Stealing Freedom (6 page)

“Yes,” he answered.

Ann could
feel
Catharine grinning, and by now Joseph was giggling. “Why?” she asked him.

Benjamin stopped kicking. “So I can fly to where my mamma is.”

Ann pulled him close to her and wrapped her blanket over his to keep him extra warm. “That's a good idea, Benjamin,” she said in his ear.

As she drifted off to sleep, she imagined that she floated up into the inky black winter sky and flew free with the stars.

Their cousins, Hannah and David, arrived from Rockville on Christmas morning, and the relatives from farther away were there by noon. They'd all started walking the night before. They came carrying sacks of potatoes and turnips, baskets of eggs, kegs of molasses, and limp chickens dangling by their feet from carrying poles. They brought all of the special food they'd been given by their own masters, along with plates and spoons, blankets and banjos to add to the celebration, and so as not to be a burden on Ann's family for the week during which they would share their home.

In the midst of these happy arrivals Ann looked up the hill to see Richard watching, his mouth slightly open. She felt her anger flare. This was
her
time,
her
family. He had no right to watch as if their merriment were on display for him. She strode up to confront him.

“What do you want?” she demanded.

Richard startled, as if she'd awakened him. “Uh—Merry Christmas,” he said, blushing.

Ann crossed her arms over her chest. “Merry Christmas,” she returned, with only a sliver of warmth.

“My brother says come on up and get your presents. We're leaving for my sister's house in a little while, so he said come soon.” As he spoke, his gaze kept shifting back to the scene in front of Ann's cabin, where aunts exclaimed over children grown so much in the past year, and uncles laughed loudly, slapping each other on the back.

At first Ann wanted to grasp his head and turn it away. Then she found herself blinking in disbelief as she recognized the emotion in his eyes. He was looking at the scene not with disdain or even curiosity, but with longing.

“I'll go get my father,” she said, now eyeing him with curiosity.

Richard nodded, and turned to climb the hill. He was wearing his Sunday best and looked cleaner than Ann had ever seen him. She surmised that the soap he'd been scrubbed with was about as strong as her mamma's soap, because as he walked he scratched, first his neck, then his armpit, then his rump.

Ann ran to her cabin, where her family was crowding inside to warm up.

“Papa.” She tugged on her father's sleeve. “Master Charles says come get our presents.”

“Then let's go,” he said, and invited her along to help carry things.

At the stone house they found Master Charles hitching the
horses to the carriage in preparation for the trip to his sister's house.

“Here, let me do that for you, Master Charles,” her father said, and took the reins from him to finish the job.

Master Charles willingly stepped back from the carriage and brushed himself off. He, too, was dressed in his Sunday best and, surprisingly, looked sober.

“John,” Master Charles began, with an air of defensiveness about him, “it wasn't a very good harvest this year, as you well know.”

“No, Master, it wasn't.” Her father nudged the bit into the mare's mouth.

“I'd wanted to be able to give your family a couple of turkeys this year—I know those boys of yours are shooting up like cornstalks.”

“Yes, sir, Master Charles, they certainly are.”

“But,” Master Charles continued as he picked horsehair off his black wool trousers, “I can't afford the turkeys. I'm sure you understand.”

“Yes, sir, Master, I understand.” Her father patted the mare on her neck and she nibbled at his shirt.

“But I do have that old sheep that went lame. She won't be the most tender meat for your Christmas dinner, but she'll provide you with more than you can eat.”

“Thank you, Master. Thank you kindly.” Her father bowed slightly.

Mistress Carol came out of the house, a long wool cloak covering the red Christmas dress Ann's mother had made for her. “It's time to go. We don't want to be late,” she said briskly.
To Ann she said, “I've left a sack of flour and a jug of molasses in the pantry for your mother. Go get them—
one
sack and
one
jug. I don't want to find anything else missing when I return.” She began to step up into the carriage, then turned as if she'd forgotten something. She opened a small leather purse. “Since it's the season for Christian giving, here.” She selected several coins and held them out for Ann to take.

The coins felt cold in Ann's hand—five copper one-cent pieces, large and heavy.

“Share them with your brothers and sister,” said Mistress Carol.

“Thank you, ma'am,” Ann said softly.

Her father carried the sheep over his shoulders, and Ann balanced the sack of flour on one hip and the jug of molasses on the other. The coins she clutched in one hand. She wondered, as they came down the hill toward the little cabin, if they looked anything like the Wise Men who came bearing gifts for the Christ child.

Ann was thankful that butchering the sheep was her father's job. She busied herself helping to stoke the fire in the fire pit, until a thick bed of glowing coals warmed the gray winter day. The chickens, plucked and gutted, and the sheep, skinned and gutted, were then thrown onto the coals to cook.

Master Charles would have written them passes so that they could travel to visit relatives, but Ann was happy to have the relatives come to them. That way, their home was filled with laughter and music, dancing and the smells of good things to eat, and these things lingered after Christmas, the memories clinging to the beams of the cabin.

They ate, crowded around the table or gathered in front of the hearth. When no one could eat another bite, her uncles brought out banjos and harmonicas, and her cousin David beat out the rhythms of the music on his chest and thighs as if his body were a drum. Catharine danced with Benjamin in her arms, her bare feet slapping the dirt floor, her crimson hair ribbon and Benjamin's bow tie bright as blood, with Benjamin clapping and laughing, until Catharine's breath caught in her throat and Arabella made her sit to rest.

When it was time for the children to go to bed, Benjamin asked, for the hundredth time, “When will my mamma get here?”

Ann had already heard enough bits of conversation to know that no one had heard from Ellie. That most certainly meant she'd been sold into the Deep South—Alabama, or maybe Mississippi. Too far south to send word back from, and too far away to walk home for a Christmas visit.

Ann watched as her mother sank into a chair and sat Benjamin on her knees, facing her. Arabella sighed, dreading what she had to say.

“Your mamma can't come this Christmas,” she said quietly.

Benjamin's face crumpled. He closed his eyes, and his cry came out as a hum from between clenched teeth.

“You will see her again, Benjamin,” Arabella was saying. “She will wait for you in heaven, and I promise you will see her there.” But her voice was flat, deadened by the knowledge that a future in heaven was little comfort to a child so young.

Ann lifted Benjamin from her mother's knees and let his tears soak into the shoulder of her dress. She helped him
climb the ladder to the loft and held him as he cried himself to sleep.

The loft was crowded, with six young cousins now sharing the sleeping quarters. Ann lay awake even after the other children were sound asleep. She listened to the conversation in the room below, where the older cousins and adults gathered in front of the fire. Their talk was alive with news of her uncle Abram—now Uncle William—and Aunt Mimi and their new baby daughter. It was her cousin David, who sometimes worked at the docks in Georgetown, who'd gotten the news from a ship captain from New York—a man for whom Uncle William had sometimes worked, loading and unloading his ship in the New York harbor.

“They had to go,” she heard David say. “Master found out they were in New York, and a slave catcher was on his way to hunt them down.”

“They say it's horrible cold up there in Canada West,” said an elderly aunt. “Can't plant until July and you've got to harvest in August before it frosts!”

“Mmm-hmm,” chimed in an uncle. “In January, if you open your mouth, the spit'll freeze.”

Ann heard Hannah's laugh above the others. “Uncle William and Aunt Mimi will do just fine,” she said. “Uncle still has his dream of owning land. Maybe in Canada he'll be able to.”

There was a murmur of agreement. Ann wondered what Canada must be like. Was it really as cold as they said? She pictured Uncle Abram with his hair frosted white with snow and ice. And what must it be like to be free—really free, in a country
where slave catchers weren't even allowed to hunt fugitives? She felt a tug at her heart—love for her aunt and uncle, and feeling how much she missed them. She went to sleep imagining them sawing and hammering, building the house her uncle had always dreamed of.

After the new year came hiring-out time. Master William decided he needed the cash hiring out would bring him more than he needed the help of Lizzy's son Henry, so Henry was sent to live and work at the Dorsey farm. It was plenty close enough for him to walk home on Sundays, so Lizzy and Tom and all Henry's little sisters and even little Evan didn't cry too hard when he left.

Outside it was cold. The ground was frozen, the trees bare, and the fields brown and sad-looking. Fewer people stopped at the inn these days, but there was still work to be done: corn to be shelled and carted to the gristmill up the road in Tridelphia, tobacco to be pressed and weighed and loaded into barrels. There was finally time to patch and mend their well-worn clothes, and to push lumps of mud into the gaps in the walls of their cabin to help keep out the cold. And, of course, the Prices’ horses and oxen, chickens, sheep, and pigs needed more care than ever now that there was nothing for them to graze on or forage for.

Benjamin stopped asking about his mother and began to
call Ann's mother “Mamma.” Arabella said the Lord just made the little ones like that, so when their mamma died or got sold far away they wouldn't waste away from the pain of it. Ann often wondered how Ellie was faring. She was sure Ellie hadn't forgotten her son as quickly as he had seemed to forget her.

Benjamin was never far from Arabella. He went with her to the tavern when there was dinner or breakfast to cook for customers, and he crawled up on her lap in the evenings when she sat in front of the fire to sew. Sometimes Arabella laid down her sewing and played patty-cake with Benjamin, or cuddled him, or told him Brer Rabbit stories.

As Ann watched them one evening, she realized that Benjamin was about the same age her baby brother would have been had he lived. She tried to imagine that it was he who sat on her mother's lap, grown to a young boy and strong. But quickly her mind went back to the night, four winters ago, when her infant brother burned hot with fever. And how, despite a night of prayer and cloths soaked in honeysuckle tea pressed to his delicate limbs, Ann awoke to find her baby brother cold and stiff in her mother's arms. She remembered how they'd buried him. “Thank the Lord, now he'll never be a slave,” her mother had said, her voice dry as crackling leaves. And her father had sobbed as he shoveled dirt into the hole, covering the tiny box that held his son.

Yet here was Benjamin, filling her mother's lap. And now that he lived with them, he was much safer from the back of Mistress Carol's hand. Ann smiled at herself. She must be becoming like her father, she thought: able to find the hidden blessings in the middle of the sad things in life.

Sundays were quieter now. It was too cold to meet in the clearing, so smaller groups gathered in various cabins and said their prayers quietly so as not to be caught worshiping without a white person present. Sunday afternoons were spent indoors, in front of the fire, listening to stories—unless, of course, there was snow.

That one particular Sunday the snow began to fall during the night, and by morning it lay thick and quiet. When Ann went out back to wash, she gathered a handful of snow from the top of the wash bucket, rubbed it over her face and neck, and dried herself with the stiff rag hanging above the bucket. If her mother insisted on washing today, this seemed an appropriate way to do it.

With the snow falling so heavily, they dared not venture to another farm for worship, so they shared their prayers in front of the hearth. Ann could hardly sit still, she was so anxious to get back outside. Joseph and Addison were easily coaxed to join her, and after some prodding even Augustus put on his jacket and came out.

The four of them ran down the hill toward the pond, which was frozen quite solid and now had several inches of snow on top. Ann ran along on the ice, her rag-wrapped feet making huge prints in the fluffy snow. Then she stopped abruptly and slid across the ice. She hollered at the joy of it. Her brothers imitated her, running and skittering across the pond on their feet, their knees, and their bellies. Soon, despite their threadbare clothing, their faces were bright with sweat. Ann didn't even mind it when a snowball hit her squarely in the back of the neck. She wheeled around to find Richard gathering another handful to throw.

Richard had the advantage of leather boots, several sizes too big but easier to run in than rags, and gloves to keep his hands from freezing. But the Weems children had the advantage of four on one. So it was Richard, plastered white and breathless after a snowball fight that rivaled the Battle of Bunker Hill, who begged for mercy.

They sat together to rest, and Richard said innocently, “You folks must be happy to be leaving this boring place.”

Ann exchanged a curious glance with Augustus.

Richard didn't wait for a response, but kept on talking. “I wish I was moving to Rockville. My pa said almost
four hundred
people live there! They have the county fair in September, and people come from all over just to see it. They've got a courthouse, and they've even got a
jail.”