The President's Daughter (42 page)

“Can't you see she isn't the one? Can't you see she isn't light brown complexioned at all? She's high yellow, which is not the same thing. Her eyes are not gray, but chestnut. She isn't eleven stone, and where is the dog-bite scar on her left wrist?”

I took a chance that the bounty hunters couldn't read or couldn't read much. I held up the girl's left forearm.

“Besides, I just explained to you that she's my employee. Her name is Thenia Hemings. I will vouch for her. I know these people all look alike to you, but surely as a trained policeman you can tell the difference between light brown and high yellow, between gray eyes and chestnut ones, between a round face and an oval one, between a flat nose and a sharp one, between kinky hair and straight hair. Look! She can't be more than sixteen years old.
Yet it says here you are looking for a woman of twenty-five! Does she look twenty-five to you?”

“Well, then, why did she bolt, if she wasn't guilty? Why didn't she say she worked for you? Just took off, hightailed it out of the tavern.”

“Tavern! Gentlemen! Because she didn't have her papers with her! Because she was running home. I have her papers. You would have arrested her for prostitution. She is terrified of jail—with good reason! Isn't that true, Thenia?” I said, praying.

The brown face had cracked in despair. Now a faint glimmer of hope illuminated it.

“Yes, mistress.”

“You have papers to prove who she is?”

“At home. If you like, I'll have them sent over to the station house at once. You'll release her in my custody.”

It was not a question but a command.

“Officers, I'm Mrs. Thance Wellington. There's my name, in huge green letters above my head. I apologize for my … servant. She shouldn't have been abroad without identity papers, and I do apologize. It is my fault and I take full responsibility.”

I modulated the tone now to a deep resonant one that bespoke “responsibility,” and then filled it with soothing Virginian sweetness.

“Oh, dear. If my husband finds out …”

My voice trailed off, my eyes flashing green wells of contriteness.

Charlotte was speechless. She had no more seen this girl in her lifetime than I. She opened her mouth several times to speak, but found she was unable to do so.

“And Mrs. Waverly Nevell of Nevelltown is a witness. Aren't you? You know, of course, who Mrs. Nevell is, Warden?”

“Of course, ma'am.”

The poor mute Mrs. Nevell nodded in agreement. The two bounty hunters glared at us but didn't dare dispute my word—a white woman's word. They moved away, and the small crowd that had gathered dispersed. Inwardly I was trembling and laughing at the same time.

“Why, Harriet, you told a barefaced lie to that policeman,” whispered Charlotte, more in awe than reproach. “You … you cowed them with your voice … and that impossible southern accent! You are absolutely crazy! What's got into you?”

The vision of Sykes and his whip floated in the heavy, humid air. I had had no choice.

“I guess I don't like big men with whips chasing small Negro girls. I don't like slave catchers and bounty hunters. I don't like the idea that some southerner can come up here and stalk the streets of Philadelphia and kidnap Negroes. The South can't dictate to us with its fugitive slave laws.”

Could I tell Charlotte, I wondered, of the abject horror of seeing myself in that girl?”

“Do you think I'm wicked?”

“No. I think you're brave. But what will you tell Thance?”

“We won't tell Thance anything. Perhaps we'll send her to Robert Purvis; he'll know what to do. We saved the girl.” I looked around at the forlorn figure cowering against the red brick wall.

“What are you going to do with her now?” murmured Charlotte.

“I'm going to take her back to the laboratory. Nobody's there. I can't take her home. We must send her to Emily Gluck, but how?”

“Your maid?”

“Thenia?
Both
without papers? Too dangerous.”

“Don't worry. I'll take her,” Charlotte replied. “You'd better get someone to take … your maid's papers over to the police station.”

“Oh, God. They're in Thance's safe. I'll have to ask the accountant, Mr. Perry, to open it for me.”

“Well, for God's sake, don't send Abe with them. Send a white man.”

As soon as we were inside the empty laboratory, the girl fell to her knees and grasped my hand, kissing it.

“Get up off your knees,” I said softly. “You don't have to kneel to me. I apologize for the entire white race.”

Those words of kindness shattered the last of her defiance. She collapsed, sobbing, and her whole story poured out. For a moment I considered sending Charlotte away. This was not a story, I decided, for her ears. Then I thought, looking around at the endless shelves of labeled brown bottles, the flacons of acids and mysterious powders, the test tubes and distilleries which exuded a bitter, acrid, medicinal smell,
I can't protect my friend forever.

The bondswoman's name was Mary Ferguson, and she was indeed the girl in the advertisement. She had escaped from a rice plantation in North Carolina and was completely alone in the world. As her story unfolded, scenes of Mulberry Row danced before my eyes. When the real reason she had run exploded from her soul, it was too late to protect Charlotte.

“My master tried to conquer my will. Not for any real reason—I never gave him any reason for displeasure—but because it was his will against mine. It was a … game. One day he called me in and got a rope and tied my hands behind me and tore the dress from my back and beat me with a
cowhide whip. For pleasure. When I asked him what I had done, he took up a chair and broke it over my head. The next day he sent for me again. He hit me with a stick until I was dizzy. In the fight with him, I bit his finger. I fought and scratched him. The next time, he decided to use another weapon —his sex. He told me to undress. He tied me to the bedstead and beat the backs of my legs until I was forced to kneel to him.”

As I knew they would, quiet sobs had begun.

“When I couldn't move, he forced his … sex into my mouth. After that, I had no more strength to defend myself. He took me any and every which way, but kneeling before him was his favorite. For three years. Every day I suffered in my spirit. I lowed like an animal when he came after me. He used me until I got with child, and when it came, the baby, white as snow, my mistress took it away from me and sold it to a passing slave trader who had a nursing slave—just like a bundle of rags. Then she used my milk for her own baby. And even before it was dry, he came after me again. I thought, If I don't run, I'm going to kill him. So I ran. She might have been glad to get rid of me, but he sent patrols out after me.”

“What about the dog bite?”

“Oh, that. Got that when I was eight years old. Set the dogs on me and my mama. That's ancient history.”

I sat dry-eyed, but Charlotte was sobbing uncontrollably.

“Char,” I said softly, taking her cold hands in mine to comfort her. “We've got to send her to Emily. She'll know what to do. We can't hide her.”

“What if the police come back looking for her?”

“They'll find Thenia, and they won't know the difference.”

“Thenia … Thenia has a story like this one, too … doesn't she?” murmured Charlotte.

“Yes,” I replied without elaboration.

“And you?” said Charlotte.

“What do you mean?”

“Is the reason you love Thenia so because your family did something terrible to her once?”

“Why do you ask that, Charlotte?”

“Because sometimes you seem to carry within yourself a terrible secret— a guilt like a terrible weight … I've seen it in your eyes. …”

“Yes,” I said. “My family did something terrible to Thenia.”

“Is that why you love her more than you love me?”

“I don't love Thenia more than I love you, Charlotte. I love you both. I've loved you longer.”

“How long is ten generations, Harriet?”

“Well, if you count from Plymouth Rock, I'd say we have until
1860.”

“I don't care what you or your family did … it doesn't change how I feel …”

“I know. I know, Charlotte. Sometimes I think you'll love me to death.”

“And you lied to a constable officer! For someone you've never seen before! And made me lie with you!”

I grinned wickedly, showing all my spectacular teeth, and rolled my eyes.

“Oh, Charlotte, it was only a white lie.”

Suddenly, I realized I could have gotten both Thenia and myself jailed. But Thenia was free and could prove it—she had her papers. I was the one who was neither white nor free; and had committed along with my husband the felony of miscegenation. I was the one who shouldn't have been more then ten city blocks from my place of residence without a pass. I was the craziest Negro I knew. An odor like burnt cork hovered in the air around me—or emanated from my own person. It wasn't fear, I knew, yet I couldn't put my finger on what it was. I felt more alive than ever before in my life. I almost danced a jig to the reckless, intoxicating exhilaration of mortal danger. I dissolved into helpless, hysterical laughter. Innocently, Charlotte joined in. We laughed until we cried.

I hid the story of Mary Ferguson from Thenia. I had tried to make Thenia's life until now as safe and secure as I could. She had never gotten over the sale of her family, and even now any announcement concerning slavery in the newspaper or the mention of a runaway could throw her into a stuttering fit, drench her in cold perspiration and such violent trembling that she had to take to her bed. I had taught Thenia to read and write; she was a skilled midwife and a teacher at the First African Methodist Church Sunday school—the only available school for black children. She was now twenty-three years old and she had been deeply in love with Abraham Boss from the first day she had laid eyes upon him.

I had promised Thenia a wedding someday, and now that Abraham had proposed by proxy, so to speak, they were to be married. She would at last have her own family and home. I would lose the witness of my former life to Abraham, who had become a registered apothecary and the general director of our supply depot. Over the years, Thenia had grown into a beautiful woman, whose looks were the talk of the First African Methodist Church and whose body was the dream of every man that prayed there. Her dark hair was worn pulled back in a bun, accentuating her high mahogany forehead, and so
tightly held that her enormous, black-fringed eyes turned upward at the corners from the tension. She favored ruffled, high-necked blouses that accentuated the length of her magnificent neck and the amplitude of her splendiferous bosom. Abraham adored her, though the black community, according to Thenia, thought Thenia should have married an American.

Nevertheless, on a cold Sunday in December, with snow on the ground and hoar in the air, Abe and Thenia rode in our carriage to the church where they were wed. She wore a long, beautiful, white velvet dress with a train, my wedding veil, and the pearl earrings her future husband had given her for their engagement. The Bishop Richard Allen, who presided over the ceremony, would probably have had apoplexy if he had heard what Abe whispered in my ear before the ceremony: “I'm doing this for Thenia, but someday it will have to be repeated all over again when we go back to Africa. I'm a Muslim.”

Abraham gazed at me from beneath lowered eyelids and smiled.

“I hope this doesn't shock you, Mrs. Wellington,” he said, his round liquid eyes holding mine. “I was born into the religion of my ancestors and my tribe, a nation that has no family names. I was captured and sold to Protestant missionaries in Durban at the age of six and forcibly baptized as a Anglican. At twenty-one, I converted to Islam, and for the love of Thenia, I have become a Methodist so that she can be married in the church. To me, one religious ceremony is worth another. When I return to Africa, I revert to the natural religion of that continent: Islam. When I go into the bush seeking specimens, I revert to the religion of my ancestors. You may believe it to be immoral to crisscross the lines of belief like that, but I find it more immoral to fight a religious war. Since there is only one God, religion is like opening and closing a door. The light beyond remains eternal and immutable. Your husband, as a scientist, agrees with me that to be born into a certain religion, as to be born into a certain race, is the purest of accidents. Of course,” he continued, “I have never told my little Methodist.”

“Your secret is safe with me.”

We exchanged spectacular smiles. Secrets. Was there anyone who didn't have them?

“Why, after all these years, won't you call me Harriet, Abraham?”

And so, in this same year of 1836, Thenia and Abraham Boss set up their apothecary in the Moyamensing district of Philadelphia. Abraham continued to work in the afternoons for Thance, who supplied him with merchandise. Thenia minded their little wooden-front store and served as midwife, pharmacist, nurse, and, in many cases, pediatrician, to her neighbors.

The death notice of my half sister, Martha, appeared at the end of that year in the
Richmond Times.
It had been sent, unsigned and without comment, by my silent, sullen brother Thomas, whose handwriting I recognized on the envelope. She had survived my mother by only nine months. Her body had been laid to rest across the head of the three graves in which lay buried my father, my other half sister Maria Eppes, and my mother's half sister, Martha Wayles. Martha was not mourned by me. I felt no pity or sympathy for any of my white family, or for the plight of Cornelia, Ellen, or any of the others. I had always detested Martha Randolph and everything about her, perhaps because I resembled her in many ways. But her airs, her synthetic gentility, her cruelty to my mother had made her my enemy. And now that my enemy's corpse floated by me, vanquished, I tried to find some better memory of her, even if only the fact that she had freed my mother at her father's request. As for her eleven living children and seven grandchildren, from what I had learned of the world they had built, they could rot in hell, all of them. I wished them the same suffering they had imposed on their slave family.