Douglass’ Women (34 page)

Brown said he was establishing a black utopia in the hills. Another Underground Railroad for fugitives. But his grand design was reduced to war. Brown’s small army was on the move. Hiding, ducking, and skirting capture in the South. They disguised their real plan: an attack
on the military arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. “We’ll arm every slave. They’ll be a rise of swarming bees,” declared Brown, who crazily argued that Douglass should join him, become “queen bee” to control the swarming blacks.

Douglass said, “No.” For the record, he refused Brown’s call to arms. Refused to follow the words of a man he’d lost faith in.

October 16, 1859

Brown and a group of twenty-two seized the arsenal. Two men were sent out to rally the slaves to revolt. Revolt never came. The army surrounded the arsenal. All Brown’s troops were either killed or captured. Brown was bound, cursing slave owners to Hell, raging like the Devil himself.

And, oh, what hell he wrought.

For days, weeks, months, all throughout the South, whites were in the grip of insanity. Slaves found life much, much harder than before. For the German papers, I told of the vicious attacks on helpless people. Told of heartrending screams. Beatings. The rash of hangings. Every slave, age six to eighty-six, was capable of revolt. Every girl child or old woman was capable of mixing poison. So, no male was left unmarked, no woman untouched by suspicion.

“John Brown will get you killed.”

Douglass was in danger. A note from him was found in Brown’s papers:

“My dear Cpt. Brown, I am very busy at
home. Will you please, come up with my son
Fred and take a mouthful with me?”

The note was published in the nation’s papers. Virginia, Philadelphia, New York. Never mind that it had been written two years before. Virginia’s Governor Wise insisted that President Buchanan send soldiers to arrest Douglass. The charge: “Inciting Servile Insurrection.” To my mind, this was payment for all the times Douglass stood proudly as a man.

History repeats.

“Flee, flee!” I shouted at Douglass. “Flee. Flee,” said abolitionists. Even Garrison begged Douglass to “Flee. They’ll hang you for certain.”

Run for your life
.

No time for long good-byes. Run, Douglass. I’ll run with you
.

He was in New York when the headlines of his presumed betrayal hit. He stole away to my rooms in Hoboken and spent an anxious, waiting time. How I tried to comfort him. He was the fugitive again. He’d done nothing to help Brown’s raid, but here he was tormented. Blamed.

In the morning, I took a carriage with him as far as Paterson, New Jersey. Douglass took the train with a connection to Rochester. But he wasn’t safe. It was only a matter of days before the Rochester papers printed his letter.

Amy Post carried a letter from William Still, a colored, famous for his Underground Railroad work, warning Douglass
to get out.
Flee
, it said.
Run, nigger, run
. Douglass left his house. Kissed his family good-bye. Took a boat to Canada.

I never got a good-bye. Not a word. Never got to say good-bye as weeks later, from Canada, he sailed across the Atlantic.

And whom should he meet in England? Julia Griffiths. A “kind” friend, the type who left notes unsigned, wrote and told me.

Julia, now married to Reverend Crofts. But that didn’t matter. Pastor, so liberal in his thinking, would graciously tolerate his wife’s wonderfully famous paramour. So jealous I was. Julia and Frederick! I told myself: “Love is free.” This was the principle my mother and the Romantics taught me. Still I fumed, reading that Douglass was the Crofts’ guest through Christmas and all through January. I wondered if Anna’s illiteracy meant she experienced less pain than I? After all, how would she know of the insinuations, the gossip written in the two-faced spirit of friendship? The lingering touches, the kiss witnessed by a serving girl. The rumors of doors flying open at night … of ghosts ever so tangible, moving from bedroom to bedroom.

I, so smart (not smart enough!), had long known I was not the only (nor even the first) mistress of Frederick Douglass.

Mother married Father and they both loved true. Wasn’t that the Romantic Ideal? Anna never had it. Neither did I.

Or am I just becoming proletarian? I should’ve married William. Been a grocer’s wife.

December 2, 1859, John Brown was hanged.

In Britain’s Mechanic’s Hall, Douglass gave a speech, reaffirming himself as a self-made man: “I decide my own course.”

I crumpled the paper and burnt it in my fireplace.

I waited a year.

Then I went looking for him.

“He ain’t here.”

—A
NNA
D
OUGLASS
, 1859

“I should have been there to support your mother.”

—F
REDERICK
D
OUGLASS,
WRITING TO
R
OSETTA
, 1860

Rochester

He ain’t here.” “He ain’t here.” When the militia came. When curious neighbors came. When church gossips came. I said what I got used to saying the last twenty years:
“He ain’t here.”

I was glad Freddy was gone.
He could be hanged. Limbs loose. Tongue black. Freddy could be hanged, side by side, with John Brown
.

I never cared for Brown. He came in my house like he was God or an angel at least. He gonna free the slaves with war. Hallelujah! Why he think slaves gonna follow him? A colored man gets hit twice for each lash given to a white. Sometimes the white man don’t even get punished. Just hang the colored man. Liked they were trying to hang Freddy, saying he was a traitor.

Give America its due: John Brown was hanged. Good riddance, I say. But Rosetta say some papers now called Freddy a “cowardly runaway.” Abolitionists had been swayed to violence. Brown be a martyr. A hero. Freddy, a weak link for the cause. I be so angry. Freddy been speaking all his life against slavery.

Rosetta say, “Mr. Henry Thoreau gave a speech:
A Plea for John Brown
.”

Everybody North weeped, then rallied to fight. Brown dead, they could now destroy the colored man.

I told Rosetta to write Freddy and tell him to stay safe, law-abiding. To keep quiet ’til he was sure who his friends be. Abolitionists couldn’t be trusted no more.

Lewis came home bloodied one day. Said he fought to prove “Father wasn’t a coward.”

Mercy. My boys too eager to fight. Feeling shame when their Daddy be a good, upright man. Strange world—when abolitionists called the one who felt slavery’s lash a “no-account” weakling. Coward. They would’ve loved him better if he was hung?

I thought Freddy was smart to survive.

I was pleased to say, “He ain’t here.”

“He ain’t here. Ain’t here.”

“
Isn’t. Isn’t
here.” Rosetta kept correcting me. The words became a sore: “Freddy ain’t here.”

All winter, my mind was on Freddy. I worried sick even though he wrote Rosetta saying he was safe in England at the Croftses, with Julia (born Griffiths) and her Reverend husband. Good Christian people. They had opened their home and I was grateful. The scent of war in the air and my boys, tall as oaks, be sniffing the breeze like hounds on a hunt. I wanted Freddy to tell Freddy Junior to stop shooting cans in the yard. Wanted him to scold Charles and Lewis for battling with sticks instead of doing their chores. Many a time, Annie cleaned a grate for Charles, laid down clean straw when the boys were deciding how best to stab a man. Like John Brown, my
boys say, “When the first shot is fired, all the slaves are going to rise up.”

“Ain’t that simple,” I told them. “Otherwise would’ve happened.”

The boys roll their eyes. I’m a woman, don’t understand much, but I understood keeping my family alive.

But still. I was blind.

I was so busy fretting, I didn’t see him. Didn’t see Mister Death sliding in the back door (pretending he Father Christmas). He took a good long look at Annie.

It was a cold. A simple cold. Annie, hazel-eyed, curly-haired, my sweet baby girl, one day couldn’t rise from her bed. Couldn’t even rise to eat her Christmas orange or sing carols with the boys. Rosetta calmed me. Told me, “Never fear.” For a while, I didn’t.

Rosetta read stories of Sir Gawain, blessed with purity of heart. “Goodness never died,” read Rosetta. “Goodness brings great strength.”

I watched as Annie smiled. Just ten. She be all that’s bright and ever-sweet.

In January, the fever and chills came. The boys tiptoed about the house, ever quiet. Brought in firewood. Icy well water. Extra blankets from the attic. Whatever was needed. They set aside war talk. Made up stories. Whittled dolls.

I stayed by Annie’s side. Made me a cot. I swore Death wasn’t going to find me sleeping. Wasn’t going to steal my namesake child.

I wiped her body down. Changed her gown. Sheets. Held compresses to her brow. Brushed the dirt from her hair. Massaged her feet. I did everything a mother could.

I sang as Mam sang to me.

I prayed, “Take me, spare her.” I stood at the window,
imagining water, the ocean, bay, rivers, imagining the bones I’d long lost and no longer saw. “Please. Please. Let me be the one.”

Mid-February, Annie sat up. She’d eat if I placed small, soft bites in her mouth. Or spooned her fresh water.

“Mam,” she once say to me. “I seen your Mam.”

“Naw,” I cried.

“All of us going to be fine, she said.”

“Naw, naw.” I howled for Mam, myself, my marriage … my children grown, bursting to get out the door and leave home. ’Cept Annie. My youngest child.

“She said an angel will come and carry me.”

I hoped Annie was dreaming. Or crazed from fever.

Come March, when crocus and daffodils started to push through the earth, Annie was much better. Even laughed when Freddy Junior made a coin disappear in her ear.

I breathed a great sigh. Made a fine dinner. Roast beef. Potatoes. Yellow cake. Everyone in Annie’s room, like this our new parlor. I knitted a bed cloak. Rosetta stitched
A. D
. on six handkerchiefs. She kept her back to Annie so she couldn’t see her birthday surprise.

“Nine more days you be eleven. What you want?”

Annie just smiled. Rosetta teased: “You want a beau? How about a chariot? Or Sir Gawain slaying a dragon?” Charles Redmond say, “Pick. You got to pick something you want.” Lewis, who never had any money, said, “I’ll buy you a doll.” Freddy Junior say, “Kisses. I’ll give you eleven kisses.”

Annie just smiled some more.

Candles burned low and, one by one, the boys said good night. Rosetta opened
Knights of the Round Table
.

“No more,” said Annie. “Thank you all.”

Rosetta saw first what I didn’t. “You all right, Annie?” she asked, her tone sharp.

Annie just nodded and said, “Cover me. I’m cold.”

Rosetta gave her a big hug, then tucked in the blankets. “I’ll heat a brick. It’ll warm you.”

“Yes,” I said. Then: “Rosetta, why you cry?” Her eyes glistened. She just shook her head and ran from the room.

“Mam?” Ever soft.

I turned and saw a girl, mostly bones, lost in a big bed. I wailed: “Annie?” And before I could gather her into my arms, Mister Death done snatched her soul and gone.

“Poor Annie. Poor Anna.”

—O
TTILIE
A
SSING,
DIARY ENTRY
, 1877

“I could not help but wonder whether
Annie’s death was part of my burden of
guilt.”

—F
REDERICK
D
OUGLASS,
IN A LETTER TO
R
OSETTA
, 1860

Glasgow

I found him in Scotland. I sold my mother’s pearls, booked passage across the Atlantic, traveled by carriage and by rail, and caught up with him in a Glasgow lecture hall.

How hearty and hale he looked! In the midst of people, he was the center of attention. No John Brown critics here, calling him “traitor.” Or “pacifist.” Only Scots held breathless by his every word.

I stood off to the side, waiting for him to recognize me. I’d bought a new dress—with a clan shawl striped in red and green. My hair was less severe and I’d bought red paint for my mouth.

I watched him and my desire grew strong. He was still my lion, bronzed and vibrant. Scotsmen were utterly unappealing. They seemed too dour, effeminate, with their kilts and pale white skin.

The women, on the other hand, were glorious. Redand golden-haired. Blue- and green-eyed. Staggeringly lovely. I was alert. There were no stolen glances, no pressed fingers. No languishing glance from across the room.

He must’ve felt my presence, for he looked up.