May the Road Rise Up to Meet You: A Novel (22 page)

“Miss Marcella, I don’ know what your fren’ mighta believed was goin’ on ’round here in the past, but I been Pastor for goin’ on four years now, an’ I never seen a runaway anywhere ’round here,” he insists. “Is there anythin’
else
I can help you wit’?”

He begins to inch his way toward the front door, and she knows she’ll have to convince him she is who she claims to be.

“That’s a very nice pattern there,” she says, pointing up at the ceiling. “
Nine-Patch
, I believe it’s called.”

She looks back at him, and then continues before he has the chance to reply.

“And that beautiful tapestry outside, the one draped over the wooden post? That’s the log cabin symbol, I believe. Yellow patch on the inside, signifying the light’s on and it’s safe to come in?”

“Miss, I don’ know—”

“Reverend Campbell, I assure you I am here to offer what help we can,” she insists. “And this may be my first time in the South, but I
am
familiar with the symbols used on the Underground Railroad. And Mrs. Carlisle didn’t only
believe
this church was used as a hiding place, she knew it. She
assisted
in the work. She’s the one who told me to come here.”

“Miss, I don’ know ’bout any—”

Oh enough of this now. I’m here to give you money, dammit
, she thought, losing patience as she so often and so easily did.

“Are there holes in the floorboard by the sanctuary?” she asks, folding her free hand into a fist and placing it palm down against her hip in an accusing manner.
Mmm-hmm, that look means yes
. “They’re cut to appear to be some sort of symbol, but they are really there as air holes for the space beneath it. That’s where you hide the runaways, is it not?”

He said nothing.
Offended the preacher. Typical for you
, she thought, and realized this was surely no simple matter for him.

“Reverend Campbell, I apologize for being so blunt,” she says, reaching her hand into the closed parasol she has carried with her and taking out the small canvas satchel hidden inside it. “But we are leaving for New York in a few hours, and the whole
reason
I talked my father into taking me along on this trip was to come here and give you the eight hundred dollars the Ladies Abolition Society has most recently raised.”

She offers the satchel to him and he looks at it, silently, then walks slowly to the front door, closing it and sliding the latch across into its holster. Then he walks to each of the windows along the back of the church, looking in every direction from them before pulling the curtains closed. Then slowly he walks over toward her, stopping this time just five feet away.

Now we’re getting somewhere
, she thinks.

“Please take it, it’s for you, for the work you do,” she says, extending the satchel toward him. “It’s for clothes and food for the runaways.”

His face softens a bit and he looks around again.

“Well, we do accept donations for the buildin’ o’ the steeple an’such,” he says. “Even been a coupla white folks kind enough ta help us.”

So this is how it must appear
, she thinks.

“Well, call it what you will, but know that the Ladies have collected this for the
work
you do,
not
the steeple.”

She walks forward toward him, arm outstretched with the satchel in her hand. He nods and hesitates just a second before taking it from her and placing it quickly into his inside pocket, not even looking at it for more than a second.

“I understan’, and thank you Miss Marcella,” he says, smiling just a little for the first time since she walked in. “An’ wonchu please be kind enough to thank the Ladies for us. Eight
hunnerd
dollars.”

He shakes his head at the thought of it and touches his coat where the satchel is hidden inside.

“Well, it’s actually a bit more than that,” she says, smiling.
How to tell a preacher this?

“More than eight
hunnerd
?” he asks, looking astonished again.

“As you are a man of God, Reverend, I suppose I shouldn’t tell you about the good fortune that befell me and … well … let’s just say there are a few more
donations
included in that pouch. There’s nearly two thousand three hundred dollars there, Reverend, and I’ll just leave it at that.”

He’s nervous again now. I shouldn’t have mentioned anything. Would it be better or worse if I told him that I won it from four men who owned five hundred slaves between them?

And for a moment she worries that all will be lost at this final, crucial moment.

“Two
thousan’
three
hunnerd
dollars kin do a might bitta good, Miss Marcella,” he says, looking as if he’s considering how many runaways he’ll now be able to set on their way with a real chance of making it all the way to the North, to Canada even.

“The Lawd surely works in mysterious ways,” he says, and smiles.

And for Marcella it is a victory greater than even the triumph of the previous night, a crowning moment in her life to date.

“Yes Reverend, He surely
does,”
she answers.
If only you knew
.

It’s the same pearl-handled brush she’s used nearly every morning for the last eight years, but it is always on this day that it has far greater meaning, and the memories run thicker than the long black hair it professes to tame. Eight years ago, on this very morning, her Abuela gave her the brush wrapped in lace and tied with a red silk ribbon. She’d come into Marcella’s room in the faint suggestion of the dawn, waking her by brushing her hand across her cheek, and Marcella could tell right away that the letter had come, and this was to be the end of their time together. Every first of September since that one, she’s awoken as if by instinct at the same inviting hour, to think back—each year with fewer tears than the one before—and replay those cherished moments in her mind. And now, running her fingers over the brush rather than bringing it to her hair, her thoughts drift, though at the safe distance she’s always placed between herself and her truest feelings, imagining the story as if it had happened to another person altogether …

And now she opens the drawer of her dressing table, taking out the jewelry box and lifting out the shelf to reveal the small key hidden
beneath it, using the key to unlock the lower drawer, where the notebooks are kept. There are the three of them from Abuela, filled a long time ago, at the bottom of a pile of ten—better than one per year—and they produce the usual proud smile whenever she sees them all together like this, like it was something of an accomplishment to have endured this long, pouring her thoughts and whatever emotions she allowed herself to feel into these books, every entry in them addressed to Abuela. She takes the three, forgoing the other, more recent histories of her life, and places them beside the brush on her dressing table. And there is barely enough light to read through them in the silence of the house while even the servants are still asleep, as she carries out this ritual of every first of September morning.

The first pages tell of the journey over, of the complaints of her brothers for having to travel in the second-class cabins, of the massive plumes of smoke and steam the ship’s engines produced and the way they willowed off into the infinite sea sky. And when she was gone just a few days, the entries became less about life on the ship or sharing a room with Pilar and Mama, and were instead filled with the details of the previous year, as if Marcella knew that it was a time in her life she must record now, lest it drift off like so many plumes of smoke and steam.

She began that portion of the story on
9 September 1852
, starting not with the first days at Abuela’s estate, but with the events leading up to it. Marcella wrote it as she did all the ones previous, as if speaking to Abuela, only telling her what she already knew all too well about Papa’s
asuntos de amor
, copying the sweetened phrase the servants used when describing his philandering ways. Marcella had overheard the conversations for years, even before she understood what any of them meant, even before she understood the inherent sadness in Mama’s boast to Tía Teresa that Papa
never carried on an affair with more than one woman at a time
, and didn’t have the first of them
until they were married nearly five years!
But writing those entries to Abuela then, it was clear that Marcella had come to understand all of it, understanding why Mama felt no other recourse than accepting Papa’s hollow apologies, understanding why Papa’s
asunto de amor
with
la esposa
of the Minister of Finance was another matter altogether, understanding why Papa’s business dealings
were legal when he was just another rich and powerful and philandering man, but were not so legal when he was carrying on with the
esposa
of the Minister of Finance.

And examining those pages now, thinking of Papa eight impenitent years later, she is stirred to the sort of emotion she generally seeks to contain, lest her true feelings be discovered too soon. So she flips past them, past the days when Papa fled to America, to the early weeks at Abuela’s when she felt more alone than ever before or since and convinced herself she would have it no other way. She would rise with the sun and walk outside to watch the field laborers start their irrigation work in the vineyards. Then she would follow around Lela, a chambermaid who had lived in Florida for the first fifteen years of her life. Lela was bitter and surly but tolerated having Marcella for a shadow since she would ask her the English word for everything they saw and then repeat it over and over, giving Lela the chance to laugh at her mispronunciations.

Then after the midday meal and the siesta, Marcella was forced to join Pilar and her brothers and Mama in the grand parlor so they could practice their English in anticipation of being summoned to America by Papa. For the first few weeks, such gatherings were led by Abuela, who had lived in Florida for three years after she and Abuelo were first married. But by the third month Marcella had become more proficient in English than even Abuela, and by the fourth she became the teacher. It was around that time that Abuela began to take special notice of Marcella. Each afternoon Abuela summoned her to her room, and they spoke fractured English back and forth. Marcella, as always, was full of questions, and she began to understand that Abuela was far more than the
vieja
she had always seen her as. She began to see that her grandmother was perhaps the happiest woman she knew, and it seemed a remarkable contradiction to her, given what she had known of the world thus far, given that Abuelo had died just a year before.

Reading through the recollection of these happy hours, recorded when they were still fresh in her mind, Marcella is able to drift back again, to one afternoon in particular, just weeks before the fateful letter from Papa arrived …