THE BOOK OF NEGROES (31 page)

In June, I was sent down to Canvas Town to advise the Negroes that another seventeen ships were being made available to them in the North Hudson River.

On the
Free Briton
, which was inspected June 13, we registered thirty-four people, every one of whom was an indentured servant. One young woman looked terrified to be leaving with the man to whom she was indentured, but I could do nothing but enter the words that Colonel Baker dictated.

Sarah Johnson, 22, squat wench, quadroon. Ind to Donald Ross. Formerly slave to Burgess Smith, Lancaster County, left him with the above Thomas Johnson, her husband.
The same Donald Ross brought five indentured servants with him on that ship.

When we left the
Free Briton
, I asked the colonel: “Is ‘indentured’ another word for slave?”

“No,” he said, “you indenture yourself of your own free will. For a fixed period of time, in exchange for money, lodgings and food.”

After such a long journey to freedom, I couldn’t imagine agreeing to that.

In the month of July, another fifty ships sailed from New York Harbour, carrying more than eight hundred men, women and children. On a ship bound for Saint John, I looked up from my ledger to interview the next person waiting in line, and found myself face to face with Rosetta and her
daughter. I knew that she had ended up working as a cook in the British barracks. I wanted to leap from my chair and throw my arms around them. But I was afraid that the colonel or one of the inspectors would get in the way if they thought I was helping my friends. I looked quickly into her eyes. She gave the tiniest shake of her head. She didn’t want to be caught either. So I cleared my throat and got down to business. I looked at the certificate in her hand, asked her name and age, and turned back to the ledger.

“Hurry up, Miss Diallo,” Baker told me. “If she’s free, you can just put down that she’s travelling on her own bottom.”

Rosetta Walcott, 21, stout wench, on her own bottom. Said she came behind British lines six years ago. General Birch Certificate.

Adriana Walcott, 8, daughter of Rosetta. Fine girl.

From that point on, whenever I registered a woman who had come behind the British lines quite young and was now travelling alone with child, I wondered if she was escaping Holy Ground, and silently cheered for her.

We also inspected Negroes on ships bound for Quebec, Germany and England. At first, I envied the Negroes who were going to England, knowing that ships left from there to Africa. But it turned out that all of the Negroes heading to Europe were owned by British or Hessian military officers returning home after the war. Some of the Negroes had been owned by the officers for years, and others had been snatched from southern plantations and re-enslaved by the British for their own purposes. Quickly enough, my envy turned to pity.

David, 10, likely boy, Germany is residence of claimant, M. General Kospoth. The boy goes with the General who got him at Philadelphia. The boy can give no account with whom he formerly lived.

The colonel made me write it that way, but David had spoken with me briefly, on board the
Hind
, and he had told me that General Kospoth
and his Hessians had made off with him and a number of other slaves belonging to a tobacco farmer. “Just keep it simple, Meena,” Baker said, dictating the response.

CHEKURA WAS PATIENT THROUGH IT ALL. For five shillings a week, he swept the British barracks and hauled waste buckets to a rotting wharf on the river. Each day, we woke up two hours before dawn to hold each other, run our hands along each other’s skin, and tell stories about our twenty-seven years in America. We never ran out of stories to tell. I wanted to know everything about him, and tell him everything that had happened to me, and I found great solace in knowing that my husband knew my whole life’s story.

I believe that we conceived our child on August 15, 1783. I just knew by the way my man moved deeper and deeper inside me, and by the way we both quivered and shook and erupted together, that we had made another baby. It was early in the morning. The British soldiers had a pen of roosters and they weren’t even crowing yet.

“I want to leave here with you just as soon as we can,” I said, with my leg draped over his. “I want a real life with you, husband.”

Chekura placed a hand on each of my cheeks, and traced the shape of my moons. “What we have right now is real,” he said.

“But the British promise that we will be free in Nova Scotia,” I said.

“Don’t forget all the slaves and indentured folk you have put in that ledger. They were stolen from the rebels and re-enslaved by the British. We may get to the promised land and we may not, but wherever we are, life won’t be easy. But that has never stopped us.”

“Stopped us from what?”

“From this,” he said, once more pressing his lips to mine.

BY AUGUST, SO MANY SHIPS had sailed that Canvas Town was beginning to thin out. It would have been an encouraging development if not for the fact that slave catchers were finding it easier to raid the area. There were fewer places to hide, smaller crowds to hide in and not as many Negroes left to protect one another. Bands of white men became increasingly bold about snatching up Negroes—escaped slaves or not. If Chekura and I hadn’t been living in the British military barracks, we would have been at greater risk. Still, I felt uneasy. The longer we stayed behind to help others to freedom, the more likely we were to lose it ourselves.

In September, while I was being paid my weekly wage, I asked Colonel Baker if Chekura and I could leave.

Baker looked up from his account book. “He can leave anytime he wishes,” he said, nodding at Chekura. “But you have to stay to the end. We need you, Meena. That is the deal. We have hired you, but you stay to the end.”

“When will the end be?”

“Before the year is out.”

ANOTHER FIFTY OR SO SHIPS sailed out of New York in October. Without warning or explanation, I was assigned to a new team of inspectors. With them, I spent a long day registering Negroes on
La Aigle
, bound for Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia. Many of them had papers proving service for a British military company called the Black Pioneers.

Joe Mason, 25, stout fellow, Black Pioneers. Formerly servant to Samuel Ash, Edisto, South Carolina; left him in April, 1780.

Prince, 30, ordinary fellow with a wooden leg, Black Pioneers. Formerly servant to Mr. Spooner, Philadelphia, left him in 1777.

People showed up in bunches. All together in one family, or having served together as soldiers, cooks or laundresses in the same military regiment, or having run years ago from the same master in Charles Town,
Edisto Island or Norfolk. There were people in their nineties, and newborn babies. There were healthy soldiers, and there were the dying. There were those who carried others, and others taken by hand.

Sarrah, 42, ordinary wench, stone blind, Black Pioneers. Formerly slave to Lord Dunmore, left him in 1776.

“How did you lose your eyes?” I asked her, whispering.

“Was mixing lye for soap, and a ’splosion went off,” she said. “Man one foot over was handing me his redcoat, telling me to wash it soft and gentle. Kilt him lickety-split, so I reckon I was lucky.”

“Must have hurt awful bad,” I said.

“I’ve known worse,” she said. “Say, you a Negro woman?”

“African.”

“You writing this down?”

“That’s my job,” I said.

“Praise the Lord, girl. Praise the Lord. I always wanted to learn to read. Guess all I can do now is learn to sing.”

“Lord Dunmore,” I said. “He owned you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“The same Lord Dunmore who issued the Proclamation? The first one, saying we’d be free if we fought for the British?”

“Same Lord Dunmore,” she said. “Virginia governor got to have his slaves.”

“You’re free now, Sarrah, and going to Annapolis Royal.”

“Don’t know where it is, but it sure sound pretty.”

“Up the coast, in Nova Scotia. Two weeks by ship.”

“You sound so smart,” Sarrah said. “Right pretty, I bet.”

I leaned over to tell her something I hadn’t told any other person, except my husband. I made sure that nobody could hear us. “I’m having a baby.”

“A chile is a miracle, ’specially these days,” Sarrah said. “Your man with you?”

“He is.”

“Praise the Lord. You travelling with us, honey chile?”

“Not on this boat. Soon, I hope.”

“Travel safe, girl, and watch your eyes.”

ONE COLD OCTOBER MORNING, after we made love and were lying, fingers intertwined, Chekura told me how he had lost the tips of his fingers.

“I had been guiding the British through the low-country waterways. They raided every plantation they could find. They shot rebels. They stole knives, chickens, pigs and silver. They took some slaves as prizes and turned others into helpers like me. They promised to liberate all of us who helped them. But when the time came to evacuate Charles Town, the British only took some of the Negroes. They promised to take more, but as usual, they lied. But I knew that if I didn’t get out, a man in Beaufort County was just waiting to get his hands on me for trying to run with the British. The British soldiers started lifting the gangplank. Another fellow and I jumped in the water, clothes and all. It was just a few feet to the boat. We tried to get up the ladder, but the men on board said they would fire if we didn’t let go. I didn’t believe them. I had served them for months. We kept climbing the ladder, even though two sailors on deck waved cutlasses. ‘Let go,’ they hollered, but we kept on. Turned out they didn’t fire on us after all. But when my friend put his hand on the top rung, one of the soldiers cleaved off his fingers. He screamed as he fell into the water and kept screaming when his head came back up. I had both hands on the rail. One of the sailors slashed at my left hand. He took off two fingertips. But I hung on with my good hand. I would have sooner died in the water than go back to my owner.

“I caught the eye of another sailor. I had seen that man before. I had traded with him in the low-country. I saw his face change as he recognized me too. He yanked me up, gave me a cloth for my bleeding hand and shoved me behind him on the deck. I had a fever the whole time at sea, but I couldn’t stop thinking of you. When we got to New York, I was let off in Brooklyn Heights. I stayed there until I heard about Canvas Town and went looking for you again.”

I had been missing Chekura since our first days in America and I didn’t want to spend one more day without him. Though I worked long days, the early mornings were ours and ours alone, for loving and talking.

“Let me talk to that baby inside you,” he said, bringing his mouth to my navel.

“Get out of there,” I said, laughing.

“No, let me say something. I have words for her.”

I smiled at my man, remembering stories of how my father had done the same thing with me when I was in my mama’s belly.

“Stick with your mother, little girl,” Chekura whispered into my navel.

“You think it’s a girl, do you?”

“Course it’s a girl. Your papa is no good, so stick close to Mama.”

“Papa just fine,” I said, “just fine indeed.”

“Papa is a travelling man,” Chekura said.

“We are travelling peoples,” I said, “all of us.”

At the barracks the next day, I was told that Captain Waters and Colonel Baker had sailed for England. No goodbye. No thank you. No indication of who would keep paying my salary. And no word left of when I could leave.

I spoke to a deputy quartermaster general, who was fussy and impatient.

“We don’t require your services any longer,” he said. “We need the space in the barracks too. You’ll have to move back to Canvas Town.”

“And my ship? What ship can I take with my husband?”

He fumbled about on his desk and shoved something toward me without looking up. “Take these,” he said, and dismissed me from the room.

Our tickets said, “
Joseph
, boarding November 7 for Annapolis Royal.”

CHEKURA AND I STOOD WITH A CROWD of two hundred Negroes on Murray’s Wharf. Huddling together under a freezing rain, we hoped that Annapolis Royal would offer gentler winters than the biting cold and snow of Manhattan. Under my heavy coat, I had the certificate that had been issued when I began my work on the Book of Negroes.

On a small square of paper with lines in flowing ink, it said:

I also had crab cakes, hard cheese, two loaves of bread, six fresh apples and four bottles of beer, all of which had been donated and wrapped in newspaper by Sam Fraunces, who had come down to the wharf to see us off. All of my friends had gone by then—some to Saint John, others to Annapolis Royal, and still others to Quebec. I knew none of the people crowded onto the pier. Sam Fraunces shook Chekura’s hand and hugged me. I didn’t know how to thank him. After Chekura and I had been made to leave the British barracks, Sam had let us stay in his tavern.
Canvas Town was just too dangerous, he had told us, because white men were prowling the area every night. People were now saying that George Washington would ride into town before the end of November.

Just as Chekura and I were leaving, Sam leaned closer and whispered to me that George Washington had promised him a job when the war was over. Sam was to become the head cook at the general’s residence in Mount Vernon, Virginia.

“When the Tories pull their last anchor, the Americans will prove to be the better people. You never gave them their due.”

“I’ll take my chances with the British,” I said.

Sam clasped my hand. “Write to me care of General Washington, Mount Vernon.”