The Wedding Gift (10 page)

“What did I tell you? Don’t ask me or no one about books or newspapers or nothing like that. And the overseer complained that you spend too much time cleaning that library. I have my suspicions why that is, and I don’t even want to know what happened when you sat with Miss Clarissa in those lessons. Sarah, please. You’re scaring me. I already got enough worries with Belle and don’t need to worry about you.”

The next day, after my mother made tea, I asked her if she wanted me to take it to the Allens on the verandah. When I finished serving, Mrs. Allen complimented me.

“Sarah, you set such a lovely tea service. Tell your mother that the pastries were delicious.”

“Thank you, ma’am, I’ll be back to clear everything. Is there anything else that I can bring, ma’am?”

“Not for me. Mr. Allen? Clarissa?”

“Tell her to bring me a glass of brandy, this tea business is for ladies,” Mr. Allen said from behind his newspaper.

I curtsied. “Yes, sir. Yes, ma’am.”

When I got to the kitchen, my mother sent me to get the overseer to unlock the liquor cabinet. When he did, she poured some in a glass and I took it on a tray to Mr. Allen. I cleared the table and hovered until they were done with tea. When they went to the parlor, I cleaned the verandah and put the newspapers under rags in my bucket, which I left in the washroom near our cabin where we kept mops, brooms, and other housekeeping items. I decided that going forward I would keep my books there too, and that night, I waited until my mother had been gone for fifteen minutes before I went to read the newspapers, one of which was published in Anniston and the other in Mobile. Both reported on local events and contained numerous advertisements about slaves, their sale, purchase, and the recovery of those who had escaped.
The Anniston Journal
contained an editorial about “fire-eating Abolitionists.” The writer urged representatives in Congress to resist calls by Northern “speech makers” who sought to abolish slavery. The
Mobile Gazette
warned readers that Northern abolitionists were luring their slaves and helping them escape to the North.

The following day, when we were working in the kitchen, an overseer asked my mother what she had done with the newspapers that Mr. and Mrs. Allen left in the verandah.

“Sir…I…” my mother said.

“Sir, I cleaned the verandah yesterday,” I said. “I put the newspapers in the bucket and forgot them there. They’re in the washroom. I’ll go get them.”

“Why didn’t you tell her that I collect the newspapers and dispose of them?”

“I’m so sorry, sir. I forgot. It won’t happen again,” my mother said.

“It better not. What you standing there for? Go get the papers.”

For the next few weeks, our lives resumed their normal patterns. I helped with cleaning, cooking, and taking care of Clarissa. She and I had begun menstruating that year, which we had known was going to happen eventually because Belle told me and Clarissa’s older cousins told her about that delicate subject. Clarissa and I talked about it, laughing nervously as all other girls do, I suppose, but the change in our bodies only reinforced my low station in life. Bessie showed me how to cut new bleeding cloths for Clarissa every month; and although Clarissa and I both suffered from severe pain during menstruation, when she was having hers, I slept on a cot in an area by her bedroom, rising to get her a hot-water bottle and tea to calm her pain.

Mama and I went to the slave quarters about once a week to see Miss Mary. Along the way, I almost could not bear to look at the toiling men, women, and children. Even during harvest, the sun was so hot that I felt weak, but the field hands never looked up. They just pulled and pulled at the cotton shrubs. On every visit to Miss Mary after Belle was sold, my mother asked her if she had heard anything about her and the other girls. The answer did not vary.

“No, Miss Emmeline. I’m sorry. I ask everybody that I can. Whenever somebody come back here who been hired out to another plantation, I ask them if they got any new girls over there. But nobody know nothing or they ain’t talking. But I’m going to keep asking. And, Miss Emmeline, know the Lord is keeping Belle safe by the power of his hand, and you remember what the Bible say: Be strong and of good courage; be not afraid, for the Lord thy God is with you wherever you go.”

At night, I continued to read and study Clarissa’s lesson books. One day, my mother told me that Mrs. Allen had received a letter telling her that her father was sick and that Mrs. Allen and Clarissa were going to Georgia for a month. She also surprised me by telling me that she and I were accompanying Mr. Allen to Mobile.

We boarded the
Coosa Belle
in Talladega. Mr. Allen stayed in his private compartment in the boiler-deck level and my mother, Eddie, Mr. Allen’s body servant, and I stayed on the main deck. We found space to sleep between cotton bales, but the first night, fumes made my stomach ill. I did not rest well, which I did not mind because, when I did, I dreamed of Belle, that she was in danger. I was glad that, while we were on the boat, my mother was with me and Mr. Allen did not summon her to his berth.

The next morning, Eddie left the deck early to get Mr. Allen’s breakfast. When he returned, it was time for the main deck passengers to eat, and we got plates of food from the cook in the pantry. Eddie told us that Mr. Allen had changed his mind and that we were stopping at Montgomery, the new capital, on the way to Mobile rather than upon our return. My mother did not like Montgomery at all.

“Sarah, maybe you don’t remember it too good because you was real little the last time we was there, but the worst thing is the slave market. They have people sitting on benches out in the open just waiting for somebody to buy them. And everybody walk around acting like nothing is strange about it. And Montgomery got too much going on anyway, too many people and too many buildings, and painted ladies dipping snuff.”

When we stopped, my mother was relieved that we were only there for about four hours, long enough for cotton to be loaded onto the boat. A carriage took us to a hotel, where we waited for Mr. Allen in the servants’ quarters while he spoke to a merchant. Montgomery was as my mother described it, populous and frenzied, but I admired the new statehouse. When we went back to the boat, all the cotton and other cargo had been loaded, but Eddie told us that Mr. Allen had made arrangements with the captain to wait for his return before departing.

On board the boat, one could observe the main purpose of river travel, the transport of cotton bales, which even took place at night, when everything was illuminated by torches. Most planters built their own warehouses on the landings, some several stories high and over a hundred yards long, to keep their cotton until it was ready to be loaded onto steamers. They constructed slides made of planks on landings where the bluffs were steep. Using iron hooks, slaves loaded bales from the warehouses onto the slides and pushed them. Everyone had to be careful, even those of us on board, because the bales gathered speed as they descended and ended their journey on the main deck. The landing in the town of Claiborne had the longest loading slide on the Alabama River because the bluffs were high above the river’s edge. Passengers and crew members who disembarked had to climb a four-hundred-foot wooden staircase to reach the top.

We anchored at Mobile Point in the lower bay, where slaves transferred the cotton bales from the steamboats to oceangoing ships that my mother said were bound for New York and England. When we were on the wharf, my mother put her arm around me and held me close. Sheriffs were putting chains on about forty Negroes whose papers were not satisfactory. My mother said that they were taking them to a jail nearby until a judge could confirm that their traveling passes or manumission papers were authentic.

“How does the judge do that?”

“He writes a letter to the person’s master or to the court in the county where the Negro say they’re from, but that can take over a month and they have to stay in jail the whole time.”

“What if the judge doesn’t get an answer?”

“They belong to the county here and the sheriff can sell them at a auction.”

A wagon was waiting for us; Mr. Allen had departed in a carriage. We had lodgings at a hotel in a busy part of the town, and when we arrived, I helped my mother and Eddie unpack Mr. Allen’s luggage before we went to the servants’ quarters. The hotel had an area in the kitchen where slaves travelling with their masters could eat. That evening after supper, my mother told me that she was going to Mr. Allen.

“Lock the door and use the chain. Don’t let nobody in, I don’t care who they say they is.”

She returned just before dawn and slept for a few hours. That morning, Eddie told us that Mr. Allen wanted him to escort us around town and that the hotel had made a wagon available. I was at first excited about seeing Mobile because the largest town that I remembered going to was Talladega, but then I felt guilty that I had temporarily not thought about Belle. Eddie and my mother had been to Mobile many times and wanted to show me different places, and my excitement returned. When we reached Royal Street between St. Louis and St. Anthony streets, where the slave market was located, a patroller stopped us.

“Where’s your pass?” Eddie showed it to him. “Y’all don’t forget curfew time here is six o’clock. The warning bell goes off at five thirty.”

“Yes, sir,” Eddie said.

“That goes for y’all too.”

“Yes, sir,” my mother and I said at once.

I saw advertisements for slaves from the Carolinas and Virginia posted on buildings, but there was no auction at the slave market that day. We passed a three-story brick building that looked like a jail where people were looking through windows secured with iron bars. Eddie took us past the business district and to the home of a woman, Miss Adeline. My mother said Miss Adeline was born at Allen Estates and lived there until she was sold to a family in Mobile at the age of sixteen. The woman’s new master had freed her and her children some years later.

“Emmeline, it’s good to see you, and this is your baby girl, and Eddie, how you been? And where’s Belle?”

My mother, sobbing, fell into Miss Adeline’s embrace. She tried to comfort Mama but could not get my mother to speak.

“Master Allen sold Belle, and Miss Emmeline’s trying to find out where he sent her, if he sold her down here,” Eddie said.

“I don’t get out much these days. I just be here during the day looking after my grandchildren. When my sons reach home tonight from working, I’ll talk to them and see what I can find out. I’ll let you all know tomorrow.”

She stood close to my mother to whisper to her, but I still heard what she had to say. “Emmeline, listen. You got to find a way to get him to at least free Sarah. I told you last time you was here that you need to get him to free both the girls.”

“I tried, but he won’t.”

“Do he know all this time you still looking for where he sent Belle’s father?”

“Yes. He told me that…he said that one reason he sold Belle was because I was looking for her father. So I ain’t looking for him no more. Now I just got to find my child.”

“So why don’t he buy her back?”

“He said he may do that, if I act right.”

“What do that mean?”

“Meaning if I do everything he tell me to do and if I stop thinking about Belle’s father. But I can’t wait. I been begging him to bring her back to me, but all he say is he don’t want to hear it and if I keep talking about Belle he ain’t never buying her back. But I can’t stop worrying about my baby. I got to at least find out where she is and get word to her that I’m going to do everything I can to get her back.”

That night at the hotel, Eddie told my mother at supper that Mr. Allen was going to the theater and that she should go to his rooms at two in the morning. The next day we returned to Miss Adeline’s home, but she said that her sons were still making inquiries of people who were hired out to work on the largest plantations outside of Mobile. She told us to get a pass from Mr. Allen to attend Sunday services at her family’s place of worship, the First Baptist Church-Crichton, where my mother could ask the pastor and parishioners if they had heard about any slaves sold to local plantations from Allen Estates. Then she asked my mother to speak with her in the next room, just the two of them.

When we returned to our room that evening, I asked my mother what Miss Adeline said to her.

“It’s best you don’t know what she said, baby.”

“Mama, if it had to do with Belle, I want to know. Please, Mama.”

“This don’t really have to do with Belle directly. It’s just about some people that maybe can help us.” My mother was quiet then, but before I could ask her again, she said, “All right, I’ll tell you, but promise me you won’t say nothing to nobody. This is serious, Sarah. It’s one of them things that can get people killed.”

“Yes, ma’am. I promise I won’t tell.”

“The pastor and some of the members of the church we’re going to, Miss Adeline’s church, work at the port like Miss Adeline’s sons, and they know the captains from the ships. A few of the captains is God-fearing people from England who don’t believe in slavery, and they try to get slaves to the free states. They know people here who belong to churches in the North and in the South, and they know things about what’s going on in different plantations. So they might of heard about Belle and the girls.”

“What’s a free state?”