A year later I wrote my first poem.
I was twelve years old and of a sudden I hated the way I looked. I was skinny as a beanpole. My skin was as black as if I’d been rubbed with fireplace ashes, and I was starting to know that no matter what I did, no matter how smart or amiable I managed to be, I was still not white folk. And I never would be, either.
I hated my hair, which would lend itself to no brush but stuck out every which way on my wretched head.
I would watch Mary brushing her long silken hair at night and hate the sight of it. And her.
Mary was not pretty, but she had two commodities I lacked. She acted pretty. And she had a bosom. Generally those two virtues were of great account in Boston in 1766.
Oh, I could recite from Shakespeare and Alexander Pope. I read Plato and Homer. I read the Iliad and the Odyssey. Nathaniel drilled these things in my head.
Mary did not even know what they were. “Would you like to come to a musical with me and Thankful Hubbard this evening?” she asked one day as I stood watching Sulie doing up her hair.
“No thank you. I’ve got the Iliad,” I said. I meant that I had to study the Iliad, for Nathaniel would be asking me about it that night.
“Oh?” Mary frowned. “Well, in that case you’d best lie down and take a powder. You know how Mama frets about sickness.”
I just stared at her as I left the room. Was she that much of a noodlehead? Or was she just not paying mind to me?
She was a noodlehead, I decided. And yet she was the petted only daughter in the family. Nathaniel abided her, teased her, but when all was said and done, took her interest to heart. Her parents provided her with every frippery and forbearance.
Mary’s afternoons were filled with teas, jaunts with friends, rides in the countryside, and bookshoppe lectures.
One afternoon when she had just left for such a lecture, I looked up from my newest sampler at my mistress. “Why do I have to sit here doing stitches? Why can’t I go to a bookshoppe lecture like Mary?”
“Mary is courting, dear. This is her time to do frivolous things. Soon enough, she’ll marry and be burdened with responsibilities.”
“Will I marry?”
“Mayhap, yes, someday. But you are different, Phillis. Surely you know that.”
“Because I’m a Negro?”
“No, dear, no. There are Negroes aplenty in Boston. Because you have a good turn of mind and we have educated you. So you must prepare yourself, school yourself, discipline yourself, for what lies ahead.”
“What lies ahead?” I asked.
Her eyes went soft. “I don’t know, Phillis. We none of us know what lies in the future. But we want you to be prepared. So you must work harder, pray more, and watch with whom you form alliances. You must be above reproach at all times.”
While Mary has all the sport, I thought dismally.
I wrote my poem. If Mary thought the Iliad was a disease, I would write poetry. I would write about virtue.
I had memorized and recited so much poetry for Nathaniel that spring that writing one of my own came as easy as breathing. And it looked so pleasing, written out in my fine script.
My words, mine. I felt filled with a secret satisfaction I had never felt before in my life.
Oddly enough, it was Mary who discovered my first poem. And it was all because of hair.
My hair.
I was reciting for Nathaniel one evening. He was absolutely daft about my reciting. He said it would give me esteem, and I needed esteem.
“Don’t fidget,” he scolded. I was reciting a Shakespeare sonnet. He made me do it again.
I commenced.
“Don’t tug at your hair!” he scolded. “Why must you always tug at your hair?”
“I hate my hair.”
“What in God’s name has your hair got to do with poetry?”
I started to cry. “I hate my hair. It makes me look like a Negro.”
“You are a Negro.”
“But some Negro women have pretty hair, all short and fluffy. Why can’t mine be short and fluffy?”
He lounged back in his chair, scowling. “There’s a Negro man named Lewis who has a shoppe. He styles hair. You recite this sonnet better for me tomorrow and I’ll take you there and have him make you pretty. What say you?”
I said yes.
“Very well, then study.” And he put on his linen coat and strode out. Likely to meet friends at some coffeehouse.
Two days later I sat in the shoppe of Mr. Lewis.
“She wants it short and fluffy,” Nathaniel told him.
Mr. Lewis smiled. “Short I can give her. Fluffy the good Lord already gave her.”
“Do your best, my good man,” Nathaniel said.
“I know what she wants,” Mr. Lewis said mildly. “I know what all the pretty young Negro girls in Boston want to do with their hair.”
“Do it, then,” Nathaniel urged. “I’ll be back in half an hour.”
I sat dwarfed in the large chair and wrapped in a great piece of flannel. Mr. Lewis stood over me, grinning, with gleaming scissors in his hand.
For half an hour he worked on me, snip, snip, snipping. I could scarce breathe, I was so frightened. I felt the hair getting shorter and shorter. All the while that he worked, he talked to me about the nigra women in Boston whose hair he had cut. “Did the maidservant at Mr. Hancock’s,” he said, “also the personal serving girl of Peggy Hutchinson. She’s the daughter of the lieutenant governor. The maidservant, Petula, stayed with Peggy that night last August, when the mob went through his house and tore it down. They destroyed everything. Next day was the first day of Superior Court. And since Hutchinson is chief justice, he had to make an appearance. Petula told me he walked into court in shirtsleeves, with tears coming down his face. He had no other garment. Nor did his family.”
Because he cut the hair of the maids in all the best houses in Boston, he was filled with stories and gossip.
“There,” he said finally. And he held up a silver-handled mirror. “What do you think?”
I squealed in delight. My hair was cut short, cropped around my head in hundreds of tiny curls. “It makes my face look . . .” I stopped just short of the word.
“Saucy,” he said.
I touched the curls. “Oh, it’s beautiful.”
Nathaniel returned, beaming when he saw me. “Who is this dazzling creature, this daughter of Zeus?” he asked.
I blushed. “Don’t mock me.”
“Would I do such a thing?” And from his frock coat pocket he withdrew a square of paper, unwrapped it, and handed me the most dainty bit of scrimshaw fashioned into a brooch.
I fingered it lovingly. Tears came to my eyes.
Nathaniel did not see them. He was paying Mr. Lewis for his services.
“Thank you, Nathaniel,” I whispered as we walked out of the shoppe. “You’re so good to me.”
“Until the next time I scold.”
But my heart was filled with love for him. True, he scolded, and true, we argued. But always it had been Nathaniel who sensed my hurt and pain and rescued me from it.
“Don’t thank me,” he said gruffly. “I did it for myself. Now I won’t have to see you tugging at your hair anymore. You women are so vain about your hair.”
“Not half as vain as you men are,” I returned, “with your powdered wigs.”
He expected the retort from me. I had to have the mettle to stand up to him, always, or I would not have been worth the bother to him. I knew that.