When we arrived at home, I was so anxious to show my mistress my new hairstyle that I ran right through the center hall to where I heard her voice in the kitchen.
I did not see Mary standing in the front parlor with a paper in her hand.
In the kitchen Mrs. Wheatley was taking inventory of the larder. Aunt Cumsee gave me a piece of pie and some milk.
“Phillis, come here.” Nathaniel’s voice boomed through the house. I ran to him.
He looked up from a chair in the parlor. Mary stood behind him. “This poem—is it of your making?”
I stared at the paper he held as if it had suddenly taken on a life of its own. How did it come to be in his hand? That was the paper I’d hidden under my pillow. Then I saw the smugness in Mary’s face.
“You’ve no right to go poking around my things when I’m not here,” I flung at her. At the same time I went to Nathaniel and reached for the paper.
He held it aloft. “Hold your tongue! And answer the question.”
There was nothing for it but to say yes. So I did.
Nathaniel began to read it then. When he got to the line “Wisdom is higher than a fool can reach,” my face went red. And I wanted to run from the room.
How could I make so bold as to write such words? They were so high sounding, so false. What did I know of wisdom? Oh, I wished Nathaniel would stop reading. He was saying, aloud, all my innermost thoughts, dragging them from the dark reaches of my soul and pouring them out into the sunlight.
“Stop!” I shouted.
Nathaniel stopped. And then the silence was worse. We just stared at one another, he and I. The clock in the corner ticked loudly. I minded that others had come into the room. Mrs. Wheatley and Aunt Cumsee.
“Please don’t read any more,” I begged. “Please give the paper to me.” I reached out for it.
Nathaniel held it away from my grasp. “You wrote these words, Phillis? On your own?” He was truly taken aback.
“I won’t do it again,” I said.
“Mother, did you hear it?”
“I did.” My mistress stepped forward. Her eyes were filled with a dull confusion.
What had I done?
I stood helplessly while they all stared at me. I felt time passing, moving across the face of the sun, slowly, inexorably, toward eternity.
They were angry with me. I had written something in secret, something Nathaniel knew naught of. Writing was a freedom, he’d told me. But because I was still a child, I was still under the Wheatleys’ jurisdiction. And my words must be approved by them.
“I won’t do it again. Give me back my work, please. I won’t do it again. I promise.”
Again I reached for the paper. This time he handed it to me. I turned and started to walk from the room.
In that instant everyone came to life.
“Don’t go,” I heard from Mary. “I won’t poke about your things again, I promise.”
“Phillis, dear”—at the same time, from my mistress—“dear child. To my knowledge, no Negro has ever written a poem.”
“Lord be praised,” from Aunt Cumsee.
But it was Nathaniel who stopped me. I felt his hand on my arm. I could not see for the tears of shame in my eyes. For it came to me, then, what I had really done.
I had broken some long-honored rule. I had stepped over some line. I had disrupted the normal workings of the universe.
“Phillis,” Nathaniel said, “you had best do it again if you know what is good for you. And again, and again, and again.”
After that my life changed. My writing was no longer mine. It belonged, after that day, to the Wheatley family, even as I did. Mary made me copy my poem over and over again to show her friends. When they came for tea, she made me recite it for them. Mrs. Wheatley announced there would be no more chores for me, not even shelling peas or helping Aunt Cumsee make beaten biscuits.
I did not care overmuch for that decision. I missed my time in the kitchen with Aunt Cumsee. She had a steadfast earthy wisdom that I needed to balance my daily diet of Greek and Latin.
Mrs. Wheatley had a new cherrywood desk brought to my room. Mary gave me a bowl of potpourri to set on it and two silver candleholders with beeswax candles.
I was supplied with expensive vellum, a new ink-pot, two new quill pens, very sharp. The fire in my grate was kept up all night against the chill. In case I was “seized by a thought and wanted to write it down,” Mrs. Wheatley said.
Mr. Wheatley contributed a hunt tapestry to be hung on one wall. It was old and valued. I had always seen it in his library. It was from England.
Aunt Cumsee gave me a special shawl to wear around my shoulders to ward off drafts if I “had the notion to write in the middle of the night.” She kept me supplied with trays of tea and cooked special things for me. Cream soups. Apples in chocolate sauce. The lightest of pastries.
I was to keep my usual schedule of a morning: breakfast with the family, then read the Bible with Mary and her mother for half an hour and devote an hour to doing my needlework. Then I was to accompany Mrs. Wheatley on calls.
After a noon meal I was to rest for an hour, then study lessons for an hour and spend the rest of the day at my desk, writing.
Lessons were shortened by Nathaniel. I was no longer required to do sums or geography. But I was to read Mather Byles, Thomas Burnet, Jonathan Edwards, and more Shakespeare, Milton, and Pope.
Yes, my life changed. But I preferred it the way it was before I became “Mrs. Wheatley’s nigra girl who writes poetry.” When my writing was mine alone, to be held close and cherished.