The Peculiar Narrative of the Remarkable Particulars in the Life of Orrinda Thomas,

AN AMERICAN SLAVE

WRITTEN BY HERSELF.

“THE POETRY OF THE EARTH IS NEVER DEAD”

~ KEATS

LONDON

PUBLISHED BY ASHWELL & CRAWFORD,

STATIONERS’ HALL COURT

1840

EDITOR’S NOTE

Upon the Editor’s journeying south to Turnwood Plantation in order to discover what fate had befallen his younger brother, Frederick Crawford, he was acquainted with these papers whose tale furnishes that history. At the time of its composition, its author, Orrinda Thomas, who has been known to the Editor since a child, could not foresee what barbarous events would transpire. Yet the Editor can attest that he has found these eloquent words to be not only written unaided, but deplorably true, and a rebuke to those who revel in the oppression of their fellow man and dare to do it in Christ Jesus’s name. It is the Editor’s intention to demonstrate how the pernicious cruelty and terror of slavery in this country endangers all men black and white, from North to South.

RALPH CRAWFORD

BOSTON, March 25th, 1840

August 28th, 1838

We sleep outside so we will not be smothered. The breeze rolls in from the river, over the levee, down the corridor of oak trees and into our makeshift bedrooms on the verandah. It is late August, and Louisiana is the eighth circle of Hell.

Last night, I watched the smoke from the sugar vats. Observed that the Spanish moss in my mattress is hardly flat. (Likely the house slaves do not think mine worthy of the rolling pin.) I could not sleep for waiting. For what? Keats’s immortal Nightingale? The Communion of William Cullen Bryant? Nothing in the wind but night and smoke. Yet, near dawn, my reward:

Lord, You alone have chosen me, yet

this ornate darkness keeps me from sleep.

The lines came with that queer, molten flush which signals a passion of Poesy. But instead of the customary frenzy of the next passage, I was seized by the unnerving certainty that one day Greatness shall indeed be conferred upon me, and I will be more than the High Brown Bard, the Sable Songstress, the Nigger Muse . . . and simply Orrinda Thomas, poet. The price of the Sublime remains to be seen.

Your superstition is getting worse with age, said Crawford buttering his toast this morning as we sat in Turnwood’s rose and ivory dining room, the gold-framed figures of the plantation’s patriarchs sternly disgusted by the sight of a black woman sharing le petit dejeuner with a white man.

“Think of Orpheus,” I said.

“Jam?” he asked.

“No, I thank you—whose song moved Gods and mortals alike. Despite his greatness, Orpheus was torn to pieces by the Maenads. They could not hear his voice for their howls.”

“Your thesis?” he asked, stirring his tea.

“It is the poet’s Bad End,” I said, lifting my cup.

But this foreboding is not solely my fancy. Our arrival in Louisiana did not augur well. On our way to Turnwood Plantation, our carriage stopped at a town but I did not descend. It was as if everything bad that ever happened there had lingered. Goodness did not live there, only a suspicious poverty of the Spirit. Porches offered barefoot children aged in their movements, and men whose eyes repeated the violence done to them.

Crawford climbed down from our carriage, leading the horses to a trough of water (outside of what we took to be their General Store—more resembling an outhouse). He tipped his hat to the clerk with his unrelenting air of refinement, but that fellow was too busy gaping at me to notice Crawford hiss through his teeth: “Orrinda, do not get down.” The children had begun drifting toward us like white gnats.

When I was a child, I developed the infernal, nervous habit of smiling when about to get a beating. I’d be begging hard for forgiveness all the while grinning. Mrs. Johnson would be winded trying to thrash the smile out of me, so what had I to do yesterday morning but sit in the carriage and Smile?

Crawford tossed his top hat in the carriage and leapt up, shouting to the horses as the children clotted and swarmed, throwing eggs and rocks, howling oaths at our backs. (Baboon and the like.) Somehow they had gotten wind that the Savage Poet had come.

“This journey is foolish beyond permission!” I cried, hugging my head to my knees.

“The more fool you for consenting to come with me!” Crawford laughed, lashing the horses on.

“But why in the world do we skip gaily into the belly of the beast?” I wailed. “It is one thing for me to be a learned Negro in Boston, but Louisiana?”

“O Orrinda . . .” Thankfully, he was struck in the neck by an egg. The yoke of indignity silenced his ill-considered oratory until we slid into the haze of the pines; the town clinging like an illness just past which leaves one sour and weak.

At last, Crawford slackened the reins, saying, “We should see this as proof of how mightily you are needed here.”

“Oh yes,” I said, smoothing out my skirt. “They need me hanging from one of these trees.”

“Come now. We must be brave. Do you not see that of all the places that must witness Negroes not as beasts of burden but as brethren capable of Beauty. Bards—”

“Being bludgeoned by alliteration! I do hope that isn’t the new Introduction to my book, Crawford.”

“Minx,” he said, rubbing his neck with his handkerchief. “Is the egg gone? This is a new cravat.”

“But truly, if I am not greatly mistaken these Southerners have no wish to see me as any thing more than a nigger parrot who has forgotten her cage. I’ve never performed farther South than Philadelphia, I fear—”

“Look.” Crawford drew the carriage to a halt. “Perfectly haunting,” he said.

I looked. The trees tunneled over us, grim and decadent, dark in their green. I wondered what terrified fugitives lurked in the marshes.

“Won’t you please,” he begged.

As is by far his worst habit, Crawford likes me to recite whenever we flee a mob. I leaned back in my seat, tipping my face to the threatening trees:

My Love is deeper than my Desire

To possess. It is a living thing

That doth remain though I expire

To bed the field and turn the page. It sings

Past me, voice an opiate choir.

’Tis more than the love I desire.

Crawford gaily applauded my poem, the prospect of those we shall conquer, and the money we will receive because of it. I only hope I live to again see the East.

Last night, I heard the bell of my girlhood. I began to perspire the lonely revulsion of Virginia, a state sixteen years past. Like one possessed, I left my bed on the Turnwood verandah and drifted along the balustrade to the back of the Great House. From the second-floor window, I saw the slaves coming up through the dark, passing the overseer, his hand itching on a whip of cowhide, and watched them fill their empty gourds in the trough and disappear into the waving cane. By dawn, the fields were burning with song.

Dinnertime now. How on earth will I eat while being served by them? Will read before bed. Am but twenty pages into Mary Shelley’s Mathilda. Though already it is darkly—indeed lavishly sentimental, I am again persuaded by Crawford’s taste in the Gothic. Perhaps I should try my hand at the Novel?

Yours, &c.

Orrinda

August 29th, 1838

This morning Crawford insisted we ride to the slave market in New Orleans. To be brief, I told him I would rather sit in the stocks. To which he replied: “My dear, I should deserve only your trust.” I could hardly persuade my legs to the door. Crawford was Very Much Disappointed in my Lack of Spirit and remained Certain Fine Poetry Shall Come of It. The man is torturous for my Art. I cannot agree with this punitive bent of Philosophy, though I have ever regarded it as a Truth that Pain can yield worthy literary Sentiment, but can it not also give way to the utter tripe of the Sentimental?

Yet as I am but a toy, a jade in a cage, a darling spectacle, I went.

I will confess that since arriving to the Inferno di Turnwood, I am not myself. Though I am treated here in the grand style, my mind misgives. The Widow Turnwood’s gestures are falsely sugared. Ha. And for what purpose? I cannot fancy why the owner of at least thirty slaves would pay me twenty hundred dollars merely to recite?? And there is something more . . . nagging . . . like the spectre behind these the moon-fretted trees: tender and indignant.

And my Crawford. . . . Do I condemn his avidity, which has led me to Turnwood, or do I commend his mad heart, which has, in the liveliest sympathy, liberated me?

Crawford feels we can convert the Widow to the Great Cause. Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem. But I find in her no Angelina Grimké. If the Widow Turnwood’s conscience is so troubled, why not set her slaves free, or simply leave? Crawford says she has been a widow but a year, is convent-raised, and claims to have been kept up till now utterly apart from the pernicious workings of Turnwood.

Before we left for the slave market, the Widow, not knowing whither we were bound, requested my presence in the parlor for the first time since our arrival. I went upstairs and told Crawford, who gave a Solomon grin, saying: “Her timing is impeccable.”

I followed him down the stairs onto the second-floor landing. “Cannot you tell it?” I said. “I am much too fatigued.”

He stopped. “But it is you who are her curio.” He lifted my curls from my shoulders, turning me to arrange them down my back.

“But I believe you’ve inspired some tender emotions in that lily-white heart.”

“Perhaps.” He smiled. “I was a bit too forward in our correspondence.”

“If by that you mean you encouraged her to harbor romant—”

“I mean,” he interrupted, “I got her up to twenty hundred dollars.” He twisted my hair into a chignon. “My sweet girl, you are too cruel. Think upon the money. Shall we wear it up for the reading? A confection of piety and exposure?” He tucked his chin over my right shoulder. “You shan’t have to tour for a year if you don’t wish. You will have time to compose. Is this not what you wanted?”

“I would rather do a hundred performances in Massachusetts than one here,” I said. “This place exhausts me, it is a reproof to see their wounds, hear their cries while I mince about free.”

“But if this venture is a success—”

“Then what?” I stepped away. “Who knows how many other disconsolate, rich widows secluded in palmetto-fringed oases of bondage would wish to witness the circus of my verse?”

“Why limit ourselves to a Northern audience?” he asked.

“I do not imagine the Widow knows the difference between Byron and Mrs. Sigourney!”

“Remember to touch your collarbone,” he said. “It—”

“Signals fragility. I know!”

He held out his hand. And because . . . O I know not what excuse to give but I took it.

“I adore you,” he said.

We walked down the curling staircase along a painted fresco and into the foyer until we stood outside the parlor door.

“I know that too,” I said, letting go of his hand. “Endeavor to come in on your cue, won’t you?”

How to describe Madam Sop? She is a fair, willowy, round-faced creature. Moon-faced, I would say. This is not to suggest she is not prettyish what with her streaming golden hair and cornflower blue eyes (a poor man’s Lady Rowena) but that her countenance is marred by her perpetually startled expression. She droops like a guilty puppet; head too big for her body. Her manner appears one of cloying docility but her nails are bitten to the quick. In short, she is a pitiable creature so why do I despise her? Why? For she is the sort of Southerner who loves to hear the colored man sing his sorrows but would never forgo the ease of her daily luxuries to not be the origin of his lament.

In the oppressive mahogany of the gilt crimson parlor, we sat in the clock-notched silence until the Widow Turnwood gathered the audacity necessary for speech, uttering: “Thank you for doing me the honor of coming to Turnwood.”

“Indeed no, it is I, ma’am, who must thank you for your gracious and bold invitation,” I said.

She inhaled sharply, “Will you read ‘I Walked in Cambridge’?”

“Whatever you wish,” I simpered.

She gazed into the black marble fireplace. “I wonder if I could ask you . . .”

“Please, ask me any thing at all. For you, I am an open book.”

“How is it that Mr. Crawford discovered you?”

Curtain up. The harmless, belaurel’d Negro takes center stage. I cleared my throat and took a sip of tea: “I was born in Virginia to Mr. William Thomas. He had a plantation some twenty miles from Manassas. My father was Mr. Thomas’s brother. My mother had once belonged to Mr. Thomas, but shortly after my birth was sold to a nearby farm. Her name was Delia. I was Mr. Thomas’s daughter’s slave. Though dear Belinda was more like a sister to me.”

“Do you recall your mother?” the Widow asked.

“Some Sundays she would get a pass and come up to the Great House while the other slaves were congregating for their weekly serving of flour and lard, but my image of her is dim. Every year I imagine a different face . . .” I’ve always hated that line. I am fully sensible of its truth but how long it has been since I experienced it as true!

Crawford burst into the parlor: “Orrinda, I hope—” Then, feigning affectionate surprise: “Mrs. Turnwood? Oh, why good morning! Had I known you were present, I never would have so carelessly interrupted. I beg your pardon.”

A premature entrance overdone. Wasted on the Widow. For him, she is already captive.

“I was telling her of Belinda,” I said.

“Dear Belinda,” Crawford cried, “whose unpolluted kindness we shall not soon forget! It is she who taught Orrinda to read and write and speak French.”

“Yes,” I agreed flatly. “I was a happy child then for I scarcely comprehended I was a slave.”

“But what happened to her?” asked the Widow.

I stared fixedly into a supposedly unfathomable distance. “One day, Belinda turned blue. Her little neck swelled like a bull’s, and she died.” I swallowed an imagined lump. “After the death of her child, Mrs. Thomas fast followed, and Mr. Thomas quitted the plantation, sending his slaves to the speculator.”

Here, Crawford dropped his head and voice in a compassionate brood and thus began to pace: “Orrinda was made to march for miles to the auction block. Her bare feet bloody, ankles raw from chains. When finally they reached their destination, the stench of the pens was that of human misery. There, rubbed with bacon fat to appear healthy, Orrinda was bought by Mr. Johnson of Southern Virginia. Then one afternoon, when she was but eleven years old, she was sent into the parlor with a tray of refreshments for Miss Julia, Mr. Johnson’s daughter, and Miss Julia’s Northern guests.”

“I was not in good spirits.” I smiled tremulously. “For old Mrs. Johnson had seen me spill molasses and tied me to a tree, stripping me from head to waist and whipping me until she was defeated by her own fatigue.”

“Orrinda had no kin,” murmured Crawford, coming to stand behind my chair. “No Belinda, no mammy to grease her torn back so her dress would not stick. She slept alone in the corner of the attic on a pile of rags. Awake half the night with hunger. But as Orrinda set the tray on the table, Miss Julia, fresh from Lady’s Seminary, began to read from a slim volume.”

“I could not know then,” I said rising valiantly to my feet. “That it was ‘The Lake’ by Alphonse de Lamartine. I knew only of a provoking familiarity and stopped, rapt, deciphering. L’homme n’a point de port, le temps n’a point de rive; il coule, et nous passons. I did not realize that I had been thus standing, when a gentleman of about medium height stepped from the visitors and remarked upon it.”

“It was Mr. Crawford!” breathed the Widow, clasping both her hands together.

“Yes!” I trilled. “Who is this? he asked Miss Julia. Why that is little Orrinda, Miss Julia said. Do you know French, Orrinda? he asked. Miss Julia laughed, Don’t be absurd, Frederick—what a notion! But he said, Connaissez-vous français? I could not help but answer him: Oui monsieur je fais. Ai-je eu des ennuis? Où suis-je pas? Miss Julia, shocked into indignation, ordered me out. But instead of going into the kitchen to grate corn, I hid upstairs in the linen closet. The next morning, when finally my belly overcame my fear, I emerged. But instead of a whipping, I was told to wash, for the gentleman who had spoken French had bought me and would be my deliverer.”

“How peculiar,” murmured the Widow.

Yet I think that Chapter is the least peculiar of all. What of that day we first set out for Boston? Being overawed by this man, differing so widely from any of the men of my acquaintance, I was made mute. I had no very clear notion of what would be expected of me, neither did I know that I now belonged to a Northern man who had no house, no farm, nor any other slaves. The second son of a large Unitarian family, Crawford was intended for Divinity, then perhaps Law, but had instead left Harvard to roam the country.

That night he gave me the corn bread in his saddlebag while he kindled a fire. I stayed by the horse, a creature I understood.

When he sat down to warm himself, he laughed. “I’m not going to eat you, child.”

He has a high, inelegant laugh that makes his eyes slit.

“Wouldn’t you like to sit?” he suggested.

I squat down on the other side of the fire, all agitation; the corn bread molding to my fist.

“You are perhaps wondering why I bought you,” he began. “I admit I am also wondering this myself. But when you stood there, Orrinda, so transported, and answered me in French—French! A single phrase entered my mind: By grace ye are saved. And I knew I had to save you, you poor wretch. I saw that barbarous old witch, Mrs. Johnson, giving you a whipping out by the barn, mutilating your little back.”

I uncurled the corn bread and began to love him.

He closed his eyes and leaned back against a tree. “You know, I saw Buckminster in the pulpit once. I was only a boy, but after seeing his performance I knew I could resign my ecclesiastical ambitions. My family was mistaken in me. You see, I’ve always had grace, but in Boston, they want holy novelty.” He looked at me with eyes cavalier, gray, and acute. “And wouldn’t they flock”—he smiled—“to hear you recite unimpeachable French.”

Thus ended my days as a slave.

Today in the slave market no muse arrived. Only we appeared amid the throng in the form of two subdued visitors. How could we become contemplative when Cato’s back made so great an impression? It was skin made drought, ridged with the memory of fish.

I wish God would see fit to tell me why Cato’s life should have been one of undeserved torture and I should escape. What am I that I do not suffer like him? In the pens, I saw manacled babes destined to be parted without mercy from their mothers whose lives will descend into insupportable grief. I could not stand there idle, well fed in silk.

I leaned forward and squeezed Crawford’s arm. “Do you see him?”

“Who?”

“The one they’re about to bid for. Look at him. Bid.”

Crawford peered round a portly man to glimpse the block. “For that poor, blistered devil? I don’t know that Mrs. Turnwood would appreciate the gift.”

“Not for her.”

He looked at me. “Are you mad? We are here to witness this earthly hell, no more—we’re bound to see a thousand wretches like him.”

“He’ll go for nothing. I’ll pay for him from my earnings.”

“Orrinda, if we dare free this man, Turnwood’s neighbors will string us up before you’ve spoken a single stanza,” he said.

The bidding for Cato began, but no buyers lingered, for the marks were to them a sure sign of rebellion.

“Did you not say that in Louisiana I would be a beacon in this darkest hour of inhumanity?” I hissed.

“We are not here to seek confrontation—not to mention how we are grossly outnumbered! We endeavor to enlighten as we entertain.”

I looked at my Crawford. There is as of yet no white in his hair, but it has begun its peaked retreat and the skin around his eyes is lined and thin. Though his eyes are those same waves in winter and around their dark centers, gold blooms. I have memorized this face and know its every crease, stray whisker, secret expression.

“I believe you claimed to adore me? Then buy him,” I said.

Crawford pinched and slapped Cato’s arms and thighs. Made a show of inspecting his teeth. Then strutted to the back of the market to strip Cato naked and pay $400 for him.

In the carriage, waiting for Crawford to obtain the Bill of Sale, Cato examined me, noting my fine dress, store-bought shoes, and unabashed familiarity with his new master. Gaunt and dusty, his perturbed eyes fairly bent from his face. All I could do was smile and offer water. In such a hostile crowd, I dared not tell him he was to be freed.

He hesitated and with a hunted look asked, “Miss, he a fair marster?”

“Very fair,” I said.

“Because I’se belonged to the meanest white man that ever walked the earth. He liked to whup me then rub some pepper on it. Seem like this Marster don’t even talk mean.”

“He does not believe in whipping,” I said.

Cato grinned at this vision. “Now I hopes that is the gospel truth.”

I do confess I think Cato will be a friend. Bon nuit!

Yours, &c.

Orrinda

September 1st, 1838

Crawford is ill. Perhaps with swamp fever. I would not know since I am not allowed to wait upon him. The Widow Turnwood frets I will catch the sickness, not being native to Louisiana. She assures me she nursed her husband all through his dying.

There is no greater hell than this. I cannot be satisfied mewed up here with my disordered heart. All night I stayed outside his door. I could feel Crawford waiting for me. Heard him saying: “Someone has hit me with a plank.”

But she alone ministers to him and the house servants watch me. What can I do?

This afternoon I heard him retching, gasping for the strength to purge yet again, and I had to go to him. I could not keep no I couldn’t from opening the door and finding the Widow wiping his mouth, bending to kiss his forehead.

“Orrinda.” She reddened. “The draft!”

The draft indeed. That bedroom was as sealed as a tomb.

I wanted to put my hands about her neck and squeeze. Feel her Adam’s apple under my thumbs. If he dies without me seeing him, I’ll kill her.

My sole comfort is the now profuse Cato who at length declares: “It ain’t Marster Fred’s time.”

Cato is the best of men. We did right to free him. I must protect Cato should Crawford die. But he can’t. He has to live. Please God, let him live. Please, please, please. I’ll do anything.

Cato’s little boy was sold on the block a year ago. Their Master needed the money. The boy’s name was Frank after Cato’s baby brother who was whipped to death by their mistress. What kind of mother lashes another’s baby dead? These sinners resound throughout Time. You put slivers of glass in their tea but they come again.

Strange to write twice in one day. I ought not. No.

Tonight in the dark before morning again I heard singing. I opened my bedroom door to find Cato gone from his pallet in the hall. Not cool out now but the air has some ease and we sleep indoors. I went past the plantation hospital, the sufferers groaning with swelling, past the sugarhouse and stables. I could not be afraid following the hum for I was a perfect ghost myself, unable to see my hands before me.

A group of slaves stood in a ditch among pine-knot torches. Behind them, a slave graveyard full of wooden posts and crosses, names scratched with no dates. The preacher held up both palms, reading them as he swayed with his sermon, though his hands were naked of any book. When he finished he dropped to sitting on a log, his countenance bright with exultation. There was a shout: “The Debil has no place here!” The untiring congregation made a ring, shuffling right in a circle, the banjo talking and hands clapping. Daring to tap my foot ever so softly, I stood undetected in the brush, or so I imagined, when a field woman snatched up my arms, bending them back. “You ain’t meant to be here,” she said, glaring at me as if I had struck her.

“I’m looking for Cato,” I insisted. “I’m not—”

“You ought not be here, Miss O.” Cato came forward.

“Cato, I didn’t mean to intrude,” I said. “Only it is the most wonderful poetry!”

“Go on back to the house. I be up. Please, Miss O. You ain’t supposed to be here.”

Why stay when you are not wanted? Why did I bother to protest? Has it not always been my lot to be Apart?

Cato soon returned to the Great House, wavering in the bedroom doorway, contrite. “They ain’t mean to go rough on you,” he said.

I was sitting by the window. I kept my back to him, saying, “I had but little reason to expect otherwise.”

“She didn’t wanna hurt you none.”

“There are few who don’t,” I said.

“Well I reckon I never knowed what folks is gonna do but I knows what you done for me. I told them how good you be—you an Marster Fred—how you done freed me.”

I leapt up and shut the door. “Cato,” I hissed, “no one is meant to know that! You could be in danger now.”

“Miss O, I seed your heart and knowed you what they been praying for. Your reading in a few days?”

“Yes . . . why?” I asked.

“You seen what devilment that overseer up to. All my born days I met up with devils like he. They gon run, Miss O, but if we ain’t help our brethern they can’t ever get loose.”

“Why? Isn’t the Widow a kinder mistress than most?”

“But that damned overseer do as he please. He shot a nigger like she a horse. They mistress don’t see what she don’t care to. But all the white folks round here gon come hear you read.”

“Don’t remind me.” I groaned, sitting back down by the window.

“They won’t be recollecting their slaves, be busy listening to what joyment you gon preach. And since you a famous nigger, nobody but the house slaves set to watch you.”

Our eyes met. “We can’t. Not without—Cato listen, we have to wait to talk to Crawford. He’ll help.”

“They can’t wait.”

I looked away. “Well then they will be ravaged by dogs.”

“You a mighty clever gal,” he said.

“Is my vanity so transparent? Cato, I’m not that sort of clever. I’m a poet for Godsake. What on earth can I do?”

He stepped closer to me. “They needs guns,” he said.

Outside, the slaves’ singing stretched across the fields, catching and hanging in the trees.

“They’ll be caught,” I said.

Cato waited like he waits for Heaven.

“We might as well slit our necks tonight,” I said.

Cato’s face can have this embalmed despair.

“No women or children will be hurt?” I asked.

“I sees to it myself,” Cato said.

Yours, &c.

Orrinda

Two new lines:

Hearing them hounds let loose in the night

Chasing the slave with the broken jaw

September 6th, 1836

A ghastly series of events. Where to begin? I suppose my tête-à-tête with the Widow Turnwood. She was greatly desirous of speaking with me before the reading. Again, I sat across from her in the parlor, the house women listening at the lock.

“Tonight at your reading there may be those very much opposed,” she said.

“You must assure your neighbors it is only poetry,” I said.

“I have tried to console myself with that very reasoning,” she said, looking down at the fingers she had picked raw. The hem of her dress was filthy. “But you must realize that in these parts nobody lets their Negroes read or write, some even refuse to let them pray.”

“Will they come then bearing clubs?” I smiled.

“Gracious, no! Not to this house. They have too much consideration for the memory of my husband. What I mean is that in their hearts, Orrinda, they are good people, and I have ever regarded that there are those among them, Christian souls, who deplore barbarity toward their slaves, and indeed, care for them as their own.”

“Yet, I have heard that here a man was flogged for carrying a book which opposes slavery. I must tell you—I do not understand why you have asked me to come here.”

She reached forward and picked up a copy of my book from the table. “When my husband died last year, I was wholly alone. A cousin of mine in New York sent me books, yours among them. Your words seemed to understand just how alone. Imagine my disbelief to find that you were a slave! And when I wrote to Mr. Crawford, he was convinced that we must meet. I can tell you that you have my word as a Christian that I will safeguard you tonight. And if something were to befall Mr. Crawford, I will see you and Cato safely to Boston. For it wouldn’t be safe for two slaves to travel there alone.”

“Yes,” I said, staring at the wall.

There it was again.

“You are too kind,” I said.

That word again.

“I must go,” I stood.

O I had heard it the first time she had said it, but now there was no mistaking that the Widow Turnwood believed me a Slave.

I found Crawford convalescing in the library, his feet up, and the sun a bright square on his chin. I shut the door, my stomach in my chest.

He turned his head, and there is no more overworked, apt word for it—he looked quite beautiful there in the light.

“You seem severe,” he said. “What have I done now?”

“Are we free?” I asked. “And I beg you will tell me the truth.”

“What’s the matter?” He set his feet down. “Are you crying?”

“Is Cato truly free? Did you free him?”

“Of course,” Crawford said. “I thought we agreed not to publicize it until safely above the Mason-Dixon. For Godsake, Orrinda, if you are going to have some sort of hysterical outbur—”

“Am I?” I pressed my hand to my heart and could feel the beat in my head.

“Is this a fit of nerves?” he smiled.

“Crawford,” I said. “Crawford.”

His face was all eyes. “Why on earth are you asking me that?”

“I’m not.” I covered my face. “Oh God, I’m not . . .”

I turned into a blunt gas meant to wander for all eternity in a sick fog.

Crawford was up on his feet, bustling me away from the door, whispering fiercely: “Listen, I will explain it. Listen, in Boston, what did it matter? Being a free state: you were free. It was my intention to get the papers, I swear to you, but out of sheer neglect, sloth really! I didn’t. A sin for which I pray you’ll forgive, and you will, Orrinda, you must. For it was not to own you, never to own you. I didn’t even remember that you were anything but free until Anthea, I mean, Mrs. Turnwood invited us South. My deceit, my only deceit—for to utterly protect you as you are not kin to me—was to leave you a slave so that no one here can lawfully harm you. I realize the false wisdom of this but—”

“Crawford,” I said, “you are telling me that you haven’t found the chance to file my papers in sixteen years? How can I believe you even if I wanted to?” I turned from him and back toward the door.

He stepped in front of me. “Orrinda, you needn’t be jealous.”

“O but who could come between us?” I pushed past. “We are joined by the letter of the law.”

“We can leave,” he said to my back.

I stopped.

He came to me and took my hands. “Listen.” He squeezed. “Listen.”

“Let go,” I said, but my arms were too weak to pull away.

“We will leave right this moment,” he said.

I stared at him. “Are you mad? The reading is in a matter of hours.”

“Whatever you want, I shall do it. I swear.”

I tried to read his face. “But you lie so easily,” I said. “You are a liar. You would leave without the money? You?”

“I will do as you wish. I swear upon my life.”

Of course, I wanted to run. Run until we can’t, until we fall into the sea and are extinguished by unforgiving waves. But I thought then of the slaves laboring in the fields, blood flowing as freely as heat, and how only I could give them guns.

I pulled my hands out of his. “I’ll do the reading. We’ll get our money. Then we leave.”

“Good girl.” He smiled, drying my cheek with a handkerchief that smelled faintly of eggs.

I hate him. He purports to be my liberator, my ever-abiding champion, but it has never been true. A slave can be beaten, branded, flogged, shot, raped, maimed for the slightest infraction imagined or real. A slave is starved of all sustenance, body and soul, which would allow them to feel free to be human. I have never not been this thing—slave—that corrupts all things. How is it that I love the man who keeps me a thing, which can be beaten, branded, flogged, shot, raped, maimed, burned, gouged, flayed, killed . . . ?

He picked up the novel he had been reading off the floor. “Charlotte Temple again. Dreadfully overblown.” He tried to laugh.

“I want to go to my room.”

He stepped aside and I went toward the door. “Wait,” he said. “You will forgive me, eventually, won’t you?”

I kept walking.

“You should know my will says you are to be emancipated at my death.”

“O?” I whispered without turning, “Is that what it is to be adored?”

I felt I was walking over glass to get out of the house and into the sun where somewhere in the sugar a slave was screaming. O for a life where I were invisible! Where I were the color of air! But I am the nethermost of all the earth’s creatures: a Brown Woman. And how the world wishes to punish me for being born to these two sins!

When the housekeeper secreted me a set of keys, I marched into the Widow Turnwood’s bedroom and searched it from top to bottom. For tomorrow’s moonless night, I gave the slaves three guns.

I don’t care what they do with them. I don’t care if they shoot us all. Such is the daily horror of their existence, which so we passively witness, that they should make our world a hell and then we will know what God is.

Yours, &c.

Orrinda

September 7th, 1836

I have come to my Bad End.

Tonight thirty-odd neighbors gathered. Expectation riot in the parlor. A room holding villains and well-wishers both. I stood at the podium where too many men eased near, their eyes telling me of a cold desire to mutilate my flesh. The Widow Turnwood hovered in the corner by the tea, aghast at her own misbegotten temerity. But all the flaxen hair in the world could not hide her.

Crawford, the showman who figured himself the conduit, the vampire who flattered himself a prophet, delivered an introduction evoking me as a stunted Athena, an obedient goddess, never surpassing the miniature form born of his thigh.

We had agreed that I would perform only Nature poems: those limited, early works of lyrical mimickings and indulgent odes to America’s landscapes. Verse which asks no questions, has no economy, and is but a blundered attempt at metaphysical complexity—the dregs of my youth.

After my first poem, not a soul clapped but the Widow: my graceless, beleaguered benefactress whose mind is not half as sharp as her heart. In the ensuing silence after my second poem (the Widow having exhausted her defiance), I paused, spying a black man at the back of the audience. This man was not known to me. I wondered why had he not gone with the other slaves and prayed Cato far afield.

Yet this did not occasion my revolt. For indeed, even in that horrified delay did I intend to be good. Did I not open with “I Walked in Cambridge” followed by “Thou Art My Ode”? I would have been a perfect paragon of black redemption had I not seen a slave child darting down the corridor of oak trees after his elders through the window behind the rows of simmering white faces. I knew then why I am here. Knew I must speak, though it bring the walls down about me. Knew I have been afraid to be seen fully, to have my heart exposed with all its merciless sorrow for unnamed blood spilling even now, easily and unjustly, into the ground.

“I hope,” I said without looking at the crowd, “you will humbly permit me to share my newest work. It is an early sketch. I beg you will pardon its rough edges.”

Then I looked at the one I thought I loved most in this world, my master, Mr. Frederick Crawford, whose gray eyes communicated a horror transparent.

Lord, You alone have chosen me, yet

This ornate darkness keeps me from sleep

Hearing them hounds let loose in the night

Chasing the slave with the broken jaw

Who was salted in the sun.

You will know him by his sin

Tell the Lord, he is coming,

Tell his son he is dead and gone

Throw his boy three times over him

Gather stones to hold down his grave

Because it has begun to rain

I did not see the man who sent his fist. I tasted only the blood he left. I buckled under the bitter heat in my mouth. I screamed for Crawford, but people swelled the room. Down behind the podium, a man caught me about the neck. He was older than I had imagined my murderer to be. With deaf blue eyes and a grandfather’s belly, his knees went between my legs as he punched me in the head. But there was a gunshot and my would-be murderer released me. As I raised myself to my elbows I saw the slave who had been at the back of the audience holding a gun. He shot the overseer then fired wildly into the crowd. A neighbor shot him in the chest, but the slave only fell to his knees and with a jubilant scream found and shot his mistress. The Widow Turnwood fell like a child slipping down the stairs. Crawford ran to her and the neighbor shot him in the head. Crawford landed on his back, his leg bent under him, bleeding onto the already crimson carpet.

How long I was alone in time. How long held there. Alone.

There was a corpse near my shoulder. I knew I had to wipe my hands in its blood, to paint myself dead and lay facedown so that when men came across me, I was fortunate that they kicked me until they believed me only a body. Realizing that there was not a living slave left to kill, they ushered out their women and furiously mounted their horses to fetch their hounds for the hunt.

When finally the Great House went quiet, I crawled out. “Crawford?” I called for no reason at all for I could see him lying in a circle drawn by overturned chairs and the trampled pages of my poetry. He was a heap, made innocent by the hole in the back of his head. His nose and eyes bleeding profusely. I tried to keep in the blood. I tried. But you have to be a god.

“You ought not move him, Miss O,” Cato said, kneeling next to me.

I grabbed him by both shoulders. “What are you doing here? They’ll come back!”

“I ain’t sees George,” he said, looking down at Crawford. “I knew he had a gun so I come back to fetch him. And now Marster Fred bout to go on to his just reward.”

For a moment I could not get my voice out. “Who is George?” I said.

Cato pointed to the dead slave. “Ise reckon can’t blame the man.”

“Listen.”

He shook his head. “That overseer kilt his wife giving her bout five hundred lashes. Cut to bone.”

“Cato. Listen. You’ve been very brave. But that’s over now. Get me paper I’ll write you a pass. Perhaps you could make it to Boston, to Crawford’s family. They’ll help you. They’re abolitionists. I’ll write them a letter. There must be paper in the desk.”

“Laws.” He shooed me.

“Please do as I say! I don’t want to see what they’ll do to you. George is dead, Crawford’s practically dead, the Widow’s dead—we’re all dead, but not you, not yet.”

“Can’t run without you, Miss O.”

I pushed at him. “Go on! You’re free!”

“We both free,” he said.

I choked out a laugh. “No, not me. I’m a slave till he’s dead. Crawford never freed me. And the irony is that still I cannot leave him here to die alone.”

Cato looked down at his hands. “Ise awful sorry.”

“I’ll be fine. Just go.”

Cato nodded slowly. “You right. But could I look at your writings for I go? Always did want to see your words.”

“But you can’t read,” I said, looking down at Crawford who was not quite dead but so close to dying I could not believe it. “O, what does it matter,” I said to him and Cato. “We must hurry.”

I found my journal on the floor by the podium. As I picked it up, I turned to see Cato take out one of the guns I’d given him and shoot Crawford twice in the chest.

I have always thought, well someday he will die, Crawford will die, no matter how I love him he will. But I had hoped it would at least be far away when I would not know it, and here he went and exited without one word to me of how I should live.

I screamed and dogs howled and Cato rushed me out to where the fields were sweetly burning.

In the smoke I cried, “Will we get free?”

“If not in this world then for sho the next,” Cato said.

And now we run for our lives.

Yours, &c.

Orrinda