52

I went to the Douglasses' for tea. Their home is more than a bit out of the way. Perched in the southeast quadrant of the city, high above a riverbank, Cedar Hill rewards the adventurous sojourner with a superb view across the Anacostia to the Federal city.

It's a new kind of home for me. There was a comfortable expanse but no formality—in the architecture. The formality was in the language, and now I borrow it for mine.

Was this the first party in my life I had attended alone, unescorted? Has any other woman in the world arrived at a formal party on her own? I surprised myself by going; I surprised a few of the other guests, I expect. And I was glad I did, from the moment a gap-toothed girl with an intelligent smile, gold-rimmed glasses, and long puffy-kinky hair opened the door and waved me in to join the crowd.

The party revolved around an immense cut-glass punch bowl filled to the brim with what tasted to be a mixture of fruit juice and tea. This bowl sat in the middle of a draped round table in a square entry hall. There were no big crystal bowls of flowers and no waiters, just shining faces and everyone helping themselves.

In the corner of the drawing room three young women from Fisk University in Nashville gave an impromptu rendition of "Soon I Will Be Done with the Troubles of the World," and this afternoon I felt I wouldn't have to leave this earth for it to be true.

We, Frederick Douglass and I, barely exchanged three sentences, but he looked at me as they sang, and I could see that he liked what he saw. As I was making my way through the crowd (so many sky-blue, so many cardinal-colored gowns—the effect—due to the new dyes—was quite unintentionally patriotic) after the song, twice the great man nodded as he smiled in my direction.

I never got too close to Douglass again, but I enjoyed a lively conversation with his son. I enjoyed this party. It was a kind of Negro open house, the kind of event to which I am not frequently invited. Mulatto mistresses of Confederate aristocrats have little standing in Negro society. And the Congressman was there.

God was showing off the day He created the Congressman. He is that good-looking. Or maybe God was just taking a stand. Who will deny the humanity of such a body, such a mind?

When the Congressman raised my hand to his lips, to kiss in greeting, I shook so hard, I was embarrassed. I flushed. I don't remember what words he said. But he offered me his arm, and we walked together into the Douglasses' garden. As we walked, he talked. He said some surprising things.

The girls from Fisk, teased again into song, had launched into "Go Down, Moses." I was amazed by their performance—the haunting combination of the raw and the refined. I told him so.

"Be not amazed," chastised the Congressman. "Be not amazed."

"They will amaze the Queen. Why not me?"

"Who is Victoria compared to you? You've seen more than she. We see it daily. We are the chosen ones, the ones who sometimes snatch victory from the jaws of tragedy."

"To what tragedy do you refer?"

"Do you require a particular tragedy?" For a moment he allowed himself the pleasure of being amused by the rhetorical question; then he waxed earnest. "Until it is transformed by our own energy, our own muscle, our own brain, every second of our very existence on these shores is tragic."

I hated hearing those words. I wanted to put my hand on his mouth and whisper, "Hush." Like I was Mama and he was Baby. But he's a man and I'm no mother, and he just kept talking. "And once transformed, even the least little bit, one drop of transformation, in the entire body of a life, makes the life victorious."

He touched the hard round muscle in the top of my arm, that golden hill of my inheritance, legacy of my childhood labor. Then he kissed his fingertips and pressed the kiss to my arm.

The release was as powerful as a little death on the green velvet couch. I was tired and wanting to hear more. He told more: "Just like one drop of blackness in the entire body of a man make him black."

What would it be like to have a drop of him in me? To keep from fainting, I changed the subject and gave him my most frozen smile.

Now he talked to me of the events of the day, expecting me to be proud of his accomplishments. I didn't know enough of the events of the day to truly value his part, but I knew enough of men to value the way he held hisself—the way even Douglass deferred to him and leaned closer to hear what the Congressman had to say when he allowed his voice to drop down low.

In that moment, the very moment Douglass leaned toward him to claim some word of his as their secret, I wondered if the Congressman could be mine. And I laugh at myself for wondering. I have been R.'s, but no one had ever been mine. I have never possessed a man. I had never hoped to possess a man. Never even wished to possess a man's soul, for it seemed too close to slaving. But now I am wondering if he could be mine, and if I knew if he could be mine, I might attempt possession. And wondering if I could possess the Congressman (as I turned away from him, all the time stealing sideways glances back at him, while moving back toward Douglass's son) raises the possibility of me possessing R.

Everything about ownership is changing: land, people, money, gold into foreign currency, foreign currency back into foreign gold, and gold back into money in our banks. It doesn't seem in this time of hurricanes and storms and other acts of God, with winds of every sort of change in the air, that hearts would be any different. Why couldn't she who couldn't own, who now owned forty acres and a mule—if I could own a former plantation—could I not own a planter's heart?

R. needs to get home soon. I've sent him a note. "I need what a man who's gone can't do. I love you. Speed your return." I wrote those words in my head while I was looking at Douglass, looking at the Congressman, and some young fool was mumbling to me. Could he, either he, which he, if both could be mine, who would I have? Could I have either?

But the gap-toothed girl, now in a cloak, caught the Congressman's eye, and he moved away, leaving the party with only a distant bow in my direction. And I was left to lesser pleasures of observation.

The dresses were modest and trim; there was an abundance of simple good food. Plates were eaten off laps on stairs after folk were seated on every available chair. Many of the young gentlemen stood.

Douglass has traveled to England and has many English friends. One English gentleman referred to the streamers down the back of a rather saucy bonnet as "follow-me-my-lads," and the back porch burst into laughter as the brown girl in question gaily skipped across the lawn. These are new and lighter days.

Several of the visitors were students at Howard University. Some, as I have already written, were visiting from down South.

I am trying to suck it all in deeply. Trying to feel how this place feels different from the farm when all the white folks were away. That's when we had our holiday, not Christmas. There were times when all of them went to Atlanta or Savannah or Charleston, when the overseer was suddenly taken sick up in bed. Strange how overseers so often took sick when the family was away during the holidays. That is when we had our Christmas.

And now it should be Christmas every day, but it is not. What it is, is the days before. Working, getting ready. Everything now is expectation, hope, waiting for Christmas to come but we don't know when.