I arrive at Franklin’s house to find Elise on her way out.
“Mon Dieu! What happened?” she asks, staring at my clothes. Then she giggles.
“A carriage splashed me,” I lie. I don’t need her knowing I’ve been bested by a gang of convicts.
“You look like un bouffon.” Now she is laughing. “What do you say in English? A buffoon? Like in the circus?”
“Clown?”
“Yes! Exactly! A clown!”
“Thanks. Thanks very much.”
But I can’t be angry with her for laughing. It gives her the most beautiful smile.
“Well? What do you wait for? Take them off and put them in the kitchen. I will clean them tonight when I return.”
“Where are you going?”
Her smile fades.
“Joseph Carver has invited me for a supper, if it is any of your concern.”
“Oh,” I say, feeling my heart sink. “Didn’t know you had a boyfriend.”
“Boyfriend? What is that? I know a man. What of it?”
“I just didn’t know you were seeing anyone … like romantically—”
“Romance? I have no time! I go to see a man and his family: his wife, his children, his maman. They offer supper to people and I am invited. Preachers are to speak about being Negro and free.”
“Can I come?”
“No, you cannot come. It is for Negroes.”
“Please? Franklin’s off visiting and I don’t want to stay cooped up in that library by myself. I won’t be any trouble.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because you are white. You will make people … how do you say? … uncomfortable.”
“No I won’t. I’ll be so quiet no one’ll even notice me.”
“Well, I cannot stop you from coming. But I will not walk with you. Blacks and whites do not walk together. I leave in five minutes. What you do is up to you.”
I race to my room. Looking in the small mirror I’d bought at the market, I see that the mud on my face has dried white. I really do look like a clown. Pouring water from a pitcher into a wash bowl, I quickly scrub it off, dress in the cotton shirt, long pants, and broad-brimmed straw hat Wimpole provided, and hurry downstairs.
She’s already left.
I rush out the front door and spy her some fifty yards away, just turning onto Chestnut.
I follow, letting her keep a good half-block ahead. She walks west, until reaching Fifth and then turns south, passing the State House and the fortress-like Walnut Street Jail. Several blocks later, the brick sidewalks and cobblestone paving end and the streets turn to dirt. Empty lots alternate with shabby brick or wood homes, nothing like the rich Society Hill townhouses in my Philadelphia. The day is hot and still. No breeze rustles the leaves. The stink of garbage, chamber pots, and animal manure dumped in the now deserted street turns my stomach.
There’s no one around. I quicken my pace to gain on her. When I’m only several steps behind, I call to her.
She whirls around, her face full of fear. “Do you always sneak onto people like that?”
“It’s sneak up to people. And no, not usually. But you said you’d wait and didn’t.”
“I gave you five minutes. You did not come. I left.”
“Where are we going again?”
“As I said, to the home of Joseph Carver.”
“Who’s he?”
“You do not know? Dr. Franklin did not tell you?”
“No.”
Suddenly, she stops and side-steps and I narrowly miss stepping into a gutted dead cat crawling with maggots.
“Oh man! That is so gross!”
“He is caretaker at the State House,” Elise says, unfazed by the cat. “Dr. Franklin got him the position to reward his service in the war. He fought in many sea battles and took a ball in his hip.”
“Oh, him,” I say, connecting the name to the short, limping black man with the salt-and-pepper hair who’d shaken his head when I’d stood in protest.
A mosquito whines in my ear and I slap. My palm comes away bloody.
“So, who are the two preachers?” I ask.
“Men who try to help Negroes.”
“Help? Help how?”
“I don’t know!” she snaps. “This is why I am going. To learn! You ask too many questions!”
“Sorry. I just want to know what to expect. Besides, I don’t get to talk much. So this is kind of my chance.”
“Chance?”
“Yeah, to talk. Maybe to get to know you better?”
“Why do you want to do that?” she asks with a puzzled look.
“Well … I don’t really know anything about you. I mean I know you’re from that island and you were a slave and that you’re looking for your Mom and little boy—”
“I said forget that!” she hisses back at me over her shoulder. “I should not have told you. Did you tell someone?”
“No! I promised I wouldn’t and I didn’t. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to learn more about you.”
“Why?”
“Well, for one thing, I bet you’ve got a good story to tell. I mean, you got all the way to Paris and then back here. And because I like you and when you like someone, you want to know more about them.”
“Oh, you mean you are a nose.”
“A what?”
“A nose. Like a bear with the bees’ hive. You put your nose where it does not belong.”
“Oh! You mean nosy. We say nosy. Not trying to be. Just trying to get to know you. To be friends. I don’t have any here. It looks like you don’t either.”
“I have no time for friends. Only work. To earn money. To get my Maman and son.”
“Maybe I could help.”
“You? What help can you give? You cannot walk the street without being covered in mud!”
“Franklin seems to think I’m okay. Maybe you could trust his judgment.”
She stops and turns. I join her. She peers at me, as though trying to see me in a different light. I stand there. She can inspect me all she wants.
“This is it,” she says.
“What?”
“The home of Joseph Carver.”
My heart sinks with disappointment. She hasn’t been looking at me at all. She’s been looking over my shoulder at the house behind me.
It’s a short, narrow, two-story home of uneven brick with a sagging roof and lop-sided chimney. The door is unpainted. The windows have no shutters. Inside, thin, ragged cloth covers them, like curtains, so I can’t see in. But I hear fiddle music and clapping.
Elise knocks. The unlatched door swings open. I start in, but Elise stops me.
“I will go first. And remember, no talking.”
We enter a dark, smoky room, deserted except for a young boy turning chickens on a spit over the hearth. He points to another door and says: “They’s outside.”
We walk into a small backyard of mostly bare earth and weeds, and a little vegetable garden, surrounded by an old wood fence. Chipped, cracked, and half-filled plates of food sit on a rough plank table. Some fifteen or twenty blacks are gathered around a fiddler. They look like working men and women: no long coats or silk vests for the men or fancy, frilly dresses for the women; just plain linen or cotton, or osnaburg that looks like burlap, all faded and frayed and salt-stained from sweat.
The only person I recognize is Joseph Carver. But he isn’t anything like the caretaker at the State House. That man keeps his eyes down, his shoulders slumped, and his mouth shut as he limps through his chores and does everyone’s bidding. This man stands upright and broad-shouldered. His eyes are bright and his face full of fun as he claps to the music and watches everyone dance. I stand at the back of the crowd, my hat pulled low. Everyone is so involved in the dance that no one notices me … at least, at first.
The young boy brings the spitted chickens out and gives them to a large, fierce-faced woman with coal-black skin and cloud-white hair springing every which-way from under a dark-blue kerchief. Grasping each carcass with a fleshy hand, she takes them off the spit and chops them into parts with a cleaver.
When the fiddler ends his tune to cheers and clapping, Carver holds up his hands and calls: “Gather round, folks! Now, we all know why we’re here.”
“Yessuh! For this fine feast!” a man says, getting a laugh from the crowd.
That “feast” doesn’t look so very fine. Just the chicken, some yams and squash, some plates of cornbread, whatever is in the bubbling pot hanging over a fire from a tripod, and some pitchers of funky-smelling water, the only drink offered.
“Quiet, Peter Wayne!” Carver laughs. “You’ll get your fill soon enough. Now, we’re here today to …”
His voice falters at the sight of me. He stares at me in disbelief, as if I’m a ghost or some other apparition he can’t fathom. A second later, his face clears, the smile is back, and his voice is as strong as ever.
“We’re here because these two gentlemen, Reverend Absalom Jones and Reverend Richard Allen—you fellas come over so everyone can see you—we’re here because these men are starting The Free African Society and they need our help.”
Two men dressed in black suits and white linen wilting in the heat join Carver. One, looks about forty, and is of medium height and solid build. Round-faced, with mahogany skin, he wears a black wig with side curls and a queue tied back with a ribbon. The other man is younger, taller, and slimmer with clean-shaven, caramel-colored skin stretched tight over high cheekbones and a full head of curly gray hair that starts at his forehead in a widow’s peak.
“Thank you, Joseph,” the shorter, round-faced man says. “As many of you know from our time at St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church, I am the Reverend Absalom Jones and this is the Reverend Richard Allen.
“Everyone’s heard that St. George’s has asked us Africans to remove ourselves from the whites downstairs and sit in the upstairs gallery. As a result, both I and Reverend Allen feel we can no longer minister there. We hope to establish our own church soon. But that is not what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about what the recent events at St. George’s mean.
“They mean we are not liked in Philadelphia. We … are … not … liked! We may have gained our freedom. We may have sweated our very blood to earn the money to buy it, or fought, even died for it in the War of Independence. But we are not liked. There is no one we can rely on in troubled times. NO ONE! Except God, and maybe each other.
“That is what Reverend Allen and I have been discussing: how we Africans can come together to assist one another. Some call it forming a mutual aid society. We are calling it the Free African Society.
“Brothers and sisters, so many of our people are in need: women who have lost husbands; children who have lost parents; men and women who need employment to earn their daily bread.
“And we are at the very bottom here in Philadelphia. We must change that. We must learn how to change that: how to find work and save money and buy homes; how to build our own banks and businesses and schools and how to run them.
“For these purposes, Reverend Allen and I urge you to join our Free African Society. We ask for dues of only a shilling a month—to be used to relieve those in need—and that you attend meetings and share information to benefit other members. Perhaps you know of a job, or available housing, or goods going for a good price. Perhaps you will share that information in the hopes of learning something from another member that may benefit you.
“This is a time of great possibility for everyone in this country; and so can it be for all the African citizens of Philadelphia, but only if we work together. That is why we are creating this society, so that all free Africans can advance by working together.
“And now I invite you to partake of this meal the Lord has provided and you all have brought to table—a fine example of what can be accomplished if we work together. The Reverend Allen and I will answer any questions you have. For those wishing to pay their shilling to join us, we stand ready to enter your names into our ledger.”
I don’t know how successful Reverend Jones’s speech is. Most people make a beeline for the food. But not Elise.
“Lend me a shilling,” she says. “I want to join.”
I fish out the small leather pouch holding my wages from Franklin and pour the unfamiliar coins into my hand. Elise plucks one up and hurries over to the clergymen and Joseph Carver. As I follow, Carver and the two preachers watch me carefully.
“Reverend?” Elise asks. “Can your society find family who are slaves and set them free?”
I’ve just taken off my hat to wipe the sweat from my forehead. Before the Reverend Allen can answer, Joseph Carver says: “Say, I know you. You’re the young man who’s clerk to Dr. Franklin. The one who can’t talk.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Elise says. “I hope you don’t mind. But he believes in the work you are doing and wanted to meet you, so I …”
“Oh no, it’s fine, it’s fine,” Carver says quickly, although I can tell it really isn’t. A lot of people are staring at me now. Elise had been right: I’m making everyone uncomfortable. “Any friend of Dr. Franklin’s is most … welcome.”
“Reverend?” Elise asks again. “Can you find family who are slaves?”
Reverend Allen shakes his head. “In truth, that is not something we do.”
“No, it is not,” says Reverend Jones. “Perhaps, in time, but now, we are just beginning.”
Elise nods and then holds the shilling out to me.
“They can’t help,” she says without expression. “Thank you anyway.”
“Wait!” Reverend Allen calls as we start to walk away. “Tell us what the matter is.”
“What is the use?” she answers. “If you cannot help, you cannot help.”
“Why, it is just as I was explaining. Mutual assistance. Establishing relationships within and outside our African community. We might not be able to help, directly. But maybe we know someone who can.”
“Or someone who knows someone who can,” Reverend Jones adds. “Tell us, sister.”
Elise looks at the men doubtfully and then at me. I shrug, as if to say: what have you got to lose? She motions for them to come closer and talks softly but urgently.
“My mother and son. We were slaves in Saint-Domingue. The master sold them to a man who said he would sell them in the Carolinas. And that is all I know.”
“It isn’t much,” Allen says doubtfully.
“No, it isn’t,” Jones agrees. “But I do know there are men who make their living finding people.”
“Yes,” Allen says. “I have heard of one in particular, over in that abominable Helltown, north of the market. A man named Lucas Rush. I know little about him. Only that he demands a very high price, and that he’s the devil to deal with. But if he puts his mind to finding someone, they are found.”
“I know a Lucas Rush!” Joseph Carver says. “Or I did. Sailed with him on the privateer Diana in the war. I wouldn’t be here at all if it wasn’t for him. When I took that ball in my hip in our battle with the Lively, he slung me over his shoulder and got me below to the sawbones. Don’t know what happened to him. Last I heard, he’d quit being a sailor to hunt and trap to get enough money to start a farm. Probably ain’t the same fella. But if it is, well … Reverend … you may think him a hard man, but I knows him to be a good’un.”
“Then perhaps this is something you should pursue,” Reverend Jones says to Elise.
“But I have no money,” Elise says. “Almost everything I earn goes to Dr. Franklin to pay him back for my passage to America.”
“I’m acquainted with Dr. Franklin,” Reverend Allen says. “A most excellent man. Perhaps he might lend you additional funds? Or possibly, his abolition society might provide assistance?”
“No, he has done so much. I cannot ask for more.”
“Then perhaps Mr. Carver here can help you work something out with Mr. Rush, if indeed it is the same man.”
“Perhaps,” she says, her face full of doubt. “Thank you.” She starts to turn away. “No, wait! Marcus, give me the shilling. I will join.”
“Well, that’s fine,” Reverend Jones says. “We will enter your name. Don’t forget now, it’s not just a shilling. It’s a shilling every month.”
“Yes, I know. It is a good thing you are doing. I want to be part.”
“And we welcome you. Now, how about you, young man? Of course, our society is for Africans, but we willingly accept contributions.”
I hand him another shilling.