10 June 1842
Dear Lulu,
It is terrible quiet around here. Only sound I hear is the whirr of a cricket and the tick of the mantel clock. Gran near done in with grief and worry. Eat a few bites of bean stew a while ago, then nod off in her rocker. Mark left to visit a free woman name of Ann that he got an eye for.
But I got to share the news with somebody. Gran say that Sawyer’s cousin sposed to send you to school in Brooklyn, so maybe you can read these letters one day.
Lulu, Gran been telling me for years that Mama is following the stars to New York. You have hear her say it yourself. But as you know, it been a long deep lie. Cause today I find Mama and lose her again, all at the same time. It hurt bad, like a splinter in my toe, or a leg boil too red to touch.
Here is what happen. This afternoon I am standing by the house gate. The sky is so clean, I can see smoke rising from Hayes. With all my chores done, it look like a good time to get the pole.
Just then, Gran come outside. She whisper, “Go to the storeroom.”
I step inside the back piazza and peek round the storeroom door. And who do I see but Mama, easing out of the corner cupboard, limp as yarn! Weren’t for leaning on the flour barrel, she might of topple over.
And she is paler than dead fish in a bucket. This worry me, till she stretch out her arms. I go to her, and she give me a big squeeze. Then she seem like our mama again.
She tell me she is never left Edenton at all. That she been hiding under the roof all these years. When I remember the cough, it all make sense.
“Mama,” I ask, “is you the one read Uncle John’s letter to Gran?”
“Yes,” she answer.
“And did Gran bring Lulu to you the night before Lulu leave?”
When Mama say yes again, Gran’s whispering that night make sense too. So it were you two talking, Sister, and not a plat eye or hag, after all, and I am mighty glad of it.
But I figure there is no need in Mama thinking she got a spooked cat for a son. “Mama,” I lie, “one time I hear a cough, and I know it been you!”
She tear up, say, “Sometimes I could hear you, too, Joseph. But all that is behind us now. When the shadows fall, I am sailing away from this place, if Norcom do not spy me on the street.”
Mama pull a nut from a chestnut tree out of her pocket, press it in my palm. “This buckeye for good luck, my little man. If you hold it tight, we will be together soon.”
Around sunset, when it look like God is lit a candle behind the sky, I help Mama from her hole. We wait for the candle to go out. Then her friend Peter come and walk her to the dock.
Soon as she wave good-bye, I race round the corner to Norcom’s house. Look in his parlor window and see him dozing in a chair. Back I go through the alleys, praying hard that Mama is not left yet. When I come out through the trees, I spot her with Mark at the edge of the dock. I catch up and tug on her arm.
“Don’t worry,” I whisper, “the doctor is home. He won’t see you.”
Mama run one finger down my cheek, and Mark help her into the dinghy. Then Peter row her toward a steamer ship sitting out in the bay. I watch till her face disappear, and all I can hear is the oars, creaking in the iron locks like they in pain.
When I get back home, I notice my fingers is froze up. Look down to see Mama’s smooth brown nut held tight in my hand all that time.
I wonder, Lulu. Can a person squeeze all the luck out of a buckeye? Or maybe it is bad luck to give good luck away. Mama might need that buckeye herself real soon.
Joseph
15 July 1842
Dear Lulu,
Mama safe! We get a letter from her today, mail by the ship captain in Philadelphia. When it come, Gran settle in her rocker with a catfish grin on her face.
“Read it, Joseph,” she tell me, and I do. Then she snatch it from my hand and quick throw it in the oven.
“Gran!” I holler.
“Hold on,” she say. “What if Norcom walk in to buy some of Yellow Molly’s crackers? He might spy your mama’s handwriting on the envelope.”
Mark agree, so Mama’s letter is ashes now. But I remember the particulars. She going to settle herself in New York and get a job. When Gran got enough money for my ship ticket, I go to New York too!
“Sawyer got to sign the boy’s free papers,” Mark mutter. “Maybe I should talk to him. . . .”
Gran look doubtful, say, “Can’t none of us make him do what ain’t in his heart.”
Then she say free papers or not, I be away from Norcom’s clutches, and that is one more rung up the freedom ladder.
Joseph
15 October 1842
Dear Lulu,
How is things in Brooklyn? Is you seen Mama yet? Tell her a lot happening here in Edenton. Mark and Ann have decide they is marrying! Ann own a cabin, so they living there after the wedding.
Mark always seem old, Lulu. He never talk much, and his face got more lines than bark. Today, though, he look handsome. When I tell him so, he make a shy smile.
He say, “First time in forty-two years I be on my own.”
“But you marrying Ann,” I tease. “Then you belong to her.”
He laugh. “And she belong to me. Taking care of each other, Joseph, that’s what getting married is for. You promise to always put the other first. Then you keep your promise. A man who don’t keep his promises is no man at all.”
Then Mark tell me how a husband take care of a wife. But I cannot write it down, Lulu, cause you a girl and too young, besides.
Joseph
17 October 1842
Dear Lulu,
Corn-shucking party at Hayes tonight. Gran want me to stay home and try on a suit she sewing. Mark say, “Oh, let the boy go. He need a chance to grow up some before he go north.”
Old Dave Blount at the party with his banjar. Comfort there too. After everybody eat, we all dance in the moonlight. She hold my hands real tight while we sashay down the line for the Virginia Reel.
After the reel over, she sidle up to me. “You a fine dancer,” she whisper. “Got a nice smile, too.”
While Comfort talk, I miss every lick Dave hit on the banjar.
Girls take up too much time.
Joseph
Christmas Eve 1842
Dear Lulu,
Old Dave come to the house today. I am surprise to see him carrying a new gourd banjar. He make it just for me, and it is the prettiest thing I ever own. Got a groundhog-skin head, with one short catgut string and three long ones.
While Gran fix snowball cakes, Dave show me how to play. “Slide your left fingers down the strings,” he tell me. “Pluck with your right.”
When Dave play, rhythm go plunk plunkity, plunk plunkity. He call it knocking. When I try, rhythm go plunk dah plunk dah plunk.
I tell him, “Dave, my fingers is stiff as hooves!”
“Sound like it too,” Gran put in.
Dave laugh. “You’ll catch on,” he say. “Just give it time.”
After Dave leave, I ask Gran, “How much time do I have?”
She go to her trunk and pour a bag of coppers on the table. “Three or four months,” she answer.
“Gran, Mark is soon moving into Ann’s house. When I leave, you won’t have nobody to help you.”
“I be fine,” she answer, but her voice crack like an eggshell.
“Come with me,” I beg.
She put down her stirring rod, hold out her gnarly hands.
“See these? They seventy-three years old, but God keep life in them yet. The more I bake, the more I can save for when somebody need it. And ain’t it cold as Norcom’s soul up there in the North? My bones achy enough as it is.”
“Then I won’t go.”
Gran pour the batter in the cook pot and sit beside me. “Lordy, Lordy,” she sigh. “Your last years of childhood belong to your mama, not me.”
I jump up, cry, “I ain’t a child! I am thirteen. Nearly. Almost.”
“Mm hm,” Gran say. “Your birthday in April. That’s four months off. But, all right then, if you such a man, go fix the roof over your mama’s old hidey-hole. Mark patch it with carpet scraps last winter, but it still leaky. Go on, now. Climb up there and nail down a board.”
Lulu, do you know how a grown-up win an argument? They give you a chore, think that is the end of it. By the time I figure out how to climb on the roof with a board, my Christmas mood is clear gone. I don’t like being so high, either. While I wobble round, I puzzle over what to do.
Stay here to take care of Gran but break Mama’s heart? Join Mama and leave Gran all alone? When I look down in Mama’s hidey-hole, I wonder how she stand it so long. Then I remember she do it to be near you and me, and I see the answer clear.
Joseph
25 December 1842
Dear Lulu,
This Christmas Day start high as angels. Gran give me the new suit she been sewing. It is brown with black suspenders and a white tie. Make me look like a preacher. Then she serve a big Christmas feast on her best tablecloth. How we did eat, Sister! Stuffed turkey, hominy grits, roast quail and rice, turnip greens boiled with Irish taters, sweet potato pie.
After that, the day flatten down. I meet Brown Joe at the water’s edge in front of his daddy’s house. Give him a strong hickory pole, show him how it bend without breaking. Then here come Wellington down the slope. He the coachman for the Collins family.
“Josiah,” he say, “your papa want you.”
Joe look like he been caught with his britches down. He cut his eyes away from me, slink toward the house. “Brown Joe!” I yell. “Where you going?”
“Don’t call me that!” he yell back. “Father says you should address me as young master!” Then he run off.
Wellington put his big hand on my shoulder. “Last night Mr. Collins order Josiah not to see you anymore. Think it ain’t right for a white boy of his station.”
Lulu, I know Brown Joe like my own nose. When Gran tell me not to fish with him, I pay her no mind. Josiah will do the same. Come spring, he will be on that fishing bridge.
Joseph
4 April 1843
Dear Lulu,
Winter weather finally gone. Josiah is not whip me like his daddy whip our great-uncle Joseph. But they is other ways to hurt a person, hurt him bad. I been to the bridge a few times. Never do see Brown Joe.
So I give up fishing, having lost my taste for bass. Been thumping my banjar every spare minute, instead. Playing “Roustabout,” a tune I learn from Old Dave.
That is why I am home when the free colored sailor from Boston arrive this afternoon. He bring a letter from Mama.
First thing she write is that Uncle John is back from his whaling trip and living in Boston. Gran’s face light up like a lantern when I read that part.
“Sea monster can’t swallow him now!” she whoop.
Second, she write that Norcom got spies and snoops all over New York City. But coloreds there got big ears too. A few weeks ago they give Mama a warning.
Norcom think he know where she living in New York, and he going there to catch her. So Mama leave the married couple she work for on Long Island. Go straight to Boston and hide at John’s place.
“The snake still under the rock,” Mark say. “I seen Norcom just this morning, walking to his office.”
None of us say what we thinking. If the doctor do go north and find Mama, he can kidnap her, bring her back here. Some white masters make an example of a runaway. Lay the lash on they back, or lock they head in stocks on the courthouse green till they faint or die.
Gran lean back in her rocker, sigh deep. “He could kill her if he want,” she say after a time, “and still be within the law.”
“By God,” I cry, “I will stomp the man if he touch Mama!”
Gran bolt straight up, and her eyes fly open. “Joseph, leave God out of it. You mess with Norcom, he might take a notion to speak to that judge after all. Now, what else your mama write in that letter?”
“She want me to sail to New York right away,” I tell her. “An Edenton man who run away from slavery is meeting me at the pier, taking me to see Lulu in Brooklyn. Then he putting me on a ship to a place call Connecticut. From there, I ride the train to the city of Boston.”
Sister, you know what this mean? I be seeing you soon! And I am bringing all these letters, so you can read them at last.
Joseph
10 April 1843
Dear Lulu,
Today I walk over to the burying ground. Bow my head and say good-bye to Mama’s daddy and mama and two aunts. Poor Gran. She is lose every daughter she have. The pine trees she plant by each grave is nearly as tall as me now. I clear away the dead brush round them, then head over to Hayes plantation.
Old Dave in the smokehouse, pulling down a ham. When I tell him I am leaving, he take me outside. Make me sit on a stump and play his banjar. He close his eyes and listen, say, “Your strum is good and limber now.”
Dave start to show me me a new tuning, but Comfort come down the path toting a basket of laundry. He grin, tell me he got to go see a man bout a race horse.
“Don’t leave yet,” I beg, but Dave disappear then. Comfort drag me in the smokehouse, pucker up her lips. And that is all I got to say about that.
Joseph
11 April 1843
Dear Lulu,
Gran’s clock ticking away. When the little hand lands on ten, I got to go. She is pack me a carpetbag with five shillings, three ham biscuits, two shirts, and an extra pair of trowsers. And she is made a quilted carrying bag for my banjar. Early this morning she go to the dock, buy my ticket. Come back clicking her tongue.
“Sometimes them steamships blow up,” she mumble.
That is true, Lulu. I have heard tales of such from colored watermen down at the dock. They tell of passengers blowing sky-high, falling back down in bloody chunks.
Gran wrap a cord round the banjar bag, knot it tight enough to choke a chicken. “Anybody ask who you belong to, you tell them Samuel Sawyer.”
“But what if I meet up with a slave ketcher on the ship? What if he don’t believe a colored boy, and he haul me off when the ship dock?”
“What if is a big hole,” say Mark. “Think about it too much, you might fall in.”
“But, Mark, I feel like a possum! Animal run this way and that, till the dogs circle in. Before you know it, that possum is somebody’s supper.”
Mark look tore in two. “I’ll go with him,” he tell Gran.
“No!” I cry. “Bad enough with Mama leaving, then Lulu, now me. Who be left to take care of Gran?”
Mark sit me down, look me hard in the eye. “I won’t lie to you, son. You is something like a trapped possum. No telling if or when Norcom might go to the judge. You still got no free papers. Slave ketchers and kidnappers is prowling the high seas and the low roads.”
“They’s laws against kidnapping,” Gran say. “But laws don’t mean much to a slavery-loving judge. That’s why you got to think like a man now.”
“A smart one,” Mark add. “The captain says you can sleep below deck tonight. Till then, keep your head low and your mouth closed. Don’t be sassing anybody.”
“And one more thing,” Gran put in. “Write letters if you want, but only in your ledger book. Don’t mail any down here. They might put Norcom on the scent of your mama’s trail. Anyway, without you, ain’t nobody left in this house can read them.”
Gran pull her shawl round her shoulders and sink in her rocker. Close her eyes and whisper the Lord’s Prayer. I kneel down, take her hand.
“Gran,” I promise, “we all be together again sometime.” She nod but do not open her eyes or even say good-bye.
Mark getting ready to walk me to the wharf, Lulu. I got to stop, put this ledger in the carpetbag. Already put in Mama’s lucky buckeye to keep the ship from blowing up. If it work, I be seeing you soon. If it don’t, buckeyes ain’t worth the trouble.
Your brother,
Joseph