The Colony of Maryland, 1748
Rebecca twisted in agony, her body fighting to release new life. She lay in the small bed where she herself had been born twenty-five years before, drenched in sweat and trying to remind herself that this was a sacred duty. This bed had been part of her marriage portion, and now she cursed it.
“Oh, Mama, I wish that you were here! Damn Samuel to hell,” she muttered. “Damn all males! They have their pleasures, and we suffer for it! I’ll never let him near me again!”
Bess Witten, now expecting her second child, sat next to the bed. “Ah, swear away, my dear. You’ll forget this moment.”
“Never!” snapped Rebecca savagely. “He’ll never touch me again!”
Elizabeth Sollers Cobham, who had borne seven children in her time, entered the room with some fresh cloths and a basin of water. Her small sweet face was anxious. “How goes it, my daughter?” she asked.
“She has moved to cursing men,” said Bess with a trace of humor.
“Ah—some progress has then been made!” Elizabeth smiled and stroked Rebecca’s sweaty hair gently.
“Did you send for the midwife?” asked Bess. “This labor is long but seems to be moving. The birth canal begins to expand.”
“Samuel went some hours ago … but I doubt that he’ll be able to reach the Chew Plantation where she lives. This rain and sleet have made the roads near impassable,” said Elizabeth with a worried frown. “We had not expected the child quite so soon.”
“I hope that he breaks his fool neck!” whispered Rebecca through clenched teeth.
“Come, I have been reluctant to hurry things along, but perhaps it would be best to get you up a bit,” said Elizabeth. She and Bess helped Rebecca from the bed, and they walked slowly around the room until the laboring Rebecca crumpled once more with a contraction.
“Oh, please—just end this,” said Rebecca.
“Take a deep breath,” said Bess as they settled her back in bed. “Now another …”
Rebecca tried to comply, and gave up. “The pains are closer,” she whispered. Elizabeth wiped her face with a cool damp rag. “All women think that this never ends—but it does, child.”
“Yes, and I’m going to die …”
“No, you’re not. Do not dare think so!” cried Bess Witten. She met her Aunt Elizabeth’s eyes with a worried expression and opened her mouth to say more when there was a soft knocking sound at the door.
It was Old William’s black slave, Emma. She was a tall woman of indeterminate years, with black shining skin and gnarled gray hair. “My master sent me to see if I could be of help,” she said
Bess looked doubtful, but Elizabeth Cobham smiled. “Yes, Emma. I had forgotten in my fear of the moment that you were arriving with Father.”
“Does she know what to do?” asked Bess doubtfully, ignoring Emma and looking at her aunt.
Elizabeth Sollers Cobham smiled. “She does. She delivered two of my own sons. Come, tell us what you need.”
Later, Elizabeth and Bess rested on a cot in the corner of the room. Emma sat with Rebecca throughout the next few hours of her labor. She brewed a potion of raspberry leaves and angelica root to ease the delivery, and rubbed a balm of nut oil with rosemary onto Rebecca’s woman parts to soothe her skin. The most valuable tool was her gentle words, ever reassuring and diverting.
“I have seen many babes come into the world, mistress,” she said during one brief moment when Rebecca’s contractions eased. “I always remember something that my mother told me.” She mumbled something in an unknown tongue, and then translated. “In your language, this means ‘Keep your circle complete.’ We believe—I mean, we believed before knowing your Christian God—that all life is a circle, including our ancestors gone before. You are helping keep the circle complete, Mistress Rebecca. You are giving a child to the world.”
“I should like to do it very soon,” whispered Rebecca, with a trace of her old humor.
“You shall, as all mothers before.”
“You have borne children?” asked Rebecca, once again feeling a new contraction begin. “Oh dear Lord!”
Emma felt her belly thoughtfully. “Soon now, mistress. Soon. My children? I had only one—a daughter. Many years ago she was sold and I do not know where she is.”
“I’m sorry. To go through so much, and have one’s child taken—” Rebecca began. “I had never realized … the cost … of life,” she gasped through another pain.
“My daughter left a son named Rafe, and Master William bought him. He is with me now. I have always been grateful to my master for this, and in a few minutes we shall give him a fine grandson!”
“A very few, I hope …” The contraction eased and Rebecca gazed up at Emma’s calm face with hopeful eyes. “Is it always such pain?”
Emma settled back on a stool beside the bed and dabbed Rebecca’s forehead with a damp cloth. “Sometimes it is much worse. Many women are not suited for the bearing of new life.”
“How many babes have you delivered?” Rebecca was anxious to talk about anything that might divert her from this hideous experience.
“Too many to count, mistress. When I was nine years old, I brought my first into the world.”
“Nine?” Bess Witten had awakened, and came forward, becoming interested in the conversation.
“Yes. On a ship—” Emma paused, and sat up a bit straighter. “When we were on the ship, Mama’s baby was born. I caught the baby when he came from her body.”
“A slave ship?” said Bess softly. “I have heard such awful tales of these.”
“Mama’s baby was born at seven months, but he was healthy and cried well.” Emma paused. Suddenly the images of fifty years before came flooding back to her, images that she didn’t want to see again. Not ever.
Rebecca Cobham’s hand grasped Emma’s as a new contraction seized her. She came back to the present. She could never explain that ship and the baby’s fate to these white women. They would never understand. She once hated white people for their apparent indifference to the cruelties of slavery, but hate was an exhausting emotion. Emma was too old to hate. She had found that most whites, women in particular, were ignorant and unthinking when it came to the plight of black folk. She kept her thoughts to herself and shielded her memories. In her years as a midwife, she had learned compassion for human suffering, especially when it came to childbirth.
“I thought that—I mean, somebody told me that slavers never brought babies on the ships,” observed Bess.
“They didn’t,” said Emma quietly. “Mama and the baby died. Mama made me promise that I would survive—to keep our circle complete, she said.”
“I never knew,” said Elizabeth Cobham quietly from her shadowed corner of the room. “I shall say special prayers for them—”
“You can’t pray for the dead, Mistress Elizabeth,” said Emma. ‘That’s what the reverends over at Queen Anne’s preach to us. Not like a papists …”
“A pox on these priests and preachers!” howled Rebecca as another contraction took hold. “What do men know of life? Bastards! All of them!”
“I think that we shall soon have another man-child in this world,” said Emma with a slight smile. “Life will not be denied.”
Samuel, half frozen and covered with mud, returned to the Cobham Plantation from his failed quest for the midwife. His teeth chattered as he reported impassable roads, downed trees, and roaring streams to his anxious mother and father. Then he stood by the fireplace, chewing savagely on his pipe and pacing. From time to time his father handed him a shot of whiskey, choking off words of comfort.
John Cobham knew that women suffered in childbirth, and often died. He had lived through this scene seven times with his own wife. Every muffled scream from the room above made both men cringe. “She’s a strong girl. She’ll make it through this,” he said at last. “Emma will help.”
“I’ve seen so many people die, Father,” mumbled Samuel, sinking into a chair at last. “But nothing compares to this. If Rebecca should die, it would be my fault.” He paused as the cabin door opened, and his grandfather, William, entered in a blast of icy wind.
William went over to the fire, shaking his damp cloak and rubbing his gnarled hands. “Nasty, nasty night. So, no child yet?” he asked.
“Not yet,” said John. “Thank you for sending Emma.”
Samuel merely put his head in his hands, and William regarded him sympathetically. He had always been especially fond of this grandson.
“I was not there when you were born, Samuel,” said William. “But Emma was.”
“No,” said John quietly. “You were not. I sat alone when Elizabeth bore Zeph and Sam and the rest. I never expected you to be there for me, Father.”
“I regret that, I do indeed,” replied William. “But I would have had few words to offer you in any event. When the babes come, it is not a time for men.”
“Does that make it any easier!” snapped Samuel, lifting his face and running his hands through his black hair.
“No, I suppose not,” said John. “But you can take comfort from the fact that Emma delivered you, Sam. She knows her business.” He looked up at his father and extended the whiskey jug indifferently.
William took a quick swig from the jug. “I’m here now.”
John grunted, and rummaged in a pocket of his doublet for his pipe and tobacco. Since the day of his mother’s death, he and his father had very little to say to each other.
“I didn’t know that Emma delivered me,” said Samuel. “Mother never spoke of it.”
“Women generally don’t speak of childbirth to men,” replied John.
“They think that we won’t understand,” added William. “The truth of it is that we don’t. If we did—well, ’tis a woman’s mystery.” He settled his lean frame on a stool near the fireplace.
The men became silent, listening to the crackling fire and whining wind outside the cabin. There was no noise from the bedchamber above for several minutes. Suddenly they heard a door open and slow footsteps on the stairs.
Emma came wearily down into the room. She was wiping her hands on an old cloth and took a deep breath before speaking. The three men were staring at the blood on her coarse linen apron. Emma made no move to hide the blood and gazed at them with oddly defiant eyes. It is her blood, she thought. Mistress Rebecca has given her pain and her blood to a new link in your line—but not, thank God, her life.
“You have a son, Master Samuel,” she said quietly. “Have you a mind to see him?”
Samuel stood up, somewhat shakily. “Rebecca?” he asked quickly.
“Well. She’s very tired, and you must let her rest,” replied Emma, moving to warm her hands at the fire, and untying the apron from about her waist.
“Thank God,” whispered William.
Samuel shed his confused manner and went running up the stairs.
John Cobham leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes wearily. “Well, you’re a great-grandfather now. He’ll be another Cecil-Cobham,” he added somewhat sourly.
William laughed, pouring whiskey into three small cups. He handed one to John and the other to Emma. “Here, let us toast to the new little William!”
They drank the whiskey and John Cobham slipped one of the family’s precious silver coins into Emma’s hand as she and his father donned their cloaks and departed for William’s little cabin.
The red-faced baby still screamed in protest at being pushed into a cold, bright world. Samuel was afraid to touch him at first, but his mother placed the wrapped bundle in his arms with cool efficiency as she helped Bess remove soiled linen from the room. Samuel observed the tiny, flailing fingers and the wide toothless gums with astonished eyes. This was his child … no, their child.
Rebecca was exhausted and lay without speaking. Her golden hair was dark with sweat and matted on the clean pillows. Samuel walked toward the bed, looking from the howling baby to her shadowed eyes. “A son, Sam. We have a son,” she said hoarsely. He lifted her hand and kissed her limp fingers.
For the first time in many, many years, Samuel began to cry.
Emma’s back and knees ached fiercely. She sat by the small fire in William’s cabin for a long time after he had retired to his own bedchamber in the loft. It always surprised her that the old man was considerate enough to give her the chamber downstairs to share with her grandson. “Your knees are ailing, Em,” he said. “I may have twenty years on you, but my frame is still strong. I’ll sleep above. ’Tis warmer anyway!”
William Cobham had owned her for almost fifty years, and they had seen much together. She had cared for his sons, cleaned his house, cooked his food, and made extra income for him when he sold her services to others. He treated her with absent kindness and gave her somewhat less attention than his horses and guns. She was simply part of his household belongings. But he had never sought to take her to his bed, and Emma was grateful for that favor. She saw how most of her sister slaves had been used by their owners and considered her lot an easy one when compared to their fates.
She brewed herself a small cup of willow tea, hoping that it would help the pain in her bones. Delivering a baby was difficult work for both the mother and those who assisted her. Master Samuel’s wife had a relatively easy time of it, but Emma couldn’t shake those old memories of the slave ship. For many years she had managed to put them out of her mind, but now she shuddered as a rush of terrible images returned.
Emma had been nine years old, but tall and strong for her age, when the slavers from enemies of her tribe swept into their village. She could remember very little of that day, especially after watching her father and brothers fight to the death to prevent capture. The slavers had taken her along with her mother. Mama had been a great and ample woman, a leader in their village, and her pregnancy did not show very much, even at six months. The women had been dazed and physically abused as they were marched away from their homelands.
They were taken to a city on the coast and held in the depths of a large stone fort. After weeks of uncertainty, they were loaded aboard a ship and crammed into a dark hold below deck along with ninety other blacks from many surrounding tribes. They could not understand one word of what was said, but it was clear that the worst of evils had befallen them. Mama said very little to her during this time, lost in her own grief and terrible fear. She constantly begged the spirits and gods for help, but they did not seem to hear.
They were fed greasy porridge with some dry meat once daily, and sometimes were taken up onto the decks and doused with cold ocean water. Emma found these moments particularly terrifying since she had never seen so much water with no land in sight. One of the older men, who was feeble and had not been chained with the stronger blacks, managed to jump over the ship’s railings. He was screaming in some words that she could not understand as he disappeared into the rolling waters.
The smells from sweating bodies, feces, and other offal increased as the voyage continued, and the bearded white Hollanders who ran the ship became angrier and less patient. Their food was thrown into the darkness of their prison, and sometimes they were forced to scrape it from the filth on the floors. People began dying, and the bearded men would come down on a daily basis to unchain and remove the bodies.
Emma had lost track of the days at sea when the time came for her mother to deliver the baby. By some miracle, he had survived the horrors of captivity and came into the nightmare world after a short labor. Emma helped her mother as best she could, and there was a hushed silence even among the condemned people who shared their prison as they recognized that in the middle of their hell, there was yet life refusing to be denied.
Emma tried to clean her mother after the birth with what little water she could find. She used a bit of sharp metal on her mother’s chains to cut the umbilical cord. She had no clothing, nothing in which to wrap the child. Her mother nursed the baby during the night, crooning soft lullabies in a gentle voice, but staring into space with no expression in her big dark eyes. Finally, she spoke quietly to Emma.
“You will survive this. You will survive and complete the circle for us. These men will not conquer our family. You must survive …,” she whispered, as if entranced. She caressed Emma on her cheek, and her hand was burning with fever.
The next morning the bearded men came to drive them up on deck. The day was bright and hot, and the enslaved blinked blindly at the light as they stumbled into the sun. In all of the confusion, her mother was able to move decisively toward the wooden railings, and in one quick move, she tossed the baby into the rolling blue ocean, screaming in her own language that this man-child would never be a slave.
The bearded men pulled on the chains to keep her from following and gazed at her with momentary shock. Finally one of the men took a short whip and began beating her viciously. Emma was chained behind her mother, and blood splashed onto her own naked body. There were shouts from the other blacks on deck, cries of sorrow and pride and respect for this woman who chose death for her own flesh rather than disgrace. The slavers began to drive them back below the deck, suddenly concerned that more of their valuable cargo might choose the ocean rather than a life of bondage.
Emma’s mother died that very day from the combined effects of the beating, childbirth fever, and her own grief. It was two days later when the bearded men came to unchain the body and toss it into the ocean.
“Grandma?” Emma’s grandson, Rafe, a thin boy of twelve years, came toward the firelight, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “Is it morning?”
Emma shook herself and drained the rest of her tea. “No, child. It isn’t morning …”
The Diary of Rebecca White Cobham, 1748
February, 1748, in Cabbin Branch
Samuel and I have a son. Bess and Mother Cobham were with me during my travail, and I often wished to die to escape such pain. It was in fact a black woman named Emma who greatly eased my time with her wise words and warm strong hands. I often thought of my mother, who bore nine children and believed that it was God’s punishment upon women to suffer so in childbirth. She would not have approved of using a potion to ease travail, but I never questioned the need for such. There must be mercy somewhere in the world!
Mother Cobham tells me that I had an easy delivery, and pray to God that I never experience any worse! My dear little son has survived his first month and is doted upon by all here. Even though I am old to bear my first child, I have recovered my health nicely.
I spend much time with Grandfather William. He owns two slaves—Emma and her twelve-year-old grandson, Rafe. I see very little of Rafe, as he has his chores to do with the other men and appears only occasionally to deliver firewood to the big house.
Emma has been a wonder with my babe, and I find her to be a wise person despite her sad origins. During the time that I labored to deliver my son, she told me many stories of her life in Africa, and I wish that I had the time and paper to record them. She came to America as a child, and her mother did not survive the voyage to America. Emma seems reluctant to speak of them. The Duvall family purchased her, and Mistress Frances Duvall trained her in Christian living and household skills before her scandal. Emma was sold to Old William by Mistress Duvall, and cared for John, his brother, Philip, and their little sister when Old William was away at his various employments. Both Mother Cobham and I are glad of her presence here.
Samuel is home and has planted the land that we leased from Mr. Bordley, called “The Principal,” to corn and vegetables rather than tobacco. He feels that we may make a modest profit from this rather than a tobacco crop. He works this land with young Rafe and a poor fellow named Nicholas Rhodes. This Rhodes man is often mad and sees things that are not real. Some say that he is possessed of a demon. Samuel would not see him wandering the streets or abused in the jail, so he petitioned the court to care for him. The madman seems well content to work in the gardens and lives alone in a small cabin on our property. Rafe takes food to him from our kitchens and often stays there for days at a time. I must remember to ride over there when I am fully healed and see how he fares.