I hated leaving my mother and brothers, and the familiarity of the plantation, yet a little excitement rose in me at the prospect of a town. Going to a new place, even as a hire, meant that one was exposed to new knowledge about geography and the larger world.
My new master was a merchant named John Brooks. In his store on the main street of Shelbyville he sold all manner of dry goods, peas, corn, flour, dried and smoked meats, teas, coffee, sugar, writing paper, chocolate, roped tobacco, imported fabric, buttons, jewelry, fancy foods and wines. He lived upstairs of the store with his wife and two small children. His three slaves, Frederick, Antonio and Derrick, lived in a shack at the back of the shop. I took up habitation with them.
My tasks included filling sacks with corn, peas and other grains, lifting and carrying, and helping Frederick, the oldest slave, with the weighing. I also helped Mrs. Brooks with the cleaning and preparation of food, and sometimes she left her two children in my care.
I did pick up some learning from Frederick as I helped him weigh and pack: counting, adding and subtracting. Our master and mistress did not seem to care because what I was learning made my work better, and that enriched them.
Though my master dealt in foodstuffs, I was always hungry. I would even be awakened at night by intense hunger. He was the meanest and stingiest person that I ever came across, even stingier than Widow Beverly. He gave Frederick cornmeal to cook for us, and that was what we ate every day, rain or shine, turn-cornmeal, a semi-liquid mush, sometimes with bits of carrots or chicken fat. The injustice became especially cruel when we would be working in the store and smell the delicious foods Mrs. Brooks was preparing for the family.
My mother had given me two suits of clothing, but as the months went by I grew out of them. They also became ripped and worn, and I did not know how to patch them. So I had nothing but a shredded shirt and a pair of pants too short for me and as shredded as the shirt. Mrs. Brooks seemed not to notice, although her two darling children were always well dressed. When the winter came I shivered in the cold. Frederick gave me an old blanket to cover myself, and that afforded some warmth. But my feet became cracked and bloody from the cold ground. At least at the widow’s I had worn shoes, although she took them from me when I left her employ. At the Brookses’ I came to believe that I would surely lose my life.
Mrs. Brooks had a habit of carrying around a “woman’s whip,” one that was not too long but stung as hard as any whip Captain Barker used. If I did the slightest thing not to her liking, she would give me several lashes and did not care where on my person the lashes landed. Once, she struck me across my head. I felt a stinging pain, and my left ear began to throb. Then I blacked out. When I came to, I was lying on the ground in the yard and Frederick was shaking me. From that day until this present moment, the hearing in that ear is diminished.
Mrs. Brooks seemed incensed at my light-skinned complexion. “White nigger, this will show you,” she would yell. “Think you are White, getting uppity, this will show you!” as she applied lash after lash. Sometimes she complained to her husband. He would strip me to the waist and beat me with a switch made from hardened hickory. My skin became red and swollen, and I grew sickly. I had no thought in the world but to die. I came to hate the Brookses with a passion that raged the entire time I spent in that household. I also became nervous and fearful. Every time I was in the presence of Mr. or Mrs. Brooks, I became agitated. I could not concentrate on my task, as I feared that any moment I would commit some offence. My nervousness became so extreme that my stomach could not keep down what little food I was given, and I grew even thinner.
My only respite was on the occasional Sunday. Enslaved people usually had Sunday as a day of rest; but the Brookses gave us only every second Sunday to ourselves. We spent these precious free days in the woods around Shelbyville, making merry with slave people from the area. They organized foot races, wrestling games and corn-eating competitions. They played music and danced the “Heel and Toe” and “Patting Juba.” Antonio won all the foot races, and Frederick, despite his age, was a superb dancer, who invented new styles of dancing and won great acclaim from the women for his skills.
But even those Sundays failed to make me happy. I would stand by myself immersed in gloom. None of the merrymaking could stop me thinking of the suffering that awaited me at John Brooks’s home.
One evening, Frederick looked at me and shook his head. “Massa and mistress have no right to beat you like that. They don’t own you.”
“But what can the boy do?” Antonio asked.
“Henry is a hire. He belongs to his master. The beatings that the Brookses are giving him are damaging his master’s property. If his master found out, he would be angry. No one wants damaged property.”
Frederick seemed to know a great deal. He often travelled with John Brooks to Louisville to ship or receive goods. He was also much older than the other two slaves and had seen more of the world, having come from Virginia with a previous owner. A thought began to form in my mind. What if I could get word to my mother, who could talk to our master about the harsh treatment I was receiving from the Brookses?
But how would I get such information to her?
As if God was answering my prayer, one morning I was helping Derrick load dried peas into a wagon bound for the docks when Dr. Martin walked into the store. He was not a planter. He lived in nearby Newcastle and occasionally came to David White’s plantation to attend sick slaves.
“Why, Henry, is that you?” Dr. Martin asked, as he came upon me. “My word, you have grown tall; but, boy, you look ill.” Dr. Martin touched my face and I winced. “You have been lashed.”
At that moment, Mrs. Brooks arrived and asked, “May I help you, doctor?” and he went to the counter to do his business. When he was finished he left the store without even looking in my direction.
A month later, Captain Barker strode into John Brooks’s store. I was at the back peeling vegetables when I heard the demon Mrs. Brooks calling my name. Seeing the captain, I was seized by an overwhelming terror.
“Take your clothes off, boy,” the captain commanded. “All of them.”
I wanted to laugh because I was wearing rags, not clothes. Embarrassed, I undressed and faced the captain.
“Turn around.”
I did as I was told. The place fell so quiet one could hear a pin fall.
“Mrs. Brooks, my employer, David White, has told me to inform you that the contract for Henry’s hire has come to an end. When Mr. White returns from Frankfort, he will work out the details with your husband.”
I could not believe my good fortune. How did this happen? Did Dr. Martin have anything to do with it? Captain Barker, who every day whipped some unfortunate slave on David White’s estate, had appeared as my rescuer.
T
My mother was standing on the porch of our master’s house when I arrived. “Oh my God, oh my God,” she sobbed, as she covered me in her embrace. After a moment she stepped back and looked at me, and the words tumbled out of her mouth. “Henry, how thin you are. Look at the welts on your skin.” And she started to cry anew.
Some of the slave people nearby stopped their chores and surrounded us. Pearl cried. Two of her children had been put out to hire, and she feared for them, wondering out loud whether they were also being badly used. Lucy, the West Indian slave, disappeared and returned with some stalks of a grass in her hand. “Bathe him in water soaked with this,” she said to my mother.
That night, after much welcoming and me making much of my brothers, who had grown so tall, my mother told me how I came to be released. Dr. Martin had told Captain Barker of my ill use. “It is not right that another man’s property be so abused,” was what the doctor said.
All the White men of Kentucky knew property was king. And slaves were the finest property. A man could maim or even kill his own slave, as it was his property. But for another to do so was cause enough to sue him. The captain wrote to David White in Frankfort and told him of my situation. My master instructed him to make the proper inquiry and, if the doctor’s words were true, he should return me to the farm.
“I don’t want you sent away again, Henry,” my mother said. “But for you to remain here, Massa must be convinced that there is enough work for you to do.”
“I could work in the field,” I said. Some people thought that field work was the worst of the worst because slaves worked for long hours in all kinds of weather. But I had been a house slave all my life and could honestly say that house work was as arduous. Moreover, the house slave is under the constant watch of the mistress or master, who can abuse the slave at the slightest whim, as I learned from Widow Beverly and the Brookses.
My mother did not reply. So I pressed on, saying that I was tall and strong for my age.
“Massa does not want you in the field.”
“Why?”
“You are too white. It would not be right.” There it was again. My complexion. “Captain Barker says that tomorrow you must go to the house to begin training as a houseboy, a sort of butler. Massa David is bringing home his new wife.”
My master was away most of the time and had never needed a butler. Now he needed one, for when there is a mistress, a house must take on a more genteel tone.
“Will massa’s new wife be mean or nice?”
“Only time will tell,” my mother said. “At least Harriet will finally have a mother.”
I had forgotten all about Harriet since she had been sent to her fancy academy in Louisville. Would she be happy about the arrival of a stepmother?
T
The following morning when I entered the kitchen I saw Elliot, the butler from Widow Beverly’s estate. My face must have reflected my horror because Elliot laughed and said, “Don’t worry, Henry, you are not coming back with me to the widow. I am here to train you.” And he added the now familiar refrain: “My, how you have grown.” It was true. I was almost as tall as he was, and he stood over six feet.
Elliot first taught me how to answer the door. White folks enter through the front door; Blacks and slaves go to the back or the kitchen. I must always bow to Whites and keep my eyes lowered. I must say, “yessuh” or “no, suh,” or “yes, ma’am” or “no, ma’am.” I must always be polite. Next, he taught me how to polish the silver and set the table, to help serve the food and to anticipate the every need of my master and mistress. He also showed me how to be close at hand but not there at all. “When you are with them, as they eat, drink, talk, shave, you must be visible to attend to them, but you must be invisible at the same time. They must never feel that you are intruding.
“If you are angry with them, you must never show it. Smile, even at things you do not find amusing. You understand, Henry?” I nodded. “Whites do not like you thinking about them … watching them closely. You must be their shadow, but they must never know.”
I was thirteen years old. This sounded insane. How can I be visible and invisible at the same time? Slavery had turned the world upside down.
My training lasted the whole day, and in the evening Elliot rode off. Having his own horse was one of the advantages of being a trusted house servant of Widow Beverly.
And so my new life as a houseboy-butler started. I worked under the same roof as my mother, and that gave me great satisfaction. My brothers George and John had been apprenticed to Shadrach and were learning his trade. Only the baby, Lewis, remained carefree.