My Name is Phillis Wheatley

by Afua Cooper

  All day and all night I heard the moans and cries of the men below deck. And the dirges of the women on deck. “What is to become of us? What is to become of us?” we asked in sad tones. Many said that the toubabs were taking us to their country to eat us, but a woman said that the toubabs had big farms, and they would take us there to work night and day. It was a toubab who told her. He had been to Africa many times and knew some of the Mandinka language.

  Later, in Massachusetts, I was told that the Phillis was a lucky ship: the smallpox and dysentery did not travel with us. When those diseases break out on a slave ship, sometimes half or more of the captives die. But I don’t know if we were lucky. So what if the smallpox had broken out on our ship? So what if we had died? It would have been no matter. We had already suffered the dreaded pains of hell.

  Days might have passed, but I am not sure. It could have been just one day. However, I heard the excited chatter of the sailors. “Land, land, we see land!” They pointed in a certain direction. The women got excited, too. We were coming close to the land of the toubabs. The women’s chatter turned into sorrow, and once again they began to sing. They knew that once in the toubab land their lives would continue in misery. I could only wonder if I would get there. I prayed that I would not.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Boston Slavery

  The men were taken up on board and washed down. The floors were swept and cleaned. The women and children were also washed and oiled. They did not bother to clean and oil me and the others who were ill in mind or body. They simply let us lie in our misery. We sailed into Boston Harbor, the land of the toubabs. What strange sights — long wooden houses stacked together, shops, stores and three-story warehouses. And the clamor, the noise of toubab men and women swarming along the dock, pointing at the ship. I heard the strange sounds of their speech, but I was too sick to panic. I felt hands scooping me up. I saw a snatch of green. “Come, child. They want us to go into the canoes to take us to the shore. You have survived the journey. It is for a reason that one so young survived. Remember, child, you must live!”

  The year was 1761. The month was July.

  Long canoes brought us to shore. The captain led us to a large building, low and painted brown. People with pink faces, like the captain and the sailors, milled about and spoke loudly in the funny language that the captain spoke. Some pointed at our group of sickly captives. But I was surprised to see men and women who looked just like my people in Fouta and the Gambia. But how strangely they dressed! Some of these African-looking people shook their heads sorrowfully. Others quickly looked away from us.

  As I write this, I am filled with a grief that will lurk forever beneath my skin. This sorrow plays hide-and-seek with me. Not my many poems that have been published, not all the accolades that I have received will heal this pain.

  Years later, I would learn that as the ship sat in Boston Harbor, the captain, whose name was Gwinn, published news of his cargo in the local newspaper:

  Just imported from Africa, a number of prime young slaves from the Windward Coast on the schooner Phillis. They are to be sold at the dock at New Boston.

  Most of the captives of the Phillis were led onto the dock. A toubab man looked them up and down. A Serer man was told to step forward, his skin gleaming from the shea butter that the sailors had rubbed on him when we neared Boston. The toubab man told him to open his mouth, and he examined his teeth. The toubab told him to leap into the air. He told him to squat. He examined him the way my father examined a horse brought by Moorish traders on their annual caravans to Fouta.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the toubab shouted. “This Negro is in the prime of his life. He is around twenty-one years old and as strong as an ox. I will open the bidding for this Negro at eight hundred dollars. Do I hear a bid?”

  And so it was that our lives and freedom were auctioned away. Slave buyers and owners pushed through the noisy crowd and haggled for the healthy captives. They poked them all over their bodies. They examined their teeth, twisted their heads around, bent their limbs and made signs to jump up and down. Many of the captives, especially the children, began to weep.

  The auction was boisterous. “I’ll buy that one for eight hundred and fifteen dollars,” yelled a short man with a round face, pointing to a tall boy whom I knew to be a member of the royal family of the Serer.

  “No,” replied the captain. “He is worth a thousand. He is young and strong and has many productive years ahead of him.”

  I watched all this while lying on a piece of dirty rug in a corner of the dockyard with others who were very weak and sick. And there we stayed, trembling and crying. Captain Gwinn said that no one would buy us. We were the “refuse.” We were left there to die. The angel with the green shawl ripped off a piece of the cloth and covered my trembling body. She held me and covered my face with kisses.

  The loud wailing of two sisters caused me to look up. They spoke Fullah, the language of my people. “Sister, if we do not meet again in this world, we will meet in the next. God go with you.” And the sisters held each other and wept before being dragged off by different buyers. Then the angel was dragged off by a man with a large, beefy face.

  By mid-afternoon, the healthy captives had been sold. How long I lay on the dirty carpet I cannot say. I passed in and out of consciousness. Then I heard Captain Gwinn’s voice.

  “Madam, she may not live long.”

  I roused myself and looked up into the face of a toubab woman with eyes the color of the sea. We locked our gaze for a long time, and then I heard her say, “How much is she worth?”

  So it was that Susanna and John Wheatley bought me. Much later, Mrs. Wheatley told me that she had been very sick and confined to bed for a long time. When she recovered, her husband promised her a personal slave. The two domestics who had looked after my mistress and the household, Aunt Betty and Clara, were not as nimble as they used to be. Aunt Betty was arthritic and had problems climbing the stairs. Mistress needed a younger slave who could be trained as a domestic and who would walk in the way of the Lord. That was what had taken them to the market on that fateful day.

  “We arrived late. By the time we got there, only the refuse slaves remained. My heart sank because I wanted an older teenager or someone in her early twenties, but all the slaves of that description were already sold.”

  Then they heard me whimpering. And they looked to see that the noise was coming from a child lying on a rug in a dimly lit corner. The Wheatleys’ hearts were moved at the sight of her frail and emaciated body. “You will not want to buy her,” the captain said.

  “But your huge, sunken eyes revealed such sorrow and pain that I was immediately moved,” my mistress told me. “We bought you for a mere trifle. Captain Gwinn told me you would die, so he sold you very cheaply. I wanted to prove him wrong. You are my miracle, Phillis.”

  My master was a rich merchant who owned two ships that traded with Britain, the West Indies and Nova Scotia. He also owned a store that sold wine, tea, coffee, rice, candles, dried fish, fish oil, fabric and a host of other items from around the world. The shop was in Boston’s busy harbor. He employed a number of people to work on his ships and run his store. My master was also tailor to Boston’s most distinguished people. His tailoring shop was on King Street, close to our house. He also owned several houses that he leased or rented.

  My mistress helped me from the market to a small carriage. Though I was weak and my breath short, I could see that the driver of the carriage was an African. He smiled at me, and my heart felt a little comforted. He jumped from his seat, scooped me up and placed me on a soft seat at the back of the carriage. The driver’s name was Prince, and he would become one of my guardians.

  Prince guided the carriage along the dirt streets of Boston. My mistress would often look at me over her shoulder, from her seat at the front. A sigh would escape her lips. Finally, Prince opened the door and lifted me from my seat
. I was looking up at a stately red-brick mansion. I could not but gasp at the size and grandeur of the house. It would be my home for the next seventeen years. I would later learn that the house stood at the intersection of King Street and Mackerel Lane, in the heart of the city, close to the sea but away from the docks.

  T

  The long march to the coast and the sea journey would forever imprint my body and spirit. I became asthmatic. Sometimes, for days on end, my lungs would be shut tight against the air. But my body grew stronger and my spirit was calmed under the care of Mrs. Wheatley and Aunt Betty, the enslaved housekeeper. The Wheatleys’ children, Mary and Nathaniel, were twins, fourteen years old. Instead of me caring for my mistress, my mistress cared for me in those first months. And she pressed Mary into service. The Wheatley women often read to me. They spoke kindly. They would point to me and say, “Phillis.” I quickly realized it was my new name. Phillis, after the ship that brought me to America. Phillis. Penda was gone forever. They also gave me their last name. Penda Wane became Phillis Wheatley. What would my father think of my new name? He would not be able to fathom such a thing. Often I contemplated my new name as I drifted off to sleep at night. The thought of it broke my heart. But my master and mistress seemed to want to preserve my life, and as the days and the weeks rolled by, I came to accept my new name.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  On the Wings of Morning

  One day I knew I would not die. As I recovered, scenes of Fouta Toro rose sharply in my mind. Visiting my relatives, playing with my friends, making mischief on the cattle. Bathing in the river, playing with my baby sister, learning domestic chores from my mother. Sitting in our courtyard while my mother combed and braided her hair. Sitting beneath the village baobab tree reciting for Baba Dende, memorizing long passages, and Baba Dende getting upset and frustrated when we did not recite the way he wanted us to. Watching my father feed strips of cotton into his loom and marveling as he created a tapestry of stories from our history.

  These memories nourished me, but they also made me extremely sad for a life I would never have again, never see again. So I commanded my mind to stop these memories. I was now in Boston, in toubab-land, in America, in the house of John and Susanna Wheatley, Nathaniel and Mary. I belonged to them. They would tell me what to do: when to wake up, when to go to bed, when to eat, what to eat, where to go, what to wear, how to talk and what to think. Yes, they would even tell me what to think, or if I should think at all.

  In no time, I learned enough of the English tongue to speak to those around me. And after I gained sufficient health and strength, my training in household duties began. Aunt Betty, the housekeeper, taught me how to set the table, to sweep the house properly and to dust the furniture. She taught me to do light laundry. She also taught me how to serve meals and wait at the table. The work came easy because my mother had already been teaching me many of these things. Aunt Betty took me with her to the market and on errands for my mistress. But she did more than train me in household arts. She made special soups “to fatten me up.” At night, Aunt Betty sang to me and told me stories of Brothers Rabbit, Tiger and Elephant and of Sister Deer. Aunt Betty had no children, and she hugged me and said, “God sent you to be my daughter, Phillis.” And for that I rejoiced because though I had lost my own mother, God had rewarded me with two.

  In addition to doing work around the house, I was to be Mrs. Wheatley’s personal maid. I combed her hair, prepared her bath, fetched her clothes, made her bed, brought her meals if she felt too ill to dine with the family and ran errands for her. I also went to church with her, though I sat on the benches for Black people. Mistress was very pious and read the Bible a lot. Her favorite subject was talking about God.

  God. Mistress and Aunt Betty spoke about God a lot. God seemed to be their special friend. They reminded me of Baba Dende, who also had God as his special friend. My mistress felt that if I came to know her God, I would be able to forget Africa. Every evening after supper, my mistress called us all together — the twins, my master, Aunt Betty, Prince, the two other house slaves, Rufus and Clara — for the bible reading and prayers. As soon as I knew enough English to understand, my mistress told me that a man named Jesus, a long, long time ago, had died for my sins. But I knew already about Jesus. My people revered him as a prophet.

  But my mistress told me that I was a pagan, that Africa was a benighted land, and it was a good thing I had been brought into slavery because I could learn about the true God and his son, Jesus. I said nothing when my mistress and Mary made unflattering remarks about Africa, although I knew they were wrong. I had been happy there. I had lived a good life with my family. I had had plenty of food and drink and had been surrounded by love and laughter. And we knew that there was only one God, as my mistress was telling me.

  A year passed, and I was speaking the English language fluently. I ventured to ask my mistress to teach me to write. And she did. I remembered Baba Dende under the baobab tree, scolding, frowning, encouraging, and my mind took flight.

  “I daresay the child Phillis is very intelligent,” my mistress said one day to my master after my lesson. “She learns faster than I can teach.”

  I smiled broadly. I was very pleased with myself. Mistress had once called me her “miracle,” and she now set about proving that indeed I was. She and Mary began teaching me bible history, poetry, British history and classical literature.

  One day, my mistress and Mary confessed that they had taught me all they knew. Nathaniel would have to become part of the great experiment. My young master was a student at Boston Latin School, and he taught me Greek, Hebrew, Latin, theology, ancient history and rhetoric. After a few months of study, Nathaniel gave me Latin verses to translate into English. He introduced me to the poets Terence, Virgil, Horace and Catullus, though he said his teachers did not like Catullus much.

  I soaked up all this learning. I became as familiar with Jesus turning water into wine as with Zeus hurling thunderbolts from Mount Olympus. Alexander Pope, the English poet, was as close a friend as was Terence Afer, the celebrated Roman playwright and an African. The gods and goddesses of antiquity peopled my imagination, and my heart would beat fast as I read about the English Revolution and how the English executed their king, Charles the First. But the Bible remained my favorite book. Reading it gave me strength, succor and inspiration. It eased some of the pain of the loss of my home and family. As I drank up the Wheatleys’ learning, my mistress declared that I was a “prodigy.” No one expected much from a mere slave, but here I was reading and writing in Latin. And speaking English better than many Whites, my mistress said. That pleased me greatly.

  At that time I had no idea that what we were doing was highly unusual. Slave owners normally did not teach their slaves to read or write, much less teach them Latin and Greek. Most felt that learning spoiled a slave because her natural condition was that of a servant. Learning put strange ideas in the mind of a slave and made her unfit for bondage.

  My owners’ amazement at the speed at which I learned made me realize that even they believed that Africans were not very intelligent. That is why I was a prodigy. But in Fouta Toro it was normal for young children to have memorized the entire Qur’an by the time they were eight. As for learning the English tongue fast, my country was a potpourri of languages. Most people, including my parents, spoke three or four languages apart from their mother tongue. Our ears were attuned to hearing and understanding. Those who came to trade in Tumbakulli spoke Bamana, Mandinka, Serer, Arabic, Songhai, Hassiniyya, Tuareg and a host of other tongues. My mind was open to learning a new and strange speech.

  Oftentimes I found myself composing rhymes along the principles that my mother and Ma Ndiaye had taught me. Every other line rhymed; every line had eight syllables. And then I would slip into the iambic pentameters and rhymes used by English poets. John Donne’s Holy Sonnets filled my twelve-year-old heart with a sweet joy.

  Batter my heart, three-
person’d God; for you

  As yet but knock, breathe, shine and seek to mend;

  That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me and bend

  Your force, to break, blow, burn and make me new.

  Or Pope’s “Essay on Man.”

  Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;

  The proper study of Mankind is Man.

  Plac’d on this isthmus of a middle state,

  A being darkly wise, and rudely great:

  With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,

  With too much weakness for the Stoic’s pride

  Words I got from fetching my mistress’s tea. From picking greens in the meadows with Aunt Betty and Prince, or with Rufus and Clara. Words I got conjugating Nathaniel’s Latin verbs. Words I got from Mary’s French songs. Words I got from Aunt Betty’s stories. Words I got from the Bible and sermons preached by the pastors of Boston’s churches. Words I got from my dreams. Words I got from looking from my window in the early dawn and seeing the sun breaking in the eastern sky. Apollo heralding the dawn, Apollo escorting the sun.

  Sometimes while I worked with Aunt Betty mixing the batter for our bread, I would stop with a piece of dough in my hand and stare into space. “Phillis,” Aunt Betty’s voice would say. “Stop your dreaming, child. We cannot eat air. Make the bread.” But I wasn’t dreaming. I was listening to the words speaking in my head.

  Then, one evening, in the year I turned twelve, it happened. At twilight I was sitting on a chair in the room I shared with Aunt Betty. It was late autumn and night came early. The room was filled with an electric air and the words formed in perfect meter and rhyme in my mind. It was as if Ma Ndiaye was in the room, encouraging me, coaxing me. Over and over the poem came, without effort. I walked briskly to Mary’s room and I knocked.