Which, we all knew. Ish. It’s the ish that does it, setting off a bout of leapfrog thinking, beginning with Seneca Village.
Because OMG. That was the whole point of Seneca Village and its fight. They were there first, before there was a Central Park. Our bodies weren’t buried in Central Park. There was no park. Our bodies were buried in someone’s backyard.
And once I have this thought I know it’s right. The way to identify these bodies is to find out who owned the land.
I grab everyone and lay out my thinking. “We need to find a map, or maybe the tax rolls, or something. We keep thinking of them as Central Park Bodies, and that’s just not accurate.”
So, 1811 gets us the Commissioners’ Plan. Which in turn, gets us to John Randel Jr. and his ninety-two “Farm Maps.” Both the plan and the maps are conveniently online at the Museum of the City of New York.
And these maps are filled with landowners’ names for properties directly in the way of streets being slotted and lots being taken. It’s a pretty ugly picture.
And as Joe keeps nudging along the map line, we finally get to the area now known as Central Park, and I hear Imani gasp. I touch Joe’s shoulder to signal him to hold, and we all turn to face Imani, who is looking at Jimmy, who nods, confirming their unspoken exchange.
“Her diary.” Imani’s voice is shaky. She points at the screen, where the name Bessie Seelman is imprinted on a building lot. “Her diary is in the Lapidus collection. We haven’t read it, but her name’s on one of the slavery indexes, it’s there.”
A woman. Wowzerhole. Of all things I would not have come up with in like a zillion years is that a woman could own slaves. A woman wouldn’t even be allowed to freaking vote for what, another hundred years give or take? So she can’t vote, but she can own a person?
And yes, my friends, I can hear you. Caution, Sid, this could, of course, be a leap. But somehow, I know it’s not. I know our dead bodies are in her yard, and I know that’s not going to be by coincidence.
And I know I’m not alone. So you’d think I’d be sharing how we all jumped up, rushing to get to the archives, but I’m not, because we didn’t. It’s kind of like we all knew and didn’t want to be those stupid people in horror movies who go back in the house.
But we would have to be. I believe the answers are going to be in Bessie Seelman’s diary. If we walk away, they’d be lost to forever. And we didn’t come all this way for lost to forever to be our answer.
We all sit, each lost in our own thoughts, until one by one we rise up until we are nine strong standing together, and we begin walking—a dead man’s drag held down by fear and trepidation, pulling ourselves one qualm-laden step at a time to the archive’s desk. Imani fills out the form, requests the diary.
It probably takes close to half an hour to get it, and I don’t think anyone speaks that entire time. Her name finally called, Imani goes, gets the book, returns, and very gently opens it to the first, fragile, yellowed page. I’m sitting directly across the table, and after she looks down at the book, Imani looks up at me, tears already falling from her eyes.
For a while she says nothing, turning pages as gently as her shaking hand will allow. After her third attempt to turn the page without tearing it, Joe, who took the seat next to her right arm so he could read along, takes the edge and turns it for them both. After his sixth- or seventh-page turn, Imani stops him and reads an entry aloud, her voice trembling, her body shaking.
“Twas a very trifling rain today. The new gurl didst finally arrive. She will be Martha Three. Twas rather late, which didst interfeer with my supper. In truth I didst not like the look of the man who brought her and told George Two to be shur he took his leave.”
Martha Three? George Two?
“Ephraim, I didst receive sad news. Your Cousin John hath passed. I beleeve it twas a short illness which hath induced intense suffering. So, it is indeed a mercy. God will have his soul now. I didst tell Martha One I do not like how Martha Three looks at George Five. This be a Christian house. I will not be having such in my house.”
Martha One? George Five? The only thing keeping me from laughing out loud or snorting or reacting is knowing this isn’t someone’s idea of a bad play, but someone’s actual diary of their actual life. Some person who thought you could name people with numbers, like they didn’t deserve their own name. As though they were not human enough for that.
How human do you need to be to rate your own name?
“Our long spell of fine weather didst end tonight. I feer tis time for a decision before the ground should harden again.”
“I have had a shock today, Ephraim. It is now ten years since you have gone home to the Lord. Martha One made your favorite supper to remember. I had to tell her again to speak with Martha Three, she be an uppity one. I willst not tolerate pride and vanity in my house.”
Imani turns the page, then another.
“I prayed again today. I believe the Lord wilst show me the way.”
And another turn of the page.
This one is different. Imani stops turning, sits staring at the page, saying nothing. Joe has read it, and looks up at the rest of us, his face fully distressed. He goes to move the book away, but Imani puts her hand over his, not allowing it. We wait.
“I have decided. I wilst not set free those men I hath paid good money for. Who are these pepul who hath decided slavery no more. I say fie. I bought my goods with fair money. Are they not mine to dispose of as I see fit? Ay. And none shalt tell me different.”
“Today I didst purchase a new dress. And then I burned my new dress. And I did so to remind my bruther that what is mine, is mine.”
I hear Ari’s sob, as much as she is trying to muffle it in Vik’s shirt.
“Ephraim, Martha Three wouldst not be to your liking, for she is of a rebellious spirit. Such as I will not tolerate. I brought all the Martha’s together and read them Colossians 22: Bondservants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. I feer, my dear, Martha Three will not listen.”
Jean is sobbing, and I have wrapped him up in my arms. I don’t think he’s cried in my arms since he was five, maybe six. I smell his hair. I breathe him. I feel how deeply I love him.
“I am glad to be of years to understand thees choices of men are not for just and fair reasons, but are of reasons of vanity and superiority. Politiks. The devils hand at work.”
“Ephraim, I hast found a man. Tis he and his bruther who will come in two days time.”
Imani turns another page. I am no longer breathing.
“Tis done. I fear no retribution, not in this life, nor in the next. For twas a good and Christian deed, for where wouldst they have gone? Who would have looked after them, fed them, cloathed them?”
“My mind returns to Colossians. ‘Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward.’”
Imani shakes her head, then stops. Tears stream, unchecked, down her face. She closes the book, pushes it to the center of the table, where it sits. Untouched.
It won’t matter how many more pages there are as we have our answer. Her name was Martha Three. Martha-fucking-Three. She died with Marthas One and Two and Georges One, Two, Three, Four, and Five because she was worth no more than a dress. She died because if Bessie Seelman couldn’t have her, neither would anyone else.
I don’t know what we expected. I know it wasn’t this.
The PA system tells us the library will be closing in another fifteen minutes. Imani retrieves the book, stands, and walks herself and the diary back to the archives desk.
You know when you read novels and they talk about a group of people looking “stricken.” Yeah, I don’t think I ever truly understood that until today. We are all of one face, one expression. It is more than wounded. It’s as if we are cellularly changed, marred by something we can’t comprehend a
nd yet our marrow knows it’s true. I look at Marcus and see myself. I see he is beyond rage because what lies beyond rage is beyond comprehension. And I see he is me.
Together we zombie our way out the front door. The dark sky, the cold air, the rush of street traffic is unfathomable. A horn screams loud and long, a rude reentry. We blink. We have traveled so far and been gone for so long.
And now we stand here, no one knowing what to do or say. Our voices still held captive by the unspeakable. My phone pings the ping I’d know anywhere. Tsarnowsky.
I look at everyone and give a forced chuckle. There is bitter irony in the first words that will pierce tonight’s air. “He’s got the DNA results.”
TWENTY-TWO
I can’t tell you who was more shocked, Dr. Lena Lolita Renata de la Cortez a.k.a. Lolo or Doc Black or Vonnie. After we met with Tsarno, he called and got them all to come over. And he was having a very good time pointing out what a little interest could do.
And while one could objectively acknowledge it was kind of like finding a needle in a haystack by tripping and having your hand land on it painfully, we did still need to go out and find the right haystack. I therefore admit, it was kind of fun listening to Tsarno relay what we had done.
But what we had done is the problem. It was amazing. It was great. It didn’t, however, resolve what we set out to do.
The DNA results did help, but as we knew they weren’t a magic bullet. Between all parties, we now know with a high probability, or in lingo-land, we now have a genetic affinity. We can posit she came from Senegal and, if so, was most likely transported from Senegambia.
And, although we didn’t know it at the time, Tsarno had kept the New York African Burial Ground in the loop, promising if anything were known, they would be the first to be made aware. So they’re now looking to put together an exhibit to tell her story. They’re also going to take custody of her DNA. As the pool grows and the science progresses, they promise they will someday try to find her family.
All in all, it’s a remarkable story. Everyone says so. Repeatedly. So we should be feeling pretty amazing. We did accomplish on so many levels what no one believed we could do. We did find her, and we did tell her story. But her story has no actual name. Which is what we set out to do—to find her name and say her name. So in that sense we failed. And even three weeks later that’s what hurts so much.
Even my High Line is not bringing me my usual sense of security or balance. I make my way over to the Plinth, to visit Simone Leigh’s Brick House, which is this enormous 16-foot-high bronze of a Black woman’s head on a torso that “combines the forms of a skirt and a clay house.” The head is just this amazing, powerful presence. She’s bold and fierce, with an afro framed by cornrow braids, each of them ending in a cowrie shell.
When they first installed her, I learned Brick House comes from the term for a strong Black woman, one who stands with the strength, endurance, and integrity of a house made of bricks.
I believe she could be Martha Three. And I breathe her in.
Then I take my hand and touch it to her torso. I’ll be back. And I start to hustle, now heading my way toward the High Line’s very end, Gansevoort Street. At Sixteenth I stop for just a moment to peer out. There she is, small but perfectly framed, my favorite perspective, Lady Liberty. I smile before hustling on.
And then, destination reached. 74 Wall Street, between Pearl and William Streets. Wall Street. Where the geographic heart of New York’s Financial District meets the symbolic home of American capitalism. And where the New York Slave Market operated and thrived. I guess this would make it a part of the city’s commodities market. You know, where people buy/sell/trade raw products, like cotton, sugar . . . other people.
I stare at the marker, innocuous enough, almost homogenized. But maybe that’s not fair. Maybe a single plaque can’t capture the horror of an entire people. And, at the very least, it’s here.
As opposed to the old Slave Market itself. There’s a condo building where it used to stand, and looking at it I wonder if the people inside ever stop to think about what was there before. Whose blood and sweat runs beneath their building. And something about that thought brings me back to another place and time.
Four years ago our class took a school trip to Washington, DC. We went to visit the Vietnam War Memorial. It was breathtaking and sobering all at once. We walked slowly past each piece of the wall, taking in row after row, name after name, each being honored and remembered, if not by family, by history.
After that we had several museums we could pick to visit. Imani went with me to the Holocaust Museum.
As you enter, each person is given an ID card. And each card has a name. Mine said Helen Katz, born January 2, 1931, Kisvarda, Hungary. And there’s a photo. It’s old and a little blurry, but I can see she was young and had these really big, dark eyes, and long brown, wavy hair pulled back with a left-side part.
I look at Helen, and I take that card with me through the entire museum, starting with the cattle car/elevator up to the top floor. Then we’re crossing under the gates telling me Arbeit macht frei. Work makes free.
We begin walking our way back down, past the piles of shoes and the Tower of Faces, always with Helen in my hand and in my head.
When we get to the bottom I learn Yaffa Eliach created the Tower of Faces one photo at a time. She was from a place called Ejszyszki in Poland. There were four thousand Jews in that area before the Nazi’s came. Only five hundred survived their initial round of massacres. Only twenty-nine survived the war. And on every floor, as you walk by, the Jews of Ejszyszki are vibrantly remembered by this celebration of their lives.
And Helen? At the end of our day, I learned her fate. On May 28, 1944, the Katz family was deported from the Kisvarda ghetto where they’d been sent. Helen Katz was killed upon arrival at Auschwitz on May 31, 1944.
Helen Katz was 13 years old. I still know her name. I still have her card. She is not forgotten.
Now I stand here in lower Manhattan, running my fingers over the historical slave market marker, the drawing so at odds with the neighborhood now having risen from it. Taken from a 1716 map by William Burgis, where he’d drawn every building on Manhattan’s East River shore, now it looks almost like one of those Americana jigsaw puzzles. You know the very manicured lawns ones with perfect quaint houses and a mountain in the background.
I call Imani.
“I’m so sorry.” I’m struggling to keep my emotions in hand. Guilt. Sadness. Desolation. Failure.
“For what?”
“I promised you we would find her and say her name. Martha Three isn’t her name.”
For a long time, there’s no answer, but I can hear her breathing so I know she’s still there.
“You know, Sid, I have a question for you. Is she, is Martha Three Aldonza or Dulcinea?”
I’m so surprised, it takes me a minute to process she’s talking about the play. Her play. Man of La Mancha. Is she Aldonza, the whore, or Dulcinea, the lady? Fortunately, this is rhetorical.
“She’s both. And she’s neither.” Imani’s voice is clear, strong. She’s already traveled this unknowing for herself. “It’s the same for Martha Three. And one day, maybe after the DNA pool is so big, and more data is unearthed, and the sky turns purple and fish fly, we’ll know who else she is. But who she is, Sid? We do know that. She is not forgotten.”
I think about that, breathing loud enough so Imani will know I’m here.
“Maybe we could just call her Three? Like Eleven in Stranger Things or Seven of Nine from Star Trek. Women with numbers are very cool.”
“Oh my god, you are such a freak.” Imani is laughing hysterically.
I am. She’s right; I am a freak. But not freaky enough to mention that way back in the day, in the original Star Trek pilot, Majel Barrett is known only as Number One. Nope. Not gonna bring that one up. Instead, I get my announcer voice on, because, well, because.
“Join us, Friday nights, for DNA, the final f
rontier.”
And after just the slightest pause Imani clicks her “engage button.” “Fly with us down the double helix road of discovery, starring Three, as the genome of promise.”
Oh. Nice one ’Mani. But I’m ready. “Featuring Georges One, Two, Three, Four, and Five as our intrepid team of Genetic Affenites.”
“Love you, Sid.”
“Yeah, love you too.”
I hang up, turning to head home, when it occurs to me that “Three” and Helen have given me something else. A plan.
I enter Mr. Clifton’s class at the last possible second, impeccably dressed to kill. Skinny jeans, white man-tailored shirt untucked, with black-and-white bow tie open and dangling loose from the collar and, yes, my spectators—I am a very lean, maybe not so mean, fighting machine.
Jimmy and Vik, of course, are already there as we take this class together. I glance about as I stride to the front desk, confirming, as I’d asked, that Imani, Ari, and Marcus have also made it.
“Mr. Clifton, I would like to present my quote for the table.” And cue the screams.
Now, if anyone needs a refresher, Mr. Clifton teaches an AP class called Morality, Legality, and Life. His final is the same every year. Every student must bring in a sticker and argue for its inclusion on his very heavily decoupaged coffee table. Obviously we are welcome to do this at any time, but we only get one shot.
Needless to say, for someone like me, this is crazy-making. Every song lyric, every quote, every bumper sticker I pass might be the one. So I’m just saying it’s possible I may have slightly abused my friends’ patience trying to find a sticker or come up with a quote I think will justify my contribution.
Even still, my friends do not need to sit here and cheer quite that enthusiastically. Perhaps a little polite applause would suffice.
I roll my eyes at them. Mr. Clifton motions the floor is mine.
“As some people might be aware,” and I glare directly at Jimmy, who is still snickering. And then I do that stupid thing I hate. I stand there, with my head cocked slightly, my jaw pushed forward, and I wait.
Say Her Name Page 14
