Two Wings to Fly Away

by Penny Mickelbury

  “We’re going to wrap you up again, Mr. MacKaye, though not as tightly. There is still more healing to do, and binding the shoulder will guarantee that it remains in its proper place. I’ll see you in my office in one week’s time.” He strode from the room, the assistant on his heels, without a backward glance. “A good doctor but an awful man,” Ezra muttered. Eli silently agreed, thinking that MacKaye had no idea how awful, for Eli was certain that the doctor was a man of the plantation.

  Abby sat in the drawing room with Dr. Wright and his assistant, whom he had never named, a silver urn of coffee and a tray of cakes and sandwiches at their disposal. Because Montague Wright didn’t require any voice but his own to have a conversation, Abby and the assistant sat and listened to him talk, his flow of words interrupted only when his mouth was occupied with food and drink.

  Eli re-dressed Ezra and hurried to the kitchen to ask Maggie for warm milk and brandy when the gentle tap on the scullery door announced Genie’s arrival. They both were overjoyed to see her. She and Maggie exchanged warm hugs and Eli hung back shyly until Genie grabbed him for his own hug. He had started to tell her of Dr. Wright’s visit and Ezra’s recovery when the doctor’s loud voice boomed out and Genie froze. Then she began to shake.

  “Montague Wright. Ezra’s doctor is Montague Wright. He’s from a Maryland slave-holding family. No wonder he and Arthur Cortlandt are friends,” she said and sat down hard in one of the chairs. She could have fallen off had Eli not caught her, and both he and Maggie were thinking, Not just any Maryland slave-holding family but the one that owned her. That awful, loud voice, Genie thought as she recovered and reclaimed herself. The brother of her mistress. What was he doing in Philadelphia? He must not see her! She made a shaky though unsuccessful effort to stand up.

  “Where are you going, Genie?” Maggie asked.

  “I must leave! He can’t see me!”

  “And he won’t if you remain here in the kitchen. But if you go out into the street—”

  Genie collapsed in on herself. She had really allowed herself to believe that she was a free woman, that her past was well behind her. How foolish!

  “Take Mr. MacKaye his warm milk, please, Eli,” Maggie said, giving him a tall, napkin-wrapped glass.

  Eli took the glass but his eyes remained on Genie. If someone were to test his loyalty, Eugenia Oliver would win. He hurried away, intending to give Ezra his warm milk and hurry back to the kitchen where he could keep an eye on Genie, but Ezra took one look at him and demanded to know what was wrong. Eli told him, and Ezra sprang to his feet as if totally free of pain. He was out of the bedroom and into the sitting room before Eli could stop him.

  “Mr. MacKaye, no! If you go running out there, Mistress Abigail will know something is wrong and so will that doctor, and he cain’t never see Miss Eugenie, Mr. MacKaye! Not never!”

  Ezra stopped. Reluctantly. Eli was right and he knew it, but if Genie was in trouble—there was nothing he could do about it. He took the warm milk from Eli and drank it down, welcoming the brandy’s burn and waiting for it to relax him. He knew, though, that as long as Montague Wright was holding forth in the drawing room he could not relax. What must Genie be feeling, having to listen to the man! For that matter, how was Abby enduring him?

  “So, you prefer Philadelphia to Baltimore?” Abby asked her guest when she could insert a word into his monologue though she was long past caring what he thought or felt about anything. What an insufferable—she didn’t know what to call him!

  “In some respects, yes, I do. We didn’t live in Baltimore proper—we were out in the countryside—so life was slower and quite a bit more genteel. But I certainly earn a better living in the city! Nothing in the countryside but farmers and ignorant nigger slaves who have no money to pay for medical care.”

  Perhaps because you don’t pay them any money, Abby was on the verge of saying when Wright prattled on. “And speaking of earning, I have an apprentice starting with me in a day or so and wonder if you have a room to let?”

  Abby was momentarily taken aback. While she’d be grateful to have Lyle Butler’s room let so quickly, she didn’t want anyone in her house or at her table with the manners of Montague Wright. “I do have a room that has just come available and should be ready to let in several days. I’d be delighted to meet your apprentice—”

  Wright bristled. “Why should you need to meet him? I’ve told you that he is my apprentice. That should be sufficient enough recommendation as to his character.”

  Abby bristled right back. “The room is available because the occupant, who came highly recommended, was a drunken boor. Had I met him first I most likely would have had some insight into his character, thanks to his perpetually red nose and its veins.”

  Wright, who was rendered momentarily—and uncharacteristically—speechless, saw Eli pass in the hallway with an empty glass on a silver tray but he gave a servant’s movements no importance. He should have.

  Eli all but ran into the kitchen, all but threw the tray to the table, and literally ran through the scullery door into the alleyway. A startled Maggie looked after him. “What on earth—where is he going in such a hurry?”

  “I think I might know,” Genie said quietly, her trembling momentarily stilled as she got up and looked toward the scullery.

  Eli, oblivious to the cold, ran through the alleyway to the street and stopped beside the brougham belonging to Dr. Wright, startling the top-hatted Black man in the driver’s seat, who looked almost fearfully at Eli.

  “My name is Eli and I work for Mistress Read and Mr. MacKaye. Is you a free man, suh?”

  The brougham driver blinked. He’d never been called “sir” before.

  “Is you a free man?!” Eli demanded, and the driver shook his head. “Slave?” Eli asked, and the man nodded. “How many more in your house?” Eli asked, and the question demanded that the man speak.

  “My wife and my daughter,” he whispered.

  “Do you want to be free, suh?” Eli asked, and the man nodded. “What is your name? And your wife and daughter?”

  “I’m Robert, my wife is Josephine, my girl is Mary,” the man answered, still whispering. Then, in panic, he added, “Dr. Wright said if he hears any talk of freedom he’ll sell ’em down south!”

  “Not if Mr. MacKaye gets you outta there first,” Eli said, and ran back the way he’d come, returning to the kitchen in time to hear Montague Wright exiting through the front door and Ezra and Abby speaking quietly as they came toward the kitchen. Then he heard Abby exclaim, heard her feet running to the kitchen. She ran to Genie and grabbed her, holding her in a tight embrace, which Genie quickly and gratefully returned. Both women wept silently but only Genie could hear Abby’s whispered, “I am so very sorry!” Ezra, Maggie and Eli watched silently for a few moments, then Ezra cleared his throat.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt but Abby, please tell them what you told me.”

  Abby wiped her eyes and turned to look at the people she considered her family, but she kept one arm tightly around Genie as she spoke. “But given what I’ve just learned about Montague Wright and who—and what—he is, I believe that the servant man the apprentice wants to bring with him is a slave,” and she almost choked on the word and buried her face in Genie’s shoulder.

  “You prob’ly right, Mistress Abby,” Eli said, and shared his conversation with Robert.

  “You said I’d do what?!” Ezra exclaimed. “I can do no such thing, Eli, and you should not have said that I could!”

  “But you saved Maggie’s little girl,” Eli said, “and you helped Miz Tubman bring some people to freedom—”

  “I saved a boy I’d been hired to find, and with your help, Eli—”

  “What we did—all of us—helped Miz Tubman, and you know that’s the truth, Mr. MacKaye.”

  Ezra nodded. “You’re right, Eli, but that doesn’t mean I can go into a man’s house and take his property—”

  “Ezra!” Genie and Abby exclaimed simultaneously.
>
  “Do you believe that human beings can be property, Mr. MacKaye?” Maggie asked. “Like a horse or a plow?”

  Ezra, miserable, shook his head. “Of course not—”

  “That’s how slaves are treated, Ezra,” Genie said. She was shaking again and Abby tightened her grip. “Bought and sold, chained and whipped, sometimes barely fed and sometimes not fed at all, poorly clothed in winter . . .” She couldn’t talk anymore because the long-suppressed memories had come rushing back to mind, overtaking the words.

  “I will find out what I can do,” Ezra said, “and I will do whatever I can.”

  “There are women’s abolitionist organizations,” Abby said. “My mother belonged to one until my father forbade it. I wish I had joined. I should have joined! I should know more and I should do more! I will do more!” Genie held her while she wept.

  “How will you find out if you can do anything, Mr. MacKaye?” Maggie asked.

  “I know many lawyers and policemen and constables—” he began.

  “And the women’s groups will know, too,” Abby added, then looked worried. “Can we possibly learn anything before Wright’s apprentice shows up with his servant? I want to reject him because Wright recommended him but I’d like more reason.”

  “I just hope it’s not too late,” Maggie said.

  “What does that mean, Miss Maggie?” Eli asked for all of them. Too late for what?

  Maggie began to busy herself, as if dinner preparations would help her think. “Ever since that fugitive slave law was passed in 1850 things have been different. More . . . dangerous . . . and it gets worse every day. In little ways right now, but the big ways will come. I can feel it.”

  Genie nodded. “It’s the reason I finally got the horse cart. Even dressed as a man I felt too exposed, too vulnerable. Even if I could outrun one slave catcher or one hooligan, even if I could shoot one, I could not outrun anyone on horseback.”

  “Shoot someone!” Abby exclaimed. “You would . . . you could shoot someone?”

  When Genie didn’t respond Eli added, “Mr. William and Arthur both was happy you got that cart, Miss Eugenie. And Mistress Abby, you and Miss Maggie need one, too. Y’all don’t need to be out like you is,” he pronounced, sounding more like a man than a boy, causing Ezra to cough into his hand to cover a smile.

  “I have a brougham,” Abby said.

  “You do!” Ezra exclaimed. “Where is it?”

  “In the carriage house. I haven’t used it since my parents died. I got rid of the horse—”

  “Eli, can you have Arthur come look at it? See what shape it’s in? If it needs wheels? Straps? And if William has a horse we can purchase?”

  “We!” Abby exclaimed. “Now you see here, Ezra MacKaye!”

  “The boy is right, Abby: You and Maggie should have the protection of a carriage when you’re out. I’ll pay for it—”

  “I don’t need you to pay for it!” she huffed, the tears of just a few moments ago forgotten. “I can take care of myself!”

  “Of course, you can,” Ezra said soothingly. “But would you allow me to hire and pay the driver? And would you, on occasion, allow me to use your brougham?”

  Abby’s eyes narrowed and she scrutinized Ezra’s much too innocent visage. She was being had. She knew it, she just couldn’t prove it. “Why can’t Eli drive it?”

  “Eli, can you drive a brougham?” Ezra asked him

  “What’s a broom, Mr. MacKaye?” he asked, his brow wrinkled in serious thought, and everyone laughed, including Eli himself.

  “We need to prepare the evening meal,” Maggie said with a smile and a hug for Eli. “The gentlemen will arrive soon. Eli, will you see to it that the drawing room is clean and that all the fires are ready to be lit?”

  He ran from the kitchen and the adults, smiling and happy, now that he was back to being more boy than man. Abby gave Ezra a steady look. “Why can’t Eli drive us?”

  “Because your driver must be able to protect you if necessary. A white woman traveling with a Black woman, either of you traveling alone? Maggie’s right: Things are changing, though I don’t know from what to what. But I never will forget the sight and sound of little Elizabeth running from those thugs and not a single person, in a street filled with people, came to her aid—not a man nor a woman, not a Black person nor a white one. She was a child and no one helped!” Ezra sat heavily at the table, supporting himself on his right elbow and seeming to try to hold his left arm closer to his body.

  Genie spoke for the first time in a few minutes. “I’m going to get Eli to help you back to bed,” she told Ezra.

  “I don’t want to go to bed!”

  “Then to your sitting room, perhaps a nap in front of the fire before dinner?”

  “I don’t want a nap,” he snapped, “and I can take myself wherever I need to go!” He stood too quickly and swayed, and the three women reached out to steady him.

  “Of course, you can,” Genie said. “May I join you for a few moments?” Then she looked suddenly at Abby. “If that’s all right with you? I don’t want to do anything to tarnish your reputation.”

  Abby blushed, thinking that Genie sitting with Ezra MacKaye in his sitting room was not how she’d like Genie Oliver to tarnish her reputation. “As long you’re back in the kitchen when the men arrive.”

  Genie followed Ezra to his suite having taken full notice of Abby’s blush, and understanding the reason for it. “You certainly look much better than when I last saw you,” she told Ezra when he sat and wrapped himself in a blanket. She lit the coals in the grate, fanned them, and watched the fire catch. She fanned it more and felt the warmth spread toward them.

  “I feel much better,” he replied. “Wright’s a decent enough doctor though Eli and Arthur might be better.” He told her about the horse liniment and she laughed so hard she almost choked. “I might be able to pull the brougham myself,” he said, and she was still laughing when Eli came in. Ezra shared the joke and Eli laughed, too, and demonstrated how Ezra would look pulling a brougham with one arm. He added more coal to the fire and left them still laughing.

  “Thank you for taking such good care of him, Ezra.”

  “It’s the other way around, Genie. Thank you for sending him to me. I don’t know what I’d have done without him.”

  “Between you and Abby—and Maggie!—he now has a place to call home and people to call family.”

  “When I first saw him and chased him . . . he had reason to fear me and to run.” It wasn’t a question and didn’t need answering.

  “And you really thought I was a man.” She shook her head. “Maggie said men never really see women. She knew right away that I wasn’t a man but she didn’t betray me.”

  “I think that women are better than men,” Ezra said, sounding just a little bit puzzled by his pronouncement.

  “I think I agree with you,” Genie said.

  “And next to you, Abby Read is about as good as a woman gets.”

  Genie turned a scrutinizing gaze on him, looking for his meaning, and when she found it she stood up. “I’ll go now, and I’ll visit Arthur. When would you like him to look at Abby’s brougham?”

  “As soon as he’s able.”

  “I’ll tell him,” she said, leaving him. Then she turned back. “Have you heard from Cortlandt? How’s his son?”

  He gave a grim chuckle. “He sent a note by Wright, along with another check. Seems that junior was treated even worse than we thought and that our timely intervention truly did save his miserable life.”

  Genie was smiling when she left him, smiling when she walked into the kitchen and saw Abby, a smile that grew wider when it was returned. Maggie fabricated a reason to leave them alone for a moment. Genie went into the scullery and Abby followed, giving them time for another close embrace. Genie told her that she was sending Arthur as soon as he could come—possibly even tomorrow, knowing Arthur. “And will I see you tomorrow?” Abby asked.

  “I must go to work some time!” G
enie exclaimed.

  Oh how I wish you didn’t, Abby thought. How I wish you could remain here with me. But she kept those thoughts to herself and nodded as Genie said that she most likely would bring Arthur tomorrow. And then Genie was gone . . . and just as quickly back.

  “Maggie, may I please have a carrot for my horse friend?”

  Maggie gave her two carrots and a hug, and Genie left thinking that Eli wasn’t the only one to find a family. Nor was he the only one who would spend the remainder of that day contemplating all that had occurred. Two of them had similar thoughts: Ezra and Abby both pledged to end their ignorance about the circumstances confronting Colored citizens, not only in Philadelphia but in all of America. It struck Ezra that he had recently read (though he didn’t recall where) that there was widespread objection to making them citizens. They weren’t citizens? Then what were they? Certainly not property, as had been made abundantly clear to him. The thought troubled him deeply, as it did Abby. She had come from England with her parents ten years earlier, a wealthy white woman with no need to concern herself with the plight of Black Americans any more than she had with Black Englishmen and women. Maggie, an indentured servant in Abby’s parents’ home, had come to Philadelphia with the family in the same role. When the elder Reads died suddenly, Abby, who considered Maggie her friend, asked her to remain as a paid employee—and friend—not as a servant. And though Maggie was ten years older the two women felt more like sisters to each other than anything else, a relationship that did not change when Maggie met and married Jack Juniper, a seaman who worked the ships that regularly sailed between Liverpool, England, and Philadelphia. Abby thought it romantic that Maggie and Jack were connected by their two countries. What Maggie had never told Abby, had never told anyone, was that Jack was a runaway slave from Maryland who believed seafaring to be safer than working on land. Maggie also kept to herself the thought, and the fear, that as long as her husband could never truly be free, neither could she. Or their daughter, no matter the circumstances of their birth.