Two Wings to Fly Away

by Penny Mickelbury

  “Wouldn’t that be something!” Maggie said, gathering her coat, hat and scarf. To Ezra she said, “Donald is a wonder. Eli will learn as much from him and you as he will from Genie and me.”

  Ezra clutched at his chest with his good hand. “What a task you set for us, Mrs. Juniper!”

  She dismissed him with a wide smile and a wave of her hand. “I’ll go help young master prepare the house for the evening,” she said, leaving them.

  “And I’ll prepare the kitchen for the evening meal,” Abby said as she began clearing away the remnants of Genie and Ezra’s tea. “And Maggie is right. Thank you both for what you’ve brought into this house. I hadn’t realized how . . . empty . . . it was until you two filled it. I thought all I needed, other than Maggie, were gentlemen to occupy the rooms. Now, for the first time since my parents died, this huge house feels like a home.” She looked all around. “I want all the lamps glowing and all the grates warm. I may even play the piano after dinner!”

  “And I’ll play—” Ezra began before he suddenly stopped himself, touching his wounded left shoulder with his right hand.

  “What do you play, Ezra?” Abby asked.

  “The violin—badly—but even playing badly requires two arms.”

  “When you are recovered, then,” Abby said.

  “May I help with dinner?” Genie asked.

  “Yes, thank you, that would be lovely,” Abby said.

  “And perhaps I can talk about some things with you?” Ezra asked, and he began speaking. Since Genie had already had the discussion she remained silent while Abby alternated between listening and asking questions. She promised to learn, as soon as the next day, when she could attend an abolitionist meeting.

  “My mother went with Florence Mallory down the street until Father no longer allowed it. Mother was so humiliated that she stopped speaking with Mrs. Mallory altogether. I’ll go see her tomorrow. I’ll ask Maggie to bake a cake for me to take.” And she signaled Ezra to continue. She interrupted again to ask whether it really was necessary for Eli to learn to shoot and fight.

  “Yes,” Genie and Ezra answered as one voice, and Abby sighed deeply.

  “He may be called upon to protect you and Maggie when both Donald and I are away,” Ezra said calmly.

  Abby frowned. “What did Maggie mean when she spoke of Eli learning from you and Donald? Have you already spoken to her of this?”

  Genie was shaking her head. “I think she meant what Eli is learning from Donald about caring for horses and driving, and what he is learning from Ezra about—about what, Ezra?”

  “Healing the body after an injury. About muscles and bones and about using laudanum, which is very dangerous if misused.”

  “Yes, I see,” Abby said nodding her head. “The boy has learned a great deal in a very short time.”

  “And he’s learned it well,” Ezra said, “and faster than I’ve ever seen anyone learn. Now, if Arthur will teach him how to make that liniment, I’ll retire from the private inquiry business and sell horse liniment for people!” He stood up. “Now I shall go and make myself presentable for polite company.”

  “Ezra,” Abby said quietly, and he turned to look at her. “You are very concerned about violence being directed toward Black people, aren’t you? And perhaps even about slavery being reintroduced into places where it has been banned? Places like here?”

  “I think that I don’t have enough information to give you a proper answer,” Ezra said slowly. “However, until I do, I think that we must prepare ourselves for the worst,” he said, and left them.

  Then they were alone, Genie and Abby, a situation they both welcomed and feared. They did not know how to speak of the things they were thinking and feeling for and about each other. But this they both knew: Neither could bear the thought of harm coming to the other. “Will you teach me how to shoot, too?” Abby asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Because I should know how, don’t you think? After all, I may need to protect you one day.”

  “Then you absolutely should know how to shoot!” Genie said seriously.

  “Will you stay here tonight? Or do you wish for Donald to take you home?”

  “I would like to stay here. If you want me. And I will help you and Maggie with dinner.”

  “I want you to stay here as my guest. As my friend. With me. Not as a . . . an employee.”

  “Is that wise, Abby? Will Maggie be . . . concerned? And what about Eli?”

  Abby smiled widely. “Maggie thinks you should live here, and Eli thinks you are an angel and can do no wrong.”

  “An angel!” Genie laughed. “And where will I sleep?”

  Abby blushed a deep crimson. “With me,” she said in a near whisper.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  How long is all night? Not long enough . . . or too long? For Genie and Abby, it was both for a while. Now, as the cold dawn sought to penetrate the darkness, it was the latter. Genie opened her eyes to find the deep blue ones, inches from her own, gazing at her. Again. At least now she could see them. During the night she could only feel them. That’s when the night had felt endless, when they lay close together, breathing deeply, not touching, not talking because they didn’t have words for their feelings, yet not sleeping because—because they couldn’t. Finally, Genie had thought of something to say.

  “I haven’t slept in a bed with anyone since I was a little girl and my little brothers and sisters and I all slept together.”

  “How old were you?” Abby asked.

  Genie thought; it was so long ago and a memory so deeply buried. “I was perhaps seven or eight.”

  “And your brothers and sisters?”

  “Younger than me,” Genie said, regretting that she had spoken of it.

  “I have never slept in a bed with anyone at all,” Abby said, remembering what Maggie once told her: Jack said slaves did not speak of the past with each other, to say nothing of with strangers. Jack had revealed bits of his past only after several years of marriage, then only reluctantly. “I have no siblings so I can’t imagine how sleeping with them would feel but I know that sleeping in the same bed with you is . . . something I want to do often.”

  “Yes,” Genie said, and took Abby’s hand and held it tightly.

  They awoke to the sound of wind rattling the windowpanes. It was now very cold in the room, the fire in the grate now little more than barely glowing embers. They wrapped their arms around each other, initially for warmth but ultimately for the deep, though so far unexplored, comfort it brought. “Where are they now?” Abby asked.

  “Who?” a drowsy Genie asked.

  “Your brothers and sisters.” The pause was so long Abby thought she’d drifted off to sleep.

  “I don’t know,” Genie finally replied. “They were sold off with my mother.”

  Abby cried out as if wounded. Then she began to weep. Genie held her even more tightly, grateful that someone could cry for her long-lost family because she no longer could. “Oh God Genie! How do you bear the pain?”

  Again, Genie didn’t reply for a long while and Abby waited, but it was she who finally dozed. Had she remained awake she would have known that Genie never replied because that was a question she could not answer. How did she bear the pain? She didn’t; she buried it, so deep that it no longer could be touched. She barely remembered it and had never spoken of it. Why now, and why to this woman? Perhaps because she was able to shed the tears that Genie herself no longer could. And now those deep blue eyes were looking into her own dark brown ones.

  “What do you see?” Genie asked.

  “More than I ever believed possible,” Abby replied, and before she could attempt to explain, Eli knocked on the door. Abby quickly pulled the covers up to conceal Genie and told him to come in.

  “’Mornin’ Miss Abby,” he said. “Some kinda cold in here!” and he began heaping coals into the grate.

  “More, Eli, please!”

  “Yes’sum,” he said and complied. “Be warm i
n here in a minute, Miss Abby.”

  She thanked him when he finished and said she’d see him downstairs. Then, when he’d closed the door, she uncovered Genie, who emerged like a beautiful brown spirit for an instant before pulling the covers over both of them where they remained for a few very pleasant moments before Abby broke the spell. “I must get up and go to work.”

  “I’ll go with you. I can help. I know how to cook.”

  “Certainly not! You’re not here to . . . to be a . . . cook!”

  Genie jumped out of the big bed and ran across the room to stand beside the grate, thinking that Abby’s bedroom was larger than her parlor, that Abby’s suite of rooms—the bedroom, sitting room and dressing room—were larger than her entire house. “It will not offend me to help you, Abby,” she said, moving a step closer to the heat as a gust of wind rattled the pane.

  “Oh, I do so hope this wind doesn’t mean more snow,” Abby said, climbing out of bed and scurrying to the window. She parted the heavy draperies and peeked out. “No snow, thank goodness!” She crossed the room to stand beside Genie and put an arm around her. “I don’t ever want to do anything to hurt you.”

  “And I don’t expect that you ever will. Now let’s get to work. How do I get to the back stairs?” And Abby told her. Much as she hated having Genie use the servants’ stairs it would not do to have a Black woman, no matter that she wasn’t a servant, be seen using the main staircase.

  Breakfast was prepared and served in record time with the three of them working together—and they worked quite well together. Maggie and Genie were as comfortable with each other as if they’d been friends for years, and Maggie accepted Abby’s friendship with Genie as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Donald ate in the kitchen with Genie, Maggie and Eli, while Abby ate in the dining room with Ezra and the other gentlemen guests after Maggie and Eli served them. It was generally accepted that Donald got the better deal. After breakfast, when they were all together again in the kitchen, they outlined their plans for the day, possible because there were now two modes of transportation: Eli would take Genie and Maggie to Genie’s dress shop and Maggie shopping for food since Genie had said there were excellent places to purchase food and supplies nearby. Donald would drive the carriage and take Ezra to his office on Flegler Street and then to Dr. Wright.

  Before they left, however, Abby had an errand for Eli and a request for Maggie: He was to deliver a message to Mrs. Florence Mallory six houses away where, if her expectations were met, she would have afternoon tea and cake that Maggie would bake. Lives were getting back to normal after the four-day halt caused by the blizzard and they were all thankful.

  ✴ ✴ ✴

  When the maid opened the door at Florence Mallory’s home, Eli dipped his head in a gentle bow, extended the letter in his hand, and announced that he had a message for Mrs. Mallory from Miss Abigail Read and that he would like to wait for a reply.

  Abby had told him that he might be invited in or not, and he was prepared to stand outside. However, the young maid asked him to step into the foyer and please wait. In a very few moments a harried woman came rushing toward him from the other side of the long hallway, brandishing Abby’s letter. He knew that she was older than Abby and probably older than Maggie but having little experience with women, he could not guess her age. But he could tell that she was wealthy.

  “Young man!” she exclaimed as she approached him. “You’ve come from Abigail!” It was not a question but he answered in the affirmative and waited for her to say more. “Is she well? Abigail. Is she well?”

  Eli was confused. Of course, Miss Abigail was well. “Yes’um,” he replied. “She very well.”

  The woman read Abby’s note again, told Eli to wait a moment, then rushed back down the wide hallway that was so dark the gas sconces were glowing, even in the middle of the morning. He didn’t ever light Miss Abigail’s lamps until evening. He stood there studying the foyer, comparing it with Abby’s: This one was larger and the staircase was on the opposite side, but they were otherwise very much alike. He pictured what he could not see: The kitchen, he knew, would be somewhere at the end of the long hallway; the dining room and parlor would be to one side, and the living room and library to the other. But there were more rooms on this floor than there were in Abby’s house—

  “Please give this to Abigail,” the lady was saying, offering him an envelope with her extended arm as she hurried toward him.

  “Yes’um,” Eli said, accepting the envelope. He dipped his head again, deeper this time, and waited for the maid to open the door. He ran the six houses back home because he was anxious to finish his chores so that he could drive Miss Eugenie and Miss Maggie on their errands. He knew, without having to ask, that he could take carrots for the horse that Genie only ever called ‘sweet girl horse.’ Which was no proper name for a horse, Eli thought. The horse needed a name—like Gerald—except for a girl horse. He would give that some serious thought.

  ✴ ✴ ✴

  Adelaide was so happy to see Genie and Eli that she almost forgot that she was irritated with them for their protracted absence. Maggie’s presence also helped—Adelaide couldn’t express her anger in the presence of a stranger.

  After hugging Adelaide, Eli rushed away to visit with William and Arthur and to regale them with stories of his recent exploits, and to tell Arthur how much Ezra had come to rely on the horse liniment. Genie, meanwhile, tried to tell Adelaide as little as possible about events in Abby’s house, most especially about events to do with Montague Wright. Maggie did not interrupt or intrude and spoke only when spoken to. She was happy to answer Adelaide’s questions and delighted to talk about Elizabeth and how excited she was at the prospect of her daughter coming home for the weekend. “It was Genie and her horse cart who inspired Abby to get her carriage ready to roll again,” Maggie enthused, “so it will be easier to pick her up.”

  “I heard about the horse Arthur got for her,” Adelaide said, and laughed when Maggie told her the horse’s name.

  “If I had a horse I think I might name him after my pa, too,” Adelaide said, “or maybe it should be a mule,” and they all laughed at that. Then Adelaide apologized for asking but she wanted to know why Maggie’s daughter lived apart from her, and Maggie told her how Ezra had rescued her from the clutches of slave catchers. Adelaide gazed in horror at Maggie. Of course, she had heard the story—how the same Ezra MacKaye whom Eli had believed was a slave catcher had rescued a little girl from slave catchers. Now the story had come full circle for Adelaide as she stood looking at that little girl’s mother. She was speechless.

  “Are you a native of Philadelphia?” Maggie asked Adelaide, as much to help her recover her breath as to learn something about free-born Blacks.

  Adelaide understood the question. “I was born in Virginia but the man who owned the plantation where I lived with my parents freed us in his will when he died. His family tried to fight it but my father had a copy of the will. He loaded us into a mule wagon and we left in the middle of the night.” She closed her eyes as she remembered.

  “Were you frightened?” Maggie asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Adelaide replied. “I don’t remember fear—I was ten years old at the time and my brother was eight—and I don’t think my father was frightened, but my mother was. She kept saying that it didn’t matter what was written on a piece of paper, that white people would do with us what they wanted to do. But Papa said it would matter a lot up North what was written on the paper and he kept that mule moving. It felt like we were moving in circles because we were! There were lots of streams and creeks on that land and Papa knew where they were, even in the dark, and drove us through them, back and forth, to confuse the dogs.”

  Adelaide closed her eyes again and let the memories play behind her lids. “I don’t remember how long it took us to get to Philadelphia. I do know that we spent some time in Washington, DC. There were a lot of free Blacks there, but Mama said there were more mosquitoes the
re than in Virginia and she didn’t want to live on a swamp. So, we kept traveling. I do remember that it was cold when we crossed the river into Pennsylvania. Not as cold as what we just had but colder than anything we had known in Virginia.”

  Genie looked at her friend in wonder. “I always thought you were born free, Adelaide.”

  “I think I came to believe that myself, Genie. After so long a time, and especially after I married William—he is free-born, and I think I came to think of myself as like him.” She gave a wry shake of her head. “I have never thought of myself as a slave.”

  “You’re very fortunate,” Genie said quietly, and no one spoke for several moments. Then Adelaide broke the quiet.

  “I am, of course, very interested to know of your accent, Mrs. Juniper,” she said to Maggie.

  “Many are surprised to hear the voice of the colonizer come out of my Black face,” Maggie replied—and then laughed, both at the absurdity of the truth of her statement as well as at Adelaide’s expression.

  Genie, thinking that Adelaide had most likely experienced enough truth for one day, interceded. “Maggie, would you like to take a look around the shop?”

  “Yes!” Maggie exclaimed, and began an immediate exploration as Genie stepped close to Adelaide and, with a gentle hand on her arm, began to discuss the tasks confronting them. The donation pile was large and people were wanting, needing, and waiting for garments. Without accusation Adelaide made Genie’s dereliction of her duties painfully obvious. Genie wished for the scolding she was due, but that was not Adelaide’s way. Genie apologized for abandoning her duties. While the knowledge that she would not see Abby for several days pained her, she could not continue to ignore her responsibilities.

  Maggie came toward them with several dresses. “May I purchase these?”

  “Of course,” Adelaide replied.

  “And do you ever have items for girls and men?”