The Underground River

by Martha Conway

  “You like it when they shout at you and throw things?”

  “They never actually hurt me; they aim for my clothes. But, May, these men! If you could only see them—but you know the type. They absolutely riddle you with snide remarks, and then they are shocked and insulted if you return the volley. As though they have every right to do the shooting but the only right you have is to duck or to bleed. They say that I am assaulting their principles. It doesn’t once occur to them that I might have principles, too. To them I’m only a New York actress.”

  “Do you have principles?” I asked.

  “Of course! Flora has educated me ever so much. I had no idea how bad it really is down here. They say slaves are happy, but they’re not happy! They say at least they have work, they have regular meals, they have homes. But do you know that a slave man can do nothing about the breakup of his family? He can’t even stay with his wife if he chooses to, and his babies might be sold away from him at any moment.”

  “That is terrible,” I said, and I meant it. But I could tell Comfort was still thinking about the white men at her lectures.

  “Of course, they only come to spar. They all stand together in the back with their hands behind them. As if I don’t know they’re carrying smashed fruit! And, oh, my dresses.” She laughed again. “May, you’re lucky you can’t see how bad they get. It would make you very unhappy.”

  Sparring with men—I suppose that was a little like flirting. Comfort always liked to flirt. And I had certainly seen her bristle enough times when she thought anyone felt superior to her. But I didn’t like this reaction of hers. I thought she would take heed of the notice and thank me for bringing it to her attention. Instead she folded it up with a smile and tucked it into her dressing gown pocket.

  “I’ll paste this into the scrapbook later,” she said.

  She looked at me as if waiting for the next thing I had to say, only there was no next thing to say: the notice had been all I had.

  “Well, now,” she said with another smile. “Isn’t this heat something else?”

  My spirits sank even further. She was talking to me as though I were just a common acquaintance, a chance meeting on the street—maybe an actress she’d worked with once and was reasonably glad now to catch up with, starting with her own news. She told me that they’d left Cincinnati almost three weeks ago; Flora wrote Comfort’s speeches and booked the lecture halls, and Donaldson drove them from town to town—“on the circuit,” Comfort called it. While she spoke she went to the window and pulled up the cheap shade: the morning fog was dispersing and the street below was busy with carts. She was doing important work, educating people about the real conditions of slave life, she told me, looking outside. Then she said something that I thought about later.

  “You can’t imagine the lives these men in bondage lead.”

  Again that light tone, as though she was thinking about something else while she said it, and I wondered if it was simply a line that she had memorized. She sat down at the small round table and began cutting a slice of bread. Her face, I noticed, looked older. She was no longer pulling her features in order to look young or pushing her teeth against her mouth to make her lips appear fuller. Now her face was softer, the peachy flesh of her cheeks a little closer to her jawline. Compared to her relaxed figure—she still hadn’t closed her dressing gown properly—I felt like a twitchy bird that flew into the room through an open window by mistake and now couldn’t get out. There was something more I wanted from Comfort but I didn’t know what. Perhaps I just wanted her acknowledgment that I was all right without her. I was independent, I had a job, I was traveling just as she was. But she didn’t believe any of that. It didn’t fit her idea of who I was, and that idea came first. A warm anger began seeping into my chest.

  Comfort spread some marmalade on the bread with the back end of a spoon, sprinkled sugar on top, and handed the slice to me. Flora had gone to check on the seats in the lecture hall, she was saying. She sliced another piece of bread and again covered it with marmalade and sugar. “I’m glad you’re coming to hear me tonight,” she said, taking a large hungry bite. “Come early so you can sit up front.”

  I wasn’t going to hear her lecture—I couldn’t; I’d be playing the piano for our show—but it was no use trying to explain that. A burst of sunlight came in through the window, showing up stains on the carpet, and I regretted taking the slice of bread, because now I would have to eat it before I could go. Liddy had told me how to enter a room, but had she ever told me how to leave one? I took a small bite, but the marmalade felt unpleasantly rough in my mouth. Sugar on marmalade was how Comfort liked to eat her bread, whereas I took mine with plain butter. Once, not too long ago—less than a month, I calculated—Comfort knew that.

  11

  After her second husband died, Comfort’s mother, my aunt Ann, tried her hand at acting, but she was not very good. She made enough money to support herself and Comfort if they lived frugally but was never able to save anything. However, the reason she finally retired wasn’t her own mediocrity—that could still be put to use, Comfort explained to me, as long as her looks held out—but rather a scandal in a play she was in that involved an actress, not even the lead role, who lifted the skirt of her costume up over her knees when walking upstage to take her bow.

  At the time they were in Bristol, England, and this wanton show of leg caused the play to be shut down by the Bristol police and the theater manager to be fined. In France, ankles might be displayed in certain circumstances, Comfort explained, and even perhaps a knee, but only to a crowd of men. Not so in England. In America the fine would have been even worse and the actress put in jail.

  She told me this story for the first time when I was a girl and we were playing together in the Tiffin River. The second time she told it to me was on the night of her acting debut when she was shaking with nerves, suddenly afraid that she could not, after all, perform on the stage. Only this time when she told me the story, she said, “It wasn’t someone else. It was my mother. My mother was the one who lifted her skirt. She was a little out of her mind, I guess. Oh, it was a bad play to begin with, but that night she forgot some lines, and a man in the first row threw a piece of bread at her like she was a street monkey. That’s what she told me later: that she felt like a vendor’s street monkey.”

  Throughout all the months of Comfort’s training—the arm exercises, the voice coaching, learning to draw her breath in through her nose before a stage laugh, and so forth—we both assumed that she would be more successful than her mother. “I have more courage” is how Comfort put it, whereas I thought she was more outspoken and liked no one else to command center stage, both good attributes for an actress. But now I saw she had another worry besides mediocrity: a tendency toward spitefulness, perhaps, like her mother. Comfort said her mother always knew that she was not very good.

  Still, it was too late now, the night of her debut. We were standing in her dressing room, which was as small as a closet, with only a few strips of baize passing as carpet. Just as she finished telling me about Aunt Ann, clutching my hands (hers were icy cold), there was a knock on the dressing room door and a little ruffian call boy poked his head in. “Pauline,” he said, which was the name of Comfort’s role, “you are called.”

  “Called for what?” asked Comfort, who had never heard this term before.

  “Why, for the stage, to be sure!”

  He waited for her outside the door. Comfort still held my hands. “What if I do something awful?” she whispered. “I can’t go back to Oxbow and live with Mama.”

  Aunt Ann was still living in Oxbow and had grown odder by the years with her diet of eggs and her intense suspicion, almost hatred, of the village postmistress. My mother and I had lived in the house next to hers for the last few years of my mother’s life, sharing a hedge, which also became a source of irritation with Aunt Ann (too little clipped, or too much).

  “You will not do something awful,” I told Comfort. “You have
never done anything at all remotely like that.”

  But now I was the one, walking back through the village of Viola, past the public stable and the straw yard and onto a dusty road that led out of town (I was too agitated to go back to the boat right away), who felt angry enough to lift my skirt at an audience. For the first time since I heard the story, either the false story told to me as a girl or the true story I heard later, I understood how Aunt Ann had felt: she had done this commendable thing—mastered lines and moved across stage and showed herself vulnerable in public—but, instead of being praised, she’d had food thrown at her. Comfort had not thrown food at me, it’s true. But I felt very keenly the sting of her disinterest in my accomplishments—her disbelief, even, that I had any. How many times had she teased me for not being able to lie? And yet she could not believe that I had gotten a job without her, that I could be as independent as she was. More so, for I had no Mrs. Howard to help me.

  The road snaked down to a slight hollow and narrowed, becoming dustier and full of rocks. Just as I was thinking of turning around, I heard something that sounded like singing, and when the road turned I saw four or five figures in a line: black men wearing straw hats with the widest brims I’d ever seen, working their hoes over a scrabbly acre of something or other. Free blacks. They were singing a spiritual about Noah, although the man with the deepest voice made it sound like “Norah.”

  Norah he built hisself an ark

  Made it out of hickory bark

  Animals came in two by two

  The elephant and the kangaroo

  They sang the last verse and then started all over again with the first. And why shouldn’t they? It occurred to me that I had done just the same thing myself back at the inn with Comfort, gone back to the same old song. As I stood there listening, one tall man with a hole on the side of his straw hat walked over to take a drink from a girl who’d appeared with a water bucket. That was when I noticed a tiny little shack at the far end of the field, and I wondered if they all lived there together and, if so, how they all fit. “You can’t imagine the lives these men lead,” Comfort had told me. But could she? On impulse, I walked over to where the man and the girl were standing.

  “Were you ever slaves?” I asked the man. In my haste to know, I forgot to say hello first.

  To my surprise, the man gave me a quick scared look. He wiped his dirty hands carefully with a handkerchief before drawing out a piece of folded paper from his pocket. The paper had yellowed and looked as soft as cloth from being carried about every day. “No, ma’am. Our father bought his freedom before we was born. You can see here.”

  He held out the paper but I shook my head. “I was just wondering. What it was like. But I guess you don’t know.” We looked at each other hard for a moment before he looked away, and for the second time that morning I had the sensation there was more that I wanted. The young girl was still standing next to the man, a tin dipper in one hand and the bucket in the other. After a moment she made a motion with the dipper and said to me, “Thirsty, ma’am?”

  I nodded and she seemed surprised. But she quickly filled the dipper and handed it to me. “Thank you,” I said before taking a sip. The water was lukewarm and tasted like moss. I gave her back the dipper.

  “You with the showboat?” she asked.

  She was looking at me with the same expression now as the man, wariness and curiosity mixed with fatigue from standing in the hot sun. I supposed that they didn’t see many strangers and simply put two and two together.

  “Yes. Our show’s tonight just after sunset.” A thought occurred to me. “I can give you a couple of complimentary tickets if you tell your friends. We’re tied up the pier. But I guess you saw us there already.”

  The girl looked at the man. He looked at me and then said, “We allowed in?”

  “There are risers in the back.” I gave him two tickets. As I handed them to the man, who looked at them in my fingers for a long moment before taking them, I wondered why we never gave complimentary tickets to free blacks? They could draw in business, too. “Only ten cents for the riser seats. We also take yams, peaches, whatever you have. We’re a family business. The owner started it with his sister. Tell your friends to come, why don’t you?”

  The girl took one of the tickets and looked at it. Her dress was a blue-and-white flowered print so faded, I could not make out what kind of tiny flowers they were supposed to be. It was too short for her, but it was clean and ironed. Were they brother and sister? Husband and wife? She was barefoot, and her feet were shaped like narrow, strong boats. Her fingers, too, were long and tapered, and she held out the dipper again for me but I shook my head no.

  That night the risers in the back were full for the first time, and I wondered if Hugo would remark on that. I picked out the girl, but either the man didn’t come with her or I didn’t recognize him in his good set of clothes. When eight o’clock came, the time Comfort’s lecture started, I couldn’t help but think of her on stage and the men throwing their fruit or vegetable of choice. But it was time for me to start playing the introductory music, so I tried to forget about her and the state of her dress. I played a quickened version of “The Wolf Is Out” while offstage Hugo nodded his head to the rhythm. He liked songs to be fast.

  “The house was rather good tonight, wasn’t it,” he said to me after the show, giving me my share. He didn’t specifically mention the crammed risers, but I was pleased nonetheless.

  • • •

  The next day was Sunday. On Sundays we didn’t move the boat and everybody slept late and then more or less did whatever they wanted. I liked to sit on the riverbank next to Leo, sewing, but sometimes I sewed in the dining room if it was rainy or too buggy outside. Mrs. Niffen, wearing her good black dress and a straw hat covered with silk flowers, always went into town in search of a church service with Celia and Liddy. Mr. Niffen practiced on his violin, which was his excuse for not going to church with them, until his wife’s shock of white hair was out of sight. Then he stretched out on a shady spot on the bank and pulled his hat up over his face to nap. Hugo either sat with Leo and me with his own fishing pole, or he looked over his books in the office, where it was cooler.

  Today, however, the actors didn’t seem as relaxed as they usually were on Sundays, and although Mrs. Niffen put on her good black dress, she did not take Celia and Liddy to church. Perhaps it was the heat, which felt like a weight of invisible bricks on my back and shoulders. The air was still and cloudless, and the sun was a sharp bright coin overhead. It was my birthday today, and I wondered if Comfort would remember that.

  Some of my anger from the day before had dissipated, although I still felt a lingering irritation that spiked if I thought about Comfort too much. I told myself that I would not go back into town—Comfort had probably already left anyway—but I found myself getting out my purse and counting the coins inside. I needed more dark blue thread, and my white thread was running low, too. But then I remembered that, it being Sunday, all the shops would be closed. I put my purse away. A little while later I thought, Perhaps Oliver would like a short walk? He was sleeping under the ticket window awning, curled up in a bitten-off rectangle of shade.

  “Oliver,” I called. Oliver didn’t move. “Oliver, let’s take a walk!”

  Hugo came around from the other side of the boat looking very red-faced from the heat, his shirtsleeves rolled up. “Where are you going?” he asked, seeing me with my shawl draped over one arm. But before I could answer, he said, “I have some letters to write; could you tally last night’s numbers for me? While you’re at it, you might just recheck my calculations from the week. But do you mind taking the ledger up to your stateroom? I need the office.”

  It was something Helena used to do, work on the ledger, but this was the first time he’d asked me to do it. Maybe he was beginning to trust me. Mrs. Niffen was leaning against the guardrail as if waiting for a river breeze before she went off to church, and I waited for her to say how good she was with number
s and how happy she would be to help out. But she just patted her silver-white hair and pursed her mouth shut. When I turned back to Hugo, I fancied he’d just winked. Quickly he began rubbing his eye with his handkerchief.

  “These insects, uncommonly bothersome,” he said. “Fly right into your face, eh?”

  His manner was strange, but I had no notion anything was really amiss until a few hours later, when I took a break from the books to get a cup of tea. No one was in the dining room, and the room itself did not have its usual lingering scent of coffee and warm bread. I went back into the galley; Cook was not in his hammock and the stove was dead cold. I had a slight moment of uneasiness then, and for the first time since I’d been on board I thought of the Moselle. But when I went to the window I saw that everything was fine: our boat was still tied to the pier and we were even with the line of flatboats and keelboats tied up beyond us. I scolded myself as I stood looking out. Obviously if we were listing I would feel it. I wiped my wet palms on my dress.

  Just then Hugo popped his head into the dining room. “May! There you are! What do you say we go for a walk?”

  “A walk? Isn’t it nearly one o’clock?” That was when we ate our supper on Sundays. I looked at my father’s watch. It was almost one thirty.

  “There’s a couple of plum trees up the bank; I want to get some fruit for Cook. He’s making a . . .” he trailed off, and let me walk first along the narrow guard.

  “Plum pie?” I guessed.

  “Yes!” Hugo said.

  At the bottom of the stairs he took my arm and steered me toward the gangplank with rather more force than seemed called for. I had the sensation of being a horse driven to market, and I did not like it. I tried to pull my arm away.

  “Where is everyone? Where’s Cook? The stove’s gone cold.”

  “Oh, sleeping, sleeping, they’re all sleeping!” Hugo said.