The Liberators of Willow Run

by Marianne K. Martin

  “Me? No. You think it’s strength? I don’t feel strong as much as I feel angry. And I can’t even put that anger on any one thing. Sometimes I just feel angry at the world. But then I muffle it down and move along.”

  “Until it pushes its way back out,” Audrey said, “at things that don’t seem at all fair. Maybe it doesn’t matter where strength comes from—like good hardened steel coming from a hot furnace. I always thought anger was energy wasted. My father, always the philosopher, claims that anger uses up valuable energy and keeps you from focusing on solutions. And, of course, believes that outward displays of anger are unbecoming of a woman. I grew up believing he was right.” With a tilt of her head, Audrey added, “I think you use your anger quite effectively . . . I admire that.”

  “So what do you do with your anger?”

  It seemed an odd question at first, or maybe it was just challenging. It made her think back years, identifying an anger that she claimed and expressed without reserve. So long ago, and now so irrelevant in comparison. Being so angry at George, the Saint Bernard who trampled her favorite flower bed, that the whole neighborhood heard her unladylike language as she chased him home. And the time she tried to beat the crap out of the preacher’s son after he missed her eye by a fraction of an inch with a BB gun. But past her twelfth birthday she couldn’t say the last time she felt that kind of anger. She could remember fear, anxiety, hiding who she was from everyone—hiding who they were, worrying that the two of them would be found out. And guilt, oh yes, she felt that, every day, every night for two years now. But anger, where was the anger? It was there, tightly bound and silent, but it was there. It was clamped down tight when Velma was taken, held in check with the hope that Audrey was wrong, with the hope that recovery was possible. And it was anger that simmered in her gut at how Nona was treated. “My expressing anger isn’t going to change anything.”

  “Should I believe that?” Ruth asked.

  Audrey nodded. “You should help me find out why I believe it.” She checked her watch. “But not tonight. We need to catch the last bus before dark.”

  Chapter 19

  “What has you so distracted?” Nona asked as she folded the Monopoly board. “You let Mrs. Bailey almost single-handedly take you out of the game. I knew you were in a different world when she prattled on about bringing your future children here for her to dote on and you were just noddin’ your head. Poor sweet woman wants grandchildren so badly. Her daughter’s taking her time, and I already told her that I’m not getting married until I have a career.”

  Audrey smiled. “How could I dash her hopes, as remote as they are, when she’s saying things like ‘It doesn’t matter what color a baby’s cheeks are, they all kiss just as sweet’?”

  “Uh, huh.” Nona pushed the game box to the center of the table and leaned back in her chair to look at Audrey. “Are you going to tell me what’s bothering you?”

  “I don’t know, Nona.” Audrey leaned folded arms on the table. “I’m still trying to sort it out myself.”

  “Maybe I can help.”

  “I feel like I’m always bringing my troubles to you.”

  Nona shook her head. “I’m your friend, not just someone you spend evenings with playing board games. And what kind of trouble did I bring you when I was late to work? Only a real friend would have done what you did. I want to be that friend for you, too.”

  “Sort with me, then,” Audrey replied. “It’s all connected to Ruth. I have to figure out if there’s a way I can help or if I should stay out of things. And either way I’m worried about what it’s doing to Ruth.”

  “Start with what she needs your help with.”

  “A young girl,” Audrey began, and proceeded to give Nona all she knew of the situation. Just repeating the details, and seeing the words reflected in Nona’s expression, emphasized the gravity of it for Audrey. This was more than a problem that Ruth, or anyone, could solve. And that brought Audrey to the other part of her dilemma.

  “What worries me just as much, maybe more, is what this whole thing could do to Ruth. She’s been through some tough times of her own and I don’t know if she has had time to heal, or even to deal with her own issues.”

  “Does she talk to you about it?”

  Audrey shook her head. “She hasn’t said that much. All her concentration seems to be on Amelia. And I don’t know if it’s my place to press her on something so personal.”

  “Have you confided in her about your own struggle?” Nona asked.

  Audrey locked into the dark brown gaze and read the message perfectly. Her response was a thin smile.

  “It could be,” Nona added, “that trusting you with Amelia’s situation is safer for her than trusting you with her own.”

  “Or dealing with someone else’s struggle is easier than dealing with her own.”

  “Whatever the cause or reason,” Nona said, “she is not ready to tell you how or if she is handling her own struggle.”

  “So would it be wrong of me to bring it up? What if she thinks that she would be burdening me, or—”

  “Or maybe since Amelia’s problems are more urgent, they should rightfully take precedent. I think you are worrying too much, too soon.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “Look, you confided in me when you were ready. You’ll confide in Ruth when you’re ready. It helps you to be able to voice it, unload it, and feel supported. But not everyone handles it the same way. She may keep it all inside until she sorts it out for herself.”

  “But what if it festers inside her until it threatens to destroy her, like it has me? I still hurt, and I don’t want her to hurt like that.”

  “Then you’ll be there when she needs you, just as I am for you. Find a way to let her know that.”

  Audrey nodded, her thoughts circling back. “Regardless, Ruth is going to try to help Amelia, there’s no question that she’ll try. So how am I going to help her, Nona? How do you protect someone when there’s no legal way to right a wrong?”

  “You said that there is no place for her to go?”

  Audrey shook her head. “No family. They don’t believe her about her uncle. I wondered about a church. A church helped you when you needed a safe place to stay. But if they knew that she was an unwed mother . . .”

  “I wouldn’t speak for the white churches, but Negro churches aren’t exempt from hypocrisy. There isn’t much space between religious and social mores.”

  “So who’s there for someone like Amelia?”

  “People who think for themselves, people who decide what is right and wrong in their own hearts. The same kind of people who marched and spoke out in public and risked going to jail and worse so that women could vote. That’s who,” Nona said. “People like you.”

  “Me,” Audrey echoed. “Me and Ruth. With no time for marching or changing minds, and no plan.”

  “Then make a plan.”

  Audrey’s voice lacked its usual patience. “Nona, that’s what we’re struggling with. It seems impossible.”

  “Have you ever heard of a woman called Moses?”

  “A woman?” Audrey shook her head. “No.”

  “She was a tiny Negro woman who, from all outward appearances, should never have accomplished what she did.”

  “Which was?”

  “Guiding slaves to safety through the Underground Railroad.”

  “Mrs. Tubman,” Audrey declared.

  “You do know about her.”

  “I think we lived in one of those houses. My father figured it out when one time he caught me sneaking into the best hiding place ever. I would disappear every time my parents’ friends came over with their obnoxious son. My father followed me down into the basement and saw me closing the cupboard door behind me. When he opened it up I wasn’t in the cupboard, and he started pounding on the back of it until he got it to open. I was just climbing out of the window well when he caught me.”

  “I’ve heard about hidden staircases and tunnels. I love
to learn about the different ways they were hidden.”

  Audrey continued. “That was the one good thing that came out of losing my best hiding place. My father explained that the escaped slaves would run to the house, drop down into the window well, crawl through the hidden door, and wait in the cupboard until someone came down to open it. They would get something to eat and clean clothes and then, when it was safe, they would move on.”

  “To the next station. I wonder if Moses was a conductor to your home. She might have been, you know.”

  “I don’t think so. My father said that she brought slaves through Ohio and all the way into Canada.”

  “Do you think your father would have been an abolitionist back then?”

  “I don’t know. When he was telling me about the hiding place, it was as if he was teaching one of his classes. It didn’t seem personal at all. It seemed like he was talking about someone else’s house.”

  “We don’t always know. Sometimes you don’t hear what’s in someone’s heart, but you can see it. A lot of those who participated weren’t known abolitionists. That’s what made them so effective; no one suspected them.” Nona hesitated before adding. “Maybe that’s you.”

  “Going beyond just being encouraging, you mean?”

  “Amelia’s situation is serious. How committed are you to helping her?”

  Audrey frowned. “Ruth’s waiting for another letter from her and then we will know more. But Amelia isn’t allowed to communicate with her family, so I don’t see how anything could have changed. It comes back to us, then—the responsibility, if we’re going to take it.”

  Nona patted her hand over her heart. “Can you not?” she asked.

  Chapter 20

  A week later Audrey found a place for her anger, a place where it might actually do some good. She had kept her anger bound, denied it a voice, and instead had let guilt have its reign. She’d owned the guilt as she thought she should, and allowed it to shape the possibilities for her life. But what she was going to learn today was about to change that.

  For the first time since she’d left her parents’ home, the week had included not one evening that she could call her own. She could no longer claim lonely, her evenings were filled with Nona and game night with Mrs. Bailey, and babysitting for Jack and Lucy, and now Ruth. Even today, which she might have spent alone, would belong to Ruth. And that was fine.

  Audrey hauled the laundry basket into her room and pushed the door shut with her hip. She dropped the basket below the dried laundry hanging on the clothesline stretched between the bathroom door and the hook on the opposite wall. As quickly as she could, she pulled dry underwear, blouses, and trousers from the line, tossed them on the bed, and hung the wet sheet from the basket in their place.

  The expected knock at the door came before she could finish folding the laundry on the bed. She ducked under the sheet, greeted Ruth at the door, and ushered her under the corner of the wet sheet. “Now I should have warned you,” she began, “that the excitement happening here on Saturdays might be too much for you.”

  Ruth offered a weak attempt at a smile and sat tentatively on the edge of a chair.

  “You got a letter,” Audrey surmised.

  “Two,” Ruth replied, placing an envelope on the table and sliding it across to Audrey.

  Light conversation was out of the question. Audrey opened the letter and read quickly through the gratitude she expected, in search of what was concerning Ruth.

  She was sure that she had found it when the sweetness of a child’s voice took on a palpable fear.

  I did as you asked, Ruth, and talked to Nurse Lillian. I told her everything and I could tell from her eyes that she is worried. She tried to make me feel better by telling me how much I have grown and matured since she first met me. But I’m not strong, not like you want me to be. I’m scared, Ruth, I’m so scared. I can’t go back home. Please let me come and stay with you. I will work very hard. Maybe someone will want me to clean their house for them. I will make my own money and I will help you all I can. Please, Ruth, don’t let them send me back there.

  Audrey met the concern on Ruth’s face. “This is breaking my heart, too. If only she was older. Legally—”

  “But she’s not. And there’s more.” She slid the other letter over to Audrey. “From Nurse Lillian.”

  Audrey opened the letter and read the neatly printed lines.

  Dear Ruth,

  Amelia came to me as you asked her to and I know more now about what has happened to her and what she is facing. Actually, I know too much now. You didn’t realize the position that her coming to me would put me in, and I doubt that I would have been able to tell you not to.

  Ruth, I took a pledge when I became a nurse, and it is a pledge that I take seriously.

  Part of it states that “I will do all in my power to maintain and elevate the standard of my profession, and will hold in confidence all personal matters committed to my keeping, and all family affairs coming to my knowledge in the practice of my calling.”

  It also states that “I will dedicate myself to devoted service to human welfare.”

  I would not be writing you or sharing any of this with you if Amelia had not given me permission to talk with you. That permission and the trust I have in your concern for Amelia’s safety is why you are receiving this.

  She asked if she could stay with me and promised to clean house and do the laundry. And I had to tell her that it wasn’t possible, that I could lose my job, or worse. But the knowledge that she will be in danger if she is sent home puts me in conflict, both personally and professionally.

  I know that you have tried to build Amelia’s confidence so that she can protect herself, but the threat from her father to institutionalize her is serious. I have strong reservations about what is often used as treatment. I have seen far more harm than good from using shock therapy and I believe it is used specifically on girls and women for the wrong reasons.

  Audrey stood, leaving the letter on the table without reading the remainder. She didn’t need to read more—couldn’t. A spike of anxiety sent nervous energy twitching through her body, her thoughts unable to move past the words she hadn’t expected. She paced a circle, hand to her forehead.

  “What is it?” Ruth asked. “It’s as bad as I thought, isn’t it?”

  The words shot fear through Audrey’s heart. It was a danger so real that it made her heart pound its message in her ears. Her body tensed and heated and readied for flight as if the warning were for her. She took a deep breath and tried to clear her head and focus on the present. “We have to go get her,” Audrey replied, and paced another tight circle. “The nurse is right,” she said, finally making eye contact. “You have no idea.”

  “Tell me, then. Tell me what we should do. We can’t just go get her.”

  It was contagious, the anxiety, the sense of urgency, passing from one to the other—refueled, re-sent. Audrey heard it in Ruth’s voice, saw it in her eyes.

  “Can the nurse help? Can you call her from your house?”

  Ruth rose quickly. “Yes,” she said. “I’ll go right now.”

  Audrey followed her, under the corner of the sheet and to the door, where Ruth turned and wrapped her in a tight embrace. “Thank you,” Ruth whispered against Audrey’s ear, “for caring.” She released her embrace but remained intimately close. “You don’t even know Amelia.”

  “But I think I know you,” Audrey replied, pushing against the urge to let the warmth pull her across the inches, to press into the full, red lips. She could let it all go—the worry, the guilt—for just a moment, just long enough to do what she had imagined so many times.

  But it wasn’t Audrey who crossed the inches. It happened so quickly, Ruth’s lips touching hers for just a moment, and then gone. A moment only long enough to leave the promise of a long, sleepless night.

  Chapter 21

  The invitation to go to Nurse Lillian’s house was God-sent. Now, more than any other time, it was
important to focus on Amelia, to turn the fire of excitement and possibility that Ruth’s kiss had ignited into fuel for a higher cause. A cause Audrey needed nearly as much as Amelia did.

  They left immediately after the phone call and took the next train to Jackson. Determined and encouraged. The rumble of steel, powering past cornfields and pastures, sped them closer to a solution. Audrey felt it, almost a relief that they had a starting point. And she could tell that Ruth felt it, too, when she breached the narrow space between them and took Audrey’s hand. It felt right, everything felt right.

  The cab had barely stopped in front of the Barton house when the front screen door burst open and two excited girls bounded across the porch and down the steps to surround Ruth as she tried to exit the cab.

  “Ruth, Ruth,” they exclaimed, each trying to be heard over the other to welcome her. “I thought I’d never see you again” and “How long can you stay?” and “I have so much to tell you.”

  Two things were clear, Ruth was well-loved here and Nurse Lillian was blessed. Ruth glanced quickly over her shoulder to be sure Audrey was right behind her, and continued up to the house with a teenager attached to each arm.

  Lillian met them on the porch with a smile that instantly took Audrey in. She reached between the chattering girls and hugged Ruth in a long, eyes-closed embrace. “It’s so good to see you,” she said as she released her. “Now, ignore all this chatter for a few moments and introduce us.”

  “Yes, of course,” Ruth replied. Her cheeks were pink from excitement and she turned to pull Audrey closer. “This is my dear friend, Audrey, and this,” she turned to the group of smiling women, “is Lillian and her daughters, Caroline and Katie—my family away from home.”

  Audrey took Lillian’s outstretched hand. “I have heard such marvelous things about you. Thank you for inviting me today.”

  “Well, please come in. My husband will be home soon and you will meet the last piece of the Barton puzzle.”

  The chatter of questions began again before they could get settled in the living room.