There's a Dead Person Following My Sister Around

by Vivian Vande Velde

  "Stay there," I said, because he had not yet looked up at me and he might not even be aware that I was leaving. "Don't come near me."

  At my words, he did look up, the skin of his face darker than any I'd ever seen this close up, but his eyes the same as anybody else's.

  Back in the house, I decided that I could cause no hurt by making the man some food. Even if the slave catchers had followed him and were about to descend on our house, he had to eat before they brought him back South to whatever place it was he'd run away from. I also decided that Theodore had enough old shirts that surely one could be spared. And if the Negro man should happen to wander away while I prepared food and sought clothing for him, so much the better.

  But as soon as I walked in the door, I realized I was still holding the baling fork. Theodore, who'd been slicing the breakfast bread, looked up at me with concern and shooed the children away.

  I worked at preparing a sandwich with thick slices of cold pork so that the children would not guess that we were talking about something we didn't want them to hear, which would fetch them underfoot faster than anything else in the world. "There is a runaway Negro slave in our barn loft," I whispered.

  Theodore sighed. He said, "He was probably looking for the Stearnses' farmstead."

  The Stearns are Quakers and everybody knows Quakers are all abolitionists.

  I said, "He was looking for Canada."

  "Any sign of federal marshals or slave catchers?" Theodore asked. I shook my head, and he said, "One of us must ride out to fetch them."

  "I know," I said.

  "Otherwise," he pointed out, "with that new law, we are responsible. We could face a thousand-dollar fine. Building this house cost less than a thousand dollars."

  "A thousand dollars is a great deal of money," I agreed.

  "And six months in jail," Theodore said.

  "Six months is a long time," I agreed. I pulled his heavy work shirt off the hook by the door and slung it over Theodore's arm. I handed him the sandwich. "Perhaps, if we're lucky, he has gone," I said.

  But he wasn't gone.

  And when Theodore saw that the Negro man's shoes were entirely worn through so that he'd been walking in the snow with what were essentially bare feet, he invited him into the house.

  And when the man took off his ragged shirt to replace it with Theodore's shirt and we saw the whip scars, some discolored, some with the skin raised like permanent welts on his back, we told him he could spend the day, and at night we would put him in the cart and drive him to the Stearnses' farm.

  All day long we waited for the slave catchers to come and catch us at what we were doing.

  They came just as I was putting supper on the table.

  Rebekka, who is very responsible for eight years old, had been staying in the front room so that she could catch an early glimpse and warn us of any visitors. She came running into the kitchen shouting, "Three men on horses."

  At that time the runaway Negro was in the root cellar, where they would be sure to find him if they forced their way in and searched the house.

  Theodore told Rebekka, "Take Jacob downstairs and choose some fine juicy apples for supper." Rebekka nodded solemnly, knowing what was behind the words. To Jacob, Theodore said, "Do you think you can help your sister?" because four years old is too young to understand, and we knew Jacob would tell our new visitors about the black-skinned visitor who was also here today. Fortunately, Jacob was eager to help Rebekka.

  The men who came were the slave owner and two professional slave catchers. The owner said he was looking for his runaway Nigro—that was how he said it, "Nigro." "A prime field slave," he said, "but ungrateful and uppity." I thought of the quiet dignity of the Negro man compared to the red-faced bluster of these three. It was easy to lie to them, to say we had seen nothing of any Negroes. They didn't demand to search the house and left shortly after arriving.

  After supper we loaded the former slave onto our cart and covered him with old flour sacks. By that time we had given him two of Theodore's shirts, a blanket, a new pair of shoes, and all the food that would fit into his pockets.

  I worried and worried while Theodore took him to the Stearnses' farm. It seemed he was gone forever, but when he came back, he said everything had gone smoothly. He had seen no one on the way and had tapped quietly on the door only after making sure there was no sign of the slave catchers. He said Thomas Stearns seemed surprised at the late-evening visit, but once Theodore told him we'd had a surprise visitor in our barn, he grasped the situation immediately. "Let him come in," Theodore said he said, "and God be with thee for thy kindness."

  It was a foolish risk, we both agreed, but the matter that most tugs at my conscience is, I never thought to ask the Negro man his name.

  CHAPTER 12

  A Friend, with Friends

  I REALIZED I'D BEEN reading all in a rush. My heart was pounding and my hands were sweaty. Sentimental jerk, I told myself, to get so caught up in things that happened a hundred and fifty years ago. Everybody involved was long dead. The passage had explained a lot—such as that Grandma's secret room must have been added later or they wouldn't have needed to hide the runaway in the root cellar. But the passage did not explain what I needed to know.

  I flipped through the next pages, looking for something that would help me, but all the while I was wondering, Did he make it to Canada? He must have, I thought; he was so close. It takes us a little more than an hour's drive (two, if Dad's behind the wheel rather than Mom), heading west toward Buffalo, then over one of the three or four bridges at Niagara Falls.

  If those bridges were up in the 1800s.

  And, of course, it would be slower without cars and expressways.

  Not to mention with slave catchers breathing down your neck.

  I looked for more, for an acknowledgment from their Quaker neighbors that they'd safely delivered the man to Canada or had received word that he'd arrived safely.

  But there was nothing more about him.

  Except, maybe, that in a couple of places—before an entry, or after one and having nothing to do with anything—Winifred wrote things like:

  All worrying does is pass the time.

  Then, on June 23, in the middle of complaining that it had rained every day for the past two weeks and talking about a shopping trip, Winifred mentioned the neighbors again:

  I saw Naomi Stearns at the notions counter, where I was looking for new brass buttons for Jacob's jacket. Naomi smiled and nodded but had not a word for me until I was leaving, having found nothing to my liking. Then, just as I passed her, she turned and, doing so, knocked over with her elbow a display of lace and ribbons from the counter. "Oh my, how clumsy!" she said, and putting her bag on the counter so that she could more easily pick up the spools of ribbon, she knocked a box containing packages of pins and needles off the opposite side of the counter.

  Never having seen Naomi Stearns be anything less than graceful, I estimated all of this was intentional, so I stooped down to help her fetch up the rolling spools, leaving Mr. Willoughby on the far side of the counter to scramble after the pins.

  Naomi whispered to me, "Federal marshals are watching my husband and me."

  "Yes?" I said, making pretense that I did not understand, though I feared I did. Already I was certain I did not want to become involved. Through the open doorway of the store, I could see a man who was unfamiliar to me loitering in the doorways across the street, watching us while pretending not to, though anyone with any sense at all would go in out of the rain.

  Naomi said, "There is a shipment of black wool being sent here from North Carolina."

  I started to shake my head, but Naomi clutched my wrist.

  "Two bales of wool," she said. "One ewe's wool, the other from a tiny lamb."

  If this was the secret language of those who helped slaves escape, it certainly wasn't difficult to decipher. Two slaves, she was telling me, a woman and a child.

  "They had to be shipped from their prev
ious location, and now they cannot come to our house. Winifred, think thee how cold and wet it has been. They have been outdoors for the past two days."

  My intent was to say no, but I found my tongue asking, "How long?"

  "Overnight," she answered. "Tomorrow after sunset, there will be a boat on the canal. Show a lantern and they will come. Identify thyself as a friend, with friends. The Federal marshals have no reason to suspect thee, so all will be perfectly safe."

  "I must discuss this with my husband," I said, handing her the last of the rolls of ribbon.

  Naomi bit her lip. "What is he like to say?"

  "Yes," I admitted. "Likely he will say yes."

  "Many thanks," Naomi said out loud. "It is very kind of thee to help me in my clumsiness." She stood and began to apologize to Mr. Willoughby and she did not look at me again. I left the store and knew enough not to look behind me to see if the man across the street watched me or Naomi.

  Theodore, of course, said yes.

  A woman and a child. It had to be our two ghosts, Marella and her mother. I was about to find out what had happened. I turned the page. The next entry simply said:

  A cold nasty day. A dismal beginning to July.

  July?

  I checked the date over the entry. July 1, 1851. I backed up a page. The previous entry, the day Winifred met Naomi Stearns and agreed to take in the slaves, was June 23.

  I ran my finger along the binding to see if pages had been ripped out. There were no pages missing, and when I thought about it, there couldn't have been. The previous day's entry had ended just about at the bottom of the right-hand page, and the next one started in on the same sheet, at the top of the left-hand page. Winifred—who wrote every single day, except when her rheumatism was too bad, even when all she had to say was that she had dusted the parlor or Theodore had painted the front step—had skipped seven and a half days and wasted the next.

  My eyes strayed farther down the page, to the next entry, which began:

  The worst possible thing in the world has happened.

  Since my left hand holding the book was suddenly shaking, I used my right hand to keep my place.

  CHAPTER 13

  The Worst Possible Thing

  July 2, 1851

  The worst possible thing in the world has happened. I keep returning to it over and over again in my mind, thinking, What could I have done to prevent it, what did I do wrong? An occurrence so violent and bizarre, it seems an act of Cod, a punishment for some evil. And yet, how could such a punishment be directed against those who so obviously trusted in Him and had suffered so much? Was it our sin—mine and Theodore's—to have presumed too much, to have arrogantly placed trust in our own abilities?

  July 3, 1851

  I have tried, several times these past nine days, to set pen to paper. Theodore says I have become silent and bitter. I have seen enough of silent and bitter old women that I do not want to become one. I need to try harder, I need to get the words and the feelings out, I need to start at the beginning.

  There was a quiet knock at our door during our supper that Monday night. It was one of the Stearns children. They have so many I cannot tell them one from the other, but this was one of the boys, of about ten or eleven years, and he had with him a tall Negress carrying a child. They were both wearing clothes more appropriate for high summer than for a rainy Rochester night. Someone, possibly the Stearnses', had given them two rough-woven blankets, but the mother had them both wrapped around her child and none for herself.

  The Stearns boy said he must get home before the watchers became suspicious that he was gone so long and in the wet, and reminded us, before he left, to hang a lantern tomorrow evening on the old elm tree that leans over the canal for those on the canal boat to see.

  The first thing I did was to ask their names. The Negress said her name was Adah, and the child, who was five years old, which would make her one year older than Jacob, was Marella.

  Before we had done more than to sit them down at the table and put warm food in front of them, Jacob pointed out that they both spoke much more clearly than the Negro we helped four months ago. I was much embarrassed, but Adah said that she and her daughter were not field hands but both worked at the big house, by which I took her to mean at the home of the plantation owner himself. I did not say what I was thinking, which was that five years old was too young for Marella to be working anywhere, nor did I mention that Marella was several shades lighter in skin than her mother, which I suspected was indication that Adah was required to do more than cook and clean at the big house.

  Over the rest of that evening and the next day, Adah and I talked a great deal. God had blessed her, she insisted, with a kind master. She said this despite the fact that her arms were as big around as Theodore's from lifting and carrying and other heavy work. And despite the fact that, though Adah had a husband, Marella was, as I had guessed, the master's daughter. Adah's husband had been gentle and loving to the child, but he had been sold, as Adah put it, downriver. Adah did not blame her master for this because the husband had been caught learning to read, which is illegal. The man who was teaching him, a free Negro carpenter, had been killed.

  I thought it was having her husband sent away from her and to the deep South which had caused Adah to risk her life for freedom for herself and her daughter, but, in truth, the matter that had decided her was that the master was getting married. Other slaves had warned her that Marella looked too much like the master for the new wife to tolerate. She would be sent out to the fields, or she might be sold to the owner of a nearby plantation who had a reputation for being very fond of young mulatto girls, the younger i he better.

  I am still too angry to even think about that.

  I stopped reading, started again, then figured it might be important, so I went to the dictionary and looked up mulatto. The dictionary said: "A person of mixed Caucasian and Negro ancestry," which I'd already caught on to. I pretty much figured! I knew what the rest of it meant, too. And I figured I was probably as angry about it as Winifred. Back to the journal:

  I had been afraid that the hours would drag like days while we hid these poor fugitives from the slave catchers, that I would be so nervous about the possibility of discovery that time would not even seem to move forward. But once they were actually under our roof, it was not as I had expected. Talking to Adah was like talking to a friend from a different country. I say a different country because much of how she described her life seemed so foreign to what I have ever known, and I say friend because I immediately admired her courage, her steadfast devotion to God and her child, her ability to think well of people despite all she had been through, which would have turned me bitter.

  Bitter. As I write down that word I remember that I have turned bitter.

  Adah was not a friend for all I have said she seemed one. She was a piece of runaway property pursued by her owner and by the law.

  Late in the afternoon of Tuesday, June 24, a man came to our door saying he had reason to believe we were harboring a runaway slave.

  No, Theodore said, while Adah and her child and I and my children sat still and quiet in the downstairs parlor, where the drapes were drawn shut, not daring to breathe.

  The man demanded to search our house.

  "I do not know you," Theodore said. "Why should I let you come in my house? You may well be a thief, for all I know."

  The man showed him a paper, which identified him as a professional slave catcher.

  Theodore said, "Come back with a Federal marshal, and I will let you in."

  "Nigger lover," the man called him.

  "No nigger lovers here," Theodore said, and quietly shut the door in his face.

  I stopped, shocked that my great-great-grandfather would use that word and that my great-great-grandmother would repeat it. In October we'd read part of Huckleberry Finn, and everybody knows the author, Mark Twain, used that same word. But Ms. DiBella said it was too offensive to say out loud, so she always substitute
d African American or person of color instead. I was amazed that Winifred and Theodore, whom I'd been thinking of as the good guys, could be so offensive.

  I returned my attention to the journal.

  We knew that the man could not be back before nightfall, but we had no safe place to hide Adah and her child. I had already given Adah an old dress of mine, having finally admitted to myself that I will never be that slender again. Fortunately, the sleeves were full, to cover her muscular arms; but for all that, Adah was a thin woman, so the dress did fit, though I needed to sew a long strip of black ruffle to the bottom hem, else the dress ended several inches above her ankles. And for sweet little Marella, we found one of Rebekka's dresses, a white one from when she was hardly more than a baby, for Marella, also, was very thin.

  And then, as the sky grew darker, we sent them out into the cold and wet night.

  The canal being a good two hundred feet back from the house, and the yard having fewer than a dozen trees to hide behind, and those far between, we could not risk Adah and Marella waiting for the slave catcher to return and then making their way to the canal. They had to wait by the bank of the canal, the lantern we'd given them shuttered until they heard the approach of a boat, lest they attract the attention of those who would return them to their kind master.