by Lori Lansens
Addy Shadd guided the big head of springy curls onto her own narrow lap, not caring about the blood on her thin nightdress. She tunnelled through the thick coils with her nicotine fingers and stopped when she found a goose egg. There was a gash on the swell, small but deep. She held the edge of her good towel there until the bleeding stopped, then she dabbed some orange iodine and tried to cover it with a medium-size bandage that wouldn’t stick.
Addy Shadd stayed on the floor, absently stroking Sharla’s soft cheek. She thought of her whole long life and all the times she’d seen a person go unconscious and tried to remember what all got done for them. She recalled when her brother, Leam, got kicked in the head by that ugly horse on Mr. Kenny’s farm in Rusholme. He slept two days straight then woke up smelling asparagus, which wasn’t even in season. She recalled when she fell out of the apple tree in the backyard and lost her sense of words for a full day. She also recalled, though she wished she hadn’t, what happened at the river with Chester Monk. She quickly pushed Chester Monk and Rusholme from her mind and focused on the child.
Sharla’s wound wasn’t too serious but she shouldn’t be moved, was the conclusion Addy came to. The other conclusion was that she was taking Sharla Cody back to her mother in the morning. She’d been crazy to accept responsibility for the child, and she could see now it would never work.
Addy Shadd rose again, and with all the up and down tonight, she was glad she’d gotten the winter rust out of her bones working her little garden out back and tending her white flowers in the square out front. She gathered up the blue plaid blanket and the soft pillow from the pull-out couch and brought them to where Sharla lay still and quiet on the kitchen floor. She tucked the pillow under Sharla’s head and put the blanket over her.
As Addy Shadd was set to rise, Sharla opened her eyes. “Mum?”
“Shh. Close your eyes now.”
“It’s hot.”
“I know. Close your eyes, Honey.”
“Smells like Ivory soap.”
“Shh now, Honey. Shh.”
Sharla looked at the old woman directly. “I wish you was my Mum.”
“You got a Mama, little girl.”
“You could be my Mum though. Mum.” Sharla closed her eyes and, because it felt good rolling off her sleepy tongue, said it once more, “Mum.”
Addy Shadd cleaned the broken china pieces from beside Sharla’s slumbering head. When she was finished, the old woman pushed herself up and sat down in a hard-back kitchen chair. She watched the big little girl sleeping on the floor, and though she knew she might regret it, she allowed her thoughts to return to Rusholme.
Rusholme
THERE WERE MOSTLY COLOURED families in Rusholme when Adelaide Shadd was a young girl. The town had been settled entirely by coloured people, fugitive slaves from the United States, in the mid-1800s. In the red brick schoolhouse on King Street, they taught their children the rare history of the land and how it came to be theirs. It was told to each generation, like a storybook legend, how the Good Lord came to an American man, a white reverend called Mills. The Lord spoke to him in his sleep, telling him to rise with the sun and set his fourteen slaves free. The Reverend Mills understood the word of the Lord and he rose and set the people free. But to further atone for his grave sins against them, the Lord said deliver those people to the North, from the hateful and ignorant, to a land that shall be theirs.
Like all the children of Rusholme, Addy Shadd learned about Reverend Mills, who brought those fourteen and more across the border to freedom in Canada. She learned that after enduring a long winter and much hardship, they found the land by the lake. She was taught how Reverend Mills disregarded the people in neighbouring Chatham who said it was wrong and organized the many who knew it was right. How they set aside a tract of ten thousand acres and sold it to the coloured settlers for whatever they could pay. She imagined how the land had been, thick with woods of oak and hickory and maple and ash, and how her people cleared the trees, revealed the dark soil, and became tillers of their own rich earth.
Those first people of Rusholme felt like they were born to the place and knew it was a better world than the one they’d left. In Chatham and other nearby towns such as Dresden, Amherstburg, and Shrewsbury, there were a thousand fugitive slaves and more coming North every day on the Underground Railroad. The railroad was not one of steel rails and wood ties, but a series of routes on which the slaves could find safe places to hide, and men and women to conduct them.
The slaves escaped their captors at night, guided by the stars, hiding in the southern swamps and bayous, then further north in the forests and waterways, helped by the Quakers and other friends of freedom, hunted by federal marshals, bounty seekers, and mad dogs. There were no maps. The fugitives passed information by mouth, in stories and in song.
Rusholme was a terminus on the Underground Railroad. The town rejoiced when men found freedom, grieved when they perished, and worried when they were expected but had not yet arrived. All of Rusholme suspected, when Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin appeared in 1852, that Uncle Tom was really one of the Railroad’s most famous conductors, Josiah Henson, and his cabin really that shack in the woods in neighbouring Dresden. Reverend Henson had published his autobiography years earlier and believed it was the inspiration for Stowe’s novel. His fame spread, and when the Reverend was sent to England to see Queen Victoria, Rusholme celebrated. It was quite a thing for a black man to meet the Queen.
Generations later, when Adelaide Shadd was a girl in the early 1920s, Josiah Henson and the Underground Railroad were but a memory and booze-toting bootleggers ruled the day. Rusholme was clear-cut and you could see all the way to the clean blue lake. Larger and grander farms flanked the smaller original ones, a few owned by white farmers, but still mostly coloured. A new network of roads conveyed the freshly spawned black Ford trucks and autos through the township, and the Libby’s canning factory in neighbouring Chatham was expanding to meet the bounty of the land.
Addy’s father, Wallace Shadd, got a good position in construction on the Libby’s factory site that paid him more money in one week than he made in two weeks being handyman for Theodore Bishop. Wallace hadn’t liked his former employer much, even though, or maybe because, Bishop was the richest black man in Rusholme. Addy and her brother, L’il Leam, didn’t have to work in the fields that summer because of Wallace doing so well, but their mother, Laisa, said “idle hands,” and wrung her own, imagining what mischief her near-grown children might be getting up to in a long hot summer.
Addy and L’il Leam, who’d complained bitterly about the farmwork last summer, begged to return to Mr. Kenny’s fields in spite of the family not needing the money. Mr. Kenny was a fat white man with a twisted red nose and a farm nearly big as Teddy Bishop’s. Addy and L’il Leam couldn’t remember a summer they didn’t work Mr. Kenny’s fields and though neither thought of him in a fatherly way, they did think of his farm as a second home.
Laisa liked to have the little house on Fowell Street to herself anyway and was relieved her children cared to work. Wallace said, though he’d have to approve how they spent it, Addy and L’il Leam could keep whatever money they earned and not put it in the family coffer. Addy dreamed of a wool coat for winter and a gold-filled hatpin from the Sears catalogue. L’il Leam dreamed of Birdie Brown.
The winter’d been long and Addy was eager to return to the fields with the spicy-smelling foreign ladies and the whole gang of boys and men from last year. They’d start on asparagus, then do peas, strawberries, tomatoes, and corn. In between the picking there were horses and pigs and chickens to tend and all of it done under the good blazing sun.
Addy loved to feel her bones and muscles as she bent and stretched over the neat green rows. She’d hitch the back of her long cotton skirt through her legs and tuck it up into the front. She did that for ease of movement and to let the smooth skin of her calves enjoy the glances of the men beside her in the field. She was aware the men admired her
strength and speed and how she could fill baskets all day and never resort to sitting on her behind and dragging it through the dirt like some of the foreign ladies did. But the real reason she chose the field this year, and she’d confess it to him soon enough, was to be near Chester Monk.
At fifteen years old Addy was womanly, with full breasts, a smallish waist, and a high round behind. Laisa noted unhappily that Addy’d grown the curves over winter and knew, because she was a mother and a woman, that her daughter would be thinking thoughts this spring. The time had come to sit her down and Laisa wrung her hands at the thought of it.
It was a grey May afternoon and they’d had an unpleasant walk back from church. Addy’d been dreamy and vacant during the service and never joined in with but one hymn. Laisa scolded her daughter for her posture and propriety, and Addy felt wicked for hating her mother on a Sunday.
Laisa found Addy on the back porch of their tidy brick home and forgot to bring the walnut squares she’d made as a gesture of forgiveness. She ensured they were out of earshot of her father and brother before she took one of Addy’s strong working hands and said, “I’m gonna give you a gift and it’s the truth, and the kind only comes from a Mama that loves you.”
Laisa took a long breath, wishing her voice were softer. “You ain’t no beauty, Adelaide Shadd, and it’s just as well to know that now. You got stick-out ears and hood eyes, and a long face like your Daddy, and go ask yourself if he a looker.”
Addy didn’t want her mother’s gift. She pulled her hand away and itched to run when she realized there was more.
“I see the way the men put eyes on your behind and don’t get a smirk, Little Girl, because I see the way you move that behind to keep them eyes looking.”
Addy felt thrilled and shamed by the talk and fixed her sight on a black squirrel sniffing around the apple tree at the far end of the yard.
“You know you got the holes betwix your legs, and you know what they for because we talk about that when your blood come. But Addy, look at me, you move that behind the way you do and you just asking for the men to go digging your hole. ’Specially them white boys ’cause they think you think they best. You understand?”
Addy hated her mother and thought she was mean to talk about her stick-out ears and un-Christian to speak of her holes on a Sunday. She watched the squirrel drag itself up the apple tree like it was still hungry but tired of looking.
“If you get a man go sticking hisself there, you know you can get a baby outta that. You understand? I ask if you understand me, Daughter?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Yes, Ma’am. And I’m here to tell you, that you ain’t got the beauty of a girl like Beatrice Brown and no boy’s gonna fall in love and take you for his wife just because you got a baby from him. You understand that?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“And if you don’t listen to the truth I’m telling you, and if you go lifting up your skirt for some boy, do not bring no baby back here to this good home of ours.”
Addy had no intention of bringing a baby home, and she thought she’d like to strike her mother and run away forever for the suggestion. She barely whispered, “I hate you.”
Laisa’s eyebrows lifted her lips to her nose. “I do beg your pardon?”
Addy said nothing and was surprised she didn’t get a pinch.
“Now you get, and think on what I said. And Adelaide, Child, look at me, don’t never say a mean thing against your own Mama because you bring the Lord’s vengeance down on your head and I can’t save you from that.”
By trying not to think on what Laisa told her, Addy could not think on much else. Only one thing could distract her mind and that was a glimpse of Chester Monk. Didn’t matter if he had a shovel full of horseshit and a hard face from the stink, or if he was laughing in that throaty way and wiping the field dust off a big red berry before taking it in his teeth. Addy thought if anyone could see beauty in her hood eyes and stick-out ears, it was Chester Monk. She knew if she got a baby outta that with him, he’d walk her down the long church aisle and promise to be her man forever and a day.
Chester Monk had been in Rusholme three summers and before that Addy didn’t know. He had smooth brown skin, a fine square head and thick strong neck. His black pupils floated in oval ponds shaded by curled-up lashes. His mouth was wide with straight white teeth. He smiled well and often, teased all the girls equal, and said he didn’t love only one. Addy knew he just meant to be kind, but thought it was wrong in the end, to give the others false hope.
Chester was only sixteen years old but he was already bigger than most men and twice the size of L’il Leam, who’d been sickly and near passed as a child. Leam would never grow to proper size and that’s why he got the Little in front of his name. Sometimes, when the farmhands were finished and stretched out on the soft grass near Mr. Kenny’s barn, L’il Leam’d get an old horse blanket and climb up on the huge shoulders of Chester Monk. They’d fix that big blanket so you couldn’t see Chester’s head and make it look like L’il Leam was some funny giant with thin stick arms and thick strong legs. They’d laugh to sore stomachs and say do it again, do it again, when Chester Monk complained it’s too hot and get off now.
Chester Monk was nowhere near done growing. It was speculated he might get as tall as Big Zach Heron, the oldest of the farmhands and a boyhood friend of Wallace Shadd. So far Mr. Heron was the biggest man, coloured or white, in the whole lake region, and that was proven in the contest at the Harvest Fair last year. Heron was a man who could be counted on, and L’il Leam admired him above all others. He was still Wallace Shadd’s closest friend. He had a tiny, frightened wife called Isobel, and he liked to whistle a tune when he walked.
On the third Sunday in June, all of Rusholme was gathering for the annual Strawberry Supper. They’d be having the picnic on the church lawn after service since the Lord was good and there was no rain in sight. The winter’d been bitter with a short, sharp spring and the berries were not large and luscious like last year but small and hard and densely sweet. They spread the tables with white lace cloth from home and laid them with platters of roasted meats and fish and fowl, and bread and pickled eggs and the end of the root vegetables they put up last fall. There was a whole table just for the berries, tarts and pies and cakes and jams, and bowls and bowls of them just simple, hulled, with sugar.
The lake wasn’t warm enough for swimming yet, but the young people could cross the road to splash their feet as long as a few stern adults went along to keep an eye. The Pastor’d preach about temptation because of how the boys and girls’d be mixing around the campfire later on. The adults knew all about those strokes stolen behind the flames and no one wanted to see an impropriety done on Strawberry Sunday.
Addy had felt sick all morning. She thought it to be excitement because of the church supper. She’d nearly brought up her breakfast when she went to take the pie from the oven and the smell got up her nose. She asked L’il Leam to do it for her so she didn’t risk the ruin of her new Sunday dress. Her older brother didn’t balk at using an oven cloth and touching a pie plate like some boys would. He set the pie by the window to cool and knew that Addy wanted Chester Monk to have a slice of it and admire her touch with the pastry.
L’il Leam had his own heart set on the day. He was in love with Birdie Brown and even though she was the most beautiful girl in Rusholme, it was Leam she chose to love, because he was special and didn’t know it. She was small like him, and they came eye to eye with each other when her Mama wasn’t around and they had the chance, and he the courage, to have a word.
They shared a kiss when the snow melted in April and it lingered still on L’il Leam’s lips. He’d been fixing his bicycle out back of the schoolhouse and Birdie’d come around the corner expressly to find him. She bent down, watching him through the wheel. “L’il Leam?”
“Why, hello, Beatrice Brown.”
She pooched her lips and squinched her nose and L’il Leam thought that was the
sweetest face and the only reason he called her Beatrice at all.
“Don’t call me Beatrice, Leam. I don’t like Beatrice and I told you so before.”
He acted contrite. “I’m sorry, Birdie.”
She leaned in and pressed her face through the spokes. “I ate maple sugar. Smell it?”
L’il Leam could smell the maple. He could also smell her hair and neck and the perfume of her young girl skin. He nodded and swallowed and didn’t know what to do about the closeness of her pretty face.
Birdie leaned in further. Quick as a hummer and light as its feather, she brushed her cold mouth against his. “Taste it?”
L’il Leam could taste the maple sugar, and her soft mouth and smooth skin, and wanted her to do it again, but he worried she might see how quick his pecker had sprung up in his trousers and be afraid of that. “You better get on now, Birdie.”
Birdie smiled prettily and stood, swinging the top half of herself on the hinge of her hips. “Mama told me I get Aunt Aeline’s dishes that come from London England and that’s got a serving platter and a soup tureen.”
L’il Leam nodded and Birdie Brown skipped off.
Birdie was Addy’s age and that was one year younger than Leam and Chester. All the girls of fifteen were best friends and the best reason was there were only four of them. There was Addy and Birdie and the twins, Josephine and Camille Bishop. Josephine and Camille were soft girls, fat and spoiled, and couldn’t have stood the labour of the fields even if their Daddy did think it fit work for a young woman.
The twins’ Daddy, Theodore Bishop, had the biggest house and fanciest suits and a sleek new motor car he took over on the ferry to Detroit every other day. When Wallace left his employ, Addy heard her father say that Teddy Bishop was running bootleg whisky for the Purple Gang out of Detroit. Laisa clucked her tongue. “Let us thank the Lord the good folks of this town don’t take that devil’s juice.”
