Ghosts of Harvard

by Francesca Serritella

  For further reading and to see truly surreal pictures of this gargantuan airship, check out The Airships Akron & Macon: Flying Aircraft Carriers of the United States Navy, by Richard K. Smith.

  The scholarship about slavery at Harvard is extremely new. Professor Sven Beckert taught a small seminar starting in 2007, and over the next four years, he and thirty-two students unearthed forgotten records of people enslaved at Harvard. In 2011 they published a summary of their groundbreaking research. And in 2016, Harvard publicly acknowledged its ties to slavery more broadly.

  Four enslaved people lived in the Harvard president’s residence, Wadsworth House: Titus and Venus in the household of President Benjamin Wadsworth from 1725 to 1737, and then Bilhah and Juba under President Edward Holyoke from 1737 to 1769. There is a dearth of written records about any of them, but Bilhah appears to be the only one who died while a slave in Wadsworth House, and that is why I chose her to haunt these pages.

  Bilhah was enslaved in president Holyoke’s household from 1755 until her death in 1765. She gave birth to a son four years before her death. There are no other known records relating to her or her child. It is not a given, and perhaps not even likely, that Bilhah got to keep her infant son with her until her death. Their lives were so devalued that better records were kept of kitchen inventory than the lives of black people during her time. So beyond those spare contours of her life and status, all the details of Bilhah’s life, child, and the circumstances of her death in this novel are products of my imagination. However, my fictionalization is informed by my research of colonial life in Cambridge. For example, the executions of Mark and Phillis in Cambridge Commons in 1655 are a matter of historical record, a brutal enforcement of slavery law and public spectacle of cruelty.

  I grappled with the decision on whether to use Bilhah’s real name for the heavily fictionalized version of her here, and I did not make the choice lightly. In the end, I decided that her name and personhood has been buried for too long. As then-president of Harvard Drew Gilpin Faust said, upon the April 6, 2016 commemoration of the plaque at Wadsworth House, “We name the names to remember these stolen lives.”

  I hope further scholarship allows us to learn more about the real Bilhah and enslaved people like her. I hope more stories like hers are included in the history of our national institutions, that those stories are taught in school, and I hope future generations of Americans are better able to imagine those voices that have been silenced. Only with more perspectives and greater empathy can we urge our present moment into a more just future.

  I cannot say it better than Representative John Lewis said, at the plaque commemoration:

  “For nearly four centuries we have believed that the best way to cleanse this nation of the stain of slavery is to move on. We have torn down historic landmarks, blotted our names from the history books, and reworked the narrative of slavery. And we try to forget. We have gone to great lengths to wipe out every trace of slavery from America’s memory, hoping that the legacy of a great moral wrong would be lost forever in a sea of forgetfulness.

  But for four hundred years, the voices of generations have been calling us to remember. We have been tossing and turning for centuries in a restless sleep. We have pleaded with them to be still. But they will not be silent. We are people suffering from amnesia. We are haunted by a past that is shut up in our bones. But we just can’t stomach the truth of what it is.”

  To access the booklet by Sven Beckert, Katherine Stevens, and the students of the Harvard and Slavery Research Seminar and other helpful resources, visit www.HarvardandSlavery.com. For broader context on the ties between slavery and American universities, I recommend Craig Steven Wilder’s book Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities.

  For my mother,

  my rickety raft

  Acknowledgments

  A first novel is at once the most personal project and the one that needs the most helping hands at its back. In the ten years that it took me to write this book and ready it for the world, I had many hands to hold and I have many people to thank.

  Kara Cesare is the type of editor in author fairy tales. The first time we spoke was over the phone, and she understood this book so instinctively that I felt deeply seen. I’ve since learned that her wisdom and insight are matched only by her warmth and empathy. Her nurturing guidance gave me the confidence to rewrite fearlessly and enriched this novel immeasurably. I can’t thank her enough for her role in getting everything that was in my head and heart onto the page. I’m so lucky to have her on my side.

  Emma Caruso and Jesse Shuman also gave me such thoughtful reads, they are wise beyond their years, and they kept the book young and fresh (even though I just graduated, crazy).

  The bench is deep at Random House, and I’d like to thank the entire team: my terrific publicist Allyson Lord, marketing genius Katie Tull, and jacket designer **TBD** for giving me such a beautiful cover by which to be judged.

  I also want to acknowledge the passing of Susan Kamil. She made such a powerful impression on me; I admired her immensely. I felt honored by her attention and eager to prove myself worthy of it, and most of all, I remember feeling so lucky to work in an industry with brilliant, strong women like Susan in charge. Her support and enthusiasm for this book changed the way I thought of my writing and myself, and there was so much more I wanted to learn from her. But writing this novel helped clarify so much of what I believe about love and loss. I believe our hearts contain universes, ones where time folds over and wraps around us in a comforting embrace. We carry the voices of the people we’ve loved; we remember them always and know what they’d say, even after they can’t tell us anymore. I’ll always regret not having more time to work with, and, truly, to study under the great Susan Kamil. But I know I can still learn from her through the memories and lessons carried on by Andy Ward, Kara, and everyone who knew and loved Susan at Random House.

  Thank you to my agents, Andrea Cirillo, Amy Tannenbaum, and Rebecca Scherer of the Jane Rotrosen Agency. These brilliant, thoughtful women were the first non-relatives who believed in this book, and their confidence breathed new energy into me when I needed it most. Each of them offered such unique gifts to this book, and your insights sparked transformative changes to the story. I’m so grateful to them for shepherding me and this novel to its happiest home at Random House.

  I’d like to thank Dr. Sandra Steingard, Chief Medical Director at the Howard Center, and Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Vermont College of Medicine. Her decades of experience as a clinical practitioner treating patients with schizophrenia made her an invaluable resource in understanding the specific challenges faced by patients and families, always with her signature compassion. She’s been like an aunt to me since I was born, having previously mentored me in feminism and Barbra Streisand, and it was a treat to learn about her other areas of expertise.

  Thank you to two of my fellow alums for lending insight into aspects of Harvard that I was not smart or talented enough to experience firsthand. Thank you to Alvin Hough Jr. for sharing his experience as an undergraduate organist at Harvard, especially for giving me the incredible detail of midnight organ rehearsals at Mem Church. Now Alvin is a musical director for Tony-award winning Broadway musicals; what a joy to say I knew him when. Thanks, too, to Dan Cristofaro-Gardiner, professor of mathematics and Von Neumann fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at University of California, Santa Cruz. He kindly let this English major into his world of math geniuses and gave me a tour of Princeton’s Institute of Advanced Study. Dan is the only person whose kindness can overcome the intimidation of theoretical math to someone who struggled in an undergraduate math course entitled “Counting People.”

  Thank you to two mentors and friends at Harvard whose words have stayed with me over the years. Ryan Taliaferro, whose support salvaged my mental health freshman year and who encouraged me to purs
ue creative writing and avoid the pitfall of going to law school as “prestigious step two.” Thank you to Bret Anthony Johnston, my former thesis advisor and creative writing director at Harvard, now the Director of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas in Austin. He is one of our greatest living writers, and I was blessed to learn from him. So many of his lessons, and jokes, have stayed with me, too many to list here (although you can find them in his incredible book, Naming the World, and Other Exercises for the Creative Writer). He gave me the best advice a young writer can receive, “Give yourself permission to take yourself seriously.” I could, because he did. Thank you, Bret, forever.

  My friends are the antidote to the solitary toil writing requires. I’d like to thank all my wonderful friends who supported me during this long road. They always countered my cyclical anxiety with refreshed encouragement, patched me up after any disappointment with bitter defensiveness on my behalf, and received each incremental update as though it were cause for celebration. Special thanks to those friends I leaned on the most: my best friend Rebecca Harrington, a brilliant author in her own right and the smartest, gentlest reader and most enthusiastic brainstormer a gal could ask for; Ryder Kessler, my valiant defender and consigliere; my comrades-in-Arts, Megan Amram, Janie Stolar, and Briana Hunter; in books, Siena Koncsol and Lucy Carson; Catherine Vaughan, my expert in perfect pitch and you should see her with a breakup text; my other busy and accomplished friends who moonlight as my therapists, Courtney Yip, Lauren Donahoe, Carolyn Auwaerter, Becky Singer, and Christina Zervanos, and finally my should-be sister, Katy Keating, who manages to hold me up from across an ocean.

  It may seem silly to thank them here, but animals have been a part of my support system for my entire life, so I would like to acknowledge my dog, Pip, and my cat, Mimi. Thank you, Pip, for being a constant source of joy, love, and perspective, as well as the bedrock to my happiness. Thank you, Mimi, for reminding me to take breaks by blocking my view of the computer screen, insisting I move the keyboard to make room for her on my lap, and biting my hands if I typed instead of petted. And in memory of Ruby the Wonder Corgi, who frequently visited me at Harvard when I was at my most stressed and reminded me that the only way to survive a Boston winter is with aggressive optimism and a low center of gravity. May the sound of her nails scampering up the steps to my dorm room haunt the entryways of Lowell, Old Quincy, and Kirkland forever.

  Thank you to my family. Laura Leonard, who has loved and supported me like family for many years, and who is my most trusted reader and sounding board. Thank you to my godmother, Franca, for radiating love and acceptance for me and my every endeavor. I’d like to remember my beloved grandmother, Mother Mary to our readers, Muggy to me, whose voice and powers are always with me. Thanks to my stepsister, a visual artist, for her legwork convincing my dad that we were totally right to pursue creative careers while secretly commiserating with me over our life choices via text. Thank you to my father for being patient all those years I was too shy to let him read this book, and then, when I finally did, for being so enthusiastic that he campaigned against edits.

  I don’t know how to begin to thank my mother. Everything I know, I learned by her example. Growing up, I watched her build her career brick by brick, and yet she always made me feel like the most important person in the room. Co-authoring our nonfiction book series allowed me to learn how to be an author alongside the best. But as much as I admire her as a writer, I want to thank my mother for always staying my mom. She’s my cheerleader, my fiercest defender, and my biggest fan. She’s my first call when something really good or really bad happens. Her greatest lessons had nothing to do with writing. She taught me how to love in straight lines, and I always feel her love, unconditional and uncomplicated. As I wrote in this novel, you only need one person. Mom, you are my one.

  Finally, I’d like to thank the readers who followed me from the nonfiction series I wrote with my mother and the “Chick Wit” column we still share in The Philadelphia Inquirer. As a memoirist, I’ve had the unique experience of sharing some of my most personal stories from my real life and then getting support from readers that feel like friends. I often wrote about pursuing the dream of writing this novel, and our wonderful readers encouraged me every step of the way. You asked me about the novel at every signing and on social media, so that whenever self-doubt threatened to get the best of me, I had a warm reminder that people I cared about were waiting to read it. Thank you for your support, patience, and faith in me. I hope this was worth the wait.

  I especially want to thank those readers who shared their personal experiences with losing a friend or family member to suicide. Each one of your stories touched me, and I held your love and your loss close to my heart while I wrote this story. Thank you for trusting me with your grief. I hope these pages did justice to your generosity. I cherish the connection a book can create between strangers. If you’ve read this far, you aren’t a stranger anymore.

  About the Author

  Francesca Serritella is the New York Times bestselling author of a nine-book series of essay collections co-written with her mother, the bestselling author Lisa Scottoline, and based on “Chick Wit,” their Sunday column in The Philadelphia Inquirer. She graduated cum laude from Harvard University, where she won multiple awards for her fiction, including the Thomas T. Hoopes Prize. Ghosts of Harvard is her first novel.

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