Elm Creek Quilts [04] The Runaway Quilt

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  I yearned to discuss the matter with Jonathan, for I knew he would understand my outrage. Instead I confided in Dorothea, whose compassion for all sorts, even her enemies, left me unsatisfied. Rather than joining me in my denunciation of Mrs. Engle, she urged me to leave the matter to God, to pray that Mrs. Engle would see the light one day, and to ask the Lord to protect the fugitive woman, wherever she was.

  I could do the latter, but regarding Mrs. Engle, I was unforgiving and unrepentant. “I simply cannot abide such handbills littering our main streets.”

  “Nor can I,” said Dorothea, “but I fear we will soon grow accustomed to it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Many routes north through Pennsylvania are obstructed by the Appalachians. The slave catchers know there are only so many passes through the mountains, and they watch them carefully. Gaps to the east and west of us are so well known to the slave catchers that the slaves have been forced to discover other, more hazardous mountain passes. One that still remains little known lies directly south of Creek’s Crossing.”

  This knowledge gave me a thrill of apprehension. “This pass is becoming better known, I think, if slave owners know to post handbills here.”

  “I fear you are correct.” Dorothea set down her sewing and gazed out the window. “This woman has avoided capture for several weeks. It is possible she may reach Canada soon, if she is not there already. We must pray for fair weather.”

  But I had followed her gaze out the window, and saw as she did that a dark cloud loomed in the southwest, which meant we would have snow before nightfall.

  I hurried home, arriving only minutes before the first flakes fell. As the blizzard raged for two days and nights, my thoughts went often to the Negress of the handbill, and I wondered what would have compelled her to flee captivity in winter that could not be endured until spring. Then I recalled the horrors I had read of in Jonathan’s books and heard of from Dorothea’s speakers, and I believed I understood, as well as anyone who had never been a slave could.

  At last the storms ended, and suddenly the weather grew as temperate as spring; the January Thaw was upon us. It was a peculiar quirk of the climate in the region that for a few days each January, we enjoyed a brief respite from cold temperatures and snow until winter resumed in full force. Energized by the precious sunshine, Anneke and I flung open the windows and decided to accomplish what spring cleaning we could in the time available. While Anneke scrubbed the floors and beat our few rugs, I washed our quilts and hung them out to dry as Anneke had taught me: colors in the shade, and whites in the sunlight.

  Since the days were not any longer despite this prelude to spring, twilight had descended by suppertime. Hans, Anneke, and I made merry over our supper, our spirits greatly elevated by the day’s fair weather. We laughed and talked so loudly that when the knock came at our door, we could not be certain our unexpected guest had not been trying to get our attention for some time.

  Anneke excused herself to answer the door, and when she returned, she looked pale and strange. “It’s a woman,” said she. “I don’t know what she wants. I did not understand her English.”

  “Why did she stay outside?” ask Hans.

  Anneke glanced over her shoulder and wrung her hands. “I believe . . . I think she may be a Negress.”

  Wondering which of our neighbors she had left standing on the doorstep, I said, a trifle sharply, “Why didn’t you invite her in?”

  Distractedly, Anneke brushed her right cheek with the back of her fingers. “She has a burn, like a flatiron.”

  Hans and I had time to exchange a quick glance before we bolted to our feet and hurried to the door. Just outside, where shadows yet hid her, stood a woman. In the poor light I might have thought her a white woman if not for her clothing, which was fashioned of coarse and soiled cloth, and the haunted look in her eye, which, when our gaze met, struck me with nearly physical force. Her shoulders slumped from exhaustion, and although she stood warily as if prepared to run, there was a determined set to her jaw that convinced me she could just as readily hold her ground if she must.

  And upon her cheek blazed the mark of a flatiron, red and blistered and sore. It sickened me to look upon it.

  Somehow I knew the woman had expected a much different reception from us. Just as she shifted her weight to hurry away, I called out, “Wait. Come in. You’re safe here.”

  She seemed to weigh my words for a moment before she nodded and entered.

  I closed the door firmly behind her, my heart pounding. “Draw the curtains,” said I, but Hans had already begun to do so. I directed the woman to a chair beside the fire and hurried off to fetch a dressing for her injured cheek.

  Anneke trailed after me. “We should send her on her way.”

  “We will. As soon as she is rested and fed, and I have tended to her burn, we will help her determine the best route north.”

  Anneke seized my arm. “I mean we must send her on her way now.”

  “Hungry and tired, and with no proper guidance north?” I brushed off Anneke’s hands and snatched up clean linen for bandages. “What if she wandered to the Engles’ farm and sought help there?”

  “They would turn her over to the authorities.”

  “Precisely. What do you think would become of her then?”

  Anneke looked as if the thought sickened her, but then she shook her head. “I don’t like it, but it’s the law. If we don’t send her away, we could be discovered and prosecuted.”

  “No one saw her arrive.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I was not, but I would not admit it. “Of course. No one can see the house from the main road because of the forest, and if a pursuer had followed her onto our property, he surely would have come to the door by now.”

  My voice sounded glib, but my knees were shaking with fright as I hurried back to the fireside. I heated water and tended to the woman’s burn rapidly, without speaking, hardly aware of the movements my hands made. The burn was badly infected, and her skin radiated fever. Anneke brought her something to eat, and the woman wolfed down bread and cheese and meat without pausing to speak or barely to breathe.

  Before she finished, Hans left the house, rifle in hand, to see if anyone had followed her. None of us women spoke; with my brother gone, the house felt cloaked in a fearful silence. I heated more water so the woman could wash and fetched her some of my own clothing to wear, the sturdiest I had, and the warmest. She was considerably shorter than I, but still a good deal taller than Anneke, so my things would have to do.

  She thanked me as I offered her my things and set her empty plate aside. I averted my gaze as she tended to her toilet, but not quickly enough to avoid seeing the whiplash scars crisscrossing her back. I swallowed hard and could not look upon them again, but Anneke stared in horrified fascination.

  “You’re the slave,” she accused. “The one who escaped from Josiah Chester in Virginia.”

  The woman gave her a hard look. “This here’s Pennsylvania,” said she, pulling my dress over her head, slowly, as if her every muscle ached. “I ain’t nobody’s slave now.”

  “This is Pennsylvania, but you’re not safe here,” said I. “You need to continue north to Canada.”

  “I know.” She said it matter-of-factly, but something in her words conveyed an exhaustion so complete I could have wept for her, thinking how much farther she would have to travel.

  I said, “You don’t need to leave until you’re rested.”

  “I go tomorrow, at nightfall,” said she, thanking me with a nod. “But where I go from here? Where the next station?”

  I stared at her, uncomprehending. “Station?”

  She stared back at me, and gradually I saw something in her eyes transform from relief to confusion to fear. She glanced at Anneke, then back to me. “Lord help me,” she whispered. She struggled to her feet and tried to run, but she collapsed halfway to the door.

  In a moment I was kneeling by her side, attempting
to succor her, but she fought me off. “Calm yourself,” said I, bewildered and frightened by her sudden desperation. “We want to help.”

  If she heard me, she gave no sign. “But I saw it,” said she, over and over, nearly delirious. “I saw it.”

  I tried to soothe her, to assure her she was safe, but her outburst had drained the last of her strength, and she slipped into unconsciousness.

  “We must get her to bed,” said I, and Anneke rushed to assist me, without a word of protest.

  The infection within her burned cheek had leached its poison into the woman’s blood, and none of us thought she would survive until morning. I thought of Mr. Wilbur, slowly dying as Jonathan fought to preserve his life. I longed for Jonathan’s skill, I longed for his presence, but we could not send for him, lest we force him to shoulder our own defiance of the law.

  For two nights and a day the woman lay more asleep than awake in the bed we made up for her in Anneke’s sewing room, murmuring and sometimes crying out, tormented by fever. I remained at the bedside, doing the little I could to see her through each hour, terrified that she would die before my eyes. Anneke’s earlier objections were forgotten as she changed the woman’s bed linens, soaked with perspiration, and tended to me as well, helping me keep up my strength. And although Hans had found no sign of pursuers, we expected the slave catchers to arrive at any moment.

  Then, at last, on the second day, the woman’s fever broke. She roused herself enough to drink a cup of broth, then slipped into restful sleep.

  With the immediate threat of her illness now diminishing, other worries began to plague me. We would have to find some means of concealing the woman until she could continue her journey north. She had seemed to expect us to know where she could next find respite along the way, so we must find such a place. How, I did not know. And how Anneke, who wore her emotions plain upon her face, would avoid raising Mrs. Engle’s suspicions in the days to come, I could not imagine.

  I sat at the woman’s bedside as she slept, brooding, wishing that she had approached some other farm, and despising myself for such thoughts. I had learned something about myself in the short span of time since her arrival, something I did not like: I was a staunch enough Abolitionist when slaves were mere abstractions, far removed from my own hearth and home, but weak-willed indeed when a runaway had become a threat to my own safety and freedom and comfort.

  I knew well that this threat would grow with every day she remained under our roof, and those days would number longer than I had anticipated when I had offered her shelter for the night. I had not yet told Hans or Anneke, but in the course of caring for her, I had discovered that she was afflicted with more than exhaustion and fever.

  Although my dress hung loose upon her shoulders and limbs, it fit snug around the midsection. The fugitive slave was with child and, as best I could estimate, was nearly as far along as Anneke.

  She would not be fit to travel for months, and knowing that, I could not bring myself to send her away—

  The line ended abruptly, followed by one crossed out so heavily that whatever Gerda had originally written was almost completely obscured. Sylvia strained her eyes, trying to make out the words, but all she could perceive were a few letters, and these were a scrawl compared to the elegant precision she had come to expect from Gerda’s writing.

  It was the only cross-out in the book, which made Sylvia all the more determined to know what it said.

  She hurried to her bedroom for her magnifying glass, but when it failed to help her, she went in search of Sarah. She found her at the library computer, working on the business’s accounts. After Sylvia explained the problem, Sarah offered to examine the line herself.

  “I can’t bear not knowing what she wrote,” said Sylvia as Sarah held the book up to the bright lamp on the desk. “When I think of the other things she did not cross out—some of them not very pleasant—I can’t imagine what could have been so terrible that she had to obliterate it. No, I can imagine, and that’s worse. What if she said, ‘I could not bring myself to send her away, but I did anyway’? or, ‘So Hans did it for me’?”

  Sarah smiled, her eyes fixed on the book. “I doubt that’s what it says.”

  “Well, we don’t know, do we?” said Sylvia grumpily. “Can you make out anything?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Try this.” Sylvia handed her the magnifying glass. “I think perhaps this last bit refers to Gerda’s mixed feelings. Could that say, ‘heart was torn’? Do you think that means she’s going to send the woman away?” She could not bear it if it was true.

  “Where do you see ‘torn’?”

  “Here.” Sylvia pointed.

  “That looks too wide to be a ‘t.’ I thought it was a capital letter.”

  “Isn’t that the end of the previous word?”

  “It could be . . .” Sarah turned the page and held it up to the light, looking at the obscured line from the back. “No, there’s a space before the letter, not after. You can see the ink is lighter there, as if she didn’t have to mark out anything.” She returned to the previous page. “And I think this says ‘born,’ not ‘torn.’ You know the context; would that make sense?”

  “Both Anneke and the slave woman were expecting.”

  “Maybe the line says, ‘until her child was born.’”

  Sylvia took the memoir and studied the line. She perceived no more than she had before, but Sarah’s interpretation did seem to match the peaks and dips of the pen, if not perfectly. “Or perhaps instead of ‘her child,’ she wrote the child’s name.”

  “That would make sense.”

  “Except for one small matter: Why would Gerda feel compelled to blot out such an innocent remark?”

  Sarah frowned, uncertain. “Maybe because at that time, she didn’t know what the baby’s name was going to be. She knew when she wrote the line, of course, in 1895, but not at that point in the memoir, months before the baby was born. Maybe she crossed it out to avoid confusing the chronological order.”

  Sylvia shook her head. “That doesn’t follow. In other parts of the memoir she leaps forward in time. We already know Jonathan and Charlotte are going to have four children, for example. If divulging future information doesn’t bother Gerda elsewhere, why should it here?”

  She could tell from Sarah’s expression that her young friend could not think of a logical explanation, either.

  9

  February through March 1859—

  in which Elm Creek Farm becomes a station

  By the time our guest had recovered enough to sit up in bed and talk, the January Thaw had passed, usurped by the brooding skies and bitter cold of February.

  “How long I been here?” was her first question to me, as her eyes darted around the room, unnaturally darkened by the storm outside.

  “Six days.”

  She pushed back the bedclothes. “I best be going.”

  “You can’t leave now.” I drew the quilt over her again. “You’re not strong enough, and there’s a storm.”

  “Slave catchers come after me if I don’t keep on.”

  “The storm will slow them. But if anyone does come, we’re arranging a hiding place. You’ll be safer there than outside.”

  To my relief, she accepted this and sank back into bed again. I offered her a glass of water, which she drank thirstily, her dark eyes fixed on the window. “The last storm was worse than this one,” said she. “I got lost in it, couldn’t find the path. Don’t know what I would’ve done if I hadn’t seen the signal.”

  I nodded as if I understood, wary of alarming her as I had that first night. “Was it easy to find?”

  “ ’Course. Right there on the clothesline like they told me at the last place. Lady there drew the Underground Railroad picture in the dirt, showed me how the pieces go. I make quilts on the plantation, but never seen that pattern before. Missus likes fancy work.” She glanced at the quilt covering her—my own humble first attempt at quilt making—and I could s
ee she was trying not to smile. “This quilt here, now, this called Shoo-Fly. It plenty warm, but missus think herself too good for it.”

  “No one would ever mistake any of my quilts for fancywork,” said I, dryly. “It keeps off the chill, and that’s about all.”

  “That’s plenty. Even missus be mighty grateful for it if she ever be cold as I was.”

  It was the highest compliment anyone but Dorothea had ever given my handiwork, and despite my distaste for needlework, including my own, especially this quilt with its humility block, I was pleased. “My name is Gerda,” I told her. “Gerda Bergstrom.”

  Her name was Joanna, and as I tended to her that day, I pieced together how chance and misunderstanding had brought her to our door. After leaving her last place of refuge, she had become lost in the snowstorm that had struck the day after I discovered the handbill on Mrs. Engle’s store. When the January Thaw brought fair weather, she had tried in vain to resume her previous course and, in her wanderings, encountered Elm Creek. She followed it, knowing she could cross the waters if need be to throw pursuing dogs off her scent, until it led her to an abandoned cabin near a barn. Too fatigued to go on, she slept the rest of the night and all the next day. When she rose at sunset, determined to continue her journey despite her increasing sickness, she spied a house on the other side of the creek. Near it was a clothesline, upon which hung several quilts, including one pieced in the Underground Railroad pattern—the signal her previous benefactors had told her would indicate the next station on her journey north.

  I hid my astonishment as best I could and quickly deduced the rest: The signal Joanna referred to was the quilt Anneke had made of squares and triangles arranged in vertical stripes. In copying Dorothea’s design, Anneke had inadvertently created an echo of the message. Now I understood why Dorothea had not responded when Anneke had asked her the name of the pattern—and I also discovered Joanna’s intended destination.