Finding Violeta absent from the sitting room, I took the stairs two at a time to our bedroom, planning to dive upon her, but she was not there. On intuition, I went to the window of the room in which I’d previously slept. I discovered her sitting in her garden, swathed in a black Portuguese mantilla. In her hands was the tabletop Daniel had carved for her just before his death. She was sobbing.
I ran down to her, but nothing I could say or do would stop her tears.
“Please tell me what’s wrong — is it Daniel? I often think of him too, you know.”
Looking away from me, speaking in Portuguese, she said, “I do not love you, John. Not as you would wish. Not like I loved Daniel.” She reached a trembling hand to her mouth. “I never shall, you see, so we must never have a child.”
“Then why … why did you come to me?”
“It was the only way to rid us both of the angry resentment that had developed between us. It was the only way to help you.” Gazing up at me with eyes full of sorrow, she said, “I warned you that you ought not to fall in love with me. I did everything I could to show you that.”
I understood then that she had kept so much distance between us because she did indeed wish to save me from herself. In an odd way, she had been more generous through our weeks of disappointment than she had been in sharing her bed with me. There had been no true complications between us from her point of view; she had simply never loved me.
I stood up, sensing my life spinning slowly to a stop. But I was not angry or even sad. Though it was a paradox, I felt both hollow and very heavy. I felt that I was composed of all the thoughts I’d had of her over the last twenty years — all my prayers and wishes. I was very tired — of myself most of all.
“You did indeed warn me,” I told her in a voice of stone, unwilling to break down. “I genuinely thank you for that. And for trying to help. I see now what a dilemma I put you in.”
I pressed my dry lips to her cold cheek and glided up the stairs as a specter. From my room, I watched her sitting in her garden for more than an hour. Then she went inside, leaving the tabletop on her bench. Staring at it through that forest of dark weeds, imagining my face as Daniel had carved it, I saw how I’d never wanted to understand the plain truth of our relationship. Even as a lass she had told me that I could hope for nothing more than friendship.
When she returned to her garden, it was with a long knife. My heartbeat jumped and my eyesight dimmed; I was sure she was about to take her own life.
When I reached her, she was defacing the portrait Daniel had carved of her, slashing at it with a violence so deep that I stepped back without knowing it, nearly toppling. I would have liked to still her hand, but I knew by now that she did not want or need my protection.
*
The next day, I did without breakfast and took a lonely walk along the Hudson River, thinking of the child we’d never have. I met Morri after school and explained solemnly what had taken place between Violeta and myself. I told her I intended to spend a weekend outside of the city so that I might think out my future — and that of my daughters.
*
Morri and I took a long boat ride on Saturday morning to the colonial town of Roslyn, at the bottom of a slender inlet on the northern shore of Long Island. On our first afternoon there we took a walk through the woods, up a rather steep hill and far into a desolate distance of leafless trees. It was as cold as I’d ever known it, and I felt as though I were walking through an old landscape that had frozen inside me. I expected to see Violeta’s body on the ground, as she had been after her uncle’s attack.
Morri walked faster than I and would often wait for me to catch up. It pleased me the way she looked back for me.
On Monday, sometime before dawn, the snow began to fall. It was the first snow that Morri had ever seen. Dashing outside, she promptly fell on her bottom, bruised but laughing. I sat down beside her. Tilting my head back, I watched the flakes falling, feeling their tickling chill on my cheeks. She and I lay together for a long time, letting ourselves be covered.
*
We got back to Violeta’s home early Monday evening, as Morri had the day off from school. She met us at the door with kind words and kisses, offering to make us hot coffee and rabanadas as a treat. I could not bear her generosity and rushed back out of the house. By late the next afternoon, having passed the night in a decrepit boardinghouse overlooking the Hudson, I’d found a small three-bedroom house in Greenwich Village that I could begin leasing in a week. It was old and plain, and the garden was nothing but frozen mud and filth, but its walls were sound enough to the taps of my fist and it was not expensive.
When I informed Violeta of my intentions, she gave me an encouraging smile and said, “I ask you only that you keep your studio here. So that we might remain friends. Do me that one favor, John.”
For the first time in my life I said no to her. A single word had never come harder to me.
*
I wrote immediately to Mother to tell her of my new home, and I changed the address in my newspaper appeals. On my last night at Violeta’s house, she slipped out to her garden before dawn. Gazing up at the stars, contoured by moonlight, she seemed again that nymph of the night I’d previously imagined. When she spotted me, I stepped back into the shadows like a criminal. She began tossing a ball up in the air. It was Fanny’s. In my mind, I could see my beloved dog jumping for it and barking. I stumbled back to bed. A little while later, I heard the sound of pebbles being tossed at my window. I covered my head with my pillow. When finally I removed it some minutes later, she was still tossing her stones. She continued until sunrise, but I dared not go to her.
*
One morning in mid-January there came a thunderous pounding at the door of our new home on Waverly Place. Running to answer it, I found my mother raising her hands to her mouth, already in tears. Behind her were Esther and Graça. At least a score of stuffed bags were being unloaded from three large carriages.
Our reunion was somewhat hysterical, as they always are in my family. It was rather like a mad Italian opera played at too fast a tempo, with four characters of wildly different temperaments searching for an equilibrium lost somewhere between tears and laughter. I kissed my children all over and took turns holding them.
The girls were wearing the filigree earrings I’d purchased in Alexandria and told me with pride that they hadn’t taken them off in weeks and had no intention of doing so for many more. On touring our house, I told them that they would have to share a bedroom, but they claimed that it was better that way, since they always slept more soundly when together at night. Like Morri, Mama had her own room and pronounced it perfectly charming, though it contained not a single piece of furniture or even a rug. Conditions were obviously very cramped and modest, and despite their smiles I suspected that they found it depressing after so long a journey. When I showed them how I’d encamped in what had been the pantry, in preparation for their arrival, I could feel my courage tiptoeing away from me.
“Just keep breathing,” Mama told me. But I could not laugh. She tapped my forehead as though to knock some sense into me. “Stop worrying, John,” she said, plainly intending it as a command. “We’ve all faced much worse than a bit of crowding and dust in our lives, even Graça and Esther.”
*
I took my children and my mother on separate walks down Broadway over the next two days, as in the light and air I could talk more freely of the loss of my arm and my experiences at River Bend. I apologized immediately to Mama for losing my arm, since I had come out of her complete and it seemed an affront to both her pain of childbirth and years of care. She hushed me up and kept saying, “You ought to have told me much sooner, you know. You needn’t always suffer alone. You’ve been doing that since you were a tiny lad, and I think it’s about time you stopped.”
I kept reassuring her that my difficulties had long passed. But she could not reconcile the image of her son in her mind with the man before her. In the early morning
, while still half-asleep, I sometimes caught her standing in my doorway, watching me with troubled eyes.
Mama has always been a creature of unexpected moods, and after this initial period of disbelief and sorrow, she turned playful with me once more. Though this in itself was a heartening relief, I knew it would take many more months for her to be able to look at me without comparing me with what I’d been.
Each of my daughters reacted differently to the loss of my arm. Graça, ever thoughtful, was given to wary silence on the subject, until I realized in a moment of revelation that she was awaiting reassurance that I was much the same man I had always been. I had forgotten my own lesson from childhood, that separation was more difficult for the young. So it was that for a fortnight I doted on her from morning till bedtime, reading to her for an hour or more each night after tucking her in. When she lost her cautious manner with me, when she could pass a day exploring the city with my mother without even remembering my existence, I knew she would be fine.
Esther decided to play nurse at this late date, and for a time I suffered with good humor her helping me down the stairs and fluffing my pillows in bed. Then it began to irritate me, and I once made her cry with my blustering. It was Mama who told me that the girl was not so different from her sister as I thought, and that she was calling for my reassurance in the way most suited to her own character. So I allowed myself to be pampered by her for several more weeks and asked only in return that she let me listen to her practice her violin. This pleased her so much that she even became my morning reveille, serenading me awake each morning with minuets and gavottes by Bach. I knew she was well when she began to snap at me occasionally without worrying that I might go away again or that another limb of mine might just drop off.
*
Relations between my family and Morri were awkward at first, as I might have expected. Her solution was to withdraw deep into the protective solitude of her upstairs bedroom when she was not teaching. One afternoon, when I dared to knock and step inside, she cried in my arms. She was sure the others all hated her. “I’m so different from them. You’ve been so kind, but it’s a mistake my being here.”
Mama entered the room then, having heard the commotion, and knelt by Morri, who sat up in alarm. She held the girl’s shoulders. “Morri, now listen to me. Your papa was the truest friend I ever had. He saved John’s life, as you may know, and he therefore saved mine.” She dabbed at the girl’s tears with her handkerchief. “At that time I made a pledge to him — that I’d always treat him as though we were kin. So it was not John’s adoption of you that brought you into our family.” She kissed each of her hands and made them into fists. “You, my child” — she smiled — “were part of my family before you were even born!”
They looked into each other’s eyes for a long time. Then Mama slapped her thigh playfully and said, “Now, come with me into the kitchen. We can get to know each other while we prepare supper.”
That evening saved the day. The girls took their cue from their grandmother and, over supper, began to think of Morri as an older playmate. Indeed, they vied shamelessly for her attention that very night, Esther with her violin and Graça with her maps and almanacs. Their first major decision as a threesome was reached the next morning: As soon as they were a bit older, they would voyage to Scotland, Italy, India, and China. “On the way back, we’ll visit Africa, to see where your father comes from,” Graça told Morri with great seriousness.
They were seated on our small sofa, and I squeezed down with them, sitting Esther on my lap. “Well, if you go by sea, do not count on me coming along,” I said, sighing mightily.
Mama laughed till she cried. On regaining her breath, she said, “John, you never understand, do you? The three of them have absolutely no intention of inviting you or me along.”
*
One evening shortly after their arrival, I felt strong enough to explain to Mama what had taken place between Violeta and myself. She went to see her once or twice a week after that, and on occasion brought Esther and Graça along. The children came to be very fond of her and often talked to me of their games together. Mama confirmed that she was gentle and doting with them. I remembered how much she had cherished the children in Newcastle whom she’d raised, and she was plainly finding joy again with my two girls. I begrudged her this only at my worst moments.
When my mother and my children would walk to Violeta’s house, it began to seem to me as though they were visiting a ghost. She became not so very different from Daniel in my mind. It was reassuring in a way, since I suspected that I might soon begin to remember her only with fondness.
And so it was that Mama, Esther, Graça, Morri, and I began our life in New York, awaiting word of Midnight.
John Stewart, April the Fourth, 1824
LVIII
They Embraced the Knowledge of What Was Coming Next
Standing on the street and watching those carriages roll off with near half the people I had ever known made me feel all broken inside. Only Randolph and his children, Mimi and Lawrence, stayed behind on Manhattan Island. They became my only links to River Bend, which wasn’t much good since I’d never been right close to Randolph.
I stayed put in New York because I knew from the moment I reached here that it was the place for me.
Here, everybody runs around trading and building. New York is things exchanging hands. It’s movement. And I like being part of it. Not that I didn’t miss the slow routine of River Bend. We all did, I’d reckon. Though none of us would ever just come out and say that to any white person except maybe John, because they’d take it the wrong way and use it against us. Even the ones up here who weren’t much fond of slavery didn’t seem to think we were good for anything except carrying boxes and cleaning chimneys. I never thought I’d see a person in the North nearly so miserable as the field slaves were at River Bend, but watching the Negro sweeps in their filthy rags, I knew better.
The secret truth was that I missed following Lily around the kitchen and licking her spoons. I missed Crow telling me in that tricky voice of his what silliness he’d overheard Master Edward say. I even missed sitting on the piazza after everyone was asleep and wondering when the hell I was going to get myself out beyond that dark horizon of pine.
I guess because of living in my mind somewhere between River Bend and New York, I stopped knowing who I was for a while. I wanted to talk to John about that just after we got here, and I even came close once or twice, but he was stuck deep down in the sands of his own misfortune and I wasn’t about to add to his worries. Violeta, the woman he loved, struck me at first as someone too secretive for anyone’s good. I sensed a big slice of anger in her too, like she might just be concealing guns in her room. You never saw anyone do as much as her, and act so kind, and help in a hundred different ways, all without ever letting you see what she was feeling. She was a giant question mark all wrapped up in a high-brimmed bonnet. But she couldn’t hide from me that she feared John wanting her so much. Whether this had to do with him having only one arm, I couldn’t tell.
It was during this period that I started writing down things about my life at River Bend and how we all got to New York. Later, John read some of it and told me to keep on going, that I had a gift for telling my story. When we spoke like that, just the two of us, I began to see a whole lot of my father in him — in little things he did and said, like the way he sometimes sat on his haunches or said things were very, very this or that, or the way he’d write an A with a tail attached or a B with paws. It was like we were both living out what my papa had left behind.
*
In early November, maybe a week before most of the other River Bend folks left New York for their farms, I was strolling on Church Street when I saw a group of Negro children funneling out the door to one of those thin brick buildings they have up here, all of them shrieking like steam. While I was watching and smiling, out stepped a young black man smoking a pipe. That reminded me of my papa, so I guess I was staring, and he
said to me, “What you looking at, girlie?”
I wasn’t too happy with that girlie, so I corrected his grammar: “What are you looking at.”
“What’s that you’re saying?”
He seemed to be another one of those puffed-up Northern Negroes we’d met, who thought we were all just wormheads — and who claimed not to understand our Southern accents.
I started to walk on. “You know how to read and write, young lady?” he called after me.
I turned and sized him up. He was not half bad-looking if you squinted.
“If I know how, what’s it to you?”
He laughed at that and said, “Where are you from?”
“The moon.” Imitating the nasal way the blacks around here speak, I said, “That’s why I got my peculiar pronunciation, don’t you know.”
“What’s your name?” When I told him, he said, “Well, Morri, how’d you like to put your reading and writing to good use at teaching?”
“I’ve never taught anyone anything.”
“Good,” he said, laughing. “Then you won’t have to unlearn any bad habits.”
“What would I teach?”
“Reading and writing. This is a schoolhouse. Allow me to introduce myself — I’m the headmaster, William Arthur.”
He came down the stairs to me and shook my hand.
“You’re the headmaster? Why … why, you can’t be more than thirty years old!”
“I’m twenty-seven. I never knew there was any age requirement, you see. If there is, you had better tell me about it, since this is my third year.”
“Will you pay me?”
“A regular wage every month. Can you start later this week?”
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