Trouble the Water_A Novel

by Jacqueline Friedland

  Now please, he has been across the ocean twice in pursuit of you. So many months lost, all because I thought I’d outsmarted the charity girl from wherever-it-is. How foolish I feel now, the way I mauled him. So please, do me the favor of forgiving the man and return to Charleston, if for no other reason than reducing my shame at the debacle I set in motion. We ladies must stick together, isn’t that so? Hurry up, now.

  Sincerely,

  Miss Cora Rae Cunningham

  Charleston, South Carolina

  July 1846

  MISS PARSONS HAD INSISTED THAT ABBY FIND A chaperone before traveling to town, and Ms. Sharp, the watercolor instructor, was somehow chosen as her companion. Injected with a biting sense of urgency after reading Cora Rae’s letter, Abby cared little about the aggravation of Miss Sharp’s finicky presence, so long as she could see Douglas forthwith. She was close to erupting with agitation at the endless delays to her current purpose.

  Almost a full day had elapsed after his visit to Hadley before Douglas sent notice of his address to Miss Parsons, all the while Abby nearly boiling over with impatience. When word finally arrived by courier during the following evening’s supper, Abby pushed her chair back from the table only to feel Miss Parsons’s firm hand on her shoulder. Decent women apparently could not go calling after supper, no matter how great their rush. So she passed a second night, suffering through her impatience. Abby’s schedule for teaching the next day was such that she hadn’t been able to find a break for the excursion until the late afternoon.

  All the while, she had frothed in her own chagrin, smoldering with shame for her grand overreaction to the scene with Cora Rae. How much trouble she’d put everyone to, how much commotion and uproar simply because she assumed always the lowest of people. She cringed again when she thought of the worry she’d caused her parents, astounded still that Douglas traveled to Wigan searching for her. She patted her pocket for the letter to her family, a stop at the post being her next order of business.

  As they stepped into the entrance hall, Miss Sharp looked appreciatively at the grand rooms flanking both sides of the vestibule and remarked on her pleasure that Abby’s friend had chosen a most respectable boarding house. To their left was a dimly lit lounge filled with inviting furniture, bulging davenports, and gracious wing chairs, quiet spaces for weary travelers. The room to the right resembled a tavern, occupied by compact dining tables and a bar at the far end. As they stood awkwardly in the vestibule, Abby first surveyed the lounge area, where she saw two groups of men engaged in quiet conversation, a young couple huddled over a shared newspaper, and a lone elderly man struggling against sleep.

  Miss Sharp cleared her throat. “Perhaps we should seek assistance,” she prodded, pointing toward an empty desk at the back of the entryway, a bell resting atop its polished surface.

  Abby stepped toward the bell but paused to survey the dining area first. The room was almost empty, save for one young man cracking walnuts at the back table.

  “May I help you ladies?”

  Pulling her gaze from the man with the walnuts, Abby saw a serving man behind the bar.

  “Do not call back across the room, mind,” Miss Sharp whispered, as she patted Abby’s elbow to propel her forward, toward the slender barkeep, who was wiping the counter with a rag.

  “I’ve come to call on one of your guests, if you please,” Abby called as she hurried across the room. Reaching the bar, she added, “A Mr. Douglas Elling, from South Carolina. I believe he arrived two nights ago.”

  The willowy man paused his rhythmic wiping.

  “Sure, yes, Mr. Elling was one of our guests, but I’m sorry, he left this morning.”

  “He’s left?” Her words dissolved into a gasping breath.

  She had missed her chance. Douglas must finally have realized she was too much trouble, the clamor of her, too much irritation. He had given up on her. She could barely think for the sudden pounding in her chest. Miss Sharp appeared beside her, pulling out one of the leather stools that had been tucked underneath the bar.

  “Abigail, sit,” she commanded.

  Abby absently climbed onto the seat, looking back toward the barkeep, “Did he say where he was going? Home, I presume.” She put her hand to her chest, fingering the sleek charm around her neck as her mind raced. Perhaps he’d been more interested in apologizing than gaining her back. Or she had taken too long to come to the inn. And now he had gone, abandoned her at last.

  The bartender filled a glass with water from a pitcher and slid it across the counter toward her. “It wasn’t me who served his breakfast this morning, but my wife, let me get her.”

  He walked to the end of the bar and pushed open a swinging door.

  “Tilly!” he shouted, his voice suddenly loud and abrasive. “Tilly, come and help a guest,” he called into the recess before letting the door swing closed again.

  “She’ll be but a minute,” he said, attempting a consoling smile before turning to stack glasses on a shelf against the back wall.

  Abby tried to think if she should follow him to Charleston. But no, his departure was a clear message that he’d had enough of her negligence and madness, her reckless lunacy. So here it was that she had lost him yet again. She put her hand around the water glass, mindful not to squeeze so tightly that the glass might shatter and match her insides.

  A large woman emerged in a flurry from the kitchen, her russet hair kept up in a bonnet, flour decorating her worn apron.

  “What is it, Henry, I’m in the middle of six fresh loaves for dinner,” she griped at her husband before noticing Abby and Miss Sharp and pasting a smile on her face.

  “I’m sorry, Misses. I didn’t realize guests had sat,” she looked back at her husband, widening her eyes in apparent annoyance, as though he hadn’t mentioned it.

  Henry the barkeep seemed nonplussed, as he spoke kindly to his rotund wife. “These ladies were inquiring where Mr. Elling went after he closed his account this morning. I thought you might be able to help.”

  “Settled his account?” She looked toward her husband like he was a grand idiot. “He did no such thing. Said he had a man to meet in Pittsfield but would be returning before supper.” She turned back toward Abby to say more, but then her attention was diverted toward the entryway. “Isn’t that him walking in now?”

  Abby spun so quickly in her stool she nearly toppled off. They were right, there was Douglas, striding through the front door with a satchel slung over his arm. He hadn’t left town, hadn’t discarded her, not yet. She was nearly paralyzed from relief. As he closed the door behind himself, he turned, walking toward the stairs, and then glanced in their direction. When he saw Abby, he froze. As realization seemed to take hold of his features, he was suddenly bounding toward her, and she was climbing off her stool, standing before him, despite the trembling in her knees.

  The corners of his mouth had turned up just enough for her to hope that he was pleased to see her. He looked her over quickly from bottom to top as he’d done two days before at Hadley, his eyes now lingering for a moment on the necklace she was wearing. When their eyes met again, his smile had grown wider, and she knew that everything was right, that she was right to come here, right to hope, right to begin again.

  “You read the letter,” he spoke quietly as he took her hand. He laced his fingers through hers, and Abby had the sensation of something finally fitting properly into place.

  EPILOGUE

  NIAGARA, NEW YORK

  1853

  I watch my two boys hollering and laughing as they kick the can across the yard, pebbles inside making a racket as the toy flies in the air. One boy is so dark he could be the stroke of midnight itself, and the other is nearly light enough to pass. They were born almost as soon as I reached New York, a month before I expected their arrival. One came racing out right after the other, both in such a hurry to touch down on free soil.

  When we moored at New York Harbor, the ship’s captain whispered that I was to stay put in my hid
ing place. During those weeks of travel, the captain had been an ally, tending to my upkeep and making certain he was the only sailor who knew I was aboard. Still, I was fretting inside the wardrobe, worrying he wouldn’t come back, questioning if this journey had been my greatest mistake. The captain returned for me just as he’d promised, after the pier had gone quiet, and he handed me a new dress, thick brown wool for wintertime, and a paper to keep in the pocket. He told me I was now Sally Mae Lyons. If anyone stopped me, I was to say I was searching for domestic work after the widow who employed me passed. I ain’t never had my own surname before, but the paper in my pocket said that my circumstances were changing.

  The pains began just after we left the docks, lighting me up as I walked behind the captain in the cold night. It felt like my body was taking its revenge on me, twisting my insides and squeezing. Maybe if I hadn’t stuffed myself into the wardrobe all those weeks at sea, laying stiff and contorted across the bottom day after day, maybe I would have labored easier. But we had luck with us even through the pain, my babies and me. The house where we were meant to rest wasn’t far, and there was a white lady waiting for us there with wrinkled skin and kind hands. She put away her surprise at my condition and just took up her task like she was waiting for it. She brought Jeremiah into the world by the light of one candle in her cellar and then held my hand tight when she told me there was still work to do. Next came Ezekiel, white as the cotton I had run from, screaming at double the volume of his older brother, howling out a battle cry, making sure God knew he had arrived, knew that he was free.

  Thelma told me before I left that traveling would be work, and that’s every bit the truth, especially when you got two mewling babies and a flow of bleeding that won’t cease. We were out of doors again the next afternoon, traveling west before my milk even came in, but there was no time to waste, not if we wanted to outrun the catchers. The white lady and I, we wrapped up those wailing babies, and she helped me lift my weary body into the back of a white man’s covered wagon. We just had to keep running, running, all the time, the babies and me. By the time we reached Ulster County, I thought that all the blood had done run out of me, but it kept right on seeping, turning my gray blanket all to brown.

  The boys were wailing like banshees, and that quiet white man, he just kept looking ahead, driving the horses onward all the time. I thought about all the babies I’d seen nursing at Cherry Lane, wet nurses with the pickaninnies day after day, always one or another flimsy babe to their bosom, and I couldn’t figure what I was doing wrong. Finally, near Albany, my boys was starved enough to cooperate, affixing themselves to my breast in tandem, content like they had found the answer to everything. All the while, I was peeking out and watching the dusty road behind us, looking, looking all the time. My head was swirling with the dizziness of fear, with the weight of exhaustion.

  I was bleeding too much, but there weren’t nothing I could do, except to keep on hugging my babies, telling them over and again that they was free. I kissed each one on his downy head before I closed my eyes for the last time. Then I took my final gasp, the air rushing out and away, as if it were behind me already, forever in the past, like all the ugliness of slave life. In that last moment, I was still holding Jeremiah tight to my breast and Ezekiel asleep against my belly.

  The man driving the wagon, he had to carry my body into the forest, covering me with just shrub and twigs before getting back on the road. But that righteous white man, he swaddled up my babies and laid them back inside the carriage. He kept on with the journey and brought them boys all the way to Rochester, the city where we were supposed to have our next respite. There was a white lady and her three brothers, Quaker people, waiting in Rochester, and they knew what to do with boys like mine.

  The Society of Friends brought my boys across the lake to St. Catherines, Ontario, where an entire village awaited, teeming with refugees. The community was built by former slaves, escapees, who had crossed to Canada and would live out their lives under the sparkling banner of freedom. St. Catherines received my children, wrapped them boys up with the security of sameness, found them a nurse of their own, a home.

  The boys live now in a sturdy cabin occupied by two families of colored folk. One of the women in the house ran all the way from Georgia when she was just about seventeen, like me. She’s been living in St. Catherines long enough now that she married and has three girls of her own, but she still had room in her heart for my boys. I see her now, a stern woman, but kind too, sitting on the stoop, trimming green beans as she watches the boys run after their makeshift toy. They, my hearty, beautiful boys, can laugh as they kick that can about, glad simply to be finished with their lessons for the day. Even with this other family, my boys are still brothers, still free.

  The boys started calling that other woman “Mama” soon after they learned to talk. When I see that portly lady loving them up, making sure they keep their ears clean, that they wipe the crumbs from their chins, it brings me a joy I wouldn’t have expected. A white pastor comes to see them each month, talks to them about God and their purpose on this earth.

  I pray for my friends, for Dicky, Thelma, and Abel. I hope one day the Underground will find them, even though I know that they are too frightened, too old, too unlikely. I pray too for my boys and what they will do as men. I wonder how they will react when they come across suffering, because surely people suffer, even in Canada, even when they’re free. I like to imagine the boys will hear my voice inside their heads. I’ll be telling them go on, boys, go on and walk toward it, go on and trouble the water. Don’t you wait on God to do it for you. You got to trouble that water, trouble it until there’s ripples, until there’s waves. My sons are the Lyons brothers from St. Catherines, and I hope that mankind will hear them roar.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Trouble the Water is the result of over ten years of research, writing, imagining, and re-imagining. I would like to express my gratitude to the many people who supported me throughout this complex process and helped propel me toward the finish line.

  I am deeply grateful to Brooke Warner, Lauren Wise, Crystal Patriarche, and everyone at SparkPress for believing in my manuscript and turning my story into a real book. They also connected with me with the fabulous Caitlin Hamilton Summie, Rick Summie, and Libby Jordan, publicity gurus who have helped spread the word about my book in more ways than I could have imagined.

  Special thanks goes to my instructors and friends from Sarah Lawrence whose guidance on this project was consistently insightful, sensitive, encouraging and invaluable. In particular, Myla Goldberg, Brian Morton, Porochista Khakpour, Victoria Redel, and Suzanne Hoover were mentors of the first order. To my classmates, Mira Singer, Regina Mullen, Jacob Ritari, Moses Utomi and Renee Nebens, your feedback continues to play on a loop in my head, and I thank you for your time and generosity.

  I would also like to thank those friends of mine who have inspired me with their successes as authors and who have, most graciously, consistently cheered me on in my own endeavors: Julie Buxbaum, Courtney Sheinmel, Amy Blumenfeld, Jonathan Tropper, Laura Dave, Charles Taylor, and Bethany Ball.

  A heartfelt thank you goes to my dear friends, family, and beta readers, Aliya Sahai, Robyn Pecarsky, Jenna Myers, Amy Tunick, Abby Schiffman, Sheila Friedland, Allison Friedland, Julie Mosow, Abby Dorsey, and Eileen Rosner.

  Thank you to Seymour Zager for encouraging me and continuing to find the humor in everything, always. My sister I thank for listening and supporting me in more ways than I can count, and for helping me to appreciate the staying power of a line well-said. Thank you to my father who has for forty years happily corrected my grammar. I extend the deepest gratitude possible to my mother who has always known how to push me—just so. She inspires me daily with her kindness, her commitment to self-discipline, her accomplishments, and her tolerance for my incessant chatter. An enormous thank you goes to my loving children for their patience when my writing took time away from them and rooting for me from the bottoms
of their hearts. Finally, to Jason, thank you for helping me find more hours in the day, for standing by my side, always, and for believing in this story from the very beginning.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JACQUELINE FRIEDLAND holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and a JD from NYU Law School. She practiced as an attorney in New York before returning to school to receive her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. She lives in New York with her husband, four children, and a tiny dog. This is her first novel.

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