Remember the Morning

by Thomas Fleming

  “We too bear witness before God about important things,” Clara said. “Everyone does.”

  He gave her that hard look again. But this time his eyes were cold. She sensed a darkness in his soul, born of a disappointment that was profound. It was a strange spirit for such a young man. Clara had only seen it in old men who had failed to win greatness as warriors.

  “Do you plan to become a soldier?” she asked.

  “It’s what I want to be,” Malcolm said. “But I’m as like to do it as I am to fly to the moon. My father’s determined to pound me into a lawyer, whether I like it or not.”

  “Is that so bad? Lawyers grow rich, don’t they?”

  “I hate the whereases and whereifs—I’m no good at it—but I hate it first and last.”

  Clara heard real pain in this young giant’s voice. He was almost as shackled by his father’s will as she was by the arbitrary laws of the slave trade.

  “A Seneca believes if something is truly your heart’s desire, you must seek it, no matter what it costs you,” Clara said.

  Her head did not reach Malcolm Stapleton’s shoulder. But she spoke to him with such calm authority, he forgot the color of her skin, her status as a slave. Clara’s orenda was at work here, shaping both their lives.

  “I applied for a commission in one of the king’s regiments,” Malcolm said. “The answer came back from London only last week—there’s no room for someone from an insignificant colony like New York.”

  “You must never think of yourself that way,” Clara said. “No man with a low opinion of himself can lead men in battle. New York is not insignificant. New York is part of America. When you place a map of America over England, it becomes a little island, no bigger than a mudbank in Lake Ontario. Duycinck is right, when he calls you American. You and I and Catalyntie—all those who were born here—are Americans.”

  There was skepticism in Malcolm’s smile. She could see he did not really agree with her. But he honored her good intentions. “I’ll try to remember that,” he said.

  Malcolm led Clara downstairs to the kitchen, where he introduced her to Bertha, a black woman who was almost as big as Fat Alice, but had a much more cheerful disposition. “This manor would fall apart without Bertha,” Malcolm said. “She keeps us all happy with the best cooking in the colony.”

  “Oh, go on, since you been a tot barely up to my knee you ate everythin’ I put in front of you. Would’ve eaten grass or dirt, I swear, if I put a little gravy on it,” Bertha said. “Never seen a boy with such an appetite.”

  She examined Clara with shrewd humorous eyes that evoked memories of her Seneca grandmother. “I already heard all about you from the Dutchman,” she said, meaning Duycinck. “What a high and mighty lady you is, with your head full of readin’ and writin’.”

  “That doesn’t mean I’m afraid of hard work,” Clara said. “I’ll be glad to help you here whenever you need it.”

  “I got all the help I need,” Bertha said, gesturing to two younger black women, who were stirring and mixing at the other end of the big sunny kitchen. Clara saw that Bertha, while not an enemy, declined to become a friend. Even the color of her skin seemed to separate Clara from Bertha’s people. Theirs was so intensely black, light seemed to vanish into it. Clara’s creamy tan was almost white in comparison. Yet she was one of them, she reminded herself bitterly. The word slave united them.

  She wondered if she would ever have a friend in this black and white world, except Catalyntie. She was miles and miles away, on the other side of the Hudson River. For a moment Clara felt overwhelmed by a desolating loneliness.

  Was flight the answer? The forest loomed not more than a mile or two beyond the Stapletons’ tilled fields. Perhaps she should flee back to her Seneca family now, before she became alien to them. But something dire, a wedge of darkness containing the voice of the Evil Brother, told her that a fatal separation had already occurred. The knowledge of maps, of white ways and white gods, of black ways and black dreams, had already separated her from the people she loved.

  Later in the day she met Jamey Stapleton, Malcolm’s seven-year-old brother. He was a plump lazy boy, with round red cheeks and hair so blond it was almost white. He gazed at Clara with astonishment when Malcolm said she would teach him arithmetic and reading. Duycinck, who was supposed to be doing the job, had given up in disgust.

  “How’s that possible?” Jamey sneered. “She don’t look like she knows enough to sling a hoe.”

  “I know how to do that too,” Clara said. “I’ve hoed enough corn to make you as fat as Bertha. But that isn’t hard to learn. Can you add this column?” She scribbled a dozen numbers on a sheet of paper. Jamey looked at them with dismay. Clara swiftly added the figures and said he would begin learning how to do that tomorrow morning.

  That night, Clara lay in her bed, listening to the distant sounds of the forest. The call of an owl, the howl of a wolf, the murmur of insects. She thought of Bold Antelope, tormented by his love for her and the disgrace of his defeat in combat with Malcolm Stapleton. Could she love a man who had failed as a warrior before her eyes? It was almost impossible for a daughter of the Bear Clan. Here too an eternal separation had occurred.

  A muffled cry, the thud of feet in the third floor hall startled her. She rushed to her bedroom door and saw Malcolm Stapleton’s huge figure in the semidarkness. He was stumbling up and down the hall, his arms outstretched, groaning like a man in agony. Duycinck rushed up to Clara, who had a candle in her hand. “He’s at it again!” he hissed. “He’s been doing this since his mother died. Once he climbed out on the roof and almost killed himself.”

  “Don’t wake him,” Clara said. “He must finish his dream.”

  There had been several sleepwalkers in her Seneca village. They were all men and their dreams as they walked often turned out to be crucial revelations of their ondinnonk—their secret desires. Clara and Duycinck tried to guide Malcolm back to his bedroom but he violently resisted their touch, snarling and swinging his huge fists at them.

  Only Duycinck’s voice calmed him. The little Dutchman capered around him in the candlelit darkness, crying: “It’s all right, Malcolm, it’s all right.”

  Something in the dream released a flood of tears. “No, no,” Malcolm sobbed, falling to his knees. He seemed to be holding someone in his arms. “Clara!” he sobbed. He allowed them to lead him back to his bedroom, head bowed, like a captive.

  In the morning, Clara asked Malcolm to describe his dream. “I was in an Indian village. Someone was being tortured at the stake. I realized it was me. But I didn’t feel anything. I was watching it like a spectator—or a ghost. You were there too. Someone had hurt you. You seemed to be bleeding. I heard your voice telling me something—but I couldn’t make out the words.”

  This was not a dream of ondinnonk but of utgo, of the evil fate that ruled so much of the world. At times it invaded the minds of certain people and gave them a glimpse of the future. The vision was not always true. Sometimes the Evil Brother used false utgo to harass and frighten people. But Clara sensed this dream was true—it would become real in the vast undefined future. It made her wonder if her life was intertwined with this young giant—perhaps unto death.

  FOUR

  IN NEW YORK, MY LIFE WITH the Van Vorsts became less acrimonious without Clara around as a source of contention. Aunt Gertrude, claiming to know best, absolutely forbade me to write to her. When Clara wrote to me, Aunt Gertrude must have confiscated her letters. I never saw one. I won’t say I forgot Clara. But she receded from my mind as the social world of wealthy Manhattan absorbed me.

  Aunt Gertrude realized I was going to be a permanent part of her household and sat me down for a motherly lecture. She warned me against Dutch stubbornness and clinging to old ways, traits she feared I had picked up from my sojourn with my grandfather. She told me the philosophy that guided her and her husband.

  Simply put it was: The English ruled the world and only fools were refusing to join them. That
was why her daughters were going to Madame Ardsley’s school. That was why her husband slogged into Indian country as the royal governor’s representative to help pacify the Iroquois and the Canadian tribes. English styles, English books, English songs, English plays, English customs, English furniture, were the future, the Dutch version of all these things the discarded past.

  Who was I to dispute Aunt Gertrude? Partly because I was touched by her maternal concern, I did my best to follow her advice. I paid attention at Madame Ardsley’s school and was soon able to persuade my aunt I was ready to graduate by demonstrating that I could read French passably, dance a minuet, and serve tea. Aunt Gertrude, never one to miss a chance to save money, agreed. My days instantly became more pleasant.

  I spent the morning cleaning my room, arranging my clothes and supposedly reading the Bible for an hour (which I never did) and after dinner12 set out to visit friends such as the Frankses, the Laurenses, or the Cuylers. These survivors of my grandfather’s generation had large families who welcomed me into their houses. Laurens had two agreeable granddaughters my age, Rebecca and Anne, and the Frankses’ grandson, Jacob, was a clever young man, full of jokes and good humor. Guert Cuyler was always glad to see me.

  Accompanying me was my favorite companion, a greyhound named Walpole that I had rescued from a visiting ship’s captain who had grown tired of the dog. That Walpole was named after the prime minister of England meant little to me. I had no idea that naming a dog after a politician was a way of showing one’s contempt for the man. I liked Walpole because he was a sweet obedient creature—and in several portraits of highborn Englishwomen I had seen in books, they were accompanied by such dogs.

  Evenings were spent at supper parties in various wealthy homes or at assembly balls in one of the better taverns. Some evenings we entertained ourselves with minuets and country dances. Other times we performed a play, such as Joseph Addison’s Cato, a tale of old Rome, in which a noble hero dies for liberty. Other evenings were devoted to winning or losing at whist, a card game which had recently emerged from the servants’ quarters to absorb the ton. Whatever the entertainment, at eleven o’clock servants brought in a feast of cold pheasant, quail, salmon and wines from France and Germany, and the merriment often continued well past midnight.

  At first, I felt overmatched by the other young women at these parties. They had played together since babyhood—and they seemed to know exactly what to say to the young men who swarmed around us, full of teasing jokes and amorous looks. I reverted to the Moon Woman, convinced of my inability to attract or interest a man. My cousin Esther soon informed me that the young men called me “the ice queen”—a tribute to my apparent coldness.

  Gradually, I began to notice more than a few similarities between my old life at Shining Creek and my new life in New York. Among the young women of my age, the conversation was almost entirely devoted to the same topic: men. Every New York maiden was looking for a husband at least as anxiously as the young Seneca women of Shining Creek. But there was one very large difference. It was all talk. There were no experimental visits to the woods, no reports on a male’s skills or inclinations as a lover. Instead, through both sexes—but especially the women—swirled a veritable maelstrom of suppressed desire, which led to violent outbursts of anger and envy.

  Not a few of these eruptions of spite were directed at me, when Robert Nicolls began paying special attentions to me. As the royal governor’s son, he was New York’s equivalent of the Prince of Wales and the natural social leader of our generation. Unintimidated by my reserve, he insisted on making me his partner in at least half the dances. When we performed Cato, he assigned me the role of Marcia, the hero’s virtuous daughter, and himself the part of Juba, a brave Numidian prince who is hopelessly in love with her. Although I knew it was all make-believe, my heart beat with more than ordinary vigor when Robert/Juba declaimed his adoration unto death. At whist, when my luck faltered, he often sat beside me, helping me play my hand.

  At the end of the night, we sometimes sent our coaches home empty and strolled back to our houses by moonlight or torchlight. Two or three soldiers from the fort carried the burning brands—and guaranteed our safety. The streets of New York, thick with drunken sailors and indentured servants and slaves relieved from obedience for a few hours, were by no means safe. In these postmidnight rambles, Robert was invariably my escort. Guert Cuyler or Jacob Franks occasionally vied for the post, but Robert was always there to wave them off.

  Aunt Gertrude’s older daughter, Esther Van Vorst, reported Robert Nicolls’s attentions to her mother, who evinced grave alarm at the dinner table. Mr. Nicolls’s reputation was less than praiseworthy. There were rumors of him “ruining” the daughters of at least two prominent families.

  I was baffled by this idea. “What did he do?” I asked.

  “He … he … deflowered them,” Aunt Gertrude stammered. “They surrendered a woman’s most precious possession, their virginity, to him—only to discover his plighted word meant nothing.”

  “You mean he stuck them?” I said incredulously. This hardly seemed worthy of the word ruin. As a Seneca, I had no great respect for virginity. Aunt Gertrude’s emotion seemed wildly out of proportion to me.

  Esther and Anna, who were facing me across the dinner table, emitted small cries of horror. “Stuck them?” Aunt Gertrude said. It was her turn to be incredulous.

  “Rogered them,” I said. “Is that the right word in English? Or is it fuck?”

  More squeals of horror from Anna and Esther. “Catalyntie Van Vorst! Leave my table. Leave it this instant!” gasped Aunt Gertrude. “Go to your room!”

  “Aunt, I don’t understand. What’s so wonderful about virginity in a grown woman? Doesn’t it mean she’s too ugly to attract a man?”

  “Did you hear your aunt? Go to your room,” roared Johannes Van Vorst.

  I retreated in confusion. Several hours later, Aunt Gertrude visited me. Still distraught, she lectured me about my language. “Respectable women simply do not use such words,” she said. “Where did you hear them?”

  I had overheard them from Aunt Gertrude’s household servants, Fat Alice and her daughter, Hester. But I did not want to get them into trouble. “People say them on the street.”

  “Only the lower sort. Let me ask you something far more important. Are you a virgin?”

  “No,” I said.

  Aunt Gertrude all but reeled in horror. “When … where … did you … forfeit it?” she said.

  “Several warriors of my village took me into the woods. But no one was willing to marry me.”

  Instead of the sympathy I thought I deserved, Aunt Gertrude’s reaction was more horror. “You must never tell that to a living soul in New York.”

  “Why not?”

  “You will never get a husband.”

  Anxiety swirled through my flesh. Was I doomed to be the Moon Woman wherever I went? Aunt Gertrude left me to my reflections, which were not very positive. This fanatic concern with virginity made no sense to me. I was too young to understand the consequences and the cost of raising a bastard child in the white world, where each family must pay its own way.

  A more loving woman would have kept my confession to herself. Perhaps that was too much to expect of Aunt Gertrude and her daughters after my dinner table conversation. I would soon discover there were other reasons, revolving around that word “will,” to make the Van Vorsts feel less than friendly to me. At any rate, Aunt Gertrude told her husband and her daughters of my unvirginal condition—and it was soon all over New York.

  “Is it true—you’re not a virgin?” Sophia Fowler, daughter of New York’s wealthiest distiller, asked me one day as we sat out a dance at an assembly ball. Sophia was a small, tremendously proud girl with the face—and shape—of a mouse. Her gowns were by far the most expensive in our set, covered with alençon lace, Chinese silk bows, and other costly fripperies.

  “Is it true you are?” I replied, throwing several listeners into fits of la
ughter.

  Among the men, the news seemed to ignite a certain earthiness in their manner. They were no longer put off by my ice queen demeanor. On the contrary, several boldly suggested a visit to the woods, where they would show me they could make love like an Indian. Only Guert Cuyler, out of Dutch loyalty, perhaps, continued to treat me with the utmost respect. I was unmoved by his kindness. I was only concerned about one thing: how Robert Nicolls felt about the news of my condition.

  By now it was summer. Robert invited a dozen or so couples aboard the royal governor’s yacht for a cruise up the East River through a treacherous passage called Hell Gate to Long Island Sound. In an hour or so we debarked at a place called Oyster Bay on Long Island, where we spent the morning playing croquet, bowling on an exquisite green, and strolling the grounds of a handsome country estate.

  At a midafternoon picnic on the grass, Robert sat beside me and said: “Don’t you recognize this place?”

  I shook my head. I had never been on Long Island in my life. “It belonged to your grandfather. Sophia Fowler’s father bought it from your estate and gave it to my father for a country house.”

  “Really?” I said, gazing with renewed interest at the handsome shingled house, the groves of fruit trees and the well-tilled fields beyond them. Grandfather had talked several times of taking me and Clara out here for a visit. I instantly wondered what the Fowlers had paid for it.

  “Do you realize what a fascinating creature you are?” Nicolls said.

  I felt warmth rush through my body. “Perhaps no one has ever told me,” I said.

  “I sense you’re not a saint,” he said. “So many American women are drenched in ridiculous piety. You were raised as a child of nature—with all that idea implies.”

  “It doesn’t trouble you?” I said.

  “That you’re not a virgin? Not in the least. I’m not one either. I deplore the hypocrisy of permitting one sex liberty and binding the other to slavish obedience to supposedly divine commandments.”