An Unlikely Friendship

by Ann Rinaldi

  "Who gave you permission to deface my fence?"

  Everyone looked at me. I did not answer at first. Then Pa said, "Mary?"

  I stepped forward. "Don't be upset, Ma, please. I did it."

  "Why? Who gave you permission?"

  Then came my lie, my Brer Rabbit deceit and trickery. "Because I recollected how many compliments you got on the fence in front of our old house. And I know how much you liked the flowers and I thought I'd surprise you and it would make you happy. I only wanted to please you, Ma. That's why I did it."

  Silence swirled around in the hallway, thick with possibilities. I looked at Pa. He nodded his head, ever so slightly, in approval.

  Betsy was speechless. She did not know what to do. She would receive compliments on the flowers on her fence. She knew that. What could she do?

  She handed her silk shawl to Mammy Sally. "I'm exhausted," she said. "I'll have some tea in the front parlor."

  THAT VERY NIGHT Aunt Rachel, a runaway, came to our back door.

  I heard the rapping and crept downstairs in time to see Mammy Sally lighting the lantern and going outside.

  When she saw me, she put her finger to her lips. I nodded yes and sat down at the kitchen table. If anyone caught me, I'd say I couldn't sleep, didn't want to wake Liz, and came down for some warm milk. I got the milk and some sugar cookies and put them in front of me on the table.

  In a short while Mammy came back inside. She blew out her lantern and shook her head. "What she wouldda done if I wasn't here this night, I don't know."

  She then told me about the woman.

  She had no husband. He'd been sold south. Then her children were bought by a planter near Lexington. She was sold to a cotton planter in Mississippi. Wanting to see her children, she escaped and made her way north to Kentucky, surviving on berries and fish she'd caught and eaten raw. She was captured by her master from Mississippi, beaten, and had manacles put around her wrists. Then she and some other slaves were put into a wagon and headed even farther south.

  When the wagon stopped she simply got out and disappeared into the woods. She broke open her handcuffs with rocks and somehow found her way north again, aided by slaves on plantations. Now she was here in Kentucky, in our barn.

  "She heard that her children were both dead," Mammy told me. "So she has decided to cross the Ohio. If'n we hadn't had those flowers painted on the fence, Lord knows where she would have gone. She's worn down, poor thing. I gave her food and a new shift. Doan worry, Mary. She be gone by mornin'."

  Likely, Mammy Sally told me, the woman would be moved to Indiana, once across the Ohio. Then on to Saint Catharines, a settlement in Canada where many slaves fled to.

  I went to bed, comforted for the first time in weeks. I was part of something, something more than the petty jealousies and mean-spirited games played in this house.

  FRANCES WAS LEAVING. The whole house was in an uproar. She was leaving to live with Elizabeth and Ninian in Springfield, Illinois.

  Summer travel was not the best. The roads were dusty or sometimes muddy. But winter travel was impossible, so she was leaving now. Our uncle, Dr. John Todd, who owned a lovely home in Springfield, was escorting her. First they would take the train for Frankfort, then take a stagecoach to Louisville. From there steamboats left twice a week for St. Louis, downstream to the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi at Cairo, then upstream to St. Louis, then to Alton on the Mississippi River.

  The last one hundred miles east to Springfield were done by stagecoach, with overnight stops along the way.

  If the swarms of gnats didn't get them on the stagecoach trip, then the places where they had to get out and walk through swampy ground would. If the stage wasn't run off the road, if it didn't lose an axle, if rain didn't turn the road to mud, they would get there in two weeks. Often it took three.

  Frances was leaving. Into her trunks, which lay open on her bedroom floor now, went all that made up a woman's wardrobe: wrappers, mantles, capes, dresses, skirts, bodices, linings, and undersleeves. Cambric and muslin, satin and velvet, cotton and ribbons, and slippers and boots. Hats and gloves.

  Frances was packing up her life, and I didn't know how to say good-bye to her, because we'd had a fight.

  Oh, it wasn't over the fact that in two weeks I was leaving the house, too, for school, and nobody even paid mind. It was because of a complete stranger, a sometime friend of hers, the wife of Judge Fielding C. Turner.

  As the judge's wife, Caroline Turner was something to be reckoned with as far as society went in Lexington. I know Frances wanted to be like her. But now Caroline had fallen from grace in the eyes of many. Now she was in trouble.

  Everybody knew she beat her slaves. But people kept still tongues about it. Some blamed her for the deaths of as many as six of her slaves. But nothing could be proved.

  Now, however, everything was out in the open. She had beaten and thrown out of the second-story window her smallest slave, a boy named Jules.

  Little Jules was crippled for life.

  Her husband had put her in Lexington's lunatic asylum for the last three months, to stave off criminal prosecution. But she insisted on a trial to "clear her name."

  Before the trial she was to be examined and questioned by a panel of six of Lexington's citizens, to determine her state of mind.

  Pa was on the panel.

  It made for dissension in our house. Frances had already had words with Pa about it. Then with me.

  Caroline was from Boston, she reminded Pa. She doesn't know our ways. She was overlenient with her slaves and they became ornery, even threatened to attack her. She was only defending herself. "You know that to be true, don't you, Pa?" she asked.

  The only thing he knew to be true, Pa said, was that slavery was tearing his family apart. Why, he knew more than one family in Lexington that had been torn apart by it. "And I don't want it for my own family."

  I'd never been close to Frances. She and Ann had always been sisterly, sharing secrets, talking about boys, and doing whatever it was that sisters did. I'd grown up on my own, with only Grandmother Parker and Mammy Sally to confide in.

  But now Frances was leaving. I knew, in my heart, as I watched Mammy Sally close the trunks, that Frances would never be back. She was leaving home because of our stepmother. There was no happiness in this home. And she knew it, though she would not admit it.

  In Springfield, a raw, unsettled frontier town, she'd find a husband. That was why she was going, wasn't it? When we next met, we'd be grown. She'd be a married woman.

  As I watched Nelson pick up the trunks and haul them downstairs where Uncle John was waiting, on the one hand I wanted to throw my arms around Frances. And on the other I hoped it would rain, that the roads would turn to mud, and she'd have to slosh through it. I hoped the gnats would get her.

  I stood out front with the others and waved them off. She'll live in the Edwardses' grand house on Second Street, I thought. There will be servants, but there are no slaves in Illinois. No Caroline Turners. And no stepmother. And I envied her, oh how I envied her. For I am left here with all the problems.

  SO PA WAS ON the panel, which met every day for two weeks at the courthouse.

  We were not to talk about the matter, he said. Not amongst ourselves, not to anyone on the outside, and not to him. It was the same as if he were on a jury, he told us.

  Oh, how I longed to speak of the matter to Mammy Sally. As I watched her dark figure move about me, I had to bite the words down on my tongue.

  I knew she was weighed down with the matter. All the slaves, in our house and in others, were not only brought low but anxious to know what would happen to Caroline Turner. For, if you could just throw a seven-year-old boy off a second-story balcony and cripple him for life, well then...

  Well then.

  They would not look us in the eyes, any of the negro servants in the house, including Mammy Sally. Lines were drawn. Sides were taken. Silence was the weapon of choice.

  As she helped m
e, in my bedroom, pack my trunk for school, I felt myself teetering on the edge of some precipice. And I knew that if I fell into the blackness, if I left for school without breaking this silence between us, I would lose her forever.

  Slavery was tearing us all apart. It was Sunday. Tomorrow I would leave for school. In church this morning our minister reminded everyone how Kentucky's negroes would soon outnumber the whites. And when they did, they would overcome every obstacle, he said. He did not mention Caroline Turner. But he knew that there were at least several members of the panel in the congregation. And he knew there were dozens of negro servants in the gallery, listening. One being Mammy Sally.

  Our hands touched now as she folded up one of my skirts and put it into the trunk. For an instant the world stood still. I looked at her.

  "Mammy," I said, "don't worry. Pa will find Caroline Turner sane, and then she can face a trial."

  "He be not the only one on that panel."

  There were tears in her eyes. Tomorrow morning, early, the panel was to meet and come up with its decision.

  "Pa will do the right thing," I assured her.

  "Don't put it all on your pa. There be a lot of negro unrest. People are scared," she said.

  Across the trunk we sought out each other's eyes. She understood! I went around the trunk and ran into her arms. She enfolded me there and rocked me. "Bad times a-comin', child," she said. "But we always remember our friends."

  "I'll be your friend forever, Mammy," I said.

  She crooned a song softly, still rocking me. "No matter what, Caroline Turner, she get hers," she said. "God ain't on no panel."

  WHEN I LEFT for school the next morning, I left my father's house for good, though I'd be back on the weekends. It was, for me, a final leave-taking. All partings after this would be footnotes in my life. When Nelson lifted my trunks into the carriage, I felt the ropes binding me to home tearing. There was a finality about it that would render any other partings as trivial. These feelings hung heavy on me, and I did not know why.

  I think Pa felt it, too. He stood there looking mournful. And well he should. The panel had convened by eight o'clock and was finished at nine, after which Pa came home and told us.

  Caroline Turner was free. She was deemed not insane, and somehow she had convinced the rest of the men that she'd been acting in self-defense.

  Pa wouldn't discuss the matter. He'd come home, eaten his breakfast, and now he looked as if Brer Fox had him pinned in a briar patch. How much of it was because I was leaving? He was, in a way, losing his third daughter.

  The little ones crowded around the carriage and had to be herded out of the way by Betsy and Ann. "Good-bye, Mary, good-bye," they chanted, as if I were off to Springfield, Illinois, and not a mile and a half away.

  Liz sat next to me on the seat. Nelson would fetch her home every night. Nobody cared enough to ask me how I would feel, seeing Nelson outside the school every day to fetch Liz, while I stayed inside and didn't go home. Nobody told me how I was supposed to feel. It was all glossed over, as if it made no difference at all.

  ROSE HILL WAS the name of the rambling brick structure that housed the school. And it was across the road from Henry Clay's Ashland, which I'd visited a dozen or so times. Why then did I feel, as our carriage pulled up in front, that I'd just finished a two-weeks' journey, that I was hundreds of miles from home?

  A whole line of girls waited to meet us, as well as the Mentelles and the servants.

  Before I was down from the carriage, Madame Victorie Charlotte LeClere Mentelle came forward, arms open to both of us. "Welcome, welcome. Girls," and she turned to the line of curious onlookers, "this is Mary Todd and her step-cousin Liz Humphreys. Mary is a boarder, Liz a day student. Come now, remember your manners."

  I was enveloped in a bevy of chattering, laughing girls. Never mind Liz. I lost her in the shuffle. Never mind my luggage. It would be taken care of by Nelson.

  "I'm Mercy Levering," one girl said. She threw an arm around me. "I'm a boarder, too."

  "Where are they taking my cousin Liz?"

  "Oh, she goes with the day students. You're with us."

  "Us?"

  I looked at them, at least eight of them, standing around, taking my measure. They were all about my age, all seemed confident and smug, as if they knew some secret I did not know.

  "Yes. We're the boarders," Mercy explained. "We all live in that part of the building."

  She pointed to a brick wing that jutted out on the left.

  "I know where my room is," I said, "I've been here before. I have my mother's ladies' desk here. No one has moved it, have they?"

  "It's still safe in the corner where you left it," Mercy assured me. "I made sure no one moved it. I'm rooming with you. Now we just wanted to tell you, that part of the building is for us, the boarders. We live quite a different life than the day students. Don't count on seeing Liz much."

  "I've learned," I said tersely, "not to count much on anything."

  She met my eyes with her level brown gaze. She seemed to have a mild and thoughtful manner. "You're already one of us," she said. "Come along."

  THE HALF DOZEN or so girls who seemed so protective of me were not wearing school uniforms. They each wore their own clothes, dimities, muslins, cotton dresses that most girls our age wore. But it was as if they were all clothed in one color, as if they all were of one species. And now I was one of them.

  But what did it mean? What was I?

  It was Mercy who told me. She stood in the small room I shared with her and watched as I unpacked my trunk.

  "Orphans," she said. "This part of the building is known, here and on the outside, as the house for the orphans."

  "Orphans?" I stared at her.

  "Yes. None of us has a mother."

  I started to speak, then stopped. She was serious. She was grave and dignified and not at all joking. She was dead serious. "I'm not an orphan," I said. I thought of Pa, of my brothers George and Levi, of my sisters Elizabeth and Frances and even Ann. I thought of the little ones I'd left at home.

  "I have a family," I told her. "I'm just here because..." but my voice gave out.

  "Because this is where they put you," she finished. "This is where they put all of us. Because they didn't know what to do with us. So we're here."

  She was so accepting about it. But I wasn't. I suddenly lost the urge to unpack. The urge to do anything. Tears were forming in my eyes, I could feel them. Oh, Pa, I thought, no wonder you looked so low this morning. You knew I'd find out about this, didn't you? You really were in a briar patch, weren't you?

  I pushed my trunk aside on the floor and sank down on my bed. Had I been put here because they didn't know what else to do with me? But of course. Elizabeth and Frances and even Ann had their places. Ann knew how to survive around Betsy, something I'd never learned. As for George and Levi, well, when I left, Levi was asking Pa if he could move to a hotel in town. George still lived in his own world, though he ate at the table with the family. That left just me from Pa's first family.

  I lay down on the bed and clutched my stomach as if I were ill.

  "Are you all right?" Mercy asked. "Come on, Mary. Somebody had to tell you. It's the same for all of us here."

  I turned over, crying. "Leave me be," I said.

  SHE LET ME BE and went downstairs. Before she went, Mercy put a coverlet over me. "We're having a special supper to welcome everyone tonight," she said. "It's at six. Rest until then. I'll make your excuses."

  It was clouding over outside and fixing to be a real rainy September afternoon. The wind was picking up, forcing leaves from the trees. I dozed.

  I was conscious of someone coming into the room and fussing about, but I did not open my eyes. A headache was forming behind them. Lately I'd been getting mind-breaking headaches, and at home Mammy Sally always had some decoction to give me. Here I had nothing. I opened my eyes briefly and saw that someone had placed an astral lamp on my dresser. It gave a pleasant glow to the room.r />
  Just then someone knocked and came in. It was Madame Charlotte.

  "Child, what is it? Are you indeed ailing? Or is it homesickness already?"

  I sat up. "I have a home," I said to her.

  "But of course you do. This is your school."

  "Then why am I called an orphan?"

  She smiled and sat down next to me on the bed. "Oh, so that's it. We call all the motherless girls orphans. It's how they are known. It's in jest, dear, don't take on so."

  "They don't think it's in jest."

  She felt my forehead. "You have a slight fever."

  I told her about my headaches and she nodded knowingly. "Migraine," she said. "You'll suffer all your life with them if you don't learn to take things more lightly. I can give you some laudanum. Come now, no more crying. We all have a wonderful time here."

  "I never have a wonderful time anywhere," I told her. "My life is a disaster."

  Her eyes narrowed. "Shall I tell you about my life?"

  It was not a question. I was old enough to know when grown-ups asked questions that were not questions. So I nodded my head, yes.

  "I WAS THE ONLY child of a wealthy Paris merchant. My father raised me as a boy. My father taught me to ride when I was just a knee baby, and as I grew he made me row, every morning, across the Seine before breakfast.

  "I was afraid of death so he locked me in a closet with the corpse of a friend, overnight."

  My eyes were wide with wonder. "But you are happy now, aren't you?"

  "Yes, child. But my husband and I were forced to flee across France because revolutionary mobs wanted to burn our children at the stake."

  My eyes were drowsy from the laudanum. Was she making up stories as she went along? Just before drifting off to sleep again I heard her say one more thing.

  "It isn't what happens to you in life that matters, it's how you take it."