An Unlikely Friendship

by Ann Rinaldi

  Mama couldn't stop crying as we watched his massa's wagon taking him away. I was still a little tyke then, but I understood my sorrow could not match my mama's. Grandma had to drag her back into the house and into the kitchen to dim her sobs, lest they anger Massa and Mistress.

  Grandma spent the night with her in her cabin, and said she cried all night long. Next day when Mama came up to the big house to care for Mistress's younger children, I could see how cast down she was. She didn't talk to me, she didn't talk to the children who loved her, too. All my life I'd had to share her love with those children. And at times she was more of a mother to them than she was to me.

  To make matters worse, Massa started to shower Mama with kindness to make up for the badness, like he always did. He sent special middlin's of meat to Grandma Sarry to cook for her and Mama and me. In the kitchen, Aunt Charlotte's girls, who were overworked anyway, got jealous and went to Mistress, who got more jealous.

  Mistress never could forget, you see, how I came to be in this world, and what Mama had to do with it.

  We were in the kitchen, just about to sit down to eat that special middlin' of meat, when Mistress came in, her hair all askew, tearstains on her face.

  "I want you to stop putting on airs," she told Mama. "Your husband is not the only slave that has been sold from this family. And you are not the only ones who have had to part. There are plenty more men about here if you want to be married. Just find yourself another one. You found my husband fast enough."

  My mouth fell open so wide bees could build a honeycomb inside. Before Mama could even think of answering, Mistress walked out.

  THAT WAS THE END of my childhood for me, if it didn't end when they whipped me. The years went on. Mama didn't marry. But the years took their pieces of the Burwell family, too.

  Robert graduated from Hampden-Sydney and became a prig of a Presbyterian minister. John and Armistead graduated, too, and went out on their own. Benjamin was still in college. Anne married Hugh Garland, another prig, a Hampden-Sydney professor of Greek. Home yet were Mary, who would soon marry Hugh's brother; Fanny, who was sixteen; Charles, thirteen; William, eleven; and Elizabeth Margaret, now nine.

  Since Elizabeth Margaret no longer needed a nursemaid, I went back to attending her mother. She did not like me, I know, but the only reason for that was because her husband was my real father. What kept me safe was that I never let on that I knew it, never acted upon it, never played one against the other. I could have, I knew. Other children in my position did. But I decided I'd rather take her orders, her coldness, than go work in the fields like other girls of fourteen. Like Jane. Never would I be made to eat worms. I'd die first.

  I WAS FOURTEEN and I knew I was pretty. I knew it because Mama worried, because she tied my hair back in braids and always put a fresh white kerchief around the neckline of my dress so my bosoms wouldn't show. "You gotta be careful," she told me. "I wasn't much older when I had you. And it weren't my idea, Lizzy, believe me."

  It was the first and only time she'd said anything about it to me. But I said nothing. I knew when to keep a still tongue in my head.

  But I didn't really know how pretty I was until Eleanor, daughter of Reverend Paxton, asked me to be a bridesmaid in her wedding.

  "You can make your own gown," she said. "You sew so beautifully. I have Mr. Burwell's permission to ask you. The gowns will be pink silk. The other bridesmaid's dresses are coming in from Petersburg. You can copy them."

  "Oh, Eleanor, I don't know what to say."

  "Say yes, Lizzy. You'll be the prettiest one I have."

  "But what will people say?"

  "You mean because you're mulatto? They won't say anything. They know my father freed his slaves and sent them to Liberia. They know what my family's beliefs are and they respect them."

  And so I said yes. Mama had kept me at my sewing in the last nine years, so I'd graduated to making aprons and shifts and even a dress or two for myself. I knew I could do it. Mama said I had a special gift for sewing. I worked hard on that dress. I stayed up nights because Mistress wouldn't give me time during the days. She didn't like my being in that wedding. I heard her tell Massa so. But he won that argument.

  Finally, two days before the wedding, I finished the bodice and the sleeves. I really wanted to be in that wedding. Just having Eleanor ask me to make my dress showed me that people knew what I could do. Of course I was flattered, and I wanted to show everybody not only the dress but me. How I had grown. How pretty I was.

  I shall never forget it. The other bridesmaids and all of Eleanor's family praised my work and appearance. Everyone was nice to me. It was the first time I felt like a person since I was whipped, since Daddy had been taken from us.

  Only one thing happened to ruin it. And it came from the most unexpected person. It came from Robert.

  I was standing around sipping punch at the reception when Robert came up to me with a girl on his arm. "This is Anna," he said.

  And then, "Anna, this is Lizzy, our slave girl. Don't let the dress and all the fuss over her fool you."

  I stammered hello. Tears came to my eyes. But I held my head high.

  "Curtsy," Robert ordered.

  I understood then. Anna was not so pretty. She must be bowed to. I curtsied.

  Later, when he was alone, Robert came up to me again.

  "You didn't have to introduce me that way," I stammered.

  "Yes, I did, Lizzy. You're getting too filled up with yourself. Too uppity. I did it for your own good. You don't want some master having to break you someday."

  My heart fell. This from Robert? I knew he tended to be a prig, but when had this happened to him? What had they taught him in the seminary?

  I chided myself. I'd vowed to hate him once, after I'd been whipped. I'd vowed to trust no white person who was for slavery. But I supposed I'd never given up on Robert. He was my most difficult lesson, still not learned. But sadly, to be learned in the future.

  ROBERT MARRIED HIS ANNA soon after. Her real name was Margaret Anna Robertson from Petersburg. I was not in the wedding. I did not expect to be, did not want to be. But a month before, Robert came to me.

  "Anna liked the dress you made for yourself for Eleanor's wedding," he said coldly. "Since money is a consideration, she would like you to make her bridesmaids' dresses. There will be two of them."

  "I don't have time," I told him. "I have my chores. Your mama gave me no time to make my own dress. I had to work at night."

  "Are you saying no to me, Lizzy?"

  I did not answer.

  "Never say no to your master," he reminded me.

  "You're not my master," I told him. "You're my half brother."

  I knew it was cheeky. I'd bantered with Robert in the past many times. Now I was pushing to see how far I could go.

  He remained becalmed, but I saw his blue eyes go icy. "You've been given too many privileges," he said flatly. "I'm going to have to see that that changes."

  I stared at him. What did that mean?

  "Hasn't my father told you?"

  I felt a numbness in my bones. "No."

  "From here on in, I am your master. You're to come and live with me and Anna. Now I want those two dresses made. I'll handle my mother. And you're to come with us to Petersburg for the wedding, where you will attend Anna as she deserves to be attended. As your mistress. You'll fetch and serve for the both of us from now on."

  IT WAS ALL TRUE. Massa informed me later that day. He had given me to Robert as a wedding gift.

  "It's best all around, Lizzy," he said. "You're growing up. What will you do here? Think of me. It's getting too complicated for me to have my beautiful mixed-race daughter around anymore. My wife won't be kind to you in the future. Who will you marry around here? A field hand? I just don't know what to do with you. Robert will. He's a minister."

  It was the first time in my life he ever called me his daughter. Was this supposed to make me feel better? It didn't.

  US SLAVES ALWAYS knew
one truth. To be a slave was horrible. But to be a slave in a family without means or money was worse. It was lowering yourself. Every slave wanted to work for quality people. Robert was quality, to be sure, and so was Anna, but one soon learned that without money, quality got shoved in the background.

  The name of the town was Ellerslie. It was in Virginia. Robert was pastor of the little local church. It was a coal mining town, as miserable as a place could be.

  I was the only servant. And I soon learned that what had been done by three servants back home was all to be done by me. We settled in. I cooked and dusted and in a few hours the coal dust was back again, on everything. I washed clothes and dusted. I swept, scoured, milked the cow, and tried to keep the dust out of the milk. I kept the poultry fed and brushed the coal dust from the horses' coats. I attended Anna, brushed her hair, and dusted. I waited on Robert, and brushed the coal dust off his good frock coat.

  Although she had already worked out in the world as a teacher, Anna was spoiled. She talked all the time about how she was descended from the Spotswoods, like I was expected to know who they were, or care. Her parents had died, she'd gone to live with an uncle, and he, too, died. She'd gone out teaching. But her parents once had money, and like everyone who'd once had money, she never let you forget it.

  She became hysterical over trifles, she got bad headaches, and she was either flying up there with the angels or cast down with her own blue devils. I was expected to know the mood and work with it.

  I'd say she needed a good serving of marrow from the jowl of a hog, that woman.

  Did Robert love her? Who knew anything about Robert these days. We never talked except when he gave me orders, and those he expected to be followed quickly and without replies. He was all the time out of the house making his pastor calls, and when he was home he locked himself away, writing his sermons. To bother him you had to be the archangel Michael knocking at the door.

  We stayed in that place for three years, during which Anna had two children, Mary and John. Carrying the children she was impossible, hysterical and crying most of the time. After they were born she drove me daft having me check on them every half hour lest they smother in their cribs. She courted disaster, that woman. She waited for it. Sometimes at night I heard her crying in their room and heard Robert trying to comfort her. These times I almost felt sorry for him.

  Then finally, when Robert couldn't stand the coal dust anymore, when Anna said she didn't want her children breathing it in, he got another job and we moved.

  I was almost eighteen and worn to the bone. Now, besides all my household chores, I was caring for two children. And Anna was in a childbearing way again. We moved to Hillsborough, in North Carolina.

  ANNA WAS NOT STUPID. She could recite Paradise Lost by heart. But she did not know how to find Robert again after she lost him in the coal town of Ellerslie.

  And that's what she had done. Lost him as sure as I'd lost my Daddy George. Only Robert was there, in front of her. They bumped into each other. They were expecting another child. But they scarce spoke to each other unless she complained to him about how bad she was feeling, about the other children, about me and what a vexation I was to her.

  HILLSBOROUGH WAS MORE to Robert's liking. He made more money, four hundred dollars a year. It was a lovely little town full of busy, happy people, all slaveholders, twelve miles west of Durham, North Carolina, which was the seat of something or other. The county, I think, though I never understood why a county needed a seat to sit down on. There were also some free nigra people, the likes of whom I had never seen before, who went about being in business for themselves, being barbers and craftsmen and farmers.

  Anna and Robert moved into a two-story frame house, with big windows and two rooms on each floor, not counting the kitchen. It was surrounded by lovely trees and on top of a hill. Anna had a greenhouse. She had roses and all kinds of flowers. She had a meadow and a vegetable garden for which she got all kinds of compliments, though I did all the work. She had a swing and a white picket fence. And you could walk to town.

  The town was full of doctors and lawyers and genteel, professional-quality people.

  "You'll love it," Robert told her. "You'll love being the parson's wife there."

  Anna hated it. She called it a mudhole. But then Anna hated everything in those days. Especially me.

  FOR SOME REASON, that first year in Hillsborough, despite her husband's happiness, or mayhap because of it, Anna was determined to wreak vengeance upon me.

  She blamed me for everything. For the rain when there was too much and the muddy water that came into the well so we couldn't do the washing. For the sun when it beat down on the quiet, sleepy streets.

  We had another slave woman in the house, name of Mary Ann. She was the cook, so I didn't have those duties, thank heaven. Mary Ann was sure of herself but never cocky. She was proud of herself yet never arrogant. One day when she heard me and Anna arguing, she took me aside.

  "Doan know who brung you up," she said, "but girl, didn't you ever learn the first rule of livin' with a woman like that?"

  I shook my head no.

  "Got one mind for the boss to see, got another for what I know is me," she quoted.

  But I never could keep my anger private and put on a smiling face, as I was supposed to do. And worst of all, I never learned to humble myself to Anna's liking.

  Robert let Anna rule the house, which was the problem. No matter what she decided, it was all right. Indeed, if she went to him for advice, all he would say was, "I don't know, figure it out yourself. I've my own work to do."

  So Anna was left on her own to figure, to plot, to plan her sneak attacks on me. And she was like a fox in the henhouse. Still, she would bother Robert with stupid questions like, "Why does the egg man call me the Widow Burwell?"

  I knew why. It was because Anna was the only one who went to the door to deal with the egg man, the milkman, the man who delivered our chickens. They never saw Robert, though they sure knew of his existence. They went to his church on Sunday. Still they called her the Widow Burwell and flirted with her. And to her shame she flirted back.

  Robert spent his time being a minister. He preached twice on Sunday. He visited his people. He held Bible classes. Everyone thought him warm and generous, handsome and likely, holy and studious, and of quality. He never told any of them, "I don't know."

  ***

  ANNA HAD JUST HAD her third baby, a girl, and was more moody and sad than ever. Though I am ashamed to admit it, we came to blows one day over a shell and wax wreath. To make extra money, she made and sold shell and wax flowers and wreaths.

  One day she'd made a particularly lovely wreath and, as always, I was helping her to carry her flowers to church for sale. As always, she was fussing at me. I had a headache that morning, I recollect. I didn't feel well and I was in no mood for her Brer Fox, Brer Rabbit games.

  I was afraid I was getting cholera. An epidemic was going around Orange County that spring. Two children had already died of it.

  I longed for Grandma Sarry, for a serving of her corn pone soaked with peas and pot likker. For a slice of her side meat. Mary Ann could not cook like Grandma Sarry to save her soul. That morning I even would have welcomed a dose of wild cherry and poplar leaves mixed with black haw and slippery elm leaves. In other words, a dose of the bitters.

  I suppose I wasn't the only one with the miseries that morning. I'd just brought Robert a cup of coffee in his study where he was practicing his sermon about sorrow and guilt, fear, sickness, and evil.

  I dropped her lovely shell and wax wreath and it broke into pieces on the floor. Anna screamed and jumped on me like a frog on a lily pad. "You are a constant vexation to me. You are the cross in my life, the thorn in my side."

  She shouted it, attacking me with slaps and blows about my head and face. What could I do? I had to defend myself. I couldn't let anyone treat me like that. I struck her back. My hand caught at the side of her face, leaving a red mark. I stepped ba
ck, horrified at what I had done.

  "You dare!" she shouted. "You dare strike me? Mary Ann! Mary Ann!" She called out to the only other woman in the house. And Mary Ann came running.

  "You two fussing again?" she asked.

  "It's more than fussing," Anna told her. "She struck me. She attacked me in my own house. Go and get my husband, Mary Ann. Go and get Master Robert.

  IN LATER YEARS, when God gave me wisdom, I would know that Robert was simply a man caught between his wife and his half sister. That day I saw none of it. I only saw Robert standing in front of me in his study. Furious.

  In his hand he had a newspaper. And he pointed to an advertisement for a runaway slave named Betty.

  He read it. "I burnt her with a hot iron on the left side of her face," the ad read. "I did it to break her. If you see her, you'll know her by this mark."

  Robert shook the newspaper at me. "Do you see what some masters do?"

  I did not answer.

  "I am not a cruel man, Lizzy, but you must be taught a lesson. You must learn to acknowledge that Anna is your mistress. I cannot think what to do with you, so I am going to hire you out next door, to Mr. Bingham. You will do chores there and then come here. You will work between the two houses. Do you understand?"

  I understood. Bingham was a nigra hater. He was a hard, cruel man who walked backward going to and from the school where he was principal, for fear a nigra might creep up behind him and knock him in the head.

  He thrashed his students all the time. Everyone knew that he carried a pistol. He was on the local patrol to protect white citizens from a possible slave rebellion. After a man named Nat Turner conducted an uprising in 1831, many white people feared slave rebellions.

  He was also known as a slave breaker. People sent their slaves to him to be broken, people like Robert, who were too genteel to do it themselves.