An Unlikely Friendship

by Ann Rinaldi

  "I don't want to go there, Robert," I said, "please."

  He paid me no never mind. And that night I reported to the back door of Mr. William J. Bingham, principal of Hillsborough Academy and local breaker of slaves.

  IT ALL BEGAN proper-like. Mr. Bingham acted like a parson himself at first. His wife was a quiet, mousy woman who couldn't come up with an opinion if Moses himself asked her to. She treated her husband like her master. When I got to know him, I understood why. She had long since given up trying to be a person in her own right. If I had any smarts, I'd have taken lessons from her.

  I was to stay at their place nights since they had a six-month-old baby who needed constant attention and cried a lot. The baby woke, fussing, at six in the morning. I got up then and carried it to its mother for nursing. Then I cleaned all the fireplaces and started fires in them. At eight we had prayers. I was to soon learn that he was the prayingest man I ever was to meet, that Mr. Bingham. I suppose he had a lot to pray about and make up for.

  After prayers I served breakfast. I didn't have to cook, thank heaven. They had a cook, name of Jenny. After breakfast I cleaned up.

  When Mr. Bingham left, I was to stand in the front hallway and hand him his hat and coat and say, "Have a good day, sir."

  It was something he was persnickety about, and I was corrected many times before he allowed that I did it just right.

  After he left I was to go home, next door, just in time to dress and feed the Burwell children. At home I cleaned up, I cared for the children, I mended and sewed, and I was at Anna's beck and call all day. Then it was back to the Binghams in time to serve supper and clean up and put the baby to bed.

  I ran back and forth between the two houses like a chicken with its head cut off, for two weeks, until I was worn down in body and spirit. I slept when I could and ate when I could and didn't mouth off at anybody. I was too scared to.

  ALL THE WHILE I felt Mr. Bingham watching me when I wasn't looking. He watched me all the time, that man, and it gave me the blue devils. I thought, if ever a man scared me like Raw Head or Bloody Bones of my childhood, it was him. He could pray all he wanted to and make me kneel when he prayed, but he was still evil, that man. I saw it in his small beady eyes and in the way he held his half-bald head. He all the time looked like he had the stomach miseries. Like he needed a good dose of scurvy-grass tea.

  He was plotting something. That's what I saw when his evil eyes looked at me. Turned out I was right, too.

  One evening when I'd been there two weeks and was putting the baby to bed, he stood outside the nursery door.

  "Come to my study as soon as you're finished here," he ordered.

  I felt like I had a cold in my bones. If I could have run, I would have, but this man always wore his pistol, even in the house. I had no doubt that he'd shoot me if I ran. Besides, before I even came here Robert had warned me, "Remember, in North Carolina a master cannot be charged with battery against a slave."

  In his study, Mr. Bingham closed the door and got right to it. "Take off your dress, I am going to whip you."

  I drew myself up proudly. "No, Mr. Bingham, I shall not take off my dress before you. And you won't whip me unless you prove the stronger."

  I knew that much. I'd die first. But he grabbed a rope and tried to tie my hands. We fought. I tried to force him away, but he was the stronger.

  He ripped my dress from my back, and with a piece of rawhide began to flog me. Oh God, I can still feel the torture now, the terrible, excruciating agony of those moments. But I wouldn't cry out. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction.

  He finally finished with his devil's work and I wrapped my dress around me the best I could and dragged myself out of the house and home.

  There I found Robert and Anna, quietly enjoying their evening before the fire in the parlor. I stumbled in, bleeding and holding my dress about me.

  I stood in front of Robert, who was reading. He did not look up at me. "Why did you let Bingham flog me?" I demanded.

  Still, he wouldn't look at me. Nor would Anna, who just sat there making her shell flowers.

  "I did everything that was expected of me. I gave no mouth. I did no foolishment. Why?"

  "Go away," Robert said.

  "No, I won't. I deserve an answer. You sent me there for this, didn't you? You wanted it for me. You know he's a slave breaker."

  "Go away, Lizzy."

  "Well, I'm not broken. Nobody can break me."

  He put his book down. He stood up. He picked up his wooden chair and threw it at me. I ducked, but it grazed the side of my face and knocked me down.

  "Go away or you'll be sorry." He stood looking down at me.

  I struggled to my feet and left. But I did not go back to the Binghams until the next morning.

  I CRIED MYSELF to sleep. You would think Anna would come and offer me something for my bleeding back, but she didn't. I knew what I needed. A bath with soaking mullein leaves. Tea made of peach-tree leaves. But I had nothing, nobody.

  THE NEXT MORNING my back hurt precious bad, but I was becalmed. I served breakfast to Anna and Robert. I know I would have forgiven him if he gave me one kind word, I needed kindness so badly. But he gave me nothing.

  I went back to Bingham's and acted with dignity.

  A week went by and the next Friday he came at me again.

  Again I fought him. He had a new rope and a new rawhide whip. This time I bit his finger. He grabbed up a stick and beat me with it, but again I wouldn't cry out. He beat me about the head and shoulders and back until I was again bleeding.

  Then something happened. He stood there as I cowered in front of him, warding off more blows. He was breathing heavily, exhausted.

  Then, of a sudden, he started to cry.

  "It would be a sin to beat you anymore," he said. "I'll never beat you again, Lizzy. I promise."

  ANNA TOOK UP AGAIN where Bingham left off. No longer did I have to work for him. Just as he turned kind, I was summoned home by Robert to take up all my old chores in full.

  Anna was holding her new little girl, Ann, when she came at me for failing to keep up the fire in the parlor. "I know what happened between you and Bingham," she told me. "He came the other day to talk with Robert. After all, Robert is his pastor."

  She glared at me. "So, you think we lost."

  "I think nothing, ma'am."

  "You'll be more of a vexation now to me than ever."

  We argued. She pushed me into sassiness. Robert came into the room then with a broom handle in his hands.

  "I'll not have any more of this. Stop it, the both of you!"

  "She sassed me, Robert. You have to do something. Bingham couldn't. She made that man cry. You must do it. You are her master. Your power is absolute."

  What did she mean by absolute? I feared the worst.

  It came about then. Robert came at me with the broomstick. He beat me about the head and shoulders until my head rang with the pain of it. I struggled. I fought him just as I'd fought Bingham.

  I felt blood streaming down the side of my face. It was like being attacked by a possum. I felt removed, as if I were somewhere far away when I heard Anna yelling, "No, no, Robert. No more please, you'll kill her."

  She kept saying it, and he kept right at me. I fell to the floor, and it was then that I saw Anna kneeling at Robert's side, baby in arms, begging him to stop.

  The baby was screaming. I worried about the baby. And this is the house of a parson, I thought crazily, while pain shot through my shoulders and arms and back.

  "I'll subdue her proud, rebellious spirit once and for all," Robert was saying to Anna.

  She clutched at his arm. "Think, think of what you are doing to yourself. You're a man of God, Robert."

  That made him stop like somebody had thrown cold water at him. Her words struck him right in the face. He stood, stunned. He ran his hand across his forehead. He looked at his hands. They were trembling. He threw down the broomstick and stared down at me as if he had no more sense
than a hooty owl.

  "Dear God, what have I done?"

  I was on the floor. I couldn't move. I was sure my left arm was broken. My face was bleeding, and I felt as if my head was split open. Lights flashed in front of my eyes, and then for a moment or two I couldn't see at all.

  The baby was hiccuping, the fire crackling, and for a moment they seemed like the only sounds in the world.

  Robert knelt down beside me. "Get up, Lizzy."

  "I don't know if I can."

  "You can. I'll help you." And so he did. Then he took the baby from Anna's arms and directed her. "Go with her and bandage her up. Put her arm in a sling if you have to. Let me know if I should call a doctor."

  He was babbling, then of a sudden he stopped and looked at me. "Lizzy, Lizzy," he said. "I promise I will never strike you another blow again."

  ROBERT AND ANNA had always needed money, but now, with a fourth child coming, they needed it like a coon dog needed to hunt. To that end they started their school. An advertisement in the paper listed the cost: English studies, $17.50, French, $15.00, Music, $25.00, Drawing and Painting, $10.00, and Sewing as for a Fine Lady, $25.00.

  The sewing was taught by me.

  They called it Burwell's Female Academy. What the ad didn't say was that the young ladies would also be making their own beds, helping to wash their own dishes, and doing their own mending. Anna wouldn't lay herself low enough to do such tasks. And all the help they had was the cook and me.

  The school was a success, which had a lot to do with Robert teaching, too. That, and the Presbyterian Session and the Ladies' Benevolent Society giving money to make the house bigger.

  But best of all, Anna and Robert were working together and had too much to do to fuss at me anymore. Anna didn't even fuss when I was asked to be in six weddings between October of 1837 and April of 1838. Of course, I was to make my own gowns, and I was surprised as a hooty owl caught in daylight when Robert offered to buy the fabric.

  "You'll be a walking advertisement for our school, Lizzy," he told me. "I can't afford not to."

  Two of the weddings, that of Miss Ann Nash and Miss Susan Atwell, were held around Christmas, and so the occasions were twice as festive.

  But a different dress for each one! I wrote to my mother, thinking she could make one dress for me for a spring wedding. "Please, could you make me a pretty frock?" I wrote. "I can send the fabric and the pattern."

  I'd written to my mother faithfully over the years, but she never wrote back. This time she did.

  "Just make sure you don't appear too likely to those white mens at the weddings," she wrote. "Or you'll end up with child, like I did."

  That was all. A brutal reply. I hid my disappointment. I made the dress myself.

  I LONGED TO GET AWAY. The house was full to the brim with chilluns. The students, whose ages were from ten to fourteen, were all just chilluns after all and they needed fussing over. They needed to have their spirits raised up when they got homesick. There was lots of crying at night when the lights went out.

  One girl, fourteen-year-old Susan Murphy, cried every night. It was my job to sit and soothe her because, as Robert said, "You have had your lessons in sorrow."

  "I can't stay here any longer," Susan sobbed in her bed. "I want to go home. If my father doesn't send the stage for me, I'll walk."

  I talked to her. I comforted her. I told her how I would never see my father again, how I'd been sent away from my mother at fourteen.

  She listened as if to a fairy tale. That's what my life is, I told myself. A fairy tale in which the witches and the dragons always win.

  I didn't sleep myself that night. I yearned to escape from that place. I'd met many other house slaves by now in Hillsborough. And they all went about a lot more free than I was. More than that, I'd met free nigra women who made their own living as storekeepers, midwives, tavern keepers, or owners of cook shops.

  I knew for certain that someday I wanted to buy my own freedom as my father and Grandma Sarry had said. But for now, all I wanted, all I needed, was to get away from that house.

  THAT'S WHERE I ran into trouble. Just like Brer Rabbit in the briar patch. Wanting to get away and do on my own. Wanting to get away from that house full of noisy little girls always up to some devilment, who all learned, straightaway, that I was the one to go to for help and comfort. Those little girls who didn't know a thing about hoeing a row of cotton, or eating the heads off worms, or waiting on a table, or sleeping on a pallet on the floor next to a cranky baby.

  When my chance came to get away, I jumped on it like a coon dog picking up scent. I didn't think twice. I minded that it was sent to me by God.

  MY CHANCE CAME when I was a bridesmaid at the wedding of Miss Jane Pitwell to Master John Dillard in March of 1838. As always, I'd made my own dress. It was yellow organza with a neckline that showed plenty of my bosoms and with no white neck scarf to hide anything.

  I was all of twenty years old and ready to break away from the harness. And when Mr. Alexander Kirkland from Ayr Mount Plantation saw me in that dress, he had a crack in his voice.

  "You made it yourself?"

  He was over six feet tall and had what the white folk called "a commanding presence." Always I'd wondered what that meant. Now I knew.

  "Yes," I said. "I do all my own clothes. And those of Mistress Burwell, too. I also teach sewing at the school."

  "I wish you could teach it to my wife and niece Catherine," he said. Was he just a bit in his cups? He looked as if he'd had a quart of locust beer.

  But my, he was handsome. And the way he spoke to me, like an equal, was a caution. I liked that. "You'd have to ask Master Robert," I said.

  "I'd pay you."

  "You'd have to pay him."

  "Hires you out, does he?"

  I thought of Bingham. "Sometimes."

  "What's your name, then?"

  "Lizzy. Lizzy Hobbs."

  "Well, Lizzy Hobbs, would you dance with me?"

  I stopped right there, like a jackass in front of a fence. I did have some sense. And I'd made a rule for myself. Never dance with a white man at a wedding. No sense in stirring up trouble.

  The upshot of it all was that Mr. Alex Kirkland, thirty-three years on God's good earth and without the sense of a grasshopper, asked Master Robert could he hire me out so's I could teach his wife and his niece to sew.

  Mr. Alex Kirkland of Ayr Mount, a mile east of town, who, as a cadet at a military academy in Connecticut, had been dismissed for hitting another cadet. Who was rumored to beat his wife. Who had once shot and killed a man in a hunting accident and sold two of his slaves to the local slave dealer because they were unruly and insolent.

  He had one baby son. He had a merchandising business in town. His man drove him to and from town every day in his fancy carriage.

  He could fetch me in that carriage, he told Robert. He would pay Robert well.

  "Do you know what a treasure you have in her?" I overheard him asking Robert.

  And Robert, who knew his treasure could bring him needed money, mumbled something about always knowing. And how would Mr. Kirkland treat me, he wanted to know. There was to be no physical abuse. After all, he'd heard things.

  "All talk," Mr. Kirkland said. "You know how people in this small town like to talk." And so Mr. Alex Kirkland, whose wife was then expecting her second child, promised no. He would not abuse me.

  AYR MOUNT was on a hill outside of town right next to the Jones place. It was more of a big farm than a plantation, but I suppose it deserved the fancified name. It had slave cabins, little nigra chilluns running about the yard, the whole cloth of a plantation. The victuals were good, too. He had a cook name of Rainy, who was all the time feeding everybody. He had house girls named Peg and Joy, a butler who also drove the carriage, name of Arnold, and a passel of slaves in the fields whose names I never did get to know. He also had a granny woman, name of Parthena, whose onliest job was to look after little colored chilluns.

  Mr. Alexande
r growed everything to feed and clothe his people on that plantation, except coffee and sugar and salt. It was a right pretty place, about a hundred acres. He had sheep, too, and they used the wool for winter clothes, and some of the slaves weaved cloth all day long.

  If I seem to take on about the place it's because it was so lovely, like a dream come true for me at first. His wife, another Anna, was as different from Robert's Anna as the sun was from the moon. She was the sweetest thing this side of freedom.

  Two days a week Mr. Kirkland fetched me "home" from Robert's place.

  At Ayr Mount I would take tea with his wife and his ten-year-old niece who lived with them. I was also invited to dine at the supper table.

  "Like a tutor from my childhood," Mr. Kirkland said. "You didn't make the tutor dine alone in the kitchen."

  At first I was powerful scared about dining with white people. But I'd served at enough tables to know what to do and what not to do. And so I was accepted as one of them.

  There was a problem though, and it was as sticky as a crock of spilled molasses. I couldn't make friends with Peg and Joy, no matter how I tried.

  "You got yourself so turned around," Peg told me, "your head is on backwards. You ain't nigra anymore and you sure ain't white, girl. You hafta decide what you wanna be."

  Indeed, what was I? It was a caution. And I was more confused than ever before in my life.

  But I did what I was hired to do. I spent those two days a week teaching Anna Kirkland and her niece to sew. I showed them how to cut and fit, baste and stitch. In this case we had a difficult task. Mr. Kirkland wanted a white duster made of linen, made cutaway style, with long tails.

  We worked on that coat until the cows came home and finished it in two weeks, and Mr. Kirkland allowed that it was as fine a coat as a man could want.

  "You certainly are a treasure," he said.

  How much of a treasure I was soon to find out.