“Never make my sister your servant, Miss,” Gabriel Coats demanded.
“No, never, sir,” Delia promised.
“I will hold you to your vow,” he said grimly. Gabriel still did not look up to Delia’s face. His eyes were trained on the knitting needles stalled in his hands. He struggled to move them in service of the pattern, but they would not. His shoulders collapsed to countenance the collapse of this tightly dreamed plan—that Ellen would produce more of her finest work, that Ellen would stay a warm and quiet helpmeet for Mary and Nanny and him. He was averse to this change.
The day that Ellen was born had been an unusual one, for Gabriel had been separated from his mam in the early morning and kept at his father’s side. He had tagged along with his blacksmith father and smelled the leather and sweat and manure in the barns. In the evening they had returned to their cabin and squatted in the back, leaning against the cabin wall. Sweat ran off them from their exertion in the barns and from Gabriel’s fear for his mother. He had heard her intermittent groaning and the midwife cajoling her through each rise. Finally Ellen had come squalling and everyone had sighed and lifted up happily, and some one of the adults—tall trees above his head talking excitedly—had handed him a cake of gingerbread. Its special flavor had arrested him and ever after he had been able to call up the taste of gingerbread and warm thoughts of that day. He’d delighted in training Ellen and coddling her and had never given a thought to cutting her away—to losing her.
Resolved to take it as his own failure of heart, Gabriel realized that all of the others were, as always, convinced of Delia. And Ellen wanted to go with her—that was clear. Ellen would be the ribbon that tags along always, for she did love this girl!
“Take care of my sister and honor her,” Gabriel said. “She did save your life once, child.”
Thirty-three
“THE BIGGEST TRANSGRESSION perpetrated against our race under the banner of racial superiority is that they have taken our good, sweet picture of ourselves and each other from us. They have made our people despise themselves and falter because of it. We must lose no time in educating our people. We have been left behind others and must work hard to catch up!” The speaker’s voice sounded like a rusted back door crux in need of oil. It was, however, compelling. Most surprising was that the voice belonged to a woman.
Going home along High Street, Naomi Coats walked alongside her mother’s right hand, feeling the pull toward her father. Gabriel Coats walked next to his wife and his leadership was the magnet. Naomi believed that her father created and maintained this pulling toward himself. Lately it irritated her that all of them must defer to her father. Gabriel Coats was the visionary! He was the one whose ideas were gold because he had brought them all out of slavery. The way the family always spoke, it was as if Mother and Granmam and Auntie had not thought of a single thing! What about how they’d struggled during the war when Papa was away in the fighting? They had been grand—all of them! Was it not her mother who had directed them to plant the eyes of potatoes in straw in the root cellar? And had they not all fed on potatoes through months of privation? Instinctive, rebellious Naomi drew away from her father.
Naomi wanted to pull her mother back toward her and very nearly did do so. She put her hand on her mother’s arm to turn her—to talk to her about Affinity Dunlap’s speech. But her mother’s attention was elsewhere.
Mary had been as touched by Miss Dunlap as her daughter. “Husband, did you hear? Is’t grand—does it not sound grand and hopeful? A school just for the colored! Hampton Institute—’tis a school to teach the colored how to make a good way,” she said excitedly.
“ ’Tis a lot of grand talk all right, Mary.” Gabriel’s hand patted Mary’s forearm authoritatively and shushed her enthusiasm. “There are a great many schemes to help the former bondman. Not many will succeed.”
“How could a school not succeed if it will look to the fitness of its students?” Mary pummeled Gabriel’s forearm gently and was shocked that he tugged it from her. Mary knew the women had been in the dark about how things had been for the soldiers—especially the colored ones. She knew when she saw her husband’s sagging silhouette—when he stood on the threshold—that the truth of the travails was harsher than she had imagined. But the harshness in him was not lessening as she had expected. She’d held the hope that his melancholy would give way to contentment at his own hearth, surrounded with his own children.
Affinity Dunlap’s speech had given Mary the seed of an idea for her daughters and she risked floating airborne in her excitement. Gabriel so coolly rejected the lofty dreams of education and equality that Mary had lost much of her gases by the time they arrived at home.
Affinity Dunlap, the woman whose voice and message had held the Coats family in thrall, was an educator and the daughter of a prominent family of free Black Washingtonians. She was passionately committed to the education of her people. A charismatic, inspirational speaker, she made the rounds of the city’s colored forums, and her message was an exhortation: education for the newly freed, education for all, education above all.
Affinity’s mother, a confidential lady’s maid to a rich Washington matron, had become fond of a word she heard spoken in lighthearted conversation between her employer, Mrs. Elizabeth Coyle, and her husband. Affinity—so lovely and diaphanous! The Coyles said the word often and Cora Dunlap simply enjoyed the sound of it. When her child was born, her lovely little girl, Cora chose the name Affinity.
Miss Affinity Dunlap would be noticed in any room. She was tall, and unlike some others of her gender, she drew herself to her full height. She appeared always proud to be head and shoulders above the average. In fact, her habit of engaging the eyes of her mostly male fellow lecturers and audience members was considered impertinent and possible only because she was so tall, of heroic bearing and relatively well-to-do.
Cora Dunlap’s little girl had thrived on the advantages of living in at the Coyle mansion. Her tall father wore livery and drove the Coyle carriage, and the girl occasionally rode behind him in masquerade as a wealthy dowager. She grew to be polished in manner and speech. Her educational accomplishments—advanced work at Oberlin College—reflected her parents’ and her benefactors’ goals. The abolitionists and the ambitious parents molded a good model of intellectual rigor and moral rectitude in the exceptional Miss Affinity Dunlap.
Mount Zion Church hosted Miss Dunlap for a lecture on education and the new Hampton Institute in the spring of 1870. Naomi Coats was so impressed with Miss Dunlap’s zealous insistence that education would be essential—especially the education of young colored women—that her breath nearly stopped. Miss Dunlap spoke eloquently and passionately of the Negro people’s grand march out of bondage. Her talk had been heart-throbbing in its vehemence. Several times during her talk the men and some of the older women became uncomfortable at the lecturer’s strong tone. At these moments Miss Dunlap cleverly softened and won back their love by drawing pictures of the ones dead in bondage. She unequivocally advocated advanced education in the scholarly studies for women so that young women would be able to instruct their children in their own homes. Until such time that they were married, these young women—a veritable army—must go out to teach the race’s children.
“We are put behind the other race and must work hard to catch up! Let us give our sons and daughters to the task!” Miss Dunlap said loudly and forthrightly. “We must take their places at the errands and the duties to give them over to their education. There is a great need for teachers and skilled nurses for our people, and expert seamstresses and laundresses are always wanted. Our daughters can go into the cities and labor for their keeping until they are married and settled. For this invaluable work they will be well suited. They will cultivate their homes with distinction and educate their own offspring.” She finished on a note to satisfy the churchmen and their wives. But she was for herself not so fond of matrimony.
Spelled out in this fashion, it seemed wrong to Mary to keep
their jewels at home. Her daughters were precious and of much more value to the wider circle than to their home only. “Gabriel, these girls might benefit from attending the school. What fine skills they have already would be strengthened at the institute.”
Naomi was surprised to hear her mother talk of sending her and Ruth to Hampton Institute. She had been downhearted because she was sure her father would not let her leave his employ. Skill with sums was crucial to the Coatses’ work and Naomi was strong in this knowledge and had facility for sewing. During the years of the war, whilst her father had been gone, Naomi had pitched in ably with work in the shop and had, as well, the care of her younger sisters.
“We have trained them up to give their services here—with us. We will build our trade upon them.” Gabriel squelched his wife’s wild ideas. He would not relent easily. He insisted that the girls were needed at home. Commerce had returned following the war. There was much work they would be leaving.
Mary bartered with Pearl. She convinced her husband that this daughter would easily be the match of the other two. Pearl was growing tall and broad and was able to hoist pots. She was also skilled at fine lap work. And there was young Hannah to train. Mary coyly suggested, too, that another hand might come, which caused Gabriel to soften with his wife’s flattery. He capitulated finally. He would permit the girls to go to Hampton. Mary felt a sad triumph.
Gabriel and Mary could have sent them via train, but greatly feared the young women might be ill treated if riding alone. Thus Mary and Gabriel set out aboard a wagon to take Naomi and Ruth to Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute down on the coast of Virginia.
The day they set out was bright and quiet and the wooden fence pickets along the roadway were whitewashed as pearly as teeth. Much of the countryside they passed through was still flattened from the war and stripped of luster. The group —partly merry, partly sad—rode along the scarred, rutted country roads in Virginia heading toward Hampton Roads.
When the nervous parents arrived at the Hampton Institute with their daughters, they pressed them to stay close to each other and buoy each other in the school. Gabriel grasped and firmly impressed upon each that she must return home when her education was complete. He meant to insist that he loved and cherished them and wished always to protect them, but rather he said they were his chickens and belonged in his yard. It was a familiar phrase and the girls beamed at their father lovingly. Naomi bade her parents good-bye with more enthusiasm than her sister. Ruth rained tears and pined for her mother and father as soon as their backs retreated from view. Naomi pinched Ruth’s arm mischievously and immediately gave her attention over to her studies.
Gabriel and Mary bade the babes good-bye with hope despite their sadness and fears. Gabriel drove the wagon toward Washington feeling a great pull to get back and to doing. His hands were impatient for his needles and unaccustomed to the horse’s reins. Upon a rutted road, their wagon pitched near the river’s edge and went into the Potomac. They drowned.
Thirty-four
THE RIVER SHIMMERS jewel-like with the full sun. Its colors then are iridescent blues. But it is a dirty jade green when you shade your eyes and look directly down in it. The Potomac is always this way. It is no true-blue body of water. Gabriel was all and all was gone.
Sorrow is the boon friend of memory—two devoted ones walking hand in hand. They are everywhere together! And Annie saw herself and the boy likewise together in all. At his table and about the tools near the hearth. Upon the rise of the hill at Ridley where, in his childhood years, they climbed to gather herbs. In the town when he became a man and his rhythmic, youthful passions thumped overhead in the loft astride his wife. All was gone! Annie pictured Gabriel at work and mumbling his stitch count to himself and moving his lips so gently. Ah! She tasted his soft, puffy lips with a hint of salt upon them when she moved her tongue across her own lips. No more! Gabriel was all and all was gone.
Again and again Annie saw the rosy times gone and again and again she faced the sight that must have been: Gabriel and Mary smashed on rocks and battered to death against them and drowned. They were close to home and had become careless or unlucky or pompous in their joy of their daughters. They had died so nearby that their bodies were recovered and turned over to their people in complete defiance of the probable.
The horse had misstepped at the Virginia side of the bridge to cross into Georgetown. She, too, had forgotten herself in excitement to be home. The wagon had tipped for being unevenly weighted. On the road to Hampton the wagon was burdened with wares and the girls’ belongings. It had become lighter when they left off the daughters at Hampton. Joy and pride had buoyed their return trip, though Mary had cried at leaving the girls. It was her own idea to send them for schooling, but the separation was punishing. Now she was sensitive of Gabriel’s annoyance at her crying.
“Clam up, Mary. Quiet yourself. We have done as you wanted. We have left them to their schooling. When you see them again they will be women like yourself,” Gabriel had said gruffly. But in the next moment he had pinched her arm and laughed at her crying. “No more, old girl. You have other chickens at home.”
Mary’s answer had been to nod and sniffle and paw at her own face to dry it.
The wagon had turned over on the slide down to the riverbank. At the bottom of the bridge, the horse had regained her feet and, confused, plunged into the water, pulling the shreds of the buckboard and with it Gabriel and Mary clinging. This dashing had battered the legs of the animal on rocks and had cut the things she towed through the rough, stirring up bloody foam.
Ah! He was cut up! Both were. Annie gave over dressing the bodies to the mortician, for she could not look upon them. The sight rendered her silent—grudging with her words. She then slipped into a narrow precinct as she’d done during the war. She gave out her directives as to the work, but said little more.
Long ago in Gabriel’s childhood, Annie had all of him in her hands. Did she think that her first and foremost handling of him meant she could always have him so? Yes, she did. A mother thinks so. She recollected the momentary hardness of his tiny penis when she first put his heels in warm water. She pinched his scrotum and teased him and he kicked his fat legs, splashing water in her face and shushing pee over her neck and breasts. This renegade thought she drove off quickly, but wanted to savor some. If Gabriel were like his father, his member would be shrunk in the laying out. The liveliness gone from it! Huh! Death, the thief! Death will snatch up everything —even what the master covets. Ha! ’Tis a comfort to the hard-suffering ones!
Annie feared herself in danger of being forgetful of Gabriel. A silly panic! His stamp was upon her. She would have mental pictures of him and phantom words and potent hauntings for all her days when she lay down to sleep. This was certain! He had cut her just as she had cut him.
And still the sensation of his little body knifing through her unused womb—opening her up and changing her body forever—returned in memory. The desperate, fearful inevitability of it was what caused her crying and moaning testimony. But, too, there was the twitching of pleasure that seemed as if she were feeling what Bell felt in his shuddering climax and the same as the other one that grunted and sweated. The sullen midwife cut her eyes sideways at Annie, but was occupied to catch the child who worked his way to daylight between Annie’s thighs with such agency. This little bitty one changed her body more and more completely than the others.
Annie touched her privacy and thought of her babe. Oh! This one would teach her her own body again at this advanced time? Recollecting Gabriel brought her back to her own body. And the exercise of it puzzled her. The thoughts coming were fearsome. It was confusing to feel herself thinking, dreaming of Gabriel, her son, this way. Beyond the veil what relation is there? Longing for the loved one has no cast—it is only longing, pulling, piercing, and skewering.
And then she feared being forgetful of the time before Gabriel was born—before he had come to change her life. Between these times there was only
left the present time of painful loss. Annie was stuck and planted in a hurting present. She felt the pain of it as a knife blade in her chest. She was forfeit of half her life without Son Gabriel! Mary! Mary! Mary!—an afterthought—shameful that Mary was an appendage to her thoughts. Beloved Mary had perished alongside her husband, leaving all of her little chickens! Oh, Mary! Oh, Gabriel! Annie keened their names, but it was Gabriel that she mourned.
He was gone and dead now. The cruel joke had been played. Look here. Look there. Around the corner comes the trouble and for that one brief moment your head is turned and lifelong caring is gone for naught. He was gone. Was there yeast in her to keep on—to gather up these others and go on? Through a bad headland they had all come. Yet it was now—when all was calm and quiet and looking forward—that Gabriel and Mary had died? Now that the cruel turn had come?
Annie had long been a patient bitch alert to trouble, poised to lash out to keep him safe—to come to his defense. For so long she had been caring for Gabriel. She’d shorted Ellen in looking out for Gabriel because she reasoned that the man—-because he was a man—needed more of her maternal agency. She had loosed him to come to the city and then she had loosed him to the war and fighting because of the times. She’d had no choice but see him go. He was a man she had made to stand on his own legs and go and do and he followed that trail. She’d suffered without him, but took it as her portion. She put little hope in his survival in the war, for their luck had been so good thus far—in the scheme of things. It surely had been used up. But he’d surprised her—delighted her. Son Gabriel had come up with more luck. He had come back from war with all of himself intact. His survival was the most improbable turn of their lives until this last inexplicable turn.
With once sharp, clear eyes going toward rheumy, Jonathan Ridley came to inventory the shop directly after Gabriel’s funeral. Neither an early arrival nor one who stayed to see the dirt cast on the coffins, Ridley waited in the tailor shop for Annie and the others to return. His blurry eyesight and uncertain speech were most often achieved at late afternoon. But this day had begun early and he’d fortified well with ale before the service and the cemetery. He expected to be forced to look at Sewing Annie and her brood. He’d endured the gaudy funeral they concocted for Gabriel and his woman.
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