Good Fortune (9781416998631)

by Carter, Noni

  Florence must’ve noticed my tension for she questioned, “Anna? Anna, don’t worry. Ain’t nothing gonna happen to you. You freed anyway!”

  I dismissed her words, letting the worry sink deeper.

  “Anna, I’m serious,” she said, tapping my shoulder with her long fingers. “I won’t let it, that’s a promise.” I relaxed a bit, acknowledging her smile. The two of us would be good friends.

  CHAPTER

  30

  DANIEL AND I HAD BEEN LIVING HERE FOR A LITTLE OVER TWO and a half months, and we were falling quite well into our new lives—new homes, new ideas, new goals.

  I continued my work at Mama Bessie’s house, taking care of the children, doing laundry, and cleaning. That was the trade between us: Mama Bessie offered us a home, and I helped out. Daniel lived half an hour from Mama Bessie’s but would make it his purpose to come see me at least twice a day. Daniel had a temporary job fixing items for neighbors around town. Most days, he would get up early in the morning and walk down to Dayton to find another, steadier job, after having little luck in finding one in Hadson. Eventually, with the small amount of money he raised, he was able to borrow the materials he needed to build himself a wagon and rent two horses for travel. I prayed daily that Daniel would find that job soon, one that was close by and that paid good money. It worried me to see him gone all day, returning at dusk, just to go help out in some field. For now, that was his job, but it was what he called “slave work,” and he told me he didn’t come all the way to freedom to go back to a field.

  “This ain’t no heaven fo’ blacks,” he would constantly tell me, and it seemed he was right. Every once in a while, we’d receive news about trouble in the city—trouble between some free blacks and the whites who lived close by. The only way for blacks to avoid this trouble was to stay out of the way. In my prayers, I asked God to keep my brother out of that kind of mess.

  What I wanted in this free land was rather different from what Daniel wanted. I wanted to learn. The desire started as a subtle feeling that would hit me while I did chores in the house, reminding me of my days back on the plantation with the children. While I did chores around the house, I took to praying for the opportunity to go to school. But the community had no black school, and I had no idea how to go about satisfying my growing desire. I continued to practice on my own, however. When Daniel stole time in the evenings to sit and talk with me, and Florence if she chose to be there, I’d practice reading the newspaper and writing, using whatever tools I could find. Every time Daniel rode to Dayton in his wagon, I gave him special requests.

  “Would you keep an eye out fo’ any paper and ink that don’t cost too much, and actual books in the city? Get a newspaper, too, so I can find out how many schools there are round here. And find out what the white schools are like, and look for any black schools close by. And …” My questions about the city’s opportunities were endless. So one day, Daniel decided to avoid all the questions and, with Mama Bessie’s consent, took me with him.

  We rode all day long as he showed me the church and the stores of the city. Then, as we rounded one of the corners, I spotted it, a lone white building that immediately caught my eye.

  It was the school.

  How I knew this, I did not know, but I knew. My skin tingled with excitement as I stared, dreaming of all the possibilities that lay behind the walls. I started to hop out of the wagon to dart across the field, but Daniel grabbed my arm, holding me back.

  “Anna, you gotta be careful round here. You cain’t jus’ go round everywhere you please. That ain’t our property.”

  “But it’s a school, Sebastian. It’s school property,” I said, aching to get a glimpse of what a real education looked like up north.

  Daniel crossed his arms and frowned at me, saying, “Don’t matta what kinda property you wanna call it, it still means blacks ain’t allowed.” As we drove away, I tried to see into the large windows that lined the walls of the one-room schoolhouse. I spied narrow tables and long benches. As the building disappeared behind us, I felt a deep longing. I wanted that education. It was unfair for me not to receive the chance these white children did.

  We spent the rest of the day looking for jobs for my brother. Daniel would walk up to a door with a sign that stated Work Needed and get turned down at each place. At one stop, a short man with grayish hair came to the door.

  “What do you want?” he asked gruffly.

  “Yo’ sign say Artisans Needed,” Daniel responded.

  “Who is it?” A female voice rang out from within the house. The man leaned back and addressed his wife.

  “Some black kid think there’s work fo’ him here.” The woman behind him giggled. I watched Daniel’s hand, held behind his back, form a fist.

  “Better tell him how it is out here, Freddie.” She laughed again as the man looked back towards Daniel.

  “Does that sign say Niggers Wanted?” The fist clenched tighter.

  “Didn’t see that, sah.”

  “Then why’s you here?” With that, the door slammed—just another one of the many Daniel encountered that day. It was all enough to drive me mad. He didn’t even receive respect as a second thought. I admired him for keeping hold of his temper and for his determination. From what I had heard and what I had seen, aggression from a black person was not taken lightly here, in any situation. The law was not on our side.

  This was no heaven for black folks. I had to keep reminding myself this, especially as my prospects for learning began to dim. Reading signposts and copying newspapers was one thing; true education was entirely another. Perhaps that dream was meant to die. Maybe it was far too unrealistic.

  As the months stretched onward, the freedom and all its dimensions came into plain focus. There was work on weekdays, church on Sundays, and young folk gatherings on occasion. I busied myself with what I could to escape my restlessness in not fulfilling my passions, and my discouragement. I found myself wondering why the bells of my freedom were not ringing very loudly, and soon came to the conclusion that I was missing out on the thing I longed for the most: my education.

  Florence, who had become a constant presence in the lives of my brother and me, was our eyes and ears until we could stand on our own. And even then, she was always there. It was as if she had been waiting for us to show up in the Hadson community. She was two years older than I was, a young woman filled with much energy and optimism.

  In Mama Bessie’s place, I felt like I had found a home among the children and the daily happenings. Even though Mama Bessie paid Florence and me a small stipend in addition to providing a place for us to live and food for us to eat, I felt, within the first few weeks, that Mama Bessie, Florence, and I shared something that ran deeper than this. Mama Bessie’s rules on manners and hard work, most times directed toward the children, never fell short of my ears. But the children always made time for games and play—so much different from the life of the slave children on the plantation that I came from. Watching them brought a lightness into my heart.

  Florence readily introduced me to the entertainment of the town. Sometimes, the church would sponsor festive celebrations that she often convinced me to attend. We’d meet other blacks from nearby communities. Some folks would travel all the way from Indian villages looking for a new place to settle.

  In my trips from Mama Bessie’s to the town center, I found that most of Hadson’s residents were young people who put a lot of effort into work and building businesses. I met folks who had been free for most of their lives. Courting was common, and from what I saw, simple marriages and the raising of families were common.

  Occasionally, there’d be gatherings out in a clearing near the Hill, as everybody called it. There was a lake with a large tree on the right bank and a huge hill on the left. The clearing sat in the middle of a circle of trees, and a platform had been built there. The young townsfolk used it for dancing and fun every once in a while.

  “I think we should go,” Florence said to me one even
ing as we cleaned up the last of the dishes. I had no desire to go, so I fussed, telling her I didn’t wanna be around any music and dancing, but she wasn’t having any of that. I eventually figured I could stay at Mama Bessie’s and explain my feelings to Florence, or I could just go. Lord knows I couldn’t begin talking about John without tears and anger, so I chose the easier of the two options.

  “Sebastian coming?” Florence asked as we dressed for the gathering.

  “Don’t know. But why you concerned?” I asked, eyeing her with curiosity. She shrugged my question off.

  “No matter.”

  We reached the Hill in a matter of minutes, and Florence began introducing me to people I hadn’t met.

  “That fiddler up there, you see him?” She pointed to the man on a stool at the front of the clearing. He was sitting in the middle of a raised platform that had been built for the musicians. “He’s blind, but just listen. He can scare away a storm with all that fiddlin’!”

  We walked on and greeted others. Daniel eventually found us and lost himself in conversation with Florence. As they talked, a wave of loneliness washed over me, and I felt removed from all the music and laughter and dancing. My mind was far away, wondering if John had run yet and if he would he ever find me here and how long he would he look for. I thought about how I would know if something happened to him.

  “Anna!” Daniel called out to me, excited.

  “Yes?”

  “Come on. We gonna dance like we did when we was younger. You rememba?” My heart warmed as it always did when I saw a real smile on my brother’s face. Daniel grabbed my hands and pulled me all the way to the platform. We spun and moved and shuffled, laughing all the while. A little out of breath, we stopped after a while, and I stumbled back over to Florence.

  “Enjoyin’ yourself, huh?” Florence said with a grin.

  “Well, you got some lookers over there,” she said, nodding to a spot under a tree where three young men sat. I glanced in their direction but quickly turned my eyes away. Florence asked my brother if he was too worn out for another dance.

  “Well, now, if you’re offerin’ your hand, I don’t reckon I have much of a choice but to take it, do I?” Daniel teased her.

  “Don’t flatter yo’self, Sebastian.”

  I laughed, enjoying the sight of the two of them walking off toward the music. But as the music played on, I felt my solitude tugging at the seams of my clothes. My attention began to drift to the fellows under the tree and as it did, an anxious feeling rose inside.

  His eyes were smiles in themselves, and they were planted on me. They belonged to the tallest of the three young fellows. He brought another wide smile to his lips and nodded my way. I nodded back but gave him no smile in return.

  I didn’t come to the gathering for this.

  My eyes fell back on the dancers, but my mind stayed with the young man as I noticed him stretch his limbs and walk my way. I stood my ground as the man came nearer to me, but I watched the musicians.

  “Hello, miss.”

  “Hello,” I said, without looking his way.

  “You new around here?”

  I nodded.

  The man stood by me, silent for a few moments.

  “Well, I’m Henry,” he said finally, stepping in front of me and holding out his hand. I looked at his palm. His hands were large, high yellow, and seemed soft. I shook it, more for observation’s sake than to be cordial. They were soft—even more of a reason to keep my space.

  John’s hands are rough.

  “Well, now, you’ve got to have a name too.”

  “Anna,” I replied.

  “Well, Anna, I bet that you have some beautiful eyes. Wish I could see them. You think, maybe …”

  I looked up at him, half-amused. His grin grew wider. Mine disappeared.

  What does he want?

  Suddenly, Florence came up beside us, breathing deeply and sweating, but also grinning.

  “Henry! I see you’ve met Anna,” she said between breaths. “You know, she told me she hasn’t danced much.” I turned angry eyes at Florence, but she didn’t appear to notice.

  “Naw, that cain’t be,” he replied, shaking his head. “I saw her floatin’ around the dance floor like she knew exactly what she was doin’!” He took my hand in his.

  “Would you do me the pleasure of giving me this dance?”

  But Henry’s words never reached my ears. I caught two words: “floating” and “dance.” My heart fluttered. How silly of me to have come here. The wrong person was standing in front of me.

  “Anna!” Florence chided, distant like a ghost from another world, “did you hear Henry?”

  “Oh, ah … ya. But I’m … I gotta go back, Florence,” I said, taking my hand from Henry’s grasp and stumbling past Florence in a daze.

  “It was nice meetin’ you, Henry,” I said with a single glance toward their puzzled faces.

  Florence threw her hands up in the air as I began walking away.

  “Anna, where you going?” she called to me.

  “Well, see, I saw Sebastian headin’ down to Rodney’s some time ago, an’ I was plannin’ on goin’ with him, so I just … I gotta go. You stay an’ have fun. Don’t worry about me.”

  My brother had left to go to Rodney’s, but that wasn’t where I was headed. My heart ached, and I knew that I needed to be alone with my thoughts, with my prayers, with my tears.

  John, why did you have to dance with me that December night?

  My heart felt heavy, and my tears flowed freely. The further I separated myself from the Hill, the stronger my fear and doubt became.

  Will I ever see John again?

  CHAPTER

  31

  LIFE STRETCHED ONWARD AND WITH EACH NEW DAY CAME a new sense of hope. Amid all the working and cleaning and meeting new people, I would occasionally find a piece of myself, something distant or from the past, that had been missing. This sure was freedom, but I was still bound to images of the whip, families torn apart, and screams heard in the darkness.

  The whip haunted me. I’d lay awake at night hearing it echoing in my mind. I’d see John, lying there, bloody, sliced up, unmoving, his eyes wide and unblinking. My mind created so many questions at night.

  But as time advanced, some of the more brutal images faded, and my doubts and fears became less pronounced. The feeling of being free in my homeland was very distant from me, but my soul drew the connection between then and the present. My dreams vacillated between images of the plantation and thoseof Africa.

  For the five months we’d been in the Hadson community, I awoke early each Sunday morning, hours before anyone else in the household. Like the old Sundays when I was in slavery, I found my place of peace: here, it was on the hill by the lake. I’d sit there and watch the sunrise, the same one I saw back on the plantation, except now the sunrise smiled upon a free girl. Sometimes, as I sat there, consumed by the essence of the moment, I would imagine my mother seated next to me. She would close her eyes, lie down by my side, and hold me in her arms, whispering secrets about what different dances meant, about nature and its gift to humanity, and about womanhood and the beautiful art of happiness beyond circumstance. She talked about my brother, Sentwaki, and of things I had forgotten. I would lie there, letting my thoughts and memories spin in my imagination.

  Some Sunday mornings, I would hear footsteps. I knew they weren’t real, but I allowed myself to hear them and the voice I longed for. “You eva sailed the wind befo’?” I’d try to, but I could never sail like I did back on my hill, back when John was with me.

  In Hadson, church started later in the morning. After visiting my special place at the lake and traveling through the images of my mind, I would try to slip back into the house before it erupted with activity. Florence and I, and any other woman who happened to be passing through, would grab the children’s clothes and iron until our hands were sore. Mama Bessie would fix breakfast and call the youngest to the kitchen to eat first, followed by the
other children, with the older ones eating last. After everyone was washed, dressed, and fed, we would head out to church.

  This morning was no different. Florence and I stood side by side, with a child grasping each of our hands, and walked down the dusty roads. The church sat slightly behind the home of one of its members. It was a small wooden building with two windows on each side and a cross placed above the door.

  Many people were in attendance, even those who didn’t come to church regularly, because today marked the church’s tenth anniversary. There were not enough seats for everyone in the building, so many stood in the aisles. Fortunately, Florence and I had arrived early, and we found our normal seats in the second row. Since there were so many children, one of the women of the neighborhood had been asked to take them to a nearby house and do a separate sermon. Mama Bessie called it the “children’s church.”

  As Florence and I seated ourselves, little Ned came running up. He was always a delight, so curious about everying, and I had to admit that I favored his presence over those of the others.

  “Miss Anna, let me stay wit you an’ Miss Florence, pleeeease!” I looked over at Florence with laughing eyes but kept my lips set.

  “Ned, they have children’s church today. That’s where you’re supposed to be.” He pouted and crossed his arms. It was too much for me.

  “All right, come sit between us. But you gotta be quiet. One little peep, an’ I’m takin’ you out!” I said to him as he hopped up between us with delight. I looked over at Florence, who was gazing at me with raised eyebrows, and I shrugged.

  “We here today to celebrate what God Almighty done fo’ us.” Church always opened with a prayer followed by singing. The church had one small hymnal written by a black man that had been brought from Philadelphia, where it had been published. Not too many folks could read it, however, so it sat out of view until after the service, which is when I would get my hands on it to read its words.