My Name's Not Friday

by Jon Walter

  ‘I ain’t exactly itching.’ The truth of it is I ain’t thought of leaving here for quite a while.

  ‘Good. Least someone here has got some sense.’

  ‘What happens if the Yankees lose the war?’

  Connie clears his nose. ‘They won’t lose no war. I heard they passed Baton Rouge already and they got gunships coming up to Vicksburg. There ain’t no way they can lose. Just you wait and see.’

  ‘They’ll lose if they ain’t got the men to fight.’ Antoinne interrupts us angrily. ‘We got to fight for the right to be free. We can’t sit about waiting for some white folks from the North to do it all for us. We got to do it for ourselves.’

  Connie snorts at him. ‘I heard they won’t even let you carry arms. I heard they’ll have you digging ditches for ’em, same as if you would if you were still a slave.’

  ‘Don’t you worry about that.’ Antoinne sits back down at the table, but he keeps his fists clenched. ‘I’ll be fighting for the right to be free. Don’t you worry ’bout that.’

  The two of ’em take to arguing about how many soldiers each side has and the size of the gunboats. They argue about who’s the better general – is it Grant or is it Lee? – and I listen carefully to ’em, all the time wondering which side God’s on and why He doesn’t hurry up and get it over and done with.

  At dusk, Mrs Allen comes to the cabins with Gerald and she gathers us around the fire pit. She confirms everything Sicely told us but says she has a plan to store the cotton till it can be sold. ‘Come the spring, we’ll only plant half the amount of cotton and turn the rest over to corn or another crop that will feed us till the embargo is lifted. It’ll be hard work to make ends meet,’ she tells us. ‘You’ll have to put wood aside in the fields too, Hubbard, just in case those Yankees come up the river. I’d rather burn the whole crop than see ’em get a cent of my hard work, I swear to God I would.’

  So there it is. Now we’ve heard it from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, no rudeness to Mrs Allen intended.

  She goes on to read to us from the Bible, reciting the story of how Abraham gave up his own son as a sacrifice to the Lord. She leads us in prayer and we each put our hands together and lower our eyes as she remembers those brave Confederate soldiers who are away from their loved ones, fighting for their right to be free.

  When she’s finished praying Mrs Allen still won’t let us go and she turns up the wick on her oil lamp so we can see her face clearly. ‘I want you to remember that we’re likely to have less food than we’ve enjoyed till now and we’re going to have to work twice as hard to see us through the winter. Now I know you ain’t gonna like this, but I’ve decided there will be no more leave from the plantation until further notice.’

  A murmur of disbelief rises up around us and when I look to see what Gerald thinks, he won’t meet my eye.

  ‘Hubbard, would you fetch the passes that you have in your cabin and bring them here to me?’

  Hubbard hesitates but he does it, coming back outside with the signed passes and handing ’em over to the missus for her to count and make sure she’s got all of ’em.

  Henry steps out into the circle as our spokesman. ‘But, ma’am, we can’t work every hour God sends. We gotta have some time of our own.’

  The missus shakes her head. ‘I hope it won’t be for long, but that’s exactly what we gotta do, Henry. If we ain’t working every hour God sends then we might not prevail, and I won’t let that happen, not with my husband away from home and putting his life on the line for everyone. I hope you’ll see the sense of it in time.’

  ‘But, miss …’

  Mrs Allen puts her hand out to stop him. ‘This ain’t up for discussion, Henry. Now goodnight to all of you.’ She takes Gerald by the hand and starts up the path to the house, while Winnie and Sicely follow on behind with the lamps.

  Hubbard goes back inside his cabin and shuts the door firmly, but the rest of us stay put at the fireside. ‘She can’t do that,’ Antoinne complains. ‘A man’s gotta have some freedom. It don’t matter if he is a slave.’

  Isaac’s angry too and he empties his pipe onto the ground and runs his thumb around the bowl. ‘How am I going to meet a girl if I’m stuck here the whole time? I tell you, she ain’t got the right.’

  ‘No. It’s us ain’t got the rights.’ Antoinne’s got a face like thunder. ‘This is the last straw.’

  Connie puts a hand on his shoulder. ‘Come on inside.’ He walks Antoinne to the cabin and shuts the door behind ’em and I put my own arm around little Gil’s shoulders and follow Lizzie back to ours. I light a grease lamp and fetch the primer from under the floorboard. ‘Time for ten minutes more before bed.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’ Gil takes his mattress from the wall and lays it down.

  ‘Don’t give me any of your cheek,’ I scold him. ‘It doesn’t matter if you want to or not. You got to do it anyway.’

  ‘Let him be.’ Lizzie looks at me, annoyed. ‘We got enough to be thinking of without you opening up your books.’

  So I put it away, replacing the piece of board in the floor so it won’t be found.

  Come the morning, Antoinne and Isaac are gone. I ask Connie where they are as we walk out to the fields, expecting him to say they’re down at the latrine or been sent on an errand. ‘They’ve gone,’ he tells me. ‘Least I expect so. Their stuff’s gone too.’

  ‘Have they gone to meet the boats?’

  Connie shrugs. ‘They didn’t tell me. I expect they’ve gone north. Now don’t you go talking about ’em to anyone. Do you hear me? The more time they have to put some distance between us and them the better. Chances are they’ll turn up later, and when they do, they can answer to Hubbard themselves.’

  I nod in agreement. I tell him I won’t say a word. So we don’t say no more about it. We go out onto the field, same as we always do and Hubbard is already there, same as he always is. He’s pulled the cart into place and has positioned the tall baskets where we can empty out our sacks. The missus has taken the horse for herself today, but Hubbard’s still big on his feet and he stands on the cart, looking back up the path to see who’s coming.

  When everyone’s out in the field and working the line, our sacks slung over our shoulders, Hubbard comes across to Connie. ‘Where’s Antoinne and Isaac? Why aren’t they here?’

  Connie straightens himself up, looking over the field towards the cabins. ‘They were coming this morning. I know they were. Perhaps the missus asked ’em for something.’

  We go right on back to picking and Hubbard walks along our line, having a quiet word here and there with some of the others if he thinks they aren’t doing something right. Everyone relaxes when we see him walk in the direction of the house. Even that George stops picking so fast.

  ‘Where are those boys, Connie?’ Henry calls out. ‘I saw ’em sneaking about in the night. Have they run off? They sure looked up to no good. They have, ain’t they? They’ve gone and bolted. That Antoinne was itching to join up. I know he was.’

  Connie wipes the back of his hand across his face and speaks quietly. ‘I think they’ve gone, but I don’t know. Not for sure. If they have left, then they don’t have much of a head start and they hadn’t made a plan, least not one I knew about.’

  Lizzie straightens up and looks out to where the river runs through the fields. ‘They shoulda planned it first,’ she says quietly, before we move away from one another, shuffling back into line to bend low and pick the cotton from the base of the plants so we don’t show our troubled faces, though we all fear the worst.

  I don’t see Hubbard come back into the field. I just hear him call out Connie’s name and hear the lash of his whip. The first blow catches Connie across the shoulders as he rises. He puts his arm to his face and the second lash meets his forearm and the tip curls around to sting the edge of his eye.

  ‘Don’t you lie to me again. Do you hear me?’ Hubbard walks away down the line, his whip held high in his hand as a show of force to the rest of us
, and we all pick faster than we did before. Everyone ’cept Connie, who stands and watches Hubbard walk away before he bends back over his stem and picks them bolls the way he always picks ’em, all slow and steady. He don’t do nothing different.

  That evening we go down to the woods to pray and I read to ’em from the Bible. Afterwards Henry tells me I oughta take more of a role in leading the ceremony cos I got more knowledge than anyone else here and I’m pleased he asked me and I feel all warm inside as we come back towards the cabins.

  Connie’s the only one at the edge of the fire pit so I go and sit with him as the others take themselves inside.

  ‘Hey, Connie, guess what? Henry told me I could lead the prayers next time we meet. He said it makes sense for me to do it since I’ve spent more time in a proper chapel than anyone else here.’

  Connie takes a long drag of his pipe and blows the smoke up into the night and I can see he’s got a face as long as a horse. He don’t even want to look at me. ‘Do you think God’ll save you when they catch you teaching slaves to read? Do you think He’s gonna suddenly appear when they discover you been leading slaves in prayer?’ He turns to meet my eye. ‘They’ll beat you till you’re black and blue. Probably put you in the cotton gin and close the lid on you. I don’t imagine you’ll feel so good then.’

  ‘God won’t let that happen.’ I shake my head. ‘Not while I’m doing His good works. He’ll keep all of us safe from harm.’

  Connie spits down into the dirt. ‘God don’t help people like us. He never has.’

  ‘You don’t believe that.’

  He turns away from me.

  ‘Connie?’

  But he won’t answer me. Just shuffles his feet with his back to me.

  ‘Why you being like this?’ He stands up to leave and I stand up too. ‘Don’t ignore me, Connie! I know you ain’t as mean as this. Have you been drinking? I bet you have, cos this ain’t you.’

  I’m expecting him to shout at me, to have a go like he did in the cabin when I saw his back – but when he turns on me he’s got a blank expression and I don’t know how he feels at all. ‘Everyone’s got two faces, Friday.’ He’s breathing heavily through his broken nose. ‘Sometime you ought to take a proper look at mine.’

  He walks back to his cabin without even saying goodnight, and I let him go cos I know there’ll be no talking sense to him tonight, and anyway he’ll feel different in the morning. He’ll be the Connie with a big heart that likes to look out for me.

  I walk back around the fire pit, intending to relieve myself before I turn in. When it’s dark like this, I use the clump of bushes on the far side of the cabins, same as everyone else, and I go there now, creeping past Hubbard’s cabin, where light creeps out from under his door. I wonder if he’s still awake and then I notice a hole in the wall, ’bout the size of a walnut – a golden nugget of light that winks to me as I pass, sure as if it were sitting on a riverbed, urging me to pick it up.

  I ignore it and go behind the bushes, but as I stand there wetting the leaves I can still see that tiny hole of light and I’m gripped with an urge to put my eye to it and see what Hubbard’s doing. I don’t know why. Chances are that whatever I see ain’t going to be worth the risk of getting caught, and yet the more I think about it the more I want to do it and so I step up to the edge of his cabin, daring myself to take a look.

  I can’t hear a thing – not from inside the cabin or here outside. Everything is still. Everything is quiet. So I step closer, put my hands either side of that hole, put my eye to the nugget of light and I see Hubbard instantly. He’s sitting in a chair over by the fire and he has his back to me. He’s very still and I think he might be asleep, but then he moves, lifting up the hand that I can’t see and transferring a book to the hand I can.

  A book! It really is a book. Hubbard has an open book in his hand and I can see it clear as if it’s daylight, a slim volume, from which he reads.

  I blink and look again. Hubbard’s reading. He really is.

  I take my eye from the wall and look back over my shoulder, checking that I’m still alone, and then I look again.

  Hubbard turns a page. He puts a finger up to the words so he can make ’em out, the way I do when I read the primer to the kids in Lizzie’s cabin.

  So Hubbard can read.

  Well, I weren’t expecting that.

  Chapter 12

  Mrs Allen works us hard in the weeks that follow, but every minute I ain’t in the fields it seems I have my head in a book. Sometimes I’m at the river with Gerald as he teaches me to read and write, amazed at how quickly I’m coming along. The rest of my time’s spent smuggling myself from one cabin, to another so that I can be the teacher.

  Now that Mrs Allen has taken back the passes, Hubbard can’t visit his wife and child and that means changing how I give my lessons. I go from teaching a single big class to teaching in ones or twos. That way it don’t seem suspicious, and Lizzie and I put a rota together in our heads to make it work. Sometimes I arrive at a cabin to sit with Mary or Harriet, before I scuttle across to George and then go back over to Lizzie, who now has her lessons with Gil. We snatch at little pieces of time between work or on a Sunday, but mostly we study late into the night, with someone watching out in case Hubbard might show at his door or Mrs Allen come down from the house.

  It ain’t unusual for me to be stopped as I go scurrying between the cabins. It might be little Gil or it might be George. ‘Hey, Friday –’ they’ll catch my arm and bring me right up close so we ain’t overheard – ‘I been telling Kofi that cotton is spelled with a K. I’m right, aren’t I?’

  ‘No, George. You’re not right on that one. It’s spelled with a C.’

  ‘Well, how’s that then?’

  ‘Ask me again in class.’ I take my arm back and edge away towards my next appointment. ‘We’ll write it down together so you can see.’

  Only the little ones still use that first primer with the dog. Everyone else is on the second primer or proper books, all of ’em brought to me by Gerald, who thinks I must be the cleverest Negro he’s ever had the fortune of owning, while the truth of it is that Mrs Allen don’t hardly have a slave on the plantation that can’t say their alphabet, excepting Connie, who says he don’t want to learn, and Winnie, who says she might have done once upon a time, but you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, so she won’t be doing with it, thank you very much.

  And then there’s Sicely. That Sicely sure is high and mighty. Even her own mother rolls her eyes at the things she says: like how the missus told her she couldn’t manage without her, or how the master had promised her a new brooch, as a reward for her devotion to his family. Sicely still can’t read a word, but only because she’s too well-behaved to partake in something the missus don’t allow.

  What’s more, she don’t approve of our meeting in the woods either. She’s a Christian herself – she tells me this often, mostly before she starts preaching at me for not doing something or other the correct way – but unlike the rest of us, she puts great store by the visits of Mr Chepstow, who still arrives on the second Sunday of the month to preach to us slaves. Sicely keeps faith with him because he’s Mrs Allen’s choice and she often tells me that, ‘He’s a proper preacher, teaching the word of the Lord the way it was intended to be and not skulking away in the woods like common vagabonds.’

  One day we are alone in the kitchen preparing food when Sicely confides in me that this coming Sunday she will be asking Chepstow to baptize her. That surprises me. ‘I thought you was baptized already.’

  Sicely looks uncomfortable, but she don’t lash out at me the way she usually would. Instead she goes a little coy. ‘I didn’t want to do it when I was with Mama at the summer camp. I didn’t like the thought of going in that river so I said no, but I was only young.’

  ‘Were you scared cos you can’t swim?’

  Sicely looks shocked. ‘A lady don’t have need of swimming! It ain’t decent.’

  I step away, thinking it
’s better to be at a distance, but she chops at a potato till it lies in little pieces and that calms her down, so that when she next speaks to me she’s very civil. ‘Have you been baptized yourself, Friday?’

  That makes me smile, remembering Father Mosely standing over me, pouring water from a silver jug and marking a cross upon my forehead with his thumb. There weren’t a boy arrived at the orphanage who weren’t baptized the same day they walked through those gates. ‘Sure,’ I told her. ‘I been baptized, though it was a long time ago and I didn’t have to go in a river. I been nervous of the water myself too. I couldn’t swim when I came here, but I’ve been learning how and I’m getting better since I’ve been practising.’

  Sicely gives me a nervous smile. Not much of a smile but I see it. ‘Well, I’m older now.’ She nods like she’s certain of it. ‘I decided I got to be braver, and the preacher will have a good grip of me. If he agrees to it, I’ll be baptized the month after this one. That’ll give me time to make my dress and get myself ready.’

  She takes another potato and chops it up the same as before, and I don’t expect her to say any more since this is the first time she’s said something pleasant to me and it can’t last much longer. I move across to the hearth to check on the fire. I bend down to rake it through, but when I straighten up there is Sicely hovering close to me. She’s pretending to stir the pot in her hands, though I can see she has something on her mind. ‘I was wondering’ – she lowers her voice and I’m all ears, straining to catch every word, wondering what she’s got to say that means she has to be this nice to me – ‘could you teach me my name? I mean to read it and to write it too?’

  I hesitate and perhaps she misunderstands, cos I see the temper flash behind her eyes and she says by way of justification, ‘It don’t seem right to be baptized without knowing how to write your own name!’