An Acquaintance with Darkness

by Ann Rinaldi

  It wasn't as if she'd never seen them before. She visited them all the time on Murder Bay, on the lower stretches of the Washington Canal.

  Mama said she was Mrs. Lincoln's confidante. She never left the woman's side when little Willie Lincoln died.

  I took the foodstuffs into the kitchen. Elizabeth Keckley followed. "You shouldn't have brought food," I protested. But I was glad for it. Now I wouldn't have to dip into the twenty gold pieces Johnny had given me for a while.

  "It's left from last evening's reception. Such a waste, all that lavish entertaining. The president eats nothing. Apples on occasion. He's wasting away. I take the leftovers to Murder Bay when I can. But this morning I thought of you and your mama. How is she?"

  "No better."

  "My best seamstress." She sighed.

  My best mother, I thought.

  "The dress she was working on is finished," I assured her. "I stayed up late doing the hem. And I'll finish the flounces on the other Mama was doing if you want."

  "Wonderful! You're getting to be a regular little dressmaker. Would you like to be in my employ when your mama passes on?"

  I pulled out a chair for her and set down two cups. The water was boiling for tea. I fetched it. I poured carefully and spoke the same way. "I never thought to become a dressmaker."

  "What did you think to become?"

  "Nothing yet. I'm only fourteen."

  "When I was fourteen, I was sent from home to live with my master's eldest son and his wife. I was their only servant. I did the work of three."

  But you had no choice, I wanted to say, you were a slave. I didn't say it.

  Elizabeth Keckley was nigra. But not like Ella May. There were two kinds of nigras in Washington. The contrabands, who came expecting forty acres and a mule. They were trained only "to the hoe," as people said. At first the white people welcomed them. But now there was a lot of bad feeling. There were never enough rations for them. In winter many died in their shacks. Nobody knew what to do. We fought the war for this? You could see it on people's faces.

  Then there were the regular people of color who had been in Washington for years. Many of them now resented the contrabands, because they disturbed the order of things. And because the whites were beginning to mark no difference between the contrabands and the nigras who had education and jobs, like Elizabeth Keckley.

  We learned about the problem in school. "Who will bear the increased taxes for schooling the contrabands?" Mrs. McQuade asked us. "When the war ends, who will get the jobs? Who will have a place in the new order of things? Think, girls, think!"

  Girls who attended Miss Winefred Martin's School for Young Ladies were supposed to think. Mama said Daddy had always wanted me in a school like that and had set aside money for my schooling. "I honored his wishes," she'd said. "I just want you to know that."

  Elizabeth Keckley was awaiting my answer. "Do you mean for me to come and work for you right away?" I asked.

  "I fill my openings right away. I must. I have other important clients besides Mrs. Lincoln. And with the war ending—well, next fall will be a brilliant season."

  "I have to finish school. My daddy wanted it. He paid for me to do so."

  "A person goes to school to find a means of support. I am offering you that."

  "Daddy said a person goes to school to learn how to think."

  She stirred her tea. "I and my race have not had the luxury of that."

  She'd had a hard life. Mama said she'd lost a son in the war, a half-white son, her only child. I knew, too, that she'd purchased her own freedom. That was no small accomplishment. Yet I knew she would never understand why I didn't want to become a dressmaker.

  I didn't quite understand it myself. What would I do when Mama passed on? All I had were the many vague ambitions and desires that Daddy's lessons and my schooling at Miss Winefred Martin's had instilled in me. And Johnny's twenty gold pieces.

  I knew there was more in life than taking up occupation with the needle. Mama had set out every day for work with no joy. And come home with less. I wanted to do something else with my life, something fine. I didn't know what it was yet, but I knew I could do it if I set my mind to it.

  I felt the knowing in my bones sometimes. The surge of desire to accomplish. The opening up of possibilities. The connection to dreams. It pounded in my blood at given moments.

  "You must harness those feelings," Mrs. McQuade had told me. "Focus them on your goals like you focus a telescope on a star. You must work hard and study."

  "Where will you live?" Elizabeth Keckley was asking.

  "I don't know yet."

  Her yellow-green eyes fixed on me. Cannon from one of the many fortifications around the city would fix on you with less accuracy. "I can find you a room with the family of one of my girls, if you wish."

  It would have been so easy to say yes, I'd take the job, I'd live with the family of one of her girls. I could always have got Daddy's tuition money refunded by the school. Then I'd have had that plus the money from Johnny. But then the rest of my life I'd have been unable to see beyond the seam I was working on.

  "Did you notice how the sun came out just as President Lincoln got up to speak on Inauguration Day?" she asked.

  I said yes, I did.

  "Most people remarked on that. I saw something else. I saw the star that came out in the heavens. It was noon. It was a brilliant star. It was the noonday of his life at that inauguration. It was a sign, a summons from on high."

  Now she sounded just like Ella May, who saw omens at the drop of a hat. The morning she left she'd said she was going not only because the government didn't give her two shifts but because there was a curse on the street. Bad things would soon happen here, she'd said. A curse on H Street? I'd laughed. The people here were so dull they would welcome a curse or two.

  "We don't all get a star at noon," Mrs. Keckley went on. "The rest of us have to muddle through and find our summons from on high where we can. The trick is to answer it when it comes."

  The trick for me right now was getting through Mama's death. I thought it a bit presumptuous that Mrs. Keckley thought her offer my star at noon.

  "There is not always a star at noon, Emily. There is not always a star. But when a summons is given, we should take it."

  "I appreciate the offer, ma'am. I would like time to study on it."

  She set her cup down. She stood up. The broad shoulders in the black silk dress with the lace collar were straight. She was not accustomed to having her wishes disregarded, I could see that. "I hope you are not thinking of living with the Surratts," she said.

  I stared at her. "I don't know yet where I shall live."

  "That woman allowed her brother to take your mother's house. There is a serpent in the breasts of those people. Once serpents take up residence in a domicile, they do not vacate the premises."

  I sighed. For all your accomplishments, I thought, you are still like Ella May.

  "And now I will pay a short visit to your mama. Is that tea for her?"

  I'd fixed a tray. "Yes."

  She reached for it. I handed it over. "Don't tell Mama that Richmond has fallen," I said. "Her sister is there. It would cause her needless worry."

  The yellow-green eyes met mine. She nodded in compliance. "We are all people of contradictions," she said. And then she said something else. "We all, at some time in our lives, have an acquaintance with darkness. It will pass." Her silk gown rustled as she went out into the hall and up the steps.

  Half an hour later, when she left, she kissed me. "You will always have me for a friend," she said. I watched her get into the barouche and drive off. Another friend, I thought. Suddenly I have friends all over the place.

  Standing on the front steps, I looked over at the Surratt house. Annie was just going up the walk. She'd been shopping. Her arms were full of bundles. She smiled and waved. I waved back. Serpents in the breast, I thought. And I laughed.

  3. Uncle Valentine

  TWO DAYS LATER Mam
a was having one of her rallying days, so she said it was all right if Uncle Valentine came to call. He'd sent a note around. There were matters he needed to discuss, he said.

  I got her out of bed, dressed her in a good morning gown, fluffed up her hair, and gave her a goodly supply of clean handkerchiefs. She was spitting up blood. I knew she would want to conceal this from Uncle Valentine, what with him being a doctor.

  "A noted surgeon," Mama called him. She said it with mockery. I did not understand why. Uncle Valentine had gone to school at the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland. For most of the war he worked long hours in Washington military hospitals. He now taught at the National Medical College. And did experiments in his laboratory there.

  For as long as I could remember he had been looking for a cure for the Wasting Disease. I did not know what this disease was. But he was obsessed with finding a cure for it. Mama said he sometimes took in people off the street when he thought they had it.

  "He studies them," she said. There was contempt in her voice. Mama also said there was no Wasting Disease. Even while she coughed up blood and wasted away in front of me.

  "He claims his wife died from it," Mama said. "What she died from was drinking rum distilled through lead pipes."

  The day Uncle Valentine came to call there was a parade outside our windows. Washington paraded if President Lincoln got over a cold. Still, I couldn't very well keep the fall of Richmond from Mama. The day was clear and bright for the first time in weeks. From outside came the sounds of cannon firing, people celebrating, bells ringing, soldiers marching.

  When I told Mama about Richmond, she sighed. "So the war will soon be over, then. I am glad I lived long enough to see it. Have there been any letters from my sister?"

  "No. But I'm sure it's just that she's too busy, Mama," I said.

  "You can't go to Richmond to live now. She'll have all she can do keeping her own body and soul together." She seemed resigned. "Where will you go?"

  "Mrs. Keckley has offered to find me a place." I didn't tell her the Surratts had offered, too.

  She nodded. "Elizabeth is a good woman. I'm lucky to have her as a friend ... Emily, you must promise me something. When I die, don't let my brother have anything to do with my body or the funeral."

  I almost dropped the fresh daffodils I was arranging in a vase. "Mama, please don't speak of dying."

  "I am dying, Emily. We all know it. So you must promise me."

  "I promise, Mama."

  "He'll want to arrange things. Run things. And do things. He has no rights. I want that understood. When I die, send for the reverend. He is to see to it that I am buried in a lead coffin."

  "Yes, Mama." I did not like this talk about lead coffins and dying. But she was set on being morbid this first sunny morning in weeks.

  "Now take me downstairs. I will receive Valentine in my parlor. Not in my bedroom, like an invalid."

  Somehow I managed to get her downstairs without letting her fall and kill herself. I had just about propped her in a chair in the parlor and lit a fire in the grate, to ward off the chilliness of the room from so many days of rain, when Uncle Valentine arrived.

  He was a half hour late. And agitated. In the hall I took his stovepipe hat. It was just like Mr. Lincoln's. And he wore a shawl around his shoulders like Lincoln, too. Uncle Valentine adored Lincoln.

  "Horse racing on E Street!" he said. "Within a stone's throw from the Congressional cemetery! Have people no respect?"

  "Whose funeral were you attending?" Mama asked.

  "Nobody's funeral." He stepped into the parlor. "Haven't I a right to go to the cemetery and visit the grave of an old friend?"

  "What old friend?" Mama asked.

  "Does it matter?" He handed me a package. "For the flower of H Street," he said. Then he kissed me. "Hello, Emily, how are you, dear? How is school?"

  "Fine." He liked me. I was not a coquette, he said, like most Southern girls. I did not bat my eyelashes and pretend helplessness. Who did I have to bat my eyelashes at? How could I pretend helplessness? I'd been Mama's mainstay.

  Before we moved to Washington I didn't really know him. Since moving here I knew him only from his visits to Mama, which always had undercurrents of arguments. It came out in one of those discussions that it was through him that I'd been accepted into the fancy Miss Winefred Martin's. You had to have family connections to get into the school. Uncle Valentine knew the headmistress, Miss Martin herself, from when he'd been young. And had cleared the way for my acceptance.

  Many times he wanted to take me somewhere: to the opera, to the Baptist church on Tenth Street to hear Adeline Patti make her Washington debut, to the National Theater, to Harvey's for oysters. Mama would never let me go. "He wants to steal you away from me," she'd say. "He has no children of his own. He has always envied me you."

  "Are you keeping up with your lessons?" Uncle Valentine asked.

  "Yes, sir." He had made arrangements with my school so that I could study at home for a few days, since Mama was failing. He'd spoken to Miss Martin about it. "But I'm no flower, Uncle Valentine," I said.

  "You're a flower about to bloom. You're just waiting for the right time."

  My daddy would have said that. I missed my daddy. That was part of why I liked Uncle Valentine. I needed to hear things like this from a man I could look up to. But I liked him, too, because he kept coming to see Mama, in spite of her insults. And because he was debonair. He had a flair about him that bespoke a man of the world. He was an important surgeon in Washington. He had led the fight to get the offal cleaned from the streets to prevent disease. He knew influential people. Young medical students considered themselves lucky to get into his classes. Everyone respected him. Everyone but Mama.

  He loved baseball almost as much as he loved Abraham Lincoln.

  "They're the same," he'd say. "In baseball, three strikes and you're out. Lincoln's had his two strikes already, his crazy wife and his bad generals. All he needs is one more and he's out."

  He would not conjecture what the one more was.

  "How are you, Mary Louise?" He stood in front of Mama, bowed, took her hand, and kissed it. Then he held on to the hand.

  "Don't take my pulse, Valentine," Mama said. "I have my own doctor."

  He released her hand and sat down. I brought him his usual glass of wine. He sipped it and regarded Mama. "Has Dr. Dent been around?"

  "Last week."

  "Does he have you on the same medicine?"

  "Yes."

  "It's not doing you much good, Mary Louise."

  "I'm much better," Mama insisted. "I'm up and around today and feeling much better."

  "Your eyes are too bright. Your face is feverish."

  "She's run out of medicine," I blurted out.

  "Emily!" Mama chided.

  But I didn't care. "I've sent a note around to Thompson's for more," I said. "A man is bringing it this afternoon."

  Uncle Valentine slipped a hand into his pocket, withdrew his billfold, and put some money on a small table.

  "We don't need that," Mama said quickly.

  "Don't be foolish, Mary Louise."

  "We have money, Uncle Valentine," I said. We didn't; I did. But neither Mama nor he knew it. Mama's pride wouldn't let her deny it, of course. "And anyway," I added, "Thompson's won't charge us."

  "Not charge you?" He scoffed. "Thompson's charges everybody twice what their medicine is worth. Why has he suddenly developed this altruistic streak? In honor of Richmond falling?"

  "In honor of my friendship with Johnny Surratt," I said. "Johnny made the arrangements. His friend works for Mr. Thompson."

  He scowled. "Surratt?" He seemed to be searching his mind for something. He set down his wineglass. But he said nothing.

  "Johnny and Emily were always friends," Mama told him. "You remember. From Maryland. He's been like a brother to her. You know his mother and I went to school together."

  "That fancy girls' school. It gave you notions, Mary Louise."
r />   "All girls have a right to notions," Mama said.

  "You haven't spoken to his mother since her brother foreclosed on your home."

  "I won't deny the children their friendship. Neither Mary nor I protest it. But it's over now with Johnny. He left the other day on a long trip."

  I'll say one thing for Mama. She has always allowed me my friendship with Johnny and Annie. She was defending those friendships now. Of course, she would defend my friendship with the Devil himself if it meant going against her brother. Still, I thought this as good a time as any to tell her I'd been invited to live with the Surratts.

  "My friendship with Johnny isn't over," I said. And I told her about the invitation. To my surprise, it wasn't Mama who was upset by it. It was Uncle Valentine.

  "You can't be meaning to let this child go and live with the Surratts, Mary Louise," he said.

  "I'm glad to know she has people to care for her."

  "She has me."

  "Don't start that again, Valentine."

  "I'm your brother! Her blood uncle. You'd rather have her live with strangers?"

  "Mary is still a dear friend to Emily. She runs a good boardinghouse. Her daughter, Annie, is only a few years older than Emily and like a big sister. Emily can't go to Richmond now. And she needs to stay here and finish her schooling."

  "She can live with me," Uncle Valentine said again. "For once in your life, Mary Louise, listen to me. You never did before."

  "I know. And I married Edward. He wasn't a good provider. And we lost our home."

  "Edward was a good provider. It just wasn't enough for you, Mary Louise. You were too much the Southern belle."

  "I never was!" Mama said. But she preened, nevertheless, tossed her head; and for a moment I could see the remains of the Southern belle my uncle accused her of being. "You may be right about me," she sniffed, "but you are not right about the Surratts."