Starting from Seneca Falls

by Karen Schwabach

  “I saw you here!” said Bridie. “The day they took me out to the farm.”

  She remembered the children on the lawn. They’d been too far away to recognize, but now she was sure the girl had been Rose.

  “Sometimes I work for Mrs. Stanton, and sometimes she lets me read her books,” said Rose.

  They climbed a set of wooden steps from the road up to the yard. There was a metal boot scraper beside the porch, and they stopped to scrape the mud and manure from the streets off their shoes.

  “If this doesn’t work out, come and find me,” said Rose. “We’ll think of something else.”

  Bridie felt instantly less worried. She could count on Rose even if Mrs. Stanton wouldn’t hire her. It was something she’d learned as a small child back in Ireland: the poor were more likely to help each other than the rich were to help anybody.

  Rose led the way up onto the porch, and knocked.

  There was a sound of footsteps within. The door opened, and a white woman stood there. She had a dishrag in her hand. A boy about four years old was clinging to her voluminous skirts.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Stanton,” said Rose.

  “Well, good morning, Rose.” Mrs. Stanton looked harried, as if her mind were on other things. “What brings you here?”

  “My friend Br—er, Phoebe is looking for work,” said Rose.

  Mrs. Stanton looked at Bridie with interest. “And what timing. My cook has gone to care for her sick mother, and Evangeline has alas gone to a better place.”

  “I didn’t know Evangeline died,” said Rose.

  “Did I say she died? She moved to Boston. Can you mind children, Phoebe?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Bridie. “And I can cook a bit, and clean.”

  “Really clean? Tell me how you clean.”

  “Well, um, sweep and mop and scrub the floors, and dust, and…”

  “That will do to begin with,” said Mrs. Stanton. “You sound Irish, which makes Phoebe a rather surprising name for you.”

  Mrs. Stanton was uncommon sharp. Bridie and Rose exchanged a glance. “Yes, ma’am,” said Bridie.

  “I have no prejudice against hiring the Irish,” said Mrs. Stanton. “Provided they’re diligent and sober. Won’t you come in?”

  Just then, a boy about six years old came charging toward the doorway, dodging around Mrs. Stanton, who caught him by the arm and inspected him.

  “Comb hair, wash hands.” She turned him around and gave him a gentle shove back into the house.

  “I want to go to school too!” said the smaller boy hanging on to her skirt.

  “You’re not old enough, Kit.”

  In the distance, the school bell clanged.

  “Oh, Neil, you’ll be late!” Mrs. Stanton hurried into the house, leaving the door open and taking the dishrag and Kit with her.

  “I have to go,” said Rose. “But I’ll see you later.”

  “Thank you,” said Bridie.

  Rose hurried off down the hill with her books. Bridie stood, uncertain, on the porch. Was she supposed to go in?

  Mrs. Stanton reappeared, looking even more harried, and pushing Neil ahead of her. Neil was carrying his schoolbooks buckled onto the end of a long book strap. Bridie envied him the book strap; only boys were allowed to have them. He broke away from his mother and ran down the hill, swinging his books round and round over his head.

  “Oh dear. If he lets go he could hurt somebody,” said Mrs. Stanton. Then she brightened. “Well, that’s how we learn. Do come in, Phoebe.”

  Bridie stepped into Mrs. Stanton’s parlor and tried not to stare.

  She had never in her life been in a house as nice as this one. There was wallpaper. There was a writing desk, and a piano, and all sorts of things that were a world away from her family’s cottage in Ireland (before the landlord had it pulled down), and Bridie and her mother’s lodgings down in the Flats, and the whitewashed poorhouse walls with stern black mottoes painted on them.

  And there were books. Lots of books. Bridie had never seen so many books ever.

  “You’ll notice there are no carpets,” said Mrs. Stanton. “Too much work to clean, and anyway I believe they trap mold and spread disease. You’ve a good head. Do you mind if I assess your organs?”

  Bridie reminded herself that Rose had said Mrs. Stanton was kind, but different. “My what?”

  “You are familiar with phrenology? I do like to take a scientific approach to hiring household help.”

  Oh. Science. That was all right, then. Besides, Bridie had never had her bumps read, and she was curious as to what they would say. “Yes, ma’am.”

  She untied her bonnet.

  There came a loud banging sound from the back of the house, where Bridie supposed the kitchen must be.

  Mrs. Stanton ignored the noise and began running her hands over Bridie’s head. Bridie felt fingers poking and probing through her hair.

  “Hmm. Interesting.” Mrs. Stanton said this several times as she felt the back of Bridie’s head, and the top of her head, and the sides, and peered at her eyes and forehead and ears. “Interesting.”

  Bridie couldn’t tell whether it was the good kind of interesting or the bad kind.

  “I’ll work hard!” she burst out, unable to take this any longer.

  Mrs. Stanton dropped her hands and looked surprised. “You’ve a good head, really. An excellent bump of causality, which means you can understand first principles and can reason. And you’ve a very large friendship bump. You must make friends easily.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Bridie didn’t stop to think about whether all this was true or not; she was too worried about getting the job.

  “Your bump of cautiousness is, I’m afraid, hardly there at all. In fact, I would call it more of a hollow. But, with care, perhaps you can develop it.”

  Bridie thought of all those times she’d ended up locked in the cell at the poorhouse. She wasn’t surprised to hear she lacked a bump of cautiousness.

  BANG-BANG-BANG from the kitchen.

  “What about school?” Mrs. Stanton asked her. “Don’t you attend the summer term?”

  “No, ma’am. I’ve my living to get.”

  “So has Rose, but she manages. Can you read, write, and do arithmetic?”

  “Read and write, yes….I’m a girl, ma’am.”

  “And that’s an excuse for not learning arithmetic? I learned it, and geometry, too.”

  Bridie said nothing. She needed to grow her bump of cautiousness, and Mrs. Stanton hadn’t said she’d hire Bridie yet. The poorhouse didn’t teach arithmetic to girls, and Bridie didn’t see why Mrs. Stanton should blame her for it.

  The banging sound grew louder. Mrs. Stanton led the way back to the kitchen, where small Kit was whacking on a brass kettle with a spoon.

  “Do stop that, dear,” said Mrs. Stanton, taking the spoon from him.

  There was a modern wood-burning cookstove in the kitchen, Bridie saw. These were new and rare contraptions. She’d have to learn to use it.

  “The baby’s having his nap,” said Mrs. Stanton. “I have three boys: Daniel, whom we call Neil, and Henry, whom we call Kit, and Gerrit, whom we call Gat. I do not frighten them with stories of the devil or hell, nor do I permit anyone else to do so. Are you looking for a live-in job?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Bridie. That would solve her problem of a place to stay. And it might help her hide…although she didn’t like how this place was so close to the Turnpike. The Kigleys might come rolling along at any moment. Still, from up here on the hill, she might see them coming.

  “A grown serving woman is paid a dollar a week,” said Mrs. Stanton. “A girl your age not half as much—two shillings at most.”

  Bridie didn’t bother trying to work out the difference. “Yes, ma’am.”

  �
�It is not nearly enough,” said Mrs. Stanton.

  Bridie yes-ma’amed again.

  “The toil is endless,” said Mrs. Stanton.

  This did not sound promising.

  “A man can work half as hard as a woman and be paid twice as much,” said Mrs. Stanton, swinging the spoon she’d taken from the child, thoughtfully.

  Rose had been right. Mrs. Stanton was a bit different.

  Little Kit, meanwhile, had wandered outside—the screen door banged shut.

  “I shall pay you a dollar a week, as I would a grown woman,” Mrs. Stanton decided. “But I will expect you to work for it.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.” Bridie felt a mix of relief and alarm.

  “Can you start today? That is, as soon as you’ve gone home and gotten your things? And will I be paying you, or your parents?”

  “I don’t have any things,” said Bridie. “Or any parents.”

  “Maybe you’d better tell me the whole story, Phoebe. Have you run away from home?” Mrs. Stanton looked at Bridie with sharp, searching eyes.

  And you could see in those eyes that Mrs. Stanton was tarnation clever. She’d probably read all those books in the parlor. And some of them, Bridie had noticed, weren’t even in English.

  Bridie felt cornered. “Not from home, no.”

  “Then from…?”

  “The Kigleys,” said Bridie, giving up.

  The screen door banged as small Kit came back inside.

  “Your former employers?”

  “Not exactly, no. They took me on trial. I was to be bound to them.”

  “But you weren’t bound yet?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “And why did you leave them?”

  Bridie wasn’t sure what to say. If she said she’d been beaten, that might make Mrs. Stanton figure Bridie was a bad worker, in spite of having mostly-good bumps on her head.

  “Were they unkind?”

  That was a good way of putting it. Bridie nodded.

  There was a series of loud clangs. Kit had picked up the brass kettle and was dropping it on the floor to see how high he could make it bounce.

  Mrs. Stanton took the kettle away from him. “Kit, go upstairs and see if your brother is awake.” She turned back to Bridie. “Did they beat you, beyond the moderate correction permitted by the law?”

  “I guess probably.” Bridie didn’t know much about the law, but she knew that if she’d stayed, the Kigleys would have killed her. “I guess definitely.”

  “Then you had every right to leave them,” said Mrs. Stanton. “The statute is somewhat vague on this point, but the courts are not. You need have no fear at all, Phoebe. I have studied the law and know this.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Bridie. “I don’t think the Kigleys have studied the law, though, and I don’t suppose they know.”

  She snapped her mouth shut as if she could put the words back in. That was sassin’ and talking back and how Bridie had gotten locked in that cell so many times.

  Mrs. Stanton, however, gave Bridie an assessing look and a smile.

  Kit came into the kitchen. “He’s awake, Mama.”

  “I’ll go see to him.” Mrs. Stanton turned to Bridie. “He has fever-and-ague, and I’m treating it homeopathically, which I must say doesn’t seem to be working very well. Have you had it yet?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Everyone in Seneca Falls, it seemed, had to go through fever-and-ague, which some people called malaria because it was thought to be caused by bad air.

  “There are beans in the bin there,” said Mrs. Stanton. “Take out two measures and pick through them, then start them on the fire to soak.”

  And she left, and Bridie looked at the stove. With her bump of causality, she should be able to figure it out.

  Rose arrived at school and sat at the back, as she’d been told to. There were a couple of other colored children in the little one-room school, but they were boys, so they sat on the other side of the room—also in the back.

  This wasn’t exactly a rule, but Mr. Davis had said it would be best. If a parent complained about the children of color, then the children would have to leave. There was no law saying they couldn’t be in school, but there was also no law saying they could.

  Mr. Davis called the first class up to recite: the ones in the primer. Mrs. Stanton’s son Neil was in that class. But Rose wasn’t, so she sat and flipped through her newest book and waited for her class to be called. She knew it was going to be an uncomfortable lesson.

  Summer-smelling air wafted through the open windows. Rose could hear horses passing on the road, and the distant whine of the sawmill.

  Her new book was a common school arithmetic. The clerk at Hoskins’s store had given her a funny look when she’d bought it, and she hoped it wasn’t going to be eight cents wasted. But she’d thought long and hard before she’d plunked down that eight cents on the counter.

  “Third Reader,” called Mr. Davis, and with a sigh Rose stood up.

  She marched to the front of the class and lined up beside Mr. Davis’s desk with two other girls and one boy. She stood all the way on the right, as if she were at the bottom of the class, which she was not. Some days, she was at the top of the class, but Mr. Davis always put her at the bottom anyway.

  He always seemed to be fretting about that one white parent who might complain.

  “We shall read the dialogue on page one hundred ninety-four,” said Mr. Davis.

  The students obediently opened their New York Reader No. 3 to page 194.

  She hoped he wouldn’t call on her. He never called on her. Why should he call on her today?

  “James and Rose,” said Mr. Davis.

  He’d called on her.

  “Which part do I read, please?” said Rose.

  Mr. Davis gave her an I-don’t-have-time-for-this look. “The slave, Rose.”

  Like she didn’t know.

  James cleared his throat and began. “ ‘Now, vill…villain! What have you to say for this second att…’ ” He cast an agonized look at Mr. Davis.

  “Attempt,” said Mr. Davis.

  “ ‘…Attempt to run away?’ ”

  “ ‘I well know that nothing I can say will avail,’ ” said Rose resignedly. “ ‘I submit to my fate.’ ”

  Rose had never been enslaved. Neither had her parents. New York had abolished slavery in 1827, and anyone born in the state after July 4, 1799, was born free.

  But it wasn’t like she didn’t think about slavery every day, and the millions of people that were still prisoners to it. She carried on reading.

  James was halting and stumbling. It was clear he hadn’t read over his lesson, and Mr. Davis was giving him a hard look. With extreme difficulty, James asked Rose what she had to say for herself.

  She clenched her teeth and read aloud, “ ‘I am a slave, that is answer enough.’ ”

  James, with some prompting from Mr. Davis on the hard words, asked Rose if she didn’t think she’d been treated humanely.

  “ ‘Humane!’ ” Unlike James, Rose had read over the lesson, and her voice rang out across the schoolhouse. “ ‘Does it deserve that appellation to keep your fellow men in forced subjection, deprived of all exercise of the free will, liable to all the injuries that your own caprice or the brutality of your overseers may heap on them? Look at these limbs! Are they not those of a man?!’ ”

  Several students giggled. Mr. Davis gave them a look. “Quietly, Rose.”

  “ ‘Think that I have the spirit of a man too!’ ” said Rose, not quite as loudly.

  Someone was still snickering. Mr. Davis reached for his hickory stick, and the laughter quickly subsided. There was an unspoken understanding in the schoolhouse that as long as silence fell the moment Mr. Davis reached for the
stick, he would never actually use it.

  Rose could feel her face burning. She looked at Mr. Davis, and he looked back at her. She knew she had read well. She knew she deserved to go to the head of the class, and Mr. Davis surely knew it too.

  Besides, it would be some compensation for being made to read the part of the slave.

  “James,” said Mr. Davis, “you have obviously not prepared at all.”

  “We had to cut firewood,” said James. “And my father was sick.”

  “Go to the bottom of the class,” said Mr. Davis.

  Dejectedly, James went and stood to Rose’s left.

  “I said to the bottom.”

  James moved over to Rose’s right, mutely furious.

  And that was it. Rose was not moved to the head of the class.

  “Class dismissed. Fourth Reader,” called Mr. Davis.

  As Rose made her way down the aisle, a white boy grinned at her and said quietly but in a high falsetto, “ ‘I am a slave, that is answer enough!’ ”

  Overwhelmed by circumstances, Rose smacked him on the head with her book.

  Fortunately, Mr. Davis was busy with the Fourth Reader and didn’t notice. Rose went fuming to her seat.

  After school, as the students filed out, Rose took a deep breath, gathered her books, and approached the teacher’s desk.

  Mr. Davis looked up warily. “Yes, Rose? You read very well today.”

  “Thank you, teacher.” Rose guessed that Mr. Davis thought she was going to ask why she hadn’t been made head of the class. Rose was not going to ask that. A teacher’s decisions were final and any fool knew it.

  She put her books down and opened the new one. It smelled of fresh paper and ink and its smooth leather binding. She took a deep breath, mentally crossed her fingers for luck, and said, “I bought an arithmetic, Mr. Davis.”

  She handed it to him. He took it and riffled through the crisp new pages. “Don’t you already know this stuff, Rose?”