Inventing Victoria Read online

  Still, as Essie thanked God that she hadn’t known slavery, she continued to thank him that she wasn’t white. She didn’t like her color, didn’t like being so close in color to the uncles. She wished she was all-African like Ma Clara, like ferryman Jack, like everybody else on Shad Island seemed to be.

  It was on Shad Island that Ma Clara also told Essie why her friend Old Man Boney, drayman and lamplighter, didn’t have a real home to speak of.

  “His carts is his home.” Ma Clara then explained that Old Man Boney had been one of the thousands of colored folks who got acres from the government during the war. “Land in Carolina, Florida, Georgia too. Lowcountry land all for colored people only.”

  Old Man Boney’s land had been on Skidaway Island.

  “Had built himself a nice little home, outbuildings. He’d sown crops. Was ready to ask his sweetheart to marry him when government men came to say the land was no longer his and was going back to secesh men. He didn’t want any kind of regular home after that, didn’t trust that some white man wouldn’t take it away.”

  Reverend Zephaniah McElroy hiccuped.

  That snatched Essie back to …

  THE BACKHAND SLAP

  “You ungrateful little heifer!”

  Essie had pretended to not see the bloodstains on Mamma’s pantaloons when her dressing gown flew open with the backhand slap.

  Minutes earlier Essie stood in the archway to the kitchen, eyes on the floor.

  “I got work, Mamma. Be moving out.”

  Mamma, squinty-eyed, was slouched in a chair at the kitchen table, a bag of taffy and a cup of black coffee before her. She hiccuped, then asked, “Work?” She hiccuped again. “What kind of work?”

  “Ma Clara got me a place at Abby Bowfield’s.”

  “Who that?”

  “Over on Bryan, a boardinghouse. Ma Clara said Miss Abby’s rheumatism plagues her something awful, so she can’t do like she used to.” Essie knew the details would be lost on Mamma, but she reckoned that if she kept talking she’d keep up her nerve. “More than that, Miss Abby’s number-one maid is about to get married, moving to Brunswick. Pays good, five dollars a week, plus room and—”

  On the tail end of another hiccup Mamma looked Essie up and down scornful-like. “You leavin’ from here to be a damn servant?” She rose.

  Essie took a step back. “Miss Abby’s is an upstanding place.”

  “Mean to tell me I done raised a fool?”

  You didn’t raise me at all, Essie thought. Ma Clara did that.

  “You rather scrub floors and empty piss pots than—”

  Essie blazed with rage. “At least it’s honest work!”

  Slap!

  Essie had figured on a peaceful parting, thought Mamma would be glad to have the attic free of her. She could do it up in red, rent it out to a girl eager to shift from walking the waterfront.

  Face stinging, Essie spun around, made for her room.

  Mamma followed.

  “You, what, all of thirteen now and you think you a woman?” By then Mamma was at the top of the stairs.

  “Fourteen,” Essie said softly. “Old enough to make my own way.” She removed clothing from the highboy, placed it on her bed. From beneath it, she retrieved an old carpetbag found in the shed.

  Mamma sucked her teeth. “You and your ‘at least it’s honest work’ … I’m more honest than a helluva lot of women.” She was inside the room by now. “Heaps of women get with men for money, only they call theyselves wives.”

  Essie stepped over to her wardrobe, brought out her few dresses, her other pair of shoes. She was determined to not let Mamma get a rise out of her again.

  “You stuck-up little … That Clara Wiggins … Teachin’ you to look down on me.”

  Essie kept packing her bag. “Ma Clara never run you down. If anything—”

  Mamma flounced over to the bed. “If anythin’ what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “If anythin’ what?” Mamma was breathing hard.

  “If anything …,” Essie began sheepishly. “If anything Ma Clara feels sorry for you.”

  “Feels sorry for me?” Mamma tightened the belt of her dressing gown, put her hands on her hips, poked out her mouth. “That ole witch … she got some nerve … Ma Clara this, Ma Clara that. I’m your ma!”

  Essie bit her tongue.

  Mamma sauntered over to the window. “You know, you remind me of a gal I met on Sherman’s March.”

  Essie glanced at the back of Mamma, at the orange zinnias on her scarlet dressing gown, then down at her dirty feet.

  “A real Goody Two-shoes,” Mamma continued. “But guess what? She didn’t make it to Savannah while I did.” Mamma thumped her chest, whipped around. “And you know why?”

  Essie looked away.

  “I had value to Yankee soldiers. Hid me in a wagon. That’s how I got across Ebenezer Creek, how I came to not wind up dead or drug back to slavery.” She picked at a scab on the back of her hand. “I was good to Yankee soldiers. Yankee soldiers was good to me.” Mamma looked like she had won a blue ribbon at a county fair.

  I was good to Yankee soldiers.

  Years ago Essie had asked if one of the uncles was her pa. Mamma had given her a flat no. After that, Essie had been too scared to ask who was.

  Now Essie did the math, factoring in her color and Mamma’s coppery skin. Sherman’s army reached Savannah in late ’64 she knew. She had been born on August 15, ’65, or sometime that week Mamma had told her. “My father was a Yankee soldier? A white man?” Essie finally asked, bag almost packed.

  “Sure was.” Mamma looked proud.

  “Who was he—what was his name?” Essie blurted out before concluding, What difference does it make?

  Mamma shrugged. “I always hoped it was the one with the last name Mirth. Tall, blond hair. Wasn’t much to look at but was real gen’rous. Liked him the most. That’s why I took his last name.”

  Essie shook her head.

  “Yes, siree,” Mamma said softly. “Keepin’ Yankee soldiers happy was keepin’ alive and havin’ less hardship.”

  Essie could feel Mamma’s eyes on her. The back of her neck tingled.

  “Anyway, I could have losed you.”

  “Losed me?”

  “There’s ways to keep a baby from comin’. But I didn’t do none of that. I let you live, gave you life. This how you repay me?”

  “Mamma, I just want to—”

  “You ever been without a roof over your head?”

  “No.”

  “Ever gone hungry?”

  Again Essie said no, though at times she had. The larder and the shelves were full or bare depending on Mamma’s state of mind. On a good day breakfast might be eggs, grits, ham, biscuits and supper Limpin’ Susan or fried shad, red rice, and cabbage. Other days for breakfast Essie made do with a few pickles or a stale biscuit with a dab of butter or Catawba jam. Some nights supper was a can of Borden’s condensed milk or an onion and some salt pork Essie fried up. Thank goodness for those days on Shad Island. Essie never wondered if she’d get a bellyful there.

  “So why you up and leavin’?” Mamma folded her arms across her chest.

  Essie was perplexed. Mamma cares? No, she decided. Just vexed over Ma Clara’s connection to her leaving. The only other time Mamma had slapped Essie was years back when she begged to live at Ma Clara’s every day of the week.

  Essie made a mental note to get a croker sack for her wall shelf and the books and magazines it held.

  Mamma grabbed her by the face. “Answer me, you little heifer. Why you up and leavin’?”

  Essie pulled away, wiped her face with the back of her hand, then let loose the riot in her mind. “You really want to know why I’m leaving, Mamma? Because I’m sick of this house! Sick of finding you laid out like dead in the parlor or on your bedroom floor from whiskey or laudanum!”

  Mamma seemed stunned.

  “Sick of how your white men look at me!” Essie continued. “How some try
to pat me, telling me what a pretty little thing I am. Just sick of it all!” Essie looked away, lowered her voice. “I want my own life, Mamma—a better life, a new life!”

  There was yelling, too, from a house next door. Mr. and Mrs. Rakestraw at each other’s throats again. Something to do with money and a hussy on Congress Street.

  “Well, you is a right pretty gal,” Mamma finally said. “Fine grade of hair. Nice shape. Long legs. And with your color men pay twice what they pay for Katy and Emma. More than they pay for me.”

  Thank God for Ma Clara, Essie thought. Thank God I’m getting out of this house!

  “You could do worse!” Mamma pressed on, back in Essie’s face. “How many colored women you know own a home like this free and clear? Some weekends I make more money than your precious Clara Wiggins make in a fortnight.”

  Again she paced.

  “It’s hard for a colored woman who got no family, no husband. ’Specially with all the promises about true freedom snatched away. Like how back long years ago our men got the vote, but most is kept from it by night riders and schemes. My white men, they my protection. Your protection, too, so long as you under my roof. As I was risin’ I was plannin’ for us.”

  Essie had, of course, noticed that Mamma’s white men had long ago ceased to be sailors, dockworkers, watchmen. They were lawmen, bankers, politicians, doctors, businessmen, and the like. It never dawned on Essie that it had been planned. She had never thought Mamma capable of planning anything.

  But then what did she know about Mamma other than that she came to Savannah on General William Tecumseh Sherman’s famous march to the sea, that she loved taffy and liverwurst, and, of all things, doing laundry when in a steady state of mind. “Calms my nerves,” she once said.

  Mamma never talked about her days in slavery, who her people were, nothing like that. It also dawned on Essie that this was the longest conversation that she and Mamma had ever had.

  Mamma looked around the attic. “That bed of yours. Highboy. Nightstand. Washstand. Wardrobe. Gifts from Mr. Farquhar who got that furniture store on Broughton.”

  The attic had been Essie’s sanctuary, the only place in that house on Minis Street where she had felt safe. She had taken pride in keeping it clean, sweeping and mopping, polishing the furniture. The five-drawer highboy, with its mirror’s frame fashioned like a harp, was her delight.

  Gifts from Mr. Farquhar who got that furniture store on Broughton.

  So her bedroom was tainted, soiled, dirty, too, like everything else in this accursed house.

  “Country ham you love … china dishes you eat off … wallpaper in the parlor … piano … clothes you packin’.”

  Everything was filthy. Everything except Essie’s wall shelf, her books and magazines, things she’d gotten on her own.

  Essie thought about grabbing them and leaving everything else behind, then quickly figured that foolish. But she vowed that after she started earning money at Miss Abby’s she’d get herself some new clothes—outfits to underthings—and burn every bit of clothing Mamma had bought for her. Hair ribbons too.

  Mamma was in her face again. “You got a problem with how I earn a livin’, but you never had a problem with the gifts I gets from my genelmen friends.” She flicked the coral necklace around Essie’s neck. “Or the things my money buy.”

  “Mamma, I just want to go my own way.”

  Essie watched Mamma pace again. “Ever since you start smellin’ yo’self, you been lookin’ down on me. Too good to pat Juba or do a little jig and whatnot, learn to play the harmonicky or a ditty on the piano. No, you always somewhere with your nose in a book. Too good to even give my genelmen friends a smile.” She stopped. “You know, you could get a dime or more for that.”

  “You really have no shame, Mamma, do you?” Essie yelled, no matter if it earned her face another backhand slap. “No shame!” Essie shut tight the carpetbag.

  In three wide strides Mamma was beside her. She snatched the carpetbag from Essie’s hands, threw it across the room. “Well, my dear girl, you go on out there and make your way!—have your new life!” She yanked the coral necklace from around Essie’s neck.

  The pitter-patter of the beads upon the floorboards brought mother and daughter to silence. For a tick of time both were transfixed by the pitter-patter, pitter-patter.

  Essie saw a flash, not of anger, but of pain in Mamma’s eyes.

  Then the rage came roaring back. “Git!” she screamed. “Go right now—with just the clothes you got on your back!”

  Essie was still frozen, feet stuck to the floor.

  “Git!” Mamma yelled louder, “before I rip those clothes off you and toss you out naked like so much trash!”

  Essie stumbled, almost tumbled down the attic steps. She was at the front door when Mamma cried out, “And you can tell your precious Clara Wiggins she don’t work here no more!”

  ASHES TO ASHES

  Essie was pulled back from that slap when Reverend McElroy mumbled, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, looking for that blessed hope …”

  The coffin was lowered into the ground.

  Gravedigger Scriven handed her a shovel.

  Essie managed half a shovelful of soil, tossed it onto the plain pine box.

  “Thank you, Reverend,” she softly said, pressing folded-up dollar bills into the minister’s hand. She gave the gravediggers a silver dollar each.

  That done, with Binah and Ma Clara, Essie headed for Abby Bowfield’s boardinghouse.

  MY BONDAGE AND MY FREEDOM

  Cook had a repast ready—cold capon, cucumber salad, potato salad, sweet tea with mint.

  Essie had no appetite but she ate for Cook’s sake.

  “I best be getting home,” said Ma Clara after about an hour and fanning herself. By the time they returned from Strangers’ Ground the air was heavier, stickier. Breezes had ceased.

  “I will see you before you go?” asked Ma Clara as Essie walked her to the front door, then out to the end of the walkway.

  “You know you will.” Essie planted a kiss on the old woman’s cheek.

  Back inside the boardinghouse, when Essie passed by the parlor, Abby Bowfield, tawny, stout, stern, called out for her.

  “Yessum?”

  Miss Abby was putting the final touches on an arrangement of camellias on the mahogany table in the center of the room. “I’ve spoken with Binah, told her it’s fine if she helps you out tomorrow.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. I really appreciate that.”

  Essie looked around the parlor, wound back to her early days with the boardinghouse ways.

  Set day for laundry, set day to clean the fireplaces, set day for window washing, set day for wiping down baseboards, door frames, doors. Set day for everything. Every day, twice a day, floors swept.

  There were rules for the boarders too.

  No drinking, except for a little scuppernong wine in the parlor Friday evenings.

  No company in the bedrooms, only in the parlor for an hour and a half starting at eight o’clock in the evening. Except Sundays.

  No company on Sundays.

  Breakfast—seven o’clock sharp.

  Supper—six o’clock sharp.

  Nightly curfew—ten o’clock. Woe betide anyone who tried to enter the house at 10:02. She’d find herself locked out and in a scurry for a place to lay her head that night.

  Overwhelmed by the rules at first, Essie soon eased into them, came to relish routine.

  No folks coming in and out at strange hours, no noisy nights, no slamming doors, no cussing, no surprises, no shocks.

  Nothing ever awry, haphazard. No one pared their toenails anywhere they pleased.

  At Abby Bowfield’s everything was aright. Like Essie had for so long wanted her life.

  The boarders—teachers, seamstresses, live-out servants, a hairdresser, a midwife—a tidy lot. If a few gathered at eventide in the parlor, all was polite. Conversation calm. Laughter was titters and giggles, not guffaws. Sometimes the room
was filled with just silence and scents of lilac and honeysuckle drifting in from the flower beds out front as the boarders read books, wrote letters, did petit point.

  The parlor, with its gentle green camelback settee and matching side chairs, was Essie’s favorite room. Its paw-footed mahogany bookshelf dearest. On its shelves, sixty-six books. Essie had counted them the first time she dusted that room.

  “The Scarlet Letter,” she said softly on the day she first scanned the titles. “Clotel; or, the President’s Daughter … The Mysterious Key and What It Opened … American Woman’s Home … The Life and Public Services of Martin R. Delany … Forest Leaves … Great Expectations … My Bondage and My Freedom.” That last book was the most worn.

  Essie was beside herself with joy when Miss Abby welcomed her to borrow books from the parlor. She hadn’t been working there a week.

  My Bondage and My Freedom was the book Essie took up to bed with her that very night.

  Miss Abby was still fiddling with the camellias when Essie headed up to her room to change out of her mourning dress, then tackle chores double-time given how much of tomorrow she and Binah would be taking off to do a deed she sorely dreaded. But on the other side of it, Essie reminded herself, she’d be embarking on a new and wonderful life thanks to the woman who took Room #4.

  PASSING STRANGE

  “Them books along with the bookcase is from the woman who takes Room Number Four,” Binah had told Essie one day while they were giving the parlor its weekly cleaning. “Had them shipped after one of her times passing through.”

  The parlor furniture was a gift from the woman too.

  “After a different time,” said Binah.

  Room #4 was on the third floor of the east wing. It was a modest-sized room with waltz-out windows onto a balcony that overlooked a small courtyard dotted with potted palms and ferns. Creamy pink bougainvillea traipsed along the back gate.

  “Parlor furniture Miss Abby had before was plenty nice but nowhere near as fancy,” Binah had added as Essie polished the top of the center table and Binah its pedestal and paw feet.

  Binah, a bit older than Essie, was the gentlest soul she had ever met. Essie envied how she slept like the dead. Once her head hit the pillow Binah was out. No tossing and turning. No sleepless nights like Essie sometimes suffered.