Inventing Victoria Read online

“What kind of future do you want? You strike me as someone who wants to make something of herself.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  Was the woman a mind reader?

  Essie had recently been daydreaming about saving up enough money to leave Savannah, make her way to one of the schools that trained up colored teachers. When done, she’d create a special school that would also be a home for children tossed aside, forced to fend for themselves, hope for mercies. I will lavish them with love, Essie vowed when she dreamed of her home for kicked-aside kids.

  “And I’ll teach them that it makes no never mind how a body starts out in life. It matters that you reach for something, elevate, exalt yourself.”

  Essie let those words tumble out on the night that she and Dorcas Vashon were standing on Room #4’s balcony, its high black cast-iron railing an arabesque of ivy. Months back Miss Abby had the balconies along with the back gate redone by a man who lived a solitary life on the outskirts of town, a man who intrigued Essie with his quiet ways and sad eyes. Whenever he did work for a colored person he always gave a discount Binah had told her.

  “They say Mister Caleb the best blacksmith for a hundred miles,” Binah had also said. Like Ma Clara he was beautifully black and carried himself as if a prince or king in another life. Essie wondered why such a nice, successful, handsome man wasn’t married as she stood on his wondrously wrought balcony with Dorcas Vashon.

  It was a windless night. Fireflies played hide-and-seek in the courtyard below.

  By then Essie no longer feared Dorcas Vashon’s eyes. During their chats she had spied in those fiery eyes mercy, compassion, comfort. A time or two Essie had wanted to tell Dorcas Vashon why she left that house on Minis Street, tell her the truth about Mamma, but in the end she backed down, fearing that the woman might spurn her.

  “You have nothing to be ashamed about,” said Dorcas Vashon out of the blue one morning. “There is no place for shame in your life.”

  Had Miss Abby told her? Had she hired a private detective? Was she even talking about Mamma? Or just about her being a poor drudge? Essie dared not ask.

  It was a few days later, on that windless, firefly night that Dorcas Vashon made Essie an offer.

  OF PROMISE

  “I can take you from this place and give you a different life.”

  “Different life?”

  “A better life.”

  “How would you do that?”

  “Turn you into a lady, help you rise in life.”

  “But how come—why would you do that for me?”

  “It is what I do. I seek out young women of promise.”

  “But—but why?”

  “I have had blessings abundant, my dear. And so many of our people are in such great need. Ever since they hammered the final nail in Reconstruction’s coffin back in ’77 …” Dorcas Vashon paused, shook her head. “So many fail to rise not on account of a lack of ambition, but on account of a lack of opportunity, a chance.”

  Essie saw that the concern, the grief were genuine.

  “In any event, I aid as many of our institutions as I can, places like the school a young man named Booker T. Washington will soon open in Tuskegee, Alabama. Along with institutions, I invest in individuals, especially young women who can use a helping hand.”

  Essie was still taking it all in. “You truly believe that I can …”

  “Yes, I do, my dear.”

  The fireflies were more numerous, enchanting the night.

  “If you decide to accept my offer,” Dorcas Vashon continued, “your journey will begin in Baltimore. And you should know, my dear, that it will not be easy.”

  Essie nodded rapidly, both elated and terrified.

  “But I do believe in my bones, Essie, that you can meet the challenge, that you can be transformed, that you can rise to higher heights. Once there you will, you must, give others a helping hand.”

  What if the whispers were true? What if she had put a hex on a man? What if she did own houses of—?

  “Sleep on it,” said Dorcas Vashon as she turned to leave the balcony. “No rush. Spend some time on self-reflection. Decide if you can leave all of this behind, cut all ties, and enter a new life.”

  I want my own life, Mamma—a better life, a new life!

  Was Dorcas Vashon dangerous or the answer to prayer?

  Essie lingered on the balcony a little longer, eyes on the flickering of fireflies in the courtyard below.

  WANTED

  Essie told Binah about the offer that night. Rattling on so, it was a while before she realized that Binah had dozed off.

  Pacing in the narrow space between their beds, Essie imagined a fine future as a lady: walking stately along a promenade with parasol and wide-brimmed hat … sailing on a placid lake … attending a banquet, a ball.

  What was that bubbly drink rich people enjoyed in a …?

  Flute.

  That was the word. Champagne flute. Essie had long ago vowed to never let a drop of whiskey touch her tongue, but champagne, that was different. She never read of champagne turning people ugly.

  Most of all, as Essie thought hard about Dorcas Vashon’s offer, she imagined a life without shame.

  How could she rise, elevate where she was? She would never be allowed into Savannah’s colored society. People like the Paces, the Deveauxs, the Coopers, people who were members of the Ladies and Gents Club or the Union Coterie, clubs that had fancy dinners and balls—such people would never cotton to the company of the likes of her, would never welcome her to their picnics and steamboat rides. What damning looks she had gotten a while back when she went to one of their churches in her very best frock, shoes shined, not a hair out of place. She had even purchased a new bonnet. Did they not know that she no longer had anything to do with that house on Minis Street? Could they not see that she was nothing like her mother? Attending the praise house on Shad Island eased some of the sting. Nobody looked down on her there.

  If she stayed in Savannah …

  Grow old at Miss Abby’s?

  End up with aching ankles, stiff knees. Nothing to look forward to but lovage and lavender foot soaks?

  Anytime Essie skimmed the WANTED column in the Savannah Morning News there were only lowly jobs for colored.

  “Wanted, a competent colored house girl …”

  “Wanted, a colored girl for chamber work and plain sewing …”

  “Wanted, reliable colored girl as maid …”

  When Essie awoke the next morning to predawn light, larksong, and a milkman’s bell, she pictured herself holding her head up high. Saw herself married to a wonderful man, someone of stature. They’d have children, children she’d love with all her mind, heart, soul. All her being.

  She began to tear up.

  Essie moved through the day—dusting, sweeping, mopping, other chores—in a trance and with doubts nipping at her dreams.

  Could she really go off to Baltimore with a woman who was still so very much a stranger? All Essie knew about Dorcas Vashon was that she preferred lemonade to sweet tea, loved succotash, and liked her eggs scrambled soft. True, she no longer feared the woman’s eyes, but every now and then she glimpsed a bit of mischief in them, something impish.

  Baltimore? The Monumental City.

  Hope surged.

  Until Essie remembered that Baltimore was also called Mob Town.

  Frederick Douglass. He had spent some of his slavery days in Baltimore. It’s where, in a shipyard, a bunch of white boys, apprentices like him, beat him up for no reason and almost knocked an eye out.

  Essie was about to tackle polishing brass, doorknobs to push plates, when she thought better of Baltimore. It was, after all, where Frederick Douglass began trying to better himself. And he was a slave!

  Maybe Baltimore was the place for her.

  AS BRAVE AS FREDERICK DOUGLASS?

  The next night, for the second time, Essie took up to bed with her Frederick Douglass’s autobiography My Bondage and My Freedom. Against the
backdrop of Binah’s snores, she turned to a favorite passage.

  “Seized with a determination to learn to read, at any cost, I hit upon many expedients to accomplish the desired end. The plea which I mainly adopted, and the one by which I was most successful, was that of using my young white playmates, with whom I met in the street, as teachers. I used to carry, almost constantly, a copy of Webster’s spelling book in my pocket; and, when sent on errands, or when play time was allowed me, I would step, with my young friends, aside, and take a lesson in spelling.”

  He had paid for his lessons with bits of bread. Essie wondered if that meant at times he went hungry. She read on.

  “When I was about thirteen years old, and had succeeded in learning to read, every increase of knowledge, especially respecting the FREE STATES, added something to the almost intolerable burden of the thought—‘I AM A SLAVE FOR LIFE.’ To my bondage I saw no end. It was a terrible reality, and I shall never be able to tell how sadly that thought chafed my young spirit.”

  But he didn’t remain in despair! That was the important thing.

  Essie closed the book, tucked it under her chin. She thought about how young Douglass managed to squirrel away fifty cents from shining shoes to buy another book, The Columbian Orator. Essie pictured him reading that book again and again. The way he talked about that book it was only second to the Bible.

  Freedom was his dream and he never let it go! Essie put the book beneath her pillow, blew out the candle. She knew better than to compare her life with that of a slave’s, knew what a blessing it was to be free. But she couldn’t deny feeling chained, bound, held back from rising in life because of who brought her into the world.

  Wanted, a competent colored house girl …

  As she lay there, enveloped by the pitch-black night with whip-poor-wills calling, with breezes bustling, rustling through live oaks, magnolias, river birches, sugar maples, Essie thought about how Frederick Douglass hadn’t known what to expect when he finally reached New York City.

  Could she be as brave as Frederick Douglass?

  He was a grown man when he took his liberty.

  She was sixteen.

  She remembered, too, that after his initial jubilee over finally being free, Frederick Douglass was awfully scared. Sleeping in the streets. Surviving on crusts of bread. Friendless. Utterly alone until someone, thank goodness, steered him to a colored man who could help him.

  And look at him now! The most famous colored man in the country, in the world. Went from the slave Frederick Bailey to the gentleman Frederick Douglass!

  Maybe she didn’t even have to be as brave as Frederick Douglass. Her journey was different.

  She wasn’t escaping slavery.

  She wouldn’t be making her way alone, but traveling with the wealthy Dorcas Vashon.

  Between sleep and wake Essie hit upon the one thing that would help her make up her final mind.

  BISCUITS AND VERBENA TEA

  “If you don’t mind, ma’am, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.” Essie had just set down the breakfast tray.

  “And who would that be?” asked Dorcas Vashon, still with a bit of sleep in her eyes.

  “Ma—Clara Wiggins, who used to clean for my ma, someone who’s been like a mother to me.”

  Essie sat outside Room #4 while the two women talked over biscuits and verbena tea. She was as squirmy as she had been years earlier when she peered into Mamma’s red room from behind Ma Clara’s skirt, praying for that yes to school.

  BLESSED, TRULY BLESSED

  “What do you think?” Essie asked Ma Clara as the two stood on Abby Bowfield’s veranda. Essie couldn’t keep still, couldn’t stop wringing her hands, couldn’t keep her eyes from darting every which way.

  What if Ma Clara advised against it?

  What if she knew a whisper about Dorcas Vashon to be true?

  But then Ma Clara smiled. “I think you have found favor with a good soul,” the old woman finally said. “You have been blessed, truly blessed.”

  “So I should say yes to the offer?”

  “Chance of a lifetime, sweetness.”

  “Really? You really mean it?” Essie rubbed her hands together.

  “Mean it?” Ma Clara balled up both fists. “Anybody try to keep you from this opportunity I’ll knock ’em headlong into tomorrow.”

  Essie hugged Ma Clara—“Thank you! Thank you!”—then dashed back into the house, bounded up the stairs, flew into Room #4.

  Breathless, she just stood in the doorway, too overjoyed, too overwhelmed to speak.

  Dorcas Vashon smiled. “Shall I take this as a yes?”

  That evening Dorcas Vashon asked three of the seamstresses at Abby Bowfield’s to make Essie several smart outfits. “Something in daffodil … Something in heliotrope …” Dorcas Vashon gave the women instructions as they took Essie’s measurements.

  “We will leave in two weeks,” Dorcas Vashon informed Essie.

  A few days later …

  TOMORROW

  “They say your ma is doing poorly. Can’t fend for herself much.”

  A roll of thunder rattled the sky.

  Ma Clara had just sat down at the kitchen worktable.

  Essie fetched her a glass of water.

  Nearly two years had elapsed since Essie laid eyes on Mamma. After she said “Yes!” to Dorcas Vashon’s offer Essie had been in knots over whether or not to tell Mamma that she was leaving Forest City. She feared it would only foment more friction, feared Mamma hurling nasty words at her again.

  “Seems she has been sending the Rakestraw boy mostly to fetch her food and such,” said Ma Clara after a sip of water.

  Essie furrowed her brow. “But what about Miss Emma and Miss Katy? Can’t they—”

  “Lit out.”

  Days later Ma Clara returned. “I check on her as I can. Take soup. She sent for Doctor Buzzard, and he’s been treating her with roots and his crazy potions. Put some chicken-bone-and-feather charm about her neck.”

  Essie was afraid to ask.

  After a heavy silence Ma Clara took Essie’s hands in hers. “It’s the waste-away, sweetness.”

  Essie swallowed, stared down at the clinker-brick floor. She had reckoned that Mamma was just having a long sick headache or maybe was just a bit bilious. She figured Katy and Emma left because they’d found a better house out of which to ply their trade. “I’ll look in on her tomorrow,” she said.

  Tomorrow became tomorrow became … Ma Clara coming with the news that Essie was out of tomorrows … became Dorcas Vashon insisting on paying for the undertaker, the funeral, buying her that magnificent black mourning dress.

  Essie gasped and her hands flew to her face when Dorcas Vashon held the dress before her.

  The woman then flooded her with its details. “It is a silk faille floor-length dress, long-sleeved, fitted bodice with off-white tatted lace trim at the neck and at the end of the sleeves.”

  Faille? Tatted lace? Bodice? Not words Essie knew. She just stood there in Room #4, mouth agape, feeling like a Cinderella, a dazed Cinderella at that. More so as Dorcas Vashon continued.

  “The lower portion of the dress flows into a full silhouette, which features black satin and …”

  Essie couldn’t keep up with the words.

  “… chevron-shaped pleats and rows of embroidered wide-edged black beaded fringe on the front.” Dorcas Vashon twirled the dress around.

  Essie smiled at the sight of the modest train that was—

  “What we have here, my dear, is a maze of tucks, pleats, ruffles, and inserts of black moiré and satin piping.” Dorcas Vashon finished with this: “The entire dress is embellished with bugle-beaded corded appliqués.”

  All those words for one dress? Essie felt utterly unworthy, guilty too for being so happy. She was about to bury her mother. How could she take such delight in a dress?

  Essie looked from the dress to Dorcas Vashon. “I don’t know what to say. Bless your heart, Miss Dorcas.”

 
; Three days later Essie stood in Strangers’ Ground with Binah, Ma Clara, Gravedigger Bogins, Gravedigger Scriven, and Reverend Zephaniah McElroy.

  And with the past snatching her back.

  MA SOMETHIN’

  The morning after Mamma was laid under the earth, Essie and Binah left Miss Abby’s following breakfast. Both wore ratty half aprons over dingy dresses and old boots, had faded kerchiefs on their heads. They carried buckets, scrub brushes, brooms, carpet beaters. The sack over Essie’s shoulder bulged with soap, lime, sweet oil, and other cleaning supplies. Binah’s was stuffed with rags.

  Turning off Bryan, they made a right onto Broad, walked south, both girls with the same wide stride.

  “Hello there, Essie, Binah,” called out Old Man Boney. He was riding by in the larger of his carts, loaded with lumber and hitched to his stoutest ox, humpbacked Jake with an unusually long dewlap.

  “Hey, there, Old Man Boney!” the girls said in unison.

  “Hello there, girls!” Old Man Boney bade Jake take it slow, then gave Essie a long look. “You look like you about to some way, somehow do us proud, Essie.”

  How does he know? Like her, Binah and Ma Clara had been sworn to secrecy. Essie wasn’t sure how much Miss Abby knew. Spooked, Essie finally said, “I’ll sure try, sir.”

  With a gentle tap of a horsetail rush Old Man Boney bade Jake to speed up.

  Essie had a bit more bounce in her step. Mind on her future and off the grim task ahead, she waxed happy over the gardens they passed. Rings of marigolds or petunias or sunflowers—or a mix—bordered by oyster shells or stones. Clusters of oleander bushes. One front yard had nothing but daisies, another luscious lilac hydrangeas.

  “When the new girl start?” Binah asked during a stretch of shade thanks to pines.

  “Day I leave.”

  “Her name again?”

  “Betty.”

  “That’s right, she start with a b like me. Binah and Betty … Betty and Binah …”

  Essie made a mental note to tell Betty to be extra kind to Binah.