Excerpts

Chapter One 1775 Mount Vernon, VA One day when I was three, my mama took me by the hand and dragged me to the slope of lawn that ran down to the river in front of the mansion house. It didn't even have the piazza on yet. There was lumber and stone to one end, and builders working. She put her hand on the back of my neck, the way you hold a chicken just before you're about to chop its head off. "You see that house, Oney Judge?" she said to me. "Do you?" Well, I saw it, all right. For me and all the other little children on the place it was always in our line of sight. Like the Throne of Grace the mistress was always reading about in her Bible. We couldn't help but see it. It was there when you woke up at dayclean, and in the night you could see it in the mists from the quarters, candles glowing in the long windows. "Yes, Mama," I said. "Well, you just take a good look, Oney Judge. 'Cause that house is where you gonna work when you get old 'nuf. You ain't gonna be no hoe Negra. You gonna be a fine mistress of the needle, workin' in that house for the mistress. Like your aunt Myrtilla do. And me. And Charlotte. And that's why I want you inside now, plyin' your needle, and not in the quarters listenin' to those tall stories that old no-'count Sambo Anderson be tellin' you." "He tells me about Africa, Mama." She hit me in the ear. "You doan need to know 'bout Africa. You here, not there. And if'n you doan wanna spend your grown-up days trudgin' in the hot sun and pullin' weeds all summer, you best listen. You hear?" All I heard was a ringing in my ear. But she was mouthing more words, and I knew they weren't good. And if I didn't say yes, I'd get another hit in my other ear. So I nodded my head yes. And I promised I would practice my stitching. And she walked around to the back of the house to go in and have her morning time of sewing with the mistress and my aunt Myrtilla and Charlotte. Because they were all mistresses of their needles. Other things about my first years on the place I disremember. But I know of those things. I suspect I was told them by Aunt Myrtilla. Some was told by old no-'count Sambo Anderson, who hunted and trapped and wore gold rings in his ears and adorned his face with tribal scars and tattoos and was anything but no-'count to me and the other children. Because he was a saltwater Negro, come from Africa, he had great esteem on the place. So that everyone, Negro and white alike, listened when he spoke. Some things were told to me by One-Handed Charles, who could salt fish better than anybody with two hands. Some by Nathan, who worked in the mansion kitchen with Hercules, the cook. And some by Lame Alice, who mended the fishing nets. It was Nathan who told me the business of "first and second mourning." It seems I had practiced with my needle enough to be allowed in the mistress's bedchamber early of a morning with Mama and Aunt Myrtilla and Charlotte. This was a privilege given to few Negro women. All Negroes who worked in the house had to be not only the best at their chores, they had to be mulatto. Which, I soon learned, meant half white. I was half white because of my daddy. He came from England. All'st he ever talked about was England. One time I heard him telling my mama about a place called Newgate. I thought my daddy was a squire, like the Fairfaxes, who lived next door. They came from England and they were fancified gentlemen. I thought Newgate was his estate. And that someday he would take me and Mama there. But when you play with other children, be they Negro or white, they soon set things right. "Newgate is a prison," the other Negro children told me. "And your daddy's a convict. Our mamas say he was saved from hangin' by bein' sent to Virginia." "Leastwise I know who my daddy is!" I shouted back. And Mama slapped me then, too. It didn't take much vexation for Mama to slap me. "Is my daddy a convict?" I asked her. "He's an indentured servant," she said. It was early in the morning in the mistress's bedchamber. We hadn't had breakfast yet. And from belowstairs I could smell ham and coffee, and my stomach growled like the big, fluffy dog Sambo Anderson hunted with. The mistress's day started at seven because when her husband was home, he got up at four, made his own fire, wrote letters, then ate hoecakes and honey with her. The mistress was belowstairs, seeing to the makings of dinner. Seems all they did was think about food in that house. The general and his lady had a regular fixation about food. Winter sunshine poured in the windows. A fire burned in the hearth. Builders hammered away, making the south side of the house straight and true, the way the master said the corners of a house should be. I sat on a rug trying to stitch the hem of a pillowcase. "Mama, why do everybody in this house wear black all the time?" I asked. "Doan ask so many questions," Mama snapped. "But I like colors," I said. "Like the red of your head scarf and the amber beads the mistress sometimes wears. And the blue tea set she keeps on the sideboard." "They all be in second mourning," Aunt Myrtilla answered. Now, here was something. I stopped sewing. I liked morning, especially ones like this, when we came to the mansion house. I knew that soon Nathan would be bringing up a tray of food from the kitchen. Good food. Real coffee and fresh-baked bread and maybe some slices of ham. We didn't get much ham. Maybe some backbone, liver, what we called lights and whites called lungs. "Why do white folks get a second morning and we get only one?" I asked. "Hush with your endless questions, child," Mama scolded. At that moment Nathan came into the room. "Mistress send you all up some vittles." He set a tray of coffee, bread, butter, and ham on a table. Before he left, he squatted down beside me. Nathan was young, with bright eyes and short, fuzzy hair. Sometimes, when important company came, he got to wear livery. I knew what that was 'cause my Mama had helped sew it. "There be two meanings to 'morning,'" he said. "One means 'the start of the day.' Like now. The other means 'a time of grief.' You grieve for somebody who died." "Who died?" I asked. He lowered his voice. "Lady Washington's daughter, Patsy. Last year. Got up from the dinner table in good spirits and fell on the floor in fits. In two minutes she wuz dead." "What's fits?" "It's what little girls get when they ask too many questions," Mama said. "Daddy says it's the only way I'll learn." "Your daddy puttin' notions in your head." Mama always said that. "Your Mama made the first-mourning dress for Lady Washington," Aunt Myrtilla explained. "Stayed up all night makin' it. Gen'l give her five shillings for her work." I knew that Negro servants often got shillings or pence for doing special work. I couldn't wait until I was old enough to earn such. "This second-mourning dress she wearin' now come from Richmond," Charlotte put in. "It wuz too long. Your Mama fixed it. It gots a white collar. A little white allowed in second mourning." "What about red?" I asked. "No red allowed," Mama said. "I see Master Jackie wearing a red vest under his black coat sometimes." "You hush 'bout Master Jackie," Mama scolded. "Master Jackie does as he pleases. Doan need to 'splain to a little Negro girl what he do." Master Jackie was dead Patsy's brother. Both were children from Lady Washington's first marriage. "I like Master Jackie a lot," I said. "The way he come to our house sometimes and give me sweetmeats. The way he always find Mama in this house and ask her to sew a button on his vest. 'Member, Mama? Master Jackie come one time when he was in trouble in school? An' you were sad 'cause Daddy was away?" "You hush 'bout that!" Mama snapped. I hushed. "You come on down to the kitchen with me now, honey," Nathan said. "And I'll give you a sweetmeat." He reached out his hand. He was favored because of the way he could make rock candy. In the kitchen he had a teakwood barrel full of long strings of glistening rock candy. And he used it to make rich brandy sauces for plum puddings. "Miss Patsy die of the falling sickness," he told me on the way down. "Dr. Craik give her mercurial tablets, but they do no good. No more talk 'bout dyin', now. You can watch me ready a pair of ducks. Lady Washington says they must be laid by, in case of company." "I'm afeared of Hercules," I said. Hercules was head cook, small, wiry, and full of moods. He threw pots and pans when things didn't go to his liking. "Hercules not gonna hurt a pretty little girl like you. An' you listen, now, you're smart, too. Doan you ever stop askin' questions." In the first years of my life I was happy. I lived in the two-story wood building on the service lane, north of the mansion. House families lived there. We had two chimneys, glazed windows, and finer blankets than those who didn't work in the house. I was one of twenty-six children who belonged to women working at the mansion house, and I knew that house families were favored. I knew my mama was favored. Everyone spoke good words about her round, pretty face. My daddy said she was taken with vanity, and it would bring her to trouble someday. The first years of my life I took comfort and hope from the ordered world I lived in. And other than having to ply the needle, I could do as I pleased. I and the other children would watch the builders working on the south end of the house, climb on the new lumber, hide in the quarry stone, until Mr. Lund Washington chased us away. Mr. Lund, as we called him, was the general's kin. And he ran the place after the general went to war. He was strict, but I soon learned how to bring him around. When it was hot, I'd fetch a glass of lemonade for him from the kitchen. When it was cold, I'd bring hot coffee. Sometimes he let me go out on the river on the schooner that Father Jack, Sam, and Schomberg used to fish for shad or herring. Once he held me high up in his arms so I could see the cupola they were putting on the red-shingled roof. It was the highest point I could see. And I just knew it pointed to heaven. But I was only three and a half. And too smart, Mama said, for my own good. "You gets that from your daddy. He may be bound to Mr. Washington, jus' like a slave, but leastways he kin be free someday. Me never, an' not you, either. So you best learn to sit on all those notions." I did not want to sit on my notions. I was determined that no one would make me afraid. Copyright © 2002 by Ann Rinaldi Chapter Two I continued to ask questions. There was much chance to learn and lots of people to learn from. Servants gossiped. They had nothing else to do while they mended, chopped, spun, wove, dipped candles, plucked chickens, and ground wheat. Servants (they were never called slaves) were close to everyone at the mansion house. They changed linens, washed them, emptied slops, knew who was sick and why, heard fevered mutterings and whispered prayers. They held secrets. Nathan told me how the general had fought the French when he was a young man in the war. How he fought for the British. And now he was fighting against the British. I minded his words. I wanted to keep it all straight. Nathan told me how the Fairfaxes, who lived in the plantation house next to ours, had been friends of the general since he was a boy. And they'd gone back to England because of the war. He told me how the general's father had died when the general was eleven, and his older brother, Lawrence, took him under his wing. I couldn't believe the general had an older brother, because I thought the general was God. But then Nathan told me that Lawrence, the older brother, was dead, which I supposed allowed the general to be God. He told me how this place known as Mount Vernon was once named Epsewasson, or Little Hunting Creek, by the Indians. That the Potomac was an Indian name too. It means River of Swans. But Sambo Anderson told me about Africa. I loved to visit Sambo. He raised lots of chickens that he sold to the mansion house. And his hunting dog could rout out grouse, partridge, ducks. Most of the children were scared of Sambo. On his brown face strange markings were cut in. He wore rings in his ears, an owl's claw around his neck. On a winter morning he sat outside his rude log hut polishing his old British musket that he hunted with. A small fire burned in front of him. On a spit over it he was roasting a rabbit. A muddy-colored blanket was draped around his shoulders. "Sambo, I come to give you some biscuits from the house." He nodded. "Little girl like you shud'na be out in the cole." "Did you hunt last night?" He nodded yes and pointed to the fowl hanging from a pole. He would sell it to Lady Washington. She counted on his bounty to dress up her table. He liked to hunt at night, like the owl that guided him. Said he could see better at night. I believed him. I sat near the fire. "Tell me about Africa," I said. I knew what would come first. I had heard it all before. The tribes. The way he said their names was like the sound of rain pattering softly on the roof. "Whydahs, Asante, Fanti, Ibo, Coromantee, Ga, Hausa," he said softly. And I waited for more. "Vanished, all vanished," he said. "What does that mean, Sambo?" "Gone. From the Senegal River to the Congo, half a land away. Hausa lay in ambush, waited to capture Asante. Malinke went to war to capture Coromantee. Old, beautiful Africa puke up its own and sell them for slaves. "Hausa make war on my people. Burn my village, kill my father. I was bound and sold for one hundred and seventy-two cowrie shells. Tied to others by a leather thong around my neck, marched for days to the sea." I waited. "My father was Asante king. They burned our village." He sighed and shook his head. "Now I am one of the Gone." Then he fell into silence. There would be no more today. You couldn't push Sambo. "Tell me how it was when the general went to the Congress," I begged. Lady Washington had told us, but I liked the way Sambo told it better. He shrugged and humphed. "Candles burn all night in the windows of the mansion house. People come and go. It wuz summer. News from the north bad, news from the south bad. Shadows on the bowlin' green. Paris an' Giles an' Joe from the stables hold the horse's reins. Gen'l's horse paw the ground, like he know sumptin' nobody else do. Heat lightnin' flash, like it did the night they burn my village. Bad sign. Finally outta the mansion house come the gen'l and that Henry man." Patrick Henry. Yes. My daddy talked about that man. My daddy liked the way Mr. Henry talked about liberty. "An' another man name of Pendleton. They come to ride off wif the gen'l. The gen'l's lady come outta the house an' watch 'em mount up. Then Billy Lee come from the stables all cocky like, 'cause he ridin' wif the gen'l to Philadelphia." "And when he went to war?" I pushed. "It wuz April. Whitefish runnin', we wuz plantin' corn. The gen'l's fish schooner on the river. The herring runnin' good. A rider come up the lane from Johnson's Ferry, like the devil be chasin' him. We Negroes all gather round and hear that up north they have a fight outsida Boston. The gen'l all excited. Everybody all excited. You never seed so many visitors as he had here then. This time he gather us round, tells us to work hard. Tells us he could lose everythin', could be taken away in chains, but he goin' to fight. He go off in the old green carriage wif that Mr. Lee and Mr. Carter. Say he be back in July. Well, he ain't come back yet. An' the old green carriage fetched home by Mr. Lund." Sambo chuckled. "These white people doan know 'bout war. Ride off like gentlemans, wif lace at their necks, to meet and talk. All they do is talk. They doan know how quick you can be one of the Gone." Aunt Myrtilla came walking down the path in the quarters, a shawl wrapped tightly around her, calling my name. "Oney? Oney Judge, where you be? Your mama want you now!" Sambo nodded at me. I set down the biscuits from the kitchen and left. I ran about freely with the other children. To Dogue Run Farm, Muddy Hole Farm. The general had five farms altogether. Mama didn't like my going to Dogue Run. She knew the general wanted his people to be Christian. She didn't want me learning the old ways, because my future was in the mansion house. At Dogue Run they had Reverend Will, who practiced the old African religion, besides preaching about Jesus. On Dogue Run the slaves had night meetings in the gullies, and for those meetings Reverend Will was the keeper of the washpot. At night meetings they turned the pot over so the sound of their secret prayers would go under it. And Dogue Run had old Sinda, who conjured. Sinda was another saltwater Negro. Born in Africa, like Sambo. We children loved to visit her. She could read the insides of a chicken to tell the future. She could make conjure bags out of red flannel, filled with ground-up toads' heads and goofer dust, which was graveyard dirt. She had a conch shell she said she had brought with her from Africa. "Water bring us here, water take us home," she'd said. She told us never to let anyone get a piece of our hair. "De hair is de most powerful thing your enemy kin git hold of," she said as we gathered around her. "It grow near de brain, an' anybody what git hold of it kin make your brain crazy." She told us that if the general and Lady Washington had let her put a "fix" on Patsy, she would not have died. "Dat Patsy girl go crazy," she said. "She got fits 'cause spiders walk up an' down in her body. I cudda helped her. But no, dey doan want Old Sinda near de big house. Dat Patsy girl, she die 'cause of some sin her father do." I made the mistake of telling Mama this, and she switched me. "That Mr. Custis, Patsy's daddy, was quality," she said. "An' you doan ever say such! An' you stay away from Dogue Run!" But I still sneaked away and visited Old Sinda. I recollect the way Sinda looked at me one day when I visited. "Dis chile gonna be free one day," she said. "Dis chile gonna have trials, but she gonna be free." I shivered. Did it mean my daddy would take me with him, when he was no longer bound to the Washingtons? But I soon put the thought in the back of my mind. It was One-Handed Charles who told me how Master Jackie came to Dogue Run one day to ask Old Sinda to conjure for him. One-Handed Charles liked to brag that he was the last slave the general purchased. "In '72. From Mr. Massey. I come fer only thirty pounds 'cause I gots only one hand." "But why did Master Jackie want Old Sinda to conjure?" I asked. "He has everything he wants at the mansion house." "'Cause he be wantin' to git betrothed to Miss Nelly Calvert. He wuz only eighteen. She wuz sixteen, and there wuz carryin' on at the mansion house fer days when he told his stepfather, the gen'l, he want to leave school. Everybody knew to stay clear. Master Jackie come beggin' Old Sinda fer some hush water in a jug, so he could give it to the gen'l to drink and quiet him down." "What's hush water?" "Jus' plain water what they fix so if you drink it, you be nice." "But everybody knows conjure doesn't work on white people," I argued. One-Handed Charles shook his head. "That still up fer speculation. Old Sinda give Master Jackie powders an' charms in a bag to put under the gen'l's bed." "Did it work?" "Is Master Jackie wed to Miss Nelly Calvert?" "Yes." "The gen'l come ridin' over here when he find out Master Jackie visit. Say nuthin' 'bout conjure. Complained that the carrots wuz too thin that year, the timothy not good 'nuf. He in a temper, all right. But Master Jackie, he git wed come February." This was how I learned about life around me, the past of both the whites and the Negroes. It all became my past. Sometimes I mixed up people in Virginia society with African tribes. When there was fear, after the general left, that the British would come up the Potomac and seize Lady Washington and burn the place, I saw in my head Sambo Anderson's village burned by the Hausa tribe. I saw Lady Washington with a leather thong around her neck, marched for miles to the sea. My nightmares were about the general's horse pawing the ground, heat lightning flashing overhead, and patsy rolling on the floor in fits because spiders were crawling up and down inside her body. When you learn about someone, hear their stories, you tote them around. They flow in your blood and your dreams. They become a part of you. So that when something bad happens to you, there is something to liken it to. I know someone else it happened to. And he still lives and breathes. So, when I was four and my daddy left, I cried, but I understood. He became part of the Gone. Copyright © 2002 by Ann Rinaldi Excerpted from Taking Liberty: The Story of Oney Judge, George Washington's Runaway Slave by Ann Rinaldi All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.