The Secrets of Mary Bowser Read online

  That last stipulation had Zinnie snorting to Mama, “Guess we’ll be waiting on Miss Bet till the Good Lord take her home.”

  In the months and years after Old Master Van Lew’s death, it seemed this prediction would surely come to pass. Miss Bet was headstrong just for the sake of being headstrong, constantly railing against show and ought, her favorite expression for anything expected of her that rubbed her as too constricting. Balls were frivolous, beaux were overbearing, ladies’ parlor conversations only dulled an educated mind—she so seldom accepted a social invitation, she hardly seemed to notice when they no longer arrived. She preferred to pore over the daily news-sheets until her fingertips were stained inky black, lecturing her mother and brother about what she read, and clipping out articles to stick in her scrapbook the way other belles might preserve pressed nosegays.

  Miss Bet was so contrary she even declared she couldn’t abide slavery, claiming she came to understand its horrors when she was away at school up North. But such proclamations didn’t make her much of a favorite among her servants. “She needs her chamber pot emptied just as often as the rest of them,” Mama would mutter, to which Zinnie would reply, “She’s got to, ’cause she takes her meals just as often as they do.” Miss Bet’s anti-slavery sentiments seemed to owe more to her family’s and her neighbors’ embrace of the peculiar institution than to any true understanding of the feelings of us slaves. Especially when all her abolitionist speechifying only seemed to tat out trouble for us.

  Papa, like many of the slaves who worked as skilled laborers in Richmond, received a small sum from his master each month to cover the costs of his room and board, as well as his clothing. He stretched this allotment as best he could, always saving enough to donate to some worthy cause or other at prayer meeting. And from time to time Papa laid by a few cents to purchase a trinket for me.

  I knew come Christmas or my birthday I’d get such gifts, but the ones I enjoyed most came without my expecting them, what Papa called the just-because. “Just because you my treasure.” “Just because you helped Mrs. Wallace tote water from the well without being asked.” “Just because spring come at last.” Any old just-because was special coming from Papa. When we arrived at his cabin one Sunday morning late in 1846, he presented me with a length of bright orange ribbon, “just because the color almost as pretty as our Mary El.” He dangled the satin strand high in the air above me, demanding all manner of hugs and kisses before lowering it into my greedy hands.

  The hue was rich and beautiful, and I sat on the cabin floor, winding the ribbon back and forth between my fingers. As I watched the ends flutter against my Sunday skirt, I thought of Elly Banks, with her bright dresses always so nicely trimmed. “Mama, will you sew my ribbon onto my sleeves?”

  She frowned at the question, but it was Papa who answered. “It’s the Lord’s day, Mary El. No laboring today.”

  “But we go to meeting today. And I want to wear my ribbon to meeting.”

  “Meeting is for praying, not for showing off your new things.” Mama flashed a look at Papa. “See how such trifles fill her head, Lewis.”

  “Pride ain’t vanity, Minerva. Time enough we teach the child the difference.” He nodded to me. “Mary El, leave your ribbon home today and give thanks for it at meeting. Be good this week, and your Mama gonna teach you how to fix the ribbon to your sleeves yourself before next Sunday.”

  Though Mondays were always tiring for me and Mama as we made up the chores from our one day off, that Monday night I begged Mama to stay up and show me how to sew.

  “Sewing is work, not play,” she said. “You sure you got the patience for it now?”

  I nodded, and she went to our trunk and drew out the sewing kit she used to mend our clothing and Papa’s. She carefully chose a needle and measured out some thread.

  “You’re not about to take any fancy stitches, so for now, hardest part will be just getting your needle threaded.” Quick as you please, she drew the thin strand through the eye of the needle. Then she drew it out again and handed me the needle and thread.

  I squinted in the dim candlelight, imitating the way she licked the end of the thread. But even after several passes, I couldn’t loop the strand through the impossible hole.

  “Mama, can’t you do it for me?”

  “If you’re old enough to sew yourself some trim, then you’re old enough to thread a needle.” She laid one of her hands on each of mine. “Just tell yourself you can do it, like it’s a riddle you set yourself to solve.”

  With her hands on mine, I held steady and drew the strand through. “I spy, with my little eye, a girl who’s got her thread through her own needle’s eye,” Mama said, her laughter more splendid than a whole spool of orange rickrack. Then she grew serious. “Mary El, that’s a hard task, and you should be proud you did it. You know the difference between pride and vanity?”

  Remembering Papa’s words, I wanted to say yes. But fact was I didn’t know the difference, though I sure did know Mama would catch me if I lied. “No, Mama.”

  “When you work hard at something, or do right by a person, it’s proper to be proud. The day Mr. Wallace took so sick, and your papa walked through that blizzard to fetch Aunt Binah to doctor to him, I was real proud. Taking all that risk to be out in such weather, just to help his friend.” She smiled, more to herself than to me. “Years ago, just about the time Miss Bet got born, Old Marse V went to Marse Mahon’s smithy and ordered up three fireplace sets. Your papa made those sets, and when he delivered them was the first day I ever seen him. The look of pride on his face as Mistress V admired what he’d made, well, he caught my eye right then.”

  “Why didn’t Papa make enough sets for all the fireplaces?”

  “Back then, three was all the fireplaces the Van Lews had. We were in a smaller house, farther down the slope of Church Hill. When Old Marse V moved the family here, he went back to Marse Mahon to have Papa make up five more sets, all to match the ones he made ten years earlier. You ever notice a difference in them?”

  I shook my head. If you laid the andiron from one set beside the ash shovel from another, I couldn’t have said which rooms they came from, though I tended the fires often enough.

  Mama’s smile broadened. “That’s a sign your papa knows smithing well, which is something to be proud of.”

  “Is pride like money?”

  “Just the opposite, nearly. What put that idea into your head?”

  “When customers go to Marse Mahon’s smithy, they give him money for the work he does. And when Mrs. Wallace hires Ben Little”—Mama nodded at my mention of the free colored boy, a few years older than myself, who lived near Papa and his landlords—“to run an errand, she pays him money. So I thought pride is what slaves get instead of money, when they do something for somebody.”

  “You can be proud of something you get money for, like Old Marse V was proud when his business grew so big he could buy this house. Sometimes, when your papa does a job that’s extra hard or gets it done extra quick, Marse Mahon even gives him a bit of money more than his usual board and keep. And Papa, he usually turns around and spends that money on a just-because for you or me, ’cause he’s proud he can. But slaves got a right to be proud of all the work we do, even when nobody pays us for it.”

  “Like Zinnie’s proud of being the best cook in Richmond?”

  “Well, that brings us round to vanity. Zinnie declares she’s the best cook in Richmond to put herself over Ida Tucker, whose marse said she was such a good cook he set her free. One time, when Ida’s marse was to dinner here, he said Zinnie’s harrico mutton was the most delicious thing he ever ate. I told Zinnie, and she’s bragged on it ever since.” Mama gave her teeth the slightest little suck, just enough for me to make out her gum squeal of disapproval. “Zinnie feels bad that Ida got free for being a good cook and she didn’t, so she likes to say she’s a better cook than Ida. Which maybe she is and maybe she ain’t, as I never tasted a thing Ida cooked and neither to my mind has Zinni
e. We know Zinnie is a fine cook from eating her food every day, and she got a right to be proud. But if she thinks it and says it just to feel better than someone else, that’s vanity. Same as if someone wants to wear a new just-because to prayer meeting to show it off and make other girls jealous, that’s vanity, too.”

  Catching Mama’s hint, I tried to direct her attention away from me and my ribbon, which it seemed we weren’t going to get around to sewing any time soon anyway. “When Miss Bet brags on her fine Philadelphia education, or Mistress Van Lew brags on how many books they got in Old Marse’s library, is all that pride or vanity?”

  Mama got real quiet. She wasn’t one to talk up her masters’ saintliness, but she didn’t like to say too much flat out critical about them, either. Once Young Master John bought himself a riding horse that was real wild, and Josiah said the only way to break that stallion was to refuse to let it know how ornery it was. Just bridle and saddle it and hang on as best you could, trying not to let on how scared you were it might rear up and throw you. That’s how Mama was with the Van Lews, struggling to keep control over a beast bigger and more powerful than herself.

  “White people live by different rules than us, Mary El. The rules I’m telling you about, pride versus vanity, those are Jesus’s rules. We got to try to live by His rules and by the ones whites make for us, both at once. That’s hard enough without worrying ourselves up all night about whether or not white people are holding themselves to Jesus’s rules, too.” She coaxed the threaded needle from my hand. “Why don’t we lay this by for now and get some sleep. Tomorrow I’ll show you how to make a nice stitch, and you’ll have that ribbon on your Sunday dress in no time.”

  By the next night, Mama was done teaching on pride versus vanity and settled right in to teaching me chain-stitch, which she made me practice over and over on scrap until I could sew nice and straight. Once she was satisfied I could make strong, even stitches, she gave her nod. Sewing the ribbon to the fabric while taking care not to sew the sleeve closed took more concentration, and my head ached by the time both elbows of my Sunday dress were festooned. But when I held my handiwork before me, I shone bright as my ribbon with delight.

  “Now you can be proud of having trimmed that up yourself,” Mama said, “because you worked hard to do it.”

  Though I smiled up at her, I was still all vanity on the inside, impatient as ever to show off the ribbon.

  The next afternoon, when the Van Lews were out and Mama was scrubbing the hall floor and I was supposed to be making up the bedchambers, I snuck up to our quarters, threw off my everyday frock, and put on the Sunday dress. With my sleeve ribbons tied into the biggest bows I could manage, I stole back down to Mistress Van Lew’s dressing room and twirled before the looking glass, losing myself in scenes I played out in my head, in which Elly Banks begged to know where I got such a fine gown.

  Mama must have been calling me a good long time, because her voice was hot with anger when I finally noticed it. “Run get the floor cloth quick, Mary El. Miss Bet’s waiting outside to come in.” I fetched the cloth to the front hall and stretched it open along the floor, so Miss Bet could walk across without slipping or dampening her shoes. I forgot all about my Sunday dress, until I looked up and saw Mama’s face.

  Before she could reprimand me, Miss Bet came inside. “How charming you look, Mary. Is that a new frock?”

  Mama answered for me. “It’s her Sunday dress, Miss Bet. She must’ve just slipped into it while my back was turned. Child knows better than to wear a Sunday dress when we’re working hard, don’t you, Mary El?”

  I nodded, but Miss Bet shook her head like she was trying to loose herself from her own yellow curls. “It’s an offense the child should have to work at all. Mary, don’t you wish you could wear such outfits every day, like white girls do?”

  I didn’t need to see how fiercely Mama was squinting and frowning to know the danger in answering that question. “I only wanted to see how my new ribbons look. Papa bought them for me just-because. And I sewed them on myself.”

  The last part was drowned out by the sound of the Van Lew carriage arriving outside. “Mary El, you get upstairs this minute and change, ’fore Mistress V comes through that door.” Mama clipped her words so quick, I didn’t dare dawdle. “Miss Bet, please don’t say anything about this. The child’s young, but she works hard, even when Mistress is out of the house.”

  “Nonsense, Aunt Minnie. Mary, come right back here. I want Mother to see how nice you look.”

  Much as I wanted to hide myself away from Mistress Van Lew, there was no ignoring Miss Bet’s command. Already partway up the staircase, I turned back just as the front door opened to Mistress Van Lew and Young Master John. Mama, Miss Bet, and I must have made quite a tableau, because they looked at us like we were three foxes in a henhouse.

  “Mother, you know I have asked your leave to pay our servants some small remuneration for their labors,” Miss Bet said.

  “And you know Mother has denied that request,” Young Master John answered. “There is no need to antagonize her, or to disgruntle the servants.” In the two years since his father’s passing, Young Master John had grown important in his role as man of the house. He reprimanded his older sister the way Zinnie slaughtered a recalcitrant sow, sighing aloud over the duty, though we all knew he took pleasure in performing it.

  But Miss Bet wouldn’t be scotched so easily. “The servants are hardly disgruntled. Look how happy Mary is, wearing a ribbon her father bought her.” By then I felt about as happy as a housefly caught in a barn spider’s web. But Miss Bet wasn’t paying me much mind. “Surely, if a man of Timothy Mahon’s standing can give his slaves wages, so can we.”

  Mistress Van Lew’s face flushed fever red, and she turned to Mama. “Aunt Minnie, am I a good mistress?”

  There’s only one way for a slave to answer when her owner asks that question. “Yes, ma’am,” Mama said.

  “Have you or your child ever gone hungry in my house?”

  “No, ma’am, never.”

  “Do you go about without proper attire, summer or winter?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  Mistress Van Lew turned back to Miss Bet. “I provide for my servants far more than law or custom require. I will not have anyone make a mockery of my generosity.” She looked up at me. “Mary, come here.”

  Dread thudded low with each slow step I took. As soon as I got near, Mistress Van Lew reached out and snatched the bows from one elbow, then the other. My stitches broke easily under her firm tugs. Holding the bits of ribbon out to me, she nodded toward the drawing room. “Put these on the fire.”

  Miss Bet hurried up beside me, protesting, “Mother, I cannot agree—”

  Young Master John cut her off. “This is a matter between Mother and her servants. It is none of your concern.”

  I walked across the drawing room and stood before the fireplace, squeezing my clenched hand so the smooth silk of the ribbon rubbed across my palm. I thought of how Elly would never see my just-because. How nobody could ever treat her and her brothers and sisters the way Mistress Van Lew treated me. How it wasn’t fair that after I worked so hard to sew on the ribbon, now I wouldn’t have it at all.

  Only when the heat began to singe my wrist did I open my hand and let the pieces fall. As I watched, the flames licked up, consuming the orange ribbon till the colors of the fire and the colors of my lost just-because blurred inseparably. I still couldn’t tell pride from vanity, but I sure could tell slave from free.

  When early spring warmed the Virginia morning, Mistress Van Lew and Miss Bet took their breakfast on the back veranda. The garden just past the house, the fruit arbor that sloped to the edge of the property, and the view of Richmond and the James River beyond were all so pretty that looking out at them seemed like a hazy slumber dream, until a dull ache in my overworked arms roused me from my reverie. As I fanned the first flies of the season from the Van Lews, they buzzed around my head instead. I didn’t dare swat them
away. I’d been told enough times not to wriggle or shift during these meals, to stand perfectly still except for the movement of my arms. No motion allowed except what served the Van Lews.

  To distract myself, I listened as Miss Bet read to her mother from the Richmond Whig. Most days she chose dull stories about the Virginia legislature or President Polk. But this morning she read the report of a dashing swindler who posed as a gentleman to rob travelers on the train between Richmond and Washington. Such a story set my eight-year-old self wide-eyed with wonder, and I hung on every word. More than that, I remembered every word.

  This was my solitary amusement, listening as grown-ups spoke and repeating their conversations to myself while I was working. Rehearsing the tale of the train robber in my head made the rest of the Van Lews’ breakfast hour pass quickly, and before I knew it, Mistress Van Lew announced she was ready to take her morning stroll about the arbor. As Miss Bet led her mother down the steps to the garden, Mama gathered the breakfast things onto the silver serving tray. I hung the fan in its place behind one of the white columns that rose two stories to the veranda roof. Clearing the news-sheet from the table, I began to recite the wonderful story out loud.

  The crash of china startled me. Mama was not a clumsy woman. Never one to drop a cup and saucer. Perhaps it was a trick of the heat, but as I turned to look her way, it seemed the whole world stood still, except for me and the buzzing flies.

  And then all at once, Mistress Van Lew stormed back up the steps. “Aunt Minnie, we are not in New York. You know the laws of Virginia, and we have made our wishes very clear on this matter. You were not to teach the child to read.”

  Mama fell to her knees. “Ma’am, I never taught her to read. I swear to Jesus, I didn’t.”