months for her to be able to look at me without comparing me with what I’d been.
Each of my daughters reacted differently to the loss of my arm. Graca, ever thoughtful, was given to wary silence on the subject, until I realized in a moment of revelation that she was awaiting reassurance that I was much the same man I had always been. I had forgotten my own lesson from childhood, that separation was more difficult for the young. So it was that for a fortnight I doted on her from morning till bedtime, reading to her for an hour or more each night after tucking her in. When she lost her cautious manner with me, when she could pass a day exploring the city with my mother without even remembering my existence, I knew she would be fine.
Esther decided to play nurse at this late date, and for a time I suffered with good humor her helping me down the stairs and fluffing my pillows in bed. Then it began to irritate me, and I once made her cry with my blustering. It was Mama who told me that the girl was not so different from her sister as I thought, and that she was calling for my reassurance in the way most suited to her own character. So I allowed myself to be pampered by her for several more weeks and asked only in return that she let me listen to her practice her violin. This pleased her so much that she even became my morning reveille, serenading me awake each morning with minuets and gavottes by Bach. I knew she was well when she began to snap at me occasionally without worrying that I might go away again or that another limb of mine might just drop off.
Relations between my family and Morri were awkward at first, as I might have expected. Her solution was to withdraw deep into the protective solitude of her upstairs bedroom when she was not teaching. One afternoon, when I dared to knock and step inside, she cried in my arms. She was sure the others all hated her. “I’m so different from them. You’ve been so kind, but it’s a mistake my being here.”
Mama entered the room then, having heard the commotion, and knelt by Morri, who sat up in alarm. She held the girl’s shoulders. “Morri, now listen to me. Your papa was the truest friend I ever had. He saved John’s life, as you may know, and he therefore saved mine.” She dabbed at the girl’s tears with her handkerchief. “At that time I made a pledge to him — that I’d always treat him as though we were kin. So it was not John’s adoption of you that brought you into our family.” She kissed each of her hands and made them into fists. “You, my child” — she smiled — “were part of my family before you were even born!”
They looked into each other’s eyes for a long time. Then Mama slapped her thigh playfully and said, “Now, come with me into the kitchen. We can get to know each other while we prepare supper.”
That evening saved the day. The girls took their cue from their grandmother and, over supper, began to think of Morri as an older playmate. Indeed, they vied shamelessly for her attention that very night, Esther with her violin and Graca with her maps and almanacs. Their first major decision as a threesome was reached the next morning: As soon as they were a bit older, they would voyage to Scotland, Italy, India, and China. “On the way back, we’ll visit Africa, to see where your father comes from,” Graca told Morri with great seriousness.
They were seated on our small sofa, and I squeezed down with them, sitting Esther on my lap. “Well, if you go by sea, do not count on me coming along,” I said, sighing mightily.
Mama laughed till she cried. On regaining her breath, she said, “John, you never understand, do you? The three of them have absolutely no intention of inviting you or me along.”
One evening shortly after their arrival, I felt strong enough to explain to Mama what had taken place between Violeta and myself. She went to see her once or twice a week after that, and on occasion brought Esther and Graca along. The children came to be very fond of her and often talked to me of their games together. Mama confirmed that she was gentle and doting with them. I remembered how much she had cherished the children in Newcastle whom she’d raised, and she was plainly finding joy again with my two girls. I begrudged her this only at my worst moments.
When my mother and my children would walk to Violeta’s house, it began to seem to me as though they were visiting a ghost. She became not so very different from Daniel in my mind. It was reassuring in a way, since I suspected that I might soon begin to remember her only with fondness.
And so it was that Mama, Esther, Graca, Morri, and I began our life in New York, awaiting word of Midnight.
LVIII
Standing on the street and watching those carriages roll off with near half the people I had ever known made me feel all broken inside. Only Randolph and his children, Mimi and Lawrence, stayed behind on Manhattan Island. They became my only links to River Bend, which wasn’t much good since I’d never been right close to Randolph.
I stayed put in New York because I knew from the moment I reached here that it was the place for me.
Here, everybody runs around trading and building. New York is things exchanging hands. It’s movement. And I like being part of it. Not that I didn’t miss the slow routine of River Bend. We all did, I’d reckon. Though none of us would ever just come out and say that to any white person except maybe John, because they’d take it the wrong way and use it against us. Even the ones up here who weren’t much fond of slavery didn’t seem to think we were good for anything except carrying boxes and cleaning chimneys. I never thought I’d see a person in the North nearly so miserable as the field slaves were at River Bend, but watching the Negro sweeps in their filthy rags, I knew better.
The secret truth was that I missed following Lily around the kitchen and licking her spoons. I missed Crow telling me in that tricky voice of his what silliness he’d overheard Master Edward say. I even missed sitting on the piazza after everyone was asleep and wondering when the hell I was going to get myself out beyond that dark horizon of pine.
I guess because of living in my mind somewhere between River Bend and New York, I stopped knowing who I was for a while. I wanted to talk to John about that just after we got here, and I even came close once or twice, but he was stuck deep down in the sands of his own misfortune and I wasn’t about to add to his worries. Violeta, the woman he loved, struck me at first as someone too secretive for anyone’s good. I sensed a big slice of anger in her too, like she might just be concealing guns in her room. You never saw anyone do as much as her, and act so kind, and help in a hundred different ways, all without ever letting you see what she was feeling. She was a giant question mark all wrapped up in a high-brimmed bonnet. But she couldn’t hide from me that she feared John wanting her so much. Whether this had to do with him having only one arm, I couldn’t tell.
It was during this period that I started writing down things about my life at River Bend and how we all got to New York. Later, John read some of it and told me to keep on going, that I had a gift for telling my story. When we spoke like that, just the two of us, I began to see a whole lot of my father in him — in little things he did and said, like the way he sometimes sat on his haunches or said things were
In early November, maybe a week before most of the other River Bend folks left New York for their farms, I was strolling on Church Street when I saw a group of Negro children funneling out the door to one of those thin brick buildings they have up here, all of them shrieking like steam. While I was watching and smiling, out stepped a young black man smoking a pipe. That reminded me of my papa, so I guess I was staring, and he said to me, “What you looking at, girlie?”
I wasn’t too happy with that
“What’s that you’re saying?”
He seemed to be another one of those puffed-up Northern Negroes we’d met, who thought we were all just wormheads — and who claimed not to understand our Southern accents.
I started to walk on. “You know how to read and write, young lady?” he called after me.
