I turned and sized him up. He was not half bad-looking if you squinted.
“If I know how, what’s it to you?”
He laughed at that and said, “Where are you from?”
“The moon.” Imitating the nasal way the blacks around here speak, I said, “That’s why I got my peculiar pronunciation, don’t you know.”
“What’s your name?” When I told him, he said, “Well, Morri, how’d you like to put your reading and writing to good use at teaching?”
“I’ve never taught anyone anything.”
“Good,” he said, laughing. “Then you won’t have to unlearn any bad habits.”
“What would I teach?”
“Reading and writing. This is a schoolhouse. Allow me to introduce myself — I’m the headmaster, William Arthur.”
He came down the stairs to me and shook my hand.
“You’re the headmaster? Why … why, you can’t be more than thirty years old!”
“I’m twenty-seven. I never knew there was any age requirement, you see. If there is, you had better tell me about it, since this is my third year.”
“Will you pay me?”
“A regular wage every month. Can you start later this week?”
“Why not today?”
He laughed again. “Because I don’t need you today. I need you in two days. All you have to do is be here every morning at nine o’clock sharp and show the children how to read and write. Four hours a day. Two different classes of thirty. Think a young lady from the moon can do that?”
“Well, I guess we’re going to find out, aren’t we?”
I was so happy about my new job that when I got home I told John we ought to get the adoption papers ready. It was what he wanted, and what my papa had wanted, and I was in the mood to make everyone in New York as happy as I was. Then John spoke about Papa as if he were dead, spoiling things good. I forgave him only because I saw in his eyes that we were the same in a way — since we’d likely wonder all our lives what had happened to him.
I grew fond of the children at my school right away, and they all flocked around me like I was made of sugar crystals. Maybe because I gave them things to read that they liked. Reading for them is different than it is for us. Adults love surprises and new things all the time. Children love repetition. They embraced the knowing what was coming next.
When I told Randolph about the school, he enrolled Mimi and Lawrence. It made me smile like a loon just seeing them there — like all of us were made of moonlight. Pretty soon I had them and nearly all of the children — even the tiny ones — well on their way to knowing their ABCs. We had some poets among us too. There was a boy named Charles who wrote a whole epic about an ant, a mouse, and a rat who took a boat all the way to Africa. It was real good work.
John came to my classroom after he adopted me, and it was real encouraging to have him there. He’d found good work to do — making a list of slaves and freed Negroes in South Carolina, so that all those folks could find one another when slavery finally ended. And we wrote a message to my father that John had printed once a week in more than a hundred newspapers.
I realized I liked him more and more. I trusted him too, which was more important, the way I saw it. I could see why Papa was so fond of him.
Pretty soon after I started teaching, William Arthur asked me and John to supper with him. That opened the gate between us as friends, and he invited just me to his rooms from time to time. John gave me his permission but said to be careful, since though I acted older I was still just what he called “a wee lassie.” Nothing happened between us though. I thought it might not ever happen.
By the end of December, things got badly twisted between John and Violeta, because she finally told him what he might have guessed long before — that she’d never love him like he wanted. He and I went out to a tiny town on Long Island for a weekend, to escape from her and talk things out, and I saw how disappointment was taking all that man’s strength.
It snowed on Monday morning, just before we headed back to the city. I slipped on the walkway when I ran to greet it. Lying there, watching those unstoppable flakes falling to the earth, opening my mouth to taste their wetness, I knew I’d never live anywhere it didn’t snow ever again.
In January, John’s daughters and mamma came over from London to stay with us. You never saw so much commotion. Mrs. Stewart scared me at first, but I liked her iron affection for her son. And I liked that she wore her spectacles only when nobody was looking. That used to make me laugh when I was in my room alone. She said some real nice things to me right away and taught me how to cook, though a few of her recipes for codfish were just about inedible as far as I was concerned. She reminded me of Lily. I guess because she was a lot older than me and fierce as can be in defense of the folks she loved. I thought that John was real lucky to have her as a mamma.
At first I thought those daughters of his weren’t much alike. Esther was always rushing around and giggling. You never saw a child’s fingers move so fast as when she was playing her violin. It made me all nervous sometimes that she might hit a lot of wrong notes. She talked fast too, so that you couldn’t understand half the words she was saying and had to ask her to start all over. Esther brings me back to when I was just little. We have secrets and giggle all the time. Graca is slower. She studies her maps and most everything else as if there’s something there that’s going to change the whole wide world. I grew fond of her right away, because we both liked silence and observing things. Esther took more getting used to, but like I say, she ended up tugging me all the way to fondness with her excitement. I like it when they knock before coming into my room. It’s like we’re family, but I still have my rights to be alone and not always be so friendly. They’ve got plans for going away with me, all the way to Africa. I told them I’d take them, and maybe I would, but the truth is it’s enough for me to stay in one place that’s safe.
In early June of 1824, after being courted real sweet for months by William Arthur, I found myself in his rooms on Chambers Street one evening, fiddling with a silk cushion on my lap while we talked about the school. When he took the cushion away and kissed me, I just about fainted.
There were some things about him I wasn’t too sure of. And I liked having the power to say no more than just about anything else. I tried to go slow. But he just loved doing things quick. So sometimes after that night in June I’d lie with him for a time in his bed and then rush on home before John and Mrs. Stewart would begin worrying about me. William and I were as fond of each other as two people can be who are a bit unsure of what their lives together are going to mean. The only thing missing from my life were the people who were dead or stuck back at River Bend. I missed Crow and Lily and Weaver and Grandma Blue. And Mamma. I wondered if my papa was with her now, or if he was still somewhere in our world. I wondered if they could see the good things that were happening to their Memoria. I wondered that nearly all the time and knew I always would.
Postscripts
LIX
