It is now the Seventeenth of October, 1825, and more than eighteen months since I last wrote of my life. For nearly two years we have been placing our requests for Midnight to write to us every week in one hundred and twelve newspapers. All the plates, vases, and ewers I’ve glazed and sold have gone into having them printed.
Mother contracted an agent in Portugal to rent out our home in Porto and sell our lands upriver, and with the proceeds we were able to purchase a comfortable Federal house in Greenwich Village with a view over the Hudson River. We moved there in August of 1824, and as there was room for Mama’s pianoforte, she had it shipped over from London that very month. By the end of September, she already had secured seven students, two of whom are gifted. She’s talking seriously these days about founding the music school she had first envisioned in London. She’s even trying to convince Aunt Fiona to come to New York and help her.
Morri still finds her teaching rewarding, though she had herself something of a shipwreck with the headmaster, who seemed for a time to have really fallen for her. After some weeks of tearful trouble, she reached land healthy and contented, however. She’s got better balance than anyone I’ve ever met — except for maybe her father.
Lawrence and Mimi are in one of Morri’s two classes. When I saw them there recently, Mimi said she hoped that I did not miss my arm too much. I let her and the other children touch my stump, which they found rather scary and marvelous. How they love being frightened when they know they’re perfectly safe!
Esther is studying violin and music theory with a demanding but kindhearted professor from Cologne. Graca has proven herself something of a minor sorceress with languages and is already speaking beautiful French, thanks to the tutoring of a fine young man from Strasbourg.
Over the past several months, Violeta has taken all the Church Street children, as well as Esther and Graca, down to Castle Garden on moonless nights to learn the constellations. She is eager and patient with them, and it is doing her good to be able to teach them, my mother tells me. I am slowly doing my best to develop a new sort of relationship with her. Though we do not see each other, we send greetings and news through my daughters. Mama calls it a “paper-and-ink friendship,” guided from afar by what can never be. She says that that is sometimes all one can hope for. I am trying to rid myself of all expectations.
At the time we were suffering together, I did not realize that much of my urgency and desperation was prompted by the sudden absence Francisca’s death had created in my life. I see now what a brave effort Violeta made in trying to save me from my own foolishness.
I now have thirty-nine correspondents and a list of one thousand seven hundred and eighteen names and locations of blacks in South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana. My scroll reads not infrequently like the Old Testament:
Moon Mary, daughter of Augustus and Angola Mary, mother of William, Sawmill, and Linda, sister of Tina, Claude, Merchant, and Picker Stephen…
Frequent letters from Isaac and Luisa have given us news of River Bend, where Crow was indeed hanged shortly after our escape, at least if the rumors they heard in Charleston are to be believed. Shortly after our
Lily, Grandma Blue, and the others who had remained behind were still in bondage. They are, of course, at the top of the list I am putting together. Morri has written to Lily to say we are all fine and that we miss her. We hope she has found someone to read the letter to her.
On realizing that I was not likely to return to Porto anytime soon, I began writing long letters to Benjamin, Gilberto, Luna Olive Tree, my father-in-law Egidio, and even Grandmother Rosa. Luna often sends sketches of fruit and flowers to me, and I return the favor with my drawings of the inhabitants of New York.
One day in September of 1824, there arrived in the post a slim manuscript written by Benjamin, entitled, “On the Hidden Meaning of Slavery,” whose dedication was made to me. In it, he gave readings of verses in the Torah to demonstrate that slavery was the last gasp of a dying world. The Lower Realms were shedding their skin like a snake, he theorized, in preparation for rising closer to the Upper Realms. The true and lasting evil of this practice, he wrote,
In his accompanying letter, Benjamin told me that though the political situation in Portugal has calmed, he foresees a civil war before too long between those who favor a constitution and those who prefer an absolute monarchy.
In one of my letters back to him, I told him that I had seen Berekiah Zarco while fading from life on the road from River Bend to Petrie’s Landing. He told me that there was little beyond the scope of a powerful Jewish mystic — even traveling across time — and that he wouldn’t be surprised to meet Berekiah one day himself! He was certain that my illustrious ancestor had helped to save my life by reciting secret prayers over me.
I learned of Benjamin’s death just four months ago from Luna Olive Tree and can still not bring myself to write more than a few words about its significance to me. It is as though an eclipse has set not simply over our life together but over the hopes he had for a better world to come. I wonder sometimes if there is anyone left to take over his mystical prayers and alchemy — who is endeavoring in a secret cellar somewhere to find the meaning in every moment.
Too weak to write me a last letter, the old apothecary had asked Luna to tell me that he was proud to have counted me among his friends and that — after I brought Morri to New York — he had seen me seated at the right hand of God in one of his visions. I was to always remember that each and every one of us was silver in the eyes of Moses.
Mama and I spoke a
So it was that we reached October of 1825.
Three days ago, on the Fourteenth, at five in the afternoon, there was a knock on our door. Esther, who was practicing her violin in the sitting room, answered it and shouted, “Papa, you’d better come inside!”
I was in the garden, putting in some autumn bulbs — not an easy task with only one arm. With my fingers filthy with dirt, cursing the disturbance, I stomped into the sitting room.
He was removing his shoes in the doorway. I guessed it was him from that wee gesture and from his silhouette. No one else could have had that form.
He took a step inside the house. His eyes held the rains of the desert.
For a time I could not speak. My body seemed to be merging with everything around me. “We saw you from afar and we are dying of hunger,” I whispered.
He repeated my words. Then, in a delicate and lilting voice, he began to sing “The Foggy, Foggy Dew,” changing the lyrics for our reunion:
In my broken whisper, I joined him:
I ran forward and fell at his feet, hugging his beautiful belly, breathing in the scent of him, which I now knew I had dreamed of all these twenty years of separation. I was sobbing and shaking. But I did not wish to regain my composure; my spirit was simply too full to be contained, and there was no need to restrain it any longer. In his arms, I could be what I most desired.
He ran his hands over my head, then bent down and kissed my brow. I reached up and gripped his hand, as if to assure myself that he was real. “Yes, I am here,” he said.
Esther came and knelt beside me.
“It’s Midnight,” I whispered to her.
