Anyway, on the day the mulatto pirate came to River Bend, my papa was away in Charleston. He was picking up some willow-green cotton cloth Mistress Kitty wanted Lily and me to make into a new ball gown. The visitor met with Master Edward in the drawing room. Crow overheard shouting, and some of it had to do with Papa. Best Crow could figure out, this man had met my father decades before and wished to see him again. Apparently, Edward the Cockerel hadn’t taken kindly to that notion and had asked him to leave his property one, two, three.
I got all worked up because I figured it was John Stewart, the little boy who’d been my papa’s friend in Portugal. By now he’d be all grown up. He had finally come to claim my father and set him free!
But later that day, when I described the man to Papa, he said that it couldn’t have been him. Even so, he closed his eyes and took a big breath. Then his belly began to drum.
We never found out who the mulatto was, by the way. All Master Edward would tell us was the he was “some blasted troublemaker” from Georgia.
Papa gave me a letter in a sealed envelope the next morning. It was for John Stewart. He said he’d written most of it years before and had been waiting for a sign to give it to me. That sign, he told me, was the mulatto man coming to River Bend for him. I was to put the letter in a jar and bury it out in Porter’s Woods.
I said, “But, Papa, you’ll be able to give it to him yourself if he ever comes.”
“No, Morri, in case I am away from the plantation, you must have the letter in your possession. We mustn’t take a chance on his not understanding you are my daughter.”
On the day my father disappeared, Mistress Anne had come up to River Bend for one of her monthly visits. I remember that because when Papa didn’t return to the kitchen to help Lily with supper, she came to me in the parlor where I was polishing the silver. On her orders I looked for him everywhere in the house and in all the gardens too. I ran out to the fields, but no one had seen him. To win him time for escaping, if that’s what he’d done, I then sat myself down on a log by Christmas Creek and watched the clumping commotion of the frogs.
When I finally told Mistress Anne that Papa was nowhere in sight, she had Mr. Johnson get the dogs ready. She sent Crow with Wiggie the coachman to all the nearby towns to alert folks that River Bend had a runaway.
I counted those first hours as if a pistol were pointed toward my heart. I sat up on the piazza steps fending off the mosquitoes, praying hard for Mantis to help him. My hands were fidgeting something terrible, so I polished every infernal crevice in that scalloped punch bowl we only used on Christmas Eve. When the dawn rose in orange and red, no silver had ever shone like that before, and I was thinking maybe we had a chance.
Crow, who’d been up all night spreading the news that Papa had run away, told me there’d been no sign of him anywhere. With a dark look, he took my hand and apologized, because he had to take the carriage right away to Charleston to put an announcement in the newspaper.
The days passed with me thinking of nothing else. After a week of sunups and sundowns, I still didn’t let myself think he’d made it, in case they brought him back half-dead and roped to a horse.
A month went by, then six weeks, then seven. Each day I thought it less likely they’d catch him. I wondered what I’d do if they brought him back to whip him to death. That’s when I stole a knife from the kitchen and buried it below the piazza. They could lynch me if they wanted, but I wasn’t going to hear Papa howl without making a ghost out of Master Edward.
But I never had to use that knife, because Papa never came back. Maybe he drowned, or was bit by a cottonmouth. Maybe he died all alone.
I let myself dream sometimes that he escaped from nigger fate and made it all the way up north to the city where snow was always falling.
Crow, Lily, and the others said he probably made himself invisible with some potions he’d fixed up. They pictured him walking like a British lord to Charleston, stepping right onto a boat bound for Europe, and sailing home to the Portuguese family he’d left behind. But I knew that if my papa meant to escape, he’d have taken me with him. Though it was possible he’d decided to get out first and then come back for me.
Just short of three months after he was gone, that was precisely the conclusion that Master Edward came to. So one night he had some white men I’d never seen before rush into my room and bind me with ropes. They gagged me too. Then they carried me to a carriage. I thought he was going to
XXXVI
A tall and slender woman was staring at me, pale surprise turning to gaunt, hollow-cheeked fear. Her eyelids were puffy and red, and her lips were dry and cracked. Stiff of posture, she wore a high-collared lilac dress with bell sleeves tightly fastened at her wrists. A white bonnet hid her hair, and a beige lace fichu was draped over her shoulders, which were thin and hunched.
But her eyes were the same jade color they’d always been.
“Good morning,” I said, taking off my hat and smiling.
“Yes … yes, good morning.” Her voice was brittle. “May I be of some … of some help?”
“Violeta, it’s me.”
“Do I know you, sir? How … how is it that you know my name?”
Before I could reply, she took a step back and brought her hands to her mouth. Smiling again to soften the shock, I said, “Yes, it’s me — it’s John. All the way from Portugal.” I found myself making Daniel’s tortoise face, which he had always made when he was feeling awkward. I had not imitated this expression in fifteen years.
I advanced to the top step so I might reach out to her.
She confounded my plans by receding into the shadows inside her doorway. “John, I never expected … It has … It has been a lifetime.” She spoke in English. “John, you are so … so very different.”
I was so startled by her apprehension that I felt a nervous tingling all over my body. I might have been just ten years old. “It’s just me — just me,” I pleaded in a rush, as though she hadn’t realized who I was. “Didn’t you get my letter?”
“A letter, no, I’m sure I have not.”
“I sent it … why, it must be six weeks ago now. It must still be at sea.”
I began to suspect just then that I’d misinterpreted the words of her letter. What a fool I’d been! She had written of her desire for a tile panel in her home simply to be polite.
I turned to wipe the tears betraying me, coughing to conceal my emotion. “It is plain that I have come at a bad time. I shall return this evening, and then … and then we shall talk.” So cool was her continued stare and so defensive her pose that I added, “Yes … yes, that’s … that’s what I’ll do. It’s been lovely to see you, Violeta. I shall … I …”
Unable to say a final good-bye, I put on my hat and gripped my luggage. I was careful not to retreat too quickly down her stairs, since that might have revealed the depth of my despair, and I wished to avoid making her feel badly about her own behavior.
I decided to find a room at a nearby inn and head off to Alexandria as soon as possible. I counted my steps, not caring which direction I went as long as I might get away from her. By the count of twenty, sure that I’d never see her again, I shuddered.
I heard my name called. Violeta was waving at me from her stoop. “Please, John, come back! John, do not move. Wait there….”
She disappeared inside her house. A few doors down, a woman held a small Persian rug out her window and
