Old Man at that time, slipping off and working in a tavern of some type in Rochester, but them taverns there weren’t nothing compared to taverns in Kansas Territory. They was more like libraries or thinking places, full of old farts in button-down frock coats setting around sipping sherry and wondering about the state of the poor Negro not prospering, or drunk Irishmen learning to read. Women and girls weren’t allowed, mostly. I thunk about getting other jobs, too, for every once in a while a white woman in a bonnet would saunter up to me on the sidewalk and say, “Is you interested in earning three pennies to do laundry, dear?” I was twelve at the time, coming on thirteen or even fourteen is my guess, though I never knowed to be exact. I was still allergic to work no matter what age, so washing folks’ drawers weren’t an idea I was game to surrender to. I had trouble enough keeping my own clothes clean. I was growing short of temper from all this treatment, and I expect them women would’a found out my real nature once something broke wrong and I drawed my heater, which I still kept. For I had come to the notion that on account of my adventures out west with the Captain, I was a gunfighter of sorts, girl or not, and I felt above most of them citified easterners who ate toast with jam and moaned and crowed about not having no blueberries in the winter months.
But the lack of woozy water chewed at me, and one afternoon I couldn’t stand it no more. I decided to drown my thirst with a taste of muddle sauce that Mr. Douglass kept in his kitchen pantry. He had bottles and bottles of it. So I slipped in there and grabbed a bottle, but no sooner did I take a quick drinkie-poo than I heard somebody coming. I quick put the bottle back just as Miss Ottilie, his white wife, appeared, frowning. I thought she’d busted me flat-footed, but instead she announced, “Mr. Douglass asks to see you in his study now.”
I proceeded there and found him setting behind his spacious desk. He was a short man, the top of the desk was nearly as high as he was. He had a big head for such a tiny person, and his hair, standing on end like a lion’s mane, loomed over the top of the desk.
He seen me coming and bid me to close the door. “Since you are in the employ of the Captain, I has got to interview you,” he said, “to make you aware of the plight of the Negro in whose service you has been fighting.”
Well, I was aware of that plight, being that I am a Negro myself, plus I heard him bleating it about the house, and the truth is, I weren’t interested in fighting for nobody’s cause. But I didn’t want to offend the great man, so I said, “Well, thank you, sir.”
“First of all, dear,” he said, drawing himself up, “sit down.”
I done that. Set in a chair just across from his desk.
“Now,” he said, drawing hisself up. “The Negro comes in all colors. Dark. Black. Blacker. Blackest. Blacker than night. Black as hell. Black as tar. White. Light. Lighter. Lightest. Lighter than light. White as the sun. And almost white. Take me, for example. I am of a brown hue. You, on the other hand, is nearly white, and comely, and that’s a terrible dilemma, is it not?”
Well, I never thunk of it that way, but since he knowed everything, I gived him my best answer. “Yes, sir,” I said.
“I’m a mulatto myself,” he said proudly.
“Yes, sir.”
“Being comely, we mulattoes have therefore various certain experiences that define our existence and set us apart from the other adherents of our racial congruities.”
“Sir?”
“We mulattoes are different from most Negroes.”
“We is?”
“Of course, my child.”
“I reckon so, Mr. Douglass, if you say so.”
“I deedy doody say so indeed-y,” he said.
I reckoned he said that as a joke, for he chortled and looked at me. “Ain’t that funny?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Cheer up, little Henrietta. Where are you from, dear?”
“Why, Kansas, Mr. Douglass.”
“No need to call me Mr. Douglass,” he said, coming from behind his desk and approaching where I sat. “My friends call me Fred.”
It didn’t seem proper to call a great man like him Fred, for the only Fred I knowed was dumber than doughnuts and deader than yesterday’s beer. Besides, Mr. Douglass was stout as a porcupine about the rules of me calling him “Mr. Douglass” at the train station before. But I didn’t want to offend the great leader, so I said, “Yes, sir.”
“Not sir. Fred.”
“Yes, sir, Fred.”
“Oh, come now. Get cheery. Here. Move. Have a seat here,” he said. He moved to a tiny couch that was as cockeyed and cocky-mamy as anything I ever seen. One side faced one way. One side faced the other. I reckoned the carpenter was drunk. He stood before it. “This is a love seat,” he said, motioning me over with his hands. He done it like he was in a hurry, impatient, like he was used to people listening to his thoughts, which I expect they was, him being a great man. “Would you like to sit here whilst I explain to you further the plight of our people?” he asked.
“Well, sir, I reckon that plight looks righteous bad now, till you furthers it.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Well, er, with people like you leading the way, why, we can’t go wrong.”
Here the great man laughed. “You are a country girl,” he chortled. “I love country girls. They’re fast. I’m from the country myself.” He pushed me down in the love seat and sat down on the other side of it. “This love seat’s from Paris,” he said.
“Is she a friend of yours?”
“It’s the city of light,” he said, sneaking an arm around my shoulder. “You simply
“Sunlight over a river? Oh, I seen it come over the Kaw many times. Every day in Kansas, in fact. It rains out there every day sometimes, too, just like it do here.”
“My dear,” he said. “You are a waif in the darkness.”
“I am?”
“A tree of unborn fruit.”
“I am?”
“Yet to be picked.” Here he tugged on my bonnet, which I quickly pushed back in place.
“Tell me. Where were you born? What is your birthday?”
“I don’t know exactly. Though I reckon to be about twelve or fourteen.”
“That’s just it!” he said, hopping up to his feet. “The Negro knows not where he was born, or who his mother is. Or who his father is. Or his real name. He has no home. He has no land. His station is temporary. He is guile and fodder for the slave catcher. He is a stranger in a strange land! He is a slave, even when he is free! He is a renter, an abettor! Even if he owns a home. The Negro is a perpetual lettor!”
“Like A, B, and C?”
“No child. A renter.”
“You rent here?”
“No, dear. I buy. But that’s not the point. See this?” He squeezed my shoulder. “That is merely flesh. You are natural prey to the carnal wisdom and thirst of the slave owner, that dastardly fiend of fiendishness. Your colored woman knows no freedom. No dignity. Her children are sold down the lane. Her husbands tend the field. While the fiendish slave owner has his way with her.”
“He do?”
“Of course he does. And see this?” He squeezed the back of my neck, then stroked it with fat fingers. “This slender neck, the prominent nose—this, too, belongs to the slave owner. They feel it belongs to them. They take what is not rightfully theirs. They know not you, Harlot Shackleford.”
“Henrietta.”
“Whatever. They know not you, Henrietta. They know you as property. They know not the spirit inside you that gives you your humanity. They care not about the pounding of your silent and lustful heart, thirsting for
