Mr. Ben ran his fingers along the family Bible that sat there, then over the little mirror in a gold frame that Mama displayed and the bowl where Lenore put cut blossoms from the tulip tree outside. He skipped over the jar with the braids in it. His fingers next ran over a pile of newsprint.
“What’s this?” he said.
Mama glanced up over the greasy spectacles on her nose, narrowed her eyes. “Ah, that? That is our newspaper. They print it once a month. It has lots for sale, and news of the church. And here …” Mama got up to stand beside Mr. Ben.
“I can’t cipher,” he said.
“Of course,” Mama said. “But, you see, there’s a primer in the back.”
She rustled the pages to the very end. She held her hand over the paper and read aloud the print there. “See? This part are words to learn. ‘Free.’ ‘Life.’ ‘Live.’ ‘Took.’ ‘Love.’ ‘Loves.’ ‘Man.’ ‘Now.’ ‘Will.’ ‘Thank.’ ‘God.’ ‘Work.’ ‘Hard.’ ‘House.’ ‘Land.’ ‘Made.’ ‘Slaves.’”
With each word she spoke, I saw him wince, as if the words had pricked his finger.
“And these,” Mama said, “are the sentences to learn. ‘I am free and well.’ ‘I will love God and thank Him for it.’ ‘And I must work hard and be good and get me a house and lot.’”
“‘Work hard,’” he said.
“Yes.”
It was quiet between them for a bit, only the fire crackling.
Then Mr. Ben panted out, as if it was taking him great effort to do so, “There was a nigger back in Maryland who learned how to cipher. You wanna know how he learned, Miss Doctor?”
“How?”
“He took pot liquor fat and dipped pages of the Bible in ’em. Dipped ’em in till the pages was clear through. Greased the Word and hid it underneath his hat, and that clever, pretty nigger walked around with the Bible fat on his head, and if any white man saw it, he wouldn’t know it as the word of God. He’d only see some greasy, dirty papers on a nigger’s head and leave ’im be.”
“Well, that’s marvelous,” Mama said gravely. “That’s quite beautiful.”
“You think?” Mr. Ben sucked in a gulp of air, cleared his throat loudly. “I always thought it was a whole lot of work. But”—he pointed at the newspaper held between them—“we must work hard and be good even in freedom. That’s what you telling me. With rules like that, don’t it make you wonder what freedom’s for?”
He let his fingers run along the mantel again, from the Bible, to the mirror, to the flowers and back again, skipping over the newsprint.
“You got so many pretty things, Miss Doctor,” he said. “Such pretty things. My Daisy was the same way. She kept three stones she’d found: pink ones, and a white one, too. And a shell she’d found down by the wharf. She even had a mirror like this,” he held up the mirror and set it down again. “She wanted one something fierce. ’Course, she didn’t need one. My eyes were enough of a mirror for her, I told her. But she said no, she needed a mirror. To see herself. First thing she bought with the money from her market garden, even before she tried to save for freedom. She loved looking at herself in that thing. Sometimes, I’d have to beg her to put it down so my Daisy would talk to me.”
He picked up the mirror at last, cradled it in his palm. “Do you think someone like that belongs in freedom?” Mr. Ben said. “I mean, if she’d lived to make it here. Do you think she would have been able to work hard and have her lot of land to earn her freedom, like that paper says?”
“We all work hard,” Mama said. “I do not follow what you mean, Mr. Ben.”
“I told you about my Daisy, didn’t I?” He still would not look at her. He carefully set down the mirror. “She was almost as fair as you. No, fairer. And big brown eyes. And hair down her back in curls, when she let it out. Almost like …” He let his fingers run again along the mantelpiece once more, until they lit on the last thing he hadn’t touched. The jar with the braids coiled at the bottom.
His back was still toward Mama. When he picked up the jar, he didn’t see her flinch. But I did.
I moved to remind him. “Oh, you know what that is, Mr. Ben,” I began, but Mama shot me a look so pained I stopped my explanation.
“Her hair was almost like this then,” he said. He held the jar up to better catch the dusty braids in the light.
“Nah,” he said, turning the jar around in his hands. “Daisy’s hair was finer.”
He set the jar back down and turned around. He was watching Mama’s face carefully, as if tracking which way it might turn. “Who’d all that belong to, then?” he said.
Mama took her glasses off her nose so that she could see him more clearly. “My youngest sister,” she said. She cleared her throat. “It is a keepsake.”
“And what happened to her?” Mr. Ben said. “You lose her to the body or the spirit?”
Mama took in a sharp breath. She made a low, guttural sound, as if something was wrenched from her throat. And then she looked quickly down at the newsprint in her hand. I could see her eyes moving back and forth, making some kind of calculation. I could see, in the fever of it, one eye wet and watery. She looked up.
“I think,” Mama said, her voice entirely steady but her eyes wet, “that we have come to an end with our time together, Mr. Ben. I think perhaps this is your last night here and you
