THIRTY-TWO
Early the next morning Lizzie rose and lit the outside fire in preparation for breakfast. On her way back from the hotel, laden with the day’s provisions, she spotted Mawu running toward her. “Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie,” Mawu was saying over and over. Not loudly, but enough where Lizzie could hear the z’s carrying through the air.
When Mawu reached her, she circled her arms around Lizzie.
“What is it?” Lizzie asked. She peeked over Mawu’s shoulder at the sun and could see it was perched at breakfast time.
“What is it, Maw?”
Mawu pulled back and put both hands on Lizzie’s shoulders. “Sweet.”
Even before the words that followed, the words that would deliver Mawu’s message, Lizzie knew something was wrong.
She clenched her teeth and dropped her bundle, leaving it on the ground where it fell. Mawu led her away from the cottages into the woods. Lizzie knew where they were headed. The five little graves. For a moment, hope flickered inside of her. Maybe it wasn’t bad. But as Lizzie and Mawu approached the bodiless mounds of dirt covering the dresses and pants and shirt, she saw her friend laid out on her back, on the ground, hands folded across her chest, as if she had already been carefully laid to rest. Her eyes were closed, one side of her face covered with a cloth, the other side smooth as if recently wiped clean. She was still wearing the dress she had worn to Dayton the day before.
Reenie was already there, standing off to one side. Mawu pulled Lizzie right up to Sweet, and they both dropped to their knees.
Lizzie’s eyes roamed over Sweet’s body. “What happened?”
Reenie shook her head and told the women that Sweet had been discovered in the ravine by early morning hunters.
Lizzie shook her head. “I don’t understand. She fell?”
“Must be,” Reenie said. “I guess she lost her way in the dark.”
Lizzie started to cry.
“But she do look happy, don’t she?” Reenie said.
“How could she be happy?” Lizzie spoke to Reenie in a tone she had never used with the elder one before.
“Because there’s a afterworld,” Reenie said. “And in that afterworld, all our sadness go away. The Bible say that the Lord will wipe your tears away.”
Mawu spat on the ground. “The Bible! The Bible! That’s all you niggers talk about!”
“She freer than you is. That’s for sho!” Reenie’s spittle flew in Mawu’s face.
They were silent.
Finally, Lizzie whispered, “Sweet.”
They held the ceremony for Sweet at night, after the day’s chores were done. All of the slaves were in attendance and a few of the house servants. None of the white men came, although Sweet’s man had been there earlier, knelt over the body for some time. At least that’s what Philip told Lizzie. While Philip and George dug the grave, the white man sat beside her. And although they did not see tears, the men witnessed the hump of his back, the shake of his shoulders.
It was late when it all began. The men brought tall candles set into stakes. They planted them into the ground around Sweet’s body. It was a dark night, the crescent moon barely lighting the clearing. There was no box to put her in. The men had not had time to build one because the white men had insisted her body be buried quickly. There was also no cooling board on which to lay the body. So they just dug the hole as deeply as they could, nearly six feet under, so that the smell of her decaying body would not reach the surface.
There was no preacher to stand over her and make sure her soul made it to the right place. They all stood silently, waiting for someone to step forward and give Sweet’s body the honor it deserved.
It began with a song.
Mary had a baby.
Yes Lord.
Mary had a baby.
Yes my Lord.
Mary had a baby.
Yes Lord.
People keep a coming
But the train done gone.
They listened to the song as if they had never heard it sung before. And it did not matter that they usually sang it at Christmas. Reenie’s voice lifted over the other night sounds and floated into the darkness. She had a rich, deep voice. And although she rarely sang and wouldn’t ever call herself a singer, she barely missed a note that night. She sang the song slowly, befitting a funeral, not rapidly like they sang it when they were working.
Only Mawu stood a bit apart from the group, her face a mask, a chicken dangling from her hand. After Reenie had finished her song, Mawu opened her mouth: “They say he fed the hungry with a few loaves of bread. They say he turned water into wine. They say he walked on water. They say he calmed storms. They say he healed the blind and the deaf. That’s what they say.”
The chicken clucked, a string connecting its tiny neck to her wrist. She stopped speaking and picked the chicken up, spun it around until its neck broke. The wings started to flap. She turned it upside down and stuck a small knife in its mouth, making a slicing motion. Blood spilled onto the front of her dress. She lifted the chicken in the air and closed her eyes, mumbling something inaudible over the wind and rustling trees.
“Enough!” Philip shouted. He looked upset.
The two men rolled Sweet’s body into the grave. George shoved dirt into the hole, mumbling “God bless you” as he worked.
Reenie took Lizzie’s hand and walked away. Behind them, Mawu walked, holding the chicken out in front of her. Philip and George moved pile after pile of dirt into the hole, the blood of the dead fowl splattered on the ground around them.
THIRTY-THREE
It was only after Sweet’s death that they decided to read the pamphlet, as if the loss of her had stirred in them a more urgent reason to know about these freedom-loving whites. On the first morning that she read, only Mawu and Reenie sat beside her. Later, Philip and George would join them. But that first time, it was just the three women sitting in the parlor of Lizzie’s cottage. Lizzie pulled the couch over to sit just in front of the two women. Reenie put out a plate of bread, and Mawu sipped from a cup of tea.
“The Philosophy of the Abolition Movement” by Wendell Phillips. This is a speech delivered in Boston on January 27, 1853.
Lizzie cleared her throat, and decided to start at the beginning. She had looked the pamphlet over several times and there were words she could not accurately pronounce because she had never heard them said aloud before. But she was pretty certain of the general meaning of what she was about to read. Even so, her hands shook. She wondered what the women would think if they knew that it had been Glory who had stolen the pamphlet and given it to her. Glory, the faithful Quaker, had stolen it out of the bag of a man at the post office.
Mr. Chairman,-I have to present, from the Business Committee, the following resolution:-
Resolved, That the object of this Society is now, as it has always been, to convince our countrymen, by arguments addressed to their hearts and consciences, that slaveholding is a heinous crime, and that the duty, safety and interest of all concerned, demand its immediate abolition, without expatriation.
Lizzie wanted to stop and read those words again. She had never heard a white man talk in such a way. For a moment, she faltered, wondering if she’d mispronounced the word “heinous.” But she continued:
I wish, Mr. Chairman, to notice some objections that have been made to our course, ever since Mr. Garrison began his career, and which have been lately urged again, with considerable force and emphasis, in the columns of the London Leader, the able organ of a very respectable and influential class in England. I hope, Sir, you will not think it a waste of time to bring such a subject before you. I know these objections have been made a thousand times; that they have been often answered; though we have generally submitted to them in silence, willing to let results speak for us. But there are times when justice to the slave will not allow us to be silent. There are many in this country, many in England, who have had their attention turned, recently, to the AntiSlavery cause. They are asking, “Which is the best and most efficient method of helping it?” Engaged ourselves in an effort for the slave, which time has tested and success hitherto approved, we are, very properly, desirous that they should join us in our labors, and pour into this channel the full tide of their new zeal and great resources. Thoroughly convinced ourselves that our course is wise, we can honestly urge others to adopt it. Long experience gives us a right to advise. The fact that our course, more than all other efforts, has caused that agitation which has awakened these new converts, gives us a right to counsel them. They are our spiritual children: for their sakes, we would free the cause we love and trust from every seeming defect and plausible objection. For the slave’s sake, we reiterate our explanations, that he may lose no little of help by the mistakes or misconceptions of his friends.