Glory over Everything: Beyond The Kitchen House(2)

I did! I did know!

“There’s word that two more boys is missin’ from the South Ward, and they say that a schooner leave for the Carolinas this mornin’. I jus’ know my boy’s on it! You got to go get him! Pan’s been tellin’ me how you goin’ down there on that ’scursion. You got to bring him back!”

I stopped him. “Henry! I don’t leave for another month! If it is true that he was taken, how do you know that they would sell him in the Carolinas? In all likelihood, they would take him farther down.” I spoke without thinking and, too late, saw the effect of my words. The man’s shoulders dropped. It had grown dark in the room, but I could see well enough when he wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his coat. Then he fell to his one knee.

“Please, Masta James, please! I only ask for help one time, an’ that’s when I firs’ bring my boy to you jus’ after my Alice die. Our Pan come late to Alice and me, an’ now he all I got left of her. I gets you the money, you go down, get him back.” His voice caught as he choked back sobs. “I know what they do to him. I’s been a slave. I’d soon see him dead before I see him sol’ for a slave. Please, Masta James, he my only boy!”

“Stand up, Henry!” I said. “Get ahold of yourself!” How could he call me by that hated title? And to be subjugating himself on his knees! Had he no pride, no sense of having bettered himself? He was no longer a slave. And neither was I.


I HAD MET Henry twenty years earlier, when, at the age of thirteen, I arrived in Philadelphia, ill and terrified and fleeing for my life.

On the journey from my home in southern Virginia, I spoke to no one, mute from fear of discovery. I traveled with two secrets, one as damning as the other. The first was that, just weeks before, I had discovered that I was part Negro, a race I had been taught to loathe. The second was that I had killed my father, for though I was raised by his mother as one of her own, and was as white-skinned as my father, he denied me my birthright and was going to sell me for a slave. Because of his murder, patrollers were searching for me and would hang me if I was found.

I should have felt relief as I boarded each new passenger coach that took me away, but instead I became more fearful. The question of what I was going to do next loomed before me. Where would I go? How would I support myself? In my thirteen years, I had never been away from home. I had been raised as a privileged white child, cared for by servants on an isolated plantation. My doting grandmother, the woman who raised me as her son, had provided me with a fair education, but she had not taught me the fundamental skills of providing for myself. Now she was dead, my home was gone, and I was alone and in great danger.

When I arrived at the tavern outside of Philadelphia, I was so ill, frightened, and travel-worn that I scarcely knew to make my way inside. It wasn’t until the coach horses were led back to the stables that I roused myself enough to walk into the noisy inn and ask for a bed. My head ached so that I was careless and withdrew my full purse. Then, before the transaction could take place, the smoke-filled room began to spin and my stomach heaved.

I just managed to stuff the purse back into my carrying case before I hastily made for the door; once outside, I ran for the back of the stables. There I leaned against the building as my stomach violently emptied. Then, before I could recover, I was struck from behind. I fell forward, though instinct had me clutch my traveling bag to me during the whaling that followed. In the end, the bag was wrestled from me, and with a last oath and some final kicks to my body, the thief was off. I tried to raise myself up to follow the man but, in the effort, lost consciousness.

When I awoke, I was looking into Henry’s dark face. “You got to quiet down,” he said. “You yellin’ too loud.”

Painfully, I raised myself on my elbow to look around. I was on a pallet on the dirt floor of what appeared to be a hut. I attempted to lift myself farther, but my head throbbed so that I lay back down. “How did I get here?” I asked.

“I find you out by the stables,” he said. “Somebody work you over, but look to me like you sick before he got to you.”

“Who are you?” I asked, squeezing my head to stop the throbbing.

“I’s Henry. I work the stables back at the Inn. I’s a runaway, like you.” He stopped, then looked at me to see if I understood what he was trying to say. “I’s a slave, like you,” he said, as though to finalize a pact.

His words struck me like a blow. “I’m no slave!” I protested. “What makes you say that? I’m white!”

He looked at me sideways. “Maybe you is,” he said, “but that not what you say when you outta your head.”

“What did I say?” I struggled again to sit up. “Tell me! What did I say?”

“You say you is runnin’, that somebody comin’ after you.”

Who was this man? Had he already alerted the patrollers? Suddenly I remembered my few belongings. “My traveling bag!” I said.

“?’Fraid they got it,” he said.

“Oh no!” I said, and defeated, I lay back down. There was nothing left! The money, the clothes, all were gone. Then another thought. “My jacket!” I cried out. “Where is my jacket?”

“You mean that coat you’s wearin?” Henry asked. “Even when that fever got you sweatin’ it out, the one thing you don’ let me take off a you is that coat a yours.”