Glory over Everything: Beyond The Kitchen House(71)

I forced myself to sit. I would take the chance. If Elly did not take the baby in, I would have to trust Robert’s ability to formulate another plan. I could think of no other solution and ended the letter with Edenton, North Carolina, as a post station whereby to reach me. After some thought, I signed off as James Pyke Burton.

Next I wrote to Robert with instructions to hire a carriage and bring the baby and the nurse to Williamsburg, where they were to find shelter with Miss Elly Pyke until my return. I included a letter of passage and another of introduction for Robert, then added a last note for my lawyer with instructions to transfer all available funds to Williamsburg.

In the early morning I posted the letters, then waited anxiously to board the stage for North Carolina.





CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN


1830


Pan


FINALLY COMES A day when I can stand up some. Then I start to wonder how to get home. I figure if I can get hold of Mr. Burton, he’ll come for me.

I can’t get the woman who takes care of me to talk, but one night after she finishes working on my head, I ask her to bring over a can of lard. I don’t think she will, but she does. When I ask her to sit down beside me, she keeps looking at me like she don’t know what’s coming next.

“I’m just gonna do what I always do for my mama,” I say, and I take one of her hands and start to rub it in with grease. I work her hand just like I did Mama’s, and in a little while she closes her eyes. While I’m working on each finger, I start to talk, and I tell her about my mama and about how good I took care of her when she was sick. I tell her how Mama had to go when the good Lord called, but that she said she would always look out for me. “I don’t know where she was when I got took, but I’m expecting that she’ll get Mr. Burton to come any day now.”

The big woman is quiet and her eyes stay closed, but it looks to me like she’s listening, so I keep going. “Mr. Burton is the man who’s coming for me. If he knows where I’m at, he’ll show up.”

I reach for her other hand and this time she gives it over easy. “Can you tell me what place this is so I can write to Mr. Burton?” I ask. The woman opens her eyes and starts looking around to see if anybody’s awake. Then she holds her finger up to her mouth so I stay quiet. Later, after she checks to make sure nobody is awake, she goes into her own small room where she sleeps and comes back with a old quill and a bottle of ink and a piece of paper. At the top it says:

You at Southwood in a sickhouse in North Carolina.

The ink is still wet. I stare at her. “Did you write this?” I ask, but quick she puts her finger to her lips. Then she grabs hold of my hand and on the inside of it spells out S, U, K, E, Y, showing me how she don’t need to use paper and ink.

“Is that you? Sukey?” I ask, and she nods. “My name’s Pan,” I say, and I’m excited now I know her name. I want her to write some more on my hand, but she keeps pointing to the paper for me to get started on my note to Mr. Burton, so I do. My hand is shaky, but under what Sukey wrote, I print out real careful: Mr. James Burton in Philadelphia.

Mr. Burton, they got me in the sickhouse at a place called Southwood in North Carolina. I need you to come get me. I got whooped on the head but I can stand now. Come quick to get me. I want to get home. I’m scared.

Pan

I give the paper over to Sukey, who waves it around to dry it out, then folds it and puts it inside the top of her dress by her big chests that hide the paper easy.

I want her to talk some more, so I ask her what’s going to happen to me if I get took for a slave, but she only shakes her head and goes back to her room. After a while, when she looks out and thinks everybody is sleeping, I see her take my letter out from her chests. Then with a long stick she hooks down one of the baskets hanging from the ceiling. It’s filled with weeds, but she takes them out. Then she turns the basket upside down and taps at the bottom until it lifts out. From what I can see, it looks like the basket got two bottoms. She slips my letter in, then closes up the bottom, and after she puts the weeds back in, she hooks the whole works up again onto a rafter. I count three baskets over from the corner and wonder if she’ll remember which basket she put it in.

It’s hard to see in her room because she’s got so many baskets of weeds hanging all over, but squeezed in there she has a chair and a small bed with a brown blanket, just like we all got. There’s nothing on the wood floor and no window, but she got a table with some quill pens and some ink with some paper sitting to the side.

Later I find out that she uses the paper to write down who is sick and how many babies get born, and every week she gives that over to the two white men who come to see her.

I wonder when she’s going to send my letter off. I don’t like this place and I want to go home.





CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT


1830


Sukey


EVEN THOUGH I say that I don’t want nothin’ to do with this boy, I never seen nothin’ like him before. Almost every night now he rubs my hands down and I don’t remember somethin’ ever feeling so good. Trouble is, he got that sweet way about him, and while he’s rubbin’ my hands, he keeps asking me questions. I don’t give no answers ’cause there is none. One night he say, “What happens if I get took for a slave?” I keep my eyes closed like I don’t hear him, and I try not to think about it. He’s small in size, but he’s ’bout the same age as me the first time I got sold, and thinking back on it, I don’t know how I come through.