Wild, Beautiful, and Free(32)

I did love to study and fell back into it as though I were in my papa’s library again. Miss Temple was so encouraging that I was eager to please her and thus was spurred to work even harder. She recognized that I could, because of the work I’d done with Papa, study geography very well. I read literature, enjoyed poetry, and learned math. I also studied French, which I’d heard so much of at Catalpa Valley but had never learned or spoken much on my own. I especially enjoyed discussing teaching, and after a year Miss Temple had me tutoring the newer girls who came to us. She influenced me with her calm and economy of emotion. I lived quietly at Barbary because she was my model.

Miss Temple modeled another important lesson: a quiet life didn’t mean an unchanging one. On a spring day in 1859 she rose from the dining table and informed her students that she was going to marry and leave Barbary Institution. The gaiety that erupted from this announcement became the source of an ongoing hum of excitement that went on for several days as we celebrated Miss Temple and planned for her departure. When the newly wed Missus Herman Cain boarded a chaise with her banker husband and rode off for new adventures, that hum went with her.

I stared out of the window of my room at the pink dogwood in blossom in the courtyard and considered this new void in my life. At first I thought I was mourning the loss of Miss Temple, or Missus Cain, and thinking how I might distract myself until I’d recovered. But my thoughts quickly turned, and I found myself contemplating how to replace the scene and not the person. The scene, I realized, didn’t have to be quiet. All the quiet I’d thought I had taken on from Miss Temple was, it turned out, only borrowed clothing. Now that she was gone, I found myself removing it and feeling a restless spirit within me. I had been content to stay in one place, hidden in the busyness of a city, and be obscure because my position as a runaway slave required it. I’d had no run-ins with the hunters who tracked runaways so they could, under the Fugitive Slave Act, return them to their owners. Of course, my appearance allowed me to blend in. My whitish skin and blue eyes always made me seem white on sight, especially with my hair hidden under a bonnet. I could take advantage of that now and move about a little beyond New York. It would have been easy for me to think Barbary was my entire world, but my geography studies with Miss Temple reminded me that the world was wide, and I could go into it and learn more of myself, of who Jeannette Bébinn really was.

Night fell. I opened the window and took in the heady scent of the hyacinths planted in the borders. The first evening stars were still quite dim. My eyes eventually rested on the horizon. If I went east, I would come to an ocean, a vast ocean. I could take a ship to Europe and cross that ocean. Or I could travel west and explore Ohio or even Canada. I thought about the hundreds of miles I had traveled to finally come to this place. I looked at the soft green leaves near my window and thought about how cold and bare everything had been three years before. In another year I would have been in Barbary as long as I had been at the Holloway Plantation. Aunt Nancy Lynne had told me that I had to have a plan if I were to have a chance of running from there and not coming back. She had encouraged me to wait. Should I wait now, and for how long? Maybe only long enough to figure out my plan. Not a day longer. Because suddenly I was that impatient—three years of calm had evaporated within an afternoon. I wanted my life to begin, a real life, with the independence Papa had once envisioned for me. But where could that life be, and what would it look like? Then I remembered: I had learned a vocation. I was a teacher. Where could I find for myself a position?

Isabella, my roommate, interrupted my thoughts when she summoned me to supper.

I couldn’t return to my thinking until bedtime, but even then Isabella was eager to talk and rehash the details of Miss Temple’s wedding and departure. I wished she would just go to sleep. If I could have quiet again, I could go back to the idea I’d had as I’d stood at the window and discover some answer for how I could find a position.

When Isabella finally drifted off, I wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and returned to the window. By then it was so dark I could see nothing but my own reflection in the glass.

Teaching—I am a teacher, I thought to myself. I am qualified. I have taught at Barbary for two years. Now all I want is to teach somewhere else. It was an entirely sensible and feasible path for a single young woman. But how do I find a new position?

I sat on my bed again: it was a chilly night, so I crawled under the covers and continued to puzzle over the question.

What did I want? A new place, in a new house, with new faces and new circumstances. There was nothing else I could ask for, nothing better anyway. My avenues would be limited because of my mulatto blood. What should I do? I could ask my friends—people like Reverend Bell or even Missus Phillips, who often sent notes of encouragement during the holiday season. I could ask if they knew of any places that might accept me. These answers soothed me. I resolved to start in the morning by writing a note to Reverend Bell, asking him for an appointment. If the conversation didn’t prove fruitful, I would write to Missus Phillips. I went to sleep at last, satisfied that I had, at least, an initial plan.

My meeting with Reverend Bell was delayed because he was traveling, but in a few days I did sit before him in his office. He looked severe in his long black suit and collar, but he looked over his glasses at me with kind eyes, so I wasn’t nervous presenting him with my request.

“I will admit, Miss Bébinn,” he said, “that I had hoped you would take Miss Temple’s place and become a teacher here.”