Soon there was a lesson in which they all learned that slavery was a decision a country made, and that a country could always make a better decision. No one should be a slave to anyone else, one of the other girls said during this lesson, and the teacher agreed. It wasn’t Biblical, the girl said. “That’s what we think, too,” Rosalie told her, though she was pretty sure it was Biblical even if it was also wrong.
Back in America, back in their sad, depleted home, Hagar had unexpectedly asked Father for permission to return to the estate of Dr. Elijah Bond. She was owned by Dr. Bond, and had been raised on that large and prosperous property, though she’d been working for Father and Mother for years now.
Before England, Hagar had seemed happy enough. She used to sing in the kitchen as she worked. After, she was different, distracted and silent. No one, not even Rosalie for all her watchfulness, took note. They were all sunk in their own grief. Why wouldn’t Hagar be the same? She’d loved Henry Byron, too.
No one stopped to wonder what Hagar’s narrow escape from death by smallpox might have meant to her. No one thought about what the freedom of England might have looked like to a slave in Maryland.
Father’s first response to her request was no. Absolutely, no. Mother needed her more than ever. Besides, it was in Hagar’s best interest to stay on the farm. “Why return to slavery?” he asked her, not noticing that she’d recently done exactly that. Here, on the farm, she was salaried and loved. It made no sense. He wouldn’t allow it.
Grandfather stepped in. “If you believe in freedom,” he told Father, which Father was always insisting he did, “you’ll agree this is Hagar’s choice to make.”
The last time Rosalie saw Hagar, she was riding away in the back of a cart, her back stiff and her face still, like a figure carved in wood. But she did not return to slavery. Instead, she ran.
Her absence wasn’t discovered for three days and by then, there was no tracing her. Dr. Bond demanded her full purchase price from Father, as he was the one who’d taken his eye off her.
Hagar was not the only missing slave Father was forced to buy. One day, Rosalie found a scratched metal plate, rectangular, with a number on it—37—and a broken chain looped through. It was in the barn, down among the hay bales. Rosalie had no idea what it was or how it could have gotten to the barn. She showed it to Grandfather, who said it was nothing for her to concern herself with. He took it from her and she never saw it again. She wouldn’t know for years that what she’d found was an ankle chain, the number meant to identify the man who wore it. She wouldn’t know for years that Grandfather had been helping slaves to freedom in Philadelphia, hiding them in the forest on the farm until they could be picked up and guided into Baltimore and beyond by the fugitive maroons.
Father would never have known about it either, except that one time Grandfather was caught and only Father’s money kept him out of jail.
* * *
—
In principle, Father disapproves of slavery, but not as strongly as Grandfather does. He was, on two occasions, a slave owner. He’d bought Joe Hall from Dr. Bond, asking Joe’s permission first, as if good manners could mitigate the evil of it. “Work hard for me for five years,” Father had said, “and I’ll free you.” And that’s what happened.
Father’s second purchase was a woman named Harriet when Rosalie was one year old. June was two and a half, and Mother, who had no idea how to live in the wilderness, desperately needed help. Once again, Father convinced himself that he was being generous. Father could convince himself of almost anything; he was his own easiest mark. He offered Harriet, currently a slave for life, that form of bondage known as term slavery.
These were the terms:
Like Joe, Harriet was to serve five years and then be freed.
But as a woman, any possible children must also be considered.
So . . .
Father would own any children she had until they turned twenty-four, at which time they’d be freed. And finally . . .
Father promised that none of her children would be sold anywhere outside the state of Maryland nor removed from Maryland after manumission.
Three days after this contract was signed, Harriet casually announced her intention to bludgeon Mother to death with a fence rail whenever the opportunity first showed itself. She was given her freedom immediately and dismissed from service. She was the last human Father bought.
Rosalie knows about Harriet because Aunty Rogers has told her. Poor Mother couldn’t bake biscuits and she couldn’t manage a slave. Aunty Rogers could have mentioned Harriet during that quarrel they’d almost had about slavery. Clearly Father and Mother’s principles were more fluid than Mother liked to acknowledge. But it was enough for Aunty Rogers to know this; she didn’t have to say it. Whatever Mother might claim to believe, they were still white women together.
vi
Back in 1838, in the absence of both her mother and father, Rosalie is almost able to relax. Spring is arriving in manageable pieces, like things seen in the shards of a broken mirror, heard from a passing carriage—birds, bugs, leaves, flowers, rain, clouds. A contented hum rises from the earth all around the cabin. Overnight, the cherry tree has burst into spectacular bloom. It is unseasonably warm.
Still no word from the great bullfrog, but the wood frogs are awake and in the evenings when Asia is in bed, Rosalie pulls her mother’s ladder-back chair out onto the doorstep to listen to them. Under the willows, right where the stream turns to marsh, they call out in a chorus strangely like the sound of galloping horses.
She watches for omens, signs of how things are going with her father and mother in Charleston. One night, she sees an owl fall and rise again with something small and tender in its feet. It settles in a nearby tree to eat. Strings of viscera dangle from its beak. Rosalie decides she doesn’t believe in omens. She takes her chair back inside. She avoids the graveyard even more than usual as the ghosts have begun predicting vague sorts of doom—hunters with hounds with teeth like the wolf in the fold they loosed him with a single lash who’ll make the shroud if it’s not in the dark these violent delights have violent ends. It’s not even clear they mean to distress with these ominous mutterings. They themselves seem unperturbed.
When night comes, June entertains her with recitations by candlelight. He practices the big soliloquies with big gestures. On the rough wood wall behind him, his shadow throws out its arms. None of the children has ever been allowed to see their father perform. He wants none of them following him into the theater. But every surface in the house is stacked with playbills, clippings, gloves, wigs, and hats. No child has to go far to find Macbeth’s dagger or Hamlet’s cloak. Richard’s hump lies often on Father’s desk under his farm catalogues and a great many reminders of money owed. During the summers, when Father’s at home, he reads to them every evening. He talks about diction, inflection, rhythm. He is training them all for the thing they’ve been forbidden to do.
June has started to dream of an acting career in Philadelphia, where he knows some of the company and has been promised his chance. This is as much against his father’s wishes as his father’s own acting career was against his father’s wishes. There are other family traditions that June will eventually carry on as well, but he doesn’t know what they are yet.