“I have hated my mother. Loathed her. But I see now that there was much to admire. She did not abandon us or throw herself into the sea, though she could have. She was too proud for that. And she was so proud of her heritage. It has only recently occurred to me that my mother took pride in what was because she knew no pride in what is.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The one thing my mother gave me was my name. She made me proud of my name. She made me proud of what I came from and who I was. Yet I have spent so many years hiding from my name.” I rubbed my chest, battling the sentiment that surged there. “It was Deborah Samson who marched and bled and starved and served. Me. But Deborah Samson is still an object of scorn and speculation when anyone thinks of me at all. And I have allowed myself to be by staying silent. I never even told my mother what I did.”
I was overcome again, drowning, and John did not try to answer or even urge me to stop. He held me for a long time, the way he’d done after Phineas died, and when he finally spoke, I heard the same helplessness in his voice, the same guilt.
“You’ve remained quiet all these years . . . for me.”
“You are my heart, John Paterson.”
“And you are mine. But you are unhappy.”
“No. Not unhappy. It is not so simple as that.”
“You have lost your hope,” he whispered.
“Yes. I have lost my hope because I have lost my purpose.”
“What can I do?” he asked, his compassion evident. “Tell me, soldier.”
“I know what I am asking. I know it might cost you your dignity, and it might even cost you your good name, the name your father had and now . . . the name of our son.”
“I have never cared all that much about my name, Samson. I told you a long time ago. No one will remember John Paterson. That has never been what motivated me.”
“I need to tell my story, General. I want to tell it. Even if no one wants to hear a woman speak. Even if I am run off the stage and chased out of town. I need to tell my story because it is not just my story. It is Dorothy’s. And Elizabeth’s. And Mrs. Thomas’s. It is my mother’s story and your daughters’ story. We were all there too. We suffered and sacrificed. We fought, even if it was not always on the battlefield. It was our Revolution as well, and yet . . . no one ever asks us.”
30
DIVINE PROVIDENCE
People wanted to hear it.
I arranged the entire tour myself. I booked venues and put advertisements in the papers. I went to Boston and Providence and Albany and New York. I filled halls. The Colombian Sentinel said it was the first tour of its kind, a woman giving a public lecture.
I started every show with a demonstration. I wore a uniform—a blue jacket with white facing and crisp white pants. It wasn’t the uniform I’d been given years before. It wasn’t the uniform I’d patched and repaired. I’d fashioned myself a new one, identical to the old. The hat on my head with its jaunty feather was new too. But the musket was the same. The maneuvers too. I performed a full five minutes of drills with John calling out the commands, the snap of my gun and the whisper of my movement the only sound in the hall.
I loaded my weapon, ripping the paper cartridges open with my teeth and flying through the motions of pouring the powder, dropping the bullet, and tamping it all down with my rod, drawing a smattering of applause as I completed each demonstration of my manly skill. Then I marched back off the platform and out of the hall, only to quickly change and return to the assembly, wearing the attire of Deborah Samson, the wife of a general, my hair swept up, my dress accentuating my female silhouette. But I still carried my musket, and the crowd loved that.
I always began my speech the same way, and I always stood on the stage alone.
“It is not for the man who has everything and wants more that we fight, but for the man who has nothing.” They were the words that had inspired the revolution in me, and I believed them still.
“In no place on earth can a man or woman who is born into certain circumstances ever hope to truly escape them. Our lots are cast from the moment we inhabit our mothers’ wombs, from the moment we draw breath. But perhaps that can change here, in this land.”
We went to Middleborough too.
Reverend Conant’s old church agreed to let me speak from their pulpit, a truly revolutionary concession. The Third Baptist Church invited me too, not wanting to be outdone by their only competition, and I made my presentation on two nights, giving two consecutive performances from each church, and all four shows were full to brimming with people from Plympton and Taunton too, though I was a curiosity more than a favorite son.