Douglass’ Women Read Free Page A

screams out. I’d never have my own home. My own babies. I’d work my days ’til too old to work, ’til crippled and less than nothing, with no children, surviving on what little I’d set by.

 
    Time makes the world fresh. Seven days, the world created. Seven days, my pain eased. Stopped feeling like a horse was sitting on my chest. Sabbath helped. I remembered the Lord loved me. And while I was singing “My Redeemer,” I felt Mam, as if she was right beside me, taking my hand.
    Got so I could see my reflection again and think I looked respectable. Clear eyes. Thick lashes. Clear skin. I didn’t have to worry about freckles like white women. But it was a sore fault not to have Mam’s sweet smile or Pa’s even nose.
    Lizbeth got Mam’s smile and four children. Even mean George with his trim features had a family of five. All told, I was aunt to twenty children. Two in the oven. Then, I felt hurt, confused. Thinking about my family, I started thinking about this man. Handsomest man I’d seen.
    Between kneading bread, slicing yams, between serving the Baldwins’ food, I be thinking: “Why this man off by his self? Where his dinner pail? His food? Why this slave be at the shipyard? Why he not sitting with free coloreds? Where’s his Master?”
    I thought, “Charity. I can show him Christian charity.”
    I kept thinking of his hair, too. Light trapped in it.Him standing on the bow, looking like gold glowed about his head.
    His Daddy must be white. Most likely his Daddy be his Master. The Dinwidde Street grocer had a daughter who visited a free colored. When her belly rose up, her folks whipped her awful. She lost the babe. The colored man ran to Canada.
    I packed a dinner. Miz Baldwin wanted chicken and biscuits. So I cooked extra. Just a few. Then I slipped in a piece of banana pie.
    Charity was Jesus’ blessing. I’d take that man supper.
    I was so nervous. I wore my best dress. It was blue and I always felt small in it. Married women seemed small. Delicate and needful, like Miz Baldwin. If I didn’t cook and clean for her, she’d fade away and die, resting on her ottoman.
    My blue dress had little buttons down the front and back. Had lace at the wrists. Shouldn’t have been wearing my best dress among those coarse men, among that sweat and dust. But I wanted that slave man to see me different.
    The trip was all right. Passed out the white carpenters’ clothes, then went to the colored men. They ate off to the side. Gaines, a free colored, who trimmed sails, acted shocked. “You almost pretty, Miz Anna.” I nearly slapped him. Everybody would’ve seen me blush if I was less dark. I passed out the clean clothes. Collected new ones. William’s shirt had bloodstains from when a saw sliced his fingertip off. Everybody working, too hard. Making mistakes. But now they were having dinner. I had passed out my clothes and if I was gonna meet this slave man, I had to do it now. Had to march myself to the ship edge and holler, “Good day.”
    I couldn’t do it. Too nervous. I stood at the edge of the dry dock looking up. Looking up at this man looking out to sea on a ship on stilts, I started chuckling. Funny. Both of us weren’t going nowhere.
    He turned, looked down at me. His hand on the rail. He smiled. I did, too. I said, “You eat?” His face twisted, puzzle-like. “You eat supper? You hungry?”
    “No. I … I didn’t eat. I am hungry.”
    My heart fell ’cause he talked proper. Even so, I said, “Come down, then.” I lifted my smaller basket. “Else I’ll feed this here to the gulls.”
    He smiled and it snatched my breath. He moved fast yet smooth, down the bow steps, then ran to where it was safe to leap over the ship’s rail. Nimble, swift. He came upon me eager. Widest smile. His beauty nearly undid me. I wondered whether Delilah felt this way when she first see Samson.
    But he wasn’t Samson. No Egypt black man. Seeing his features straight on, I could see more of the whiteness in him.