Read Online The Secrets of Mary Bowser by Lois Leveen - Free Book Online

insisting it was preparation for my formal schooling.
    It was nearly Easter when word arrived of Sarah Mapps Doug-lass, a colored woman who kept a small academy in her home. When Miss Bet annouced that Miss Douglass had agreed to accept me, Mama negotiated for me to stay in Richmond a bit longer, to spend my birthday with her and Papa. It was always a sore point with Mama that neither she nor my father knew their own dates of birth—Papa wasn’t even sure what year he was born, separated as he was from his family so early on—so Mama was mighty careful to remember the day I came into the world, May 17, 1839. With my twelfth birthday approaching, Papa determined to outfit me for my new life any way he could.
    Miss Bet, eager to ensure the success of her personal experiment in negro improvement, provided me with the basics of a new wardrobe—two summer day dresses, both fine enough even for Sundays, and one evening dress, plus a night-shirt with matching sleeping cap, new shoes, hose, and my first real set of lady’s undergarments. To Papa were left the purchase of items “necessar-y to a free young la-dy,” as he called out in sing-song. Unlike the whimsical just-becauses of my childhood, these gifts came deliberately chosen, talismans of all Papa wanted me to be and do, once I was far from him. A toilet set and matching combs, my own Bible, even a bonnet as fashionable as any white girl my age wore—each gift appeared to his merry rhyme. My favorite of all was a sewing kit. Not any old rusty needle and scrap of thread but a proper tortoise-shell box containing a whole case full of new needles of every size, along with a plump satin pincushion, a worked-metal thimble and matching scissors, and a rainbow’s array of spooled threads. All of it meant not just for mending but for the kind of fancy needlework I didn’t yet know how to do.
    Richmond’s slave markets supplied human goods to much of the upper South, and I was old enough to understand the horror of families ripped asunder, with no idea where a child or parent auctioned in the city would eventually be taken. As foreign as Philadelphia was to us, we knew it wasn’t slavery and it wasn’t the South. Knowing I was freedom bound, we savored that time when the future was a promise that had not yet come to pass.
    As I blinked my eyes open my last morning in Richmond, I made out the iron cross hanging on the wall of Papa’s cabin. Most Sundays of my childhood, I spent half an hour or more tracing over its whorls and flourishes, fascinated that my papa had created such a beautiful thing. But this morning I was ticking too full of emotion to lay gazing at his cross.
    In just a few hours, Miss Bet and I were to take the train North to Washington, where we would transfer to the rail line to Philadelphia. Miss Bet had fussed about how cramped boat passage was, but Mama harrumphed at her protestations, informing me in private that Miss Bet just had a tendency for seasickness. Though I had never been on either a boat or a train, the latter seemed more modern and formal to me, with all the noise and smoke, so I felt glad for Miss Bet’s infirmity.
    I thought my excitement would have me up earliest of my family, but Papa and Mama were already dressed in their workday clothes and seated at the table, a small pot of coffee between them. I quickly rose and readied myself, splashing water on my face and rinsing my mouth. Undoing the plaits I normally wore, I swept my hair back from my face, securing it with my new combs. Stepping back from the doorway to preserve my privacy, I reached for my pile of new clothing.
    I slipped into the knee-length chemise that would protect my undergarments, then struggled into my new corset. As I labored to lace myself in, the stiff fabric pulled my shoulders down and back, causing my rib cage to poke out and constraining me so, I could barely bend and wriggle my way into my new petticoat and corset cover, and then my crinolines, followed by