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Authors: Alice Randall
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back to politeness the Congressman directed another question to me.
"What ship did you cross over on?"
"The
Baltic.
"
"How funny, how very funny."
Now the Congressman was laughing anew, and I was laughing too. We
knew
about the
Baltic.
Only R. was still laughing at the old, cold joke, embedded like an insect in amber, that the slave Hemmings' stay in Paris had been a Grand Tour. And while we free Negroes were laughing at the strangeness of transformations, I was wondering what Lady would think of my table.
Later, when I poured them coffee and they were enjoying their cigars, before their business began in earnest and I would retire, the Congressman asked R. if he was following the career of "my friend Francis L. Cardozo. You might be useful collaborators."
"The state treasurer?" responded R.
"Exactly."
"I know the name."
"He was educated in Glasgow and in London. He was a minister in New Haven. Since the war he's been the principal of a school for blacks in Charleston. Next time you're in Charleston, you should see him."
R. shrugged. His cigar had gone out. He lit it again.
"It would be interesting to meet with him in Washington. Or bring him to see us in Atlanta."
R. changed the subject. If he was interested in the South's new colored leaders, he wasn't interested in them in his beloved old seaside town. He might eat with them in Atlanta or Washington, but he would never eat with them in Charleston.
I wonder what this means for me?
And I wondered if the Congressman had raised Cardozo's name at just that time, the moment I was pouring, to raise just that question in my mind.
36
I crossed the Atlantic Ocean on a ship called the
Baltic.
The crossing took seventeen days. My hate of seawater did not emerge until I was upon it for at least three or four. It popped up the way one of the sailors said that icebergs do. Out of the fish-rich darkness emerges this white, killing thing. Pointing straight up to the sky. A ship is like a cotton farm. Everyone has his place. There are the officers and the sailors. From the officers' uniforms dangle brass buttons that sparkle like stars against the blue, the way soldiers' buttons do.
When I first saw R. in his soldier's uniform, I wondered who he had got it off, what dead boy or man. Whose skin did he inherit? Or is my skin the only skin that has been inherited in thisâdare I say itâfamily?
It was during the burning of Atlanta; it was late in the war.
Or did he just buy that uniform in a store? I know you don't buy them in a store. Did he have it made up, in preparation? When did he know, when did he become a soldier in the South? A Confederate officer willing to die, to keep meâdifferent from the sailors on the ship. The sailors who live in the hole and have more work and less water and no brass buttons, the difference between them and meâwords on paper. I had the softer labor.
Words on paper, a bill of sale written out at the slave market in Charleston, a name and a price. The girls who sell themselves at Beauty's are saved the pain of words on paper; their prices disappear, spoken and forgotten in the air. The most free slaves are the ones who cannot read or write.
Later, I read about the
Baltic.
It carried supplies for the relief of Fort Sumter. I guess the Congressman had read about it too. Read and remembered.
37
Atlanta looks small this morning when I went go out walking. Everything's so new. I smell the creosote in the train smoke and I remember wanting to go places, but I don't want anything now. Except to sit on the platform of the Atlanta train station and watch the folks coming and going, kissing and leaving.
Mama's dead, and I'm feeling old. I'm up next. It's my turn to die. R. wants to move to Charleston. He wants to begin again. His daughter is dead. Every day all day so many eventsâbut these two deaths are the center around which the rest of both our lives revolve. One was inevitable, the other a miracle. If Precious had lived,
"What ship did you cross over on?"
"The
Baltic.
"
"How funny, how very funny."
Now the Congressman was laughing anew, and I was laughing too. We
knew
about the
Baltic.
Only R. was still laughing at the old, cold joke, embedded like an insect in amber, that the slave Hemmings' stay in Paris had been a Grand Tour. And while we free Negroes were laughing at the strangeness of transformations, I was wondering what Lady would think of my table.
Later, when I poured them coffee and they were enjoying their cigars, before their business began in earnest and I would retire, the Congressman asked R. if he was following the career of "my friend Francis L. Cardozo. You might be useful collaborators."
"The state treasurer?" responded R.
"Exactly."
"I know the name."
"He was educated in Glasgow and in London. He was a minister in New Haven. Since the war he's been the principal of a school for blacks in Charleston. Next time you're in Charleston, you should see him."
R. shrugged. His cigar had gone out. He lit it again.
"It would be interesting to meet with him in Washington. Or bring him to see us in Atlanta."
R. changed the subject. If he was interested in the South's new colored leaders, he wasn't interested in them in his beloved old seaside town. He might eat with them in Atlanta or Washington, but he would never eat with them in Charleston.
I wonder what this means for me?
And I wondered if the Congressman had raised Cardozo's name at just that time, the moment I was pouring, to raise just that question in my mind.
36
I crossed the Atlantic Ocean on a ship called the
Baltic.
The crossing took seventeen days. My hate of seawater did not emerge until I was upon it for at least three or four. It popped up the way one of the sailors said that icebergs do. Out of the fish-rich darkness emerges this white, killing thing. Pointing straight up to the sky. A ship is like a cotton farm. Everyone has his place. There are the officers and the sailors. From the officers' uniforms dangle brass buttons that sparkle like stars against the blue, the way soldiers' buttons do.
When I first saw R. in his soldier's uniform, I wondered who he had got it off, what dead boy or man. Whose skin did he inherit? Or is my skin the only skin that has been inherited in thisâdare I say itâfamily?
It was during the burning of Atlanta; it was late in the war.
Or did he just buy that uniform in a store? I know you don't buy them in a store. Did he have it made up, in preparation? When did he know, when did he become a soldier in the South? A Confederate officer willing to die, to keep meâdifferent from the sailors on the ship. The sailors who live in the hole and have more work and less water and no brass buttons, the difference between them and meâwords on paper. I had the softer labor.
Words on paper, a bill of sale written out at the slave market in Charleston, a name and a price. The girls who sell themselves at Beauty's are saved the pain of words on paper; their prices disappear, spoken and forgotten in the air. The most free slaves are the ones who cannot read or write.
Later, I read about the
Baltic.
It carried supplies for the relief of Fort Sumter. I guess the Congressman had read about it too. Read and remembered.
37
Atlanta looks small this morning when I went go out walking. Everything's so new. I smell the creosote in the train smoke and I remember wanting to go places, but I don't want anything now. Except to sit on the platform of the Atlanta train station and watch the folks coming and going, kissing and leaving.
Mama's dead, and I'm feeling old. I'm up next. It's my turn to die. R. wants to move to Charleston. He wants to begin again. His daughter is dead. Every day all day so many eventsâbut these two deaths are the center around which the rest of both our lives revolve. One was inevitable, the other a miracle. If Precious had lived,
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