Jo had just finished the hull and was wiping the sweat out of his eyes when he saw Anna standing and waving from the dock. It was rare for her to meet him after a workday because he usually finished before she did, but he was pleased to see her.
As he grabbed his tools and started walking toward her, he realized something was wrong.
“Mr. Mathison says for you to come to the house quick as you can,” she said. She was wringing her handkerchief in her hands, a nervous habit he detested, for seeing it always had the effect of making him nervous too.
“Is Ma all right?” he asked, grabbing her hands in his and shaking them until they finally stilled.
“Yes.”
“Then what is it?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
He looked at her hard but could see that she was telling the truth. She was nervous because Mathison had never asked to see Jo before, not in the seven years that she and Ma had been cleaning house for him, and she didn’t know what it could mean that he was asking her now.
They walked the few miles to the Mathison house so quickly that the contents of Jo’s toolbox rattled uncomfortably against the box walls. Jo was walking a little ahead of Anna, and he could hear the patter of her small feet struggling to stay in step with his long legs.
When they reached the house, Ma Aku was waiting on the porch, her cough their only welcome from her. She and Anna led Jo into the parlor, where Mathison and a handful of other white men were sitting on the plush white couches, the cushions so full they looked like small hills, or the backs of elephants.
“Kojo!” Mathison said, standing to shake his hand. He’d heard Ma Aku call Jo that once, and had asked them what it meant. When Ma had explained it was the Asante name for a boy born on Monday, he’d clapped his hands together as though hearing a good song, and insisted on calling Jo by his full name every time he saw him. “Taking away your name is the first step,” he’d said somberly. So somberly that Jo hadn’t felt it wise to ask what he was thinking—the first step to what?
“Mr. Mathison.”
“Please, have a seat,” Mr. Mathison said, pointing to an empty white chair. Jo suddenly felt nervous. His trousers were covered in dry pitch, so black it looked like hundreds of holes lined them. Jo worried the pitch would stain the chair, making it so that Anna and Ma Aku would have more work to do the next day when they came in. If they came in at all.
“I’m so sorry to bring you all the way over here, but my colleagues have informed me of some very troubling news.”
A fatter white man cleared his throat, and Jo watched the jiggle of his neck as he spoke. “We’ve been hearing about a new law being drafted by the South and the Free-Soilers, and if it was to pass, law enforcement would be required to arrest any alleged runaway slave in the North and send them back south, no matter how long ago they escaped.”
The men were all watching him, waiting for him to react, and so he nodded.
“My concern is for you and your mother,” Mr. Mathison said, and Jo looked over to the door where Anna had been standing just moments ago. She was probably back to the cleaning by now, worried about whatever it was Mathison had to say to Jo. “As runaways, you might have more trouble than Anna and the children, who are free in their own right.”
Jo nodded. He couldn’t imagine who would be looking for him or Ma Aku after all of these years. Jo didn’t even know the name or the face of his own old master. All Ma could remember was that Ness had called him the Devil.
“You should get your family further north,” Mr. Mathison said. “New York, Canada, even. If this thing passes, there’s no telling what kind of chaos it’ll cause.”
—
“Are they gon’ fire me?” Anna asked. They were sitting on their mattress later that night, after the children had all gone to sleep, and Jo was finally able to explain to her what Mathison had called him over for.
“No, they just want to warn us, is all.”
“But your ma’s old master died. Ruthie tol’ us, remember?”
Jo remembered. Anna’s cousin Ruthie had sent word from one plantation to another to a safe house and finally to Ma Aku that the man who had owned her had died. And they had all breathed easier that night.
“Mr. Mathison say that don’t matter. His people can still get her if they want to.”
“What about me and the kids?”
Jo shrugged. Anna’s master had fathered her, then set her and her mother free. She had real free papers, not forged ones like Jo and Ma Aku. The kids had all been born right there in Baltimore, free. No one would be looking for them. “Just me and Ma that gotta worry. Don’t you think about this none.”
As for Ma Aku, Jo knew she would never leave Baltimore. Unless she could go back to the Gold Coast, there would be no new countries for her—not Canada, not even Paradise if it existed on Earth. Once the woman had decided to get free, she had also decided to stay free. When he was a child, Jo would often marvel at the knife Ma Aku always kept tucked inside her wrapper, which she’d been keeping inside her wrapper since her days as an Asante slave, then an American slave, then, finally, free. The older Jo got, the more he understood about the woman he called Ma. The more he understood that sometimes staying free required unimaginable sacrifice.
In the other room, Beulah started whimpering in her sleep. The child had night terrors. They came at unpredictable intervals: one month here, two days there. Some days they were so bad she would wake herself up to the sound of her own screams or she’d have scratches along her arms from where she’d fought invisible battles. Other days she slept still as death, tears streaming down her face, and the next day, when asked what she’d dreamed about, she always shrugged and said, “Nothing.”
This day, Jo looked out and saw the girl’s little legs start to move: a bend at the knee, an outward kick, repeat. Beulah was running. Maybe this was where it started, Jo thought. Maybe Beulah was seeing something more clearly on the nights she had these dreams, a little black child fighting in her sleep against an opponent she couldn’t name come morning because in the light that opponent just looked like the world around her. Intangible evil. Unspeakable unfairness. Beulah ran in her sleep, ran like she’d stolen something, when really she had done nothing other than expect the peace, the clarity, that came with dreaming. Yes, Jo thought, this was where it started, but when, where, did it end?
*
Jo decided to keep his family in Baltimore. Anna was too pregnant to haul up from the city to which they were all rooted, and Baltimore still felt safe. People kept whispering about the law. A few families even made moves, packing up and heading north for fear that the law would pass. Ol’ Bess who sold the flowers on North Street went. So did Everett, John, and Dothan, who worked on Alice.
“Damn shame,” Poot said the day three Irishmen walked onto the boat to replace them.
“You ever think ’bout leavin’, Poot?” Jo asked.
Poot snorted. “They gon’ bury me in Baltimore, Jo. One way or another. They gon’ throw my body down into the Chesapeake Bay.”
Jo knew he meant it. Poot always said that Baltimore was a great city to be a black man in. There were black porters and teachers, preachers and hucksters. A free man didn’t have to be a servant or a coach driver. He could make something with his own hands. He could fix something, sell something. He could build something up from the ground, then send it out to sea. Poot had taken up caulking when he was only a teenager, and he often joked that the only thing he liked better than holding a mallet was holding a woman. He was married but he had no children, no son to teach his trade to. The ships were his pride. He would never leave Baltimore.
And for the most part, everyone else in Baltimore stayed put too. They were tired of running and used to waiting. And so they waited to see what would come.