And then, Nelson stopped coming. This happened right around the time her sisters died, so she didn’t notice at first, too busy with the calamity of seeing everything she’d known collapse. Too secretly ashamed of how tired she’d been of being the oldest girl, of how often she’d chosen to slip off with the boys into the trees instead.
When she finally missed him, Rosalie worried that Nelson had also died in the cholera. She sought out Ann in the kitchen to ask. No, none of the other children had died, Ann told her. About Nelson she simply said, “Sold.”
Rosalie was relieved.
“Sixty-five dollars,” Ann said.
Rosalie was impressed. At nine years old, she was unable to imagine his life much changed. She assumed that wherever he was, Nelson was building forts, streaking his face with war-paint mud, smiling his gappy smile. If someone paid sixty-five dollars, she thought, they must love Nelson very much.
But perhaps she had doubts, because of what she’d asked next. “He’s happy, don’t you think?” she’d said and then, to prompt Ann into the right answer, added, “Nelson’s always happy.”
“Children can snatch happiness from even the darkest times,” Ann said. “That’s God’s gift, that’s how God loves children. You grow up, you can’t do that no more. You don’t have that gift. God’s taken it back.”
And, just as they would again all those years in the future, Rosalie’s losses crowded into her heart, a heavier weight than she could bear. Frederick and Elizabeth, Mary Ann and Nelson. Mother’s happiness and Father’s sanity. She was too big now for Ann’s lap, but Ann sank into one of the dining table chairs and gathered her in anyway, rocking her and humming something church-like, as if Rosalie were still a child, which she now, in her deep unhappiness, understood for the first time that she was not.
She’d lost that, too.
* * *
—
And still, even with this all everywhere about her, Rosalie had given little thought to slavery—slavery was a thing that just was—until they’d made that terrible trip to England with Hagar accompanying them. One day in school Rosalie mentioned her. Hagar, Rosalie had said, was a slave. She could feel the shock this caused. “Not our slave,” she’d clarified quickly, but the damage was done.
Soon there was a lesson in which they all learned that slavery was a decision a country made, and that a country could always make a better decision. No one should be a slave to anyone else, one of the other girls said during this lesson, and the teacher agreed. It wasn’t Biblical, the girl said. “That’s what we think, too,” Rosalie told her, though she was pretty sure it was Biblical even if it was also wrong.
Back in America, back in their sad, depleted home, Hagar had unexpectedly asked Father for permission to return to the estate of Dr. Elijah Bond. She was owned by Dr. Bond, and had been raised on that large and prosperous property, though she’d been working for Father and Mother for years now.
Before England, Hagar had seemed happy enough. She used to sing in the kitchen as she worked. After, she was different, distracted and silent. No one, not even Rosalie for all her watchfulness, took note. They were all sunk in their own grief. Why wouldn’t Hagar be the same? She’d loved Henry Byron, too.
No one stopped to wonder what Hagar’s narrow escape from death by smallpox might have meant to her. No one thought about what the freedom of England might have looked like to a slave in Maryland.
Father’s first response to her request was no. Absolutely, no. Mother needed her more than ever. Besides, it was in Hagar’s best interest to stay on the farm. “Why return to slavery?” he asked her, not noticing that she’d recently done exactly that. Here, on the farm, she was salaried and loved. It made no sense. He wouldn’t allow it.
Grandfather stepped in. “If you believe in freedom,” he told Father, which Father was always insisting he did, “you’ll agree this is Hagar’s choice to make.”
The last time Rosalie saw Hagar, she was riding away in the back of a cart, her back stiff and her face still, like a figure carved in wood. But she did not return to slavery. Instead, she ran.
Her absence wasn’t discovered for three days and by then, there was no tracing her. Dr. Bond demanded her full purchase price from Father, as he was the one who’d taken his eye off her.
Hagar was not the only missing slave Father was forced to buy. One day, Rosalie found a scratched metal plate, rectangular, with a number on it—37—and a broken chain looped through. It was in the barn, down among the hay bales. Rosalie had no idea what it was or how it could have gotten to the barn. She showed it to Grandfather, who said it was nothing for her to concern herself with. He took it from her and she never saw it again. She wouldn’t know for years that what she’d found was an ankle chain, the number meant to identify the man who wore it. She wouldn’t know for years that Grandfather had been helping slaves to freedom in Philadelphia, hiding them in the forest on the farm until they could be picked up and guided into Baltimore and beyond by the fugitive maroons.
Father would never have known about it either, except that one time Grandfather was caught and only Father’s money kept him out of jail.
* * *
—
In principle, Father disapproves of slavery, but not as strongly as Grandfather does. He was, on two occasions, a slave owner. He’d bought Joe Hall from Dr. Bond, asking Joe’s permission first, as if good manners could mitigate the evil of it. “Work hard for me for five years,” Father had said, “and I’ll free you.” And that’s what happened.
Father’s second purchase was a woman named Harriet when Rosalie was one year old. June was two and a half, and Mother, who had no idea how to live in the wilderness, desperately needed help. Once again, Father convinced himself that he was being generous. Father could convince himself of almost anything; he was his own easiest mark. He offered Harriet, currently a slave for life, that form of bondage known as term slavery.
These were the terms:
Like Joe, Harriet was to serve five years and then be freed.
But as a woman, any possible children must also be considered.
So . . .
Father would own any children she had until they turned twenty-four, at which time they’d be freed. And finally . . .
Father promised that none of her children would be sold anywhere outside the state of Maryland nor removed from Maryland after manumission.
Three days after this contract was signed, Harriet casually announced her intention to bludgeon Mother to death with a fence rail whenever the opportunity first showed itself. She was given her freedom immediately and dismissed from service. She was the last human Father bought.
Rosalie knows about Harriet because Aunty Rogers has told her. Poor Mother couldn’t bake biscuits and she couldn’t manage a slave. Aunty Rogers could have mentioned Harriet during that quarrel they’d almost had about slavery. Clearly Father and Mother’s principles were more fluid than Mother liked to acknowledge. But it was enough for Aunty Rogers to know this; she didn’t have to say it. Whatever Mother might claim to believe, they were still white women together.