Not exactly a "lost" chapter from The Book of Harlan - just one that didn't make the final cut...
A story is built in layers...layers upon layers of plot and narrative and characterization. When you finally step away to allow "fresh" eyes to experience the story the feelings one might experience can range anywhere from relief to terror.
Nevertheless, an editor - a good editor - is a writer's best friend because he or she can see what it is the writer was blind too.
When an editor suggests that a sentence, page, paragraph or entire chapter warrants expulsion from the body of work - I won't lie - it feels like a limb is being hacked off.
Sometimes, I disagree with the advice, but most times, after I've had a few days to sit with it, I secede.
Why am I using war terms? Well, because the writing life is a battlefield!
In any case, I tweeted that I was thinking about posting some chapters from The Book of Harlan that failed to escape the editorial sword and was met with mixed responses. Some folk felt that it was best to leave "trash" in the trash can while others were open and ready to read.
For those of you who are interested here is the chapter that I'll call: Mother and Son.
In The Book of Harlan, Tenant and Louisa Robinson are portrayed of former sharecroppers who've done well for themselves. That's about all you know. But in earlier drafts, I gave much more background information on their lives. As you may know, The Book of Harlan is peopled with my real, true ancestors. Tenant and Louisa Robinson were my GGgrandparents who were born into slavery. Louisa had many children before she met and married Tenant after emancipation. According to my research, she buried all but one of her children, a son, Seth H. Adams - who I believe to be the result of a master/slave union.
I found direct descendants of Seth still living in Georgia who blessed me with surviving photos of him and his native-American wife, which are posted immediately following the chapter along with photo of my GGgrandfather, Tenant M. Robinson
Without further adieu - here is my imagined story about my GGgrandparents and my great uncle Seth Adams.
Mother and Son by Bernice L. McFadden (unedited)
Christmas songs drifted from the radio in the sitting room and sailed through the house. Emma hummed along under her breath as she dried and carefully stacked the dinner plates into the cabinet.Louisa was seated at the table, curling and uncurling the hem of the tablecloth. Emma looked around the kitchen, sighed, folded the dishtowel and placed it on the rim of the sink.“Come and sit down. I wanna tell you a story,” Louisa blurted suddenly.Emma was in no mood for conversation. “Maybe later,” she stated wearily.“Ain’t no later. I gotta tell you this now. So sit down.”Emma rolled her eyes, pulled out a chair and sat. She stared at her mother expectantly. For a moment, Louisa seemed unsure where to begin. Her eyes darted around the kitchen as she grappled with what she was about to share.It was a difficult story to tell. Giving voice to that memory would mean Louisa would have to relive it, every heart-stopping, terror-filled moment of it. But the story was necessary if she was to make Emma understand Harlan’s scorn and her hurt and angered response. The story had to be told, before mother and son’s emotions, spun further out of control and vined wild.Louisa flattened her palms against the wooden kitchen table and began at the place that made the most sense – the end. Which we all know is really the beginning of something new.In 1865, Tenant and Louisa, limped out of slavery. Tenants had welts on his back, thighs and calves that he would take to the grave. Harlan had seen those scars, had asked questions about them, and Tenant had indulged him.Louisa had scars too; although hers were hidden in her womb and crisscrossing her heart.Louisa’s mother died giving birth to her. The only thing Louisa knew about her mother was her name, which was Lizzie. She knew her father's name as well: Master. Known to his friends and family as Henry. Everyone else addressed him as Mr. Adams or sir.When Louisa was twelve, Henry Adams sent for her. Just as he had her mother thirteen years earlier. He did not receive Louisa in his personal boudoir; instead she was brought to the bedroom set aside specifically for that particular aberration.The walls of the room were painted a soft yellow. The one lone window was nailed shut and hidden by plum-colored, brocade drapes.One queen sized bed, a simple wooden chair and low stool balancing a white wash bowl filled with warm, soapy water.Louisa was ordered to strip and clean wash herself clean.Afterward, Henry Adams dried her with a stiff rough towel, which raised angry red bumps on her skin.“Get on the bed.”She was weeping by then. He bound her wrists and ankles to the bedposts, but did not gag her mouth (he enjoyed hearing them scream) climbed on top and scattered her.Louisa returned to her shack, bloodied and dazed. Nine months later she gave birth to her first child, a girl. She died within hours of taking her first breath. The older slaves, buried the newborn in a dirt hole behind the hog pen.Weeks later, Henry Adams sent for her again.Emma sat staring.Louisa said, “You understand Emma, that I was that child, right?” Emma slowly nodded her head.Between the ages of thirteen and sixteen, Louisa gave birth to six of Henry Adam’s children. The first five all died within hours of breathing the bondage-tinged air. The sixth one, however, kept breathing. Louisa named him Seth. He was the spitting image of his father. Who was also his grandfather.“All one in the same. Are you following me?”Again, Emma nodded. Henry Adams fathered twenty-four children on that plantation, but Seth was the one who most resembled him – bright white, dark brown hair and eyes the color of hazelnuts - maybe that’s why Henry Adams hard heart began to melt. He never took a wife, and so had no legitimate off spring, just the bastards that picked his cotton, cooked his food, cleaned his house and tended his livestock. As old age bore down on Henry Adams, he became obsessed with his legacy and since Seth looked as white as any white child he’d ever seen, he decision to claim Seth as his own, made perfect sense to no one but him.Henry Adams took Seth in and schooled him in the ways of white folks. Reading, writing, arithmetic. How one should conduct oneself during high tea, which utensil was to be used for which course, God and his commandments and so on.Later, he taught Seth about fine scotch, the art of wooing women, how to spot the difference between a good cigar and one stuffed with rabbit tobacco, how to shoot a pistol.When emancipation came, Henry Adams offered Emma five hundred dollars to allow Seth to remain behind with him. Louisa cast her eyes towards the horizon and said, “No thank you sir, you keep your money and I’ll keep my son.” Seth started to cry. Louisa thought he was shedding tears of relief. She extended a hand to him, but Seth turned his back on her and went instead to Henry Adams side. Louisa heart stalled. She slapped her thigh, ‘Boy, you come here this minute!” “Don’t make me go with her papa!” Seth wailed. Papa? It had been their secret thing. “In the house, when it’s just you and me, you don’t have to call me Master or Sir. You can call me daddy or papa.” “Come here, now!” Louisa ordered sternly. “No, I don’t want to!”Henry Adams threw his arm around Seth’s shuddering shoulder and used his free hand to pull the wad of bills from his left pocket of his trousers. “Don’t be stupid, Louisa. Take the money.”Louisa left Seth behind and joined the droves of freed men and women traversing byways and country roads. She wanted to get as far away as possible from Henry Adams, Seth and Aiken County, South Carolina.When Louisa reached Atlanta, Georgia she stopped walking and took shelter in an encampment hidden deep in the woods. There she was given a piece of bread and allowed to drink as much water as she could hold. Louisa removed her battered shoes and went to sit in the shade of a pine tree. Louisa could feel her heartbeat pounding away in the soles of her feet. A weariness settled into her body that made her feel giddy.. For a while she straddled wake and sleep, unable to decipher between her dreams and the activity swirling around her. Finally, eyes closed, her head drooped and she succumbed to sleep. Hours later, she was awakened by a hello, that seemed to come from the end of a long tunnel.Her eyes fluttered open. She wiped at her mouth and yawned loudly.“Hello,” the greeting came again. Louisa looked up into the dark, portly face of a man wearing moth-eaten coat tails, and a battered top hat. He looked ridiculous. Louisa stifled a smile.“Hi.” Louisa said as she carefully studied his face. There was something familiar about his kind eyes. ‘Do I know you?”The man removed his hat, revealing a heap of tightly, coiled black hair.The man squinted at her and shook his head. “No, no. I don’t think so.”“Oh.”“Where you headed?” “I don’t know.” “You looking for kin?” “Don’t have any that I knows of.” “You mind?” He pointed at the empty space of dirt beside her.“Not at all.” Louisa scooted over.Louisa noted the filthy rags wrapped around his shoes.“My name is Tenant. Tenant Robinson.“Louisa.”His clothes smelled faintly of skunk.“Nice to meet ‘cha.”“Same here.”“Beautiful day, don’t you think?”Louisa looked around. “Yes, I suppose it is.”Tenant pulled a battered bible from the inside of his jacket. “I’m a preacher.” He announced brightly as if Louisa had asked.Louisa glanced at the bible Tenant cradled in his hands. “That’s nice.”“Are you a Christian Miss Louisa?” Louisa thought for a moment. On Sunday mornings, Henry Adams would gather the slaves in the clearing behind the big house, and rattle on and on about the goodness of Jesus and the miracles he’d performed. According to Henry Adams the only black man in the bible was Ham. “Ham and his increase had been cursed into slavery by his father, Noah.”“Which explains you all’s situation,” Henry Adams said as he ranged his eyes over the crowd of black faces. “Ya’ll is the descendants of Ham.” He said. “Destined to the end of time to be slaves to the white man,” He added, waving the bible high above his head.Louisa derived that Jesus hadn’t performed any miracles that benefited niggers, not even one as small as freeing them for slavery. Lincoln had to come along and do that. So no, she was not a Christian.“I don’t believe I am,” Louisa said.“I see,” Tenant said.They sat quietly for sometime, listening to the chatter of birds and people. Soon though, Tenant began to hum. The tune flooded Louisa with a sentiment she did not believe possible. Her eyes welled with tears. “What’s that?” Louisa asked, sniffling. “Run mourner, run.” “No, not the - ” she started, stopped and shook her head.Louisa chuckled inwardly. How could he know she was referring to the emotions rippling through her and then suddenly, he did know. “Oh that!” Tenant spouted with a smile. “Why, that’s freedom, Miss Louisa.” They left the camp together. Two weeks later, in Savannah, Louisa accepted Jesus as her Lord and Savior and Tenant as her husband.
On their wedding night, he planted soft kisses all over body. Henry Adams had never bothered with any tenderness.Tenant asked permission to roll her nightgown above her hips. Henry Adams had said, “Give me any trouble and I’ll whip the black off of you.”Tenant did not scatter Louisa as Henry had. He sank into as gently as a finger coaxing a seed into fresh turned soil.
They named their first son, James. The second boy came two years later and he was christened, John.“Thirteen years after John – Surprise! – here you come, my sweet Emma Bell.” Louisa said with a giggle.Maybe it was because she had finally accepted Jesus and his father and all of their mysteries without question, that in 1883 God took pity on Louisa and guided her lost son back to her. Seth was a grown man when he appeared on Tenant and Louisa’s front porch on that hot, August afternoon. He had a wife in tow, a tall Penobscot girl with black eyes and tall cheekbones. Her name was Tiny.Mother and son gazed at each other. Seth sported a big grin, shaded beneath a thick, silky mustache. Louisa’s mouth worked and worked, but her tongue refused to flap. No words. “Mama?” You don’t ever forget about your babies. Not the dead ones, not the living ones. Not the ones who broke your heart or the ones who made you proud. You don’t ever forget about them. The ones that broke your heart, well those, you wish you could forget, but it’s doesn’t come naturally, so you push them way to the back of your mind, out of sight. You allow yourself to think about them on their birthdays, holidays or on the rare occasion when you spot someone who has their same mannerisms or physical characteristics.If you hinged your mind to the ones who shattered you, the heartbreaking would ensue every moment of everyday. No one could live that way and remain sane. “Who dis, mama?” John asked as his eyes hopped between the man and the wife who was desperately trying to disappear into the porch column. “Not dis,” Seth corrected with a smile. “This.” Louisa sent the John to his room.She had worked hard to forget those times and preferred not to tread over those memories of bondage, brutality, degradation and suffering. Why speak of it at all? The past was the past and really what was the sense of turning over a nightmare? But when the relic of that nightmare showed up on her front porch, with a wife in tow, all the effort Louisa had poured into forgetting, turned to dust. And what had been, took breath once again.Louisa looked down and her shoes were gone, so was her fine blue skirt and crisp white blouse. Suddenly, her hair was wrapped in a rag, and there was a baby strapped to the front of her and a forty-pound sack of cotton strapped to her back. Abraham Lincoln was the boogeyman - a story white southerners threatened their children with: You betta be good or Abraham Lincoln will free all of the slaves, and then what will you do?“Seth?”It all rushed back. The pain, sorrow and the time she whispered into the ear of her sweet, God-abiding husband, “I think I hate him.”“Who?”“Seth.”“Your son?”“Not my son, his son.”Now his son was standing on her porch and Louisa was a woman under water. And that water was contempt. Fathom and fathom’s of contempt.“You don’t mean that,” Tenant had said.“I do. He chose him over me.”“He’s just a child.”“Child or not, I was his mother.”“Still are.”“Nah, he’s dead to me.”“Louisa!”“If he was on fire, I wouldn’t spit on him.”“Louisa!” The day was unbearably hot and Louisa kept Seth and his wife out on the porch for as long as she could, hoping, praying and willing the heat to bear down on him until he literally erupted in flames. But all Seth did was perspire and gaze at his mother with love and longing. If he could have read her thoughts, Seth would have wished Louisa a nice day, donned his hat, taken his wife’s hand into his own and went on with is life. But he did not posses that magic and so threw himself into Louisa and embraced her with all of his might. “Oh mama, I’ve missed you so very much.”Louisa raised her hand and patted Seth stiffly on the back, as if he was a mutt, come to beg for scraps of food. Finally, she said, “Come in.”She served them tea and cookies in the drawing room. Henry Adams had taken real good care of Seth. When he came of age, he sent off to Howard University. “Papa died during my sophomore year,” Seth said between sips of his tea. “But he left enough money for me to finish my studies. More than enough for me to marry and start my life.” He looked lovingly at Tiny before returning his attention to Louisa. “I’m a teacher now, mama.”All those years later, Louisa still cringed at the sound of that word: Papa. She detested it so much that she didn’t allow her children to use the term. “They’ll call you daddy,” she told Tenant when she was pregnant with their first child. “How did you find me?” She asked flatly. “I saw a picture of you and your husband, the reverend, in the newspaper.” “The Telegraph?” “Atlanta Constitution. About the clothing drive for the tornado victims.” John and James were eavesdropping on the steps leading to the second floor. Seth waved at them and then looked at Louisa and asked, “My brothers?”Louisa nodded.“Well can I meet them?”Louisa nodded again and the boys came clamoring into the parlor before she could summon them.“Hi!” They chirped in unison.“Well hello,” Seth offered joyously as he shook James’ hand and then Johns. “A pleasure to meet you both.”The boys grinned and looked at Louisa for direction. “My name is Seth,” Seth said. “Do you know who I am?”The boys shook their heads.Seth looked at Louisa who was staring down at the floor.“I’m your brother,” he whispered.John and James exchanged confused looks and then looked to Louisa for confirmation, but she was up, clearing away the teacups and saucers.“Can I help,” Tiny squeaked. But Louisa shook her head no.“Our brother? But you white?” John spat incredulously.Well, I’m only half white.” Seth laughed.“Which half?”“My daddy’s half.”The boys exchanged looks. “My daddy ain’t white!” John bellowed.“Don’t say ain’t,” Seth counseled. “My daddy isn’t white,” he corrected. “That’s true but my daddy was.”The boys looked at Louisa who was heading through the doorway towards the kitchen.Seth absently took his wife’s hand into his and softly caressed her fingers. “Mama, you didn’t tell them about me?”Louisa spun around. The pain is Seth’s face filled the room, clung to the drapes, slipped into the faint grooves of the oak moldings and blended into the bright colors of the stained glass window. “And your husband, does he know about me?”The knife was lodged and it was clear; Seth was wounded. All that was left for Louisa to do was twist the blade and he would bleed out right there on the parquet floor. But she was struck with a moment of humanity, or maybe God stepped in, or better still, maybe it was the fact that no matter what, a mother’s undying love for her child is just that – forever.Whatever it was, it barred Louisa from telling a lie and crushing Seth to bits.Louisa rolled her shoulders, plastered a sunny smile on her face and said, “Of course he knows about you, Seth. Why wouldn’t he? You my child, ain’t you?”
Seth H. Adams
Tiny Adams
Bernice L. McFadden
Nevertheless, an editor - a good editor - is a writer's best friend because he or she can see what it is the writer was blind too.
When an editor suggests that a sentence, page, paragraph or entire chapter warrants expulsion from the body of work - I won't lie - it feels like a limb is being hacked off.
Sometimes, I disagree with the advice, but most times, after I've had a few days to sit with it, I secede.
Why am I using war terms? Well, because the writing life is a battlefield!
In any case, I tweeted that I was thinking about posting some chapters from The Book of Harlan that failed to escape the editorial sword and was met with mixed responses. Some folk felt that it was best to leave "trash" in the trash can while others were open and ready to read.
For those of you who are interested here is the chapter that I'll call: Mother and Son.
In The Book of Harlan, Tenant and Louisa Robinson are portrayed of former sharecroppers who've done well for themselves. That's about all you know. But in earlier drafts, I gave much more background information on their lives. As you may know, The Book of Harlan is peopled with my real, true ancestors. Tenant and Louisa Robinson were my GGgrandparents who were born into slavery. Louisa had many children before she met and married Tenant after emancipation. According to my research, she buried all but one of her children, a son, Seth H. Adams - who I believe to be the result of a master/slave union.
I found direct descendants of Seth still living in Georgia who blessed me with surviving photos of him and his native-American wife, which are posted immediately following the chapter along with photo of my GGgrandfather, Tenant M. Robinson
Without further adieu - here is my imagined story about my GGgrandparents and my great uncle Seth Adams.
Mother and Son by Bernice L. McFadden (unedited)
Christmas songs drifted from the radio in the sitting room and sailed through the house. Emma hummed along under her breath as she dried and carefully stacked the dinner plates into the cabinet.Louisa was seated at the table, curling and uncurling the hem of the tablecloth. Emma looked around the kitchen, sighed, folded the dishtowel and placed it on the rim of the sink.“Come and sit down. I wanna tell you a story,” Louisa blurted suddenly.Emma was in no mood for conversation. “Maybe later,” she stated wearily.“Ain’t no later. I gotta tell you this now. So sit down.”Emma rolled her eyes, pulled out a chair and sat. She stared at her mother expectantly. For a moment, Louisa seemed unsure where to begin. Her eyes darted around the kitchen as she grappled with what she was about to share.It was a difficult story to tell. Giving voice to that memory would mean Louisa would have to relive it, every heart-stopping, terror-filled moment of it. But the story was necessary if she was to make Emma understand Harlan’s scorn and her hurt and angered response. The story had to be told, before mother and son’s emotions, spun further out of control and vined wild.Louisa flattened her palms against the wooden kitchen table and began at the place that made the most sense – the end. Which we all know is really the beginning of something new.In 1865, Tenant and Louisa, limped out of slavery. Tenants had welts on his back, thighs and calves that he would take to the grave. Harlan had seen those scars, had asked questions about them, and Tenant had indulged him.Louisa had scars too; although hers were hidden in her womb and crisscrossing her heart.Louisa’s mother died giving birth to her. The only thing Louisa knew about her mother was her name, which was Lizzie. She knew her father's name as well: Master. Known to his friends and family as Henry. Everyone else addressed him as Mr. Adams or sir.When Louisa was twelve, Henry Adams sent for her. Just as he had her mother thirteen years earlier. He did not receive Louisa in his personal boudoir; instead she was brought to the bedroom set aside specifically for that particular aberration.The walls of the room were painted a soft yellow. The one lone window was nailed shut and hidden by plum-colored, brocade drapes.One queen sized bed, a simple wooden chair and low stool balancing a white wash bowl filled with warm, soapy water.Louisa was ordered to strip and clean wash herself clean.Afterward, Henry Adams dried her with a stiff rough towel, which raised angry red bumps on her skin.“Get on the bed.”She was weeping by then. He bound her wrists and ankles to the bedposts, but did not gag her mouth (he enjoyed hearing them scream) climbed on top and scattered her.Louisa returned to her shack, bloodied and dazed. Nine months later she gave birth to her first child, a girl. She died within hours of taking her first breath. The older slaves, buried the newborn in a dirt hole behind the hog pen.Weeks later, Henry Adams sent for her again.Emma sat staring.Louisa said, “You understand Emma, that I was that child, right?” Emma slowly nodded her head.Between the ages of thirteen and sixteen, Louisa gave birth to six of Henry Adam’s children. The first five all died within hours of breathing the bondage-tinged air. The sixth one, however, kept breathing. Louisa named him Seth. He was the spitting image of his father. Who was also his grandfather.“All one in the same. Are you following me?”Again, Emma nodded. Henry Adams fathered twenty-four children on that plantation, but Seth was the one who most resembled him – bright white, dark brown hair and eyes the color of hazelnuts - maybe that’s why Henry Adams hard heart began to melt. He never took a wife, and so had no legitimate off spring, just the bastards that picked his cotton, cooked his food, cleaned his house and tended his livestock. As old age bore down on Henry Adams, he became obsessed with his legacy and since Seth looked as white as any white child he’d ever seen, he decision to claim Seth as his own, made perfect sense to no one but him.Henry Adams took Seth in and schooled him in the ways of white folks. Reading, writing, arithmetic. How one should conduct oneself during high tea, which utensil was to be used for which course, God and his commandments and so on.Later, he taught Seth about fine scotch, the art of wooing women, how to spot the difference between a good cigar and one stuffed with rabbit tobacco, how to shoot a pistol.When emancipation came, Henry Adams offered Emma five hundred dollars to allow Seth to remain behind with him. Louisa cast her eyes towards the horizon and said, “No thank you sir, you keep your money and I’ll keep my son.” Seth started to cry. Louisa thought he was shedding tears of relief. She extended a hand to him, but Seth turned his back on her and went instead to Henry Adams side. Louisa heart stalled. She slapped her thigh, ‘Boy, you come here this minute!” “Don’t make me go with her papa!” Seth wailed. Papa? It had been their secret thing. “In the house, when it’s just you and me, you don’t have to call me Master or Sir. You can call me daddy or papa.” “Come here, now!” Louisa ordered sternly. “No, I don’t want to!”Henry Adams threw his arm around Seth’s shuddering shoulder and used his free hand to pull the wad of bills from his left pocket of his trousers. “Don’t be stupid, Louisa. Take the money.”Louisa left Seth behind and joined the droves of freed men and women traversing byways and country roads. She wanted to get as far away as possible from Henry Adams, Seth and Aiken County, South Carolina.When Louisa reached Atlanta, Georgia she stopped walking and took shelter in an encampment hidden deep in the woods. There she was given a piece of bread and allowed to drink as much water as she could hold. Louisa removed her battered shoes and went to sit in the shade of a pine tree. Louisa could feel her heartbeat pounding away in the soles of her feet. A weariness settled into her body that made her feel giddy.. For a while she straddled wake and sleep, unable to decipher between her dreams and the activity swirling around her. Finally, eyes closed, her head drooped and she succumbed to sleep. Hours later, she was awakened by a hello, that seemed to come from the end of a long tunnel.Her eyes fluttered open. She wiped at her mouth and yawned loudly.“Hello,” the greeting came again. Louisa looked up into the dark, portly face of a man wearing moth-eaten coat tails, and a battered top hat. He looked ridiculous. Louisa stifled a smile.“Hi.” Louisa said as she carefully studied his face. There was something familiar about his kind eyes. ‘Do I know you?”The man removed his hat, revealing a heap of tightly, coiled black hair.The man squinted at her and shook his head. “No, no. I don’t think so.”“Oh.”“Where you headed?” “I don’t know.” “You looking for kin?” “Don’t have any that I knows of.” “You mind?” He pointed at the empty space of dirt beside her.“Not at all.” Louisa scooted over.Louisa noted the filthy rags wrapped around his shoes.“My name is Tenant. Tenant Robinson.“Louisa.”His clothes smelled faintly of skunk.“Nice to meet ‘cha.”“Same here.”“Beautiful day, don’t you think?”Louisa looked around. “Yes, I suppose it is.”Tenant pulled a battered bible from the inside of his jacket. “I’m a preacher.” He announced brightly as if Louisa had asked.Louisa glanced at the bible Tenant cradled in his hands. “That’s nice.”“Are you a Christian Miss Louisa?” Louisa thought for a moment. On Sunday mornings, Henry Adams would gather the slaves in the clearing behind the big house, and rattle on and on about the goodness of Jesus and the miracles he’d performed. According to Henry Adams the only black man in the bible was Ham. “Ham and his increase had been cursed into slavery by his father, Noah.”“Which explains you all’s situation,” Henry Adams said as he ranged his eyes over the crowd of black faces. “Ya’ll is the descendants of Ham.” He said. “Destined to the end of time to be slaves to the white man,” He added, waving the bible high above his head.Louisa derived that Jesus hadn’t performed any miracles that benefited niggers, not even one as small as freeing them for slavery. Lincoln had to come along and do that. So no, she was not a Christian.“I don’t believe I am,” Louisa said.“I see,” Tenant said.They sat quietly for sometime, listening to the chatter of birds and people. Soon though, Tenant began to hum. The tune flooded Louisa with a sentiment she did not believe possible. Her eyes welled with tears. “What’s that?” Louisa asked, sniffling. “Run mourner, run.” “No, not the - ” she started, stopped and shook her head.Louisa chuckled inwardly. How could he know she was referring to the emotions rippling through her and then suddenly, he did know. “Oh that!” Tenant spouted with a smile. “Why, that’s freedom, Miss Louisa.” They left the camp together. Two weeks later, in Savannah, Louisa accepted Jesus as her Lord and Savior and Tenant as her husband.
On their wedding night, he planted soft kisses all over body. Henry Adams had never bothered with any tenderness.Tenant asked permission to roll her nightgown above her hips. Henry Adams had said, “Give me any trouble and I’ll whip the black off of you.”Tenant did not scatter Louisa as Henry had. He sank into as gently as a finger coaxing a seed into fresh turned soil.
They named their first son, James. The second boy came two years later and he was christened, John.“Thirteen years after John – Surprise! – here you come, my sweet Emma Bell.” Louisa said with a giggle.Maybe it was because she had finally accepted Jesus and his father and all of their mysteries without question, that in 1883 God took pity on Louisa and guided her lost son back to her. Seth was a grown man when he appeared on Tenant and Louisa’s front porch on that hot, August afternoon. He had a wife in tow, a tall Penobscot girl with black eyes and tall cheekbones. Her name was Tiny.Mother and son gazed at each other. Seth sported a big grin, shaded beneath a thick, silky mustache. Louisa’s mouth worked and worked, but her tongue refused to flap. No words. “Mama?” You don’t ever forget about your babies. Not the dead ones, not the living ones. Not the ones who broke your heart or the ones who made you proud. You don’t ever forget about them. The ones that broke your heart, well those, you wish you could forget, but it’s doesn’t come naturally, so you push them way to the back of your mind, out of sight. You allow yourself to think about them on their birthdays, holidays or on the rare occasion when you spot someone who has their same mannerisms or physical characteristics.If you hinged your mind to the ones who shattered you, the heartbreaking would ensue every moment of everyday. No one could live that way and remain sane. “Who dis, mama?” John asked as his eyes hopped between the man and the wife who was desperately trying to disappear into the porch column. “Not dis,” Seth corrected with a smile. “This.” Louisa sent the John to his room.She had worked hard to forget those times and preferred not to tread over those memories of bondage, brutality, degradation and suffering. Why speak of it at all? The past was the past and really what was the sense of turning over a nightmare? But when the relic of that nightmare showed up on her front porch, with a wife in tow, all the effort Louisa had poured into forgetting, turned to dust. And what had been, took breath once again.Louisa looked down and her shoes were gone, so was her fine blue skirt and crisp white blouse. Suddenly, her hair was wrapped in a rag, and there was a baby strapped to the front of her and a forty-pound sack of cotton strapped to her back. Abraham Lincoln was the boogeyman - a story white southerners threatened their children with: You betta be good or Abraham Lincoln will free all of the slaves, and then what will you do?“Seth?”It all rushed back. The pain, sorrow and the time she whispered into the ear of her sweet, God-abiding husband, “I think I hate him.”“Who?”“Seth.”“Your son?”“Not my son, his son.”Now his son was standing on her porch and Louisa was a woman under water. And that water was contempt. Fathom and fathom’s of contempt.“You don’t mean that,” Tenant had said.“I do. He chose him over me.”“He’s just a child.”“Child or not, I was his mother.”“Still are.”“Nah, he’s dead to me.”“Louisa!”“If he was on fire, I wouldn’t spit on him.”“Louisa!” The day was unbearably hot and Louisa kept Seth and his wife out on the porch for as long as she could, hoping, praying and willing the heat to bear down on him until he literally erupted in flames. But all Seth did was perspire and gaze at his mother with love and longing. If he could have read her thoughts, Seth would have wished Louisa a nice day, donned his hat, taken his wife’s hand into his own and went on with is life. But he did not posses that magic and so threw himself into Louisa and embraced her with all of his might. “Oh mama, I’ve missed you so very much.”Louisa raised her hand and patted Seth stiffly on the back, as if he was a mutt, come to beg for scraps of food. Finally, she said, “Come in.”She served them tea and cookies in the drawing room. Henry Adams had taken real good care of Seth. When he came of age, he sent off to Howard University. “Papa died during my sophomore year,” Seth said between sips of his tea. “But he left enough money for me to finish my studies. More than enough for me to marry and start my life.” He looked lovingly at Tiny before returning his attention to Louisa. “I’m a teacher now, mama.”All those years later, Louisa still cringed at the sound of that word: Papa. She detested it so much that she didn’t allow her children to use the term. “They’ll call you daddy,” she told Tenant when she was pregnant with their first child. “How did you find me?” She asked flatly. “I saw a picture of you and your husband, the reverend, in the newspaper.” “The Telegraph?” “Atlanta Constitution. About the clothing drive for the tornado victims.” John and James were eavesdropping on the steps leading to the second floor. Seth waved at them and then looked at Louisa and asked, “My brothers?”Louisa nodded.“Well can I meet them?”Louisa nodded again and the boys came clamoring into the parlor before she could summon them.“Hi!” They chirped in unison.“Well hello,” Seth offered joyously as he shook James’ hand and then Johns. “A pleasure to meet you both.”The boys grinned and looked at Louisa for direction. “My name is Seth,” Seth said. “Do you know who I am?”The boys shook their heads.Seth looked at Louisa who was staring down at the floor.“I’m your brother,” he whispered.John and James exchanged confused looks and then looked to Louisa for confirmation, but she was up, clearing away the teacups and saucers.“Can I help,” Tiny squeaked. But Louisa shook her head no.“Our brother? But you white?” John spat incredulously.Well, I’m only half white.” Seth laughed.“Which half?”“My daddy’s half.”The boys exchanged looks. “My daddy ain’t white!” John bellowed.“Don’t say ain’t,” Seth counseled. “My daddy isn’t white,” he corrected. “That’s true but my daddy was.”The boys looked at Louisa who was heading through the doorway towards the kitchen.Seth absently took his wife’s hand into his and softly caressed her fingers. “Mama, you didn’t tell them about me?”Louisa spun around. The pain is Seth’s face filled the room, clung to the drapes, slipped into the faint grooves of the oak moldings and blended into the bright colors of the stained glass window. “And your husband, does he know about me?”The knife was lodged and it was clear; Seth was wounded. All that was left for Louisa to do was twist the blade and he would bleed out right there on the parquet floor. But she was struck with a moment of humanity, or maybe God stepped in, or better still, maybe it was the fact that no matter what, a mother’s undying love for her child is just that – forever.Whatever it was, it barred Louisa from telling a lie and crushing Seth to bits.Louisa rolled her shoulders, plastered a sunny smile on her face and said, “Of course he knows about you, Seth. Why wouldn’t he? You my child, ain’t you?”
Seth H. Adams
Tiny Adams
Bernice L. McFadden
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