Chapter Fifty-three
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They named her Liza, a version of her mother’s and grandmother’s names, and this girl, a pale creature compared to most of the other slaves—you’d say she was the color of almonds—stood out from everyone else even as she tried to stand close. Her great-grandmother had disappeared somewhere near an African river, her grandmother went mad but still gave birth before she died, and her mother succumbed in the birth throes, victim to what felt like a curse upon all the women.
Liza hoped to escape that curse.
Her father—everyone except his father seemed to know about her paternity, from the house slaves to all who lived in the back cabins and worked in the rice fields—put her to work in the main house when she was still a child, and there Liza flourished, learned under the tutelage of a black stump of a woman named Precious Sally, to help in the kitchen and to cook simple meals, if not at first for the aging master and his family, at least for the other house slaves. The doctor checked on her every time he visited the plantation, extremely worried that her father—he took him to be that dangerously mad—might at some point try to take her up the way he had her mother. He talked to the slave child, asked her certain questions that might have led her to reveal certain matters if in fact they had occurred.
But nothing.
This gave the doctor pause, and he was, at least momentarily, pleased that no harm had come to this girl.
Yet.
Because, he surmised, her father suffered from a terrible mental difficulty, and, the doctor believed, it was only a matter of time before the man would turn his attention in the worst way to his beautiful almond-colored daughter. For a while though, the man seemed to ignore her.
Meanwhile, the girl was growing, and much to the dismay of some of the field slaves who saw it, she now and then turned cart-wheels on the lawn of the main house on her way to work in the kitchen. Cooking. Baking. Cleaning. Gathering the spices.
At this point the doctor intervened and gave her periodic instruction in how to read. At least twice a week, and sometimes more, the physician would appear at the kitchen door, as though he himself were one of the slaves, forbidden to enter through the front door, with books in his arms. He taught her the alphabet from an early age. The way she sounded each letter seemed to him a small miracle, and she mastered this quickly. Oh, and doesn’t this make all the difference! He sighed to himself. Give the young bird a little shove from the nest and it instinctively spreads its wings and however clumsily flies to safety. And the human child? She sounds her letters, and soon will be able to fly on her own, yes. Scientific-minded fellow that he was, the doctor encouraged her to read to him from geography books first, such as some that he bought in town.
INTRODUCTORY LESSON
Questions to my little Reader.
What place do you live in?
Is it a town or a city you live in?
What is a town? What is a city?
Which way is north? Which south?
Which way is east? Which west?
Have you ever been in any other town or city than the one you live in?
If you have, what was the name of that town?
In going to that town, which way did you go?
What town lies next to the place in which you live, on the north?
What town is next, on the east?
What next, on the west?
What next, on the south?
What county do you live in?
Do you know what a county is?
What state do you live in?
Which way is Boston from the place you live in?
Which way is New York?
Which way is Hartford?
Which way is Philadelphia?
Have you ever seen a river?
Have you ever seen a mountain?
If you have, what was it called?
Describe a mountain?
Did you ever see the sea, or ocean?
What is the sea, land or water?
Is the land smooth and level, like the water?
Are towns built on the water, or on the land?
Do animals such as horses and cows live on the water, or on the land?
Did you ever catch any fish on the land?
Where is the sky? Where are the stars?
Did you know what the shape of the world is?
Did you ever hear of England?
Did you ever see anybody who has been in England?
Do you know which way England lies?
Did you ever hear of Asia?
Do you know which way Asia lies?
Did you ever hear of Africa, where negroes come from?
Do you know which way it lies?
The doctor’s little reader quickly learned her lessons in what lay where and how she should regard them. She learned her directions, and told him a story about catching fish on land—a silly dream she dreamed one night after reading with him. She did not know anyone who had been in England, but she had heard of Africa, yes, and she recalled quite vividly the stories old women back in the cabins told about the old country, the rivers, the forests, and she knew which way it lay. Back there, over her shoulder, where across the rice fields the ocean broke on the shore, and made a road of waves all the way back to the place where her grandmother had been born.
Where is the sky? Where are the stars?
She knew answers to these questions, too.
The stars spread overhead on dark nights without a big moon, the stars made shapes—the boy sometimes pointed these out to her—and some of these pointed toward England and some to Africa and some to Philadelphia and New York. Each of these names seemed as foreign, and as familiar, as the next. Only the stars glittered with a fascinating and hypnotic light that made her wonder about everything in the world and everything above it—creeks, rivers, roads, trees, fields, farms, horses, people, African or not, each fit into a pattern like the pattern overhead in the dark on nights without a great moon. Though some nights just before sleep she wondered how she might steal a boat and sail back to Africa, she understood that once she returned she would have no place to go. Could she look for, and find, her grandmother? How far deep into the forests must she have returned? It might be easier to float up to the stars and turn upside down and use the glowing specks of light as stepping stones back to the night skies above the place where her ancestors were born.
Such a vast place, Africa seemed in relation to all else on the globe in the book. And all a big ball, and all that ocean between her and Africa. It seemed easier to memorize a poem about it all than to contemplate leaving the plantation and returning to Africa.
GEOGRAPHICAL RHYMES TO BE REPEATED BY THE PUPIL
The world is round, and like a ball
Seems swinging in the air,
A sky extends around it all,
And stars are shining there.
Water and land upon the face
Of this round world we see,
The land is man’s safe dwelling place,
But ships sail on the sea.
Two mighty continents there are,
And many islands too,
And mountains, hills, and valleys there,
With level plains we view.
The oceans, like the broad blue sky,
Extend around the sphere,
While seas, and lakes, and rivers, lie
Unfolded, bright, and clear.
Around the earth on every side
Where hills and plains are spread,
The various tribes of men abide
White, black, and copper red.
And animals and plants there be
Of various name and form,
And in the bosom of the sea
All sorts of fishes swarm.
And now geography doth tell,
Of these full many a story,
And if you learn your lessons well,
I’ll set them all before you.
Ball…air…all…there…She loved the sound of the rhymes…sky…sphere…lie…clear…
If there was any moment in her early life when she first thought about walking away, running, it must have been here. Mark it!