Chapter 26
From the Diary of Martha Smith
April 9, 1865
The war is over. The South has lost. The slaves are free.
April 10, 1865
Yesterday, I was too ecstatic to write much more than that. Matthew came downstairs, flung open the trapdoor, and said, “It’s time for you to live your life again.” I picked up Mary and took her into the sunshine. God has never made a more beautiful day. Mary stretched her legs and sang her songs, then waddled up and down the beach in front of the Sheridan place. Her eyes were big and shining. The Sheridan children couldn’t get enough of her: a new playmate. And I sat on the sand and wept into my hands. Eventually, I asked Matthew if I could borrow one of Wendy’s bathing suits, and I waded into the freezing-cold water and raised my arms to the sky and felt more alive than I had since I was a child. Before I knew what it meant to be a slave. Before I knew how entrapped I was. I imagined that I could feel the rapture of so many thousands of slaves across the country, discovering what freedom means for the first time. And I sang and danced and ran back up onto the sands to take Mary in my arms and cry.
Matthew made up a bed for Mary and me in the main house. It was the first time I slept above ground since our escape from Georgia.
Matthew and I woke up before the children this morning and went to the water. He asked me if I was thinking about heading north to find my sister and husband now that it was safe. I said of course, it was always on my mind. But Matthew told me he wasn’t sure I should. “You don’t know where they are; you have no way to make money; you have no community. If you stay here, I can help you.” I wasn’t sure what to make of it. My head was filled with questions. He said, “Ever since Wendy died, we’ve been like a ship without an anchor.” I told him I know how to cook and clean; that I could teach his children to read and write. But I also told him that I wasn’t planning on being a slave. I wanted days off sometimes. I wanted a wage. He smiled and agreed. I couldn’t believe it! I had the strangest fear he was going to beat me instead.
April 16, 1865
An actor shot the president yesterday.
Matthew stopped me from running back downstairs in fear. He said, “The war is still over. The slaves are still free. But we have lost a great man.” And we mourned together. It occurred to me that I am one of his only friends. And it’s true that we’ve become quite close since we lost Wendy. We needed one another: me in the basement and him with four children and no wife.
What will the future hold? We have no leader. We are an aimless and broken nature. How will we heal?
July 11, 1865
This life is the most beautiful one I’ve ever known. The Sheridan children have taken Mary as one of their own. The girls dress her in their old gowns; the boys tease her and teach her games. I gather them all together for breakfast, lunch, and dinner—but mostly, they amuse themselves and watch out for each other. Mornings, I perform my chores and tidy the house, but afternoons are often for myself, for reading or writing or thinking. I’ve thought so often lately of Virgil and Jane, imagining where they ended up and what they think about the war ending. Sometimes I imagine them making a plan to come get me, but other times, I know I’m kidding myself. Sometimes I wonder if they really came, would I even want to go? I’ve grown so fond of the Vineyard Sound; of the sound of the waves; of the sparkling white beaches; of the fish that Matthew hauls in from a long day at sea for me to de-bone and fry up. We glow from eating fish and swimming in the sea. We glow from the hope that comes with the dawn after a horrible war.
October 16, 1865
I couldn’t believe it when I walked out the door this morning. A harsh wind shot out from the sea and pummeled me. I nearly turned around to run back inside. But that’s when I heard the sound of my name. A carriage grew closer. At the front of it were two colored people, a man and a woman. My heart surged. I pulled up my skirts and raced across the yard. I felt like a little girl again. By the time I reached them, my sister had leaped down and opened her arms for me. I fell into her and sobbed. She cried just as hard.
She smells different, like fine soap and lavender rather than Georgian fields and sorrow and rage. She looks beautiful and well-fed. She says my name over and over, as though she can’t get enough.
The man with her is her husband, Jefferson. She met him in Canada, and they want to stay.
She tells me that every letter she sent here must never have made it. That she wrote and wrote herself to death only to never hear from me.
“I thought you were dead,” she won’t stop saying. “But I told Jefferson we had to come here and see for ourselves. And you’re not dead! And Mary is the most gorgeous sight I’ve ever seen!”
Matthew agreed to let them stay for a few nights, which means we have a full house. I know that once night comes, I’ll have to take Jane outside and ask her what happened to Virgil. I have a feeling I won’t like the answer.
Later:
Jane and I just walked along the water beneath a pregnant orange moon. She told me the entire story of what happened after she and Virgil left me behind. It’s brief.
After Martha’s Vineyard, Jane and Virgil went north to another house outside of Boston and then another even farther north of that. That’s as far as they got. They woke up in the middle of the night to gunshots. There was an uproar upstairs. Virgil was sure they would be found out. He tried to convince Jane to pack up and come with him immediately, but Jane was too frightened. “It sounded like they had the house surrounded,” Jane told me. Jane stayed hidden in the tiny closet that served as the Underground Railroad hiding place while Virgil snuck out.
But Jane doesn’t think he made it far. There was another gunshot, followed by someone calling, “I got him! I got him!”
My heart sank as she told me this story. I remember my strong and quiet Virgil; remember that he’s the father of my Mary; remember that when we first plotted to escape, it was Virgil who pushed hardest for us to go. Without him, Jane and I wouldn’t be here on Martha’s Vineyard.
I asked Jane what happened after that. How did she go on? She got lucky, she said. She met another group on the Railroad the next night, and they adopted her. They made it all the way to Canada, where she met Jefferson and got married. They have a house of their own, apparently. They’re going to have a baby. They’re going to have a normal life.
Jane keeps apologizing for leaving me behind. For heading north without me. But I keep pointing out the sky and the house and the five children in my care. I keep telling her about Matthew’s goodness. I wouldn’t have had any of it if she and Virgil hadn’t packed up and left that night.
October 17, 1865
Jane pulled me aside this afternoon and warned me not to fall in love with Matthew. “It’s better if you call him Mr. Sheridan,” she said. “He’s your boss.” I told her that he pays me a wage and that I can take off time whenever I want. I told her that I’m not in love with him. I didn’t tell her that I don’t exactly know what “love” is anymore. That I feel damaged on the inside after losing Virgil and Wendy.
Jane told me that she heard talk about me in the village. That people speculate about my relationship with Matthew.
“Don’t forget that he’s a white man in a white man’s world,” she warned. “Neither of you can escape that. The white man’s world goes on forever, even into Canada.”
I know she’s right.