Hang a Thousand Trees with Ribbons Read online

  Nathaniel came home one day bearing a package wrapped in burlap. Inside were the finest pair of delicate yet warm boots I had ever seen.

  Mary gave me her best muff, the one I had so often admired when she wore it to church of a Sunday.

  Aunt Cumsee had sewn me a fine new pocket to wear around my waist. It was embroidered with the colors of summer.

  I should have been happy, but I was not, as we set out the first day. Something was missing.

  My cowrie shell. How I wished for it as we drove through a fine, needlelike snow that dusted the housetops and streets! We were to be received by Governor Bernard this afternoon. I was terrified.

  As Prince drew the carriage up before the governor's mansion, servants came running to assist us out of the carriage. But Prince was there before them, helping me down. In his hand he had a small package.

  "Wif permission, ma'am." And he bowed to Mrs. Wheatley. "I'd like to give somethin' to Phillis, too."

  The governor's servants stood waiting. Mrs. Wheatley knew she could not object. "Of course," she said.

  Prince and I had not had a decent conversation for months. He didn't loll around much when his chores were finished, for which Mrs. Wheatley was grateful.

  He handed the small package to me. "Open it," he said.

  Inside was a black velvet ribbon, the kind white girls wore around their necks, usually with a cameo in front.

  On the front of mine was my cowrie shell. I gasped. "I lost it! Wherever did you find it?"

  "You lost it in the yard. I had a hole bored in it so the ribbon could pass through."

  I drew it out of the wrapping. "It's my cowrie shell," I explained to Mrs. Wheatley. "My mother gave it to me and I thought I'd lost it. May I put it on?"

  "Of course, dear, but do hurry. We can't keep the governor waiting."

  I tied it around my neck. "I'll wear it always," I said. Mrs. Wheatley took my hand and hurried me down the brick walk.

  "My dear," Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson said the next day, when we were visiting his house, "your recitation was perfect. And the poem! I am much taken. Writing is a pastime of mine, you know. I have no talent at describing characters, but I took years to write my History of Massachusetts Bay. It was thrown into the gutter the night the mob destroyed my house in north Boston in sixty-five."

  He had the bluest eyes I ever saw. "That would have been the Stamp Act mob, sir," I said.

  "I see you know your history as well. They destroyed my home, my fruit trees; drank my wine, took my dead wife's jewelry. They ruined every book and paper I owned. We had to move here, to Unkity Hill in Milton."

  "It's a lovely home, sir."

  "Yes." He stood up and gestured to a far window. "On good days you can see Mount Wachusett. To the east my fields run down to the Neposet River. And there is a wonderful view of Boston Harbor."

  I went to the window with him, looking toward the harbor. But all we could see was falling snow.

  "Miss Grizzel, we'll have tea now." He turned to the elderly woman in lavender silk who sat doing needlework. She rang a bell cord for a servant.

  "See what can be accomplished, Peggy, when one sets one's mind to a task?" He walked back across the room and touched the golden curls of his young daughter. She was his favorite, Mrs. Wheatley had told me. His other daughter, Sallie, was married.

  "Billie," he said to his youngest son, "now you know why I would have you keep to your studies. Here we have a young woman who is a slave. Who had no formal education. And she writes like an angel. Would that you take example from her."

  I winced at the word "slave." And for just a moment I felt like the bear on the wharf with the chain around its neck, again.

  Then Hutchinson turned to speak to me, and his blue eyes were earnest and sincere. "My two older boys are already through Harvard, my dear, and I would be much gratified if either of them displayed an ounce of your talent."

  I blushed and curtsied. The man meant every word that he said. Nathaniel called him Tommy-skin-and-bones. But I liked him. He was a Tory, yes, but he had suffered much. And he was gracious and debonair in spite of the hatred directed at him in Boston. There was something here worth pondering. If I ever got the time to ponder anything again.

  I did not seem to have a moment to myself these days, to think, read, or study. I was constantly on display. It was wearying.

  And it did not matter to Mrs. Wheatley whether we visited Whigs or Tories. Politics had naught to do with her plans for me.

  Shamelessly, she pursued both.

  On the way to and from our destinations she would have Prince halt the carriage in front of booksellers' shoppes. We visited the shoppe of James Rivington, that of Cox and Berry. And she had an inordinate fondness for newspaper editors.

  "Oh, Mr. Boyles, we were just driving by and I wanted to see one of your esteemed new books. On these cold evenings I just love sitting by the fireside and reading."

  We hadn't had an idle evening by the fireside in near a month. But Mr. Boyles, printer and bookseller on Marlborough Street who brought out the News Letter, was flattered, of course. In no time he had wiped his ink-stained hands, sent an apprentice for a tray of tea, and was listening avidly as my mistress expounded on the merits of my poetry.

  Then around the corner to the Boston Gazette and Country Journal, owned by Mr. Edes and Mr. Gill.

  All the newspaper editors rose from their desks to greet my mistress. All were friendly and encouraging to me.

  "Smell the ink, Phillis," Mrs. Wheatley said to me as we walked into Thomas Fleet's Evening Post on Cornhill Street, late of a December afternoon. "Look at the press! They set words in print! And someday all of these newspapers will be printing your work. And all these booksellers carrying them."

  It was a heady business for a young girl. I felt the strange excitement. Newspapers were powerful and far reaching. They had a voice. And one day soon, they would give me one.

  I wrote another poem. On the near-tragic sea voyage of Messrs. Hussey and Coffin.

  The day when I was to be given a voice was coming, sooner than I realized.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  DECEMBER 1767

  My poem about Messrs. Hussey and Coffin was published that December, right before Christmas, in the Newport Mercury. Unbenownst to me, Mrs. Wheatley worked her magic and it was accepted.

  On the morning the paper arrived in the post, they were all waiting for me at the breakfast table, smiling. When I entered the room they stood and applauded. Then from behind me I felt the others come in, Aunt Cumsee, Prince, even a scowling Sulie.

  "What is it?" I felt myself blushing. "What's happened?"

  Mrs. Wheatley came forward and embraced me. "Nothing has happened, Phillis, except perhaps the greatest moment of your life. Your poem has been published. Look." She held the paper up in front of me.

  My eyes scanned the words. My words. "Oh," I said again and burst into tears. So taken was I with the sheer joy of the moment that I could not face any of them. I hid my face against Mrs. Wheatley's snow white shawl collar.

  The breakfast was festive, with fresh fish, sugared ham, Bohea tea, and lemon cake made with fresh lemons that had just arrived on the Wheatleys' ship yesterday. Mr. Wheatley and Nathaniel raised their mugs of rum in a toast. Twice there came a knocking on the front door and Prince brought in written congratulations, delivered by messenger, from the Wheatleys' friends.

  My head was spinning. I coughed. My head felt feverish.

  "There will be no calls today," Mrs. Wheatley announced. "You shall sit by the fire and read and be spoiled."

  "More than she is already?" Nathaniel asked good-naturedly. But before he left for his countinghouse he leaned over me and planted a cool kiss on my forehead. "Congratulations, Phillis. You have made Mother very happy."

  The kiss was cool, impersonal, such as I'd seen Mary give her pet cat. Still, I luxuriated in it And I felt its imprint on my forehead all morning.

  But there was a price to pay.
Even for that one poem.

  I had the copy of the Newport Mercury in my hand. The house was quiet, except for sounds of pots and pans from the kitchen. It was the first opportunity I'd had to really study my words in the newspaper.

  And then I saw the announcement that prefaced the poem.

  Please to insert the following Lines, composed by a Negro Girl (belonging to one Mr. Wheatley of Boston) on the following Occasion, viz. Messrs. Hussey and Coffin, as undermentioned, belonging to Nantucket, being bound from thence to Boston, narrowly escaped being cast away on Cape Cod, in one of the late Storms; upon their Arrival, being at Mr. Wheatley's, and while at Dinner, told of their narrow Escape, this Negro Girl at the same Time 'tending Table, heard the Relation, from which she composed the following Verses.

  I gasped.

  Mrs. Wheatley looked up from her reading. "What is it, Phillis? Are you unwell?"

  "No, ma'am, I'm fine. It's just that it says here in the preface that I was tending the table when Messrs. Hussey and Coffin came to dinner and told us of their voyage."

  "Yes, I know." She smiled.

  "But I wasn't tending the table. I was at dinner with all of you. They have made a mistake."

  "It's no mistake, Phillis." Again she smiled, then reached forward and patted my hand. "It's the only way the editors would abide to preface the poem."

  "Ma'am?"

  She sighed. "I wrote the preface myself, Phillis. I said you were at the table with us. The editors said they could not give such an account. That it would be unseemly. The only way they would publish the poem was if I allowed them to say you were tending the table. Do you understand?"

  My throat constricted. "Yes, I see. It's the price."

  "Now, now, Phillis, don't you fret about the cost of getting the poem published. I am happy to bear any financial burden to promote your career."

  "Not that price, ma'am. The one Nathaniel told me about."

  "Nathaniel? What has he been telling you? I won't have him worrying your head about what all this is costing us. Mr. Wheatley and I are honored to do it for you."

  I sighed and settled down to concentrate on my words in the paper. "Nothing, ma'am. Nathaniel hasn't been telling me anything," I said.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  SUMMER 1770

  I had gone downstairs for about the third time to fetch some freshly pressed garment to pack in my large trunk. On my way back to my room, I heard voices behind the door of my master and mistress's chamber.

  I know it is not seemly to eavesdrop. But my mistress was saying words that I myself had been thinking.

  "Why is it," she was asking her husband, "that all joy is trimmed with pain and all pain with joy?"

  "I'm too tired for abstractions, dear. Explain yourself."

  "It has been such a dreadful winter in Boston. Yet in spite of it all, there is hope. If the proposals in the Boston Censor bring enough subscribers, Phillis's first volume will soon be published."

  "I would not count on that, dear. The Censor is a Tory sheet. Influential Patriots ignore it. I think it will not last in this political climate."

  "Poetry is not political, John. Both Tories and Patriots have encouraged Phillis. They all applaud her."

  "You have pursued, both Tories and Patriots, Susanna. Soon you will have to sort your loyalties out with Phillis's poetry. As Nathaniel has sorted his out with his business ventures."

  "I refuse to sort out my friends. And I trust them not to sort out me."

  "And then there is the matter of race. A more pressing reason why I think there will not soon be a volume of poetry published."

  "Race? Nonsense, John! Genius is genius. It has no need of status or nationality."

  "Its promoters do. Especially have they need of money."

  "What mean you, John? What have you heard? Tell me."

  "Talk is being bandied about that no printer or publisher will bring out such a volume. That none truly believe a Negro girl wrote this poetry."

  "Lies! They have all met Phillis. None have told me they do not credit her with the writing."

  "They say one thing to you, my dear. But what do they say to their subscribers? No, I am afraid that her poems must be brought out in London."

  "London?" My mistress was unbelieving.

  "Yes. You must set your course for London, dear girl. Even as Nathaniel is doing."

  "Nathaniel is going to London?" She was incredulous. "Why?"

  "He must develop our business interests there."

  "When?"

  "Not for a while yet, but he is going. You should think of sending Phillis with him. She will be well received there."

  "London?" my mistress echoed. Her voice sounded so forlorn. "But, John, Phillis is an American."

  "So is Benjamin Franklin. And he has been well received there."

  "John, be serious."

  "I am. I thought you said poetry had no nationality."

  "Isn't it sad to think that her book won't be brought out here?"

  "Sadness has naught to do with it. It is simply a matter of there being more than one way to skin a cat, my dear. The concept is absolutely American."

  "London," my mistress said. "Perhaps I can write to the Countess of Huntingdon, Selina Hastings. She is part of the international Christian missionary circle that supports Moor's Indian Charity School. And John Thornton, the English millionaire philanthropist. He's part of that circle, too. What think you, John?"

  "I say you are wonderfully American, dear. You know many ways to skin the cat. And I say we should get some sleep. We leave for Newport early in the morning."

  London! With Nathaniel! I fair trembled with excitement.

  But that was far off. Tomorrow we were going to Newport. I would see Obour! I had not seen her since the day we parted in the slave market.

  There were many reasons for the trip. I had developed a cough last winter, 1770. It was Mary's last chance to have a "season" before she married her reverend next January. And Boston was in chaos.

  Boston was always in chaos, of course, but this time matters were fraught with danger. Troops had occupied the town since September of '68, drilling, loitering, and being boisterous and troublesome. In February some of those troops had shot at Americans, killing five, one a nigra man. The troops had left in March, but the town was still up in arms about the upcoming trial. One could never tell when another fracas would ignite.

  Besides, I had written three poems about the trouble. One on the arrival of the ships of war; another about the death, at Tory hands, of the street urchin Chris Seider; and the third about the massacre. After all, it had taken place on the street where we lived.

  I saw no reason not to. People were declaring themselves all over the place. Ministers were shouting from the pulpits God's words to Noah after the Flood: "Whosoever sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed."

  All this talk about shedding blood made Nathaniel nervous. It was bad for trade, he said. My poetry made him even more nervous. It was getting too inflammatory. I think he thought it, too, was bad for trade. Nathaniel, who had once complained that Parliament was bottling us up, decided to stay neutral. And said that his parents should get me out of town for the summer. So we were going.

  "Eat your meat, Phillis," my mistress said.

  But I could not eat. How could I, when but a stone's throw away was my dear friend, Obour?

  There she was, in the kitchen of the elegant Tanner home. And there was I, at the table with them and my people in the dining room. I could see her, she could see me. But I was not permitted to talk with her. Especially not when she waited on the table.

  I felt anguish and confusion. And anger at my mistress, yes, for not allowing me to go and throw my arms around Obour. And at myself, for not defying her.

  I had to sit there and pretend interest while Mr. Tanner went on about Newport's wonders. And how the boats the inhabitants used on the Sound were called double-enders.

  "After supper I'd like to offer my guests a
sail in our own double-ender," he was saying. "The Sound is lovely at sunset."

  "You must excuse Phillis," Mrs. Wheatley said. "I cannot permit her to go. She's had a cough. I fear the damp air."

  A few moments later, when Obour brought another platter of ham to the table, she leaned over me and I felt something drop in my lap. When she moved on I looked down. It was a folded paper. A note! I watched her glide out of the room, head held high. Mr. Tanner was now talking about Block Island, thirty miles across the Sound, and how its coves once provided hiding places for Captain Kidd the pirate.

  I waited in the Tanner library, as Obour's note had suggested. The others had all gone off for their sail. Impatiently, I paced, not even looking at the books. I stood in front of the great window, looking out at the water.

  "I've finished my chores. Are you ready?"

  She stood in the doorway. I ran to her. We embraced.

  "I can't believe it's you." She touched my short, curly hair, examined my gown. "My, you're fancy. And you've grown up."

  "No," I said, drawing back to take her measure. "I'm still skinny and ugly, skin and bones. But you! Obour, you're a woman!"

  She was tall, and rounded in all the right places. But more than that, she had an air of practiced calm I knew I never could have. "I'm older by a year, remember?" She laughed. "Come, let's get out of here."

  "What is this place, Obour?"

  We had run, hand in hand, shoes off, for about ten minutes along the coast, away from the Tanner house. Now we stood on the heights overlooking the harbor. If we turned, we could see the house in the distance, like a great ship rising out of the dunes. Candlelight already glowed in the windows.

  In front of us was the Sound. Behind us, a massive stone tower at least thirty feet high, supported by columns, abandoned and overgrown with sea grasses and weeds.

  "This is the old windmill. Been here for more than a hundred years. Nobody comes here anymore. I make it my private place. I come here to read. And think. Let me show you."