Hang a Thousand Trees with Ribbons Read online

  "So, since men with money are against this Stamp Act, you're against it now, too." Mary's tone was snide.

  "It will ruin our economy," Nathaniel said.

  Mary grimaced. "If something affects trade you care. My John is preaching against the Stamp Act for the good of all."

  "The good of all is his business," Nathaniel said; "mine is trade." Then he grinned. "Did John not tell you how it affects those contemplating marriage?"

  "Don't jest, Nathaniel," Mary said.

  "I don't. The Gazette said today that many young people are joining in wedlock earlier than they intended, because after the first of November it will be difficult to have the ceremony performed without paying dearly for stamping."

  Mary flushed. "Mother, make him stop."

  "Enough, children," Mrs. Wheatley chided. "You know we encourage intelligent discourse. But let's not let it divide our family."

  I looked at Nathaniel. It affects us all, he'd said. We can never be slaves. I liked the ring of it.

  When Aunt Cumsee brought in the whipped syllabub, we heard the clamor outside. Dusk had fallen; candles flickered on the table. We ran to the windows. A crowd had appeared.

  Mary gasped. "Where did they come from?" She was afraid.

  I was not. I was seized by a sense of excitement.

  "Crowds come from nowhere these days," Mr. Wheatley said. "I suggest we close all the shutters."

  We went about fastening the shutters on the inside.

  Nathaniel secured all the doors. "Mary, play your harpsichord so Mother and Father don't hear the noise." And he ran up the stairs.

  Mary sat to play. Aunt Cumsee served the syllabub. I lighted more candles. Nathaniel came back down and took his place at the table. Inside his frock coat he had a long pistol stuck in the waistband of his breeches. Was I the only one to notice?

  After dessert Mr. and Mrs. Wheatley sat in chairs before the empty fireplace. Mrs. Wheatley took up some petit point.

  I slipped out of the room and followed Nathaniel across the hall into the parlor. He had one shutter open. From outside there came the dull murmur of many voices as more and more people surged down King Street, waving their arms, one great body driven by their anger.

  High above them they carried the straw Andrew Oliver on a bier.

  Nathaniel stood watching, hands behind his back.

  "What is it?" I whispered.

  "A mock funeral procession."

  "What are they chanting?"

  "'Liberty, property, and no stamps!'"

  I listened, making sense of the chant then. Over and over they said it. Louder and louder. There was a rhythm to it, a sense of purpose. They were coming right by our house.

  "Are you afraid?" Nathaniel asked.

  "Mary is. But no, I'm not. I think it's exciting."

  He granted.

  "And besides, you have a pistol."

  "How do you know that?"

  "I saw it"

  He reached out his hand and brushed my cheek. "You'll fare well," he said. "You don't miss much and you're not afraid."

  I flushed under the praise.

  He put an arm around my shoulder and drew me toward him. I smelled the tobacco and strong-scented soap he used. I leaned next to him, happy, watching the crowd go by chanting, stomping, orderly, yet fair to bursting.

  "Take notice of them, Phillis," he said. "These are the common folk, the tradesmen, the town artisans, cord wainers, carpenters, farmers, shopkeepers, printers. These are the people who helped make me a merchant. Never underestimate their power."

  "Women, too," I said, looking up at him.

  He smiled down at me. "Yes, women, too."

  "Where do they go?" I asked.

  "Likely to Oliver's office. Even to his residence."

  "For what purpose?"

  "To do mischief. To smash windows. Tear his garden. Drink his wine. Scatter his papers."

  I felt a thrill of joy. I felt the cadence of their words pounding in with the blood in my veins. Liberty! Property! No stamps!

  And we will never be slaves, I thought. We will never be slaves.

  The next morning Prince was back, bringing wood in for Aunt Cumsee, waiting on the table. No one called him to account. But I heard Nathaniel chide him quietly as Prince fetched Nathaniel's hat.

  "I hope you know what you're getting involved in, Prince. Most of our miseries we bring on ourselves. And they're the sum of our own stupidity."

  "I know," Prince said. "I know."

  Chapter Seventeen

  SUMMER 1766

  A year later I wrote my first poem.

  I was twelve years old and of a sudden I hated the way I looked. I was skinny as a beanpole. My skin was as black as if I'd been rubbed with fireplace ashes, and I was starting to know that no matter what I did, no matter how smart or amiable I managed to be, I was still not white folk. And I never would be, either.

  I hated my hair, which would lend itself to no brush but stuck out every which way on my wretched head.

  I would watch Mary brushing her long silken hair at night and hate the sight of it. And her.

  Mary was not pretty, but she had two commodities I lacked. She acted pretty. And she had a bosom. Generally those two virtues were of great account in Boston in 1766.

  Oh, I could recite from Shakespeare and Alexander Pope. I read Plato and Homer. I read the Iliad and the Odyssey. Nathaniel drilled these things in my head.

  Mary did not even know what they were. "Would you like to come to a musical with me and Thankful Hubbard this evening?" she asked one day as I stood watching Sulie doing up her hair.

  "No thank you. I've got the Iliad" I said. I meant that I had to study the Iliad, for Nathaniel would be asking me about it that night.

  "Oh?" Mary frowned. "Well, in that case you'd best lie down and take a powder. You know how Mama frets about sickness."

  I just stared at her as I left the room. Was she that much of a noodlehead? Or was she just not paying mind to me?

  She was a noodlehead, I decided. And yet she was the petted only daughter in the family. Nathaniel abided her, teased her, but when all was said and done, took her interest to heart. Her parents provided her with every frippery and forbearance.

  Mary's afternoons were filled with teas, jaunts with friends, rides in the countryside, and bookshoppe lectures.

  One afternoon when she had just left for such a lecture, I looked up from my newest sampler at my mistress. "Why do I have to sit here doing stitches? Why can't I go to a bookshoppe lecture like Mary?"

  "Mary is courting, dear. This is her time to do frivolous things. Soon enough, she'll marry and be burdened with responsibilities."

  "Will I marry?"

  "Mayhap, yes, someday. But you are different, Phillis. Surely you know that."

  "Because I'm a Negro?"

  "No, dear, no. There are Negroes aplenty in Boston. Because you have a good turn of mind and we have educated you. So you must prepare yourself, school yourself, discipline yourself, for what lies ahead."

  "What lies ahead?" I asked.

  Her eyes went soft. "I don't know, Phillis. We none of us know what lies in the future. But we want you to be prepared. So you must work harder, pray more, and watch with whom you form alliances. You must be above reproach at all times."

  While Mary has all the sport, I thought dismally.

  I wrote my poem. If Mary thought the Iliad was a disease, I would write poetry. I would write about virtue.

  I had memorized and recited so much poetry for Nathaniel that spring that writing one of my own came as easy as breathing. And it looked so pleasing, written out in my fine script.

  My words, mine. I felt filled with a secret satisfaction I had never felt before in my life.

  Oddly enough, it was Mary who discovered my first poem. And it was all because of hair.

  My hair.

  I was reciting for Nathaniel one evening. He was absolutely daft about my reciting. He said it would give me esteem, and I needed
esteem.

  "Don't fidget," he scolded. I was reciting a Shakespeare sonnet. He made me do it again.

  I commenced.

  "Don't tug at your hair!" he scolded. "Why must you always tug at your hair?"

  "I hate my hair."

  "What in God's name has your hair got to do with poetry?"

  I started to cry. "I hate my hair. It makes me look like a Negro."

  "You are a Negro."

  "But some Negro women have pretty hair, all short and fluffy. Why can't mine be short and fluffy?"

  He lounged back in his chair, scowling. "There's a Negro man named Lewis who has a shoppe. He styles hair. You recite this sonnet better for me tomorrow and I'll take you there and have him make you pretty. What say you?"

  I said yes.

  "Very well, then study." And he put on his linen coat and strode out. Likely to meet friends at some coffeehouse.

  Two days later I sat in the shoppe of Mr. Lewis.

  "She wants it short and fluffy," Nathaniel told him.

  Mr. Lewis smiled. "Short I can give her. Fluffy the good Lord already gave her."

  "Do your best, my good man," Nathaniel said.

  "I know what she wants," Mr. Lewis said mildly. "I know what all the pretty young Negro girls in Boston want to do with their hair."

  "Do it, then," Nathaniel urged. "I'll be back in half an hour."

  I sat dwarfed in the large chair and wrapped in a great piece of flannel. Mr. Lewis stood over me, grinning, with gleaming scissors in his hand.

  For half an hour he worked on me, snip, snip, snipping. I could scarce breathe, I was so frightened. I felt the hair getting shorter and shorter. All the while that he worked, he talked to me about the nigra women in Boston whose hair he had cut. "Did the maidservant at Mr. Hancock's," he said, "also the personal serving girl of Peggy Hutchinson. She's the daughter of the lieutenant governor. The maidservant, Petula, stayed with Peggy that night last August, when the mob went through his house and tore it down. They destroyed everything. Next day was the first day of Superior Court. And since Hutchinson is chief justice, he had to make an appearance. Petula told me he walked into court in shirtsleeves, with tears coming down his face. He had no other garment. Nor did his family."

  Because he cut the hair of the maids in all the best houses in Boston, he was filled with stories and gossip.

  "There," he said finally. And he held up a silver-handled mirror. "What do you think?"

  I squealed in delight. My hair was cut short, cropped around my head in hundreds of tiny curls. "It makes my face look..." I stopped just short of the word.

  "Saucy," he said.

  I touched the curls. "Oh, it's beautiful."

  Nathaniel returned, beaming when he saw me. "Who is this dazzling creature, this daughter of Zeus?" he asked.

  I blushed. "Don't mock me."

  "Would I do such a thing?" And from his frock coat pocket he withdrew a square of paper, unwrapped it, and handed me the most dainty bit of scrimshaw fashioned into a brooch.

  I fingered it lovingly. Tears came to my eyes.

  Nathaniel did not see them. He was paying Mr. Lewis for his services.

  "Thank you, Nathaniel," I whispered as we walked out of the shoppe. "You're so good to me."

  "Until the next time I scold."

  But my heart was filled with love for him. True, he scolded, and true, we argued. But always it had been Nathaniel who sensed my hurt and pain and rescued me from it.

  "Don't thank me," he said gruffly. "I did it for myself. Now I won't have to see you tugging at your hair anymore. You women are so vain about your hair."

  "Not half as vain as you men are," I returned, "with your powdered wigs."

  He expected the retort from me. I had to have the mettle to stand up to him, always, or I would not have been worth the bother to him. I knew that.

  Chapter Eighteen

  When we arrived at home, I was so anxious to show my mistress my new hairstyle that I ran right through the center hall to where I heard her voice in the kitchen.

  I did not see Mary standing in the front parlor with a paper in her hand.

  In the kitchen Mrs. Wheatley was taking inventory of the larder. Aunt Cumsee gave me a piece of pie and some milk.

  "Phillis, come here." Nathaniel's voice boomed through the house. I ran to him.

  He looked up from a chair in the parlor. Mary stood behind him. "This poem—is it of your making?"

  I stared at the paper he held as if it had suddenly taken on a life of its own. How did it come to be in his hand? That was the paper I'd hidden under my pillow. Then I saw the smugness in Mary's face.

  "You've no right to go poking around my things when I'm not here," I flung at her. At the same time I went to Nathaniel and reached for the paper.

  He held it aloft. "Hold your tongue! And answer the question."

  There was nothing for it but to say yes. So I did.

  Nathaniel began to read it then. When he got to the line "Wisdom is higher than a fool can reach," my face went red. And I wanted to run from the room.

  How could I make so bold as to write such words? They were so high sounding, so false. What did I know of wisdom? Oh, I wished Nathaniel would stop reading. He was saying, aloud, all my innermost thoughts, dragging them from the dark reaches of my soul and pouring them out into the sunlight.

  "Stop!" I shouted.

  Nathaniel stopped. And then the silence was worse. We just stared at one another, he and I. The clock in the corner ticked loudly. I minded that others had come into the room. Mrs. Wheatley and Aunt Cumsee.

  "Please don't read any more," I begged. "Please give the paper to me." I reached out for it.

  Nathaniel held it away from my grasp. "You wrote these words, Phillis? On your own?" He was truly taken aback.

  "I won't do it again," I said.

  "Mother, did you hear it?"

  "I did." My mistress stepped forward. Her eyes were filled with a dull confusion.

  What had I done?

  I stood helplessly while they all stared at me. I felt time passing, moving across the face of the sun, slowly, inexorably, toward eternity.

  They were angry with me. I had written something in secret, something Nathaniel knew naught of. Writing was a freedom, he'd told me. But because I was still a child, I was still under the Wheatleys' jurisdiction. And my words must be approved by them.

  "I won't do it again. Give me back my work, please. I won't do it again. I promise."

  Again I reached for the paper. This time he handed it to me. I turned and started to walk from the room.

  In that instant everyone came to life.

  "Don't go," I heard from Mary. "I won't poke about your things again, I promise."

  "Phillis, dear"—at the same time, from my mistress—"dear child. To my knowledge, no Negro has ever written a poem."

  "Lord be praised," from Aunt Cumsee.

  But it was Nathaniel who stopped me. I felt his hand on my arm. I could not see for the tears of shame in my eyes. For it came to me, then, what I had really done.

  I had broken some long-honored rule. I had stepped over some line. I had disrupted the normal workings of the universe.

  "Phillis," Nathaniel said, "you had best do it again if you know what is good for you. And again, and again, and again."

  After that my life changed. My writing was no longer mine. It belonged, after that day, to the Wheatley family, even as I did. Mary made me copy my poem over and over again to show her friends. When they came for tea, she made me recite it for them. Mrs. Wheatley announced there would be no more chores for me, not even shelling peas or helping Aunt Cumsee make beaten biscuits.

  I did not care overmuch for that decision. I missed my time in the kitchen with Aunt Cumsee. She had a steadfast earthy wisdom that I needed to balance my daily diet of Greek and Latin.

  Mrs. Wheatley had a new cherrywood desk brought to my room. Mary gave me a bowl of potpourri to set on it and two silver candleholders with bee
swax candles.

  I was supplied with expensive vellum, a new ink-pot, two new quill pens, very sharp. The fire in my grate was kept up all night against the chill. In case I was "seized by a thought and wanted to write it down," Mrs. Wheatley said.

  Mr. Wheatley contributed a hunt tapestry to be hung on one wall. It was old and valued. I had always seen it in his library. It was from England.

  Aunt Cumsee gave me a special shawl to wear around my shoulders to ward off drafts if I "had the notion to write in the middle of the night." She kept me supplied with trays of tea and cooked special things for me. Cream soups. Apples in chocolate sauce. The lightest of pastries.

  I was to keep my usual schedule of a morning: breakfast with the family, then read the Bible with Mary and her mother for half an hour and devote an hour to doing my needlework. Then I was to accompany Mrs. Wheatley on calls.

  After a noon meal I was to rest for an hour, then study lessons for an hour and spend the rest of the day at my desk, writing.

  Lessons were shortened by Nathaniel. I was no longer required to do sums or geography. But I was to read Mather Byles, Thomas Burnet, Jonathan Edwards, and more Shakespeare, Milton, and Pope.

  Yes, my life changed. But I preferred it the way it was before I became "Mrs. Wheatley's nigra girl who writes poetry." When my writing was mine alone, to be held close and cherished.

  Chapter Nineteen

  FALL 1767

  If I did not produce great works in the next year, no one complained. They urged me to take my ease, read, think, and study. But always I sensed them waiting for me to write my next poem.

  How often I tried! But nothing happened. The words turned to dust under my pen.

  I cried in secret. I brooded. I sulked. One evening when Nathaniel was being especially hard on my Latin translations, I cried.

  "I can't think," I said. "I can't do anything."

  "The poetry will come, Phillis," he said.

  "Then why haven't I written anything?"

  "It will come."

  I covered my face with my hands. "I'm a fraud," I said. "The first poem was only an aberration. Everyone will say that!"