The Underground Railroad

LEFT my house on Friday evening the 26th about 10 o’clock P.M. (without provocation whatever) my negro girl SUKEY. She is about 28 years of age, of rather a light complexion, has high cheek bones, is slender in her person, and very neat in her appearance. Had on when she went away, a striped jean frock. Sukey was lately owned by L. B. Pearce, Esq. and formerly belonged to William M. Heritage, deceased. She is at present (from appearance) a strict member of the Methodist Church in this place, and is no doubt known to a majority of the members.

JAMES AYKROYD

OCTOBER 4

THEN she became the one lagging in her lessons, surrounded by impatient children. Cora was proud of the progress she made with her reading in South Carolina and the attic. The shaky footing of every new word, an unknown territory to struggle through letter by letter. She claimed each circuit through Donald’s almanacs as a victory, then returned to the first page for another round.

Georgina’s classroom revealed the smallness of her accomplishments. She didn’t recognize the Declaration of Independence the day she joined them in the meeting house. The children’s pronunciation was crisp and mature, so distant from Michael’s stiff recitations back on Randall. Music lived in the words now, the melody asserting itself as each child took their turn, bold and confident. The boys and girls stood from the pews, turned over the paper where they’d copied the words, and sang the promises of the Founding Fathers.

With Cora, the class numbered twenty-five. The youngest-the six- and seven-year-olds-were exempt from the recital. They whispered and fussed in the pews until Georgina hushed them. Nor did Cora participate, being new to the class, the farm, their way of doing things. She felt conspicuous, older than all of them and so far behind. Cora understood why old Howard had wept, back in Miss Handler’s schoolhouse. An interloper, like a rodent that had chewed through the wall.

One of the cooks rang the bell, drawing the lesson to a close. After the meal, the younger students would return to their lessons while the older ones took to their chores. On their way out of the meeting house, Cora stopped Georgina and said, “You taught these pickaninnies how to give a proper talk, that’s for sure.”

The teacher checked to make sure her students hadn’t heard Cora. She said, “Here we call them children.”

Cora’s cheeks got hot. She’d never been able to make out what it meant, she added quickly. Did they know what was in all those big words?

Georgina hailed from Delaware and had that vexing way of Delaware ladies, delighting in puzzles. Cora had met a few of them on Valentine and didn’t care for that regional peculiarity, even if they knew how to bake a good pie. Georgina said the children make of it what they can. What they don’t understand today, they might tomorrow. “The Declaration is like a map. You trust that it’s right, but you only know by going out and testing it yourself.”

“You believe that?” Cora asked. From the teacher’s face, she didn’t know what to make of her.

Four months had passed since that first class. The harvest was done. Fresh arrivals to the Valentine farm made it so Cora was no longer the greenhorn, bumbling about. Two men Cora’s age joined the lessons in the meeting house, eager runaways more ignorant than she was. They ran their fingers over the books as if the things were goofered, hopping with magic. Cora knew her way around. When to prepare her own meal because today’s cook would muddle the soup, when to bring a shawl because Indiana nights were a shiver, colder than she’d ever known. The quiet places of shade to be alone.

Cora sat in the front of the class nowadays, and when Georgina corrected her-on her penmanship or arithmetic or speech-she no longer smarted. They were friends. Georgina was such a dedicated gossip that the lessons provided a reprieve from her constant reports on the farm’s goings-on. That strapping man from Virginia has a mischievous look, don’t you think? Patricia ate all the pig’s feet when we turned our backs. Delaware women liked to flap their gums, that was another thing.