Charles Johnson - Middle Passage

“Santos,” Papa snapped, stepping outside, “who is this?”

Santos was staring at me in bewilderment. “That’s that boy the schoolteacher was seein’.” Deeply, he frowned. “Nigguh, how’d you do that?”

Isadora asked, “Rutherford?”

The captain peered over her and Papa’s shoulders. “Mr. Calhoun, I’m glad to see you’re taking a little air after your misfortunes. However, we’re in the middle of an important ceremony—”

“He was on that ship?” Papa stepped back from me, scratching his jaw. “Calhoun? I don’t believe it, but if you was there, I wanna talk to you tout why that ship went down and whose fault it was. In my cabin, son. Right now. Santos, you bring him along — and don’t lose the goddamn ring.”

His man sat where he was, leery of me. I used this second of uncertainty to pull Squibb to one side and ask him to perform one last duty for me, one my life and Isadora’s depended on, then hurried her away from the others. Baleka kept following us, trying to listen. I shooed her away. And all the while Isadora gave me a once-over, pushing her head close to see if I’d switched my nose for a different proboscis, if I was the same person under my beard, and just as quickly she pulled back.

“Do I smell that bad?”

She shook her head. “You don’t look or sound the same.”

Of course, she was right. Sometimes without knowing it, I spoke in the slightly higher register of the slaves, had their accent, brisk tempo of talk, and occasionally caught myself incapable of seeing things in general terms. In other words, when I wasn’t watching myself, each figure floating past me possessed haecceitas but not quidditas, a uniqueness so radical I felt I could assume nothing about anyone or anything, or now — in the case of Isadora — generalize about her from one moment to the next.

She began squinting, and not simply to shut out the sun, although we were on the ship’s western side afore the windlass. Rather, it was the squint of slowly remembered rage, and suddenly her voice was full of frowns. “Where were you, Rutherford! I waited for hours and hours after everyone else left, except for him.” She pointed in Papa’s direction. “Do you know — have you any idea — how humiliating that was for me?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “If I could do it over, I would.” Cautiously, I touched her left arm, hoping she would not pull away. “I’m not the same, as you say. There’s someone else, a girl. .”

I could feel Isadora’s arm tense beneath my fingers. Quietly, with her lower lip caught between her teeth, she waited for me to explain.

“She’s one of the children orphaned by the voyage. And no, I’m not her father, if that’s what you’re thinking, but I might as well be. Whenever Baleka is out of my sight I am worried. If she bruises herself, I feel bruised. Night and day I pray all will go well for her, even after I am gone. Sometimes she drives me to distraction with all the things she shoves under my nose for me to see — Yankee things she wants me to explain, but I cannot eat, if you must know, until I am sure she has eaten first, nor sleep if she is restless and, to make matters worse, if she is quiet for too long, I worry about that as well. .”

Isadora placed her right hand over my fingers. “My goodness, you have changed, Rutherford.”

“Aye, and what I’m saying is that in order to raise her I shall need your help.”

“Is that a proposal?”

“It is.”

“Then I’m sorry, Rutherford.” She lowered her eyes, her hand left mine, and for a moment I felt like a ship unmoored. “I can’t accept your proposal now.”

“Why not? Is it because you accepted Papa’s first? Isadora, how can you even consider marrying him?”

She hurried to the rail, gagged, her stomach unsettled by either the rocking of the ship or her scheduled marriage to a man who made Cesare Borgia seem like a milquetoast. And abruptly she was angry with me again, so angry after gagging her voice came in sputters and a spray of spittle I felt too ashamed to avoid by turning my head or by taking a step away. “Papa and that goon of his were there when you weren’t, Rutherford! He might be a criminal, but he saw how I was hurting, standing there in front of all those people Madame Toulouse invited, so everybody who’s anybody in New Orleans would know no body wanted me.” I eased to one side, believing Isadora was drawing back her fist; instead, she pulled nervously at her earlobe, a new habit she’d developed since I’d been gone. “I could have died right there, really I could have. But then. . he was nice to me. He took me home. The next night he came by with a whole carriage filled with my favorite flowers, and proposed, and then I didn’t know what to do. You don’t say no when you’re being courted by a man who owns half the city, has underworld connections everywhere, and kills people for interrupting him.”

“You did that?”

“Once,” she confessed. “After that I was afraid to. He scares me, Rutherford! Sometimes I’m so frightened I can’t eat or sleep. You don’t know what kind of things he’s been up to.”

“I think I do. And I’m not surprised he wants you. You’re beautiful,” I said, to soften her anger, yet it was true. Her anxiety and loss of appetite had made her prettier. Up close, I could see she’d used the ash from matches to darken her eyes, the juice from berries to rouge her cheeks and lips. “You’ve twice as much education and culture as he has. Given the circles he moves in, marrying you might bring the lubber a little respectability.”

“I suppose that’s why he took me on this trip, to force me to accept his proposal. I’ve been holding him at bay, really I have, Rutherford, for weeks. He hates animals, you know, even though he maintains a few as bodyguards and personal friends. He says I’ll have to get rid of my cats. Well, I told him I couldn’t let them go, not out into the cold, before I’d knitted sweaters for each of them, and I’ve been doing that every day for two months, stalling him, I mean, because at night I undo them.” She wanted something to dry her eyes; I offered the tail of my shirt. After blowing her nose loudly she said, “It was working until last month when Santos, that blot on the species, stopped by my room to deliver a present from Papa and saw me unraveling booties I’d made for one of the puppies. You remember Poopsie, don’t you?” I nodded, the memory of dog fur on my clothing unpleasant, but I made myself smile, which prompted Isadora to lean into me so firmly I felt our bodies had been fitted at the factory.

“Rutherford, what am I supposed to do?”

I asked her to stay in her cabin for the next hour. After making sure she’d locked her door, I bade Captain Quackenbush direct me to Papa’s quarters. Then I shook his hand, and turned to Squibb, who waited by the rail with Ebenezer Falcon’s logbook.

“This is what yuh wanted, right?”

“Thank you, Josiah.”

“And yuh’re goin’ in there with them swabs by yuhself, mate?”

“Aye, but I’d appreciate your staying close by and keeping a bright lookout.”

With his good arm, Squibb gave a mock salute. “Whatever yuh say, Cap’n,” which belied the fact that if any gob could be counted on during a storm it was he. And believe me, a storm was brewing. Poor Isadora! Papa now had her by the short hairs. Served her right, I thought, for bringing him into our lives in the first place. I knew I could not leave her in such a fix, that I had to confront him, much as David, his pitiful sling and shepherd’s stick at his side, squared off with the giant of the Philistines. Whether Papa fit the image of Goliath best or Santos, I cannot say. Yet of one thing I was sure. I was not, nor could I ever be, his match. For some blacks back home, those who did not know the full extent of his crimes, Papa was, if not a hero, then a Race Man to be admired. His holdings were diverse (including a controlling share in the Juno, according to Isadora), and he carefully watched political changes in the country, even the smallest shifts in local government, so he could profit from them, sink a little cash into land here, a house there, which in twenty years would return his investment tenfold. Once he bought a business, he never — absolutely never — sold it back to white men, because he feared if it left black hands it might never return. Aye, for many he was a patron of the race, a man who lent money to other blacks, and sometimes backed stage plays written by Negro playwrights in New Orleans. Could evil such as his actually produce good? Could money earned from murder, lies, and slave trading be used for civic service? These questions coursed through me as I paused before his cabin, and I saw how a man such as Papa might hunger for an heir, particularly a son raised by a woman as refined as Isadora — a teacher, indeed, a nursery-governess by trade. As the boy matured, he might feel a twinge of shame at his father’s bloody fortune, but he would toast his old man’s portrait some nights, for those crimes had carried their family from the fields to the Big House, from the quarters to the centers of finance. Oh, Papa’s heir might occasionally complain like Peter Cringle (surely Papa would nudge him toward politics) but, like those blacks in awe of the giant Philistine, he would feel that freedom was property. Power was property. Love of race and kin was property, and if the capital in question was the lives of other colored men. . well, mightn’t a few have to perish, in the progress of the race, for the good of the many?