Miss
Cluny Remembers
by
P.A. O’Neil
“Now
you sit comfortable-like, Miss Cluny, and talk into this microphone just like
you were talking to me,” the smartly dressed young man from Howard University
instructed.
I
looked at him in disbelief, did he think that, just because I was in my
eighties, I was feeble-minded? “I am talking to you.”
“Yes,
of course, ma’am. I meant you didn’t have to yell to be heard on the
recording.”
I
nodded my head, closed my eyes, and let my memory drift back to things and
events long since buried.
###
Autumn
had come to the plantation, you know, the time of year when the full moon is so
large and bright, the fields can be harvested, as if it were right before
supper time instead of time for sleepin’. But there was no moon the night my
daddy went away. I’ll always remember the night sky was ever so black, just like
the old iron cauldron my mama used to fix our suppers.
There
had been a type of excitement in the air that afternoon. All the big folk was hurrying
this-ways-and-that, talking in whispers, passing little bundles, which I later
learned were food and clothes, to each other.
I
was one of the in-betweens, too young and small for working in the fields, too
old for being packed around on my mama’s back. Mostly, I just helped with
taking care of the little ones, keeping ‘em out of trouble or underfoot of the
big folk.
The
day was windin’ down and most folks was heading back to their cabins looking
forward to a warm supper of boiled greens, hog hocks, and beans. No one wanted
to be caught outside after dark, that’s when the Ol’ Hoodoo come ‘round to take
you away. I still get the shivers just thinkin’ about it. Mama and the other
women had come back to the cabins early, and I, seein’ no reason to stay around
to take care of the babies with their mamas there, took off into the woods to
play a little before being called to supper.
I
didn’t go far into the woods, just far enough so I could hide behind the nut
trees so the big folks couldn’t see me, but if I poked my head around, I could
see them. Daddy had come in from the field, but instead of washing up like normal,
he and some other men gathered to talk. I couldn’t hear what they were sayin’,
but I knows it was important, ‘cause he turned back to our place with a look on
his face I ain’t never seen before. It was somewhere between the sadness the
big folk had when Ol’ Moses died, and the anger I once seen on him when the
overseer, Mister Cawl, whipped young Isaac for helpin’ himself to the ripe
vegetables in Master’s garden. Soon Mama joined Daddy, her eyes were all red
like she had been weeping. He put his arm around her and together they walked
back into the cabin.
While
I was watchin’ all this, I could feel with my toes the round shells of nuts
which had fallen from the trees. Cupping the bottom of my dress, I stooped and
started filling it with nuts. I thought if I could bring them to Mama, she
wouldn’t be sad no more.
I
guess my attention was so focused, I didn’t hear anyone walk up. I was reachin’
for some nuts when I sees a pair of black leather shoes. I looked up to see the
soft cotton stockings, a white pinafore of Miss CeCe, the master’s daughter;
she was a child like me. I froze in my stooped position looking up at her, but
she just smiled wide, her blue eyes twinkling, as she too stooped to the ground
and started filling my make-shift basket with nuts.
“Cecelia!
Miss Cecelia, where are you?” It was Ol’ Londa, Miss CeCe’s mammy, callin’ for
her.
Miss
Cece stood up and shrugged. She turned to leave but I called her back, all
quiet like. “Here, put some of these nuts in your apron, so as you don’t get in
trouble for being out here.”
I placed
half my bounty into her make-shift basket, and nodded goodbye. She just smiled
and nodded back as she trotted out the other side of the grove.
“There
you are, child, why didn’t you come when I called?” Ol’ Londa exclaimed as Miss
Cece left the shelter of the nut trees. “What you got there? You been pickin’
up nuts? I declare, your shoes dusty and stockin’s are all snagged.” Her voice
grew fainter and fainter as they walked back to the Big House.
“Cluny!
Cluny!”
I
could hear my daddy callin’, so I balanced my harvest in my dress, using both
hands careful like so as not to drop any of the nuts while I walked. I remember
I had to walk slow and stooped over so as not to raise my dress higher than was
decent. I must’ve looked a sight walking all hunched over, it made my daddy
laugh out loud. I think he had been
plannin’ on being mad at me for not being around, but when he saw what I was
bringing to the family he just smiled and coached my way to the cabin.
“Careful
now, Cluny. You don’t wanna be droppin’ any of your bounty. Makes way, here
comes Cluny, an’ she’s got something for us all.”
I
know he was probably makin’ fun of me, but I like to think in some small way he
was proud of me for trying. At least, that’s the way I want to remember it.
Come
night we had a big supper, it included cornbread and honey, just like it was
some special occasion. Daddy praised my mamma for her cooking, but she didn’t
say much, just set about cleaning up and getting my little sister ready for
bed. Daddy sat by the cookin’ fire and hummed a quiet tune and soon it was time
for myself to go to bed. Mamma tucked my sister and me into the bed we shared,
telling us to go right to sleep.
My
mamma never smiled that night. Usually she would tell us to dream of playing in
the warm summer days, the sounds of birds singing in the trees, and blessings
from the blanket of stars above us, keeping us safe for the night. But that
night, there were no blessings, just the command to turn to the wall and go to
sleep.
I
could hear my parents talking real low and in hushed tones.
“Do
you really has to go with the others? Why can’t you jus’ stay here with us?” My
mother would plead.
“You
know we has to go tonight, Dolly; the moon is right and Cawl been talking for
days about how he an’ Master goin’ to town tonight for a meeting. It has to be
tonight!” he reaffirmed.
“But
Canada, Micah? I don’t even know where that is.”
“Shush
now, Dolly, we can’t be lettin’ the girls hear!” His voice was adamant but
restrained, “I told you it’s north, that’s all you need to know, it’s north.”
I
laid there listening to their conversation, keeping my eyes to the wall. I
couldn’t believe my daddy was talking about leaving us. Daddy wouldn’t do
somethin’ like that. I looked up at the little piece of sky I could see through
the window curtains and silently promised I would be a good girl and not run
off to play when I should be workin’, if only my daddy would stay home. The
cabin grew silent, and I could see by the shadows from the dying fire, my
parents was just standing there holdin’ each other. The silence didn’t last for
long, as soon there was a knock.
“Micah,
it’s time,” a man’s quiet voice came through the closed door.
“Yeah,
I’m comin’,” he replied.
I
laid there, quiet like, pretending to be asleep, but I could hear him walking
around the room as he gathered his pack of food and extra clothes. His
footsteps grew close to our bed as he stopped and sat on the edge. I laid there
with my eyes closed, thinking---if I was a good girl, sleeping like I was told---he
would change his mind.
“My
sweet, sweet, angels,” he whispered. “You take care of your mamma and I promise
I will come back and take you to a new home where we all can be free.” He stroked
my hair and leaned over to kiss my forehead, then he stood and walked out the
door.
My
mamma remained by the fireplace, her shadow still cast upon the opposite wall.
She never said a word, just stood there. She must have been in a kind of shock,
because I remember, as I was silently crying myself to sleep, her lone shadow
was the last thing I seen.
###
I
must’ve been crying as I finished my story because the man from Howard reached into
his front breast pocket to remove, and offer me his clean pressed handkerchief.
“Thank
you, I’ll wash it and get it back you,” was all I could say.
We
both sat there in silence for a few moments before he said, with a new sincerity
in his voice, “I’m sorry, ma’am, I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“You
didn’t child, I just hadn’t thought about what happened that day in … in, well,
your lifetime for sure.” I smiled at him, hopin’ my words had lightened the
situation, but it only made him more curious.
“I
meant, upsetting you about being a slave,” he said in earnest.
His
words caught me off guard. I opened my mouth to reply but nothin’ come out. I
closed it and turned away, hopin’ not to have looked the fool, and thought
about what he had said. How did I feel? How could I make him understand? I
turned back to look him in the eye, and with a solemn tone said, “On the day
that this all happened, the story I jus’ told you, I wasn’t a slave—I was a
child.”
He
looked at me, slightly taken aback, “Yes, ma’am, but you were a Negro child on
a Maryland plantation, born before 1860.”
“Yes,
yes, I was,” I agreed noddin’ my head. “I suppose technically I was, but your
question to me was about my recollection of the start of the Civil War, was it
not?”
The
young man from Howard sat up straight and cleared his throat, “Uh … well, yes,
ma’am, but I’m here to talk to you because you are one of the living survivors
of the time when we Negroes were slaves.”
I
placed my hand, gnarled with arthritis, on his, skin smooth with youth, “Now
don’t get me wrong, young man, I am a free woman and very proud of it, but on
that day, I was nothin’ more than a child, no different than Miss CeCe was. We
both was beholden to the care and generosity of adults for our food and
shelter. Neither of us was free to go where we wanted without permission, and
if we misbehaved, there was consequences, usually at the end of a strap.
“Now,
some might be sayin’ ain’t that what slavery is? And I say, yes, but on that
day, it also was what bein’ a child was.”
He
nodded his head, seeming to understand what I had said. “Did you ever see your
father again?”
“No,
never again.”
“I’m
sorry, Miss Cluny, but I have to ask, do you know what ever happened to him?”
“I’d
like to think he made it to Canada to live as a free man,” I lifted my glasses
and wiped my eyes before dabbing my nose, “but it would’ve meant he didn’t mean
it when he said he would come back for us.”
“What
then do you think really happened?”
“I
learned much later, he was right, there was a meeting of the town folk to
discuss the start of the war and what the plantation owners should expect.
Daddy wasn’t the only man to run away that night, it angered the overseer
fiercely when a good portion of the hands didn’t show up the next morning for
work. The women folk were questioned and threatened with whippings, or worse
yet, being sold off, but none of them said anything. I think they were about to
come after us children, but war did indeed come to our county and there was
talk soldiers was comin’. I was young, I didn’t really understand ‘til much
later.
“There
was word about a posse of overseers and bounty hunters out looking right away
for the men folk who ran away. Others told me later, a couple of the men
drowned in the river as they tried to cross over from Maryland to what is now
West Virginia.”
“Do you
think your father was one of these men?”
I
shook my head from side to side with a measured gait, “I don’t rightly know,
but I do know Momma cried every night of her life after Daddy left. I don’t
want to think my daddy drowned, but it’s better to think he died trying to
reach freedom than thinkin’ he did and deserted us in another country.”
The
man from Howard put his hand on my shoulder, “One last question, I promise,
what happened to your family, with the war and all, I mean?”
“Mister
Cawl and Master both left to join the war leaving their women behind with us
folk. Without the threat of penalty, many of the families picked up and left
the plantation. If only my father had waited, he could’ve taken all of us with
him.
“Instead,
a man come by; I didn’t know him, but Mamma did. She said he was her brother,
my uncle, who had been sold off to another plantation when they was teens. He
had come to get what was left of his family and move us all north”.
I
sighed and with a tone of regret finished with, “Sometimes I wonder, if we had
stayed behind, at the plantation I mean, Daddy would’ve come back for us, or,
if he did indeed come back as promised, just to find we wasn’t there.” I dabbed
my eyes again, this time knowing full well the sorrow I was expressin’.
The
man from Howard swallowed hard, obviously moved by our discussion. He pulled
the microphone closer to his self and said, before turning off his recording
machine. “This concludes our interview with Miss Cluny Dafoe, born a slave in western
Maryland in the 1850’s, now living in Memphis, Tennessee.”
* * * * *
P.A. O’Neil, spent her early years in southern California
before her family moved to a small town in Washington. According to her father,
her Mexican and Irish roots qualified for the designation of “Smoked Irish”.
Knowledgeable in things urban and rural, young and old, she knows what it means
to simultaneously be in both the minority and the majority. She can be reached
through her Facebook page: P.A. O’Neil, Storyteller. Her
stories have been featured in: Askew Authors’ Anthology Askew Vol. 4 –
Communications (October 2017); Relationship Add Vice (Zombie
Pirate Publishing, December 2017); Inner Circle Writers’ Group Anthologies Flashpoint (Feb
2018), Storm (Apr 2018), Vortex (May
2018), and Windows (Jun 2018); The Crow Literary
Journal (Summer 2018), and on Spillwords.com (3
July 2018).
