Stand the Storm (17 page)
Gabriel Coats and New Mary stood up to declare themselves before the minister at Mount Zion Church on January
11, 1855
. A good-sized group of congregants joined to witness the nuptials, for it meant something that this couple was stepping up to formalize themselves. The puffed-up Reverend Noah Zachary was fond of expounding this point of uprightness and chastity. “The ministers are pressing colored for to marry. It is a good thing to say our people are coming out of slavery and doing things in a formal way.”
Education, temperance, economy and moral rectitude, these were the virtues expounded upon at Mount Zion and aspired to by the town’s free colored. The churches of the town promoted these simple ideals heavily. Aspiration above all was the air the freed people breathed in the sanctuaries and the songs they sang. These uplifting virtues were the drink for their great thirst. And beneath this banner, Gabriel did begin with his wife.
Annie ceremoniously brought bedclothes to the room on the upper floor that the newly wedded would share. Again Annie rotated the sleeping arrangements in the house according to the proprieties. The married couple was to have the topmost room.
Annie placed the linens on a stool just inside the door to the small, irregularly shaped room. She freshened the bed with a mattress of good straw and grasses laced with some cinnamon shavings. A lovely cloud of aroma redolent of Christmas rose from the bedding as Annie fluffed and punched and arranged it. Several lit lamps embellished the warmth and disseminated the spicy smells. Mary, who shyly followed Annie up the stairs, took a place near the door. It embarrassed her, this fussing—-especially as Annie grinned despite her pretense at solemnity.
The sheets to cover the mattress were as white as a whisper and the pillow shams were bordered with Annie’s finest needlework. Pillow shams! Embroidered pillow shams! The pattern was a needlewoman’s favorite—the Cornucopia. It was thought a charm for the most fortunate to have linen worked with the Cornucopia. Annie set store by the way she could execute the intricacies.
Annie made her way around the bed, pulling and tucking and clucking her tongue with satisfaction at the work. Mary came forward to take a lofted end of the sheet—to assist—but Annie waved her away and smoothed the sheet herself and tacked it with precision. It was a delight for Annie to look at the sleeping pallet with the starched and stiffened covering that was smooth and unwrinkled like butter. Ah! She enjoyed the feel of this cloth and was proud that Gabriel and his good wife could begin with each other on a bed of fluff and comfort.
When she was done with her bed-making, Annie smiled at her new daughter, who stood with her back at the wall. The girl was nervous, she knew. Annie might tell her that Gabriel was good and gentle, but he was a man. Mary would learn him for herself as every wife learns her husband. After earnest consideration Annie did say to Mary, “It is sensible to keep the man satisfied. It ties him to you. Do as he says to do. Learn him.”
Early on that morning Annie had taken nervous Mary—leading her by the shoulders—to the front room of the shop. She had put the girl in front of the mirror and presented her own picture to herself. A reflex caused Mary to shy from the glass. Annie held her firm in front of it. She was made to see that she was lovely in the dress Annie and Ellen had made for the day. Ellen had festooned the white cloth her mother had sewed with lace trim of great intricacy. The dress suited Mary’s form perfectly. She was all-over lovely. Ellen brought forth a secret undertaking—a shawl of knitted whorls that she’d worked unobserved by the others. The shawl was worn on the head and it draped across Mary’s shoulders and the bodice of her dress.
Young Aaron Ridley good-naturedly insisted that Gabriel make a wedding suit for himself from the stock of the shop. He offered up a fine black wool cloth. Gabriel graciously allowed Ridley to take some measurements. It pleased the young white man to be, in some manner, a benefactor of the couple. Gabriel had already put aside the brushed beaver pelt that he would apply to the collar of his wedding suit. If it were not the most fancily decorated garment, it would be the best made of all the great many he had sewn.
“You will make a splash, Gabriel!” Aaron exclaimed. “There is no nigger to match you!”
Gabriel was excited by the upcoming wedding ceremony at Mount Zion. The colored tailor’s rising popularity appealed to church members and they wanted him amongst them. Likewise, Gabriel wanted to claim a place in the town—among the free colored. There was a splash to be made for a tailor. For his big moment at the church, Gabriel skimmed his hair close and oiled his head with lard. He wanted no woolly stuff. His shirt collar was a perfection of white. It was high and starched stiff by the expert laundresses in his household. It framed his handsome, unmarked face—no mustache, no chin hairs, and no scar.
Winnie Wareham, who had become an especial friend to Annie and the Coatses, promised plentiful yeast rolls for the wedding party fare and brought them. Daniel Joshua, surprised at himself to be in such genteel surround, brought sacks of sugar and tubs of cream for the wedding coffee.
After the repast, the assembled sat and sang the familiar songs. There was a harmonica and an able woman called Sally Matto to play upon it. There was a singing, warbling saw blade played by Nathaniel Booker that was the very blade his papa brought out of slavery. A tale told over and over was that Nathaniel’s papa risked all to take the saw blade away from the cruel place they had been. He said it sounded like his own mama in the mournful way it sang. Hake and Jake Leonard played horns fashioned out of a dead bull. They had taken the end off the animal’s horns so as to be able to blow on them. And they had made some very fine horns.
The saw blade rose in full-throated celebration and Nathaniel was tireless upon it. Hake and Jake followed him. The others came on their heels and singers joined in. Nathaniel played “I’ll Fly Away” and they sat and sang many a verse of the song. And though it was a joyful celebration, there came a time the souls of the dear departed seemed present in the room. The people sat around and sang round after round of the popular pieces.
Hush, hush, somebody’s calling my name
You may call for your mother
Mother can’t do you no good.
Crying, Oh, my Lord, what shall I do?
After the ceremony, when the wedding couple had left the clutch of well-wishers at the church, the Coats family returned to their workroom hearth to boil coffee and eat fancy-made sweet biscuits. Annie, Ellen, and the babe, Delia, ate heartily and happily. They licked sweetness off their fingers and doubled the cream in their coffee before settling back to their needlework. The stunned married couple sat beside each other without speaking and little eating. Gabriel waved off cream and drank a dark cup of coffee and doused his biscuit in the cup. Mary took no repast.
“My mother is pleased for you,” Aaron Ridley said ceremoniously, coming to stand in the doorway between the shop and the back room. Gabriel and the three women were startled and rose. Each one upset a task on the table and the general confusion caused Aaron to retreat a few steps.
“My mother and I give this to you . . . in celebration.” He held out a large paper-wrapped, tied bundle, but was unsure of whom to hand it to. Annie came forth and took the bundle with a curtsy. She inclined her head and said for all, “We thank you, Master Aaron. We thank your mother heartily.”
Aaron Ridley stood still longer, basking in their thanks with his arms dangling uneasily. “Well, ah,” he said. “Gabriel . . .”
“Sir,” Gabriel answered, proffering some new prestige to Aaron Ridley. He stood straight and expectantly.
“Well . . . be of good cheer,” Aaron said with some surprise, and turned to exit.
“Sir, my wife and I and my mother and my sister do thank you and your saintly mother for your favor. It does mean much to us,” Gabriel Coats, a man with a sprig of wedding flowers in his lapel, declared.
Aaron Ridley had obtained this gift, a quilt his mother had amongst her stores that was the lovely Double Wedding Ring, on one of his periodic trips to Ridley Plantation. It was a treasure. It did make Annie Coats become Sewing Annie at the sight of it—as it tumbled out of its paper and was unfolded. Her mentor, Knitting Annie, had worked upon this beautiful quilt from Ridley. This is one quilt her fingers had not been allowed to touch in her childhood. And now it had come to her son and his wife!
Gabriel, too, recognized this quilt. It was Nanny’s teaching quilt. She drew it from the linen closet at Ridley again and again to show him the stitches and the placement of pieces. Whispering during Mistress’s naptime, she would put his small fingers on it—having scrubbed them herself—to educate him, to teach his fingers the stitches of Knitting Annie, to show his eye the placement—the strict, unerring sense of the pieces of the pattern. There was a beautiful, meaningful account in the stitches, in the quilt. He remembered the lessons, though he’d never seen the old one Nanny talked of. The old one was dead before he had come, but she was his teacher. Nanny pressed him to this quilt and began his education in counting and piecing. She had risen in her own estimation when she had, upon the death of her mentor, become the caretaker of the quilt.
Young Knitting Annie had made it to be part of a dowry for a weakly related girl in the Ridley family. The mistress swapped it at the last moment and wrapped up a lesser quilt for the relative. Mistress and Knitting Annie savored this cover and used it as a teaching tool. Sewing Annie was trained up with it and Mistress’s sister’s girl learned lessons from it.
Annie opened the wedding package to show Gabriel. She unfolded the quilt by layers, gasping as it lay out revealed. Large tears fell from her eyes.
“Nanny, all has come home at last,” Gabriel said to his emotional mother, well pleased that his wedding had brought this treasure back to her.
In the wake of Annie’s ceremony in the bedchamber, Mary was sorely agitated. She had never contemplated a bed of linens and sweet-smelling grasses and a man. She felt her cheeks become hot with anxiety. She sat and continued to sit. Finally she recognized a silent exchange of pointed looks, and the other women left for their beds.
Mary then rose and went up the stairs to the husband and wife’s loft. Gabriel dillydallied over his buttons and scissors and snuffing candles to give Mary time to take care of the womanly things. He did not want to scare her by following too quickly. Above it all: his dread of frightening her.
Gabriel did mount the stairs in lighthearted anticipation. His member was excited, but lost its nerve on the climb in the cold air. Ellen had been mistaken. Gabriel did not eye the gown Mary wore at all. His eyes did not come to a single spot when he entered the room. He lifted the gown over Mary’s head where she sat shivering upon the bed and tucked her beneath the covers to keep her from chill. Loathe to crease or muss the counterpane, Mary remained still in the bed. Gabriel put out the candles, removed his clothes, and slipped under the cover.
He stretched stiffly beside her. He felt an obligation, but his member lay still. It had always come up merrily, but was stalled now and his stomach was uneasy. Upon a sigh—Gabriel did not know if it was his own or Mary’s—his member did rise. He pulled her body beneath his, parted her legs, and put himself in before his prowess flagged.
A
ARON RIDLEY CREDITED
a changed demeanor in Gabriel immediately following the wedding. He put the change down to the contentment of wedded constancy. “Any mutt is constant with a bitch at his own hearth.” Aaron repeated to his uncle the accepted alehouse wisdom. So it clearly was with Gabriel. But Aaron Ridley told his uncle that he suspected there was more. He regretted his wedding day camaraderie. Gabriel, still obsequious enough for even the most demanding customer, was lately more upright in his bearing. He’d developed the habit of trading looks and expressing unsolicited opinions in a way that smelled of arrogance.
“The air I must share with these beasts is noxious, Uncle. Will you permit me to take rooms, sir?” Aaron pleaded. He held that his position in the tailoring business had necessarily changed after the manumission agreement between his uncle and Gabriel. But in view that the concern still would be called Ridley & Ridley, Jonathan Ridley insisted that his nephew continue as manager. He considered that he had made an investment and that a hefty percentage of the concern’s profit was to be paid to the Ridley family. As realists, neither Jonathan Ridley, Aaron Ridley, nor Gabriel Coats believed the business could flourish without the management of a white gentleman. They would lose an advantage with tradesmen and suppliers and their profits could not stand. As well there were a great many of their customers who wouldn’t abide a colored man about their person no matter their respect for his skill.
In a lather from his appeals, Aaron did win from his uncle the concession that he might move away from the shop and establish living quarters under another roof.
Like pegs set well down, there was stoutness and resolve about the Coatses now. They had the freedom! The value of it seemed illusory—to be mostly in Gabriel’s chest, for he felt only a small difference in his daily going about in the city. The temper of the town was to put restrictions on the movements of the free people—to question their intelligence, their honesty, their decency. The Coatses, as they were now widely and generally known, could all come and go as free people. Yet still they were liable to be set upon by hooligans or constables or soldiers.
Gabriel started to cultivate as clients—and this was the main cog of his plans—the growing number of successful free Blacks in Georgetown. Word of his exceptional talents with cloth and his willingness to accommodate certain customers in their own homes circulated on the vine of household help and among the congregation at Mount Zion.
“If opportunities for free men were fair available,” Daniel said, “a colored woman could play the lady.”
Disgruntled when the talk between Gabriel and Daniel went to pontificating about “our” women sitting at home, Annie sucked her teeth loudly. “Huh! Never the chance for a colored woman to sit on her duff if the house would all eat,” Annie said.