THE BOOK OF NEGROES (30 page)

“How do they get a certificate? And what about the women in Holy—”

“Negroes who have served behind our lines and have the requisite certificate will be allowed to leave for the colonies,” said Waters.

I hoped that meant the women could leave, but Waters was barely giving me any room to speak. “And my pay?”

“One pound per week, in silver. You will have to move into residence in our barracks, as there will be constant work. You will receive lodgings and food in addition to salary.”

“All of this information about the Negroes,” I said. “Where will it be kept?”

“In a special ledger,” he said.

“What will it be called?”

Waters gave me a dry smile. “How about Exodus from Holy Ground?”

I folded my arms. “All of this amuses you,” I said.

Waters checked his pocket watch, and his face became serious. “It will be called the Book of Negroes. You are meeting the colonel and me for breakfast, seven a.m. tomorrow, Fraunces Tavern. We have logistics to review. It will be a long day of work. You will have eight months of long days.”

“The Book of Negroes,” I mumbled.

I nodded and got up to go. Waters put up his hand, told me to wait and
left the room. Returning in a minute, he gave me a canvas sack. In it were apples, two loaves of bread, cheese and dried figs.

“Extras from the storeroom,” he said. “I’m sure someone can use them.”

Within two hours of my return to Canvas Town, there wasn’t a man or woman who hadn’t heard the news. My friends gathered at the door to say goodbye.

“We’ll keep this here shack for you, in case you get sick of the white folks,” Claybourne said.

“He say that all pretty,” Bertilda said, “but soon as you gone, he take all your wood. Lickety-split.”

“I’m not taking nothing,” he said, “’cause I built her that shack. I built it before y’all moved in with me.”

“He got a mouth like a drawbridge, but I do loves my man,” Bertilda said, taking his hand.

I gave them half of the food and saved the rest for Rosetta.

Claybourne took the bread and judged its weight in his hand. “My wife got her own loaf in the oven.”

Bertilda slapped his arm. “Shush,” she laughed. “You wasn’t supposed to tell.”

I opened my eyes wider and smiled at the woman. She wasn’t showing, yet.

“A loaf in the oven,” Claybourne said, “and a right good one too.”

Later that night, as I was packing up my possessions, two Canvas Town men rapped on my door.

“Meena,” one said, “we got a man here.”

“A man?”

“Says he wants to see you.”

A knot formed in my stomach. They had found me. I imagined being pinned and tied inside my own tent. Outside, I knew, I could try to run. I stepped out into the night air.

“Meena, do you know this man?” one of the guards said.

It was a dark night with no moon. I stepped closer. A black man. Slender. Only a few inches taller than I. One of the guards struck a match and lit his lamp.

“Aminata Diallo!” said the man.

I threw my arms around my husband and smiled over his shoulder at the guards. “Yes, I do know this man. I know him in all ways and anywhere.” I took Chekura’s hands, feeling the space where one finger was missing and then feeling the absence of two more on the other hand.

“You’re going to have to stop disappearing,” I said. “Stick around me, and hang onto your fingers.”

“I’ve still got enough left to hold you,” he said.

“I’ve been waiting nine years for you,” I said.

“Better than thirteen,” he said, grinning. “I heard you came up here around the start of the war.”

“That’s right. And where were you?”

“In the low-country, as usual. All over Georgia, and then back to Lady’s Island. When the British took Charles Town, they made me a river guide. So I could take them up and down the low-country streams without getting shot up. Don’t know how much good it did. A few of them died of musket fire, but a lot more were taken by fever and the pox.”

“Are you planning to stay for more than one night?” I asked.

“Your husband is a free man, Aminata Diallo. Free tonight, free tomorrow, free to stay right here with you.”

“We aren’t far from free, but we aren’t there yet,” I said. “Not until we leave the Thirteen Colonies.”

It’s not an easy thing to make love to a man you haven’t seen in nine years. The last time I’d seen him, I was thirty years old. I feared I was less beautiful now. My breasts didn’t lift the way they once had. Would the softness of my belly turn him away? I didn’t find him any less beautiful
than before. I didn’t mind the silver-grey colouring by his temples, or the smooth baldness of his head. He was my man, just further along the road of life. I wanted to watch him grow older still. I wanted to note all of the changes, one day to the next, and I wanted to protect his hands, in mine.

I went to sleep that night confident that I would wake up with my husband. In the morning, after leaving Canvas Town, I would have one more thing to negotiate with Colonel Baker. Room and board for my husband, and his passage with me to Nova Scotia.

OVER BREAKFAST, I WAS GIVEN A MESSAGE to spread around Canvas Town. Starting the next day, from eight until eleven each morning, every Negro who had spent a year or more behind British lines was welcome to line up at the Fraunces Tavern. Every man and woman would be given two minutes to explain themselves. If they could satisfy the officers that they were of good moral character and that they had served the British for at least one year, they would be told which wharf to attend, on what day, in order to board what ship. There would be a more substantial inspection on the ships. Any person who presented himself fraudulently would be turned over to the Americans.

The next morning, four hundred people gathered outside the tavern. Colonel Baker took the first thirty, pushed them all inside, and told the others to return another day.

“We have months to do this,” he shouted out. “We can’t process all of you in one day.”

My job was to interview the Negroes, and to relay answers to the officers. I met some people who came from places I had never heard of. Some of them, I couldn’t understand. But for the most part, I was able to collect their information, and explain to them what was written on the tickets
they received. The room was cramped and hot, and the days were long. But though I was eager to get back to Chekura’s arms, I loved my new work. I felt that I was giving something special to the Negroes seeking asylum in Nova Scotia, and that they were giving something special to me. They were telling me that I was not alone.

I had imagined, somehow, that my life was unique in its unexpected migrations. I wasn’t different at all, I learned. Each person who stood before me had a story every bit as unbelievable as mine. At the end of each of our encounters, I hastened to repeat the key details: the wharf where they were to go, the time to be there, the name of the ship they were to be rowed to, and the possessions they were allowed to bring: a barrel of food, a barrel of clean water and a chest of clothing. Colonel Baker insisted that I say all this, even though I told him that no Negroes in Canvas Town owned barrels of food or chests of clothes. But I did something else for the people who passed the first interview. I showed them their tickets, read out their names and made sure they saw that their names had been recorded.

Over the next two days, we processed sixty more emigrants. Then Baker told the mob of people waiting outside the Fraunces Tavern to go away and come back two weeks later. There would be no further tickets given out until mid-May.

They gave me a pleasant room in a house in Holy Ground. Chekura was allowed to stay with me, and he was promised passage to Nova Scotia.

“We can offer him a job cleaning barracks, to keep him busy,” Waters said. “He should take it, because he’s not going to be seeing a lot of you.”

AFTER THE FIRST NINETY NEGROES ASSEMBLED on Murray’s Wharf first thing in the morning on April 21, 1783, my real work began. They were rowed out to a few ships anchored in the East River: the
Spring
, the
Aurora
and the
Spencer
, each bound for Saint John, and the
Peggy
, bound for Port Roseway. I knew that Saint John and Port Roseway were part of what was called Nova Scotia, and had been shown on a map where they were located.

Colonel Baker, Captain Waters and I were first rowed to the
Spring.
As soon as we boarded the ship, assistants set up a table for our use. We were joined by two officers from the American Army, who were there to ensure that no unauthorized Negroes were allowed to depart. Sailors and officers moved about on deck, but passengers were kept in a waiting area below. Also on board were dozens of white Loyalists who had been the first to embark. But they were not our concern. We were there to inspect the Negroes. My job was to listen to the officers interview the refugees and to enter details into a two-page ledger.

“Use your best scrivening skills,” the colonel told me. “Neat, concise and precise.”

These ledgers were to form part of a registration book listing all Negroes carried to the British colonies at the end of the war. If the Americans chose later to press for compensation, the colonel said, the Book of Negroes would show who had left New York.

A group of ten Negroes was called up to the deck. I had never seen them before.

“Who are they?” I asked Waters.

“Slaves and indentured servants,” he said.

“But I thought …”

“We will get around to evacuating the refugees in Canvas Town,” Waters said. “But first, we register the property of white Loyalists.”

The colonel began to interview a Negro who stammered uncontrollably, but a white Loyalist stepped forward and said, “He’s mine.” The Loyalist, Lieutenant Colonel Isaac Allen, said he had acquired the Negro as an indentured servant and was taking him to Saint John.

Following the colonel’s instructions, I began to write in the ledger. In the first column,
George Black.
Next to it,
35.
And then I wrote the name of the owner or indenturer,
Lt. Colonel Isaac Allen.
In a final column, I wrote how he came to be freed before taken into indenture.
Freed by Lawrence Hartshorne, as certified.

A girl appeared before me. From her disconsolate face, and from the white man who stood beside her, I could see that nothing about this trip suggested freedom.

Hana Palmer
, I wrote, again taking down the colonel’s words.
15, stout wench. Ben Palmer of Frog’s Neck, Claimant.

“Claimant?” I asked the colonel when the white man had taken away the girl.

“It means that he owns her,” the colonel said.

We interviewed the other Negroes. None of the others were indentured or enslaved, and the questioning was more rigorous. How did they come to be free? Could they establish that they had served the British? Did they have a certificate from a British military official proving service behind His Majesty’s lines? When the colonel grew impatient with the Negroes’ accents, I took over the questioning and scrivening.

One young woman appeared before me with a baby in her arms. I remembered seeing her in Holy Ground.

Harriet Simpson
, I wrote under the first column.
19
, I then wrote. Next came a column for a short physical description.

“Just a word or two,” Baker told me. “Put ‘stout wench.’”

Stout wench
, I wrote, disgusted with the term.
Formerly the property of Winston Wakeman, Nancy Mum, Virginia.
Because she had proof of service to the British, I added
GBC
, for General Birch’s Certificate.

While Baker busied himself by stuffing a pipe, Harriet whispered to me that her child had been sired by a British captain.
Sara, 2, healthy child. Daughter to Harriet Simpson and born within British lines.
I was relieved
that Harriet owned the General Birch’s Certificate—nobody found it necessary to ask exactly how she had served the British.

One man was eighty-nine years old. “Born 1694, Virginia,” he told me, and so I wrote that down. As for how he had served the British, he said, “I deserted the Rebel Standard and that was service enough. Born a slave, but I will die free.” The colonel was wearying of details and the American inspectors were growing bored, so I dashed out the entry as I saw fit.

John Cartwright, 89. Tired out & one eye milky. Formerly owned by George Haskins, Virginia. Says he came behind British lines three years ago.

The old man didn’t have a certificate proving his service to the British, but no one asked for it, and he was allowed to stay.

We registered all the Negroes on the
Spring.

“Only ten of them?” I asked Waters.

“Most of the space is for white Loyalists and their property,” said Waters.

On the
Aurora
we inspected fourteen Negroes. I saw again that the British were indeed sending some fugitives to freedom, but were also allowing white Loyalists to bring along slaves.

Later that night, in bed with Chekura, I chattered on and on about what I had seen. But Chekura wasn’t impressed.

“Slaves and free Negroes together in Nova Scotia?” he said, sucking his teeth. “Some promised land.”

For four more days, we were rowed out to ships in the East River. In fifty ships, nearly six hundred men, women and children required inspection. Baker, Waters and I couldn’t do all the work, so three other teams of inspectors were formed. I worked each day from dawn to sunset, and the time passed quickly. I liked writing names in the Book of Negroes, recording how people had obtained their freedom, how old they were and where they had been born: South Carolina, Georgia and Virginia; Madagascar, Angola and Bonny. I wanted to write more about them, but the ledger was cramped and Colonel Baker pressed me to rush through
the lineups. The colonel was especially impatient over the descriptions and preferred short phrases such as
stout wench, marks on face, stout fellow, pitted with pox, likely fellow, ordinary fellow, worn out, one-eyed, lusty wench, incurably lame, little fellow, likely boy
and
fine child.
I didn’t care for the descriptions, but I loved the way people followed the movement of my hand as I wrote down their names and the way they made me read them aloud once I was done. It excited me to imagine that fifty years later, someone might find an ancestor in the Book of Negroes and say, “That was my grandmother.”