The Secrets of Mary Bowser by Lois Leveen Page A

most distasteful chore, and Mama put herself to it only at moments when she needed to think on some important matter without being disturbed.
    As I watched her cross the yard, marching hard against the winter wind, I already knew what she would resolve while she scrubbed and limed and whitewashed. And so I returned to my own labors, humming to myself as I began to imagine what my life would be like in Philadelphia.
    Mama didn’t say a word about the matter for the next few days. But I anticipated the coming Sunday would bring much important discussion between her and Papa. Supposing Mama was already concocting excuses to get me out of Papa’s cabin so they could speak freely, I began contriving excuses to stay. I meticulously collected everything we needed before leaving the Van Lews’, so there would be no reason to send me back to fetch a forgotten article. I let out a careful sneeze or two, so that I might claim a cold if they instructed me to go on an errand. Then I thought perhaps a cold would give them an excuse to leave me inside while they went out together, so I ceased sneezing immediately. The conniving weighed on me all week. But it turned out all my scheming was for naught.
    As soon as we arrived at Papa’s cabin, Mama set all of us down for a talk. When Papa started to send me off to check on his elderly neighbors, Mama stopped him. “What I have to say concerns Mary El, she needs to hear it for herself.” She turned to me. “You’re old enough now to keep the family confidences, aren’t you?”
    When she said you’re old enough, I thought of all the times that phrase meant some new, unwished for responsibility, and how it always struck a pang of resentment in my heart. But now I wanted things to be different. I wanted to feel intrepid rather than timorous or obstinate about what my old-enough self would be expected to do. “Yes, Mama,” I said. “I’m old enough.”
    And so I sat beside Papa at his little table and listened to her plan. Freedom meant little without opportunity. Wasn’t that precisely what Virginia’s restrictions on free negroes and freed slaves proved? Education would increase my opportunity, and so an education I would have. And since a Philadelphia education was the only one good enough for Miss Bet, it surely was the only one good enough for me. My parents would miss me, but Old Master Van Lew and Mistress Van Lew must have missed Miss Bet, and anything they could bear my parents could certainly bear, too. It was a good thing, not a bad thing, after all, to be living apart from a daughter who was getting such a fine Philadelphia education, better than any white family’s daughters got here in Richmond.
    Right about there, Papa cut in. “Minerva, no need for you to be talking yourself through missing Mary El when you gonna be right there with her. Gonna get that Philadelphia opportunity yourself.”
    “No, Lewis, I’m not.” Mama didn’t seem sad exactly, though her voice held a dim sort of sorry over not even quite knowing what she was giving up. “I remember how lonely it was when I first came to Richmond. I’m not ready to be that lonely in Philadelphia now. Or to leave you to it here. Child grows up, leaves her parents, that’s natural. Wife leaves her husband, though, that’s something else.”
    “You know the law,” Papa said. “Only got one year, and then you be sold off to the highest bidder, who know where you end up. I won’t allow it.”
    “We have one year, but not one year from now. One year from the day the state of Virginia knows I’m free. What if nobody knows, nobody that doesn’t have to?”
    And so Mama outlined the rest of the plan. She’d remain in Richmond, working for the Van Lews, earning wages just as Josiah and Zinnie and their girls were doing. But she’d stay as long as need be, until Mahon agreed to sell Papa to Miss Bet or free Papa himself. Miss Bet would write out free papers for Mama, but she wouldn’t file them with the