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likesomekindofcheese · 4 years ago

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Songbird of Jamestown Ch.8 (Samuel Castell x fem! Reader)

Fandom: Jamestown ITV Series

Summary: You are among the English maids in 1619-1620 who have agreed to board ship for the new world in Jamestown, with the intention to marry the men there. You have chosen to find a husband and life of your own and pay back the company, than be pre bought and bound to a random stranger. Life is difficult and you and your friends struggle, but there is a certain recorder who’s willing to help. He’s kind-hearted and handsome ...and has already been pledged to another. You want to be with him...at what risk?

Chapter One //Chapter Two // Chapter Three // Chapter Four // Chapter Five// Chapter Six// Chapter Seven

Word Count: 7K

Warnings: attempts at accuracy that aren’t always on point, swearing, drinking, marriage, religion, a bit of bullying, angst that becomes fluff, and steamy parts but nothing explicit.

A/N: Here we are! The wedding chapter woohoo! I hope you all enjoy it!

“Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.”- Sonnet 116

“We may not be in England anymore, but have a Boleyn in our colony,” you heard him smirk.

The tavern tonight was supposed to be full of people. You shouldn’t have picked out that voice. Of the two dirty-faced men with dark beards leaning close over their beers. Yet as soon as you helped Verity finish another drinking song, you did hear it. As clear as thunder.

Some customers came by to press coins into your hands for the song or wish you luck for your upcoming nuptials. Those seemed deaf. You kept glancing back, wondering what you could even say.

“…Miss Woodbyrg’s fiancée…”

“…her maid, even! We’ll be counting the days until Y/N’s head gets lobbed off…” the shorter one hissed.

“Poor Miss Woodbyrg, one cannot understand her grief…” the taller one acknowledged with a shake of his shaggy head.

“Imagine giving someone like her up!”

“A beauty if there ever was one! And Castell tosses her aside for her former maid! Why would the madman do that?”

“Well, why do you think…one large reason why…who knows what Y/N had between her legs that carried him away…” he joked lasciviously with a wiggle of his eyebrows.

“Look at her, singing away for tips here like some beggar.”

No, you wanted to interrupt, Verity allowed your singing since her throat is sore. But you dared not and could only nod in silent thanks as a teenage boy pressed a gold coin into your apron pocket.

“That’s the woman Castell chose over Jocelyn. A dirty pub singer over a lady. Y/N’s probably after his money. And he just wants a whore he doesn’t have to pay.”

Bits of tears stung your eyes, you bit back your tongue. You turned away to the side to stare at a wall. Making a scene would not solve anything. They would think even worse of you.

“I thought the man was balless,” he chuckled “reading fairy stories and fawning over babes like a damn woman.”

“Maybe not! Now what’s beneath her dress is all he can think about! She must’ve brought the man out of him!” the man gossiped, gesturing towards you.

The words simmered in your brain so much you hardly noticed an old planter hobbling towards you. His beard was streaked grey and his balding head wrinkled.

“Why, that drinking song I’ve barely heard! Do ye happen to know…”

There were strong footsteps and a broad figure from behind cut in front of you.

“Do not bother the lady, sir!” he said

Nathan Bailey’s dark head cut in front of yours as he walked in front of you and you hid behind him. Samuel had paid him to help guard you at least until the wedding. It was a blessing and a curse. The new bride replacing an old one and needing a soldier accompanying her everywhere probably raised a few eyebrows, you wondered. But he did his job, never asked why, and was a decent young man.

“Oh! I meant nothin’ wrong! I was just moved!” the old man pleaded.

“I was just lost in thought, Nathan! He’s been perfectly respectful!” you cut in.

He turned to you with a huff.

“Alright, but if I see you or any man getting handsy with her, you’ll have ‘em chopped up!” he spat.

You mouthed a thank you to Nathan. He returned to sit by you, nursing his water but always hawk-eyed. Processing what you overheard, the insults piercing your insides, you hardly noticed Verity walking up to you.

“Why, Y/N--looks like you made enough coin to buy France! How about some…what…what is it?”

Her cheerful, freckled face darkened at you looking down at the floor.

“I…I’m just…I heard some…I can’t tell you. Not now…” you said, glancing back at the soldier.

The tavern had plenty of men. And even if it was empty, Nathan was there. You were hardly alone even when you had to use a chamber pot or squat in the woods to relieve yourself. Not when you worked. Especially not when you ate. As badly as you wished to confide in Verity…the soldier could overhear something.

“Oh, Y/N, don’t cry…” she comforted, using a spare cloth to wipe your face.

“Just…some people said…bad…bad things…” you managed to blubber out. You wished you could be strong, but it hurt.

She placed her hands on her hips.

“Oh, pah! Damn them all. You’re a good person, making money honestly, and you said you’re about to be married in two days! Who’s the man?”

“You don’t know?” you gasped.

“Is he decent? If not, I’ll…”

“Well-you…you haven’t heard…anything?” you asked.

“No, not even from you…and there’s been too many weddings here I can hardly keep track!” she said with a shrug.

It was not a secret so why hide it?

Verity stood next to the soldier. Her husband was playing cards excitedly with a large group opposite away.

“Do you know the recorder? He made me an offer of marriage and I accepted.”

“Ha! I knew-you’re far too pretty and far too sweet for any decent man here to turn his head away! But wasn’t he…he was…”?

“He was previously betrothed to… someone else. They decided to end things. Her money was paid already, so there was no debt. So, he asked me to marry him…” you said flatly. And technically, that was the truth.

She nodded in understanding. Perhaps even more than even you could say. Perhaps it was a fading in her eye. But she understood.

“Let me walk you home, dear, at least….” She said, looping her am around yours. “I ain’t scared of the bloody dark, I can walk back here backward without fear. But I can’t have a bride fall on her face she has to keep pretty for the wedding.”

The soldier raised his eyebrow and looked at you.

“That…that would be nice…” you answered.

The next morning, you fought not to nod your head off with Lady Yeardley. Sitting on her table reading as she listened was not too reviving an activity for the morning. You completed a reading of the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians. She picked that chapter and had you read aloud the fourth through the eighth verses. Looking up, you thought she would ask you a question for discussion. But it wasn’t a question, it was a phrase.

“Well, speaking of love- my dear...” she said kindly.

A smile broke on your lips. She took the brown bible from your hands.

“Today…today’s my wedding day, ” you finished despite yourself. You could hardly believe the words coming out of your lips.

She then took your palms and guided you to stand up with her.

“I…I’m so nervous, Lady Yeardley!” you confessed.

Was this even the right thing? You felt wrong. Perhaps not the altar was waiting at that church but the guilty nose of adultery. But you could not get the nasty comments of those men last night out of your head. What if they were right?

“I’ve already been married twice and even then I was always nervous at my wedding…” she recalled, taking the bible from your hands. And child! I know you’re afraid but…Castell is a good man, a kind man, you know that?”

You nodded.

“Lady Yeardley…you do not think…you do not think I’m a wicked, bad person, am I?”

“Why, no, not at all…”

“I always feel like I am…I feel like I am doing something wrong…”

“You consented to something sacred, Y/N, how could that ever be wrong?”

Now was the time.

“And I came here wanting a husband, a lord who could provide for me, take care of me. Someone who could protect me the way God protects us. And in turn, I would give him my respect and my…my obedience…” you added hesitantly.

Her eyes beamed. Even if it wasn’t entirely true, it wasn’t entirely false. But most of all, it was everything you knew she would want you to say.

Two can play at that game, Woodbyrg.

“Well, of course, my dear! And you’ve been blessed with the opportunity-there is nothing wrong with that! Quite the opposite in fact!” she cried.

You saw Nathan in the corner, ever diligent. He checked his fingernails for dirt, more interested in those than some silly female chatter.

“Perhaps…we can pray today…since I’m nervous…” you suggested. Now that was entirely true.

“Yes…”

Both of you knelt to the ground. Lady Yeardley asked for a blessing for you and Samuel, as well as a note of thanks for both of you being here in the colony together. It was genuinely sweet of her. Your eyes were closed, but you smiled again.

As soon as an amen was voiced, you got up. It was the morning already. But one other matter was pressing on you too much

Saying your goodbyes just outside, you turned to Nathan and ordered “please go with me to Samuel’s house, now.”

He trotted behind as you picked up your skirt and hurried there. He was puffing to keep up with your sudden speed.

“But- Miss! Miss! Istn’t it-you shouldn’t!” he huffed out.

Knocing eagerly on the door of the short house, you spoke through.

“It’s me! It’s Y/N!”

You heard a slight gasp and a panicked shuffling of feet and closing of doors. Mercy cracked the door, her lily white face face barely sticking out.

“Why Miss Y/L/N! Why are you here? Before it’s time?” she asked chipperly.

“Can…can I speak to him?” you asked.

“Today’s the morning of the wedding! You’ve got a dress and everything to get ready!” she cried

“Mercy, please! I just wish to speak to him! A little!” you begged.

“But miss! It’s bad luck for you to see each other before the wedding! You don’t want that, do you!”

“I don’t need to see him…just speak with him…” you reasoned.

She blinked her eyes, and then turned around. You saw Christopher peak his head in the space too out of curiosity.

“Mercy…could you cover my eyes and Christopher…cover his…that way we can speak?” you asked.

They looked at each other then nodded. Mercy walked you inside and then sat you down. She placed her pale hands from her sides oer yours until all was black. You heard a few footsteps.

“Y/N…what is the matter, darling? Is everything alright?” you heard Samuel ask. Thought the slight laugh in his voice was undeniable. “I haven’t put the check in yet…so you’ll have to wait a little while.”

“Samuel, if I am to do this, I have to know something…what am I to you?”

“Why, why such doubts?”

“There has been…been talk on my character…” you blurted.

“Who has been speaking? I’ll deal with them if need be!”

“No! I was worried if your intentions were…if they’re honest…because they said that…I must have been some, some conquest to you. Am I? Please be honest!”

“Oh, Y/N, I would fight those men if I could but…sweetheart, if I saw you as a conquest, would I consider marrying you? Would I consider using my own tobacco for you if I planned on abandoning you after?”

“…no, you wouldn’t…”

“You’re no prize. Y/N. You’re my light, my friend, my joy, my beloved-you know me better than anyone and you care for me more than anyone I’ve ever met. And I know if I am at that church and I don’t see you walk up to me later today… I don’t know what I’ll even think. And now I feel scared you…you won’t.”

You felt yourself sniffle “Oh Samuel, I’m so sorry! I was just hurt by gossip-can you forgive me?”

“There’s nothing to forgive…you were hurt and unsure. And there’s been many a poor maid beguiled in the past. You didn’t want to end up becoming one.”

“I wish I could embrace you now.” You said, not caring who was there to hear it.

“We’ll have time for that after. There’s a check I need to give to the governor first…and I have to be at the church after, would you like to join me?” You could hear the smile in his voice

“More than anything else in the world…I will see you later.”

“I’ll see you later, Y/N.”

Mercy pulled your arm up and turned you around while your eyes were still closed. She walked you outside and closed the door. She trotted after you, but saw that the emotion welled up in you had let out. You let out a few tears and covered your hand with your mouth.

“Miss, there’s already a lot to do for today- and there’s something I…Why, miss? What is it? Please don’t cry!”

She took a handkerchief from her pocket, you noticed it was white with little strawberries sewn into the middle, You patted your eyes dry. Nathan stood by, quiet and watchful.

“Master Castell will not want you to see you so upset! Especially not today of all days!”

“I…I don’t think I’m upset…not anymore. I’m crying because…I’m happy. I’m happy that I can be sure he…he cares about me.”

“What have people been saying, miss?”

“I…I’ll tell you later. I just have something to ask of you…what is it you were talking about?”

She took your arm, pulling you excitedly to the front of your house. Nathan stayed outside, always keeping a safe, polite distance but his pistol ever by his side.

As you walked inside, you were surprised to see Alice there with pink flowers in her hands.

“Oh, Alice! Th-thank you!” you cheered, accepting the plants.

“I’ve picked them this morning, so they were fresh…” she added proudly.

“This is a precious gift, thank you!”

“Well, I have a gift…but it is not this one…” she teased, her cheeks grew rosier from the happiness shining from her beautiful face.

“What do you mean?” you ask.

She smiled mischievously, “I know it’s not like me to take things without asking…but you did so much for me, when we went on the ship and…and after and with everything…I had to thank you…so I asked for Mercy’s help. I’ve kept the key you gave me.”

“And right glad I did, miss-and it’s most beautiful!” Mercy cut in.

“What is?” you asked.

She stepped aside and gestured to your bed.

When you looked on it, there was your dress. It was your nicest dress. When you packed it, you knew that if, no, when you were married at the colony you would wear it.

But it was different. There were decorative little flowers sewn into the skirt. A few tears and patches were fixed and smoothed out. There was a beautiful, shining material added to the skirt and bits of gold decorations that shone in the light. It did not look like just merely a nice dress for a Sunday church service. It looked like a gown a queen in a fairy tale might wear.

Covering a slight gasp, you embraced the two of them with another hundred thanks for their work.

Mercy tied up your stays and helped you put on a few more petticoats. Alice held it gently open for you to walk in. Once it was slipped over your body and buttoned, you noticed the skirt felt wider, as if you looked like you were floating. You slipped two lace gloves, the only luxury the company gave each woman aboard, Mercy nudged your arm.

“Oh! Please! Please let me do your hair! I’m so good with hair and I’ve had practice!” she begged with wide eyes.

“Why…sure…you can, Mercy! I’m sure you do wonders!” you agreed, settling into the chair.

It had been long since England since any changes were made to your hair. Since first boarding the boat it had grown out some. Mercy was gentle as she tucked in strands, put pins in, and did her best to brush it through and present your hair in a way that was beautiful.

“And these!” she cheered, pulling a few flowers from her pockets and tucking them into the crown of your head securely.

Looking at your reflection in the window, they looked like little jewels. Alice folded her arms and admired it quietly.

“One more right here…I do hope you are not tender-headed, miss….”

She fixed it in a way that flattered your face yet felt soft, free, and romantic. Alice’s eyes went bright as you turned to face her.

“Oh…oh heavens…you look beautiful, Y/N…” Alice said.

“I don’t know if the whole world itself had such a bride!” Mercy declared, folding her arms behind her.

You were on the verge of your next hug when there was a knock on the door. Christopher walked in.

“Ladies…the check has been delivered. In a few minutes, he’ll be ready at the church.” He reminded.

“Yes, but get you gone! You have to be there too!” Alice teased, shooing him away. She waved goodbyre as she left.

“I’ll see you after, Y/N…”

Your heart began to beat hard against your ribs. The time was approaching.

“Mercy…Mercy…thank you- you made this all happen…not to mention all of that cooking!” you recalled.

“I’m only glad you could assist me!” she said.

“I couldn’t let you do all of that by yourself!”

She smiled, sniffing up a few tears herself.

Outside, you heard up a few fiddles and instruments playing in the distance. You knew they always did at weddings. And here they were, almost like an approaching army but not bringing war but bringing joy and expecting not a battle, but the approach of a bride.

“You’re most welcome…Miss…Mistress Y/N…I bet the Master might swoon at the sight of you…”

“I’m feeling dizzy myself…” you confessed.

Taking a deep breath, sudden fears clenched inside your stomach, images and bitter memories flashing in your mind. This was all too perfect. Any minute, something horrible might happen. Something would go wrong.

“Oh miss! Don’t be so troubled! Today is going to be the most heavenly day!” she cheered.

You nodded, returning the strawberry handkerchief to her.

“Yes I will…I’ll try to forget everything…I’m just…nervous. I almost feel like I’m going to die once I step inside that church…” you confided.

“Why, you won’t die! But the master might die of unhappiness if you don’t! You can clutch my hand as we walk…that way you know that today is today!”

She handed you the pink flowers from Alice.

“And I might die of unhappiness if I don’t make myself go too…” you reasoned.

Shaking it aside, trying to slow your breathing, you both walked out. You treaded through a bit of dirt, but you didn’t mind. You kept your eyes forward. There was plenty of a crowd watching. Even if they were running errands about town, they watched. Your gown contrasting with the many drabber colors of ordinary day clothes as if you were a large butterfly. Some ladies even curtsied, and men took off their hats in reverence.

Finally, you saw the church. And a few figures outside the door.

Samuel was there, so was Christopher by his side, patting his back in brotherly congratulations. You felt as if your breathing would stop at the sight of Samuel. He looked incredibly dashing, his cape just over his shoulder, and never more like a prince than today.

When you walked up to the entrance, Mercy slipped out of your arm to go back into the crowd. You took a few soft steps to be by his side.

“You look beautiful, Y/N,” he said quietly into your ear as the doors opened.

“Thank you…you as well…”

A few witnesses, Christopher and the Yeardley couple, walked in as everyone else waited outside. Reverend Whitacker stood at the altar. The church had been decorated with a few extra flowers than normal. But oblivious to any unsanctimonious joy, he stared at you both. He was a sour faced man with long gray hair and beady eyes, analyzing you both. And his solemn frown seemed a bit serious for a wedding. Had he heard the rumors in town concerning you? And believed them? You wanted to freeze. You kept walking up and reached the altar.

Whitaker began to read the first rites. Looking down, once your other hand let go of the flowers, you noticed it was shaking. This was all so happy. Too happy almost. But here you were, about to be married to the sweetest, dearest, best of men. You had braved separation from your family, a voyage on a ship, hard work, faced drudgery, heartbreak, and came close to death. It was all overwhelming, and the words and first prayers seemed numb to your ears. You found you were smiling a little, but you wanted to cry again.

You felt Samuel turn his head to see you. His eyes were a little bright and his mouth closed as if trying to keep himself from speaking or anything lest he should cry too. You felt his hand come close and take yours. You accepted it. He felt less tense, as did you.

Samuel leaned forward after a prayer to him.

“If you would mind, minister…I asked you about a passage from the book of Ruth earlier…can it please be read here for the ceremony?” he asked.

“It’s not normal to…”

“Pease, just for this ceremony, I think it would be appropriate for today…” Samuel reasoned.

“If it’s for this ceremony, I will…” He nodded soberly, turning his head down to the bible and flipping the pages.

You turned to face Samuel. As the priest read, you could see him lightly mouthing the words to you. As if he was genuinely saying them to you.

“Entreat me not to leave thee or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people will be my people, and thy God my God.”

A stray tear escaped you. But your smile widened.

Finally, you made vows to love and honor each other. Your voice became stronger with each promise “from this day, until death do us part.”

After a bit of communion with wine and bread, a final prayer was said. You began to breathe in a little deeper. You felt his hands were shaking as well. Both of you let out a deep breath as if you both were holding it in throughout.

“I now pronounce you, man and wife. You may kiss the bride.”

Samuel leaned forward and kissed you so quickly and deeply you almost got dizzy. Your hands reached up and froze, and then wrapped around, deepening it.

It’s…it’s done! It’s happened! I never knew it would happen. This day I never thought would ever come.

Once you walked out, almost in a trance, the crowds of people were outside. You wondered if they would jeer or throw mud at you for a second.

They applauded. Women in pretty dresses and their hair done in braided buns tossed flower petals from their baskets. Samuel took your hand and raised it up and men cheered for him. Alice even walked up and gave you a large hug.

“Congratulations, Mistress Castell,” she said.

More people, strangers even gave their good wishes. Nearby there was a small band of musicians playing fiddles, drums, flutes, fifes, and you gazed at them, smiling at the joy of the music and all that it brought you.

You felt Samuel gently put a hand on your shoulder as you listened, and then turned around and kissed you again, and you felt yourself smile into it.

“I never knew I could be this happy…” you confessed.

“Neither I…but I love you, my sweeting,” he said cupping your face.

You leaned into it, kissing part of the palm of his hand and grinning. A few flower petals went over you in a flurry and some got into his brown hair.

“You didn’t tell me you would wear flowers today!” you joked, following the wedding party as everyone began to walk.

“I guess I wished to match you!” he replied, he gently took a hand to touch the little flowers in your hair that was Mercy’s touch. In turn, you brushed a few petals off his shoulder and placed them on the top of his head teasingly.

Everyone went over to the tavern. Tables set aside; everyone went quiet once each person received a glass of ale. Governor Yeardley himself handed you and your new husband two each.

“Everyone!” he barked. The party stilled.

He beamed at you two. Glasses with ale were passed around to as many as who could get one.

“Castell is a good man, a man without whom our colony would be lost and dysfunctional. Every day, every event we see him scribbling away in the corner, making sure our history is secure. Y/N is an honest, God-fearing woman. Together are the ideal, perfect couple for our colony.”

“To the health of the Castells and of Virginia!” he declared, drinking deep. The rest of you followed suit.

Mercy and a few of the women began to scramble in and out of the room carrying plates of food. Music picked up as everyone began to feast on the bounty saved for today. You enjoyed eating with Samuel publicly without a sense of shame.

“That verse was beautiful, thank you…Whitaker isn’t always a friendly man…” you said.

He nodded and beamed, “I’ve talked with him a bit before…and I thought with the conversation we had earlier…it felt right to have it in. It’s from the Bible after all.”

People walked up to congratulate the two of you constantly. If you happened to be chewing on bread as someone babbled away, Samuel put a protective hand over you and thanked them for your sake so you could eat your food. Christopher was arriving as Samuel got up from his seat and embraced him happily, the two of them talking deeply with large smiles.

The same musicians began to play some tender ballads. You both enjoyed biting into your wedding cakes, the ones Mercy handed out, made with honey into it and frosted with powdered sugar. Samuel brought your hand to his lips and kissed it.

“I’d like to speak with Farlow and the governor, I’ll be back…”

“I’d like to speak to the Sharrows, I’ll be back as well…” you said, both of you getting up from your chairs.

Once you had wandered, talking with the Sharrows, and a few more people here and there, you found yourself backing into a corner. It seemed as if almost all of the bloody colony had arrived and the air was stuffy with the crowd. It was fading to be the hours of dancing and people began to step away to form a dance floor in a messy oval in the wooden room. Silently, you felt yourself walk backwards. You felt the cool air of evening by your cheek as you got close to the door.

“Congratulations on your marriage…” a voice as low and smooth as honey spoke to you.

“Why th…”

Head turning, your heart stopped at the sight of her.

“Yes. Thank you.” You said to Jocelyn.

Your feet were stuck in place, and a word kept repeating in your head, ‘no no no no, no, no….’ As hard as you tried to plaster a smile on your face, your food began to swirl in your stomach.

“May I ask, what is Samuel doing tomorrow?” she questioned matter-of-factly. “Who is he speaking with?”

Her eyes looked down at your dress in surprise at the work and quality. For once, it was clear from your clothes that you were no longer below her station.

“He’s going to just do his normal work of recording Assembly business. And that’s it. Why should that matter to you?” you said.

“It should. If you do not know what is happening in here, then you’re truly a dull woman. You’ve been married for an hour, you should know these things.”

You shrugged.

“I don’t care to know them.”

“That’s your folly. Give him a smile and be sweet, that’s all you have to do to get a man’s attention…it seemed that and spreading your legs to him worked in your favor, after all. Now you can use it to be useful.” She added with a glance in his direction.

“I have not spread my legs once to him!” you blurted quietly, glancing to make sure no one overheard. You had had enough.

“That’s what everyone thinks now. You’ll have to-might as well be practical with it. But perhaps…you aren’t that good in bed. Well, when a wife can’t satisfy her husband…you know what they say happens, it’s the nature of men…” she said with a wicked smile.

A hundred curses were caught in your throat.

“If that’s all you have to say then I do not need my time wasted, there’s guests I’d like to talk to before the day is over,” You replied a little icily.

There was only so much you could do or say with people surrounding you.

“If you are going to blindly let Farlow, Redwick, and Yeardley destroy everything, your time is being wasted,” Jocelyn said.

She adjusted the hat on top of her head from tipping too far off.

“They aren’t much! And this isn’t a day for politics…it’s a day for feasting and my food is getting cold,” you dismissed, starting to walk away.

She swerved in front of you.

“It’s also about to be a wedding night and if you don’t please him tonight with your pathetic body...”

“Thank you for your kind sentiments,” you interrupted sarcastically. “Now I must leave, farewell.”

As you turned away, deciding it was best to be aggressive, you felt her grip your arm, pulling you in close with an immense strength that you were surprised Jocelyn had in her slender arms. Your stomach dropped and you bit back the urge to yell. Perhaps she was provoking you on purpose. Especially in public on your wedding day.

“I haven’t forgotten. This will not make you any safer. Samuel gave the company the money so you could be his slut. Now no one cares what happens. you’re a dead bitch walking,” she hissed lowly so that only you could hear.

Fear gripped you. Your face dipped down, feeling warm. You could have sworn a head or two turned your way out of the peripheral of your eye.

You released a false laugh, your courage growing, and walked away from her.

“Miss Woodbyrg, what a funny joke!”

She looked stiff as a bust. Her soft, plump lips were growing tight.

“I mean it,” she voiced.

Biting away a frown, you heard the fiddles pick up a quick tune.

“You must excuse me,” you said in an official voice as you could muster. “I’d like to have a dance with my husband.”

Fleeing as far from her as you could, you joined your husbands side on the other half of the room.

Seeing your face, his own turned dark.

“Darling, what is it?” he asked, placing a hand on your shoulder.

You shook your head, feeling one flower fall off a strand of your hair.

“It’s…it’s just I’m…I’m worried…” you confessed,

“Can you discuss this now?”

“Not with everyone around us…”

“It will be alright but…would you like to dance-would it make you feel better?”

He gave you his open hand. You placed your own hand, blanketed by your lace gloves, in it.

“Y-yes,” you agreed.

You got into lines and danced with the others finding him surprisingly talented. They were simple country dances that everyone knew so as many people could attend the wedding as possible. But you smiled with the movements, the switching of arms and touching of hands as you walked with him in a circle, skirts and the odd cloak floating like a bird’s wing. How couples could line up and run to the ends then run through the lines of people and still be together. Even if there was a mistake or a stepped toe, people smile and chuckled it off. Any worries were replaced with your muscles getting sore from the quick movement.

As the song ended, instead of a last gentlemanly bow as was tradition, you felt Samuel walk to you and place his arms around your body. In an instant, he lifted you up and you started laughing, placing your arms around his shoulders for security as he twirled you around, your skirt billowing. The others smiled at the sight.

“Today, I am the happiest of all men!” he chirruped to them, giving you a sloppy kiss on your cheek as you returned his embrace. It was comforting, enveloping even.

Though you felt yourself sight a little once he let go.

There were so many dances, you weren’t aware your feet were hurting. Or that the sun long past dipped over the horizon.

Mercy picked up her apron and ran to you. In one hand she held a large cup of ale.

“Oh, Miss…. Mistress! No- Mistress Y/L/N! No, not that! Mistress Castell!” she corrected herself.

"It's alright Mercy, I'm new to it myself!" She blinked away tears, rubbing it off with her eyes. Her chest huffed with crying.

"I'm so happy today! So happy! I'm so happy for both of you! How he smiled! I thought he would burst when we walked up to him! I remember how you comforted me-I was the first person you even spoke to here. But now…now you're my mistress after you've been my friend, and my last mistress…she…she’s so… and….and oh! I feel so much!" she cried, letting out pent up tears.

"Have peace Mercy! It's normal to cry! Everything's changing, but for the better this time! Just dance and enjoy yourself!" you cheered.

Returning the strawberry handkerchief, it was your turn to wipe off her sniffling face.

"I have to clean up all the…"

"No, you don't! Just enjoy the party!" you insisted.

"But its ending! See! Everyone's walking out and…you have to…to go home and I have to pick up the mess!" she refused.

Part of you jumped, already with a faint jittery shiver running down you.

"Let's just…finish your drink, let's enjoy today while it lasts and not worry," you suggested.

She drank half of the ale in a large gulp.

"But…you might need some water, too," you added.

People filtered out with bright eyes from dancing and farewells on their lips.

Samuel walked up to you and linked his arm around yours. Suddenly aware of how close he felt, your breathing quickened. You felt flushed from all the people, excitement, and dancing.

He wished any slightly drunk guest's good night as you finally walked outside into the night. It felt crisp compared to the cramped dancing quarters and you shivered a little. Clutching his arm, you felt yourself become weak at the sight of what was now your door.

"Welcome home, Mistress Castell," he said as he opened it. "Can I carry you in? It's bad luck if you trip when you walk inside."

"Yes, you may."

He scooped you into his arms and carried you past the main room. Looking around, you saw more flowers were on the tables, chest, and desk than what was normal, into your shared room. You could have almost collapsed from the nerves and excitement.

The bed had been decorated with a few spare ribbons tied into bows. Just like people did for weddings back home. You even noticed that there were pink primroses on the chest next to the bed.

As he let you down, both of you stood near each other. His face looked as flushed as your and he placed his hands together in what seemed to be…timidity it looked.

"Have you…have you eaten well? People kept talking to us, I hope you aren't hungry from all of that," he asked.

"I'm stuffed, I can't take another bite…it was all good, though," you said, attempting to break the awkwardness.

"Have you had some water?"

"Yes."

"I have…I have a little bit of wine I've been saving. I thought we could open it to…to celebrate…" he offered.

"Yes, I would like that," you replied.

He hurried out, returning with the bottle and two green glasses. You sat on the edge of the bed and watched as he poured you both a glass. Sitting by your side, you clinked your glasses together in a toast, having your first sip.

"Your house looks wonderful with the flowers" you complimented.

"I did it for you. Well, Mercy did too. We both picked them. She laughed at me picking them."

"You've picked plenty of flowers before..." you gestured to the primroses.

"I thought you would like that touch. Even then I wanted somehow to show you how much I adore you…"

Leaning forward, though wine was still on your breath, you took his hand and kissed it, leaving a small mark on it.

"I hope every day I can show how much I adore you as well…" you said.

He gave you another kiss, trailing over from your mouth to the crook of your neck. You gasped at the feeling. Your hands naturally went to hold onto his arms, but you felt his hands wander to the buttons on the back of your dress, teasing away at them much to your mixed nerves and thrill. But then as he pressed another kiss on a certain spot on your neck you had to let out a laugh.

"Mmph, what is it, Y/N?" he asked quietly.

You replied, "your beard tickles!"

Both of you laughed a little from the released tension.

"It's been itching me since morning," he confessed.

"I can't take it off, but I can help you with your cloak, can I?" you offered.

Sitting so you could reach it, you unhooked it and set it away.

He undid a few buttons of his doublet then paused.

"And let me help you…first with your hair…" he said.

Nodding, you sat and felt his hands touch it, letting strands free. He took away the flowers, pins, the turns, and tucks. You realized he never saw you with your hair down…and felt the last part fall free. You looked at him, with your hair freely released and everything set aside. His eyes were sweet. He gently took a strand.

"You'll have to get used to it being down all the time, now…" you commented.

"I won't mind at all…would you like to change out of your clothes?" he asked.

"Yes, I think it's time I did."

"Can I help you?" he asked.

"Yes, thank you." You had more to remove than he did.

His hand went to the back of your dress and you felt him unbutton it. Slowly, as if he was touching a piece of glass, he removed the dress, then helped you out of your petticoats, and slowly undid your stays, figuring out how to loosen them. The cups of wine were left on the chest, almost entirely drunk. You felt yourself feel warmer with each bit of skin that was slowly being revealed to him. Finally, you felt it loose enough to be taken over your head.

He looked down as you stood before him in your shift, and only your shift. His eyes softened.

"I…I know what you expect of me tonight…" you confessed, jumping right to it.

"I…I…uh, yes. I…I don't expect…expect anything…" he said, his ears going pink.

"Have you…do you have any diseases? You can be honest with me," you pleaded.

"No, I don't," he answered, shaking his head.

He began to undo the buttons of his doublet and removed it, in his white shirt.

"Have you been with anyone?" you asked, placing your hands in your lap.

He froze. His blush increased to his whole face.

"Twice. You will be ashamed of me…"

"You can tell me. Was it anyone here?" you asked.

"No. I was of age and wanted to prove to my brothers that I was a real man. I decided to try a prostitute in Oxford…I got too attached. I saved up to see her second time. I wrote her a few love letters and tried to visit her, and she laughed me away after…I was young and foolish," he recalled.

"You just didn't know…" you commented thoughtfully.

He removed his shoes, stockings, and pants. Now he was also in his shift as you were.

"And you? I know they all boast of the purity of the maids to make wives…but we're alone now, Y/N. You can tell me. Have you been with anyone?" Samuel asked in turn.

You looked him in the eyes, your beloved, and told him honestly about what experience or lack of experience you have had. He was nonjudgmental and nodded in understanding. Jocelyn's words from earlier flashed in your mind.

"I just don't want to…to... to displease you," you said, looking down at your feet.

"You're my wife now, I made vows before God to protect and cherish you. I don't care about being pleased. I just want to tell you that you'll always be safe with me. And you shouldn't be forced to anything. We don't have to do anything tonight." He assured you.

He felt a slight rush of excitement as he went up to kiss you again, feeling butterflies in your body as he did. But you felt an aching further below. You pressed your lips further, tasting the wine. You began to lay down on the bed, feeling it shift with your new weight on it.

He turned his head up and asked "would you…would you like to make love tonight? If you don't want to, I…"

"Yes!" you cried.

"Yes?…are you…"

"It's our wedding night! And…I want you too much…" you replied bluntly, looking in his eyes. Perhaps it wasn't ladylike to admit it. He didn't seem to care. And it was the truth.

You took his hands and led them to your sides. He laid you down softly on top of you, but not his whole weight. You could even feel how badly he wanted you from under his shift.

"Well, if my wife insists, I'll obey…" he smirked.

Letting out another little laugh, you began to kiss him. Your hands began to touch him boldly, you felt his body from the shift-his back, his biceps, his waist, and you felt one of his hands get to your hair. You pressed each other's forehead against each other breathing in deep with the cold rush of each other's breath. Courage made you push him a little bit away. You placed your hands over the tie on the front of your shift that held it together, the last thing hiding your "pathetic" body. You unhooked the front of your shift. His pupils went large once you removed it over your shoulders and let it fall away.

He smiled at you, "You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, Y/N…God, you make my head spin."

As you laid back on the bed with a grin, your heart beating against your ribs so hard that you could hear it through your eardrums, you looked up at him you laid down and he placed one hand on the collar of his shift and joined you.

"Tell me you love me," you voiced nervously.

He took it off and laid on you, cupping your face again.

"I love you…that's everything I can think of right now. I'd say some pretty verses I'd say to you now but…at the sight of you naked I forgot it entirely…"

"I appreciate the thought, my darling," you commented with a smile.

It was a night that was tender. Every physical urge you both suppressed around each other was released in a wave inside of you. Pleasure flooded every inch of you. You forgot the men at the tavern. You forgot the tears from earlier. You even forgot the woman you wanted to forget about most of all. You only knew his name. You cried out his name as a prayer many times that night. And he prayed yours.

Now completely, husband and wife, you both fell asleep in a tangle of each other's arms.

Taglist: @bluesfortheredj (sempai) @yourlocalmusicalprostitute @theworksgaga @itscale @theoneandonlyeclecticepileptic @queenlover05 @rubystarflight @themficsilike @namelesslosers @itsametaphorgwil @grigorlee@isitstraightvodka @rhapsodyrecs @cxllianmurphy @princealfie

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justawritingcorner · 4 years ago

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Buzzfeed Unsolved but It’s Dabi and Hawks

I love Buzzfeed Unsolved and I like writing for Dabi and Hawks (my bois). That’s my only excuse.

Elegant snow-white and pastel pink flowers blossomed on the branches of the many trees in the area, drinking in the warm spring breeze and bathing in the bright sunlight. They waved excitedly at the pair as they exited the car. Dabi, worn out from driving for hours, stretched his limbs while his companion took in the elegantly crafted building in front of him. A path made of varying shades of grey stone led from the parking area to the holy church Hawks insisted on going to before they embarked on this cursed trip. Sturdy, white stones held the complimentary, high ceiling, some overhanging to provide some shade to priests and churchgoers passing by. On the top of the most central pillar of the sacred building a cross shone brightly, marking this ground as a sanctuary for all.

“Okay, let’s get this over with,” Dabi huffed as he walked from his side of the car towards Hawks. The younger rolled his eyes at his companion’s words, “Yeah, I just wanna get some words from the Father before we go to the hell-holes, that too much to ask?” He didn’t give the patchwork man a chance to respond before he raced towards the entrance.

Sunlight filtered through the many brilliantly crafted stained glass windows, painting the carpet in an array of beautiful colours. Turning his head, he noticed a particularly well-crafted religious statue in a small alcove. Before the winged hero could admire the artistic works properly, Dabi began walking ahead of him. They continued through the church.

They wondered around for a bit before the two arrived in the room where the sermons took place. Majority of the space was occupied by endless rows of pews facing a large stage, adorned with several beautiful golden treasures and a mahogany lecturn. Smaller stained glass windows flecked the walls, all depicting a notable scene from the Bible. In the plentiful pews, a balding man sits, bowing his head respectfully to the religious objects in front of him.

Dabi and Hawks walked over to him, silently praying it was the pastor they scheduled to meet and not a random praying man. Maybe it was luck from the church, but he was. They sat together on the pew in front of the elder and shifted their bodies around to look at him.

“First of all, thank you for talking with us today.” Father Thomas shook Hawks’s extended hand, then Dabi’s, though with a bit of hesitation. Before he could question it, Hawks began the conversation.

“How many exorcisms have you preformed in your career?”

“Formal exorcisms, I’ve preformed 50 to 75 in 10 years.”

Shock was visible on their faces as he said this. Hawks felt even more respect for the older man blossom in his chest as the preacher relaid this information. Dabi still peeved at the hesitation of the handshake, disbelievingly rolled his eyes. It would take more than that to convince him this bullshit was real.

Now feeling like Thomas was the best person to ask, Hawks proposed the questions that had been gnawing at him for a long time. “What is the difference between a ghost and a demon?” The Father shifted in his black priest robes, “A ghost would refer to a disembodied human soul. A demon is a preternatural angelic creature that rebelled against God.”

“It’s not human,” Hawks echoed.

“No, it’s not. Their life form is dying. They have been dying since the moment they rebelled. And so humans attract them for two reasons. One, because they are parasitic and they feed off our life form, but secondly, their goal is to take as many to hell with them as possible. Because they already know they’ve lost.”

Thomas examined the two’s uncomfortable faces, “I’m not trying to-”

“Oh, no. I just got a shiver down my spine.”

The three talked more about demons and spirits, mostly Thomas and Hawks as Dabi held back laughter at their conversation, before the priest implored, “Where are these homes you’re going into?”

Regret sank back into him as he retold the horrible places Dabi convinced him to go to, “One of them is nearby, The Winchester Mystery House. Essentially, a haunted mansion. The next is the haunted doll island in Mexico City. And the last is perhaps the scariest, it’s a house infested with a demon.”

Noticing the time, Hawks asked for some advice for these places and anything they may come across. Thomas fixed a few wispy strands, stalling for a moment. “If these places you’re going claim to have spiritual attachments, I would do nothing to invite them into any kind of conversation. I would do nothing to create a tie with them.” For the first time since the beginning of the conversation, Dabi spoke, “Treat them like a fine art museum.” Thomas, ignoring the blatant sarcasm, nodded in agreement.

The bird man pulled out a regular unopened water bottle from his coat pocket, “Would it be possible for you to bless this water for me to carry?” It took every ounce of strength in Dabi’s crispy body not to burst out laughing as Thomas began his blessing.

“In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, in your kindness hear our prayers and pour down the blessing into this element, so that health obtained by calling upon your holy name, will be secure against all attack through Christ, our lord, amen.”

With the conversation ended, they, mostly Hawks, thanked the Father for his time. Dabi, eager to leave the building and head to the Mystery House, sped out of the church. Hawks went to follow his companion, but the Father set a heavy hand on his shoulder. He turned to see Thomas standing behind him, “Do not be afraid, Hawks.” Before he could speak, the pastor made his way out of the building. The winged hero froze for a minute before following Dabi out of the church.

“I feel so comforted and where we’re about to go, it will be the exact opposite,” he muttered as he walked towards his tall friend.

After a few seconds of silence, Hawks told his partner about the preacher’s comforting words. Dabi said nothing at first before a sly smile overtook his neutral features, “Jesus said ‘chill’.” Hawks laughed and repeated the phrased the pastor did not say.

They entered the car with Dabi driving again and Hawks reading off directions. They told jokes and dumb stories, trying to ease the man in the passenger’s seat’s anxiety. It worked, to an extent. The possibility of encountering any evil spirits still terrified Hawks. And the haunted lineup they have planned for the next week wasn’t helping him in the slightest.

#bnha #boko no hero academia #mha #my hero acadamy #my hero academia #hawks bnha #hawks #hawksbnha #dabi #dabi bnha #buzzfeed unsolved au #can you tell i don't know anything about church?#or religion #basically just the beginning to a crack fic #can be read as platonic or a ship. doesn't matter #might not do every episode. but will do some #wrote this instead of sleeping

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andrewjaaeremy · 3 years ago

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They need to see you plain, a long-faced lad in an old black cloak.

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dancekickboxcardio · 5 years ago

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See I was prepared for Saturday weekend warrior 🛡⚔️. I am of the same opinion with the nurse that if my back does nothing all day but carry weight and not move as I move typically, it shall not improve. I am not sure 🤔 what happens in the physiology. But my hypothesis is the muscles 💪🏾 surrounding the area whether it is part of the inflamed tissues or not do not develop and gain strength and does not aid in the chemical reactions 🧪 that supports healing. It is a question to ask a science 🧫 professor 👨🏻‍🏫.

I wanted something green on my nails 💅🏾. This is a mix of green and blue. I wanted something bright but it’s not necessary. I wish I inconvenienced others for my morning selfie 🤳🏾. The perfect snapshot 📸 should be a big goal 🥅 of going to the gym 🏃🏼‍♀️ 💪🏾 as much as measuring my gains 📈📉📊. Speaking of which, I wanted to gauge my 📏 one month change. I have not used my tape measure. Laura is astounded that I do it myself. I think 💭 I said, “I am talented 🤹🏼‍♀️.” I have not weighed myself 4 weeks and I am looking 👀 forward to seeing where I stand. Huge change not everyday tick mark moves. I am not going to lie 🤥. Without my numbers 🔣🔢 I focus on others things. It’s not that I am less of a hawk. It’s just that I am working out 💪🏾 🏃🏼‍♀️ but unsure 😐 of my bearings. I was taught fractions kindergarten and I thought 💭 it was the most boring thing. But NASA 🚀.

Heck, I am interested in math. Actually, I don’t show it but when we measure the angles of flight of airplanes ✈️, I am dying of excitement inside 😆 🎊. I want to get myself school 🏫 ✏️✂️🖇📐🗒 supplies to keep me busy on the floor. I get to analyze by assessments my work 🎉. I got my Target Red Card. When do I get my bank 🏦 card? I want to shop 🛍 already.

I liked my Friday. Oooh 😯, I have to show twighlight.

I like seeing the majestic colors in the sky 🌌. We all know it as blue. But take a closer look 👀. There’s blue, purple, orange, red, yellow, green. Vie, I don’t see it. Look 👀 closer. Stare longer ? I just got my allowance $180. That means no Target splurge 🛍. I wanted $250. What the hell did I purchase over the 💳 week? Let me make calculations 🧮 . Perhaps, I can ask for more money 💵.

I looked at the accounting 🧾. What can I get with $180 😫. Stomp 👢. Tough call.

When in doubt, Nordstrom’s. They are giving me like $40 off at Under Armour 😭.

Ok. I paid the credit cards 💳 I am going to use. My gawd, $60 sunglasses 🕶 . It’s so cheap 💲 💲💲💲💲 if you consider it. It’s also going to stop 🛑 me from getting more cheapies. Just one. I need a case. You thought 💭 my Tahari’s were expensive? Steal this. How I think I will look 👀 like.

My brain 🧠 has been designer 👜 hacked. Let’s ground ourselves back to hard grind at the health club.

I got there early and oh my gawd, the transformation when I put on my make up💄 👛 and when I put my hair up. It must be high because I was going to be on the pool 🏊🏻‍♀️. I really shouldn’t have shied ☺️ it out, propered it out and I can do it later it out. Do what you have to do. You care more about what your face expression says than what they think about your vanity 🤩. I know it is a front, but sometimes those little things goad you in the right direction. It is not my big rocks ⛰ and some can over do it without knowing. I am looking 👀 forward to continued weightlifting 🏋🏼‍♀️ and cardio ♥️ like training 👟 and eating 🍽 what I want. I can have more flavorful 👩🏼‍🍳 dishes. Pastries 🥮 . Ice cream 🍨 without worries.

I spend time on my phone 📲. More, I read 📖 . The arguments in Gladwell’s book 📚 read like a New York Times paper 🗞. It’s like balance. I have not read the Bible to completion. It teaches you the nitty gritty way to live a good life. It has stories from the ancients ⚱️that are timeless rights and wrongs, good and evil. I like how historical they unfold for me. I am not ignorant of the time it was conceived and it propagated. In fact, people shed blood to start the Catholic Church ⛪ . Most of Christ’s disciples are martyred to sainthood 👼🏻. I don’t go to church but I have faith. I just don’t wear it like a cloak to hide my nefarious ends and motivations. That is disgusting. I should watch this today as a tribute.

I know the stories by heart ❤️ . However, I pick up little things. I live for those aha moments 💡. It makes more meaning. Unless, you miss the memo 📝 , we live in like a Judeo-Christian world 🌍 🙄.

I did great yesterday. People next to me wore scents and it didn’t want to make me barf 🤮. In fact, I love 💕 the Zumba 💃🏼 instructor’s scent—Katie. It makes me excited 😆 to get some for myself. Fingers-crossed 🤞🏾 next allowance week 📅. They had many questions particularly that there is construction 🚧. I was talking to Will right? He is one of the trainers and my sister’s BFF’s nutrionist. He contacted me to give me a prize 🏆. I won ⭐️ their raffle contest. I mentioned about second guessing. I feel that when most people and it is true to everyone when they are in a new situation and hello 👋🏾 it is intimidating Lifetime, you feel at a loss. You get some anxiety and become a little freaked out unsure 😐. I didn’t have this. Let me tell you my secret for only $100 bucks. I won’t go into details however I believe the answer is in preparation. 🎒 Overpacking is a good thing. Except, my duffel is so light because I cannot injure my low midback more.

I was in a little pain like at the most 6 in a rating scale. I didn’t bring Advil because I packed very lightly. Bare minimum. I don’t have like a first aid ⛑ Girl Scout graduate 🎓 school 🏫 kit. I should take some now not to relieve any pain. I have none. But to stop the inflammation. By today, I should be switching to hot 🥵 compress. The cold 🥶 waters 💦 benefited me a lot and the oldies were quite a cute bunch to have in classes. Their personalities range but oh boy, they know fun 🎉 like a practical joker. They were a treat 🍭 .

I drank two NSAIDs to calm down the inflammation and grabbed an ice pack. It is freezing put directly on the skin. I allowed it to go behind my satin boxer pjs.

I did one hour in the treadmill and tested how far I can go. To best describe it, I can at most go at a rate of 2.9 I suppose mph and the incline was a 5.0. To sustain my walking, it can only be set at 4.0. Yeah, my back was stiff and I feel the pain. But magic ✨ happened in Aquatics 👙. Maybe it’s the happy 😃 retirees effect. Bullocks, it’s the water 💧 and the exercises. Molly was able to zero in on my problem area. Perhaps that is what most seniors have an issue or what they really need to work with. Cynthia was right. It was with ease and yes easy. Under the water I tested my limits. I wanted to ask someone what a limited motion in my right side mean. Does that suggest the injured 🤕 area? I wanted to tell Katie the miracle. But the floor was haphazard 🔨 with the renovations and after dance 💃🏼 the situation presented itself differently. I was walking back to the women’s locker room with a smile 😃 only known to me that I don’t feel the injury. I feel better.

I went to dance 🕴🏻and there were a lot of people for a Friyay. Guess why? Yup, the machines and equipments were limited. I love 💗 Patty’s dance moves. They are contemporary but with touches of Latin. It was great. I wasn’t tough on myself. I did what I can. “I’ll correct it.” “I’ll pick it up.” I cannot make hip movements and wide use of obliques yet I enjoyed 😊 them. A girl approached me if I go to all the dance 🕺🏽lessons. You bet your bottom dollar. She asked me about Kelli. I don’t feel I describe it great. I told her I like her too. I love ❤️ all of them. Each have their unique signatures and you attend each session and you’ll never get bored 😵 because they include new things and they each teach differently. Like she has more hip hoppish moves. More gritty and less elegant. They are very high in intensity. Her moves are moderately high in difficulty. Just go and try to copy what they do. It could happen very fast 💨 so be on your toes.

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faithfulnews · 5 years ago

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Sufjan Stevens Is the Perfect Coronavirus Season Soundtrack

Sufjan Stevens’ music is full of birds. Swans, hawks, doves, loons and other avian witnesses to human toil and struggle. Like Stevens, birds can take a long view of their surroundings — soaring miles above it, untroubled by the granular details. But also, like him, they largely choose to be a part of it, poking around in the soil for sustenance and substance. You can scratch your head and wonder at why pigeons hop across the street instead of flying over it or you can be grateful for the sight.

I think that’s why Stevens has been such a valuable part of this self-isolation season. COVID-19 has, like nothing else since World War II, given everyone on our planet one, single, terrifying context. Every single living person you have ever met is going through some version of the same thing. That’s the bird’s eye view. But more immediately, the details of our individual lives have been upended. The places we walk. The people we kiss. The meals we make. These are the minutiae. The little things, suddenly torn asunder.

Stevens is gifted at not just seamlessly floating from the macro to the micro but exploring the relationship between the two. His Illinois tribute album Come On! Feel the Illinoise! is famous for unwieldy song titles like “Decatur, or, a Round of Applause for Your Step-Mother!”, but there’s an important point to this clutter. The town of Decatur and Sufjan’s stepmother existed in relationship with each other. The macro and the micro.

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This is why Steven’s music is good coaching on understanding the ways your personal wellbeing is connected to the common good. That’s always been true; it’s just more obvious now. But there’s another reason Steven’s music has been such an important balm for me the last few weeks: its treatment of death.

I was in college when Stevens first alighted on the then-burgeoning indie music scene, with his 50 State Project and everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach to recording. Refreshingly, for that time, he didn’t seem to take himself too seriously until he, suddenly, devastatingly would. He predated the modern internet’s knack of saying important things with silly aesthetics. I was living in Chicago when Illinoise came out and I loved it dearly, as any young, music-loving Chicago resident would. I didn’t know I, a Christian, was allowed to publicly admit that sometimes praying means “nothing ever happens” until Sufjan sang about it on “Casimir Pulaski Day.”

I was younger then and kept death in my peripherals like most of my friends did, but Stevens has always been much more comfortable with the grim specter over his shoulder. That was clear then but became much more apparent on 2015’s Carrie & Lowell, where death became the main player following the loss of his mother. The album’s sparse instrumentation suits its sad subject, with achingly pretty melodies about death, depression and, ultimately, acceptance. “Every road leads to an end,” Stevens sings on “Death With Dignity” — just one of many lines that can float by on a dozen listens before it catches you in your guts. Particularly now.

In America, we are experts at sanitizing death into a cold calculation — a distant, sterile finale unsuitable for polite conversation or any conversation at all outside of closed-off hospital rooms. But in Stevens’ music, death is the unavoidable context of our lives. “Make the most of your life while it is rife, while it is light,” he charges on “The Fourth of July” before slipping into the song’s repeated refrain — one simple, immutable fact: “We’re all gonna die.” In his telling, this is neither morbid nor fatalistic. It’s a fact to grow comfortable with now, while you still can.

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Stevens’ perspective rings truer now, with all our efforts to keep death at bay failing in spectacular fashion. In this strange season, death is lurking everywhere — a neighbor’s handshake, a doorknob, church. Paranoia and panic are obvious responses. But Stevens models a more human and necessary posture: “All things go.”

That’s why Stevens’ music has been both a comfort and a challenge. Comforting, because his music seems so comfortable with our present reality. Challenging, because this is the only sane way to think about death, really. “Jesus, I need you, be near me, come shield me from fossils that follow my head,” he sings on “John My Beloved.” “There’s only a shadow of me, in a matter of speaking: I’m dead.” If this season doesn’t get that into my skull, nothing will.

When will things go back to normal? I know what people mean when they ask that, but the reality is that there will be no going back to normal. The pandemic has raised enormous questions about the fragility of our lives at the macro and micro levels — the delicate, life-and-death ways we’re all connected to each other via a labyrinth of local businesses, healthcare systems, trusted (and not so trusted) news sources and minimum wage workers, as well as smaller things like hugs, concerts and restaurants. Shame on us if we refuse to re-evaluate our attitudes and actions about these things post-quarantine.

But likewise, it’s important to not let this collective familiarity with death go to waste and take advantage of the unique wisdom that is, for a time, looming over us like a shadow. “Now I am about to go the way of all the earth,” Joshua said in his lovely farewell address to Israel. “You know with all your heart and soul that not one of all the good promises the Lord your God gave you has failed. Every promise has been fulfilled; not one has failed.”

Stevens strikes a similar attitude about death, welcoming it neither as a friend nor fearing it as an enemy but accepting its inevitability and drawing logical conclusions about what that means for his life. “Lord,” he sings on “My Blue Bucket of Gold”, “touch me with lightning.” Is this a call for death or sanctification? In the Bible’s view, they are not always so different. As 2 Corinthians 5 says: “For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.”

That’s not easy to remember. But during my time in quarantine, Sufjan Stevens’ music has helped, a little, to both soar over some of the mess but also poke around in the messes of it and find “the only reason why I continue at all …blind faith, God’s grace.”

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weldonturner · 7 years ago

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New Post has been published on Weldon Turner

New Post has been published on http://www.weldonturner.com/sojourner-truth-part-2-woman-of-influence/

Sojourner Truth Part 2: Woman of Influence

Artist’s portrait of Sojourner Truth’s meeting with Abraham Lincoln in 1864 (Photo by MPI/Getty Images)

This is the second of a two-part article on Sojourner Truth, the 19th century preacher, orator, anti-slavery, and women’s rights activist. Born a slave in Ulster County, New York, she was never afforded the opportunity to learn to read or write. Yet, through fearless determination born of a deep Christian faith, she became one of the brightest lights in the civil-rights and women’s rights movements of the 19th century, lecturing and speaking to thousands, and meeting with some of the most influential figures of the period, including three presidents.

Laying the Groundwork

From New York City Sojourner Truth headed east: Brooklyn, Long Island, then Connecticut–Bridgeport, New Haven, Bristol and Hartford. She attended camp meetings, organized meetings, listened to sermons, preached and shared her testimony. She also worked when she could. In Hartford, in 1843, she joined a group of Millerites.

In 1838 William Miller (1782-1849) published a collection of lectures entitled Evidence from Scripture and History of the Second Coming of Christ, About the Year 1843. The volume predicted the final days of the earth, and the return of Christ, based on the Book of Daniel [1].

Miller was not an ordained minister but did have a license to preach [2]. He and a colleague, Boston pastor Joshua Hines, [3] recruited evangelical preachers and published books and pamphlets to support their teachings. The phenomenon became known as the Millerite Movement, and attracted some 50,000 adherents.

Northampton 1843-45

Like Miller, Truth believed the end of the world was near, but was not convinced of his timeline [4] [Note: Much of the reference material in this article is based on the book, Sojourner Truth, A Life and A Symbol, by Neil Patrick Painter, professor of history at Princeton University.] Nonetheless she became popular at Millerite meetings throughout the Northeast with her singing, prayer, and the ‘aptness of her remarks’ [5].

Opportunities to address audiences large and small accelerated the transformation from Isabella Van Wagenen to Sojourner Truth.

As the winter of 1843 approached, uneasy with some aspects of the Millerite Movement, and a preference for communal living, the itinerant Truth accepted the recommendation of Millerite friends to move to a commune in Northampton, Massachusetts [6].

The community was officially named The Northampton Association for Education and Industry [7]. One of the founders of the Association was the brother-in-law of William Lloyd Garrison, the famed publisher and anti-slavery activist. According to Painter:

[The Association] did not hold property in common or attempt to supplant existing family arrangements…it was organized “by religious men, upon anti-slavery ground…The need to heal class conflicts of the larger society, the worst of which was slavery, was one of the Northampton Association’s basic tenets.’ [8] Leading members of the abolitionist movement, including Garrison and Frederick Douglass, were featured lecturers [9].

Initially Truth was not impressed with the Association, but she ‘gradually became pleased’ with it. At Northampton she found a community consisting of some of the ‘choicest spirits of the age,’ where all was characterized by an ‘equality of feeling,’ ‘a liberty of thought and speech,’ and a ‘largeness of the soul.’ [10]

Engraving From 1868 Featuring The American Writer And Former Slave, Frederick Douglass (1818-1895).

Frederick Douglass, too, was impressed with the egalitarian nature of the community. He recalls: ‘the “place and the people struck me as the most democratic I had ever met. It was a place to extinguish all aristocratic pretentions. There was no high no low, no masters, no servants, no white, no black. I, however, felt myself in very high society.”’ [11]

In time Truth no longer considered herself a Millerite, but without the help of fellow believers, she was faced with the daunting task of earning an income.

In 1845 Frederick Douglass published the first of his autobiographies, the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, to enormous success, selling 4,500 copies in the first six months [12]. A year later, Sojourner Truth embarked on her own Narrative. She dictated her story to Olive Gilbert, a fellow member of the commune at Northampton [13]. In 1850 The Narrative of Sojourner Truth was published [14].

Truth carried copies of the book and sold them where she preached and lectured. The Narrative of Sojourner Truth further established Truth as a public figure, a popular preacher and lecturer.

The Ascendancy of Truth

In 1850 Truth addressed a ‘large’ women’s rights meeting in Worcester, Mass, the first such meeting of a ‘national scope’. It was a follow up to the landmark 1848 conference at Seneca Falls, New York. Many abolitionists were also pro-women’s rights, as was Garrison, Douglass, and Amy Post, one of the organizers of 1848 conference. Sojourner Truth was also part of this circle of activists and would become a lifelong friend of Post [15].

Aren’t I A Woman

On May 28, 1851 Frances Dana Gage and fellow activists in the women’s rights movement convened a conference at an Akron, Ohio, church. Among the speakers were male members of the abolitionist movement, and ministers from several faith denominations. Also in attendance was the itinerant speaker, Sojourner Truth [16].

On the second day of the conference, after several speeches by men apparently dismissive of women’s search for equality, Sojourner Truth asked the event organizer, Gage, to speak.

May I say a few words…I want to say a few words about this matter. I am a woman’s rights. I have as much muscle as any man, and I can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that? I have heard much about the sexes being equal; I can carry as much as any man, and can eat as much too, if I can get it. I am as strong as any man that is now. As for intellect, all I can say is, if a woman has a pint and a man a quart, why cant she have her little pint full? You need not be afraid to give us our rights for fear we will take too much,–for we cant take more than our pint’ll hold. The poor man seems to be all in confusion. And I don’t know what to do. Why children, if you have woman’s rights give it to her and you will feel better. You will have your own rights, and they wont be so much trouble. I cant read, but I can hear. I have heard the bible and have learned that Eve caused man to sin. Well if women upset the world, do give her a chance to set it right side up again. The lady has spoken about Jesus, how he never spurned woman from him, and she was right. When Lazarus died, Mary and Martha came to him with faith and love and besought him to raise their brother. And Jesus wept—and Lazarus came forth. And how came Jesus into the world? Through God who created him and woman who bore him. Man, where is your part? But the women are coming up blessed be God and a few of the men are coming up with them. But man is in a tight place, the poor slave is on him, and he is surely between a hawk and a buzzard.

The above account—later known as the ‘Aren’t I A Woman Speech’–would become inexorably linked to Truth. It appeared on the back page of the June 21, 1851 issue of the Anti-Slavery Bugle–a weekly publication of the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, later the Western Anti-Slavery Society [17]. According to the Library of Congress, the Society reflected the ‘radical’ views of William Lloyd Garrison. It’s motto, ‘No union with slave owners’ and its mission statement, “to preach deliverance to the captive, and the opening of the prison door to them that are bound; to hasten in the day when ‘liberty shall be proclaimed throughout all the land, unto all inhabitants thereof’” succinctly stated its point of view. In addition to its anti-slavery perspective it supported women’s rights and the ‘peace movement’, coming out against the government’s involvement in the Mexican-American War. It printed editorials, letters, calls for meetings, and speeches that supported its goals.

The 1850s

The 1850s were a tumultuous and culturally disruptive decade for the United States–a decade in which the issue of slavery was front and center. In 1850 Congress passed a revised version of the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act, which allowed slaveholders to recapture escaped slaves in free states. The 1850 version, intended to mollify fears of southern states on the issue of slavery and preserve the Union, went even further. It compelled citizens to assist in the capture of runaway slaves, denied slaves the right to a jury trial, and paid federal ‘commissioners’ more for the return of captured slaves than for freeing them [18] 2017. The new law put escaped slaves in jeopardy everywhere in the United States.

In the North reaction to the new law was intense. It mobilized many abolitionists and helped usher in a brand-new actor on the political stage: the Republican Party.

In 1856 the newly formed Republican Party held its first National convention, and fielded its first nominee for president, John C. Frémont, ‘on a platform that called on Congress to abolish slavery in the territories.’ [19].

Truth continued preaching. According to SojournerTruth.org, she addressed a meeting held by the Friends of Human Progress Association in Michigan, on October 4-5 of 1856. She spoke of her life in bondage–what it meant for her as a person, as a mother, as a ‘wife’, as a piece of property [20]:

I believe in Jesus, and I was forty years a slave but I did not know how dear to me was my posterity. I was so beclouded and crushed. But how good and wise is God, for if the slaves knowed what their true condition was, it would be more than the mind could bear. While the race is sold of all their rights — what is there on God’s footstool to bring them up? Has not God given to all his creatures the same rights? How could I travel and live and speak? When I had not got something to bear me up, when I’ve been robbed of all my affections for husband and children.

Some years ago there appeared to me a form (here the speaker gave a very graphic description of the vision she had). Then I learned that I was a human being. We had been taught that we was a species of monkey, baboon or ‘rang-o-tang, and we believed it — we’d never seen any of these animals. But I believe in the next world. When we gets up yonder, we shall have all of them rights ‘stored to us again — all that love what I’ve lost — all going to be ‘stored to me again. Oh! How good God is.

My mother said when we were sold, we must ask God to make our masters good, and I asked who He was. She told me, He sit up in the sky. When I was sold, I had a severe, hard master, and I was tied up in the barn and whipped. Oh! Till the blood run down the floor and I asked God, why don’t you come and relieve me — if I was you and you’se tied up so, I’d do it for you.

Truth’s speech addressed what was probably the pre-eminent issue of time. Events within the next four years seemed to propel the country into an unavoidable confrontation over the issue of bondage.

The Gathering Storm

In March 1857, the United States Supreme Court ruled on one of the most infamous cases in its history, Scott v. Sandford. Dred Scott was a slave who travelled with his owner to a free state (Illinois) and lived in a free territory (Wisconsin) [21]. Scott eventually returned to Missouri where he saved to purchase freedom for his family and himself. In 1846, six years after returning to St. Louis, Scott had a new owner who refused to grant freedom. Scott took his case to the Missouri State Court arguing that since he had lived in a free state, he was entitled to emancipation, based on the Missouri Compromise of 1820. After a series of lower court rulings, Scott’s case went to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court refused to hear the case, claiming it lacked jurisdiction. Chief Justice Roger Taney writing the majority opinion argued that since Scott was a negro and a slave (and thereby property) he was not a U.S. citizen and had no right to file a suit in federal court [22]. He added that the idea of him becoming emancipated by simply traveling to a free state was ‘absurd’ and ‘disgraceful’ [23]. The decision outraged Northern abolitionists and boosted support for the fledgling Republican Party and its anti-slavery platform.

In 1858, two years after dragging seven pro-slavery settlers from their homes and hacking them to death, [24] [25] a White radical anti-slavery activist, and self-proclaimed soldier of God, visited the free Black community in Chatham, Ontario, Canada. There the Connecticut native hatched a plan that had been percolating for some time: an armed anti-slavery insurrection in the South. The man’s name was John Brown.

In October 16th, 1859, Brown and twenty-one followers, including his five sons, raided the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia–the ‘biggest collection of weapons in the South.’ [26] The success of the raid depended on slaves joining Brown and his men, but not a single slave joined the group. The following morning, U.S. Marines, under the command of Col. Robert E. Lee, surrounded the arsenal. Brown’s sons were killed and he was wounded and captured. During his trial he presented his cause as a ‘just war’, and himself as a martyr for God’s work. On December 2nd, 1859, Brown was executed by hanging. His exploits and the resulting trial were widely reported in the newspapers. He became an anti-slavery icon, admired by some abolitionists in the North, and reinforced anti-slavery fears among pro-slavery Whites in the South, who saw his exploits as confirmation of the North’s intention of overthrowing slavery through violent means.

Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War

In 1858, former congressman Abraham Lincoln, running for a seat in the UL.S. Senate, gained national attention after a series of debates with Democratic candidate, Stephen A. Douglas. In 1854 Douglas had sponsored the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which supported the principle of ‘popular sovereignty’. The Act was based on the premise that territories that had not yet become states should be able to chose whether to become a slave-holding state or free. Lincoln argued the territories should be free. Helost the race but gained national prominence for himself and the young Republican Patty [27].

On May 18, 1860 in Chicago, at its second national convention, the Republican Party nominated Abraham Lincoln as its candidate for president [28]. Almost six months later, on November 6th, Lincoln was elected the 16th president of the United Sates. The country was deeply divided. Lincoln won all Free states and none of the slave states [29]. He secured the victory over Senator Douglas, two other major candidates, and a divided Democratic Party. He won almost 40% of the popular vote and 180 out of 303 electoral college votes [30].

1860 U.S. Electoral Map (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

Several southern states, hostile to the Republican Party’s anti-slavery platform, had threatened to secede if a Republican were elected president. Between Lincoln’s election in November and his inauguration on March 4th the following year, seven states seceded [31]. The Confederate States of America was established, with Jefferson Davis its president [32].

Just over a month after Lincoln’s inauguration, at 4:30 a.m. on April 12th, Confederate forces opened fire on Union soldiers at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbour, South Carolina. The Civil War had begun.

Emancipation Proclamation

Lincoln insisted that the war was not about freeing the slaves, but preserving the Union. By 1862 the South was using enslaved peoples to aid in the war effort. The North refused to allow African Americans to enlist. On September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued a preliminary emancipation proclamation, warning the Confederacy that if they did not surrender by January 1st of the following year, their slaves would be freed. But freedom would come to slaves in Confederate-held areas only—not to all people in bondage. This was clearly a military strategy, for it deprived the South of one of its most valuable assets: free labour. Lincoln kept his word and issued the final Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863 [33]. Slaves in states that had seceded from the Union were now free. Slaves in border states loyal to the Union remained in bondage, as were those in Confederate areas that had already come under Northern control [34]. Nonetheless Black men were now allowed to fight for the Union cause and were admitted into the Army and Navy.

Widespread Influence

In 1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Life Among the Lowly. The story, examining the brutality of slavery from what some consider a Christian perspective, sold more than 300,000 copies in the United States and 200,000 copies in England in its first year [35], on the way to becoming the best-selling novel of the 19th century [36]. It drew comments from as far and wide as Charles Dickens and Leo Tolstoy.

An endorsement by Harriet Beecher Stowe would have been an immense gift to any first-time author. In 1853, Truth met Mrs. Stowe at her home in Andover, Massachusetts and received an endorsement for the Narrative.

Ten years later, in April 1863, Mrs. Stowe published ‘Sojourner Truth, the Libyan Sybil’ in the Atlantic Monthly. In the lengthy article Stowe recollects her meeting with Truth some ten years previously. She depicts Truth as both a towering imposing figure—reminiscent of a famous statuette–and a stereotypical southern ‘mammy.’ She is also depicted as lovable, simple, uncultured, shrewd, with common-sense that escapes many far more educated than she. Mrs. Stowe writes:

When I went into the room, a tall, spare form arose to meet me. She was evidently a full-blooded African, and though now aged and worn with many hardships, still gave the impression of a physical development which in early youth must have been as fine a specimen of the torrid zone as Cumberworth’s celebrated statuette of the Negro Woman at the Fountain. Indeed, she so strongly reminded me of that figure, that, when I recall the events of her life, as she narrated them to me, I imagine her as a living, breathing impersonation of that work of art.

I do not recollect ever to have been conversant with any one who had more of that silent and subtle power which we call personal presence than this woman. In the modern Spiritualistic phraseology, she would be described as having a strong sphere. Her tall form, as she rose up before me, is still vivid to my mind. She was dressed in some stout, grayish stuff, neat and clean, though dusty from travel. On her head, she wore a bright Madras handkerchief, arranged as a turban, after the manner of her race. She seemed perfectly self-possessed and at her ease, — in fact, there was almost an unconscious superiority, not unmixed with a solemn twinkle of humor, in the odd, composed manner in which she looked down on me. Her whole air had at times a gloomy sort of drollery which impressed one strangely.

“So this is you,” she said.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Well, honey, de Lord bless ye! I jes’ thought I’d like to come an’ have a look at ye. You’s heerd o’ me, I reckon?” she added.

“Yes, I think I have. You go about lecturing, do you not?”

“Yes, honey, that’s what I do. The Lord has made me a sign unto this nation, an’ I go round a’testifyin’, an’ showin’ on ’em their sins agin my people.”

Mrs. Stowe presents Truth’s Christian testimony—of her encounter with Jesus through an electrifying, spiritual experience; her experiences a slave; of retrieving her son illegally sold into slavery. Mrs. Stowe adds an anecdote, originally shared by respected Boston anti-slavery and labour reform activist Wendell Phillips, that became inextricably linked with Sojourner Truth.

Speaking of the power of Rachel to move and bear down a whole audience by a few simple words, he [Phillips] said he never knew but one other human being that had that power, and that other was Sojourner Truth. He related a scene of which he was witness. It was at a crowded public meeting in Faneuil Hall, where Frederick Douglas was one of the chief speakers. Douglas had been describing the wrongs of the black race, and as he proceeded, he grew more and more excited, and finally ended by saying that they had no hope of justice from the whites, no possible hope except in their own right arms. It must come to blood; they must fight for themselves, and redeem themselves, or it would never be done.

Sojourner was sitting, tall and dark, on the very front seat, facing the platform; and in the hush of deep feeling, after Douglas sat down, she spoke out in her deep, peculiar voice, heard all over the house, —

“Frederick, is God dead?”

The effect was perfectly electrical, and thrilled through the whole house, changing as by a flash the whole feeling of the audience. Not another word she said or needed to say; it was enough.

The Atlantic Monthly article, written by the most celebrated writer of the day, put Sojourner Truth into the national consciousness., and further cemented her reputation among White, upper-class anti-slavery activists in the North.

Less than a month after the Libyan Sibyl article appeared, women’s rights activist and writer Frances Dana Gage published her account of Sojourner Truth’s speech at the women’s rights meeting in Akron, Ohio, twelve years earlier. The article was published in The New York Independent and documented what would become Truth’s best-known speech–‘Aren’t I A Woman’. Though the speech was published twelve years earlier in the Anti-Slavery Bugle merely a month after it was delivered, it was Gage’s article that attracted the widespread audience that solidified Truth’s status as a woman’s rights activist. Gage’s gift as a writer, with dramatic flair and stereotypical dialect (which was no doubt readily accepted by her readers), attracted widespread attention.

Two articles, published in respected, widely circulated journals within two months of each other, firmly established Truth as one of the most significant figures in the anti-slavery and women’s rights movements of nineteenth century America—a reputation that has not only survived but continues to grow to this day.

Truth’s Visit with Lincoln

Truth was a supporter of President Lincoln, and vowed to see the first ‘Abolitionist President’ (in person) [37]. With funds raised by a group of friends, she left Battle Creek, Michigan, in mid-1864, her grandson in tow, and travelled to Washington D.C. On the way she gave speeches in support of Lincoln’s re-election campaign. In Boston she met Harriet Tubman, who was well know for helping slaves escape years earlier through the Underground Railroad. Painter suggests that, at the time of their 1864 meeting, Tubman and Truth differed on their perceptions of Lincoln. Truth was earnest in her support, while Tubman was more skeptical. Having been exposed to Black Union soldiers in Boston, she was aware of the unequal treatment they received compared to White soldiers [38].

Through a connection with Mary Todd Lincoln’s assistant, Truth was granted a meeting with the president at 8 a.m., Saturday, October 29th, 1864 [39].

There are varying reports on what transpired during the visit. In the 1875 and 1884 editions of her biography, Truth was effusive about their meeting. In a letter dated November 17, 1864, dictated to a friend, Truth recalls the meeting [40].

The president was seated at his desk. Mrs. C. [Lucy Colman, a White friend who had assisted in securing Truth’s meeting with Lincoln] [41], said to him, “This is Sojourner Truth, who has come all the way from Michigan to see you.” He then arose, gave me his hand, made a bow, and said, “I am please to meet you.”

I said to him, Mr. President, when you first took your seat I feared you would be torn to pieces, for I likened you unto Daniel, who was thrown into the lion’s den, and if the lions did not tear you into pieces, I knew that it would be God that had saved you; and I said if he spared me I would see you before the four years expired, and he has done so, and now I am here to see you for myself.

The letter references the emancipation proclamation and Lincoln’s predecessors, particularly George Washington. Lincoln claimed that if the opportunity had availed itself, they all would have done what he did. He added that if the South had not rebelled he could not have emancipated the slaves. He then showed her the Bible given to him by the colored people of Baltimore. Truth continues:

I must say, and I am proud to say, that I never was treated by any one with more kindness and cordiality than were shown to me by that great and good man, Abraham Lincoln, by the grace of God president of the United States for four years more. He took my little book, and with the same hand that signed the death-warrant of slavery, he wrote as follows:

“For Aunty Sojourner Truth,

Oct. 29, 1864.

A Lincoln”

Painter suggest the meeting may have had a very different tone. Years after Lincoln’s assassination, Truth’s companion that day wrote her own narrative of the encounter. In it she describes Lincoln’s demeanour– ‘relaxed and funny’ with his previous White male guests, but ‘tense’ and ‘sour’ with Truth. She adds: ‘Being loved as the Great Emancipator irritated Lincoln…He believed in the white race, not in the colored, and did not want them put on an equality’ [42].

Truth made subsequent visits to the White House and met with Presidents Andrew Johnson and Ulysses S. Grant [43].

Truth During and After the Civil War

At the outbreak of the War, Truth quickly supported the Union cause. At a pro-Union rally at the Steuben County courthouse in Indiana, she was arrested on an obscure law that prohibited Black people from entering the state. The law was rarely enforced. Thousands of Blacks lived in the state and Sojourner had spoken there previously without incident. For ten days the authorities repeatedly detained and released her, before ultimately letting her go [44].

Truth initially volunteered for the Union effort from her home in Battle Creek, Michigan. In 1863, she collected food for the Black soldiers of the First Michigan Regiment stationed at Camp Ward in Detroit. In addition to delivering food and clothing to the soldiers, she reportedly spoke at formal ceremonies, albeit to segregated audiences [45].

In March 1865 Congress established the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, which became known as the Freedmen’s Bureau. The Bureau was created to assist in providing social and educational welfare for former slaves in their efforts to adapt to a life after bondage [46]. Abolitionists like Truth were commissioned to help in achieving the Bureau’s mandate. She also worked with the National Freedmen’s Relief Association, a private organization established to assist former slaves adjust to newfound freedom [47]. One of Truth’s responsibilities was to work at the Freedmen’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. (Established in 1862 to care for freed, disabled and aged African Americans [48], it was the predecessor to the teaching hospital at Howard University’s Medical School.)

Her work at the hospital required travel around Washington D.C. to procure items for her patients. The city’s streetcars were a means for doing so. The streetcar company set aside one such car—The Jim Crow car—for ‘colored’ people. By now an old woman, and well known for her speaking and activism–Truth complained to the president of the streetcar company. The ‘Jim Crow’ car was subsequently removed, giving Black equal access—theoretically, at least—with Whites [49].

The removal of the ‘Jim Crow’ car did nothing to alleviate negative attitudes towards Blacks however. Truth relates how on numerous occasions she waved at one streetcar after another to stop and let her board, to no avail. On one occasion, while returning to the Freedmen’s hospital with a White companion, a conductor attempted to physically throw her off the car.

The conductor grabbed me by the shoulder and jerking me by the shoulder, ordered me to get out. I told him I would not. Mrs. Haviland [her White traveling companion] took hold of my other arm and said, ‘Don’t put her out.’ The conductor asked if I belonged to her. ‘No,’ replied Mrs. Havliand, ‘she belongs to humanity.’ ‘Then take her and go,’ said he, and giving me another push slammed me against the door. I told him I would let him know whether he could shove me about like a dog, and said to Mrs. Haviland, Take the number of this car.

On arriving at the hospital a surgeon discovered that ‘a bone was misplaced.’ Truth, with the help of the Freedmen’s Bureau, had the conductor charged. He eventually lost his job. The case gained much attention and soon thereafter the streetcars looked like ‘salt and pepper’ [50].

Civil War’s Aftermath: ‘Contraband’

The Fugitive Slave Laws required escaped slaves to be returned to their owners. On August 6, 1861, four months after the start of the Civil War, fugitive slaves fleeing their former owners were declared property of the Union army, or “contraband of war” if their labor had been used to aid the Confederacy in any way. And if found to be contraband, they were declared free [51].

After the War the name remained: former slaves continued to be called ‘contraband.’ Many moved from Virginia to Washington D.C. where they lived in squalid settlement camps, rife with filth, poverty, and crime. The ‘Book of Life’ section in the 1875 and 1884 editions of Truth’s Narrative presents a report by the Superintendent of police that reads, in part:

[C]rime, filth and poverty seem to vie with each other in a career of degradation and death. Whole families, consisting of fathers, mothers, children, uncles and aunts, according to their own statements, are crowded into apologies for shanties, which are without light or ventilation. During the storms of rain or snow their roofs afford but light protection, while from beneath a few rough boards used for floors the miasmatic effluvia from the most disgustingly filthy and stagnant water, mingled with the exhalations from the uncleansed bodies of numerous inmates, render the atmosphere within these hovels stifling and sickening to the extreme [52].

Having lost several of her own children, Truth considered the poor, the destitute–the ‘contrabands’–her own offspring, and embarked on a crusade to improve their welfare. She found homes and employment for them in the Northern states, and obtained labourers to rebuild communities destroyed by the War [53].

In Washington D.C. crime became an ongoing concern for the young, who were trapped in a vicious cycle of crime, incarceration and release. Truth could not help but compare the magnificent edifices built within the city with the hopelessness of the city’s poor, and decided to correct what she saw as a social injustice. She gathered signatures to petition the United States Congress and the Senate to set apart a portion of land in the ‘West’, and to erect buildings there for the ‘aged’ and ‘infirmed [54]. In February 1870 Truth took her message to the people, launching a speaking tour in Providence, R.I., [55], followed by lectures throughout the North–Fall River and Boston, Massachusetts; Springfield and Orange, New Jersey; Philadelphia, Rochester, Syracuse, New York City, Detroit and her adopted home town of Battle Creek, Michigan. She received newspaper coverage at these locales, in many instances receiving good notices., some reprinted in her Narrative.

Audience reception to her lecture tour was mixed: some audiences were large, others, sparse. The petition did not make it to Congress. In 1875, Truth’s grandson and long-time traveling companion, Samuel Banks, died at aged twenty-five [56]. By the late 1870s Truth’s health had declined, and by the Fall of 1883 she lay mortally ill with ulcers on her legs [57]. She died on November 26, 1883, at about aged eighty-six.

Women’s Rights Legacy

Sojourner Truth embodies three key strands of the social fabric of her day: faith, civil rights and women’s rights. She, however, is greater than the combination of the three. Her indefatigable Christian faith fuelled an iron will to fulfill what she believed was God’s calling on her life—a call to travel the land and spread God’s message–a call to believe in her beloved Jesus Christ, a call to end the evil of slavery and to uplift the people of her race, and a call to recognize and accept the rights and dignity of women.

Her faith and dedication to her race is clear from her preaching and her life experiences, but it is her reputation as a women’s rights activist that has come to the forefront in recent years. Yet this is the role that is probably most complex, most nuanced.

Frances Dana Gage’s report on Truth’s ‘Aren’t I A Woman’ speech solidified her women’s rights credentials, as does her appearance in Susan B. Anthony’s and Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s History of Woman Suffrage. Moreover Truth is quoted as saying: ‘If colored men got their rights, and not colored women theirs, you see colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before.’ [58] But there is more to the story.

Prior to the Civil War and emancipation, many in the abolitionist movement were also pro-women’s rights: Truth, Douglass, evangelist Henry Ward Beecher, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony supported both anti-slavery and women’s rights issues. After the Civil War and the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, which permanently put an end to slavery and gave Black men the right to vote, a schism in the women’s rights movement became clear. One side, led by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, balked at the idea of Black men–former slaves, ignorant and illiterate–having the right to vote, while educated, cultured, White women did not. Stanton is quoted as saying that If truly universal suffrage was not feasible, she ‘preferred to enfranchise educated people first, for “this incoming tide of ignorance, poverty and vice” must not be empowered. Without woman suffrage only the highest type of manhood should vote and hold office’ [59].

The other side, supporting universal suffrage for men and women, refused to allow the suffrage of Black men held hostage by the lack of suffrage of (White) women. Supporters of this group included Douglass, Frances Dana Gage, and lesser known women’s rights activists Lucy Stone and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, a Black poet, and noted public speaker and civil rights activist in her own right [60].

Ultimately Truth was forced to chose between the two factions, and selected the latter. Stanton’s and Anthony’s embrace of Southern Democrats, who sought to halt passage of the Fifteenth Amendment granting Black men the right to vote, was a choice that she could not make.

Concluding Remarks

Because Sojourner Truth was unable to read or write—limited to communicate her experiences without filter–we are at the mercy of those who knew her or researched her story to paint a picture of this incredible woman. How much of what we know is authentic Sojourner Truth and how much reflects the perspective and potential bias of the messenger? The Christian messenger will stress her undeniable faith; the civil rights activist will highlight her anti-slavery work and speeches; the feminist will emphasize her contribution to women’s rights. As society and culture change, her image will evolve, as successive generations claim those aspects of her life and contribution that reinforces their values. Is this positive or negative? Undoubtedly a bit of both. The differing interpretations of her life will insure a contemporary image as times change—a fresh perspective of her contribution. Alternatively there will inevitably be some question on how accurate that perspective really is, and who Sojourner Truth really was.

Next Month

New fiction: Stuffed Green Peppers

Images

Sojourner Truth and Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln (1809 – 1865) reading the Bible with former slave and abolitionist Sojourner Truth (1797-1883), originally Isabella Van Wagener, in a print presented to the President by the black community of Baltimore to commemorate the Emancipation Proclamation. (Photo by MPI/Getty Images) Credit: MPI / Stringer Collection: Archive Photos Date created: January 1, 1862 Licence type: Standard

Frederick Douglas

Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), abolitionist, author and statesman. Image courtesy iStock (by Getty Images) License type: Standard

1860 U.S. Electoral Map

File courtesy of Wikimedia Commons This map was obtained from an edition of the National Atlas of the United States. Like almost all works of the U.S. federal government, works from the National Atlas are in the public domain in the United States. Online access: NationalAtlas.gov | 1970 print edition: Library of Congress, Perry-Castañeda Library URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1860_Electoral_Map.jpg#filelinks

References

[1] Christianitytoday.com, http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/denominationalfounders/william-miller.html [2] Christianitytoday.com, http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/denominationalfounders/william-miller.html [3] Christianitytoday.com, http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/denominationalfounders/william-miller.html [4] Neil Irvin Painter, Sojourner Truth, A Life, a Symbol, W.W. Norton, 1996, p83 [5] Painter, Sojourner Truth, p87 [6] Painter, Sojourner Truth, p87 [7] Painter, Sojourner Truth, p89 [8] Painter, Sojourner Truth, p93 [9] Painter, Sojourner Truth, p88 [10] Painter, Sojourner Truth, p89 [11] Painter, Sojourner Truth, pp93-94 [12] Painter, Sojourner Truth, p103 [13] Painter, Sojourner Truth, p101 [14] Sojourner Truth, Olive Gilbert and Frances Titus, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth, (1884 edition), Penguin Books, 1998 p x [15] Painter, Sojourner Truth, p114 [16] Painter, Sojourner Truth, p165 [17] Library of Congress, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83035487/ accessed, September 6, 2017 [18] History.com, http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/fugitive-slave-acts accessed, September 17, 2017 [19] Britannica.com, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Republican-Party accessed, September 17, 2017 [20] SojournerTruth.org, http://www.sojournertruth.org/Library/Speeches accessed September 10, 2017 [21] History.com, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/dred-scott-decision, accessed September 30, 2017 [22] pbs.org, https://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/antebellum/landmark_dred.html, accessed September 30, 2017 [23] loc.gov, https://www.loc.gov/resource/llst.022/?sp=9, accessed September 22, 2017 [24] Biography.com, https://www.biography.com/people/john-brown-9228496 , accessed September 17, 2017 [25] USHisotry.org, http://www.ushistory.org/us/31d.asp, both accessed September 17, 2017 [26] History.com, http://www.history.com/topics/john-brown, accessed September 22, 2017 [27] History,org, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/abraham-lincoln-elected-president [28] Politico.com, http://www.politico.com/story/2011/05/republicans-nominate-abraham-lincoln-may-18-1860-055138 [29] Historynet.com, http://www.historynet.com/abraham-lincoln-election [30] ucsb.edu, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/showelection.php?year=1860, accessed, September 23, 2017 [31] Civilwar.org, https://www.civilwar.org/learn/articles/civil-war-facts, accessed September 223, 2017 [32] History.com, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/abraham-lincoln-elected-president, accessed September 23, 2017 [33] pbs.org, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2967.html, accessed, September 27, 2017 [34] Archives.gov, https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation [35] pbs.org, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2958.html, [36] HistoryNet.com, http://www.historynet.com/uncle-toms-cabin, accessed, September 30, 2017 [37] Painter, Sojourner Truth, p200 [38] Painter, Sojourner Truth, p203 [39] Painter, Sojourner Truth, p204 [40] Truth, Narrative (1884), p120-121 [41] Painter, Sojourner Truth, p204 [42] Painter, Sojourner Truth, p207 [43] Painter, Sojourner Truth, p207 [44] Painter, Sojourner Truth, p180 [45] Painter, Sojourner Truth, 182 [46] Truth, Narrative (1884), p124, note 103 [47] Painter, Sojourner Truth, 214 [48] U.S. National Library of Medicine, https://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/medtour/howard.html, accessed September 27, 2017 [49] Truth, Narrative (1884), p124 [50] Truth, Narrative (1884), p126 [51] pbs.org, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2967.html, accessed September27, 2017 [52] Truth, Narrative (1884), p127 [53] Truth, Narrative (1884), p129 [54] Truth, Narrative (1884), p134 [55] Truth, Narrative (1884), p134 [56] Painter, Sojourner Truth, p242 [57] Painter, Sojourner Truth, p254 [58] Painter, Sojourner Truth, p220 [5] Painter, Sojourner Truth, p228 [60] Painter, Sojourner Truth, p223

Bibliography

Sojourner Truth, Olive Gilbert and Frances Titus, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth, (1884 edition), Penguin Books, 1998 (This narrative was original published in 1884, a year after Truth’s death. Frances Titus, her long-time friend, added the ‘Book of Life’ and a ‘Memorial Chapter’ for this edition. The 1998 edition was edited with an introduction by Neil Irvin Painter.

Neil Irvin Painter, Sojourner Truth, A Life, a Symbol, W.W. Norton, 1996.

Links

Christianitytoday.com, http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/denominationalfounders/william-miller.html, accessed, October 4, 2017

Library of Congress, loc.gov, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83035487/ accessed, September 6, 2017

History.com, http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/fugitive-slave-acts accessed, September 17, 2017

Britannica.com, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Republican-Party accessed, September 17, 2017

SojournerTruth.org, http://www.sojournertruth.org/Library/Speeches accessed September 10, 2017

History.com, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/dred-scott-decision, accessed September 30, 2017

Pbs.org, https://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/antebellum/landmark_dred.html, accessed September 30, 2017

Library of Congress, loc.gov, https://www.loc.gov/resource/llst.022/?sp=9, accessed September 22, 2017

Biography.com, https://www.biography.com/people/john-brown-9228496 , accessed September 17, 2017

USHisotry.org, http://www.ushistory.org/us/31d.asp, both accessed September 17, 2017

History.com, http://www.history.com/topics/john-brown, accessed September 22, 2017

History,org, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/abraham-lincoln-elected-president, accessed, October 4, 2017

Politico.com, http://www.politico.com/story/2011/05/republicans-nominate-abraham-lincoln-may-18-1860-055138, accessed, October 4, 2017

Historynet.com, http://www.historynet.com/abraham-lincoln-election, accessed, October 4, 2017

University of California at Santa Barbara, ucsb.edu, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/showelection.php?year=1860, accessed, September 23, 2017

Civilwar.org, https://www.civilwar.org/learn/articles/civil-war-facts, accessed September 223, 2017

History.com, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/abraham-lincoln-elected-president, accessed September 23, 2017

pbs.org, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2967.html, accessed, September 27, 2017

Archives.gov, https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation, accessed, September 30, 2017

pbs.org, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2958.html, accessed, September 30, 2017

HistoryNet.com, http://www.historynet.com/uncle-toms-cabin, accessed, September 30, 2017

U.S. National Library of Medicine, https://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/medtour/howard.html, accessed September 27, 2017

pbs.org, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2967.html, accessed September27, 2017

#abolitionists #Abraham Lincoln #Anti-slavery #Frederick Douglass #Sojourner Truth #Women’s Rights

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killingthebuddha · 8 years ago

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Instead of sitting by her side, helping her gently pass into the afterlife, when my grandma died, I was standing on a street corner in Thessaloniki, Greece, eating a cheese pie.

Since she was old and had complicated health, her death was an inevitability for which I tried to prepare myself. But never, when I imagined that fateful day, would I have guessed that on the bright morning my grandma, in her words, “flew away,” I’d be staring at the Greek sun, while halfway across the world, a Canadian one hadn’t yet broken.

I went to Greece to report on religion. While 95 percent of Greeks identify as Greek Orthodox, the refugee crisis has brought an influx of Muslims into the country. Combined with the economic depression, this makes room for many interesting stories.

My grandma—Baba, is what I called her—was the most religious person I knew. When I’d sleep over she’d dutifully help me say my prayers, tuck me into bed, and then retire to her kitchen table, where a small light illuminated her Bible. She underlined it while listening to a radio preacher.

My Baba had to quit high school to work on the farm, and always told me that she read slowly because of it. But somehow she managed to plow through piles of religious literature, studying about “that good old way.” When I was older, some nights she’d let me sit across the table in the dark and watch her. It filled me with such emotion that I’d get shivers. I’d borrow all her tracts and study them on my own to learn what she knew.

In Greece, I was going to visit Mars Hill, where Paul first spread the good news to the Greeks, and also to Thessaloniki, where he first preached after his conversion on the road to Damascus. I was going to write about how religion was affecting Greeks in the wake of the economic depression and the refugee crisis, and I was planning to come back home and tell Baba all about it.

On my way to the airport, before the trip, I phoned her to say goodbye. But when I called the phone rang, and rang.

“I hate leaving this city,” I said to my friend beside me. “Every time I do, I get anxious about what’s going to happen here when I’m gone.”

We both knew the last time I was overseas the man I had been seeing—who I thought was the love of my life—broke up with me in a text message.

“I want to cut his balls off,” Baba had said when I called her, crying, from Scotland. Age made her direct.

The experience scarred me and I was superstitious about going away. Soon I learned that superstition was not unfounded. This time my mom texted me: Baba was in the hospital. She needed surgery. They told my mom to summon the family.

Should I cancel the trip to Greece? I wondered. I had serious doubts about whether Baba’s frail body could survive surgery of any kind. She was a strong woman—a pioneer on the Canadian prairies who used to humor my romantic sensibilities by telling me stories of riding in a horse-drawn sleigh over the snowy fields to school. She could drive a tractor, pickle beets, and sew her own clothes. But hard work had taken its toll on her already-troubled body, and two years earlier she had been half-paralyzed by a stroke. She wasn’t her fighting self, to say the least.

Baba got on the phone, her words obscured by morphine. “Go to Greece and do good work,” she said. So I did.

My first stop in Greece was the capital, Athens, of the Acropolis and Olympic fame. Here I visited a makeshift refugee camp at an abandoned airport. Technically it’s not an official camp, but the government knows about it, and it’s serviced by NGOs from other nations, so it is more official than a squat, unsanctioned communities of refugees living together in abandoned structures, many of which have also appeared in Athens.

I’d never been inside a refugee camp before. The terminal, once a bustling hub of people leaving the country and coming back again, was converted into housing. The irony of being stuck in a building previously used to get people out of Greece must have felt like a slap in the face for the people living there.

The adults there were wary of journalists. It took a while before they warmed to us—only accomplished when their children circled us wanting to play. Our interpreter, who met us after prayer at an underground mosque, told us boredom is a refugee’s greatest enemy. He was a refugee too.

“I thought many times maybe I should…” he trailed off not knowing the words for “slit my wrists,” but showing me the action. He was 19 years old and graying.

A migrant child living at a makeshift camp inside the an abandoned Athenian airport looks cautiously at the camera.

I earmarked this story for Baba. It didn’t really fold into anything I was specifically reporting on, but I thought I would tell her about the children and the interpreter, and she would pray for them. Baba seemed to be doing alright during the first few days I was in Athens. She had made it through surgery and was awake, making everyone laugh with her enthusiasm for drugs.

So I kept reporting, thinking of her, and trying to learn as much as I could about religion in Greece. I wore a Lois Lane jacket. I carried a notebook and a pen. I chased down stories. I took a cab into the Athenian suburbs in the rain to interview a Greek shipping magnate’s son about the Orthodox Church. I met with an evangelical missionary about her work to convert refugees with clean laundry, hot showers, and Bible study.

I obtained a map to all the anarchist squats in Athens. I promptly followed it right to City Plaza Hotel, a squat for families. There I met a 23-year-old university student who was volunteering to keep the squat functioning.

“We’re trying to show solidarity with the refugees,” he said, before describing what had happened when the government tried to dissolve some of the camps where refugees at this squat had been staying previously.

“They didn’t give them shelter, they just put them on the streets,” he said. Another thing Baba would pray about.

A few days into our trip we drove up to Thessaloniki, the second largest city in Greece. I was interviewing the founder of a fair-trade jewelry startup when I noticed my mom’s text: “Can you call when you have a moment?”

“Is Baba alive?” I asked. I’ve always been one to get straight to the point. “I am in the middle of an interview.”

“Yes,” my mom said, “but when you are able please call.”

And then, immediately following: “How soon until you call?”

Okay, so it was an emergency. I excused myself from the interview and walked out into the Greek sunlight.

Thessaloniki is a pedestrian-centric city and the street was a collision of different realities. Motorbikes whirred past, a gypsy man hobbled by me, and students giggled as they traipsed down the sidewalk. I guessed they were headed to a cafe or bar along the waterfront. No matter what time of day it was, there always seemed to be young people in the cafes. There was no corner to hide in, so I turned my face toward a brick wall and added one more sound to the cacophony—soft crying. My mom put the phone to Baba’s ear so I could say goodbye.

She had been doing fine after her surgery but overnight she had a stroke. She was still breathing, but unconscious, and they weren’t sure how close the end was, but it was coming soon.

It took me two tries to say anything worthwhile. Then I hung up, mad at myself for being in Greece, for having nothing to say, for being unable to hold her hand and kiss her cheeks while they were still warm. I wiped the running mascara from my eyes and went back to finish my interview.

As the sun was setting that day I strolled along the waterfront. Thessaloniki is a gritty city with a choose-your-own-adventure kind of charm. In recent years it has seen growth as a tourist destination for Muslims and Jews seeking their family history, because of its importance to the Ottoman Empire, and also because it was once home to a vibrant Jewish community, dubbed “Mother of Israel,” before the Holocaust. Thessaloniki’s Jewish community perished in Auschwitz. Out of the few who survived, most moved to Israel, although a remnant still remains in the city. Now it’s a place to search for ghosts. Memories of family lines.

It would also hold a piece of my history, I was discovering: the place I was when my Baba died. My tears embarrassed me. I didn’t want the old Greek selling nuts on the boardwalk to see them. Or the Nigerian hawking his wares. Or the university students out having a laugh.

But I could not hide my sorrow. I found a slab of concrete by the water and faced the ocean for anonymity. Baba was the first person with whom I went into the ocean. She was the one who made me love music, religion, travel—and as I looked up at the Greek sun I thanked God that, at least for a few hours more, we still lived underneath it together.

Not long after that, I would eat a cheese pastry on the street while my Baba lay in her hospital bed, surrounded by her children, about to receive the “heavenly crown” she always prayed she’d get.

Boys play a pickup game of soccer outside the an anarchist squat in Athens known as City Plaza.

A few days later, back in Athens, Baba would be gone and I would lose my composure. I would call all my siblings to calmly coach them through their grief; as the oldest sister, it felt like my responsibility to make sure they were managing. But then I would find that I needed someone to look after me.

I would find myself dissolving into tears and miscalculating the time change. That would lead to me spending a day in bed relentlessly calling the man who broke my heart, until he woke up, so I could have someone with whom to cry. It took seven tries before he answered. But it was worth it, he knew what to say.

Baba wouldn’t yet have been in her grave, and I’m not sure if you can “roll over” pre-grave. But if you can, I assure you, my Baba found a way to do it at that moment. She was not a woman who asked for help. Especially not from men whose balls she wanted to cut off.

I would feel trapped in Greece and worry about my family, grieving without me. I would talk to refugees about feeling trapped in Greece. “Do you worry about your family in Afghanistan?” I asked one of them, who had been in Greece for over a year, without any hope of resettlement in Europe, and not knowing what would come next for him.

“All the time,” he said, before adding that, despite missing his family desperately, he was happy at the moment, because someone had helped him find a warm, safe place to stay. Before, he had been in a camp where he shared a leaky tent with 12 people and needed to walk out into the forest to relieve himself.

That’s how I learned about religion in Greece, you see. I learned what religion meant in Greece. Reporting on religion, visiting refugees, calling desperately for help until the phone was answered, missing my Baba like I’ve never missed anyone before, I realized that pure and unblemished religion is this: to look after people in their time of distress and to not let the world make you evil.

Or something like that. I may have heard it on the radio somewhere. But I learned it in Greece.

Author’s Baba. All photographs by the author.

#IFTTT #WordPress

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