“That is not at all what I meant. I’m holding Agnes’s basket in one hand and books in the other. I don’t have a hand to spare.”
“Oh, I hadn’t considered that.”
“Probably because you haven’t looked at me since you turned this over to me”—he held up the food—“when we met. Does that mean you woke up a different person today than the one I was with yesterday?”
Like horses terrified by an unexpected noise, thoughts of yesterday, this morning, tomorrow, the rest of her life trampled over her. A different person? How would she know? She heard the thundering hooves, but she couldn’t stop them. She blurted, “Am I different? That would suggest I knew myself as the same person. It doesn’t matter, because everything I might have thought I was is crushed under the weight of what everyone else wants me to be.”
“Stop. Come here.” Gabriel stepped into an alcove between two houses and set the basket and books on the ground.
When he reached to place his hands on Lottie’s shoulders, she took a step back. “Please, don’t. Don’t touch me,” she whispered.
“I can’t believe you said that to me. Do you think me capable of hurting you?”
“Yes. You hurt me every time you touch me. Every time, it reminds me of what I won’t have. What I cannot have,” she said. “The person I am with you will not survive the future other people have charted for me. Yet I don’t want to be that other person when we are together.”
“I don’t want you to be her either.” He turned and nodded to the couple that passed slowly, their curiosity evident in their unapologetic stares. “We can’t continue having these discussions in alleys.”
Lottie did find some humor in that. “Where we talk will not change the what. It will not change who we are in this world.”
“And that’s exactly why,” he said as he picked up the basket and books again, “we need to. Being in this world doesn’t mean we need to be of it.”
“All we need is our own underground railroad,” said Lottie.
* * * * *
Clement stared at the sheet of foolscap in front of him with the wonder of a child on Christmas Day.
“Clement,” he said as if meeting himself for the first time. “Miz Lottie, I’s most fifty, and I never think I write my own name.”
Lottie turned away lest Clement see her squeeze her eyes together to forestall tears. These men and women struggling to learn, knowing it could mean their lives, humbled her. One day, leaving after the lessons, Gabriel had remarked, “I’m a grandparent and a parent away from sitting on the other side of the table in that room.” Lottie didn’t grasp the enormity of that statement until today. And she would never know it in the way Gabriel felt it.
Clement, Anna, and Percy practiced their names one more time before they had to leave. Across the room, three men and Gabriel sat in a circle holding Bibles and taking turns reading a line from the Gospel of Matthew. When they finished, each man would tear out a page and take it with him. At first, Sister Mary Catherine was appalled to discover Gabriel ripping Bibles apart. But when he explained that one thin sheet was easy to carry, easy to hide, and easy to dispose of if necessary, she quickly changed her mind. “I think God would certainly approve of sending His Word out, even if it means one page at a time,” said Sister.
Anna, who finished writing her name first, leaned over, tapped Lottie’s arm. “I needs a favor. Can you help?” she whispered. “I needs some writin’.”
Why was she being so secretive about wanting something written? Whatever it was, helping her by putting words on paper was easy. “What do you need me to write?” Lottie pulled two sheets of paper from the stack in front of her.
Clement and Percy looked up from their papers to one another and then to Anna. She stared back at them, and they went right back to their writing.
“Miz Lottie, you need not raise the dead when you talk.” She closed her eyes as if she could see what Lottie needed to write. “Here what you say: ‘Marcus and Jeremiah gots their tickets.’”
Lottie omitted the s and would explain that to Anna at another lesson. She printed the sentence neatly, folded the paper in fours, and handed it to Anna.
Anna pushed her hand back, “No, Miz Lottie, I needs you to gets it somewhere.”
Whatever Lottie’s expression was at that point, it amused Anna, who patted her hand and said, “It be fine. I trust you.”
She glanced at the two men across from them, who must have written their names five times by then but diligently kept printing. “What is it?”