“. . . If you like.” Heat flared in my chest. I felt it travel to my cheeks, turning them to crabapples. “. . . Are your children recovered? And your wife? Has she stayed well?”
“The sickness is making its way through all of the children now, but they’re recovering thanks to Rebecca. We couldn’t manage a single day without her. She is—” He broke off, but when I went on gazing at him expectantly, he finished his sentence. “The perfect mother.”
Without his hat, he looked younger. Thatches and sprigs of black hair waved in random directions. He had tired smudges beneath his eyes, and I imagined they were from helping his wife nurse the children, but he pulled a worn leather book from his vest, saying he’d stayed up late in the night, reading. “It’s the journal of John Woolman. He’s a great defender of our faith.”
As the conversation turned once again to Quakerism, he opened the book and read fragments to me, attempting to educate me about their beliefs. “Everyone is of equal worth,” he said. “Our ministers are female as well as male.”
“Female?” I asked so many questions about this oddity, he became amused.
“Should I assume that female worth, like abolition, is also part of your personal faith?” he said.
“. . . I’ve long wished for a vocation of my own.”
“You’re a rare woman.”
“Some would say I’m not so much rare, as radical.”
He smiled and his brows lifted on his forehead, their odd tilt deepening. “Is it possible a Quaker lurks beneath that Presbyterian skin of yours?”
“Not at all,” I told him. But later, in private, I wasn’t sure. To condemn slavery was one thing—that I could do in my own individual heart—but female ministers!
Throughout the few remaining days on ship, we continued our talks in the wind-pounded world above deck, as well as the dining quarters, where it smelled of boiled rice and cigars. We discussed not only the Quakers, but theology, philosophy, and the politics of emancipation. He was of the mind that abolition should be gradual. I argued it should be immediate. He’d found an intellectual companion in me, but I couldn’t completely understand why he’d befriended me.
The last night aboard, Israel asked if I would come and meet his family in the dining room. His wife, Rebecca, held their youngest on her lap, a crying tot no more than three, whose red face bounced like a woodpecker against her shoulder. She was one of those slight, gossamer women, whose body seemed spun from air. Her hair was light as straw, drawn back and middle-parted with wisps falling about her face.
She patted the child’s back. “Israel speaks highly of you. He says you’ve been kind enough to listen as he explained our faith. I hope he didn’t tire you. He can be unrelenting.” She smiled at me in a conspiratorial way.
I didn’t want her to be so pretty and charming. “. . . Well, he was certainly thorough,” I said, and her laughter gurgled up. I looked at Israel. He was beaming at her.
“If you return to the North, you must come and stay with us,” Rebecca said, then she herded the children to their cabin.
Israel lingered a moment longer, pulling out John Woolman’s journal. “Please accept it.”
“But it’s your own copy. I couldn’t possibly take it.”
“It would please me greatly—I’ll get another when I return to Philadelphia. I only ask that after you read it, you write to me of your impressions.” He opened the book and showed me a piece of paper on which he’d written his address.
That night, after I blew out the wick, I lay awake, thinking of the book tucked in my trunk and the address secreted inside. After you read it, write to me. The water moved beneath me, rushing toward Charleston into the swaying dark.