just like Aunt Lydia Ann. But what if they believed her and then the baby turned
out to be colored? She tried to imagine the look on Mabel’s face and might have
laughed, if the prospect hadn’t been so devastating. She descended the stairs to
her cabin and once again counted the days. She should get her monthly visitor today or tomorrow, but felt none of the familiar cramping.
She lay down, remembering her father lecturing them about how to make a
decision. “Make a list of your choices and the best and worst possible outcome of each.” Her first decision had to be made soon, if she didn’t get her monthly
visitor by the time they reached Erie. What were the possibilities? Don’t go home – go straight to a home for wayward girls. Go home, don’t tell them
anything, and find out how to get rid of the baby. Go home and tell them about
her poor dead husband. Go home, break down in tears, and tell them she had been raped. Or that some young man had promised to marry her and then
disappeared.
She tried to consider the outcome of each, if the baby was white and if the baby was black. Most of her options were nothing but disastrous if the baby turned out to be colored. Why had she lied about a husband or beau, or not mentioned that her rapist was black? What black man was she trying to protect?
And if she said she had been raped by a black man, a stranger to her, and then
the baby was white? It was all too complicated. The first choice – go straight to a
home for wayward girls – was the one that made most sense, but the one she could least bear the thought of. She was tired of being alone. The steady drone
and thump of the engine, together with the rocking of the boat, eventually lulled
her to sleep, though she stirred often during the night.
The next morning she woke to the sound of a downpour and stayed in bed,
nibbling at the loaf of bread she had brought. When the rain subsided into a light
patter, she rushed up to use the latrine and then bought a cup of the gritty coffee.
The sun came out later in the morning and she strolled through the puddles on
deck, but did not converse with any of the other passengers.
The dining room offered tasteless fare – a bowl of greasy soup, a slab of fatty
meat, fried potatoes, dried out chocolate cake, and more of the bitter coffee. The
passengers shared long mess tables and Olivia chose a place next to a family with small children, knowing they would be too busy to make more than a brief
attempt at polite conversation with her. Olivia smiled and nodded and rose as soon as she’d finished.
She made her way to the back of the boat, to the deck over the engine, and stood watching the coloreds huddled there. They sat on their baggage and spoke
in soft tones. One of the mothers noticed Olivia staring at them and pulled her little girl closer. Others also began casting suspicious glances her way, lowering
their eyes to avoid Olivia’s timid smile. She sighed, shook her head, and turned
away.
Back in the white section she stood at the rail and thought what it must have
been like for Mourning, growing up the only black-skinned person in town. She
bent to rest her forehead on her knuckles and allowed thoughts of him to fill her
mind – working under the hot sun with his shirt off, sweat trickling down his
shiny back; balanced on a roof beam, calling down to her to toss him a sack of nails; humming while he lit the fire, his voice as smooth as coffee with cream.
For a brief moment she even allowed herself to remember his hands on her body,
but the magic of that memory had been almost entirely eradicated, buried
beneath the sludge of a different type of physical contact.
When the boat docked in Erie she marched to the stagecoach office.
“Just in time,” the man behind the caged window said. “Got one leaving in
about twenty minutes. It’ll be going through Five Rocks before dark.”
