The Power of Kindness

She cut two pieces from the apple pie and gave them to Ruth and me. ‘I was indentured when I was your age. Old Mister Malbone had five of us from Ireland, along with near thirty slaves . . . Dinah was real friendly to me when I first got there, helped me get used to a new place, and people ordering me around.’

These words, spoken by Jenny, the tavern owner’s wife in Chapter III, show that kindness can be repaid and returned even many years later. Isabel thinks Jenny looks familiar, but she is not sure how she knows her until Jenny says, “You’re Dinah’s girl.” Jenny explains Dinah’s, or Momma’s, kindness toward her when she first came from Ireland as an indentured servant. Jenny repays Dinah’s kindness by being kind to her daughters, Isabel and Ruth. Further, just as Dinah helped Jenny, Becky Berry helps and teaches Isabel. Kindness keeps flowing, slowly but unendingly, like the rivers in this narrative. The quotation also shows that African American slaves were not the only people who were mistreated, although, as Jenny points out, she was able to “walk away” after seven years of servitude, whereas slavery was most often a life sentence.

The mother took the basket and said ‘Thank you’ and then ‘Thank you, again,’ and then ‘Thank you most, most kindly,’ and they went back inside. I hummed a carol as I walked away, finally feeling at peace.

On Christmas night, at the end of Chapter XXXVIII, Isabel performs an act of kindness that would have made her mother proud. When Isabel hears Momma’s voice say, “Keep Christmas,” she decides that she will honor a memory she has of Christmases on Mary Finch’s farm. Isabel bakes a bread pudding and cleans herself up. She carries the warm pudding in a basket to the part of the city that has been destroyed by fire, full of makeshift tents and huts. Isabel hears the laughter of a family coming from inside a tent and decides to offer her basket to them. Although they are hesitant at first, the family accepts her humble gift. In this case, Isabel’s kindness flows right back to her as a feeling of peace, one of the few times in the novel when she feels this positively. Isabel’s generous, unselfish act results in her own contentment, which allows her to honor Momma’s memory.

She sat back and used her right hand to place her left hand in her lap. ‘I will soon meet my Maker, Isabel. I am a sinner in need of forgiveness.’

Here, Lady Seymour speaks to Isabel in Chapter XL. She has invited Isabel to sit with her as a companion would. The invitation is a kind one, an extension of many kindnesses shown by Lady Seymour to Isabel. However, Lady Seymour has fallen short of the ultimate kindness she could have shown Isabel: to purchase her from the Locktons. She informs Isabel of her failure, and she asks instead for Isabel’s forgiveness, a kindness that Isabel cannot give. Instead, Isabel thanks Lady Seymour for telling her and takes her leave. Being purchased by anyone, even the kind Lady Seymour, is a false kindness in Isabel’s mind, and the Lady’s apology rings hollow.

The Dichotomy of Slavery and Freedom

One by one they dragged us forward, and a man shouted out prices to the crowd of likely buyers and baby Ruth cried, and Momma shook like the last leaf on a tree, and Poppa . . . and Poppa, he didn't want them to bust up our family like we were sheep or hogs. ‘I am a man,’ he shouted . . .

This is one of Isabel’s earliest memories, recounted in Chapter II when Robert Finch intends to sell the two sisters, Isabel and Ruth, at auction, perhaps even splitting them up. The memory haunts Isabel and encapsulates the inhumanity of slavery. It was the last time Isabel saw her father and the scar on his face. This moment is likely when slavery became suddenly real to her young understanding. The novel contains other references to masters treating slaves like animals, and certainly Isabel’s branding in Chapter XXII makes the analogy literal. As the question “Am I not a man?” became a slogan for abolitionists a century after this scene takes place, Poppa’s emphatic statement foreshadows an entire political movement. The ideal is repeated and repurposed in Sojourner Truth’s famous speech “Ain’t I a Woman?”

I froze at the sideboard. The words of the bald-headed man came to me: ‘If the British win, we’ll all be free.’ Could it be so simple? Might the invaders liberate me from this nightmare? Was this my chance?

Isabel asks these questions in Chapter XXVII, when Madam orders Isabel to go shopping in expectation of Lockton’s return home. The British have just invaded New York City, and Madam observed rebel soldiers retreating. At this point, Isabel is confused about which side she should serve. Serving the rebels has not gotten her very far, and some slaves at the Tea Water Pump have made comments about the British being a better bet. In the prior chapter, a woman in a yellow head cloth claims that both sides “say one thing and do the other” because the British promise freedom to slaves but won’t give it to the rebels. On the other hand, the rebels want freedom but won’t give it to their slaves. The discussion with the woman turns heated. Grandfather steps in and says that British or American is not the choice. The choice is finding the River Jordan, their own freedom from both oppressors.

I thought of all the ancestors waiting at the water’s edge for their stolen children to come home. Waiting and waiting and waiting . . . A thought surfaced through my ashes. She cannot chain my soul . . . she could not hurt my soul, not unless I gave it to her.

 

This breakthrough moment happens to Isabel in Chapter XXXVIII, while she walks alone on Christmas Day afternoon. The ashes of sadness and the buzzing bees have returned because Madam has just threatened Isabel with further violence if she continues to visit the prison. Earlier, Isabel has said that she was chained between two nations, but here, she realizes that she can only be chained if she allows herself to be, that maybe slavery is a state of the mind and not just a state of the body. The idea liberates and excites Isabel, and this realization will guide her just as the candle she observes on a windowsill does. Isabel’s thoughts also harken to a distant past and all the ancestors who wait back in Africa for their children to be returned. At this moment, as she is often, Isabel feels connected to all her ancestors, both living and ghosts. Her slavery and her freedom are theirs.

I tried to be grateful but could not. A body does not like being bought and sold like a basket of eggs, even if the person who cracks the shells is kind.

Isabel thinks this harsh truth in response to Lady Seymour’s apology for not purchasing her in Chapter XL. Isabel admits that it would ease Lady Seymour’s mind if she were to accept her apology, but she cannot bring herself to do so. Although the Lady has been kind to her, nursing her back to health after the branding and supporting her visits to the prison, the fact that Lady Seymour wanted to buy rather than free Isabel feels disappointing. The institution of slavery was hard baked into the culture, even among those who questioned its future. In 1777, it was impossible to imagine America without slavery. It was impossible for even a kind woman to imagine slaves being equal and free. It was impossible to consider Isabel as anything but property. Lady Seymour is a product of her time and of her class, and despite her good intentions, she is still guilty of being a slave owner.

History Is Both Personal and Political

‘Where you see smoke, you find fire, Country. Don’t worry. The day of our liberty will soon dawn. This country is going to be free, and you and me with it.’

‘For a boy with a little head, you sure do have big dreams. I just want what’s owed me.’

This conversation between Curzon and Isabel, here called Country, happens in Chapter XIII after they stand in line to fetch water at the Tea Water Pump. As they walk home, they discuss Lockton’s affairs, including his recent travel to Connecticut despite being on a parole. Isabel has just criticized Curzon’s report that the Royal Fleet is fast approaching as “idle gossip and pipe smoke,” but Curzon defends his report. Curzon has already become a person for whom history is political, but Isabel insists that for her, the situation is different. She cares to focus on the personal and ignore the armies and their causes. Isabel cares about her personal freedom more than she cares about political acts. She holds this opinion before she changes her mind and supports the rebels. She spies to free herself, not to help anyone’s cause.

‘This is not our fight,’ the old man said. ‘British or American, that is not the choice. You must choose your own side, find your own road through the valley of darkness that will lead you to the river Jordan.’

These words, spoken by Grandfather toward the end of Chapter XXVI, distinguish between political and personal freedoms and history. Grandfather dismisses the revolution and its two sides as irrelevant to slaves. When another man claims that there is no River Jordan, just the East River and the North River, Grandfather responds that the River Jordan is a metaphor for everything that stands between a slave and his or her freedom. He proceeds to examine the scar on Isabel’s cheek and tell her that the wound is a sign of strength and survival. Although various characters express themselves differently on the subject, the novel as a whole suggests that the personal and the political mirror each other, that one does not have to choose between them. For Isabel, and for the reader, they can be two sides of one coin.

Momma said we had to fight the evil inside us by overcoming it with goodness. She said it was a hard thing to do, but it made us worthy.

Here, Isabel recalls her Momma’s words immediately before she throws Captain Farrar’s note to Captain Morse into the fire in Chapter XLIII. Isabel faces evil head-on when Madam demands the note. Isabel has just described that the poison of evil has “eaten holes through [Madam’s] soul and made room for vermin to nest inside her,” a graphic depiction of Madam’s depravity. Although dead, Momma is still with Isabel, whispering words of wisdom when she needs them most. In this case, Momma lifts Isabel out of the personal and into a transcendent realm: being worthy, being spiritually good, thinking far beyond the limits of one’s own small experience. When Isabel throws the note into the fire, she seals her own fate, which may, at first, seem doomed but instead is exalted. The fury that she evokes in Madam makes Madam reveal Ruth’s true whereabouts, just the incentive Isabel needs to break free.

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