Chasing the Devil --Prologue

It seems like only yesterday when the sun shone through the tiny window of our little room. It gave warmth to the icy cold floor and allowed prisms of marvelous light to hypnotize and entertain us for hours.  We pretended the colors were extravagant jewels we were going to wear to some marvelous ball our mother was planning… when she released us from our prison.





Prologue



1864

Damp and musty walls are a constant reminder that just like yesterday and the day before, our lives are spent in this dungeon.  Emily is only four and she has no idea what the real world is like, but I do.  I remember the bright light of all-day sunshine, the soothing sound of music, the feel of warm soft beds, and the taste of good, hot food.  Mama was different then and I loved her very much, but she has changed. Now, Emily and I live in constant fear of beatings and the possibility of death if we make noise above a whisper. 



When Emily came along, Mama sent us here.  Soon, Emily barely made a sound at all, and she slept most of the day and night.  I thought something was wrong with her, but Mama said she had to give her medicine so she wouldn’t cry so much.  Mama gave Emily a dose every morning and every night until she was well past a year old.  By then, Emily could pretty much be quiet all by herself. 



We look forward to days when the sun shines.  To us, it’s an assurance that God has not forgotten us, and although we have little to cling to down here, we rely heavily on hope. Peeling plaster, dirty floors, and big scary spiders walk around in hanging cobwebs in the room where we live.  The smell of our own waste, and the crowd of flies surrounding it, is something we have come to live with, although we would rather not.  The floor of our dungeon is made of large rocks that stay icy cold in winter, but serve to keep us cool in the dog days of summer. That’s mine and Emily’s favorite time, if you can call it that. It’s then, we can look out our window onto green grass and trees, blue skies, and red and yellow flowers. Our dreams are renewed in spring, just like the rest of the outside world. 



Emily dreams of running as fast as she can through fields of clover and wildflowers near the pond.  I dream of picking all the different colors and kinds of flowers. Watching them twist and turn, winding their way around every thing visible from our window of dreams.  We both dream of catching butterflies in our hands, and skipping stones across the little green pond, just like the slave children do.  The stones roll across the top of the water, kissing with each touch.



We aren’t quite sure what a slave is, but we do know there are a lot of them living outside our window.  Mama says that if they don’t do what they’re told, then the ugly ol’ overseer will come around and beat them something awful.  She says that if we don’t do as she says, he will come and beat us the same way.



  The portal to all of our dreams and grand adventures are visualized through a tiny window situated at the top of three wooden crates in the back corner of the dungeon.  I cleaned the cobwebs and dead insects away, and made a clean and proper place for Emily and me to do our dreaming.  I climb on the boxes first, and then I give Emily my hand.  She’s not very big and she’s light as a feather.  I have no problem pulling her up to the top so we can dream of escape together.

After we climb up, we make ourselves comfortable because we plan on dreaming a long time. Sometimes, Emily will bring a ragged piece of blanket to wrap tightly about her.  Big brown eyes spill giant tears as tiny lips quiver.  Emily just wants our mama to come and make it all better. It’s scary to watch her cry silently, afraid of Mama’s wrath if she doesn’t.  Poor Emily is always hungry, and nearly always scared. But, I’ll take care of her and I’ll love her, even if Mama doesn’t. 



Our window looks out across the fields on the backside of the plantation where the slave houses are lined up in rows on either side of the back road.  Mama says it’s called slave row, but she doesn’t like that word, and she doesn’t like slave.  When Mama speaks of either, her eyes fill with tears and fall onto her beautiful silk dresses.  “One day,” she says, “we will be far away from people who use such hurtful words.”



Mama would offer this promise of escape nearly every time she ventured down the rickety ol’ stairs to see us, and although we have grown to distrust her, one day we do hope to be free. For now, we only wish Mama would worry half as much about us as she does the slave row people. From our window, Emily and I watch these people work and their children play, and all we want is to be a part of that life. Mama says we don’t know what we are saying, and that we have no life until Emily’s father comes for us. My father died before I was born, but Emily’s father lives in Philadelphia. Mama always says he’ll be here soon.  I wish he’d hurry, because I really don’t like it in this dungeon, and neither does Emily. Emily’s father writes for a newspaper up North, according to Mama. He works very hard and is saving every penny so we can be with him.  She says that every now and then he sends a letter through the Underground. 



I guess the Underground must be someplace like our dungeon, but I wonder, how does he get the letters to her if he’s in a dungeon like this.  We sure couldn’t get any letters out of here.  Besides, who would we give them to—Mama?

The fields behind the house we are living under are white with cotton in the fall.  That’s when slave row starts picking. They throw big bags over their shoulders, fill them up, empty them, and start all over again.  Sometimes they get so hot that they pour water over their heads to keep cool.  Mama says there’s an overseer out there, somewhere, and if he sees them wasting water, he’ll beat them oh so bad.  There sure are a lot of people on this plantation, but I bet they never look toward this big ol house and think that somewhere under it, in a dark, damp basement with a tiny window, there are two little girls who just want to come out and play.

 

“You’re not like other children, Martha Anne,” Mama says.  “You and Emily are different and folks don’t like different, so you must remain a secret. Some folks like to hurt people unlike themselves.  Dr. Greene would hurt you if he knew you were here, so you must be quiet.”



Mama tells us this so matter-of-factly, but I see the tears well up in her eyes. Sometimes she will even hold us until I’m sure we are going to break.

I don’t understand why such things have to remain a secret and I certainly don’t want to be a secret, but I am.







Emily and I have learned, in no uncertain terms, that any sound above a whisper has the potential for raising suspicion, and that any suspicion can and will jeopardize our existence, and Emily and I don’t want any part of that. We know Mama will come down and punish us like the time she almost killed baby Emily in the big metal pan in the corner of the dungeon. Mama stuffed Emily so far under water that I couldn’t see her, and she was under the water so long that she stopped breathing.  When Mama came to her senses about what she had done, she began beating on poor Emily, that’s when Emily woke up and started breathing again.  The next day, Emily was black and blue all over and her back hurt for a long time after that.  Emily was amazing!  She didn’t cry one time; not one sound.  Amidst the pain in her body and her little broken heart, she just sat there with a tortured look on her face and stared blankly into the air.  I tried my best to comfort Emily, but nothing I ever did seemed to take the place of her want of Mama.



Pain and questions haunted Emily’s huge brown eyes.  She couldn’t understand why Mama hurt her so badly. I on the other hand will never forget the look on baby Emily’s face. It will haunt me until the day I die.  How could she? I wanted to scream. How could she do such a terrible thing, and then just run away.  “Go ahead,” I imagined myself saying “Run upstairs to the comfort of your little world where you can enjoy your life, your pretty dresses, and all the things that we can’t have, just because we have to be quiet... and a secret!”



Emily, being so young, had no idea what was going on in her small little life.  The questioning look in her huge brown eyes melted my heart into a million pieces.  Her warm brown skin, more so than mine, and her funny little smile always makes me smile back.  Her eyes still hold many questions, and I try my best to answer them, but I usually just make up stories and excuses for Mama, hoping against hope that this is all a big misunderstanding and that one day soon, we will all leave here.

 

Once a week, but not every week, Mama brings us a loaf of bread, a large bucket of water, and a tin pail in which to relieve ourselves.  Some nights, when she is mindful of us, she might bring us a bite of meat or fresh milk.  In the summer, we sometimes get peaches. I just love the soft fuzzy skin and beautiful pink blush.  Strawberries are a rarity, but they are oh so sweet, and go squish in our mouths.  We love the red color that it leaves on our lips, and we pretend we are getting ready for some fancy party. Most of the time, if we get fruit at all, we get apples.  But as good as apples taste, the rotting core would bring more flies, so it stood to reason that we eat the core, too.



In spite of this filthy dungeon we are forced to live in, and Mama’s strange behaviors, we still love her. She’s all we have, and if anything happened to her, we would die here and no one would ever know. For all the beauty bestowed upon our mother, she is horribly ugly to us at times, like leaving us on our own for days, forgetting to feed us, or to empty the stinking waste pail. We get scared that she has forgotten us.  We sit in the corner of our straw mattresses and cry until our eyes swell shut and our chests ache. Times like these usually occur when strangers come to Greene Plantation for parties.  This is the most dangerous time for us, according to Mama. “With all these people here, the chance of your being caught is more likely.  If they found you here, they could take you away from me, and if that happened, we’d never see each other again. “It’s very dangerous, girls; no one can know that you are here.  I can’t explain now, but it won’t be long and you will be out of here.  Then we’ll all be on our way to Philadelphia.” It was the same story every time...and we believed her...every time. “I know I can trust you, Martha Anne,” Mama would say.  “I need you to keep Emily quiet.”



The craggy old stairs leading to the main part of the house are scary and squeaky.  They are full of splinters and falling though in places.  We’re afraid to climb them.  They creak and moan as if they have a mind of their own. I sometimes imagine them screaming out a warning, like, “Look out!  Here come Martha Anne and Emily!” If the stairs spoke and Mama heard it, we’d be punished.  So, despite our burning desire to escape, we have never considered such an attempt. We just do what we are told and hope that what Mama tells us is the truth, and even though we doubt her words, we have no other option but to believe her.



Mama usually asks the same questions, and I usually give the same answers, concerning the subject of noise. “Yes Ma’am, I’ll be very quiet,” and “Yes ma’am, I’ll be sure to keep Emily quiet, too.” Emily is a doll and she trusts me.  She thinks I have all the answers to all the questions in the entire world, and that she has nothing to fear.  I wouldn’t want her to know that I just do the best I can just to keep us alive and that’s all.



A couple of times when the house was silent, Mama would sneak us upstairs.  We’d be so happy and try hard to have a good time.  We still had to be very quiet just in case someone happened to be “milling around outside.” I figured she meant someone like the ugly old overseer or one of his goons that she was always talking about. We don’t recall seeing the overseer or even a goon, ‘cause I’m sure I’d remember a goon if I saw one.



Emily and I danced around from room to room wandering the big house looking at all of the beautiful things that mama got to live with and we didn’t.  Our favorite place of all was the outside room.  It was made mostly of glass, and it was the most beautiful thing in the world to us. Inside the outside room, there were plants and flowers everywhere you looked.  One could get lost in them if only they were allowed to go in, but because of the many windows, we couldn’t possibly take the chance of being seen.  Flowers rose and intermingled amidst a forest of green that trailed across slender mahogany tables. Rich colors of vibrant blooms topped slender white pedestals as trailing leafy hues cascaded toward a vibrant carpeted floor. Giant mirrors lined the one tapestry-covered wall, giving the illusion that it was all part of a fairytale forest, and to us, it was. Emily and I couldn’t help but stare at the windows. We wanted to go out and play, to be a part of what we could only dream about from our tiny window in the dungeon. 



Mama spent a lot of time holding us on her lap and smothering us with hugs and kisses that day.  She told us how much she adored her little girls, and as wonderful as it was in the moment, it was all so very confusing to us,, but we’d take what we could get. On that day it seemed Emily could get by with the sort of questions I was too afraid to ever ask Mama.

“When are we going to go to Piladelpa, Mama?” Emily’s hands worked nervously at her frilly dress of blue satin that miraculously appeared when we came upstairs.  Mama seemed as if she had no knowledge of its existence when we were downstairs in hell, and I was just as sure she would overlook its existence as soon as she returned us there. Emily doesn’t say much, so I was astounded when she collected the courage needed to talk to Mama.



“Just as soon as your daddy gets us word, child, soon as that.” Another of her monotonous answers.



“What’s an uddergound?”



“The Underground is actually many places.  Many people go there to be safe.  Sometime they are able to get word to the ones they love and maybe get us to your daddy one day."



“Is it like our dungeon, Mama? Is he allowed to talk to people, and go in and out of his window whenever he wants?” Emily looked at Mama with her huge brown eyes expecting truth to drip from her lips.  I sure was glad Emily didn’t know that much about lying yet. 



“Well, aren’t you just full of questions tonight, Emily?"  I feared Mama might get upset over all of Emily’s questions, and I felt the need to interrupt before Emily got us both in trouble.

“I’ll tell her later, Mama,” I said, hoping to stall the conversation and the brewing storm that always lapped at my mothers heels.



“Aren’t you the smart one, Martha Anne?”  Mama smiled curiously.  “How could you possibly answer a question like that when you don’t have the slightest idea as to the answer?” 



God help me, forgive me, I said in quick prayer!  That was it!  I had done it!  I’d gone and opened my big mouth, pretending to know everything but actually knowing nothing.  All I was trying to do was let Mama know that I could take care of Emily.  I wanted to let her know that she didn’t have to answer a bunch of questions that might upset her, but somehow I knew I was about to get it! 



My mind slowly went into motion, imagining the torture she might inflict upon me.  She had always promised us that she would have to keep us quiet no matter what it took.  Maybe she would take my head and stick it in the fire!  I’d never talk again if she did that!  Maybe she’d just stab me and throw me out to the dogs!  Who’d take care of Emily if she did that?  My mind was spinning so fast that I couldn’t catch it.



“It’s all right, Martha Anne,” Mama had said, smoothing my hair back, “don’t look so worried.”



Truth is I never know for sure when to worry and when not to. Definitely, when we make noise, definitely when we fall off the boxes under the window, or when Emily cries louder than a whisper, which of course isn’t often.  Still, I wondered why not now? What did I not do that kept her from slapping me, drowning me, or threatening my very life?  I couldn’t guess!  Mama was so unpredictable.  I was shaking wildly and my knees were knocking so hard that I could hear them.  I felt sick, relieved but sick.  Somewhere, a clock struck six o’clock and I nearly jumped out of my skin.  My throat swelled so that I couldn’t breathe, and I made a horrible noise I didn’t recognize.  My mind had wandered too far and I couldn’t find my way back. I struggled between the real and the unreal until the banging of the clock seemed to usher in my doom.  I was so glad it had not been twelve o’clock. I may not have lived through it.  In the meantime, Mama continued her definition of the Underground so we could understand.



“No Emily,” Mama was saying, “The Underground is not a basement like you’re in, at least not all of the time.  It is full of people who help others to get away from bad situations.



“Is Dr. Greene a bad situation, Mama?” I asked.



“Yes, Martha Anne. Dr. Greene can’t be trusted to keep our secret,” she said.



“What secret is that, Mama?”



“I can’t tell you now, but one day you will understand.”



I should have known it was going to be a “one of these days’” kind of answer. Now that my legs were made of rubber, they no longer had the strength to hold me. I settled quite loudly to the floor admiring my own dress of lace over pink with matching ribbons, and wondered how long before the dungeon swallowed us again. I felt it looming like a dark cloud about to spew rain, and I shivered.



What is our secret? Why must we remain hidden away from the rest of the world? Only our mother knows the answer!