The Daughters of Liberty
Chapter 1 Harriet Tubman
The choky smoke blends with the smell of grass and soil and filled every corner of the old wooden rail way station. Two gentlemen step down their carriage with their carved stick and brand-new grey woolen hat that imported from Europe. “Did you read the news in the morning? Mr. Smith has just published an address that criticizes the new policy of the congress……” These two men talk while walk through the bustling crowds and the humid summer air with no idea that they have hit a black woman in checkered kerchief.
“Mose, is New York also this hot in summer? I can’t even breath.” a girl about 15 plucks the big sleeve of the black woman’s dress while trying to clamp a chook with her elbow and body. “It’s much cooler.” The woman that been called as Mose answers in a low volume, “and with endless drinkable water. Wait another 10 minutes, Charlotte.” “10 minutes then endless water? As much as I want? From master?” Charlotte’s eyes are wide open on her skinny face. “Endless.” Mose stares at the time table, “not from master, but from yourself.”
The roof of the station is old and blackened in years of smoke. Ravens fly around the top of the building and kicked down a piece of wood while howling. Among the noise of the crowd and the natural world, Mose notices a heavy knock of boots, actually two knocks of boots in different pace. It’s the guardians’ grey boots. She knew the result without even looking at those two men in red uniforms. Mose grabs her kerchief and wrap up her nose and face then turn to these two guardians. which stand beside the entrance to the railway.
“They were checking tickets.” Charlotte’s voice is shivering. Her chook is chuckling under her catch. “Yes. And I will tell them we are going to West Virginia. We carry the goods.” Mose points to the chook, “for masters. Then I will contact one of my friends while arrived and we can go to Pennsylvania in boats tonight.” “Come.” Mose pulls Charlotte and turns to her when Mose finds Charlotte is stuck and trembling, like a young sapling in a summer storm. “What are you waiting for?” “They got gun.” Charlotte pinches Mose’s dress. “While then I will die before thou. Come.”
“No.” Charlotte stares the ground and shakes her head. “I don’t want to die. I don’t go New York. Take me back to the plantation please……” “hey,” Charlotte finds Mose looks down at her and speaking. It’s strange that such a common black woman had eyes like the hardest stone in rock mountains. “There is no retreat. Thou never live to tell in that way.” Mose rolls up her sleeve to show Charlotte a dagger in her pocket of petticoat. “What are thou afraid of? Been killed? Even an old woman with inability of one side like me survived these many times of escaping. Thou are young. Don’t act as a coward. We just look like any other slaves in the station. There’s no reason that may lead to a failure. Come on, we will make it.”
Mose then walked to the entrance with her left foot behind her body with Charlotte behind her, head down. “Why are you going to West Virginia?” “With our master.” Mose answers the stocky guardian before her, who is looking at her and her long black dress. “Who’s your master?” “Mr. Brant.” Charlotte shouts out a name before Mose opens her mouth. “The old gentlemen who is going to celebrate her daughter’s birthday in West Virginia. He hates birds.” Charlotte lifts forward her chook. “So me and my mother helps him to carry it.”
“That’s true, Frank!” another guardian turns around and supplements, “I checked the tickets of Mr. Brant several minutes ago.” Frank, the stocky guardian, doesn’t say a word again while pushes Mose across the entrance with his beard shivering on his big red face. Charlotte follows their steps.
The crowds of people in the station ebbs like waves of the Red Sea as they went on to the train. “See, Charlotte, thou make it alive. thou make it alive wonderfully.” Mose sits in one corner of the train and smiles “I can’t imagine it’s such easy. They didn’t even ask our names.” Charlotte whispers to Mose. “There are too many people.” Mose wraps her kerchief tighter and says, “no one will pay even a little attention to an old, hemi-disable, traditional-looking black woman with a child. Every plantation has a woman like that.” “Will you really kill me if I turn around and run at the station?” Charlotte leans on Mose and asks. “Not as good as knock thou down and carry thou with my hand and tell the guardians thou are my sleepy child.” “I will never ever come back if I ever leave.” Charlotte stares at the window. “And I will.” Mose fondles Charlotte’s curly black hair, “run back. If unable to run back, then walk back. If unable to walk back, then crawl back.” “Why?” Charlotte gets up and looks at her. “God plants inner light in my heart and asks me to save my brothers and sisters till the end of my days.” Mose answers peacefully.
“While, can I help too?” Charlotte looks at her. “Thou can help me by enjoying freedom yourself and starts to consider this question ten years later. Now sleep. I will wake you up when we arrived. It’s not safe yet.” “One last thing.” Charlotte lay down again but suddenly sits up, “can I have your name? Your real name, not nickname.” “Not now.” Mose refuses decisively. “But maybe one day when I accomplish my tasks or been replaced. And thou still want to know,” She complements when Charlotte rubs herself against her dress. “Well, maybe I will tell thou then.”
“Harriet Tubman.” Charlotte finally gets this name when she meets Mose again in New York railway station 40 years later, when they are both living a peaceful and free live.
Chapter 2 Emily Dickinson
First perspective of Dickinson
It takes 15 steps to walk from my bed to the door of my bedroom. Another 15 steps to pass through the corridor, and the delicate porcelain with drawings of thrushes, lilies and roses will greet at me from the glass cupboard.
If it’s lucky enough, Helios already rides his golden carriage across the sky, then I can turn to the garden outside of the dining hall. Pansies and hyacinths lay on the ground like a colorful blanket weaved by Penelope, or the carpet used in the triumphus in Ancient Roman world, and this causes 20 steps. Mimosa pudica and peas hide in the lawn beside the footpath in the courtyard. My pace can lead me through these plants, as people in the myths, or on the cobblestones to the wooden gate. That’s usually where I stop and turn back. If it’s rainy, the window of the glasshouse and kitchen will be the new border of my kingdom of narcissus and gingersnaps, oh, and my pens and my writings.
In many novels and proses, poems and addresses, the speaker yells to fight for chances to run out or fly away like birds in the winter. They despised isolation, cursed it as a cruel “penalty”, a torture. They called themselves freedom’s followers.
Maybe it’s because they never laid down on the lawns of their homes, or they never stay out of the crowd. They didn’t get what I know when Muses and Death whispered to me in my dream. Solitude is the most attractive thing on the earth. It’s the spring of poems, the friend of art, and the mother of freedom.
Either in the middle of the night or in the morning sunshine, I stand beside the door of my garden. I know I can take the 21st step, a slight push of the wood with either of my hand, a lift of myself and move of my little black boots will get me out, like the times I go to Mount Holyoke College in my previous life. But I won’t. It’s only because I don’t want to.
I know all the fissures on the rocks and bricks in my house, and every petal, even the angle between my desk and the sculpture on it when the sun leans down from the window pane in 3 p.m. in the afternoon. I know one is the best time to water my flowers and how much specific sugar I need to bake my cookie. I am the queen of my room of my own. I can post my poetry and writings in every corner of the house, on napkins, notepapers and handkerchiefs: on everything.
Isolation is my heaven, my paradise and my ultimate freedom. Without contacting others, the supposed “reasonable” obligations also vanished. My mother went out of her room every week, to attend feasts and meet countless relatives. The heavy evening dresses and pearl jewelries lower her back for the whole life. She directly turned from a pretty daughter that dances all night to a wife who meets every of her husband’s friend, then a mother who bears all the chores and take care of every member in the family. She’s responsible, soft, and been able to handle many issues, but she never took up her -pen again.
In all past years, women of Dickinson’s family all chose to walk out of the door and embrace their social and family obligations. They all put down their pen and just led dust occupied their old writing desk. They forgot the songs of Shelley and Goethe. Their name even disappeared in their husband’s career’s glory.
But I won’t. Staying beside the front door is the other path that my family never picked and it actually gives me greatest freedom that my predecessors never got. Instead of the cars and stores outside of my house, I choose to stay with Shakespeare for every starry night at home. God created people to bear different responsibilities in the world. For me, the most important thing in my life is to free my soul. Those who sympathize me of been alone, sigh in front of my house will never find out my soul have travel on a carriage with Death even in childhood.
I sip the tea in my cup. The bittersweet water rushes into my mouth, with morning sunshine kisses my hair through the ivies on my dining hall’s window. The luckiest thing ever happened to me, I smile, is been the daughter of loneliness.