Adam kept Honor at his side for the first hour to teach her how to measure cloth against the marks made on the edge of the table, make a small cut and rip the fabric along the weave, and wrap it in brown paper and string. She had bought cloth often enough to be familiar with the procedure, which did not differ between Oberlin and Bridport. At least some things were the same in the two countries. Once Adam was confident that Honor knew what to do, he left her to deal with customers alone while he handled money and oversaw a boy he’d hired to sharpen scissors and needles brought in by customers, a recent initiative he hoped would help the shop’s prospects.
Honor was glad to have contact with new people. While living in a community of Friends was familiar, after just a few weeks in Faithwell, among the same people day after day, she was finding its limitations trying, and craved variety. At home she had been more used to the mingling of Quakers and non-Quakers, and with the coming and going of ships there was always something different to see, and strange faces to ponder. In Adam’s store she studied people’s clothes and listened to their talk about politics or the weather or crops, or what foolish Oberlin students had been up to. She watched boys run by with hoops, and smiled at a girl dragging a carved toy dog on a string. She held a baby while a customer spread out a bolt of cloth, and helped an elderly woman around the corner to the buggy waiting for her on College Street. All of these interactions made her feel vital rather than the unwanted extra she was at Abigail’s.
Among the steady stream of customers, several black women came in to buy cloth or needles or pins, or to have their scissors sharpened. Honor tried not to stare, but she could not help it, as they were like exotic birds blown off course to land among sparrows. They all looked the same to her, with brown skin like polished oak, high cheekbones, wide noses and dark, serious eyes. They conducted themselves similarly too. After glancing at her, they went over to Adam, waiting for him if he was helping someone else, then asking him for material, or giving him the scissors or needles for the boy to sharpen. It was as if they had established that Adam was safe, and so they did not have to approach her. Clear about what they wanted, they chose quickly, paid and left, saying little to Adam and nothing to Honor. They certainly would not have asked her to hold their babies for them.
When there was a lull in the shop, Honor went out for a brief walk to escape the heat inside, and discovered a few doors down a confectioner’s where a crowd of black women were gathered, chatting and laughing in groups. The man behind the counter, selling peppermints and shaved ice, was also black and clearly in charge. Honor had not expected Negroes to own their own businesses. Donovan had been right: Oberlin was radical.
As a Quaker, Honor had been used to the feeling of being set apart, and she was an outsider in almost every place in America. She knew the black women must feel more comfortable with one another, just as she did with other Quakers. However open-minded, people tended to gravitate to those like themselves. And Negroes had reason to be wary of whites, where one family could produce two people as different as Donovan and Belle Mills. But as she watched the women so clearly at ease, where they hadn’t been in Cox’s Dry Goods, she felt a pang. I am excluded even from the excluded, she thought.
Late in the day, as she was folding cloth, Honor heard a throat cleared beside her. “Excuse me, miss. How much is that a yard?”
A black woman stood next to her, intent on the fabric in Honor’s hands: a cream cotton dotted with tiny rust-colored diamonds. She was as small as Honor, and older, her cheeks smooth and shiny and crisscrossed with lines, like the palms of hands. She wore spectacles and a straw hat trimmed with dandelions limp from the heat.
Honor glanced toward Adam: he had disappeared into the back room. “I will look for thee,” she said, pleased to have been asked. Each bolt was wound around a flat piece of wood; on one end Adam had written the price. Honor searched for that now, pulling back the layers of cloth. “Fifty cents a yard,” she announced.
The woman grimaced. “I can manage that, just about.” She pulled out a lace collar yellow with age but beautifully made, and laid it on top of the cloth, smoothing it with long fingers tipped with pale oval nails. “This go with it?” She said this more as a statement than a question, and Honor did not know if she should answer. The collar went well enough with the material, but something finer like silk would have been preferable. She did not think she should suggest this, though, as silk cost much more.
“Is it for thee?” she asked.
The woman shook her head. “Daughter’s wedding dress. She need somethin’ she can wear after, for everyday or for church.”
She is like any woman, Honor thought, concerned that her daughter should look her best and yet have a practical dress. “Then it is a good choice,” she said. “How many yards would thee like?”
“Six-no, five, please. She’s a little thing.”
Her hands shaking, Honor measured and cut the cloth with more care than she had for any other customer that day. As she wrapped the cloth and tied twine around the paper, she thought, This is the first time I have helped a black person.
She felt eyes on her and glanced up. The woman was studying the yellow rim of Honor’s bonnet. “Where you get that bonnet? Not from Oberlin, did you?”
“No. Belle Mills’s Millinery in Wellington.” Several other women had already asked about the bonnet and had been disappointed that they would have to go all the way to Wellington for one.
Recognition sparked in the woman’s eyes; she gazed at Honor, a steady look unhampered by her glasses. She might have been about to say something when Adam appeared from the back room. “Hello, Mrs. Reed. Has Honor been able to help with everything thee needs?”
Mrs. Reed’s eyes disappeared behind a flash of spectacles as she turned to Adam. “Yep, she did. Where Abigail at?”
“I’m afraid she was unwell this morning.”
“Was she, now.” Mrs. Reed pressed her lips together and handed Adam the money for the fabric. She made it seem as if she had much to say but was holding it back behind her clamped mouth, only letting some of her thoughts seep out from her eyes. She picked up her package from the table. “Thankee. Good day.” She turned and departed without looking back.
Honor refolded the cloth and put it away, deflated. Clearly their encounter had meant much less to Mrs. Reed than it had to her.
Faithwell, Ohio
7th Month 5th 1850
My dear parents,
I was overjoyed to receive your letter this morning-the first I have had since the letter that awaited my arrival in Faithwell. As I read it I could hear your familiar voices, and imagine exactly how Mother sat at the desk in the corner to write it, looking out of the window now and then while considering what news to tell me.
My pleasure was only tempered by the pain of reading your address to Grace as well. Even as I write this, you, indeed the whole community, still do not know of her death, and it is an odd feeling, that news of such importance suffers a delay of almost two months. By the time you receive this letter, other things may have happened that you will not know of. Similarly, the news I have had from your letter may already have been overtaken by other events. I can only hope and pray that our lives will not be so full of drama as to outdate our letters before they reach their destination.