Page 88 of Under the Tulip Tree
Tears of anger spilled over, but I stepped out of his reachwhen he tried to comfort me. “She deserves better, Alden. She deserves to have her life story told exactly as she lived it.”
“Yes, she does, but how? Carlson won’t use it unless you alter it. What other choice do you have?”
A light rain began to fall, but I didn’t care. There had to be another way. My mind whirled.
“What other choice is there, Rena?” he asked again, softening his voice this time, as though encouraging me to find a solution.
The words of Harriet Beecher Stowe came back to me.
“I hope every woman who can write will not be silent.”
Suddenly I knew.
An idea so preposterous, so ridiculously improbable took root in my spirit, I nearly laughed at the absurdity of it. Yet something about it felt completely right.
For the first time that day, a smile inched up my wet cheeks.
I parked Mary’s Hudson in the shade of the two-story building on Printers Alley. It had only been six weeks since the last time I’d come down to theBanner’s offices, yet so much had happened since. After Mr. Armistead let me go, I thought I couldn’t survive if I didn’t work at the newspaper. Funny that I didn’t realize until just this moment I hadn’t missed it at all.
Typewriters hummed as I entered the office. The familiar smells of ink, cigarette smoke, and coffee hung in the air, but they didn’t beckon to me as they had in the past. Severalreporters glanced my way. I smiled and kept walking. By the time I reached the door to Mr.A.’s office, I’d gained the attention of most of the men in the newsroom.
“Gentlemen,” I said before turning to find Mr.A. standing at his desk, a look of surprise on his face. “Hello, Mr. Armistead. It’s good to see you.”
“Leland.” He glanced through the window that separated his office from the newsroom. A number of men continued to stare at me. “What are you gawking at? Get to work,” he bellowed. When the noise of typing resumed, he returned to his seat and eyed me over the rim of his glasses for a long minute. “Something’s different.”
I hid a smile. “Oh?”
He motioned to the chair in front of his desk. I settled in it, keeping my purse on my lap.
“How are things with the Federal Writers’ Project?”
“I interviewed seven former slaves for the FWP. Their stories will be included in those being gathered and sent to Washington.”
He nodded, but his narrowed eyes remained on me. “And now you’re out of a job and you’re here to beg me to hire you.”
I chuckled. “Not exactly, but I would appreciate you hearing me out. I have an idea I’d like to discuss with you.”
“An idea?”
I settled back against the chair. “It’s actually a story about an incredible woman I recently met.”
Never one to miss a thing, he said, “A former slave, I takeit.”
“Yes. Her name is... was Frankie Washington, and hearing her story changed me.”
He crossed his arms over his ample belly. “How so?”
I’d rehearsed this speech a dozen times over the last few days, but now the practiced words fled me. Instead, I spoke from my heart. “Frankie lived a life I never knew existed. In school we learned about slavery, but not like this. Not the real, raw, and sometimes-horrifying truth of their lives in bondage.”
A look of doubt clouded his face. “The war ended seventy years ago. No one wants to hear about slavery these days.”
“That’s the point, Mr. Armistead. No one wants to talk about it, yet that doesn’t mean it didn’t exist. People who are still alive today endured it. They were forced into labor, never given a choice. They had no say about their lives, their destiny. They wereowned.” I let that word sink in. “They were property, bought and sold at the whim of their master. Our generation—my generation—can’t begin to understand how such a thing was possible or what it felt like. The people who lived it are the only ones who can tell their story. They’ll be gone soon—” my voice cracked with still-raw grief at the thought of Frankie—“so we mustn’t let this opportunity slip past us.”
“Isn’t that what the FWP is doing? Collecting stories from these people so they’ll be on record?”
“It is, but I have reason to believe not all the stories will be told in the way they should be.” I didn’t want to accuse Mr. Carlson of any large-scale wrongdoing based on the situationwith Frankie’s interview, but I also knew I couldn’t allow her story to be edited in order to fit his idea of a slave narrative.
His eyes narrowed again, but in a familiar way. I knew he was considering my words. “What do you propose?”
