The Price of a Child by Lorene Cary

Author:Lorene Cary [Cary, Lorene]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-77848-2
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-03-23T00:00:00+00:00

The Ladies Anti-Slavery Society meeting took place most weeks in a room off the Quaker meetinghouse that the Society shared with a temperance group. But because the temperance people had planned a special event for this afternoon, the Ladies Society agreed to meet at Eliza Ruffin’s house. Harriet’s letter had explained the group to Mercer, by way of convincing her to visit Ruffin. The Ladies Society was not just an outgrowth of a men’s group but their own proper organization. They were Negro and white women together, and one of the colored women was a co-chairwoman (not, as Harriet explained often happened in mixed groups, the helper). In principle, they occasionally met in one of the members’ houses, because they believed that women who worked together should not be ashamed to entertain each other in their homes (although in practice, they met at Eliza Ruffin’s, and no one protested, or even took much notice, that they did not alternate). As opposed to many groups that abhorred slavery but cared little for equality, the Ladies Society believed that achieving the “elevation of the freemen” by fighting discrimination in the North was inseparable, as the promoters of the year’s colored national convention put it, from “the great work of the slave’s restoration to freedom.” They sponsored lectures and informal talks and fairs like everyone else, but mostly they liked their abolition radical.

By the time Mercer arrived, a dozen women, four of them colored, were assembled in the upstairs parlor. They had arranged themselves in a half-circle around the table where Eliza Ruffin sat pouring tea. The late afternoon was sunny and cold, but Eliza Ruffin’s fire was just the slightest bit warmer than the one she’d had lit the day before in the downstairs parlor. Two ruddy-faced women shared a large chair and talked loudly about the virtues of not eating red meat. They moved on to the subject of vigorous exercise; then, in genteel language, and with giggles, to moderation in conjugal relations.

“Mr. Graham has worked out quite a specific regimen, and he says without question that it will relieve debility.”

“The Mr. Graham who makes the crackers?”

“The same, yes.”

“Relieve or prevent?”

“Excuse me. Prevention, of course—as in all matters of health, our first concern—but the system relieves as well.”

“Priscilla is a wonderful advertisement. You are the picture of health.”

“She always was.”

“Well, yes, I’ve been blessed. But this regimen—”

“This regimen, my eye. Beth put her finger on it. Priscilla has never been sick a day in her life. I know, you see, Priscilla. I was there when your mother, my aunt Ruth, fed your family a lovely, rare chop every morning, noon, and night. I never saw so much meat. Red, quite red. And kept you in the house by the hour. You were the picture of health then, and you’re the picture of health now.”

“Well, I say like Sojourner Truth said: ‘Is God dead?’ What I mean is: Do Mr. Graham and these other people who presume to keep one alive forever, do they talk about the restorative powers of prayer.

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