“No, miss.”
“Are you cruel?”
“No, miss.”
“Are you going to hurt me?”
“Never, Miss. I swear it on everything I hold sacred.”
His sincerity was undeniable. He truly believed what he said.
“So I have another question. Can you read?”
The question took him by surprise. A flash of fear crossed his face. Reading was illegal for slaves in Virginia. But after a long moment, he said softly, “Yes, miss. I taught myself. I know it’s not allowed, but I… I couldn’t help it. Books are gateways to places I’ll never visit.”
“What are you reading?”
“Whatever I can find. Old newspapers, sometimes books I borrow. I read slowly. I haven’t learned well, but I read.”
“Have you ever read Shakespeare?”
His eyes widened. “Yes, miss. There’s an old copy in the library that no one touches. I read it last night, when everyone’s asleep.”
“What plays?”
“Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest.” His voice grew enthusiastic despite himself. “The Tempest is my favorite. Prospero controlling the island with magic. Ariel longing for freedom. Caliban treated like a monster, yet perhaps more human than anyone else.” He stopped abruptly. “Excuse me, miss. I’m talking too much.”
“No,” I said, smiling. I was smiling genuinely for the first time in this strange conversation. “Keep talking. Tell me about Caliban.”
And something extraordinary happened. Josiah, the enormous slave known as the Brute, began discussing Shakespeare with an intelligence that would have impressed university professors.
Caliban is called a monster, but Shakespeare shows us that he was enslaved, his island stolen, his mother’s magic ignored. Prospero calls him a savage, but Prospero has arrived on the island and claimed ownership of everything, including Caliban himself. So who is the real monster?
“Do you consider Caliban a character you can empathize with?”
“I see Caliban as a human being, treated as less than human, but still human.” His voice trailed off. “Like… like slaves.”
“I finished.”
“Yes, miss.”
We talked for two hours about Shakespeare, books, philosophy, and ideas. Josiah was self-taught; his knowledge was fragmentary, but his mind was sharp, his thirst for knowledge evident. And as we talked, my fear melted away.
This man was no brute. He was intelligent, kind, thoughtful, trapped in a body that society viewed and saw only as a monster.
“Josiah,” I said finally, “if we do this, I want you to know something. I don’t think you’re a brute. I don’t think you’re a monster. I think you’re a person stuck in an impossible situation, just like me.”
Her eyes suddenly filled with tears. “Thank you, miss.”
“Call me Elellanar. When we’re alone, call me Elellanar.”
“I shouldn’t, miss. It wouldn’t be appropriate.”
“Nothing in this situation is fair. If we’re going to be husband and wife, or whatever this arrangement is, you should use my last name.”
He nodded slowly. “Elellanar.” My name and his deep, gentle voice rang out like music.
“Then you should know something too. I don’t think you’re unfit for marriage. I think the men who rejected you were fools. A man who can’t see beyond the wheelchair, to see the person inside, doesn’t deserve you.”
It was the kindest thing anyone had said to me in four years.
“Will you do it?” I asked. “Will you accept my father’s plan?”
“Yes,” he replied without hesitation. “I will protect you. I will take care of you. And I will try to be worthy of you.”
“And I’ll try to make the situation bearable for both of us.”
We sealed the deal with a handshake, his enormous hand engulfing mine, warm and surprisingly gentle. My father’s radical solution suddenly seemed less impossible.
But what happened next? What I learned about Josiah in the months that followed. That’s when this story takes an unexpected turn.
The agreement formally came into force on 1 April 1856.
My father performed a small ceremony, not a legal wedding since slaves were not allowed to marry, and certainly not one that white society would recognize, but he gathered the servants, read some Bible verses, and announced that Josiah would henceforth take care of me.
“Speak with my authority regarding Eleanor’s welfare,” my father told everyone present. “Treat her with the respect her position deserves.”
A room adjacent to mine was prepared for Josiah, connected by a door but separate, so as to maintain a semblance of decorum. He moved his few personal effects from the slave quarters there: a few clothes, some secretly accumulated books, the tools from the forge.
The first few weeks were awkward. Two strangers trying to navigate an impossible situation. I was used to having housekeepers. He was used to heavy labor. Now he was responsible for intimate tasks. Helping me get dressed, carrying me when the wheelchair didn’t work, attending to needs I’d never imagined discussing with a man.
But Josiah handled everything with extraordinary sensitivity. When he had to pick me up, he asked permission first. When he helped me dress, he averted his gaze whenever possible. When I needed help with personal matters, he preserved my dignity even when the situation was intrinsically indecent.
“I know it’s an uncomfortable situation,” I told him one morning. “I know you didn’t choose it.”
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“Neither do you.” He was reorganizing my bookshelf. I’d mentioned wanting it alphabetized, and he’d taken on the task. “But we’re managing.”
“Are we?”
He looked at me, his imposing figure somehow nonthreatening as he knelt beside the bookshelf. “Ellaner, I’ve been a slave all my life. I’ve worked grueling labor in heat that would kill most men. I’ve been whipped for my mistakes, sold and cast out by my family, treated like a voiced ox.” He gestured around the comfortable room. “Living here, caring for someone who treats me like a human, having access to books and conversation… This isn’t suffering.”
“But you’re still a slave.”
“Yes, but I’d rather be a slave here with you than free but lonely somewhere else.” He went back to reading his books. “Is it wrong to say that?”
“I don’t think so. I think he’s sincere.”
But here’s what I didn’t tell him. What I still couldn’t admit to myself. I was starting to feel something. Something impossible. Something dangerous.
By the end of April, we’d settled into a routine. In the morning, Josiah would help me with the preparations, then take me to breakfast. Afterwards, he’d return to the forge while I took care of the household accounts. In the afternoon, he’d return and we’d spend time together.
Sometimes I watched him work, fascinated by how he transformed iron into useful objects. Sometimes he read to me, and his reading improved significantly thanks to access to my father’s library and my private lessons. In the evenings we talked about everything: his childhood on another plantation, his mother who had been sold when he was ten, and his dreams of freedom that seemed unattainable.
And I talked about my mother, who died when I was born. About the accident that paralyzed me, about the feeling of being trapped in a body that didn’t work and in a society that didn’t want me. We were two outcasts who found comfort in each other’s company.
In May, something changed. I had watched Josiah work at the forge, heating the iron until it was red hot, then shaping it with precise strokes.
“Do you think I could try?” I asked suddenly.
He looked up in surprise. “Try what?”
“The work of forging. Hammering something.”
“Eleanor, it’s hot and it’s dangerous and—”
“—and I’ve never done anything physically demanding in my life because everyone thinks I’m too fragile, but maybe with your help I could.”
He looked at me for a long time, then nodded. “Good, now I’ll fix it safely.”
He placed my wheelchair next to the anvil, heated a small piece of iron until it was workable, placed it on the anvil, and then gave me a lighter hammer.
“Hit right there. Don’t worry about the force. Just feel the metal move.”
I struck a blow. The hammer hit the iron with a soft thud. It barely left a mark.
“Again. Put your back to it.”
I hit harder. Better hit. The iron bent slightly.
“Good. Again.”
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