A New Beginning: My Journey with Addy

Mrs. Ford loads each of us down with a large package wrapped in brown paper before we head out. I’m surprised at how heavy a dress can be, but once I think about how long the skirts are, it makes sense. Addy tells me she likes delivering to Society Hill after school, but she often gets lonely by herself. So she’s glad for the company today.

As we walk, the neighborhood changes around us. The streets grow cleaner, lined with trees and iron lampposts topped with delicate scrollwork. Row houses rise up with tall windows and brightly painted shutters, and even the horses are cleaner. And they pull carriages instead of dusty wagons. Everyone who lives here is clearly wealthy, and I can’t stop comparing these wide, quiet streets to the plain room where Addy and Momma live above the dress shop. It seems strange that two such different worlds could sit so close together.

A pair of finely dressed women pass us on the sidewalk, and I tell Addy how fancy the neighborhood is. She looks up at one of the houses and nods slowly. She says back on the plantation, she thought this was what freedom looked like. A house with room enough for everybody, and curtains on every window. I think about my own bedroom and the closet full of clothes I never have to repeat two days running, and I feel a hot flush of embarrassment at how much I have compared with what Addy has always gone without.

Addy tells me she used to lie awake next to Esther, imagining what freedom would feel like. She says things are better now, even though her family is scattered across more than one city. At the plantation, everybody rose before sunrise and worked until dark. It was hot in the fields, and she afraid of getting punished for talking to Sam and Poppa.

I shudder at the thought. Addy just shakes her head. Freedom isn’t perfect. She and Momma still work long hours, but now Momma gets paid for it, and Addy gets to go to school every day. I think about what freedom means in my own life: walking to the ice cream shop with friends, putting off my homework, never once worrying about someone stopping me from talking to the people I love. Addy is proving my Grandpa right without even trying. Freedom takes work.

At the first house, a brass knocker shaped like a lion’s head hangs on the door. Addy raps it three times, and I ask what we’ll do if nobody answers. Addy says the maids are always home, and sure enough the door swings open a moment later. A Black woman in a dark uniform and apron studies us carefully before Addy explains, in her most grown-up voice, that we’re from Mrs. Ford’s dress shop with a delivery. The maid opens the door wider, takes the package, and tells us to wait while she disappears down the hall.

The entrance hall alone is bigger than the room Addy and her family live in above the shop. Addy tilts her head toward a doorway on the left, and I lean over her shoulder to look. Inside is the fanciest room I’ve ever seen: gold-framed mirrors on every wall, tall windows draped in curtains tied back with gold rope, and a rug patterned with curling dragons. I can just make out the edge of a red sofa with thin, curved legs before the maid returns and presses five pennies into Addy’s hand.

The maid doesn’t say a word, just opens the door and waves us back out into the cold. As soon as the door shuts behind us, Addy grins and drops the coins into a small cloth purse tucked under her shawl. She happily says she’s five cents closer to her lamp. I try to match her excitement, though I can’t help thinking about how long it will take to save three whole dollars one delivery at a time.

Dark clouds roll in and block the sun as we hurry to the next address, and the wind picks up too. A cheerful young woman answers the second door, thanks us for bringing the missus’s gown, and tells us to follow her down to the kitchen to warm up for a moment before we head back out into the cold. Addy and I trail her across a wide hall, through a door, and down a narrow staircase. I can tell by the excitement on Addy’s face that she’s never been let this far into a house like this before.

The smell of food reaches us before we’re even all the way down the stairs, and my stomach growls loudly. I usually have a snack when I get home from school, but neither Addy nor I have eaten anything since lunch. At the bottom of the stairs, the kitchen turns out to be nothing like the one above Mrs. Ford’s shop. An entire ham steams on a table, a whole silver fish lies on a cutting board, and baskets overflow with fruit, vegetables, and fresh bread. Frosted cakes sit beside trays of decorated pastries, as though this were a party rather than an ordinary supper.

Four women in caps and long aprons hurry around the room, somehow never once bumping into each other as they carry pots and bowls between a giant black stove and a deep sink with its own pump. I ask Addy if all this food is really for one family, and she just nods, too stunned to answer.

The maid who let us in reappears through another door, having grabbed something off the long table on her way past. She presses three pennies into each of our hands and hands us a bit of bread, explaining that the rolls got a little too browned to serve at dinner. The roll is warm and soft in my hands, and I take a bite without even thinking about it. It tastes perfect to me, and I tell her so around a full mouth while Addy thanks her properly. Laughing, the maid leads us out through the back door and into the alley. And even this part of Society Hill looks clean and fancy.

Addy and I linger there for a few minutes, finishing our rolls before heading home. Neither of us has ever seen a kitchen so large, and Addy admits that even the plantation kitchen, big as it was, couldn’t hold a candle to it. She used to help her Auntie Lula in a kitchen like that sometimes, sneaking bites of whatever they were cooking and talking while they worked. She says mostly, though, she stood in the corner of the dining room while Master Stevens’s family ate their supper, ready to pour water or fetch more soup the second anyone glanced her way. I ask if she really just stood there the whole time, and she nods. She admits it was hard, smelling all that food while her own stomach was empty.

As we start back toward the sidewalk, I try to press my share of the second house’s pennies into Addy’s hand. She pushes it right back, insisting I need the money as much as she and Momma. And it’s been nice having me keep her company. I tell her having company makes the work better, the same way I feel when Gran keeps me company while I’m doing the dishes at home. I ask her to let me add my share to her lamp fund instead. She hesitates only a moment before tucking the coins away with the rest. She happily says it’s been a good day—eleven cents and a warm roll.

I laugh along with her, wishing for a second that I could add Grandpa’s coin to her savings too, though I know that’s impossible. It’s the only way I have of getting home. Together we start back toward Mrs. Ford’s shop, the empty afternoon still stretching ahead of us.