The House of Eve (5)
“I better go.”
“Tonight. Ohio,” she hummed her pet name for Eleanor. “I’m going to wait for you to return, and then hound you until you put on that dress.”
“I didn’t even put in for a pass to go out this evening.”
“I’ll take care of the dorm matron,” Nadine shot back.
Eleanor nodded in exasperation, and then closed the door behind her. How could she focus on going to a party when her confidence was so injured? Eleanor couldn’t remember the last time she wanted something as much as she’d wanted to join the ABCs. She had worked extra hard on her application, spending over a week on perfecting it. Her GPA was well above the requirement, and she had volunteered several times at Harrison Elementary school for her community service. What was worse, it had been the first time she had put herself out there, after that trouble she had gotten herself into her senior year of high school. Only for it to blow up in her face. On paper she looked like the model candidate.
Not in the mirror, you aren’t.
She picked up her pace, trying to dampen the flicker of self-doubt that had started whispering to her when she arrived at the university. In her distraction, she wandered through the Founder’s Square, treading over the university’s limestone seal. It was believed that if you walked over the mark without reading it, you’d earn a semester of bad luck. Eleanor stopped. She couldn’t take any more bad luck.
* * *
The campus library was just ahead, and Eleanor walked through the doors and up the marble steps to the second floor. Her boss, Dorothy Porter, stood on the other side of the glass wall in the collection room, holding a magnifying glass to her eye. Her tight curls were pushed away from her forehead, and she wore a polka-dot dress that hit below her knees.
“Has a new flat arrived?” Eleanor asked as she dropped her bag.
The collection room was always kept cool and dry, providing a stable environment for the assemblage of rare manuscripts, pamphlets and books that Mrs. Porter curated in her role as an archivist.
“It’s a letter written from James Forten, of Philadelphia, addressed to William Lloyd Garrison, dated December 31, 1830,” she spoke in a hushed voice, as if talking at full volume would destroy the delicate paper in her hand.
Eleanor read over Mrs. Porter’s shoulder, knowing from working with her for the last year that she dare not touch the naked sheet without washing her hands.
“Forten was a wealthy Negro sailmaker. A stunning piece to add to our manuscript puzzle.” Mrs. Porter’s eyes shone. “I’ll need you to codify this.”
“Freeman. Biography. Philadelphia?” Eleanor looked at her boss expectantly.
“Yes, and then by decade and gender.”
Mrs. Porter slipped the flat paper into a clear polyester film sleeve and then passed it on to Eleanor. “We have a private viewing of biographies and portraits for a donor in Boston next month. I’d like your suggestion on which pieces we should display.”
Eleanor whipped her head toward Mrs. Porter in surprise. This was a first, and it patted a layer of salve over the sting from the sorority’s rejection letter. Mrs. Porter was very protective of “her collection” that she had spent two decades amassing, and her zeal for her work was astonishing.
Eleanor had arrived at Howard as an English major with the mind that she would become a teacher, but that had changed only a few weeks into her first semester, when she’d first met Mrs. Porter.
Eleanor had been studying in the library when a voice behind her asked, “Would you mind lending me a hand, dear?” A woman—Mrs. Porter—had stood in a plaid suit with a bulky shopping bag in each hand. Eleanor had taken the heaviest one from her and followed her up to the Moorland Room.
“Careful with that.” Mrs. Porter chastised her when Eleanor thumped the bag on the table. “You never know what treasures can be found on the floors of people’s basements.”
The contents in the bag were odorous, but that didn’t sway Mrs. Porter from gently going through all the pieces with the care of a mother hen. There were letters, a diary, photographs, dusty books, rusty trinkets and newspaper clippings. Eleanor asked Mrs. Porter what the assortment was for as she had a propensity for antiquated things.
“My goal is to build a collection that would reflect all of our history. Comprehensive Negro history.” Mrs. Porter beamed.
Her enthusiasm was contagious, and after just a few moments together, Mrs. Porter asked, “Have you read Incident in the Life of a Slave Girl?”
“By Harriet Jacobs? It’s one of my favorites.” Eleanor grinned. She had been a self-proclaimed history hound since her eighth-grade teacher introduced her to the writings of Claude McKay, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, and her husband, Paul Laurence Dunbar.
Mrs. Porter had instructed Eleanor to put on a pair of white gloves and then placed a weathered newspaper clipping in her hands. Eleanor had looked from the piece between her fingers to Mrs. Porter with her mouth agape.
Mrs. Porter confirmed. “An original advertisement for Jacobs’s capture. It ran in the American Beacon newspaper on July 4, 1835, in Norfolk, Virginia.”
Chills surfaced up Eleanor’s arms as she pored over the ad offering a $100 reward for Harriet Jacobs’s apprehension and delivery. Unexpected tears welled in Eleanor’s eyes as she recalled Jacobs hiding in an attic of her grandmother’s house for seven long years before finally escaping north to freedom. Eleanor’s gaze locked with Mrs. Porter’s as an understanding passed between them. From that moment on, Eleanor was hooked. Before her first semester was over, she changed her major to history, with the goal of becoming a library archivist, just like Mrs. Porter.