The Price of a Child.

Reviewed by

Jan Furman University of Michigan-Flint

When Virginia Pryor, a slave and mother of three, finds herself waiting out the afternoon in a Philadelphia hotel before taking a ferry with her master to New York, she realizes that the opportunity for escape has arrived; before the afternoon ends, she will make a break for freedom. Traveling with the vigilant Jackson Pryor and two of her children, she knows that trying to get away is dangerous and that the high price of freedom is the child left behind in Virginia whom she would most likely never see again. Alternately agitated and resolute, Virginia gets word of her situation to a black man working in the hotel. News quickly spreads to the abolitionist network in Philadelphia, and Virginia and her children are rescued on board a crowded ferry just before it leaves Philadelphia for New York. In freedom, Virginia Pryor changes her name to Mercer Gray and for nearly a year, the time span of the novel, lives with a sprawling black family, working to repay their kindness.

In this alluring story of bondage, escape, and freedom, Lorene Cary embraces the commonplace tropes and themes of the slave narrative: a deviously jealous slave mistress whose idea it is to keep one child in the South to insure Virginia's obedience, a lascivious slave master who is father of two of Virginia's children, bloody whippings that leave scars as permanent reminders of slavery's brutality, and a fervent determination of the enslaved to be free at any cost. As familiar as these characters and plots may be, in The Price of a Child they are not hackneyed. Having used the narrative genre to give basic shape to her work, Cary confidently writes beyond stereotype; she is never bound by static conventions. Her characters are seductive and interesting, and her plot is suspenseful, never predictable.

In 52-year-old Jackson Pryor, for example, Cary probes the perversely Byzantine thinking of a slave holder and self-described Southern gentleman. Incredibly, Pryor sees himself as an honorable man who has been wronged by Virginia's escape. He had chosen to give her his attentions, and she repays him with betrayal. In Pryor's mind, Virginia's desire for freedom is misguided and unnecessary; he is not cruel or depraved, after all. He is merely acting within an unprotested tradition that is sanctioned by his wife, family, and neighbors: using a slave woman to "take his comfort." So practiced is the tradition that, in the most casual way, Pryor can fully reconcile his exploitation of Virginia with his role as devoted husband; one does not negate the other. In this convenient way of ordering the world, he is simultaneously father and owner of Virginia's children. Any macho pride he may feel as the father of sons is tempered by their status as his slaves. As such, they will carry his name only as chattel, and never as legitimate heirs. It is this uneasy assemblage of slave holder authority, male prerogative, and vulnerability that make Pryor an object of both contempt and pity. And although Pryor's character takes up only a few pages of text, the Southern arrogance he represents subtly influences much of the plot by placing Virginia's sober insight into stark relief. In opposition to Pryor's delusional sentiments is Virginia's perception of his criminality. He is guilty, not merely of enslaving her, but of the insolent assumption that favors and civility could sanitize enslavement. Always, there is Virginia's smoldering but veiled contempt of Pryor's vanity and false pride. In the end, his will is no match for her audacity.

Thirty-year-old Virginia Pryor is the fictional counterpart of the real Jane Johnson. Cary writes that she is "especially grateful" to a particular research librarian in Philadelphia for leading her to Johnson's story in William Still's The Underground Railroad (1872). Still, an antislavery activist with the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee, compiled an ambitious collection of escape narratives in which he was directly or indirectly involved. Of Jane Johnson's life he records two events: her bold rescue from the ferry and a subsequent trial of five black men (including Still) accused of kidnaping Johnson and assaulting her master. At the trial, Johnson - wearing a veil and secreted from her, by then, former master and the U.S. Marshall in his service - stands in the courtroom when her name is called, walks proudly forward, and tells her experience to stunned observers. She and her two sons, ages 7 and 11, had been bought two years earlier by Colonel John H. Wheeler of North Carolina, the United States Minister to Nicaragua, as a servant to his wife. A third son had been bought by someone else and taken to Richmond. For a long time, she explained, she had been desperate for freedom and would rather have died than go back with Wheeler.

These excerpted moments and partial portraits from Still's collection are the skeleton on which Cary has constructed whole people caught up in an urgent drama. In every way that matters, Cary has chosen to maintain the historical accuracy of Johnson's experience as if to carry on Still's work of "show[ing] what efforts were made and what success was gained for freedom." Indeed, one of the most gripping episodes in the novel is Cary's imaginative rendering of the trial. Taking a lesson from contemporary courtroom drama, Cary begins the scene with Mercer, a surprise witness, entering the courtroom flanked by five women, four of whom are Quakers who have pledged to support and protect her. The scene builds as two witnesses testify for the defense and then climaxes as Mercer, triumphant and proud, takes the stand and looks directly at Pryor, just long enough to say in her mind, "You don't have me." Cary's portrayal of Pryor's barely contained anger and humiliation at that moment is masterful.

Since the slave's history did not end with escape, neither does Cary's novel. As a free woman with a new name, Mercer remains in Philadelphia with a family of black entrepreneurs. Manny Quick, a hard-driving, tough-talking big boss, presides over a number of small but profitable enterprises run by his wife Della, son Tyree, and an extended family of siblings. Generous and big-hearted, the Quicks take Mercer and her children into their raucous lives without hesitation. During the day Mercer helps Della with the cooking for their catering business, or does work in sister Bea's boarding house, where Mercer also sleeps. At night she studies the lessons given by daughter Harriet, who teaches school. The Quicks' interests range from the political to the apolitical, from the efficacy of back to Africa movements to the virtue of economic success. Cary, who grew up in the Philadelphia area and who still lives there, no doubt knows the city's black history and uses that knowledge to great effect in the novel. With the largest black community in the country during the 1850s, a thriving class of merchants and professionals, "Handsome Negroes. Well-spoken Negroes. Negroes carrying kid gloves at the train station, speaking better English than white folks [in Virginia]," Philadelphia was a whir of black industry and activism. Mercer comes of political age in this place "where black people go about their own business." She attends antislavery meetings, reads black autobiographies of the day, and finds her own voice in public protest against the degradation of slavery.

The Price of a Child is much more than a tutorial in black history, however. The Quicks spread their lives across the pages amid the rich milieu of Philadelphia society: Their feuds, jealousies, forbidden loves, betrayals, and dark secrets threaten the family's survival. Their intrigues and unfolding mysteries are what really drive the novel. For a while Mercer is caught up in these family matters. She falls in love with the sincere and passionate Tyree, but loving a married man (even if his marriage is failing) brings only brief happiness and much regret. Finally, Mercer leaves Tyree and Philadelphia and heads for Canada to continue the work of recreating herself as an independent woman.

Cary is a wise storyteller (The Price of a Child is her second book; Black Ice [1991] is an autobiographical chronicle of the author's life as a scholarship student at a prestigious New Hampshire boarding school). Her novel is an entertaining and serious contribution to the continuing reclamation and revisioning of America's past.