A Convenient Disguise

     Although I ate voraciously, I knew that the next meal I would receive might not come quickly, so I wrapped some of the bread and meat and put it back into the burlap container. Now sated, I could rest for a while and ponder my next move. I could not stay in this part of the city. Order had been restored, it seemed, as I had seen the dead being loaded onto wagons to be taken to the mortuary, but I did not have much confidence that a ruffian or mob that came upon me would not decide to violently cast me among the dead, had they a chance to do so.

     I recalled that the servant had called me “boy.” I realized that with my trousers and cap, I would easily be mistaken for male. I thought about this for a moment, considering whether it would be more advantageous to continue the masquerade. A vague reminiscence of a stern warning from my teachers about the predations of certain kinds of men upon little girls came to me. They impressed upon us that Negro girls in particular were the ones whom the laws seemed not to protect from what they called "concubinage."

     After more reflection, I decided that I would remain in my disguise until I found safety. But safety where? The horrors I had witnessed by the Christian mobs had left in me a profound wariness of their capacity for pity upon a poor colored child. The only persons who passed by the staircase were white, and I could not assume that, unlike the servant, they would be sympathetic to my condition. I knew however, that I could not stay under the staircase much longer. I decided to wait until nightfall to go in search of a more permanent shelter.

   [TO BE CONTINUED.]