Chapter Text
February, 1776
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, British America
The stone steps which lead to the privy from out the back of their new home in Philadelphia were probably not the cleanest things to be sitting on; her clothes would need to be washed, later, and though there was no snow on the ground, the air was bitterly cold. The chill from the stones underneath her seeped through her skirts and numbed the underside of her legs-- and yet, Georgia found all of it preferable to her other options. Preferable to sitting in the house and trying to find common ground with her brothers. Preferable to lurking near the Georgian delegates when America went to visit the Continental Congress, knowing they were her people, and knowing that her people would hate her. Preferable to sitting in the shared room with her sisters, North and South Carolina either ignoring her in silence or talking about her like she wasn't there.
She was a colony, just as all the rest of her family. The people within her borders were both black and white-- couldn't they feel any of it? Charleston was the cradle from which the American South had raised and nurtured that awful, awful practice-- her sister had to know. Couldn't they feel it?
Couldn't they?
“What on Earth are you doing out here? Do you want to freeze?”
There was light spilling out from an open door, and a pair of buckled shoes, and stockings, and an exasperated huff as the state of Virginia settled down to sit next to her. Georgia glanced over, but only for a moment-- trousers, really. She didn't understand how her sister could go around acting in such a way and still find the logic to justify treating half her population as inferior.
The huff was followed by an exaggerated shudder. “Philadelphia has no right to be so hot in the summertime, and so cold in the winter.”
Georgia sighed, figuring she would need to answer at some point. She hated the cold just as much as the rest of the south, but...
“Mm, well. S'quiet out here. Don't mind the cold so much, then.”
“It smells,” Virginia persisted, “and it's much warmer inside!”
The younger girl's ire flared up before she could quash it down, and she turned fully to face her sister. “And why'd you care?”
But she wasn't expecting the long pause that followed, and she certainly wasn't expecting the defeated tone which her sister's voice took on when Virginia finally did speak-- Virginia, ever-proud and unyielding Virginia, sounding defeated?
“...Do you feel them? Of course you do-- you must, surely.”
There was no question as to who she meant.
“The slaves?” Georgia asked, and got to see her sister flinch. “Call it what it is, Elizabeth. The people that's been enslaved-- our people that's been enslaved, also by our people. I feel it, Elizabeth. I feel them, yes.”
Virginia looked pained. Her lips pressed together in a thin line; her brow furrowed slightly in thought; she looked away from Georgia, studying her hands intently.
“I think--” she started, then stopped again. “I... Carol and Caroline, they feel it. I don't like talking about it with them, but I've tried.”
Georgia continued to look at her, but Virginia refused to look back up and meet her gaze.
Were her words supposed to-- to what? What was the point? If she was trying to assuage any hurt feelings, as if only that was the problem between them here, she was still failing. What did her words mean beyond the fact that at least three of her family of fifteen knew that they were wrong in their actions and continuing to do so anyway? All that did was cause more hurt. Further the divide.
But her sister's actions here were distressingly out of the ordinary, too-- Georgia thought about the flat fields of the south and the sprawling plantations-- the crops watered with blood from the slaver's whip-- the clamor of the auction block, bodies packed in too tightly and ropes around her wrists---- oh, but Virginia hated change. Her people, much like herself, had moved from tiny colonies just barely managing to survive to the peak of American aristocracy, and anything that could remove her from the position she held was seen as a threat. Change was a threat.
Opposing slavery, removing it, would remove the linchpin of southern economy and wealth, and it would destabilize everything-- change was a threat. Georgia knew how her sisters thought.
“What I'm-- I--”
She had never even seen Virginia at such a loss for words. At least, she couldn't remember ever seeing such a thing.
And then again, this was probably one of the longest conversations they had ever had with one another.
“I can't-- excuse what my people are doing.” Virginia looked up, finally, but she still couldn't bring herself to meet Georgia's eyes. She looked out into the darkness of the night, vaguely in the direction of the privy, the light from indoors catching in the gold of her hair, her high cheekbones, narrow nose, pale skin. She sounded calmer, but she still tripped and stumbled over her words as though she was speaking a language entirely unfamiliar to her. “But I let their thoughts and actions mess with my head and skew my judgment, and-- I can't excuse that either, but-- I'm sorry, Belle. For the things I've said. And done. I'm sorry.”
Georgia said nothing. Her mind had gone about as numb as her fingers and her toes.
It wasn't that she doubted her sister's sincerity-- or that Virginia at least believed that she was being sincere. But it was all too easy for her sisters to excuse themselves for their actions, to place the blame on others. Letting the thoughts of their people bleed through into their minds, as it so often did, accepting slavery as it was even if they happened to disagree with it, that made them no different than any other white person in the south. But for Georgia-- oh, every time she felt that dull resignation of this is my place and every pro-slavery argument she found herself nodding along to and--
She was a person. She was a colony, just the same as all the rest of them. There was nothing that could make them better, nothing so different between her and them to put them above her--
“Well, one've you's come to her senses,” she sighed, looking away, and she could hear Virginia's glare in her sharp intake of breath. “No. No. Don't you start now, Elizabeth, s'been more than fifty years. Don't think I've forgotten the first things you said-- all said.”
There was another long pause, more strained than the first. Virginia's voice, when she spoke, was tight with controlled anger.
“I'm trying to apologize--”
“And I understand that!” Georgia snapped back. “But I can't-- I can't just forget. That one apology don't erase everything.”
The wind blew. A few loose strands that had slipped out of Virginia's braid over the course of the day whipped around her face. Georgia's toes curled inside of her shoes, and she pressed her elbows into her sides, repressing a shiver. It was cold outside, yes, but that didn't mean she was going to go back in.
She heard the scrape of buckled shoes on stone, heard the fading footsteps, heard the back door to the house shut. The light dimmed and faded out; it was quiet outside.
Georgia tilted her head back towards the sky above and sighed again.
Their whole family had gathered in Philadelphia, all of the colonies and their father-- sans Rhode Island, and Vermont, and Maine. The latter two were their own, odd little subsets of other colonies, and preferred to keep to themselves in the same way that places like Plymouth and the Massachusetts Bay did. As for Rhode Island, he had been the only one of them to actually respond to his brother's call to arms, joining up with the militia around Boston, ready to fight for the freedom of their country against the British. Massachusetts himself had been unable to, with his capital under siege for so long, and he was still recovering.
Her hands clenched into fists; the fabric of her skirts bunched and wrinkled underneath her fingers.
Freedom.
British, or-- or-- American? Was that what they would all become? But in some respects, in the ones that meant the most to her, it didn't particularly matter-- too many of both thought the same way. These colonies would never be truly free until all who lived within their borders were also free, and there were few in power on the American side of things who would back that cause. Under British rule, the change might come faster-- and yet she could no more support the British killing her brothers' people and holding their cities under siege than she could rightfully support the men who held millions in bondage.
No, one way or another, this country was going to be built on hypocrisy, and she dreaded to see the outcome of it.