Tumult and Dr. Frances Lowe

                                                                        CHAPTER 1

In Boston Massachusetts, 1852, Dicelle Lowe, and her daughter, twelve-year-old Frances were in a bedroom hurriedly packing valuables in an old bleached flour sack.  It was late summer afternoon, and there was an ominous feeling clouding the atmosphere.  Dicelle looked out the window of her bedroom several times, watching familiar people stroll up and down the narrow street.

Young Frances seemed oblivious to what was making her mother nervous, and she talked without fear or dread.  She was full of exuberance, sensitivity, intellect and questions.  Her three thick braids bounced about as she tried to keep up with her mother’s movement around the room.

Dicelle, a slender woman, displayed much pride and moderate education.  She could easily be taken for a schoolteacher.  She appeared worried and impatient and told Frances to hurry, but the child wanted to talk.

“Hurry, Frances.  It’s getting late.”

Young Frances blocked her mother’s path, trying to get her to listen to her school assignment:  “My teacher, Miss Evans, asked the class to write a poem about something we learned in Sunday school, and this is what I wrote.  See if you think it is as good as Phyllis Wheatley.  I wrote about the fig tree in the Bible.  You know the one in Matthew 21:19.”

Young Frances had to catch up with her fast moving mother again to get her attention.  “Remember, mama, when the Lord was hungry, and He saw the beautiful fig tree, and was looking for food, but didn’t find any?  He then raised his hand, and placed a curse and that pretty tree died.  So, I call my poem the Vain Fig Tree.  Listen, mama.”

“Upon a lonely highway a fig tree proudly stood;

I am the very best thought she none other is as good.

No other has such fine attire, nor are they fully clad;

for God has chosen me; you see, And I am very glad...”

Dicelle continued with her instructions, barely listening to what her daughter was saying: “Now, you stay with Miss Toby Grant ’til I send for you.  You hear?  Obey her and be a good girl.  Ain’t no white people gonna bother you there; they’re scared of Miss Toby.  They think a Black conjure woman will turn them into a toad or frog.”

Frances took her mother’s hand in excitement, wanting her to listen: “OK, mama, but listen to the rest of my poem:”

“Then Jesus came along that way and saw how she was dressed;

through all her leaves He searched for food, His hunger to arrest.”

Dicelle packed all the important pieces into the cloth bag:  “These are bad times for Black folks.  Lord only knows what will come of your daddy’s meeting tonight.  Hurry, child.  I’m putting the money from under the mattress in here, too.  It’s one hundred dollars and all we’ve got to our name.  You take care of it, girl.