The Underground Railroad

Chapter 25 Summary

This chapter is a vignette of Mabel: “The first and last things [Mabel] gave to her daughter were apologies” (297). While she was pregnant with Cora, Mabel apologized for the world that awaited her. Come another 10 years, Mabel would find herself apologizing to her daughter for “making her a stray” (297). But Cora did not hear either of these apologies.

During Mabel’s flight, Moses’ face flashed before her eyes. She remembered the man as a sickly baby that no one expected to survive. But his mother, Kate, ministered to him using “witch-woman cures […] poultices, and root potions” (297). She sang lullabies and other songs to him every night, and he lived longer than most of the boys who were also born that year. Everyone credited Kate for saving him from “the early winnowing that is every plantation slave’s first trial” (297).

Mabel remembered that Kate was sold once one of her arms became paralyzed. Moses then bore his first whipping for stealing a potato. When he was whipped the second time for idleness, Connelly commanded that his wounds be washed with hot pepper. But Moses did not grow mean until Connelly shaped him into a boss, “the master’s eyes and ears over his own kind.