The Book of Negroes

  I repeated every word that came from Georgia's mouth. After one or two moons, I was accustomed to the way she spoke. As it became possible for me to follow her speech, and to talk to her, I came to see that she was teaching me two languages. It was like Maninka and Bamanankan—different languages, but related. One sounded a little like the other. There was the language that Georgia spoke when alone with the Negroes on the plantation, and she called that Gullah. And there was the way she spoke to Robinson Appleby or to other white people, and she called that English. "Bruddah tief de hog" was Gullah, and "brother done steal the hog" was the way to say it to the white man. "De hebby dry drought 'most racktify de cawn" was one way to speak, but I also had to learn to say "The long drought done spoil the corn." "De buckra gib we de gam; demse'f nyam de hin' quawtuh" was Georgia's normal way of speaking, but I also had to learn to say it another way: "The white people done give us the front quarter, they done eat the hindquarter themselves." Buckra was the Negroes' word for white people, but, Georgia warned, I was never to call a man "white."

  "You call a white man white, he beat you black and blue."

  "So what do I call him?" I asked.

  I was to call the man who owned this farm "Master Apbee," Georgia said, explaining that when he spoke to me, he would say "Master Appleby." His wife was to be called "Missus," or "De Missus."

  The lessons and instructions were never-ending. Appleby had the first name of Robinson, but I would surely be beaten for addressing a buckra by his first name. If I didn't know the last name, "Master" or "Missus" would do. I was never to look a buckra in the eye when he spoke to me, nor to act like I knew more than him. It was equally foolish to act stupid, Georgia said. The best approach was to follow the buckra's conversation like a well-trained dog. I was to do my utmost to keep away from Appleby, especially when I was alone. Finally, Georgia said, I was never to forget that the buckra did not know Gullah. They understood only their own way of speaking. I was never to teach a buckra a single word or expression that the Negroes used. And I was never to let on that I understood too much of the buckra's way of speaking.

  Georgia was clearly pleased that I had learned to speak so quickly. She started taking me to other women and men on the plantation, so she could boast about my progress.

  "She done learn so fast," she said. "Zing zing zing. Words fly out her mouth like eagles."

  I laughed. I did love to hear that woman talk. Every time she opened her mouth, she said something astounding. Something in her way of speaking made life tolerable.

  "Honey chile," she said to me one day, "why don't Fomba speak?"

  I said that he had lost his words on the big ship.

  "He done crossed the river with you?"

  "Yes."

  Georgia nodded and put her hands on my shoulders. "You done cross the river, and your head is on fire. But grown man done cross the river and shut his mouth forever." Georgia seemed to be thinking about it, making sense of it all. She crossed her arms and put her hands in her armpits. "You all done cross one nasty shut-mouth river."

  I didn't tell Georgia that Fomba had been the village woloso. I didn't want anybody to know. "He works good," I said. "Strong like an ox."

  "I know," Georgia said. "Yesterday he done lift a hog off the ground and string him up in a red oak to bleed. Work for three men, but he done string the hog up lonesome."

  I wanted Fomba to live. I worried about him being unable to speak. On this plantation, I learned that there were two classes of captives. There were "sensible Negroes," like me, who could speak the toubabu's language and understand orders. And there were the other ones. The insensible ones. The ones who couldn't speak at all to the white man, and who would never be given an easier job, or taught an interesting skill, or be given extra food or privileges.

  I thought that if it were widely understood that Fomba could lift and string and bleed a hog by himself, perhaps he would be taken care of and left in peace. I understood enough about him to see that he became distraught when people confined him. But when he was free to throw quicklime in ponds to stun the fish and scoop them out, he did well enough. In those moments, he was capable and strong. I hoped desperately that he would stay that way. Around me I wanted only the strong.

  ONE DAY WHEN THE MOSQUITOES were particularly hostile, Mamed interrupted my work at the washtubs with Georgia and told me to come with him.

  "Ain't no call for pesterin' her," Georgia said. "She busy as a bird wit' nest."

  Mamed pushed her aside and grabbed my wrist in an iron grip. It felt like the clamp of a leg iron on the slaving ship.

  Georgia dropped her arms to her sides and called out, "You'll have to mess with me if you lay a hand on that girl."

  Mamed headed behind the shacks, pulling me along. Something about his knee—the right one, on the same side that he kept his cane—didn't bend properly. But it didn't keep him from moving fast, and he certainly wasn't lacking in strength. His breeches were cut off at the knees, and the muscles in his lower legs slid and slithered like snakes. His silver hair was not curled as tightly as mine, and he had lighter skin than most people on the plantation.

  When we were out of Georgia's sight, Mamed let go of my wrist and led the way through the woods. We came to a clearing. I saw a large thatched roof suspended on long poles, without walls or floor. The roof was just for shade, and under it were rectangular vats made of cypress. There were six of them, in two rows of three, and they stank of urine. In each row three vats were placed side by side, but each elevated at a slightly different height. Pipes ran from vat to vat.

  Mamed handed me pine needles and a brush. He showed me how to climb into the vats, dip the brush in lye and water and scrub the wood. Then he watched to see if I followed his instructions. It was hard work, but I showed him that I learned fast and would do the job well. I had no wish to anger him.

  At night, I asked Georgia why I was cleaning the vats.

  "For indigo," Georgia said.

  "Indigo," I repeated.

  She said it had something to do with dye for buckra clothing. I couldn't understand what brushing an empty wooden vat had to do with clothes. She explained that while I was working with Mamed, she and the men were hauling stumps from a patch of land. "Snake-biting, bee-stinging, bug-crawling no-good dirty work," Georgia said.

  Day after day, Mamed brought me back to clean. One day I looked up from scrubbing and saw Appleby walking toward me. Mamed shouted that I had missed a dirty spot on the vat, and he whacked me with his cane. I felt Appleby's eyes resting too long on my body and I was relieved to have the osnaburg cloth, no matter how rough, wrapped around me. Appleby soon left us, and my work continued with no more lessons from Mamed's cane.

  When he was alone with me, overseeing my cleaning work, Mamed did not use the Negro language. He spoke in the buckra way. I wondered if it had something to do with the way he looked. He was much lighter than me, but darker than a buckra. I wondered about his parents, but dared not ask a word.

  Eventually, Mamed began to leave me alone to scrub off the muddy stains. "Clean to here," he would say, marking a spot on a vat. When he came back, he would check to see if I had reached the target mark. To avoid beatings with the cane, I hurried to do the work quickly and kept myself company by imagining encouraging words from my father. What a difference a father would make. A father to speak to me in my own language, to show me how to avoid being hit with a cane or having my wrists pinched in a big man's hand, to show me how to be in this new land. I ached for someone who knew everything about me and knew exactly how to guide me. Inside my own head, I tried to hear the sound of my father's low and steady voice while his fingers lit gently on my arm. This is what they want, Aminata, and this is how to survive. Chickens, for example. They don't bleed them in this country. You just lop off the head and rip out the guts. Avoid the pork, if you can, but don't worry about it too much. You are in a new land now. Do what it takes to stay alive. I am watching over you, Daughter. I use the stars for eyes, and I
see you in this new land. You crossed the big river and you must keep on living.

  Mamed came back to check a few times a day, nodding grudgingly and occasionally bringing water or food. After seven days of work, the vats were finally cleaned to Mamed's satisfaction.

  In our bed at night, Georgia told me she had heard Mamed saying that I did good work.

  "Where is he from?" I asked.

  "He is just a Negro," she said, "born here in the Carolina low-country."

  I stopped for a moment, listening to how she said the word. She made it sound like "Ky-ly-na." While I was thinking about how she had stretched out each sound in the word, almost pausing as she went, Georgia whispered another detail.

  "Mamed's mama pure African."

  "She is?" I shouted.

  "Hush up, chile."

  I grabbed her wrist and whispered, "Mamed's mama is African?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "Where is she from?"

  "Let go my hand, girl."

  I released her wrist. "But where is she from?"

  "African is African and that's all I know."

  "Is his mama alive?"

  "Dead and gone long ago."

  "Did you know Mamed's mama?"

  "Never done meet her, but that ain't all," Georgia said.

  "What ain't all?"

  "Mamed's daddy was a buckra. Had his own plantation on Coosaw Island."

  "His daddy living?"

  "Daddy just as dead as mama."

  "But how come Mamed is a slave?"

  "Overseer," Georgia said.

  "Isn't he a slave too?"

  "Uh-huh, but more uppity than you 'n' me."

  "But his daddy was a buckra?"

  "True as day," Georgia said.

  "Then why is Mamed a slave?"

  "Got a slave mama, then you is slave. Got a slave daddy, then you is slave. Any nigger in you at all, then you is slave as clear as day."

  I was going to ask how Mamed came to our plantation, but Georgia already had the answer ready.

  "When Mamed's mama done passed away, the buckra daddy done sell him to Master Apbee."

  I fell silent for a while, but could not sleep. It seemed absurd that I should be scrubbing wooden vats, washing clothes and slitting the throats of chickens for a man who didn't even live with us. How did it come to be that he owned me, and all the others? I wondered if he owned me at all times, or only when I was working for him. Did he own me when I slept? When I dreamed?

  Georgia was snoring hard, but I couldn't stop myself from tapping her arm.

  "Hunh?" she said.

  "What is a slave?"

  "Don't wake me up with foolish questions."

  "How exactly does that man own us?" I asked.

  "In every way."

  "And if we don't?"

  "Don't what?"

  "Don't work."

  "If you don't work, you die," Georgia said. "Buckra man has things to grow and houses to build, and if you don't do his work, you die."

  "Before we was done here. Before the Negroes. Before the Africans. Who did the work?"

  "I was having myself a good dream," Georgia said. "Why are you messing my head with all this talk? Who, what, where. Gal, I am smacked down tired. I got tree stump pulling all through my bones."

  I lay on my back and pressed my lips shut. Perhaps another time I could ask all these things. Now that I knew how to converse with her, my mind was spilling over with questions.

  Georgia shifted away from me in the bed, stayed that way a moment, then let out a snort and turned back to face me. She slapped my hand teasingly. "In your land, do Africans yap all the time?"

  "No more'n you," I said. "When you get going, you yap like a dog wit' tail caught fire."

  Georgia laughed and got up to relieve herself in the bucket outside the door. When she came back to bed, she said, "Your African mouth is like a galloping horse. Slow down and steer, honey chile, or you will hit a tree. Now let me sleep before I beat you black and blue." She patted my back once, but then turned and was soon snoring again.

  It took me some time to fall asleep, but I felt comforted by the sounds that she made and by the way her warmth swam across our bed.

  ONE CHANGE OF THE MOON later, Mamed led a group of Negroes— including Georgia, Fomba and me—down to some farmland. While he watched, we planted seeds. It was just like back home. I would dig with my heel, drop a seed in the hole and cover up the hole with the toes of the other foot. I could see that Mamed was impressed with my ability. The men used long hoes, though, and could move much faster.

  We sang with the people who worked near us, and Georgia often took the lead. While we dug soil, planted seeds, covered the holes and did it again, each of us working in our own row, Georgia would sing in a low, plaintive voice. I never knew where all of Georgia's songs came from. Sometimes she just sang them straight, and at other times she waited for us to respond at the end of each line. In those moments of singing together, we would slide into a rhythm of planting seeds with each response.

  On our last day of planting, while we dug the hole, Georgia sang out a line: "Had a big ole daddy but he done gone."

  And we dropped down the seed and called back, "Big ole daddy but he done gone."

  Fomba, who was working in the row to my left, dropped his seed too, even though he didn't sing. We covered up our holes, stepped forward and paused for a moment. Then, as Georgia sang again, "He pull ten stumps in da burnin' sun," we dug another hole. Down dropped our seeds, and with the others I called out, "Ten stumps in da burnin' sun."

  With the next line about to come from Georgia, I readied my foot to dig. She began to sing and I put my foot down on a snake. It slithered and hissed and coiled, tongue flickering. I screamed. Fomba flew to my side, sliced down with his hoe and severed the snake's head. Before I could say a word of thanks, he picked up the head with one hand and the quivering body with the other and tossed them away.

  "Country fool," Georgia said, giving him a shove. She ran to where Fomba had thrown the snake and retrieved the body.

  That night she skinned the snake and rubbed oil on the skin, kept oiling it for days. Eventually she dried off the oily skin and wrapped it in two rows around her Sunday washing hat—a wide-brimmed, straw-woven affair with a green and blue peacock feather jutting out at an angle.

  "Snake or master, same ole thing," Georgia said. "Wear his clothes, it bring good luck."

  It only took fifteen days for plants to start pushing up out of the sandy earth. Under Mamed's close watch, I used a bucket to water them, and they shot out of the ground. When they started showing thick leaves, Mamed assigned me to ten rows of plants each day. My task was to remove all grasshoppers. I was under the strictest orders not to damage the leaves, nor to disturb their faint layer of powder. I was merely to lift the bug off gently, squish it, drop it in a bucket and keep moving from plant to plant. Mamed watched over the leaves as if he knew them individually and couldn't bear the thought of sharing them with the insects. Ten rows a day, for days on end, I cleaned those plants as they grew higher.

  MASTER APPLEBY'S BIG HOUSE was cleaned by a Negro woman who worked with a baby slung on her back in the African way. She lived with her baby in a mud home apart from the others and she didn't speak much to anybody. Not long after I had become comfortable in speaking Gullah, I went to join the woman while she was working in her own little garden.

  "Evening, Cindy-Lou," I said.

  She grunted and kept pulling weeds.

  "Y'all hold your baby in the African way."

  She grunted again, but offered no words.

  "Fomba and I come from the same village," I said. "In Bayo, we wrap up our babies just like—"

  "I's from dis here land and jes' now I is stakin' beans, so doan be telling me nothing 'bout Africa."

  When we were in bed later that night, Georgia scolded me. "Doan be running your mouth on Africa," she said. "You walk by a nigger with shut-mouth lips, or you walk by a white man on a horse or on his a
rse, doan be carrying on about back home an' all. Ky-ly-na buckra beat the Africa clean out of you."

  The next night, while Georgia was watching me eat and declaring that I now had "meat on my bones," Appleby came into our home. He was a tall man, clean shaven, and he wore tight-fitting pants and fine leather riding boots. I knew not to trust him, but wanted—from a safe distance— to learn more about him.

  I tried to follow every word as Appleby spoke with Georgia. He said something about a woman having problems on another island.

  "Work all night, no work tomorrow," Georgia said.

  "Morning only," Appleby said.

  Georgia wouldn't budge. When he gave in, she demanded that he bring her a mortar and pestle, "babe size," from Charles Town. Appleby agreed. Georgia gathered a cloth bag holding her potions, liquids and plants and then she grabbed my hand.

  "Just you," Appleby told her.

  "She go with me."

  "Hurry, then."

  Walking as quickly as Georgia could manage, we tried to match Appleby's long strides. Georgia breathed loud, like something was stopping up her nose. We came up to a plantation Negro named Happy Jack, who was waiting with two horses and a cart. Georgia and I climbed onto the back of the cart and bumped along until we came to a pier. There, we were guided into a canoe—a hollowed-out cypress log with two others fastened beside it. Negroes from another plantation stood upright in the canoe and used poles to push Appleby, Georgia and me across the water. The whole time we were in that canoe, Georgia asked the oarsmen questions. She spoke very fast, and it was clear not only that Appleby didn't understand, but that he wasn't even listening. Where was Old Joe? Georgia asked. And Quaco? And what had happened to Sally, after they took her away from St. Helena Island? I could follow most of what the men in the canoe said to her. We arrived at another island, and were taken by horse and cart to a hut where a woman was crying out.

  Before going in, Georgia spoke to the buckra man on this new plantation. "Master, give me pipe and tobacco," she said, "and two yards of red Charles Town cloth."