The Book of Negroes

  I ran to Appleby, beating my hands on his chest. I slapped and hit until he threw me down.

  "Bring back my baby!" I shouted.

  He laughed in my face.

  "Bring him back!"

  "Too late. He's sold. Only got me five pounds, but he's a buck, and he'll grow and make his new master a fine profit one day."

  Dirt dug into my knees, and milk was streaming from my breasts. I had never before wanted to kill a man. But I would have killed Robinson Appleby then. My heart and my body were screaming for Mamadu. But my baby was gone. Sold, sold, sold. Appleby would not say where.

  We dipped the fishnet deep, but no one knew a thing about a baby boy arriving in their midst without his mother. Not on St. Helena or any of the neighbouring islands. He wasn't on Lady's, Coosaw, Edisto or Hunting islands.

  "He ain't in the fishnet," Georgia said. "He's long gone. Master Apbee done sold him good."

  All the fire and the fight drained out of me. I felt worse than I had felt since arriving in Carolina. Chekura did not come once to see me. I was convinced it was my fault. My husband had turned away because I had lost the son that we had made together. I felt sickness and despair and had no desire to lift a hand. I caught the fever that killed so very many Negroes and even more buckras, but Georgia nursed me back to health. I would have welcomed death, but it merely whistled at my door and blew away.

  "If your man ain't coming," Georgia said, "he been done sold or hired out and he just can't come."

  But I did not believe her. I refused to work. I would catch no more babies and wash no more indigo vats. Appleby threatened to shave my head again, but I didn't flinch. My son was gone, my husband wasn't coming to see me any more, and all of my efforts to learn the ways of the buckra had ended in disaster. Georgia grew furious at me for refusing to work, and Mamed said he could only protect me for so long. Appleby beat me, but still I would not work for him. At the onset of the indigo season, I would not plant a seed. I stopped eating. I would not leave my bed.

  One morning Appleby barged into the room and dragged me into the yard. I readied myself for a whipping, but he simply uttered an oath—you stupid no-good Guinea wench—and sold me to Solomon Lindo.

  The shape of Africa

  {Charles Town, 1762}

  I MISSED CHEKURA DESPERATELY. My young body was perfect back then, smooth and strong and curved and full. My skin was screaming out to be kissed and caressed. My hands and body were ready to stroke and hold and straddle a man. I woke up at night wet between the legs, aching for Chekura's touch. But I never saw or heard from him, even though I had left word for him with Georgia that I had gone to stay with Solomon Lindo in Charles Town. He could have found me if he wanted me. It caused me no end of anguish to think that if I somehow made it back to Bayo, there would be no baby in my arms and no husband beside me. No child to show from my loins, and no man to stand proudly by me while I told my people about the strange ways of the buckra.

  CHARLES TOWN WAS BURSTING WITH ACTIVITY. The moment I arrived in the harbour with Solomon Lindo, I knew from the smell of the rotten foods and human waste that it was the place I had come to five years earlier. I tried to shake the thought from my mind. I glanced at the tall man who was my new owner. I noticed that he was calmly looking at the stalls of food as we entered a market, and that he was humming.

  "Do you have other slaves?" I asked.

  He flinched. "One other. But my wife and I prefer the term servant. And we don't treat our servants rudely. In our home, you will find none of the barbarism of St. Helena Island."

  Shrimp gleamed on tables in the sun, crabs were piled high and fish were stacked for sale, but what astonished me most was to see Negro women walking freely with platters on heads and baskets in hands. The women wore head scarves, bright shifts and blazing petticoats. Some had hats with fur around them, others wore bright shoes. They laughed, gestured and bargained. They carried on in rapid-fire language, seemed entirely at home and acted like there wasn't a soul in the world who could do them harm.

  "Mister, give me a shilling for oranges." A Negro woman with a baby in her belly and oranges piled in a sack by her feet grabbed at Lindo's trousers, clutching for change in his pockets.

  Lindo stepped back but showed no sign of shock. "Give me ten of them," he said.

  She waved her finger in his face. "Five for one shilling," she said.

  "You gave me ten for that price last week."

  "Price done change," she said.

  He put a coin in her hand.

  She flashed him a smile. "Good oranges, Mister. Always buy from me. Oranges for you and your little woman."

  His little woman? He said nothing in response. She put the oranges in his sack and sauntered off. I watched as she made her way back into the crowd. A white man in shabby clothes approached her, offering something for her fruit. She spat on the ground and turned away—the shabby man was of no more interest to her than a river rat. Lindo, in his wig and fine clothes, was the only sort of man she wanted.

  Lindo looked at me and smiled. "You'll find fruiterers and hucksters all about this town," he said. "They keep some of their earnings, but are still owned by masters."

  We headed back into the streets. Jumping to the side to avoid a horse and cart, I stepped in a pile of horse manure. In disgust, I wiped my foot on a cleaner part of the street, which was topped with sand and crushed oyster shells.

  "You can wash when we get home," Lindo said. "Just keep one eye on the ground in Charles Town. Always."

  When I saw that the next patch of ground was safe for walking, I looked back up. Huge turkey vultures wheeled in the sky, slow-moving and patient.

  "It's against the law to kill those birds," Lindo said. "People here value them, because they make off with foul carrion. They clean our streets for free."

  "Georgia would boil a big bird like that in soup with onion and yams."

  "Georgia?"

  "The woman done take care of me on Master Appleby's land."

  "Took care of you, did she?"

  "Yes, Master. She took care of me."

  "You don't have to be afraid to speak properly, Meena," he said. "I already know that you can read and speak well."

  "You want me to talk like you? Talk like white folks?"

  "English," he said. He paused for a moment while we walked. "I am not a white man. I am a Jew, and that is very different. You and I are both outsiders."

  I hoped that he could not see disbelief in my eyes. I didn't want to have any trouble with this man. We walked by a tavern. Loud men spilled out of it, some of them clutching drinks. One of them turned to the side of the building and urinated in plain sight of passersby. Through the door, I could see two Negroes drinking with the white men. It seemed incomprehensible. Women selling in the market, Negroes drinking with white men, and yet here I was—a slave.

  "Do I hear two pounds?" a voice called out.

  In front of a big building, I saw a white man standing on a platform with an African woman. She was covered with ripped cloth. Her eyes darted left and right, and white foam seeped from her mouth. She waved a hand at something in front of her face, but nothing was there. Men called out more numbers.

  "Two," someone shouted

  "Do I hear five pounds?" the man on the platform shouted. No one answered. There were guffaws in the group. "Gentlemen, please. I ask only five pounds. Tender care will restore this wench."

  Near the platform stood a group of Africans, some barely able to stand and others with pus dripping from sores on their legs. Five of them looked like they would not regret the closing fist of death. I felt my stomach churning, my throat tightening. I looked down to avoid meeting their eyes. I was fed, and they were not. I had clothes, and they had none. I could do nothing to change their prospects or even my own. That, I decided, was what it meant to be a slave: your past didn't matter; in the present you were invisible and you had no claim on the future. My situation was no better now than it had been before. I didn't know where my o
wn child was. I wouldn't even know if his name had been changed. I had lost any hope of finding him. In the five years since coming to Carolina, I had lost much more than I had gained.

  Suddenly I missed St. Helena terribly. I missed the touch of Chekura's hand, the evening readings of the Bible with Mamed, and sitting around the soup pot on Sunday afternoons, smelling the fish and the vegetables while Georgia did up my hair. I missed the nonstop crying of the cicadas, which I imagined to be the voices of my ancestors, saying, We will cry out like this always always always just so you don't forget us.

  I looked up from the street and again at the wretched captives. I vowed not to let the noises of the city drown out their voices or rob me of my past. It was less painful to forget, but I would look and I would remember.

  Solomon Lindo kept a large, two-storey wooden home on King Street. On the main floor of the home, he had his office as the official inspector of indigo for the Province of South Carolina. He and his wife lived above and behind the shop.

  When we arrived, I wasn't stripped or inspected but was brought inside the big house. Lindo left me standing quite alone. I noticed large windows, paintings of Lindo and a woman, and chairs with sculpted feet. As I was looking at a wooden table with silver vases, a woman entered the room. She was tall, slender, very white and not ten years older than me. She had a cap on her hair, and a yellow gown with a plain petticoat. Her lips and nose were thin, and her eyes blueish with the tiniest hint of orange stars circling her pupils. White people had odd eyes. They had the strangest flashes of colour, and no two pairs seemed the same. The wife of Solomon Lindo had friendly eyes. She did not seem like a person who would use a whip.

  "Meena," she said. "Am I saying it right?" She had a high voice, like that of an excited child.

  I swallowed. She was the first white person to know my name before we met.

  "I am Mrs. Lindo. I am so pleased to finally meet you. Mr. Lindo told me all about you, so young and bright."

  I wasn't sure if it was wise to catch her eyes again, so I bowed my head.

  "Do sit, please," Mrs. Lindo said. I sat on a pink chair with thick cushions and a rigid back. "It is wickedly hot," she continued. "Something to drink?"

  I did not know how to reply, but she spoke as if I were her guest. Back home, to refuse food or drink was an insult of the highest order. I accepted her offer. When I brought the thin glass to my lips, the sweetness grabbed the back of my mouth, as if to say, we're not going to let you forget this.

  "I hope you like lemon cordial," Mrs. Lindo said. She talked about the house, her life, how busy Charles Town was and how much they had been looking forward to my joining them. I understood her words, but did not absorb them. While she went on about a hundred things, I wondered where the Negroes were and when I would be shown my sleeping quarters.

  I felt a wave of relief when a Negro woman with a swollen belly appeared in the doorway. I guessed she had about five months to go.

  "So," the Negro woman said, "she done take my place?"

  "Don't say that, Dolly," Mrs. Lindo said. "Mr. Lindo and I have already told you that nobody is taking your place."

  "Now that I got a baby in my belly, this pretty new girl come and take my place."

  "Meena is going to help you with that baby," Mrs. Lindo said. "Mr. Lindo says that Meena has caught many babies."

  Dolly's lip curled in disbelief. "This little lamb? Catch my baby?"

  I expected that Dolly would be threatened with a beating, but Mrs. Lindo just sighed.

  "That's quite enough. Please take Meena to the quarters. And be nice. If not, you will lose your privileges. No going to market, no extra clothes, no taking Saturday off. Is that clear?"

  "Yes'm," Dolly said, and I followed her out the door.

  BEHIND THE HOUSE, I passed a garden, a magnolia tree, some fruit trees and a live oak. Further back stood a two-storey wooden building. It looked big enough for twenty people. When we entered I noticed that the floors were planked. No mud, no earth, no water between my toes. I saw candles and a bed with straw on the lower level.

  "Who stays there?"

  "Self-hire men, when the Lindos need them," she said.

  "Self-hire?"

  "The Lindos pay them to do work, sometimes. Slaves of other folks, on hire to the Lindos."

  I nodded. I thought I understood.

  Dolly led me up a flight of wooden steps. There, I discovered an apartment more spacious than anything I had ever slept in before.

  "This is my room, but now you gonna sleep here too," Dolly said.

  Two beds were built up on wooden planks about a foot off the floor. There was straw bedding on the planks, with blankets thrown overtop. We had so much space that it seemed lonely to have only two people in it. A space like that would be happier with Georgia and two or three other women who could laugh and comb one another's hair.

  "I do the cooking," Dolly said, "and I go to market. If you take those jobs from me, they'll throw me out."

  "Throw you out? Aren't you their slave?"

  "They'll sell me down in Georgia," she said.

  "Don't worry. I don't cook."

  "Don't cook?" she said. "What kind of woman you is?" She studied me carefully and finally said, "You African?"

  "Yes."

  "Pure African? From Africa, straight off the ship?"

  "I am from Africa," I said.

  "Mrs. Lindo done say 'pure African,'" she said. I nodded. "I never done meet an African who don't cook and who talks so natural."

  I smiled at her. "I like to eat," I said, "but I hate to cook."

  "If I hated to cook," Dolly said, "Master Lindo throw me out. You must be good at something else."

  MY FIRST WEEKS IN CHARLES TOWN were given over to following Dolly around on her errands. Each morning, she set out to buy fruit, vegetables and bread. Dolly liked to get the errands done before the thunderstorms rolled in.

  Walking with Dolly in the dusty tracks in town, I often had to jump to avoid being run over by teams of horses. Charles Town stank of horse shit and human shit, of animals rooting through the streets, of people who never bathed and of rotting food strewn in the streets or tossed into the Ashley River. Without even looking at the harbour or casting a glance in the direction of Sullivan's Island, anyone could detect the presence of a slave ship. The odour of the dead and dying lifted into the air, growing so thick that it made you choke.

  Walking about the town on business for the Lindos, I would distract myself from the smells by looking at women's clothing. Dolly wore none of the rough cloth that had scratched my skin in St. Helena. She had a finer grade of cotton, frequently dyed in blue or red, and the Lindos gave me some too. Dolly liked to wear a petticoat around her waist, but I preferred to take a yard of cloth that Lindo had given me and to wrap it around me in the African way, knotting it at the hip. Dolly didn't usually bother with a head scarf or footwear while working in "Lindotown," as she called the house, but she wouldn't be caught dead out in the streets without a red scarf around her hair, an orange scarf over her shoulders and a pair of red shoes with big brass buckles. Dolly and I pointed out to each other shoes of all colours, petticoats, silk scarves and white gloves. Dolly so loved buckled shoes that she kept a little collection of the worn-out footwear hidden under a loose floorboard in our back house. From time to time, she took them out to dust them and to try them on.

  One day, Dolly gestured at a woman in a silk petticoat and said, "Would you look at that? She is one fine-looking woman, dressed just like the Queen."

  "What is the Queen?" I asked.

  "Doan you even know 'bout the King and Queen?"

  I didn't.

  "King George and Queen Charlotte," Dolly said. Chawlut, was how Dolly said it.

  "What does the King do?" I asked.

  "Boss man of the whole land."

  "What land?" I asked.

  "Any land the buckra got. And she the boss woman." We walked for a minute while I thought about that. Then Dolly leaned toward m
e and said, "They call her the Black Queen."

  "How is that?"

  Dolly whispered, "Got some African in her."

  I didn't believe her. Nobody would let an African become boss woman of the whole land.

  All the market vendors knew that Dolly worked for Lindo. She usually got her vegetables and spices from a Negro who sat alone on a stump that he hauled to market every day on his cart. He went by the name of Jimbo, and he had hair all over his face. A big, thick matting of hair. "He look bad," Dolly said, "but he treat you right."

  "Hairy dog," I whispered back to her.

  "What Mr. Lindo want today?" Jimbo called out to Dolly.

  "Best vegetables you got," she said.

  "Always de best for Mr. Lindo," Jimbo said. "He keep me in business. He is my kind of white man. I give you okra, snap beans, tomatoes and three chicken necks."

  "Lindo don't eat your chicken necks," Dolly said.

  "I give'em to you, so you loves me more," he said.

  "I been loved already by a runaway dog," Dolly said, laughing and patting her belly, "and I don't need no man no how. Put them necks here in this basket and I'll cook them up for me."

  "Who is your little friend?" Jimbo asked.

  "Don't ask her African name. I can't say it. We just call her Meena. Nice. Sweet. But she straight from low-country and don't know a buzzard from a bathtub."

  "Why sure I know," I said, sliding into the conversation. "Buzzard done drop his business on your head and bathtub what you done need yesterday."

  Jimbo slapped his thighs in laughter.

  "So what you do, Meena chile?" he said. "What you good at?"

  "I am helping Dolly 'cause she getting big as a house."

  "Good gal," he said. Turning to Dolly, he worked out the amount due.

  "I don't do numbers," Dolly said to me. Turning back to Jimbo she added, "Mr. Lindo be by to pay you tomorrow."

  As we left the market we saw a white man leading five young Negro boys—all about eight years old with shaved heads and light complexions— along the street. As the boys walked, they danced, sang and clapped. A sixth boy—taller, bigger, about my age—walked behind them with a sign that read: COLOURED QUINTUPLETS. FOR HIRE. HOUSE PARTIES. ENQUIRE WILLIAM KING, WATER STREET.