The Book of Negroes

  "Aren't you on self-hire?" she said.

  "Yes."

  "Then you can get your own meals too. I'm not wasting time or money on you, and if I have anything to say about it, my brother won't have anyone else doing it for you either."

  When I tried to enter the house to find some of the books that Mrs. Lindo had left behind, Lindo's sister refused to unlock the door. With nothing to read and no meals to eat, I wandered the streets every day, scrounging for fruit, peanuts and bits of cooked meat from women I had come to know in the markets. At night, I sometimes bought grilled fish sold behind a tavern where white men went looking for mulatto women.

  Coins were almost impossible to come by, and in the markets even small goods were exchanged by means of trade. I thought ruefully of the lessons about money that Lindo had taught me years earlier. As it turned out, I had been right. Chickens were more reliable than silver. I rarely had chickens to trade, but exchanged whatever goods I received from the Jews and the Anglicans who had me catch their babies or the babies of their slaves.

  Some of the new mothers gave me small quantities of rum, but one rich woman gave me a box filled with fifty glass bottles. At first, I felt cheated. What good was a box of empty bottles? But when I reopened the box at home, I found the glass to be of extraordinary beauty, coloured with swirling lines of blue. The tiny bottles had room for two or so ounces of liquid, but each was shaped differently, some cylindrical, others bulbous, some cube-like and still others faintly spherical. I filled each with two ounces of rum and stopped it with a cork.

  For months, I used the smooth, slender bottles with swirling blue lines to make purchases in the market. The Negro hucksters loved the rum and kept the bottles because they considered it good luck to blow into blue glass. They called me Blue Glass Gal when they saw me coming, and the bottles that I traded changed hands among other buyers and sellers.

  I slept at night in the backhouse, and felt terribly lonely without Dolly and her son. It seemed to me a violation of human nature to be made to sleep alone. Sometimes I comforted myself with thoughts of my parents in Bayo, or of Georgia warm and snoring in the bed we had shared on the Appleby plantation. When I couldn't sleep, I would stay up late into the night, re-reading books and thinking of the people—Georgia, Chekura, Mamed, Dolly, and Mrs. Lindo—who had been in my life when I had first read them.

  One night I heard footsteps downstairs. I jumped off the bed and covered myself with my cloth wrapper.

  "Who is there?" I called out.

  "Aminata?" It was a man's voice, whispering.

  I stopped. When had someone last called me by my African name?

  As Chekura reached the top step, I flew into his arms. When my hands pressed against his back and my toes rested above his, I felt my childhood in his flesh and my homeland in his voice. I clung to him for minutes, almost afraid to discover the man he had become. What if he was no longer the boy who had helped me stay alive in the long walk to the African coast, or the young man who had married me and given me a son?

  His hair had fallen out, and he kept his bald head shining. He was still a slender man, barely heavier than I, and only a few inches taller. Half of the middle finger on his left hand was missing, but he still had the same smile he had worn almost everywhere in our homeland journey. I loved the light in his eyes and the way his lips turned up into a grin when he looked at me. We fell into conversation just as if we had been together the day before.

  "How did you find me?"

  "I asked for the home of Lindo the Jew," he said.

  "How did you get to Charles Town?"

  "A man who is taking a mess of tobacco and rum into the low-country has come to the Charles Town market, and I'm here with him."

  "How long can you stay?"

  "Just tonight. But I might be able to come back once or twice in a month or so."

  "You might return once or twice," I said, letting go of his hand and sitting down on my bed.

  He sat beside me and placed his hand on mine. I pushed it away. He took it again, but I shoved it away firmly.

  "No," I said, "you can't do that. I've missed you more than you could ever know. But you can't just climb into my bed with the promise that you might return 'once or twice.'"

  "Do you have any food?"

  "I eat in town. There's no eating here. Lindo is away."

  He slid his curled fingers along my cheek. "Then you can come away with me and he won't know you're missing."

  I turned my face away from him. "You want me to run into the low-country with you? And the man who owns you?"

  "He might let me go for a day or two. I know places where we could be alone."

  "A day or two is not what I want with you," I said.

  "Sometimes a day or two is all we can get," Chekura said.

  For some time, neither of us spoke.

  "I married the man I loved," I said finally.

  "And the man who loved you married you," he said.

  "Do you still want me?" I said.

  "Always did and never stopped."

  "You didn't even come to see me after they took Mamadu."

  Chekura stretched out on the bed, pulled me down beside him and whispered in my ear. "My master on Lady's Island sent me down to Georgia for three years. I was sent away before Mamadu was even stolen."

  I pulled away to look into his eyes. He smiled at me and ran his fingers over my hair.

  "My master and yours knew each other," he said. "They sent me away so there wouldn't be trouble."

  I took his hands into mine. "All that time," I said, "I was sure that you blamed me."

  "For what?" he said.

  "For losing our child."

  Chekura put his arms around me and brought me closer to his body. "What mother is to blame for losing her child?"

  We were lying side by side and my hand was on his hip. "What did they make you do down in Georgia?" I asked.

  "Plant rice," he said. "Worse than indigo. Plenty worse, working in water all the time. If you didn't work hard enough, they whipped you. And if you did work hard enough, you died. I made it through three seasons."

  Chekura brought my face to his chest and whispered, "When they sent me back to Lady's Island, I knew you were in Charles Town. But there was no more travelling and trading allowed. They used sentries to stop Negroes from moving about at night. I got past the sentries but fell into a man-trap."

  I pulled away from his chest to look into his eyes. I took his hand and stroked it, and came across the half finger.

  "My punishment," he said.

  I kissed his nine good fingers and stayed much longer on his tenth, stroking and brushing my lips against the half that remained. I felt full of love for this man, but thought about how I would feel if he entered my body and then disappeared for another fourteen years.

  "Your eyes are as round as acorns, and the moons on your face are beautiful," he said.

  I thought of how good I had looked through my twenties, when I was fending off the drunken and obnoxious advances of Charles Town men—white and black—and suffering the stares of Solomon Lindo and the few friends he brought into the house to feast their eyes on me. Now I was thirty years old and had nothing to show for it. No son. No family. No homeland. And even my beauty would soon fade.

  "Don't be sad," Chekura said, letting his fingers run up and down my arms. "No moons as beautiful as yours have crossed the Atlantic," he said. "All these years, when I was missing you, I would wait for the thinnest sliver of the crescent moon to come out at night. On those nights, just once or twice a month if the skies were clear, I felt that you were with me."

  I burst into tears. Chekura took me in his arms and held me close, and as my sobbing ebbed to gentle weeping, I could feel his chest moving steadily in and out. I lay awake for a long time after Chekura began to snore, wondering if I would see him when the day broke. I was the first to awaken, and found him lying with his hand in mine. I pressed it to my breast. Once we had jumped the broom, once we
had made a son, and once I had hoped that we would all stay together.

  Chekura awoke and found our hands together. He turned his head my way. "A husband needs his wife," he said to me. "Would you love me now?"

  The soft morning light bathed his face, and I noticed a wrinkle or two at the corners of his eyes. This man had once walked with me for three moons, all the way to the coast of our homeland. This man had risked his life time and again to visit me at night by the indigo fields of St. Helena Island. He had lost half a finger and all of his hair, but none of his love for me. A long-buried desire clicked at the back of my throat. I felt the same warmth and wetness that I had felt during the thousands of nights that I had missed Chekura, but this time he was here with me and he was mine.

  I had no idea when I would see him again and wanted to savour every moment that we had. Licking and touching every inch of his skin, I basked in the smell and the sweat of him and felt my passion rising under his tongue and his fingers as they circled and teased and devoured me. Our lips met. I brought just the very tip of him into me and we stayed like that, kissing and licking and slowly rocking. I moaned as his lips tickled my nipples and his thumb slid against the hard, extended ridge of my womanhood. Chekura arched and slid deep inside me and we inhaled life one from the other. The sound of his breathing and gasping brought me to the peak of my own pleasure. Once, twice, three times I shook and shuddered as my husband spilled himself deep inside me and we cried out together. We held on to each other long after we were both spent, and kissed once more before we fell asleep.

  I awoke to find him tracing my cheeks with the fingers of one hand. He smiled at me faintly, and I knew that he had to leave soon.

  "Do you know what happened to Mamadu?" I asked.

  "He was sold down in Georgia," he said.

  "Who told you?"

  "Different folks. News came up from the fishnet."

  "How come you heard if I never did?"

  "I was working down in Georgia. Three long years I spent down there. I heard on the rice plantation that he had been sold off, and then later that you had been sent away. When I heard that, I thought about drowning myself."

  I stroked the back of his hand. "You never know when you might see your wife again," I said.

  "Maybe that's what stopped me," he said. Chekura sat up cross-legged on the bed. "I don't like this man Lindo. He keeps you here all alone and doesn't even leave food for you when he's gone."

  "He's better than most," I said. "Never beat me, I can say that."

  "I heard talk about Lindo in the fishnet."

  "What sort of talk?"

  "It came some time after Mamadu was sold. I knew your friends on St. Helena and the nearby islands were asking where he had gone. And in Georgia, I started asking after him everywhere I went. Every time I met a Negro who was coming or going, I sent out word in the fishnet. Somebody, somewhere, had to know about my son. A year or two later, word came back: Mamadu had been sold to a family in Georgia. In Savannah. I would have kept on asking in the fishnet. I would have found that family and killed someone. But the pox came through the town and our baby died."

  "He did?" I reached again for Chekura's hand and gripped it hard.

  "About a year after he was sold."

  "What family was this?" I asked.

  "I don't know the name—but Solomon Lindo arranged the sale," Chekura said.

  "How do you know it was him?"

  "That's how it came up the fishnet. It was a rich white family in Savannah. They had a slave wet-nurse in the house. A wet-nurse born in Africa. When our dark-skinned baby arrived with no parents in sight, the wet-nurse sent out word through the fishnet."

  "What, exactly, did she say?"

  "The man who set up the sale was 'Lindo, the indigo Jew.' That's what I heard. The wet-nurse said 'the indigo Jew' was with the family when the baby arrived. He was paid a fee, and then he left."

  I ran down the stairs and shut myself into the outhouse. I cried until I began to cough, and coughed until I vomited. Finally, emptied and numb, I returned upstairs. Chekura had not moved an inch.

  "And the baby is dead?" I said. "You are sure he is dead?"

  "Heard it three times in the fishnet. Three people brought me the news, and none of them knew the others. They knew I was the father of the baby who arrived with no parents in Savannah, and they knew the wet-nurse. She told each of them. She said pox carried off the baby in 1762."

  I sat for a long while in silence. Finally, Chekura told me he couldn't stay much longer. He had his man to meet at noon, on Broad Street.

  We walked into town together. I used a blue glass with rum to buy two pieces of cooked sea bass, two buns and two oranges from a woman in the morning market. We ate them among the crowds of people—black, mulatto, mustee and white—coming and going in the morning.

  "Do you want me to kill him?" Chekura said.

  "Are you going to kill Appleby too? And every white man who brought us here?"

  "It's just Lindo I want," he said. "Right here in town, he's one I could get. I could come at night and nobody would see me."

  "They might not see you, but I would know," I said. "Killing him won't bring back our baby. I want you to stay alive, and I want you to stay good."

  "You want me to stay good?"

  "There's been enough killing in our lives. And you're no killer anyway. You're still the runt of a lad who was too foolish to run away before they chained you up and threw you in the ship."

  "I would have run from the slavers, but I knew you were heading across the big river and I wanted to go with you."

  I gave a tiny smile. "Nice try," I said. "You were a fool but you were good. If you stay good, come back and stick around a little longer next time—you never know what might happen. I might just marry you."

  "And now you tell me," he said. He gave me a long, sweet look, holding me with his eyes just as deeply and as fiercely as any man could use his body.

  It was time for Chekura to go. At noon he had a man to meet—the same man who had given him a night off and who now had to be guided through the low-country waterways. I spread my hands and brought my fingers to Chekura's. Together, our hands resembled the skeleton of a house. I pressed a little harder against the pads of his fingertips, which were smooth and soft despite the years. When Chekura smiled, I could see deep creases at the corners of his mouth.

  "Goodbye, my dear wife," he said.

  A white man was watching us from across the street. It had to be the one who owned him.

  I couldn't bring myself to smile, and I had no more words. I pressed Chekura's fingertips one last time, and then my man was gone.

  SOLOMON LINDO RETURNED after being away for a month. I had caught two babies in his absence, but received nothing but a flask of rum, a pouch of tobacco and a yard of cloth dyed with indigo.

  Lindo sent his sister home, spent a day doing business and then called me into his office.

  "I have seen the accounts," he said. "You owe me two pounds."

  I would not look at him.

  "I expect an answer when I speak," he said.

  In a low monotone, I said: "You owe me much more than silver."

  "You're to pay me ten shillings a week, but in my absence you didn't leave a thing with my sister."

  "I have nothing to give you. And there are other things on my mind."

  Lindo snorted. "I have lost my position as the official indigo inspector— and would you like to know why?"

  I ignored his question. What did I care about his indigo problems?

  "Because," he continued, "there isn't enough being produced to merit my inspections. If I don't get the British to increase the bounty, and if we don't see the price rising on international markets, the Carolina indigo economy will collapse."

  "And what does that have to do with me?"

  He slammed his fist on the desk. "I keep you clothed and I keep you fed," he shouted. "You live better in this home than any servant in town. There will be no clothe
s, no meals, no benefits, and no support until you pay your way. Ten shillings a week, and not a penny less."

  "I can't pay you money that is not paid to me," I said.

  "Then you are not to go out, unless it is to do midwifery work or other tasks that I assign."

  "So will you now start saying 'slave,' instead of 'servant'?"

  He grabbed my wrist and pulled me to him. I could feel his breath on my forehead.

  "You will cook and you will do as I say."

  "I will not."

  I tried to yank my wrist free but he held it firmly. With his other hand, he slapped me in the face. Then he let me go.

  My cheek burned. I stared into his eyes until he turned his head.

  "Forgive me," he said quietly, looking down. "I don't know what got into me. I am not myself now that Mrs. Lindo is gone."

  "You cannot blame everything on your grief," I said. When he looked up, I spoke once more. "You sold my son."

  "I don't know what you are talking about. Robinson Appleby sold your son."

  "You helped him. And you were paid to do it. You sold my son to a family in Savannah, Georgia."

  "Who told you this?"

  "Some Hebrew you are. And you say you're not a white man."

  "Have you been going through my papers?"

  I thought that he might strike me, or rip off my clothes and force himself on me. I thought that he might shove me out the door and leave me to fend for myself on the streets of Charles Town. But Solomon Lindo did none of those things. He sat down heavily and asked me to join him. I refused, and stood with arms crossed.

  "I do not expect you to understand, but there is more to the truth than you know."

  There was nothing more for me to say, because I did not care for Solomon Lindo and his truths.

  OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS, Lindo moved at all times with reluctance and heaviness. We settled into an uneasy truce. I did not make any more payments to him, and he provided me neither food nor clothing nor whale oil nor assistance of any kind other than the right to sleep in his backhouse unmolested.

  I received no more midwifery work from the Jews of Charles Town, and the Anglican slave owners would pay in nothing but the smallest quantities of rum and tobacco. I traded them with difficulty in the town markets. I had to start drawing my last good red wrap more tightly around my waist and hips, and it too started to fray.