“What’s the matter with you?” Bertha asked when she saw Kitty wiping her tears.
“Missy slapped me,” she said, pouting. “Her doll was about to fall off the chair, and all I did was try and make it sit up again. She told me to get out.”
From the way Mammy puckered her lips and shook her head, Kitty knew she wasn’t going to get any sympathy from her. “Ain’t Missy always telling you not to touch her things?”
“But it was going to fall. I thought—”
“You ain’t supposed to be doing no thinking. Just do whatever the white folks say, and if they say never touch their things, then don’t you dare touch them. Only job you have is obeying. You hear?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Now turn off them tears and come help me fan Missy Kate so she can take a nap.” Kitty lifted the skirt of her pinafore to dry her eyes, and the cookie she’d hoarded slid out of the pocket. She wasn’t quick enough to catch it before it hit the floor, and it crumbled into pieces. Her tears started falling all over again. Bertha glared at Kitty as she dropped to her knees and scooped up the crumbs. “Are you stealing that cookie from Missy Claire?”
“No, ma’am. Cook give it to me, I swear. You can ask her yourself.” Kitty stuffed the crumbs into her mouth. They tasted gritty with dust.
“You better believe I’m asking her … and you better not be spinning no lies.”
“No, ma’am.”
The long, hot day seemed to last forever. Late in the afternoon company arrived for dinner, just like Cook had said they would. Mammy Bertha said the guests were spending the night, and everyone had to be on their very best behavior—including Kitty. The two older girls, Claire and Kate, had to get scrubbed and brushed and dressed in their finest Sunday dresses, then they sat in the parlor and visited like proper young ladies. With all the fussing and showing off, Kitty didn’t have a chance to eat anything all day except her one crumbled cookie. When the girls were finally in bed, Mammy Bertha told her she could go out to the kitchen and see if there was anything left over from dinner.
It was very late, but Kitty was surprised to see the kitchen all lit up. A big gathering of colored folks sat around the table, talking and eating roast pork and chicken and a bunch of other goodies from the white folks’ dinner. Four strangers—the house slaves who had traveled along with the white guests—sat among the usual kitchen workers. Kitty fixed herself a plate of food, then sat on a stool near the door, listening to the news and gossip that the newcomers had brought.
“Delia, here, is a storyteller,” the visiting coachman told them after a while. He gestured to a tiny gray-haired woman who was no taller than Kitty. “Delia’s knowing all the old tales about our people before we was slaves,” he said.
Everyone seemed real excited to hear Delia’s stories, and they begged and begged her to tell one. The kitchen grew so quiet that Kitty was almost afraid to breathe. She sat forward in anticipation, watching the storyteller’s every move. The little woman closed her eyes for a long moment, as if looking deep inside herself for the words.
“Back home where our people come from,” Delia began, “folks call a storyteller like me a
griot
. We’re the ones who’re remembering the old ways and the old stories and passing them on to our children and to their children, so our past don’t get lost. My mammy was a
griot,
and her mammy was one before her, so the stories I know go way, way back to a time that nobody alive can even remember no more—a time when all our people were free.” She sighed as she said the last word, and it seemed to Kitty that it fluttered from the storyteller’s mouth like a little bird and flew away.
“It’s only in the telling of our story that we’re ever gonna remember who we really are,” Delia said. “And that’s something we ought never ever to be forgetting.” She gazed all around at her listeners, and her dark eyes rested for a moment on Kitty.
“We once lived in a land called the ‘Mountain of Lions,’” Delia said, “in a tribe called the
Mende
. It’s a big, rich land where every single person has black skin. Ain’t no white-skinned people there at all, back in the beginning. And the whole land’s belonging to us—all the forests and fields and rivers and hills is ours. We can hunt game and plant our own rice and build our own houses and live any way and anywhere we want to with no one but our own leaders telling us what to do. Long before the white men came, our people are learning how to trap the water and making it go wherever we want. We’re making fields that we can flood and drain to grow our rice. Our women are weaving baskets out of sea grass for gathering up the crops and winnowing the rice. We’re a peaceful people, living in our own villages with our own families all around us.”
Kitty listened, fascinated, unable to imagine a land without white people. Delia’s voice was as soothing as a cup of warm milk, and her small, wrinkled hands gestured gracefully as she talked.
“Then one day the white men come,” she said. “They’re seeing all that we have and how hard we’re working, and they’re deciding they want us for their slaves. So they come with their guns and chains, and they’re stealing our people away, catching us in the woods and snatching us from our homes and away from our children. They’re tying our people together with their big chains and forcing us to march a long, long ways. They ain’t even caring that some folks are dying along the way of hunger or weariness or fear. No, them white men take all our captured people to a fortress on an island where we can’t escape. They’re putting us to work there, laboring to crush shells into lime. Our people are thinking life can’t get no harder than this—but it does. Turns out we’re just working to make lime while we’re waiting for the ship to come. And, oh my! One day that slave ship surely does come.
“Seems like the white men just forgetting we’re people, the way they’re packing us down into the belly of that ship. They’re making everybody lay down on hard wooden shelves, one row stacked up on top of the other, so there ain’t even room to sit up. We’re all packed in there so tight that nobody can move. The white men are filling up the whole ship with slaves that way. And it don’t matter to them if folks is sick or needing to use the privy, it just have to run down on top of everybody. My Lord! There’re folks dying of hunger and thirst and heat and grief every single day. That ship’s tossing and rolling on the waves, and you can hear the sound of them waves pounding against the planks day and night. And also the sound of tears. Seem like the ocean’s gonna overflow from all our tears.
“Takes a long, long time for that ship to sail to the white men’s country. The full moon comes around twice, maybe even three times before we’re finally landing here in the Low Country. The new land seems a lot like back home, but we ain’t free no more in this new place. Rice we’re growing ain’t feeding our own families no more. Our husbands and children are getting sold away from us and moving someplace else. We have to work like animals for the white men, digging canals and ponds and growing rice for all of them because we’re their slaves now. Our people ain’t free no more. White men got guns, so they’re capturing us and making us do all their work.”
She leaned forward, her body tense, her eyes bright with tears. “But don’t you ever forget that a long time ago, we was free. That’s the way God created us. The way we’re supposed to be—free.”
When Delia finished, nobody moved. The room had grown so quiet that Kitty could hear her heart beating in her ears. This terrible story couldn’t be true, could it? Missy Claire was old enough to read books aloud to her and Missy Kate, with stories of fairies and elves and animals that talked, but Kitty knew those stories weren’t true. Could this one be?
“That story true?” she whispered, breaking the silence.
“Yes, it’s true!” Delia said, slapping her palm on the table. “Every word I said is just as true as I’m sitting here. Black folks was born free and we was meant to live free. They stole that away from us. And now they’re trying to make us forget that we ever was free. But don’t you ever forget, honey. You remember who you are, and who your family is, and where you coming from.”
That night Kitty dreamed that white men chased her through the woods and captured her and locked her in a dark, fearsome place. When she awoke she felt as though she hadn’t slept at all. The nightmare reminded her of the old dream she used to have when she was very small, and she wondered if she had once lived in the land where there were no white men. But no, Delia had said that story happened a long, long time ago.
“You remember who you are, who your family is, and where you coming from,”
Delia had said. But Kitty didn’t know who her family was or where she’d come from. She couldn’t remember.
Kitty was still thinking about all of these things the next morning as she opened Missy’s bedroom curtains and saw the Great Oak Tree outside. She was certain that the tree was linked to her past, somehow—part of the dream she used to have when she was very small. But Kitty could no longer remember why the tree was important to her or what it meant. When she and Mammy Bertha were alone in the nursery, Kitty gathered the courage to ask about her past for the very first time.
“Mammy, did you ever know my mama and daddy?”
Bertha closed her eyes for a long moment. “Yes, child. I knowed your mama,” she said softly. Mammy was usually very talkative and full of stories when they were alone, but she suddenly seemed sorrowful and afraid to talk.
“Well, where is she, Mammy Bertha? What happened to her?”
Mammy turned away. “We can’t talk about it now,” she said. “You come see me tonight, after Missy Claire’s falling asleep.”
Kitty thought the day would never end. Claire kept her hard at work until late that night, hauling hot water for her bath and brushing her hair, then making her stay and keep her company until she fell asleep. Every time Kitty sat up on her pallet beside the bed and looked to see if Claire had fallen asleep yet, Missy would glare down at her and say, “Why do you keep staring at me like that? Go to sleep!” But a mixture of dread and anticipation kept Kitty wide awake.
At last Claire slept, and Kitty managed to tiptoe from the room and look for Mammy Bertha. They found a quiet place to sit, outside on the steps of the warming kitchen, and Mammy told Kitty the truth.
“Your mama’s named Lucindy, and she used to be one of Missus Goodman’s chambermaids right here in the Big House,” Mammy began. “She’s a pretty gal like you, always sweet and cheerful to everybody. One day she fall in love with a man named George—your daddy. He’s working as a slave for the preacher man and his wife, all the way over in town. Lucindy’s meeting him while their massas go to church every Sunday, and pretty soon the two of them’s falling in love. Everybody try and tell them it’s gonna be hard for them to be together, but they decide to jump the broom anyways. Every Saturday night when his work’s all done, your daddy George come walking all the way from town just to be with his wife. Then he’s walking all the way back home again. His massa’s a good man, though, and he’s giving George a pass so he can come and go without the paddyrollers bothering him.
“Then one day your daddy’s massa die, and in his will he’s saying that George and all his other slaves can go free. Seems like a real good thing, being free—but it ain’t. White folks hate to see Negroes going free even more than they hate us when we’re slaves. They say free Negroes get uppity, and the whites are always worrying that the freedmen gonna give slaves the notion that we should all be free. So the white men pass a bunch of laws saying that free Negroes can’t be living in town, and they can’t own no property, and they can’t be staying in any one place too long. If the freedmen break that law, the white folks throw them in jail and charge a big fine, then sell them back into slavery when they can’t pay the fine. They’re trying to drive all the free Negroes away from here—or else get them back as slaves again. Either way, they don’t want freedmen like your daddy hanging around.
“So, poor George was free now, but he’s wearing himself out trying to help your mama, especially after you was born. He gets himself a job on a steamboat in Charleston, loading wood and coal and such. He’s working hard as he can so he can earn enough money to buy Lucindy. But even when he’s saving up all his money, Massa Goodman ain’t selling her. Poor George finally decides ain’t nothing left to do but take his wife and child and run away. That’s because your daddy’s wanting your mama and you to be free, just like him.
“Everybody try and tell them they’re making a big mistake. Things gonna go real bad for them if they’s caught. ’Course they ain’t listening. Your daddy’s trusting Jesus to help him, and one night, he and Lucindy steal away. Soon as Massa Goodman find out that Lucindy’s gone, he’s calling the paddyrollers together and they’re sending the dogs out after them. Your folks never even make it out of South Carolina, poor souls, before they was caught.”
Kitty’s dream came back to her, vivid and strong. She knew, then, that it had really happened. The dogs had come tearing at mama and papa’s legs until they couldn’t run anymore. Then the white men came on horseback with guns. But what was the end of that dream? She never could remember the end. Her mouth felt so dry she could barely speak.
“What happened after they was caught, Mammy?”
“Oh, child … you don’t want to know,” she said, shaking her head. “Some stories is best left untold.”
Kitty shivered even though the night was warm. “I do want to know, Mammy Bertha. Please tell me.”
Mammy sighed. She hesitated such a long time that Kitty was afraid she would never tell. When Mammy finally spoke, her voice was very soft. “They whipped your poor daddy and hanged him for a thief, right out there on the Great Oak Tree.”
For a long moment Kitty couldn’t breathe, couldn’t swallow. That tree had always seemed like her friend, her place of refuge. Now she felt betrayed. The Great Oak Tree had helped them kill her papa. She closed her eyes at the thought of him hanging from its branches.
Bertha wiped her eyes with the corner of her apron. “Massa Goodman’s saying your daddy stole his property when he’s running off with your mama and you—which I suppose is true. They make all us slaves stand out there and watch so we’d learn what would happen to all of us if we try and run off. Whipped your mama, too, then they sell her to a slave trader. She’s begging and pleading with Massa to sell you along with her instead of leaving you here all alone. You was still just a little thing, toddling all around. But Massa Goodman ain’t listening.” Bertha slipped her arm around Kitty’s shoulder and pulled her close. “That’s how you come to be all alone in the world.”