WE LAUGHING SO hard we slobber and spit on ourselves. We all in our underwear sitting in the family room, like usual. Rosalie just told us about the time her father came to school and whipped her for cheating on a test. He work at a pickle factory. Came in smelling like pickle juice when she was in third grade. For the rest of the year, kids called her peewee pickle head.

Kianna goes next, telling us ’bout the time she spent the night at a white friend’s house and got her hair washed. Kianna liked how straight that girl’s hair got when it was wet. So, she asked her friend’s mom to wash her hair next. A hour later, that girl’s momma was calling Kianna’s mom telling her to come over quick. Kianna say she cried two whole hours while her mother detangled her hair and brought back her curls. “So, Earle, now you know why I don’t just let anybody do my hair.”

We check on Earle to see if she smiling yet. She is a little. We joking around mostly to cheer her up, especially after what Carolina done to her. The makeup hide the bruises, but she still hurting.

“You cool over there, Earle?” I ask.

She in the rocking chair, not moving. I’m ’cross the room at the card table with Roxanne. She doing my nails. I’ll do hers next. Earle start talking ’bout that night like we wasn’t there. Everything went wrong it seem. She was tired. We always tired. And she ain’t wanna leave the house. Carolina dragged her down the steps by one leg. Daddy was at the bottom of the steps finishing his corned beef sandwich. Burping, he asked Carolina why she couldn’t control us.

Sometime Earle just be asking for it. At the motel, she argued with Carolina in front of customers. Later on, them two brung that mess back home. That’s how I found out Anthony and Carolina is related, sister and brother. I shoulda known by the things Carolina say sometime. Plus, they do got the same nose and skin color—ears with tips that curl under. We was all piled in one room lying across the floor like sardines in a can, when Earle spilled the tea.

“They grew up in a house like this,” she said. “Had a younger sister with leukemia and everything.”

My head almost explode when she say that.

“Anthony was in college, till his mother got sick. He left school to run the business ’cause she made him. Then she died, and he sold the house. Carolina’s been mad ever since, because their mother promised the house and the business to her.”

“How you know all this?” I asked.

“We from the same hood.” So, it was easy for Anthony to get her to come work for him, Earle say. “Kids ’round my way know about his big cars, expensive clothes, and trips.”

I asked if they knew about us. “They knew about his momma, and they know about him. Now they know about me too.” Anthony made sure they did, after Earle ran off the last time. He posted pictures everywhere. “That why they wanna know,” she said, “where you be at online. My grandmother seen them pictures. I can’t go home no more.”

Daddy would never do that to me.

We tell Earle more stories, make some jokes. Kianna and Gem fall asleep on the floor. After a while, me and Roxanne follow Earle upstairs ’cause she asks. We in front of Carolina’s room when Earle stops. Normally, Carolina padlocks her door whenever she not there. A hour ago she flew out the house, cussing all the way to her car. She still out there arguing with her husband, Earle says. She walk into Carolina’s room. Not us, we too scared. She opening and closing drawers. “There’s gotta be a cell phone here.”

I walk in after I hear that. Roxanne does what I do. Quiet, we hold our breath. Moving fast. We find stuff we don’t care about—cards and notes from her kids, pictures, good underwear, not the cheap kind they buy us. “Hey. Look.”

We run over to Roxanne. She found it under a box in the closet. It’s different from the one we see her writing in all the time. Earle swears she’s seen it before. We’re all here, even some girls that been gone for years. “Carolina told him,” Earle said, “that this should only be on his laptop or phone. But he old-school.” She turns some pages. “I’ma pay him back one day for what he done to me.”

We find our names.

“What’s that mean?” she say. “Sale?” She look at me. “Am I leaving the house?” She looks at the door. “Carolina!”

I cover her mouth with my hand. “Shut up, stupid. We for sale every day—twelve, fifteen hours a day every day of the month. So, what’s it matter what she wrote there?”

My fingers slide over my name. I read everything twice.

I’m older, Earle told me. Anthony probably don’t see me around long as he does Roxanne. Guess I don’t get sold. Maybe I get put on the street, thrown in the river.

“You’re a diamond, Charlie. It’s hard to break you. JuJu did a good job raising you. It’s up to me to undo some of what she’s done.”

Every time he say my sister’s name, I wanna throw up. ’Cause if I go home, he’s coming for her and me, he told me. “And that baby too. What’s her name? Cricket.” He stomps the ground whenever he say that, like she a bug under his feet.

Kate yells upstairs, “She’s on her way.”

We run to our room. Lying across the bed, I tell ’em about the time Miss Saunders brung something to school I don’t never wanna forgot. “She’s not like regular people,” I tell ’em. “She go to museums, buys old postcards people already wrote on, newspapers, and other stuff most people don’t want.”

Earle lay on the floor with her feet on the bed. “Miss Saunders brought in a ledger one day.”

“A what?” Roxanne asks.

“A book where a farmer wrote down stuff like how many pigs and cows, chickens and mules they had. I can’t remember everything. But I remember he had people on that list too. Slaves.”

I remember some of the names. Maleeka ain’t the only one with a good memory.

“James Beard, Negro, thirty-seven years old, married, two hundred dollars,” I say. “Nellie Beard, Negro, twenty-six years old, wife of James, five hundred dollars.”

Roxanne picking at the edges of her hair. “They the same as us—”

“Property,” she and me both say.