Trudging past the owl house, I wanted to kick down the spindly stilt legs under the porch, to smash the wide window of Pa’s study like I had a cyclone’s breath. He’d left again and hadn’t paid the money for our ransoms. Neither Kitty nor I nor Mamaí could be freed without those manumission fees paid, forty pounds for each of us. That was fhortún, a fortune of a hundred and twenty pounds.
The past few years, I was permitted to sit in Pa’s study on Saturdays, and he’d teach me words in Irish like misneach, courage, or ragaireacht, for wanderers of the night. I liked that one. It sounded mysterious.
He taught me numbers, too, and buying and selling, the tools for the free to gain wealth. It sounded as if he wanted me to help run the plantation. How could I do this if I was enslaved?
Why wasn’t Pa’s word good? Did he not have the misneach to do it, to make us true family in the eyes of the law?
Pa read me letters from his business friends and from Nicholas. My brother usually sent a sole cut of foolscap that asked for pocket money, asked to come to Montserrat, and asked not to be left adrift.
I gloated.
Then my heart whimpered for the hope of a big brother who could teach me reading and about the world. Pa didn’t have the patience to help me see the words. The letters flipped sometimes. The other children, the white ones and some lucky Blacks, could read, but I couldn’t, not easily, no matter how hard I stared at the page.
But Nicholas would never share his book learning. Guess it didn’t matter if Pa never meant to better my lot.
Heart pumping fast, I ran through the good side of the plantation, all the huts and fruitful provision grounds. The air smelled of sweet mangoes. My ears perked at the snap of the large leathery leaves of cracker bushes, some larger than my head and shoulders combined. The leaves were harvested by women to feed pigs, to wrap mango dishes, or to provide shade for garden chores.
The good side of the plantation always eased my pulse and cooled my temper. I slowed my steps as I made it to the redbrick cistern.
My sister Kitty, bright laughing Kitty, poured water into her calabash from the pump, then poured it into the base.
She looked at peace, playing.
Something in my spirit rose. I needed to save Kitty. She wasn’t in danger of tipping over and drowning in the cistern, but I needed to be the kind of sister to cover her, to feed her, and give her more than me.
Moving close, I straightened her scarf, blue and white checks that wrapped her wonderful brown braids. Her olive face lifted and she grinned. Her heart showed in her smile.
“I’ll always protect you, Kitty. I always will.” That was my vow. I’d keep this promise in my pocket like a shiny pebble.
Three women came toward us. Two had pots on their heads to draw water. The middle woman wore a hat, a beautiful straw hat, not scarves, like me and Kitty.
The wide brim had bright orange banding. I’d only seen such on a planter’s wife, never a colored woman’s head.
I couldn’t stop staring.
Kitty’s topaz eyes widened and she pointed. “See, Dolly. Nice pots.”
Painted blue and red, the clay vessels shone with a glaze. “They’re lovely,” I said. “They’ll fetch a fair penny in town.”
The three smiled at us, even the ones who’d talked bad about Mamaí last week when I gathered water.
“Dolly, you like my hat? I’m a freewoman. I get to wear a fancy hat.”
The older woman sat, plopping down on a stone bench. “Girl, don’t brag. Your lover has done what he needed to do.”
The hat woman’s face twisted with a smirk. “Guess your Betty doesn’t know what she needs to do, Dolly. De lard gib beard a dem who na hab chi fe wear i! That is, Massa’s favorite has all the advantages but can’t make him stay.” She laughed, haughty and loud.
This hat-wearing lady knew my name. I didn’t know hers, but I recognized a mamba snake and a mean spirit. “Nothing for you to ever have worries about,” she said. “Creole lover don’t love no tar. White man, he’ll never take you this far.”
The third thin young woman giggled and repeated the awful rhyme. She was new to the plantation. Pa had bought her last month for fifty pounds. That was money he could have used to free Mamaí.
Slipping to Kitty’s side, I opened the cistern’s brass tap, splashing water onto my hand, forcing my mother’s empty smile to show.
The mean hat woman hummed again, but I’d have to forget her awful song. I couldn’t hear it, couldn’t think on it, and forced my gaze to my pretty reflection in the water puddling near my feet.
Yet the hat was something to crave—something to add to my dreams. The desire to earn forty pounds times three seeped into my empty chest.
This feeling had to fill me before gossip and doubt took root.