CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

THEY STAYED IN THE Medger house for the next three weeks, sleeping in the small living room, the boys on the floor and Lani and Yasmine together on a cot. They spent their waking hours helping with the garden out back, cleaning, cooking, and working as needed in the church. Yasmine was uncomfortable with taking advantage of strangers’ hospitality for so long, but she had to admit they had no other options. Their ship, the Nautilus, would not be leaving port until early January, and her contacts with the American Colonization Society assured her that she should use the time to prepare themselves for the long journey by sewing some additional clothing for the children, procuring farming tools and “practicing” with them, and stocking up on various other items they would want but that would be hard, if not impossible, to get in the colony—which was basically everything.

Mrs. Medger was kind enough to give them three extra Bibles from the church, and she helped them stock up on paper, ink, and quills. Yasmine, Mrs. Medger, the boys, and the constant stream of guests at the house canned broccoli, peppers, and cabbage from the garden, and prepared salted pork and pigs’ feet. When it came time to go, Mrs. Medger insisted that they take two crates full.

Yasmine shook her head, embarrassed by the older woman’s generosity and aware of the fact that she could never repay her. “Take it, dear,” Mrs. Medger told her firmly, as Mr. Medger and the men loaded them into the ship’s cargo hold. “You’ve earned it. And besides, I keep on hearing bits and pieces of letters some in the church get from family members who’ve made the journey. They say the first year is hard, brutal even. Planting and growing there ain’t like planting and growing here. It’ll take a minute for you and the children to get back on firm footing.” She hugged Yasmine and Lani tightly, and held her close. “Do it for the children,” she whispered in her ear then. “I know you doing it all for the children.”

Yasmine nodded, surprised that saying good-bye to this woman who she had known for less than a month could produce such pain in her heart.

“Mama, I don’t want to go no more,” said Little George, wiping away the tears that streaked across his cheeks. “Ain’t it all right for us to stay here now? This place so much better than Master Scott’s. No need for us to get in the ship.”

Yasmine pulled him into her side, hugging him as they headed toward the walkway onto the ship. “My George, they so many wonders on the other side—wonders we can’t even imagine yet! Plus, we gonna have our own house, our own garden, and we gonna find us some new friends.”

Little George nodded reluctantly, clearly trying to get on board with his mother’s plan.

“I don’t want a new home,” Nolan said stubbornly, at her other side. “Besides, Malina says you can only ever have one home, and this is ours.”

Yasmine laughed. “You be home when you with your family,” she said firmly, the phrase her father had told her so many days of her life solid in her mouth. “And we be with one another. Always.” She stopped to kiss the top of Nolan’s head, then turned around for one last look at the bustling port of Norfolk, at the men and women selling fish at the docks, at the filthy shipyards and the equally filthy men who built the ships that sailed in and out of port each day, at the haughty whites who knew they were better than the coloreds, and the poor whites who knew they were too. She looked, finally, at the army of coloreds walking behind their masters, walking alone to complete some mundane task, at the colored children who were doomed to follow in their footsteps and whispered, “Good-bye.”