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  “Mama!” Liza protested.

  “Are you teaching this Negra to read and write?” She turned her crimson-faced anger on her own daughter. “Answer me!”

  “I am practicing to become a teacher.” Liza stood up as tall as she could and faced her mother square on.

  With one quick swipe, Old Mistress Polly struck her own daughter in the face with the fan.

  “You do not teach Negras to read or to write! It gives them a bad attitude and makes them dangerous, Liza!” Old Mistress Polly wailed. “And it is against the law.”

  Sweat dampened her dress under her arms, and her veins pulsed against her temples. Leaning down close to Bones’s face, she delivered a good hard slap to be sure Bones was paying attention.

  “If I ever find you touching one of these letter blocks or near a book again, I’ll have you sold to another plantation, and you’ll never see your mother or granny again. You hear me, gal? We sold your father, and we’ll sell you, too. You are a slave. Do you know what that means, Bones? You are our property. We own you. You belong to us just like our cows and our chickens and our horses and our tobacco fields. And if we are not happy with those things, we get rid of them. And if we are not happy with you, we will get rid of you. Do you understand what I am saying?” Old Mistress’s face was the color of a plum, and her hands were trembling when she finished.

  Bones nodded furiously, her hands in tight fists by her sides.

  “You’re lucky I don’t have you skinned. Go back to your cabin. Now!” Old Mistress ordered. “Someone will be there shortly to give you a whippin’.”

  Bones’s feet would not move.

  “Run, you little black beast!” Old Mistress snapped. Her hand came down with a slap on the back of Bones’s head as the girl finally flew out the door and down the back steps.

  Chapter Four

  Bones went back to her cabin to wait. No one was back from the fields yet. She quickly took Lovely from around her neck. She dropped her carved peach-pit heart into the wide-mouthed bottle that she used to store it in and hid both the treasures under the sleeping pallet to protect them. She had seen Ben, the hulking black overseer, flog grown men and women, but she had never seen a child whipped. Ben lived alone in a cabin on the other side of the plantation. The Brewsters didn’t want him living near them, and it would have been too dangerous for him to live among the slaves’ quarters. The other slaves hated him. He showed no hesitation to use his whip on his own people when ordered to. It was not unusual, after a visit from Ben, for a slave to find his kettle or blanket missing. Fortunately, Master Brewster only used beatings as a last resort, so they were delivered few and far between.

  Bones heard the sound of Ben’s boots dragging in the dust. He stopped in front of her cabin, and Bones dropped to her knees, her heart pounding in her ears.

  Ben stood just outside the closed door, slowly slapping what Bones imagined was his whip against the side of his leg. She smelled cigar smoke drifting through the walls, and the smell turned her stomach. She heard him sniff and clear the phlegm from his throat. He spit into the dirt next to the cabin.

  When the door flew open, Bones saw that Ben carried a bunch of hickory sprouts tied together instead of the big leather strap he used on the grown-ups. He also held a bucket that reeked of vinegar.

  Her heart fired inside her chest, and she stared at the floor. The air was so quiet she could almost hear his gaze slowly travel around the cabin, looking for some little trinket he might want. Her eyes squeezed shut, and she listened as his feet shuffled around the room, stopping here and there. He paused in front of the fireplace, cleared the phlegm from his throat again, and spit it into the embers from the morning’s fire, where it sizzled and hissed. He circled her, whistling softly, and then stopped. His eyes slid around, finally settling on Bones trembling on the floor, and he let out a long sigh, as though he was bored by this puny little chore in front of him.

  “Pulls your shirt up, gal,” he drawled, looming above her. He smelled of sweat, tobacco, and liquor.

  “Please,” she whimpered, clasping her knees tight.

  “I said, pulls your shirt up. Gals that don’t hear so good gets it worse,” he ordered.

  She was afraid she would faint, but she slipped her shirt up to her shoulders. Her ribs protruded like a bird’s bones from her narrow back, and her skin felt clammy.

  He pulled the handmade whip back and snapped it hard against her back, and she screamed when it bit into her flesh. She hunched her shoulders, and her hands flew up and covered her ears. The hickory sprouts snapped hard across her back again. She shrieked and fell facedown on the floor.

  “Oh, pray. Oh, pray.” She groaned and tried to crawl under a chair. But Ben grabbed a fistful of her hair and dragged her back.

  “Don’t try and go nowhere, gal,” he growled.

  Pulling her knees up underneath her, she tucked her head down when the whip cracked a third time. She bit her tongue, and blood mixed with drool oozed out from the space between her front teeth.

  “Oh, please, please, no more, sir,” she wailed, words and blood both spitting out of her mouth.

  Ben picked up the bucket and snorted. “Gots a little salt and vinegar here for you.” He swung the pail back and threw it in her face. “Mistress says to never use them eyes to look at nothin’ you not supposed to again.”

  “I won’t, oh no, no, please!” she screamed, shaking her head wildly, and squeezing her burning eyes shut. “Have mercy on me.” Bones shuddered.

  “Girl,” he snickered, “don’t expect there’s no mercy for you in this world.”

  With that, he picked up his instruments of torture and calmly walked out of the cabin, Granny’s pipe tucked in his side pocket. He left his victim alone in a little wet heap on the floor. For weeks after, the smell of cigar smoke made Bones gag.

  The angry purple welts across her back and red, swollen eyes lasted for two weeks. Bones swept and washed the kitchen and porch floors and performed her duties anyway. Mama and Granny were as angry as wet bees with Old Mistress Polly, but knew to keep their fury to themselves. They applied cool homemade salves to Bones’s back and face every morning.

  Lying in her bed at night, Bones went over and over the map in her mind, being certain not to forget any details. When she found out what state her pappy had been sold to, she would know how to get there—which direction to go. In the darkness, she traced each letter of the alphabet on the inside of her arm with her finger, imagining each state and its place on the map.

  V-I-R-G-I-N-I-A.

  South of Virginia, shaped like one of the boots that Master wore when he rode his horses: L-O-U-I-S-I-A-N-A.

  South Carolina—shaped like a wedge of Queenie’s shoofly pie. They cannot beat the learnin’ out of me, Bones thought defiantly. South Carolina, Georgia, Florida . . .

  “She get hers,” Granny would fume about Old Mistress. “God seen it all and marked it down. She nothin’ but an old, rich devil.”

  At first, Bones was certain that Liza would come find her, but as the days went on, the truth in Mistress’s words settled on her. They were not friends. The Brewsters owned her. In Bones’s heart, though, she still believed there was something more than that between her and Liza.

  During those two weeks, she slept naked on her stomach until her wounds closed up. The stinging cuts were eventually replaced with three jagged scars shaped like lightning strikes that ran across her back.

  Chapter Five

  The wind seeped through the gaps in the cabin walls all through the night, reminding the women that cold weather was coming. They would patch them up with mud before the air got colder. Master would appear one day soon with shoes for all his slaves, as he did every year. They felt lucky in this way. Many plantation owners let their slaves go barefoot all year. Frostbite was common.

  The sound of the wind made it hard for Bones to sleep, and Granny’s nose made a whistling sound when she snored. The old woman and the wind took turns. The wind would rise u
p and heave through the old cabin. Just when it would stop, Granny’s nose would start up again and let go a long snorty whistle. This went on most of the night. The wind, Granny’s nose, the wind, Granny’s nose.

  “You need to forgets about that readin’, Bones. It can only be trouble for you,” Mama said as they lay in the darkness. Bones slept in the middle between her granny and her mother on sacks stuffed with straw. Lovely, wrapped in her handkerchief, slept tucked under her arm.

  “I can’t, Mama. Once you knows it, it sticks there. I can’t help it. And Miss Liza didn’t mean to get me in trouble.”

  “I know that,” Mama said. “But you old enough now to know that slaves are sold off for knowin’ how to read. Sometimes they even killed. You need to wash that learnin’ outta you brain. Please listen to me now.”

  “Mama?” She hesitated. “Why they sell my pappy?” Her mother rolled onto her back and rested her face on the edge of the rough sack, pieces of her hair escaping from the bun tied up on top of her head. She had soft, wide brown eyes, but hard work had beaten her face so she looked older than her twenty-seven years. Still, as her mother lay there with a little sliver of moonlight coming through the cabin and resting just so across her face, Bones could imagine what her long-lost pappy must have seen in her. Bones had the same soft round eyes as her mother, but Mama’s had grown squinty from working in the sun for so many years.

  “The crops was poor that year,” Mama finally said. “Didn’t need so many men. Masta up and sold him and two more men. Just took him one mornin’, and I ain’t never seen him again. Mm-hmm. He was a handsome man, he was—tall and broad shouldered.”

  “Why they call him Fortune?” Bones asked. “That’s a funny name.”

  “They called him Fortune because he was good with wood making, and they could sell the chests and bureaus he made for a lot of money,” Mama said. “Twice a year Masta Brewster took his chests down to Richmond. Anyway, he was stubborn like a mule. Didn’t want to belong to no man and kept trying to run off. They would have killed him or chopped off his hand, except then he wouldn’t have been able to make furniture for them no more. So they took an ax and chopped off his left ear instead. That stopped him runnin’,” Mama said.

  “He didn’t run again, Mama?” Bones asked.

  “No. He just do what they say and come home every night to me and you and Granny. Then one day they call him and two others up to the big house, and I never see him again. Never even let him say good-bye.”

  “Tell me again about the day I was born. When Pappy give me his heart.” Bones rubbed her little carved heart between her fingers.

  “Well,” her mama began, sounding too tired to talk. “You come right out, and your pappy say how beautiful you are. He thinks you the most beautiful baby on the whole plantation. And then he pulls a little peach pit out of his pocket that he’s carved into the shape of a heart. That man could make anything. And he’d carved tiny vines and a flower all over that heart, and he put it in your little hand.”

  “And what did I do then, Mama?” Bones asked.

  “You closed your tiny fingers around it. We couldn’t believe it! And then Fortune say, ‘Now my baby girl will always know she gots her pappy’s heart in her hand.’”

  “I just love that story, Mama.” Bones sighed. “Where do you think my pappy is? You ever hear anything—anything at all?”

  “No. But somewhere far away. Maybe Mississippi, I hear, or someplace called Alabama.” She covered her eyes with her small hands as if to wipe out his memory. “Lord, I loved that man. And they just up and sold him—sold my Fortune,” Mama said.

  “Just like he was any old thing,” Bones said softly.

  “You go to sleep now,” Mama said. “Roosters be crowin’ good mornin’ to us before you know it.”

  “I will, Mama,” she whispered, trying to remember how many s’s were in Mississippi—the state shaped like a piece of bread with a bite taken out of it.

  She pulled her little nightshirt up over her eyes, snuggled Lovely close to her heart, and thought, Snug in my little cabin, but still with my sorrows, worth no more than a cow, or a horse, or a dog.

  Chapter Six

  “Old Mistress wants all the silver polished so you can sees yourself in it,” Queenie instructed as she finished mixing up the paste. “I’m gonna be checkin’ on you ’cause she gonna be checkin’ on me!”

  Bones wrinkled her nose. “It smells funny,” she said.

  “That’s why you not gonna be polishin’ in my kitchen house,” Queenie said.

  She led Bones outside to the picnic table next to the big house. Queenie often sat there on sweltering days and chopped green beans and carrots, or diced potatoes and onions.

  Today she had spread old newspapers on top and had more than two dozen pieces of Old Mistress’s silver laid out.

  “Get to work, gal,” Queenie ordered. “And don’t miss any little corners or edges!”

  Bones sat down on the bench and began polishing a water pitcher in neat little circles with the creamy white paste. The smooth surfaces were easy. It was the decorative areas—the vines and twining roses—that took the longest. They reminded her of the little leaves and vines her pappy had carved into her peach pit. That made her smile. She dug her fingernail into the little crevices to work out the tarnish. When she finished the pitcher she held it up and looked at her reflection. Pretty cute, she thought. She stuck her tongue through the space between her two front teeth. Mama said that when Bones got older that space would close up. Mama said she had that same space when she was a child, and by the time she was grown it was gone. Bones would like it if her ears didn’t stick out from her head quite so much, but she figured she was stuck with them for good.

  She moved the water pitcher over slightly to one side, exposing the newspaper underneath. She looked around carefully before lowering her eyes to read the paper. There was an article about an upcoming Thanksgiving Ball in Richmond. Well, well, Bones thought. Another stated that Mrs. So & So had ladies over for a luncheon. Nothing all that interesting, but it still felt good to be able to read, and to know that the learning had stuck good in her head.

  Bones looked down at her hands, white now from the polishing paste, and said out loud, “Well, I declare, I think they look prettier black!”

  She was interrupted when the window above where she was working slid open, and she heard Liza say, “I need you to help me with my sewing, Jane. I can’t get the hem on my doll’s dress to hang straight.”

  Bones scanned the yard to be sure there was no one around her, and then she tiptoed over and stood under the open window. She couldn’t see the girls but she recognized the next voice as Liza’s older sister, Jane.

  “Give me your sewing basket and thread your needle. It’s just a matter of practice. I’ll show you,” Jane said. “And I understand you will have plenty of time indoors to practice. Mama says that she is horrified at the direction your character has taken, and you will be spending more time indoors practicing more ladylike pursuits.”

  “So she says.” Liza groaned.

  Bones leaned against the house where she could better hear the conversation.

  “What could you have been thinking, Liza, teachin’ that little Negra gal to read and write?” Jane said.

  “I’ve decided that I am going to be a teacher when I’m grown. I was practicing on Bones. Mama didn’t have to have her beaten,” Liza said. “It was my idea to teach her. I was watching from my bedroom window when Ben went down to Bones’s cabin, and I heard her screams all the way up here. It was so terrible!”

  “Regardless,” Jane said. “The little blackie needed to learn her place.”

  “I miss playing with her. You have the Anderson twins,” Liza sputtered. “All I have is you!”

  “Well!” Jane said, bristling. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I mean that you like to just read and sew, and I want to go out and run in the fields and play with the dogs,” Liza explained.

  �
��You’ll never catch a man if you keep carrying on that way,” Jane said. “No one will want a wife who acts like a wild little boy!”

  “I don’t want to catch a man!” Liza insisted. “I want to be a teacher.”

  “Oh, Lord, Liza Anne Brewster,” Jane said. “You go ahead and teach, then, but I’m going to be the lady of a plantation just like Stillwater someday. You’ll be some raggedy poor old teacher—probably a spinster at the rate you’re carrying on. But don’t worry, you can come visit me, and I’ll give you my hand-me-downs.”

  At least she misses me, too, Bones thought, crouched against the wall in her hiding spot.

  Chapter Seven

  Most Sundays the slaves were given the afternoon off. One Sunday in late September, Master Brewster pulled up on his black horse hauling a wooden cart. Bones sucked in her breath when she saw Miss Liza was with him, sitting high atop her own horse, her pale blonde hair tied up in pretty braids.

  Master rang a big bell that was attached to the wagon, and his voice boomed across the slave yard. “Boots or shoes for everyone!”

  Doors opened up and down the long row of cabins, and women came out with babies on their hips, even though there were no shoes for babies. Men who were fishing down at the river put down their poles and came up to stand in line. No one wanted to miss a chance for a pair of shoes.

  Bones stood mesmerized in her doorway, Lovely swinging from her neck. She looked up at Miss Liza, her legs swung primly sidesaddle. She hadn’t been allowed to play with or even talk to her since they had been caught by Old Mistress with the books. It was odd to see her here in the slave quarters, in the middle of Bones’s world.

  “Agnes May, are you coming, gal?” Master looked directly at Bones.

  She stared blankly back. She turned her head and looked behind her, but there was no one there. Who was he talking to?