“I won’t,” Sarah said.
“Put that thing away.”
Sarah slid her book under the quilt on her bed.
Yet one dawn, after almost-nightly school lessons, Sarah woke to hands pulling her up. Before she was fully conscious a driver grabbed her, told her to run fast, and rushed her into a clearing that already held Tamra and Wilbert, lashed to a tree. Sarah searched for Ruth’s face, and was relieved not to see her. At least Ruth was not among those seized.
The driver ordered them to strip. Hands shaking, Sarah unbuttoned her thin cotton shirt, and once she removed it, unwrapped the scarf she’d kept around her neck while she slept. She unbuttoned her skirt and let it drop, now naked in the cool morning breeze.
The driver ordered Tamra pinned to the ground. Another man tied her, spread-eagled, to four small stakes, wrists and ankles lashed with rope. He muttered while he bound her, “The driver’s crazy. Don’t stay quiet, holler as loud as you can. He’ll stop sooner.”
First, the driver brought the leather strap up and down, as hard as he could, on Tamra’s bare back.
“This will teach you to take up white-lady airs! No good comes of reading!” the black driver shouted. Tamra moaned, then shrieked as the whip struck thirty times.
Sarah saw blood. Her stomach tightened and she turned away, but still gagged and vomited.
The driver then laid into Wilbert, striking and cursing as he brought down each blow on the silent boy, who looked as if he might be dead. His fluttering eyes proved otherwise, however, and Sarah struggled to decide if death might be the better fate. “Ain’t got time for this nonsense. Reading!”
Sarah closed her eyes and tried to keep breathing, though the stench of her vomit gagged her again.
Only once before had she seen such prolonged lashing. She’d hidden behind a poplar tree while Uncle Jeremiah took sixty bloody lashes for stealing a chicken, so ol’ master claimed. Jeremiah too had cried out as the leather strap hit again and again. Watching now, Sarah remembered the high-yellow foreman swearing at the heat and “lazy field hands, who only want to eat.”
But now he cursed their book.
By the time the driver finished with the second scholar he said he had no arm for Sarah. But morning, he promised, would find him a man refreshed, ready for this work.
“I’ve got to get to the farthest field,” he said. “But tomorrow morning …” He swore.
All day Sarah shivered. Mama’s face seemed permanently streaked with tears. Loping back to the quarters before dusk, they found Wilbert and Tamra, tended by Hannah and another old woman. Mama rubbed her own ointment onto their torn bodies.
That night Sarah huddled with her mother, her sister, and her brother, waiting miserably for the sound of the driver’s horn. She thought of running, but Mama begged her to stay. “They won’t kill you,” she pleaded, eyes tearing yet again. “You’re young, you’re strong. You’ll have children. But if you go, they surely will be your death.”
Mama was always practical. “Girl, you got to make your way,” she often told her daughter. “And here is where you are.” That awful night she reminded Sarah again, “It’s too dangerous to run. You got to work with what you got. What you got is here.”
It was true. What Sarah had was her tall, firm body and reflective mind, her brother, her father—when he could come—and mother, her “uncles” and “aunties,” Ruth and other friends, like Amely and Wilbert. And her life. That was too much to risk for a chancy escape, one that could easily end in death, ripped apart by dogs. Or sale to the terrors of the deep South, to those unfamiliar, scary-sounding places: Georgia. Alabamy. Louisiana. Mississippi.
“Pray, daughter. Pray for deliverance.”
Before dawn the family tried to eat their biscuits, but no one could swallow the mealy pulp. At the last possible moment her mother ran to a field where new land was being cleared. Albert and Esther ran behind, holding on to her skirt while they looked back, wide-eyed, at their big sister. Sarah had to stagger off alone to meet her fate.
There was no escape.
When she arrived at the soaking wet lower field, as the sky lightened behind the silhouetted trees, the driver unfurled his great whip. But this was a new man, one Sarah had never seen before. He flicked his lash with a sound like unfurled lightning.
Sarah trembled.
“I’ll tear the hide off your back,” this new head slave roared, rearing back. Yet, astonishingly, the snake of leather never touched her skin.
The driver hollered, and Sarah and two others screamed when he told them to, “Please no more, oh, please, Lord, no more!” But every droplet their owner would see, should he happen by, was berry juice mixed with the blood of an unlucky squirrel.
On this day, far out in a distant field, no one came to inspect. The screams carried far enough.
Sarah could not believe that she’d escaped—but she knew it was a sign. This was a miracle like one of the many she’d read about, like when Moses wandered in the wilderness with his people, so thirsty, and he smote the rock that gushed forth a great stream of water for everybody to drink. Or when the Red Sea parted and the children of Israel walked through in order to escape the Egyptians. God was her Shepherd, and had given her the signal. She wasn’t born for this life, no matter what Ol’ Master Armstrong said. One day she would no longer be enslaved. And she would never, ever, let herself be whipped. Before that happened she’d run away. No man would ever tie her down like that.
CHAPTER 8
For once, even my purple-striped comforter doesn’t comfort me, and no matter how far I pull the covers over my head, I’m shaking. Sarah was so brave. I don’t know if I’d have that much courage—to face a whipping. I only know I need to find out what happens.
Just when I open the next chapter, “The World Explodes,” which sounds like a perfect description of my universe, I hear Mom’s footsteps charging toward my room. I jam the papers under a pile of books on the floor and reach up to turn off my light, so I can pretend to be asleep. No way do I want to hear her screaming at me now. But it’s too late: she’d hear it click or see it flash out under the door. Instead, I grab my American history book, prop it on my stomach, and half close my eyes, doing my best imitation of sleepy reading.
Mom sails in and plops on the side of my bed. No apology, no invitation, nothing. Not even any rage. “Oh, Nina,” she starts. “I’m sorry I got angry. This is a tough time for me.”
Mmm-hmm, you’re not the only one. And why are you opening up to me now? You know, I’m the kid. I’m the one who needs you; it’s not supposed to be the other way around.
“I know you didn’t mean it,” she says. “And I didn’t mean to react like that, either. It’s just the school budget’s being cut again and I’m writing grants like mad, applying for funds from every foundation under the sun.” She settles in, raising her hands to her forehead. “But I want to be here for you.”
All of a sudden she’s smiling. I’ve got my real mom back, we’re on the same side of the wall, and a cozy feeling creeps through my chest until tears sprout in my eyes. If I don’t tell somebody soon about how my world’s exploding, I’m gonna burst. Mom, I wish I could say. I want to lay my head on her lap and let her know about Tyrone, how he’s so horrifying and vengeful, and about Jimi and the bike—how could he steal it?—and ask her to get it safely back into Tyrone’s yard. I want to tell her about Sarah Armstrong and the terrible suffering she endured, to share that pain I’m feeling with my mom. And then I want to hear her say I don’t have to be black or white, and help me figure out how to hang out with everybody and not have to choose. I need her to remind me, like Dad does, that “faith is the evidence of things not seen” in the soothing way he says it, assuring me that everything will work out all right even though I can’t imagine how. God’s got it covered.
“What, sweetie?” she asks, reaching out her hand to rub my forehead. She strokes me, right where the hair starts, and keeps pushing my curls back, over and over. Her fing
ers are soft, and make my back tingle. This is how she used to put me to sleep, along with singing the songs she wrote. As if she can read my mind, she starts to sing, softly, “Nina, Nina, you’re the one …” She sits on my bed like that for a while, humming, and I feel myself being lulled into a drowsy mood.
“Mom,” I burst out, all set to confide.
“Tell me, sweetie, what’s on your mind? If you talk about it you’ll feel better.”
“At school,” I start, relieved to let it out, even to her, “the mixed kids mostly hang with the black girls. But I still want to be friends with Jessica too. We used to do everything together, you know that, and now she hardly talks to me—”
“Nina.” She looks straight at me, while her hand keeps stroking my forehead. “People may look at you and see an African American, but you’re white too. Whatever that means; you know it’s a construct, about as scientific as a flat-earth theory. And even if you weren’t”—she smiles—”you can be friends with anybody you choose.”
“White kids call everything they think is bad ‘ghetto.’ Jessica’s starting that too. And she’s not interested in Dad’s novel, even though it’s based on my real great-great-grandmother! You know, Sarah’s family; something terrible happened, so she’s running away …”
Mom’s hand freezes.
“It’s so sad,” I say. “In the night I imagine she’s knocking on my window, and I wish I could help her.”
Mom jerks her hand back from my face. “Nina, I told you.” Her voice is steely; right before my eyes she turns into a stranger. “Your father …” Her mouth moves as if she’s chewing something nasty. She spits it out. “I told you not to read that book. It will poison your mind. Your father …” Her teeth are clenched. “In the last year, he’s changed.”
“Mom, stop!” I’ve never heard her talk like this.
“Your father …”
“Dad.”
Tears come into her eyes. “I am not the man … You know, there are good white people too.”
I sit up and, out of habit, I wrap my arms clumsily around this creature who’s invaded my mom, even though that’s the last thing in the world I want to do.
“Being white isn’t a bowl of cherries, either. These days the whole world hates us.” She looks straight ahead, at the purple wall. “Race is … it’s not actually real, Nina. Honestly, white people made it up to keep people separate.”
Look at the steps of Canyon Valley High at lunchtime. Race is real.
“I’m not even totally white,” Mom says like a robot, with a voice as glazed as her stare. “Not with you and Jimi as my kids.” She stands up and pulls a tissue out of the box by my bed. “This is tricky territory, sweetie. But remember, you get to be friends with anybody you want, with Jessica and Claudette and Lavonn or anybody else. Even if it doesn’t seem like it.” After she blows her nose, she says, “Your generation might actually have a chance of figuring out how to do it.”
“How?”
“I don’t know, exactly. But ninth grade is rough no matter what. I remember when I was a freshman, there was a snooty group—the popular girls who wouldn’t talk to me because my dad was a union organizer, and he wore overalls, not a suit.”
“That’s nothing like this!”
“Exclusions like that are just different versions of the same thing, Nina.”
Mom totally, totally does not get it. Why do I ever ask her anything? I’ll never again confide one solitary thought to her; I’ll never let myself get lulled into believing she knows anything. She’s a fool.
“And I know something about being mixed. I had the Irish-Jewish split in my family, and believe me, in Boston forty years ago, that was something.”
“This is so, so different.” I have heard that story a million times and it was nothing, absolutely nothing like what I’m facing.
“Not as different as you think.” Mom checks her watch, and all of a sudden she flips back to “normal Mom,” like this pathetic conversation never happened. “Ten forty-five! You better get to sleep. Everything will look better in the morning. And next year, in tenth grade, things will start to settle down.”
Next year?
“Turn off your light, sweetie, as soon as I’m out the door.” She leans over to give me a kiss.
After she leaves, my mind jumps around. What did she mean, “Being white is not a bowl of cherries” and “I’m not white”? Yes, she is. Her mother’s white, even if she’s Jewish, her father’s white, her sister’s white, she’s white. No problem. Not like me, who’s half everything.
For hours my mind swirls. Race didn’t used to matter, in our family or with my friends. What happened? How could Jimi have gotten us into this mess with—of all the kids in the school—that maniac, Tyrone? Who is weirdly the brother of that cute guy, Dwight, who probably hates me now too, if he even knows I exist. And what’s gotten into both of my reliable parents; have they been taken over by aliens so neither of them has a clue what it’s like to be me? When I realize long after midnight that I’ll never fall asleep, I reach under the pile of books by my bed for the next chapter about Sarah Armstrong. I flip on the light, crawl deeper under my comforter, and lose myself in reading about a girl who faced even bigger problems than me.
The World Explodes
The day dawned like a normal day, with a scarlet sky and rain clouds. Roosters crowed, dogs barked, the overseer blew his horn, and kittens mewed. The sounds, the familiar smell of pigs’ feet boiling, the everyday noise of people running to the fields, and the feel of the rough blanket against Sarah’s skin gave no indication that day was to be different. The air burned as hot on that July day as on others.
There was no warning.
Sarah shifted on her pile of rags and straw, forgetting for a moment that her leg was fractured, broken from a leap into the pit school weeks before. It was starting to mend with the help of a crude splint fashioned by one of her aunts and the good health of a robust twelve-year-old.
Abruptly, she heard shouting. She hobbled across the small wooden floor, pushing past laundry drying by the fire to exit the door of the cabin in time to see two white men, jackets flying, running, shouting, and grabbing people on their way to the fields. The way they yanked arms decisively and threw on shackles made it clear their targets had been marked. For a moment it was bedlam, screams piercing the air.
Then, too quickly, the momentary silence of shock.
Sarah, wide-eyed, immediately picked out the familiar figure of her mother among those seized and roughly told “Run!”—to gather a change of clothes.
Freed from the irons, Mama had a moment to collect a bundle, then wrap and tie it in a large square of frayed orange cloth. She’d been sold, and they hadn’t even known.
Yasmine, sobbing and trembling, rushed to pass Sarah her own small, forbidden Bible, folded in a white cloth. This and a few bone buttons were all the objects her mother had to pass on. “White folks going on to hell like a barrel full of nails,” she said, shaking. “Master Armstrong’s the evilest …” She seemed unable to finish her sentence. But she left Sarah with a critical admonition, whispered as she was shoved outside. “Take Esther and little Albert and run, girl. Go north. Pray for guidance—”
In the six months since Papa had been sold, they’d only seen him once. But short-tempered as they all were these days, Mama and Sarah had developed an even closer bond. “We’re cut from the same cloth,” Mama often said. Though she could be rough when she needed to, cuffing or reprimanding her firstborn for “foolish dreaming,” she always promised, “We will be delivered,” and every night she crooned songs whose words and tune fused together to etch hope deep into Sarah’s brain.
Now, as Sarah limped after her, Mama forced a muffled hymn through her sobs. “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen, nobody knows but Jesus.” This Jesus, she told her children, could be counted on, lifting high their tribulations until burdens had no weight at all. But where was Jesus now? Before Sarah could fully absorb the blow, she saw h
er mother, orange bundle on her head, ordered into a wooden cart with five others.
“Get in the buggy! Ain’t got no time for crying and carrying on!” The trader in a high top hat stood, one foot up on a brown leather suitcase, cigar in his mouth, chuckling and chatting as he handed over cash to Ol’ Master Armstrong and received slave papers in return.
People swarmed the sides of the two-wagon caravan, calling out to those inside. A woman Sarah knew well, whom everyone called Auntie Mabel, sat rigid with dignity and shock; a teenager who’d only recently come to the plantation slumped against a grizzled man, disbelief and terror in his eyes. The older man, with a trembling hand, patted the younger one’s shoulder.
When Mama laboriously climbed up into the cart, her former owner—her daddy, Sarah thought, allowing herself the realization—slapped her good-naturedly on the rump.
“Farewell, Yasmine,” he said with a laugh. “You’ll make some man—”
Sarah lunged for him until Mama, as if able to spot her daughter’s move before she made it, motioned her back forcefully. “No!” Sarah screamed, and the words left her mouth as the trader’s boot sent her reeling. Master Armstrong only glanced in her direction before he strolled away. Sarah then saw Mama stand up in the open cart, tears marking rivers in her cheeks where the sun glinted on the drops. “NO, NO, NO,” Sarah shouted, stumbling after the cart.
The trader pushed her back with a shove, and drew a pistol. “If you come one foot closer, I’ll shoot.”
Her mother screamed, “Stay back!”
Sarah staggered backward. She and her mother had seen this scene too many times in recent months. To plead for mercy would only bring a kick or the offered shot.
The horse began to pull the creaking buggy along the rutted dirt road.
Sarah strained to capture the last sight of her mother: the dark-green shawl; her face partially covered by her old white bonnet; the familiar torn and stained light-brown dress, with the sleeves pulled down almost over her hands to protect her from the burning sun.
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