The Book of Negroes

by Lawrence Hill

  I spotted William King with his fine clothes and upright posture. He glanced my way but looked right past me. The man who had once sold me to Robinson Appleby now had no idea who I was.

  King's coloured quintuplets wrapped chains around their ankles and then danced out of them. They took an orange and tossed it back and forth, always dancing and half the time airborne. Emptying their pockets, they each began juggling three oranges. They sang something crazy, happy and meaningless, something that sounded straight from my homeland, although the words didn't mean anything to me. "Bokele bokele bo. Bokele bokele bo. Awa. Bokele bokele bo." They sang and clapped their hands while the oranges were looping through the air. Then they returned the oranges to a wooden crate, bent over and began walking around and dancing upside down and clapping their feet together as if they were hands.

  A young bare-chested white man, perhaps just eighteen or so, ran into their midst and began hollering and dancing with the younger Negroes.

  "White folks love these boys," Dolly said.

  "Why is that white boy acting crazy?" I said.

  "Rum, I expect," Dolly said. "There are fighting men all around town, drinking and waiting to get out and go home."

  "Who are they fighting?"

  "Each other. The English and the French were killing each other and the Indians too."

  I shook my head. I couldn't imagine such a thing. I had never seen white men fighting each other.

  "White men fight about any old thing," Dolly said. "Lindo tell me that a long while ago white folks went to killing themselves just because one of them cut off the ear of the other. Jenkins the man got his ear cut off, so they called it War of Jenkins' Ear."

  The man who was leading the Negro boys chased off the bare-chested white dancer, and we watched the procession reach the end of the block and turn the corner. Dolly said she had heard that the man who owned the coloured quints made money by renting them out at house parties. I said it seemed strange to me that white people would take Negroes to a party.

  "White folks is strange," Dolly said. "They like their party-niggers light, mixed up, mulattoes and mustees. The things they like is strange, and the things they don't like is stranger."

  On the way back to the Lindos' house, Dolly had to stop and rest. "My feets shouting loud as a churchman," she said.

  I loved the way Dolly spoke. Although she had a different way of speaking than Georgia, she still made me think of folks in St. Helena around a fire at night, poking the logs with sticks and telling stories. I had become entranced by the books of the buckra, but was equally taken by the languages of Negroes—tongues that made me feel at home. As I unfastened Dolly's buckles, the words flew from my mouth.

  "Your feets too swole fuh them red shoes," I said.

  "Shoes jes' fine an' I ain't swole," she said.

  "I done catch babies all over the low-country. You get big wit' chile, yo feets swole up."

  "Young thing like you gwine catch my baby?"

  "Come five moons," I said.

  "Gawd help me. You kill me sure as dog kill cat."

  THE LINDOS ATE THEIR MAIN MEAL in the middle of the afternoon. Dolly had to cook the meal and wash up afterwards, but once she got her tasks done she could spend her time as she pleased. She did not have to work on Saturdays, as that was the Lindos' Sabbath, but she was expected to prepare their Sabbath meal the night before. The Jews in Charles Town had taught one of their slaves to butcher meat according to their beliefs, and Dolly stopped by the shop where he worked to pick up meat and chicken. Solomon Lindo and his wife also avoided pork. Perhaps he was right in saying that we were similar. I resolved that for as long as I lived with the Lindos, I would try to take meat in the way that they had it prepared. Dolly and I were often allowed to take the Lindos' leftover food and eat it in our back house, and Mrs. Lindo frequently gave us pomegranates, figs and cheese.

  The land of Charles Town was shaped like a finger, bordered by the Cooper River on one side and the Ashley on the other. The tides rose and fell twice a day in town, and when the water pulled out, the mud flats could stink to high heaven in the broiling sun. Sometimes animals were found rotting in the flats. On other days the bodies of Africans washed up on shore, or were discovered when the tide went out. Whenever commotion erupted by the waterside, I knew better than to join the crowds. I couldn't bear the sight of the bloated bodies.

  One Saturday, Lindo allowed us to go to a fair out of town. Like the very Negroes I had watched with such confusion after coming off the slave ship, Dolly and I walked there without a thought of running away. At the fair, we watched bear-baiting and cockfights, and saw white men wrestling greased pigs while onlookers shouted and laughed and threw coins. The first man to wrestle a pig to the ground got to take it home. Dolly seemed relaxed, but I didn't feel comfortable in the crowd of shouting and drinking white men. I worried that their boisterous happiness could erupt into anger at any minute. If it did, I'd be pressed right among them, just as I had been on the ship.

  On the way back through the town, we passed the Sign of the Bacchus punch house. It had a written notice: WHITE NEGRO GIRL, GREY EYES AND WHITE HAIR. I tried to spy her through the swinging doors, but only caught a glimpse of light-skinned Negro women drinking at a counter with white men.

  "Buckra like their niggers white," Dolly said. "High yellow, washed out, with just a little taste of African."

  I didn't entirely believe Dolly. I remembered Robinson Appleby. And many men stared at me in the streets of Charles Town.

  Walking through town, especially on the days that Dolly was too tired to join me, I had found that I had to be careful. In plain daylight, a white man tried to grab me and pull me into a tavern. I wrenched my arm free and ran away. The very next day, a tall Negro man in the fish market put his hand on my breast and tried to pull me by the wrist. "Come to my boat," he said, "I have a gift for you." I fled from him, too.

  SOLOMON LINDO LET ME GROW ACCUSTOMED to Dolly's routines and learn my way about Charles Town. I grew attached to my new comforts. I slept more and ate better than at any time since I had left my homeland. One day, Lindo called for me to join him in his parlour. He said his wife was out discussing books and music with her friends, but that she knew he had been planning to speak with me. Lindo fixed me a glass of lemon cordial with three pieces of ice—I loved ice more than anything else on those hot, sticky Charles Town days—and looked at me once again.

  "I am not sure how you managed to learn to read," he said.

  I sat a little more rigidly in the hard-backed chair.

  "But I don't have to know," he said. "You are keeping that confidence, and you must keep this one too. I am prepared to teach you to read even more than you can read now."

  He asked if I would like that. I nodded. He said that he and Mrs. Lindo were going to give me lessons in sums and writing. Charlestonians would not take kindly to any Negro reading, he said, so this would have to remain a secret in the house.

  "Yes," I said.

  "Dolly says you're not one for cooking," he said.

  "That's right, sir."

  "Not to worry. I have something else in mind for you. How do you like being a servant in this household?"

  "Like it right fine, Master Lindo."

  "Good. Then I want you to start paying your own way."

  "Paying?"

  "There are ten thousand people in this town, and more than half of them are Negroes. You are going to start catching babies in Charles Town."

  "Whose babies?"

  "The babies of Negro servants," he said, "although I know some Jews who might want to use you too. I'm putting you on the self-hire system."

  I sat forward in my chair. "Self-hire?"

  "You will work in the mornings on my books, keeping accounts. I'm going to teach you how to do that. And when you are not busy with that, you will start catching babies. With what you earn from that, you are going to start paying me ten shillings a week."

  Solomon Lindo began teaching me for
two hours a day, early in the morning before his long days of work. He promised to give me a book of my own if I could learn all about money in South Carolina. And he showed me a notice he had placed in the South Carolina Gazette: "Skilled midwife. Obedient, sensible Guinea wench. For hire. Enquire of Solomon Lindo, King Street."

  "What does 'midwife' mean?" I asked him.

  "A woman who catches babies."

  "And what is a 'wench'?"

  "Woman," he said.

  "Is Mrs. Lindo a wench?"

  He sat up straight. He rubbed his hands, then looked at me directly. "She is a lady."

  "I'm not from Guinea," I said suddenly. The anger in my own voice surprised me. I jumped up from the table, knocking over an ink pot. "And I'm not a wench. I had a baby and I would have it now but Master Appleby stole him away. I am no wench. I am a wife. I am a mother. Aren't I a woman?"

  Lindo righted the ink pot, patting paper over the spill. He gave me a little smile. "It is only a term for the newspaper. Calm yourself. I will avoid the word if it causes offence. But what's wrong with Guinea?"

  He was peering at me brightly. He seemed to be enjoying himself. I didn't like the way his eyes paused on my body.

  "Guinea means nothing to me, so how can I be from it? I am from Bayo. It is my village. Have you heard of that?"

  "It's a big, dark continent. I don't know it at all. Nobody does. Enough chatting, Meena. We have work to do."

  A ledger was a record of what you had. Keeping books meant writing down what you spent and what you earned. That was where things got complicated. Lindo said you could get something in one of two ways. One way was to pay for one item by offering something else in return.

  "Like Georgia gets rum or cloth for catching a baby," I said.

  "Exactly why I purchased you," Lindo said. "I knew you would catch on fast. I saw the intelligence in your eyes and I wanted to lift you up."

  "Lift me up?"

  "Give you a chance to use your God-given abilities."

  No white person had ever spoken to me like this, and I didn't trust him.

  "Do you have a religion, Meena?"

  "My father used to pray to Allah," I said, "and I was learning from him."

  "So you are a Muslim and I, a Jew. You see, we are not so very far apart at all."

  I fiddled with the quill and the ink pot. I did not feel like meeting his eyes. But Solomon Lindo kept speaking.

  "Our religions come from similar books. Your father had the Qur'an, and I have the Torah."

  It astounded me that Solomon Lindo could name the book my father had shown me, in Bayo.

  "In my faith," he said, "it is considered a very good thing to give another person what they need to become independent, and to take care of themselves in the world."

  Then why, I wondered, didn't he set me free?

  I believe he sensed the coldness in my eyes, because he turned abruptly back to our lessons.

  LINDO EXPLAINED THAT I COULD either barter for an object, or pay with copper, silver or gold coins. This confused me. It made no sense to me that someone would prefer to be paid with a useless metal coin than with five chickens or a tierce of corn. Lindo put some coins in my left hand and told me to imagine that I had a live chicken in my right. I was to imagine myself going to market with only these two possessions, he said. A person selling oranges would gladly take my coins, but only a person who needed the chicken would accept it as payment.

  "But what if the coins become useless?" I said. "People will always want a chicken, but will they always want an ugly metal disc? It has no beauty and it can't be eaten. If I were selling oranges, I would take the chicken."

  Lindo tapped the table. "This is not a debate. It is a lesson. Are you ready to continue?"

  I nodded.

  We moved on to sums. One shilling plus another equalled two shillings. Two plus two made four. Lindo shuffled the coins quickly on the table. With one shilling, I could buy ten eggs. With five shillings, I could buy fifty. For two hours each morning and six days a week, we reviewed arithmetic. After adding and subtracting, multiplication and division came fairly easily. Solomon Lindo was making my mind gallop like a horse and I loved the challenge of keeping up with him.

  Lindo's next lessons concerned all the specie circulating in Charles Town. There was the Spanish eight-reales coin, but it was simplest to call it a dollar. It wasn't British, but silver was silver and it was one of the most common coins in Carolina. He showed me a Spanish dollar that had been cut into pieces. The eight triangular bits were used because there weren't enough small coins. A Spanish dollar was worth six shillings, he said, and began to explain the relationship among pence, shillings, crowns, pounds and guineas. There were copper coins and silver, he said, but the guinea was made of gold.

  "Guinea?" I said. "That's the same word you used for my homeland."

  They were called guineas, he said, because they were made from gold taken from Ethiopia.

  "From where?" I asked.

  "Your land."

  "I thought you called it Guinea."

  "We call it many things," he said. "Guinea, Ethiopia, Negritia, Africa— they all mean the same."

  "And you have named your big gold coin after Africa?"

  "The guinea. Worth twenty-one shillings."

  My mouth fell open. From my homeland the buckra were taking both gold and people, and using one to buy and sell the other.

  I didn't feel like learning any more that day, and was relieved to see the lesson end. As we stood and prepared to leave his office, Lindo said, "You will make me good money. And I will see that you are properly clothed and fed. You will be treated better than any Negro where you come from, I can guarantee you that."

  "I come from Bayo and I was born free," I whispered.

  Solomon Lindo sat back. "I beg your pardon?"

  "I was a freeborn Muslim."

  "Well, I was born in England. But we are in the Colonies now."

  I crossed my arms.

  He stared at me for a minute, and said, "You will be free enough. You will be free to make extra money on self-hire, as a midwife. And I will collect a return on my investment. I spent a fortune on you."

  I was not a little surprised by the sarcasm of my own words: "And you paid this fortune in coins or chickens?"

  Lindo looked stunned. Perhaps such words would not be tolerated. Perhaps I would be terribly beaten. But Lindo shook his head, stroked his beard and began to laugh. It was the first time I had said something to make a white man laugh. But it wasn't at all funny to me.

  LINDO TESTED ME FOR SEVERAL DAYS and decided that I had learned all his lessons about arithmetic and coins. As a gift, he gave me a book called Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift. My eyes fell across these words:

  I lay down on the grass, which was very short and soft; where I slept sounder than ever I remember to have done in my life. . . . I attempted to rise, but was not able to stir: for, as I happened to lie on my back, I found my arms and legs were strongly fastened on each side to the ground; and my hair, which was long and thick, tied down in the same manner. . . .

  I was instantly full of desire to read the book. "It looks as good as Exodus," I told him.

  "And what do you know of that?" he asked.

  I explained that I had been reading the Bible on St. Helena Island.

  "We all talk about the Exodus, did you know that?" he said.

  It seemed foolish to say too much, but I could not stop myself from blurting out a question: "What do you mean?"

  "What I mean is that Jews and Muslims and Christians all have the story of the Exodus in our religious books," Lindo said. "The Israelites are my people and Exodus is the story of our escape from slavery."

  I listened carefully to Lindo, and thought about what he was saying. The discovery was fascinating, yet confusing. Perhaps Lindo could explain why Christians and Jews kept Muslims as slaves if we all had the same God and if we all celebrated the flight of the Hebrews from Egypt.

  How
much had been paid for me, I wondered, and who had arranged to have me brought to this land? How were the black men who stole me from Bayo tied to the Christians and Jews who traded in slaves in South Carolina? Just as the world of the buckra was beginning to make a little more sense, it was becoming increasingly confusing. Answers only led to more questions.

  Lindo interrupted my thoughts. "I have a hunch that an African can learn anything, if given the opportunity," he said. "So let's have an experiment and see how much you learn."

  Lindo placed one hand over the other. My eyes drifted to the ring on his finger. Guinea, I thought to myself. Guinea gold. Use me if you must, but I will use you too.

  SOLOMON LINDO HAD VARIOUS FORMS OF INCOME as the official indigo inspector for the Province of South Carolina. He didn't get a salary, but the House of Assembly paid him five hundred pounds a year to calculate how many pounds of indigo were being shipped to Britain, and indigo producers paid him to grade their indigo mud and advise them about how to improve it. I kept his books, delivered his reminders of accounts due, and began, as a result of an advertisement that Lindo placed in the South Carolina Gazette, to be asked once or twice a week to catch babies in Charles Town and outlying areas. Lindo gave me the money to buy a cloth bag and healing herbs and supplies from a market vendor. To show that I had the right to travel about town on self-hire, and to avoid being harassed or arrested by buckra, I had to pin to my clothes a six-sided tin badge stamped with my name and the year: Meena. 1762.

  At the market, I bought elderberry flowers and stewed them in lard to treat the bites of the chiggers—insects that hid in the Spanish moss hanging from the oak trees. I bought the root of cotton, as I was sometimes asked to stop a child from growing inside a woman, the same way Georgia had saved me when I was set upon by Robinson Appleby. I bought the bark from the wild black cherry tree, which I would soak in warm water to help women whose monthly bleedings were too strong. I acquired the root bark of the Georgia tree and the leaves of the American aloe for rattlesnake bites, because sometimes people came in to complain of such matters when I was helping a woman with her baby. Blackberry herbs were good for stomach pains and the runs, and tea made from the white sassafras root could cure blindness. Dogwood, cherry bark and red oak bark were good for tea to help with the fevers that plagued Negroes working in the swampy, dismal air.