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Praise for the Writing of Mildred Pitts Walter
Because We Are
A Coretta Scott King Honor Book
A Parents’ Choice Award Book for Literature
“Walter draws readers into a complex situation with finely paced writing, good integration of themes, and an understanding of the feelings of young men and women.” —School Library Journal
The Girl on the Outside
A Christian Science Monitor Best Book
A Notable Children’s Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies
“[Walter] re-creates the tenor of the times from both black and white perspectives and gives the incident immediacy for today’s younger teens …” —Booklist
“We are moved … by the courage required of these children and their parents …” —School Library Journal
“A moving, dramatic re-creation of the 1957 integration of a Little Rock high school as seen through the eyes of a black girl and a white girl.” —Booklist
“A vivid story … written with insight and compassion, its characters fully developed, its converging lines nicely controlled.” —Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books
Second Daughter
“Based on a real case, this admirable historical novel is unique for the perspective it lends to the Revolution and its profound impact on the lives of all Americans.” —Kirkus Reviews
Trouble’s Child
A Coretta Scott King Honor Book
“Walter immerses readers in Martha’s internal struggle, holding their attention to the last page. The quickly paced text utilizes the native dialect, further adding to the aura of the isolated island setting as Walter shows how ritual and superstition dominate.… While Martha’s particular problems are unique, adolescent readers will easily empathize with her predicament of feeling confused by the pull from so many different directions at this stage of life.” —School Library Journal
Second Daughter
The Story of a Slave Girl
Mildred Pitts Walter
DEDICATED TO MILTON MELTZER,
who understands that American history
is the action of all Americans.
It is a strange freedom to go nameless up and down the streets of other minds.… The name is a man’s watermark above which no tide can ever rise.
—Howard Thurman
1
Does anyone want to know how terrible it was being a slave? And how it is now to hear and see my sister’s name and still remain nameless? She had a sister and a husband. That’s all they know about me and Josiah. But everyone will forever know her as Elizabeth Freeman, or the name whites prefer to call her, “Mum Bett,” while I live among others—without a name; known only as the sister. I must tell my story, for I, too, have a life. I, too, have a name.
On record: Elizabeth Freeman, also called Mum Bett. Born 1742. There is no record of my name, nor the date of my birth, but I am told that on the morning I was born, an icy rain was falling in Claverack, Columbia County, in the state of New York. My sister, Elizabeth, whom my parents named Fatou (Fa-too), first daughter, and Olubunmi (O-loo-BOON-mee), the midwife, say that I took my time coming and when I finally arrived I screamed loud and long. Did I know that I was being born a slave? Did I know, while still in the womb, that my five brothers had recently been sold off to the dreaded South? That my father, so enraged by the sale, struck his master and was beaten and kicked to death? That my mother no longer wanted to live?
Olubunmi said at my birth, “The ancestors didn’t give this child an easy journey, but they granted her special gifts. Unlike other children, this one will appear physically weak, but she’ll be strong. She will suffer greatly as a slave.”
My family was the property of Cornelis Hogeboom, a Dutchman, who owned a lot of land in what was then called New Amsterdam. My father made bricks in his factory; my brothers worked in his fields and herded his cattle. Cornelis was above flogging his slaves. However, when one got into a fight, stayed away too long, lost a cow, or did not make his share of bricks, the constable was called to whip him. The whip used had fine wire plaited into the thongs to increase the pain. When the constable was called to whip my father for confronting the master, my father fought back and, defending himself, he died.
Nine days after I was born, my mother died. She lived just long enough to defy the master and perform the naming ceremony befitting a Fulani. I was named Aissa (I-sa), second daughter. Her last words were “Fatou, give your life for your sister. Never let them separate you.”
It was a cold winter that year, when Fatou, still very young, became my mother. She padded me with wool, wrapped me in a scarf that had belonged to our mother, and tied me onto her back. The warmth of her body moved into mine, creating a warmth that flowed back to her. Her heartbeat mixed with mine like the rhythm of the drum. We kept each other warm.
I was passed back and forth to other slave women on the land; and Fatou and I, without the love of our family, survived. There were many women on the farm, but Olubunmi is the one I remember most and the one who speaks to me now in my dreams. Even though I was young when we were sold away from her, I still see her tending a pot hung over a fire between stones. I can now whiff that spicy smell in the mixture she brewed. On freezing mornings she gave me a cup with the words: “It’s a new day, so fill your mouth with blessings from the earth.”
Often I wanted to refuse, for I was not sure what she offered. But as our eyes met over her outstretched hand, I felt as if I was drawn to do whatever she asked. When I took the cup, my hands were warmed. Steam drifted up to my nose and I was surprised at the smell of a mixture of sweet herbs and bitter roots. I drank. Warmth spread through my little body and I was able to withstand the most icy cold.
Olubunmi, a Yoruba, whose name means this highest gift is mine, was old. Her clothes always looked as old as she—worn, but clean. Her skin, as dark as the night, was without wrinkles, and her eyes were like black violets in a clear pool. Her liquid stare seemed able to penetrate secrets deep inside and see what ordinary eyes could not see.
It was she who encouraged storytelling around the fire at night. I can still remember the tales of the long camel caravans that came into her town bringing fabric, beads, copper, even salt. Her mother sold the thirsty trades-men fruit, fruit juices, carob cakes, and millet fritters. Olubunmi could make me see streets alive with merchants, laughing children darting between donkeys, and water carriers.
Other women told stories and sang songs, too, but none like Olubunmi. Once while remembering Africa, she broke down and cried, longing for her family and home. I loved her, and when she hugged me close her sour odor, like burnt leaves and spices, was strange but not offensive.
Even before I was born she had taken Fatou under her wing and declared her the one who, like Olubunmi, would become a midwife and healer. Olubunmi and my sister would often slip away to gather herb leaves and roots without the master’s knowing. Many times she insisted that Fatou go with her to attend the sick and to deliver babies. Because Olubunmi was both honored and feared, Baas Hogeboom did not often interfere with her activities. When we became orphans, it was Olubunmi who took charge of me and Fatou.
I remember a day of great excitement when I was about five years old. Fatou held my face in her hands and said, “A white man, Colonel John Ashley, they say from Massachusetts, has just come here with a large herd of cattle.” There was fear in her eyes and in her voice. I tried to remove my face from her hands, but she held on. “Listen to me,” she continued. “This man wants to marry the baas’s daughter, Meesteres Annetje, and buy som
e of us.”
Surrounded by older women to whom I always listened, I knew a lot about slavery, especially the word buy. I began to cry.
Fatou, a strong, tall girl, picked me up and held me close. “You don’t have to be scared. I’ll never let them sell us apart. Never!” She dried my face and left me with the other children in the yard.
The place continued to hum with excitement, but Fatou remained quiet even around Olubunmi. She talked to no one but Brom, another slave who was like our brother. Not quite six feet tall, Brom had a narrow brown face. When he arrived in Claverack his hair had been long and braided. But Hogeboom cut his braids, leaving his hair with little peaks standing about his head. He was a little older than Fatou, and after our brothers were sold he claimed me and her as his sisters.
Secretly, they put their heads together and whispered in Fulfulde, our language that the master forbade us to speak. If they had been caught speaking together in any language other than Dutch, they would have been whipped by the constable and one of them would have been sold. Olubunmi often worried about Fatou and Brom. “Why do you risk your hide and even being sold down the river?” she often asked.
“To speak my mother tongue gives me a pleasure worth being beaten for. And who’ll know? Will you tell?” Of course Olubunmi would never tell. But she threatened to punish Fatou if ever Fatou let me hear one word, for fear I would speak it openly and lose some of my skin on the whip.
Much of the excitement was about the wedding of Meesteres Annetje to Colonel Ashley. He wanted to give his bride a slave for a wedding gift. He wanted her to have someone familiar and trustworthy. Hogeboom offered to sell the colonel Fatou. This pleased Meesteres Annetje, but Fatou was not happy. Meesteres Annetje was moody and selfish, and, because I was a weakling who was spoiled with too much pampering by old women, she did not care for me at all. She declared I was the embodiment of the devil.
Fatou knew that the master would do as he pleased, but knowing that she would rather die than leave me, she went to talk to him. “Baas Hogeboom, I’m grateful that you want me to serve our Meesteres Annetje, but please, baas, I can’t leave my little sister.”
“You will if I say so and if your Meesteres Annetje so chooses.”
“I pray you don’t make me go away. I can’t, and I won’t go without her.”
Colonel Ashley knew that his bride had her mind set on Fatou, and that Fatou was determined to starve herself to death if she had to leave me. He decided to buy me, too. When he looked at the men, to choose one of them, he chose Brom. The colonel paid forty pounds for Brom, fifteen for Fatou, and eight for me.
I wondered what would happen to us as I watched the tears roll down Fatou’s face while she put our things in a strong wooden box that our father had made. She packed our mother’s scarf that she had wrapped me in to carry me on her back; our mother’s dark skirt and white blouse that the meesteres had given her; a bonnet and some soft shoes with tiny beads, a gift from a woman who lived in the forest; wooden shoes and a homespun dress and coats that each of us had received from the baas. Carefully she also wrapped roots and leaves and placed them in a basket.
It didn’t dawn upon me that I was leaving, until I had to say good-bye to Olubunmi. I screamed and cried and clung to her as the baas pulled me away and firmly placed me in the cart that was filled with boxes, crates, and bags—gifts for Meesteres Annetje. Olubunmi cried aloud as she followed us until the new baas made her return to the farm. Fatou held me close and our tears wet our clothes.
2
For many weeks we rode and walked along streams, through green valleys, thick forests, and over mountain trails. Then one day Fatou aroused me from weary sleep; we had arrived in a place near Sheffield, Massachusetts. The valley of the Housatonic River spread before a child’s eye a beauty that I could never have imagined. Among the evergreen pines and spruce trees the yellow and gold leaves of the aspens shimmered in the distance. As we descended into the valley the guide pointed out high hills and Mount Bushnell, and the tall towers of Mount Everett east of us. On the lower slopes the red, yellow, and brown leaves of the birch, oak, and sugar maple trees brightened the valley.
We wound our way down into that beautiful valley to Sheffield, a street city. Finally we came to a house made of planks instead of bricks like the one we left in Claverack. It was a well-built, big house that hugged the shore of the dark, slow-moving Housatonic River that wound through the plain.
I remember the people who came to greet us. The baas and meesteres were swept up by many from the village. They all called him master and her Mistress Anna and so we began to call him master and her Mistress Anna, too. Not as many dark faces as we knew at Baas Hogeboom’s were in this place. Here, there were many more African men than women. Only two women: Sarah and Nance. The older one, Nance, was short and plump and her smile, which showed more gums than teeth, was warm and genuine. She took one look at Fatou and said, “Yo’ looks. Ah thinks maybe Ah know you befo’.”
“But where?” I asked in a language more Dutch than English. Sarah, younger than Nance but older than Fatou, looked at me, surprised that I should speak so to Nance.
“Oh, Ah oft’ time think dat when Ah see mah kinfolk in dis land far from home. Ah look at ’em and wonder, is she from mah village? Or, is he mah brother’s son who was stole in a raid and done come a slave of a Mande whose daughter he married? Us Af’icans is like li’l seeds that float in de air far ’way and land close to de other not knowin’ dey from de same pod.”
I had heard the women back in Claverack say similar things and, remembering, I said, “And you could marry your clan brother, right?”
“Aissa!” Fatou called. I saw the alarmed look on Sarah’s and Nance’s faces and wondered what I had said wrong. “She talks too much,” Fatou sighed.
“I would say she hears one thing and understands ten,” Sarah said, and laughed.
“I wuz ramblin’,” Nance said. “G’wan, git yo’ things and come wid me.”
We soon learned that Sarah did not belong to the house. She was free, lived in the village, and hired herself out as a seamstress, cook, and housekeeper. However, when the greetings had died away, it was Sarah who picked me up and took me into the cellar, gave me a good scrubbing, and dressed me in clothes that were much too big. When Fatou had bathed herself, the clothes she wore were much too small. They had not expected such a big, tall girl.
I waited in the very large keeping room, or kitchen, while Fatou went with Nance to see the rest of the house. A fireplace covered a whole wall. Many iron pots and brass kettles hung on or near it. There were tables and cupboards. One table in the center of the floor had one side folded; on the other side was a drawer that looked like a shiny half barrel underneath with a round button on it near the tabletop. I grabbed the button and pulled. The shiny part was filled with flour used for making bread.
Beautiful, bright blue-and-white dishes filled a cupboard near the fireplace. I had just climbed onto a low chair nearby to see them better when the mistress entered the room. Not saying a word, she lifted me from the chair, took me into a corner, and forced me down on my bottom so hard that I let out a yell. Quickly, she put her hand over my mouth and nose. I struggled to breathe, but her grasp tightened. I bit her.
She tried to let go, but I held on and my sharp teeth cut into the palm of her hand. She screamed for help and the master came, followed by Fatou and Nance. Nance ran to the mistress and placed a cloth over her bloody hand. From the hearth, the master grabbed one of the green sticks on which the pots were hung over the flame. Fatou seeing his anger, cried, “Oh, master, wait, wait, I’ll take the blame. I don’t know why she did this, but it’s my fault.” Fatou looked frightfully scared.
The master didn’t wait. He whipped me on my backside and legs until I could no longer feel the pain. After putting the stick aside, he and the mistress left the room. Both Nance and Fatou looked at me and cried. I felt so ashamed. My first day in this big house and I had made my sister and new friend
cry. What had I done for the mistress to want me not to breathe?
“Oh, mijn zusje [my little sister],” Fatou cried. “What did you do? Do you want to be sold away from me? I can’t keep you if you are not a good girl. We’re servants to the master and mistress; you had better remember that.”
“I only wanted to see the dishes,” I cried.
“You bes learn dat de mistis is boss in dis house,” Nance said. “Never, never, harm the mistis if you want tuh live.”
Fatou took me to our room. She rummaged in a basket and came out with some roots and leaves that she pounded. Then she bathed my sore bottom and legs and put on them the plaster of roots and leaves. After she had covered me with a homespun cloth, she gave me a drink that made me drowsy. I remember her picking me up, but I don’t remember being put in the bed I shared with her.
Fatou and I slept in a building that adjoined the house. Our room and Nance’s and those of all the other slaves were in that same building. Its slanting roof made low ceilings, and only thin walls divided our space from the others. Even though our room was just big enough for our small bed and the basket and box Fatou had packed for the journey, we were glad to be together.
Fatou’s tea made me sleep for two whole days. I awoke with not too much pain from the beating. Fatou stood over me. “Wake up. The master wants to see us.”
She hurriedly dressed me, washed my face, and pulled me along to the big house. The mistress met us at the kitchen door, “Your master wants to speak to you, girl, not this wretched child.”
Before Fatou could answer, I said, “She can listen to him better if her mind is not on me.”
“Please, meesteres.” Fatou spoke softly and evenly.
Mistress Anna gave in and led us up steep stairs into a big room with high windows that let in light but, even in the day, lamps were lit. A long table had chairs around it. The walls, the color of honey, were shiny like the big dark desk behind which the master sat. A fire sparkled in a fireplace right next to a glassed-in cupboard that held fancy glasses and pitchers.
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