The Comet's Tale: A Novel About Sojourner Truth

By Jacqueline Sheehan

Born a slave, survived a free bondswoman, reborn an outspoken abolitionist, Sojourner Truth died a heroine of graceful proportions. But the story of her inner struggles is as powerful and provocative as her accomplishments and could be captured only in fiction. This emotionally searing novel beautifully infuses the historical atrocities of the 1800s with psychological speculation of who Sojourner Truth really was, beyond her social and political persona. Reminiscent of White Oleander, Bastard Out of Carolina, and Their Eyes Were Watching God, Jacqueline Sheehan’s book tells the story of Sojourner Truth as it has never been told before.

“I rode to earth on the backside of a comet.” So begins the story, based largely on the early life of Sojourner Truth. Born at the turn of the nineteenth century to slaves of a New York State Dutch farmer, given the name Isabella, the young child is sold off at the age of nine to a succession of owners---some cruel, some indifferent, all assuming that she, as a colored girl, is nothing more than property. But Isabella has dreams and fears and deeply felt faith that somehow see her through the indignities and beatings she must tolerate. Ultimately she triumphs against the most enormous of odds to speak out against slavery and for women’s rights as long as she draws breath.

A Comet’s Tale is a testament on one woman’s strength and a powerful lesson in courage.

PRAISE FOR A COMET’S TALE:

“...Sheehan’s writing is lively and vivid and her feel for historical detail is fine...”
-The New York Times

“...an emotionally and lyrically powerful novelization of the life of Sojourner Truth...offering a new way of looking at one of history’s greatest champions of freedom.”
-Publisher’s Weekly

“...Sheehan offers a solid portrait of slavery that also brings the child and young woman to life.”
-Kirkus Reviews

• Language: English
• Publisher: Greenforge Books
• Release date: Jul 16, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465756596

Jacqueline Sheehan

Jacqueline Sheehan, Ph.D., is a fiction writer and essayist, the bestselling author of the novels Lost & Found and Now & Then. Currently on the faculty of Writers in Progress and Grub Street in Massachusetts, she also offers international workshops on the combination of yoga and writing. She writes travel articles about lesser-known destinations and lives in Massachusetts.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

HURLEY, NEW YORK

I rode to earth on the backside of a comet. Mau Mau Bett saw me blaze across the sky and disappear into the moon, where I reined in the comet with my strong arms, tightened my thighs to make the comet turn and then scorched back again across the sky. With the last light of the comet, for I had nearly burned it up dashing around the moon, I rode until I saw a man as tall as a tree holding a burning pine knot in a smooth stone mortar. Next to him was a woman holding out her apron. I landed headfirst into her outstretched cloth, turning her apron black with my heat.

Mau Mau said every child is born a different way. Some are born by water, some by lightning, some by blizzards, and some squeeze in through the cracks in the wall. You never know until the baby arrives.

How did Peter get here? I asked.

On a strong wind.

Strong wind was right enough. The first thing every morning, Peter woke me with his farting. He started before he woke up and because we slept together, I was the one most affected. Peter was also as warm as burning wood. It was a challenge to stay warm in our cellar home and Peter’s farting or drooling on my neck was small inconvenience for his comfort.

The wet from the ground often seeped up between the boards that Bomefree and Mau Mau set on the dirt floor. It rained so hard in the land of Charles Hardenbergh that our cellar home was more often a pond than a refuge for people.

The boards were hewn by Bomefree and each one was earned by his extra work on top of his expected work for Master Charles. Every plank of wood was time spent when Bomefree squeezed out his own labors, often in the middle of the night. Peter and I slept on a sack filled with hay as did Bomefree and Mau Mau. Living in a cellar is easiest for frogs and lizards (of which we had a continual parade) who thrive in the mud and mold. At times we could have housed fish as well. If it was raining when we went to sleep, Peter and I could be sure that the water would seep through to us before morning. Peter was such a sound sleeper that often he did not notice the wet until after he woke. He was prone to say, Isabella wet the bed again. He knew I had not wet the bed. He also knew I could not answer him back in a loud voice. Our voices were never to carry beyond our cellar. Mau Mau had beat that knowledge into us early on.

Mau Mau said that when Peter slept, his spirit traveled far. It was my job to hold onto his warm body until his spirit returned. She said people who can sleep so deeply in this hard life are blessed.

Our mother fretted about the water in our home, but what I remember most is the smell of her skin not the unrelenting dampness. Later in my life, I would smell perfume, some of which came from France, and none of it compared to the skin and hair of my mother. She was named Mau Mau Bett by Colonel Hardenbergh. Her mother named her Elizabeth although none but my father ever called her by her given name.

Mr. Charles came by us when I was a baby and Peter was not yet born. We were owned first by Colonel Hardenburgh and when he died, his son Mr. Charles gained us. I do not remember our first home with the Colonel, which was a cottage with a small plot of garden space allotted to us for growing the extra that we needed. My ten older brothers and sisters were born in the cottage; all sold off or given as gifts to other Dutch folks before I was born. The Colonel named me Isabella after a queen he was partial to talking about. Mau Mau said that the few other slaves already called us the white people’s niggers because of the favored status of Bomefree and her. The old man naming me after a long dead queen from a place I later learned was called Spain only served to create a distance between us and the other colored people in Hurley. It was not easy for anyone to stay long away from Mau Mau, even if they felt that she was favored. To the disenchanted, she told them that that the Colonel was an old man and his thinking was starting to wander with his age so why else would he name a colored child after a queen? To me she whispered, He finally got one right.

Mr. Charles was better than most and if we did not steal, lie, or act disrespectfully, our chances of not being unfairly beaten were good. A fair beating was one you deserved and the strokes were given in accordance with the behavior. A fair beating came as no surprise to anyone. An unfair beating was given out for something we did not do, or was one delivered with no relationship to the wrongful behavior.

My father was called Bomefree, which is Dutch for tree. He was said to be named for his tall height and his powerful strength. I once asked him what kind of tree he was, because Mau Mau told me of many different kinds of trees. He said he was just a plain tree.

Trees had sweet bark, or smooth skin, or leaves that danced and rattled in the breeze, or bubbles of pine that could burn bright if you were lucky enough to find one on a dark walk through the woods. My mother was very fond of the white birch. We were likely to find them crashed to the ground after a fierce wind storm, so it was not for their physical strength that my mother rubbed her cheek against the moon white bark. It was for their defiance and unlikeliness in the midst of the more brutish trees that could survive lightning bolts, thick wet snow, or the porcupine ravaging teeth on the protective bark. The white birch chose to grow despite nature handing the worst conditions.

If my father was a tree, Bomefree was the kind of tree who grows on the edge of cliff and is turned different directions from the wind and it makes him hold on all the tighter as he digs his roots in harder and the trunk, roots and branches are grown gnarled and tough.

My first language was Dutch. In our part of New York, all the people, colored and white alike, spoke Dutch. It is a round language, smooth as river rocks, and there are still moments when I tumble back into Dutch when I talk to God. The first time I heard English, I was walking with my mother and Peter, carrying spun wool on instructions of Master Charles. We were all three bundled like oxen with the precious cargo of hard worked wool. A man on horseback pounded up to us on the road taking us out of Hurley. He pulled cruel on the reins, his horse striking a look that I had seen before, meaning that the horse was torn between wanting to throw off the man and fearful of the payment if he did. He spoke to us in slapping sounds as if he had no soft spot in his mouth or throat. He cracked away with his voice, getting agitated by degree as we stood waiting for sensible words to come out of him. He brought his horse closer to us, and I could smell the sweat on the animal’s tired body. The man snapped his arm at Mau Mau and made more sounds, this time with a snarl to his lips. Finally she spoke to him, saying that we were taking spun wool to a farm a day’s walk from where we stood. He arched an eyebrow at her, spoke again, she repeated her message more slowly, and he turned one ear toward her. I could see him thinking over the situation. He finally dismissed us with the flap of his hand and rode off. Mau Mau told us that people who lived farther away spoke in different words than we did but that there was no reason for us to have to learn it.

It was from Bomefree that I learned that trees do not live forever; they are born, live their life, then die. Bomefree was already in decline, his knuckles bulging and twisting by the time I grew to his waist.

I looked at my father’s knuckles and then held out my arm to look at mine. My hands were smooth and the color of fire dried acorns, of which we had many. I squeezed my hand into a fist and my knuckles poked closer to the skin making the pointy places a lighter and lighter shade of acorn. Mau Mau’s knuckles were smaller than my father’s, but larger than those of most men including Master Charles. Her fingers were long and they went in the right direction, which Bomefree’s no longer did. Mau Mau rubbed lard mixed with the bark of the quaking leaf tree into his aching joints and told him stories of summer heat and dry breezes in the land of my mother’s people. The ashy color from his knees darkened and glowed with the warmth from Mau Mau’s hands.

Oh Elizabeth, tell us a story of the children. Tell us story that will make my bones young again.

Mau Mau held in her the lives of all her children, and all those who went before her who had time to leave her a story, a touch, or enough of a spark to be remembered. Mau Mau and Bomefree had ten children before Peter and me, most of whom were sold by the old Colonel while some were offered as gifts to the other Hardenberghs of Ulster County. The taking of each one of the children was chiseled in a story of pain and Mau Mau did not spare us such stories. But we never heard a story of a child’s terrified screams without hearing a story of who this child was or how she was tied forever to Mau Mau and Bomefree and all of us.

Margaret was a first sister and we loved to hear of her in particular. To hear Mau Mau tell this story, or most of the story, warmed the bones of my old father. We sat close to my mother, in our cellar home, me with my head leaning up against her knee. Margaret was born on spring rain and flooded streams. All the snow was gone from around the cottage and all over the Colonel’s large farm. No ice firmed the river to the east and all the animals and birds were furious to birth their babies. When Mau Mau walked to the big barn to collect eggs, she saw a Robins egg, pecked in half, free of its charge. When she picked up the blue shell, she knew her child would soon be on her way. It was a spring filled with birth after a cold, white winter where many animals had starved. The snow had been too deep for the deer to forage, making them easy targets for the farmers. So many of the weakened deer were shot that even the Colonel, who was a terrible marksman, had a surplus of venison and gave a withered hindquarter to Bomefree.

Margaret gushed into this world with the snowmelt from the west mountains. Mau Mau called her tadpole for she never stopped loving the water. If Mau Mau was set to spinning wool for weeks on end, Margaret (as the Colonel named her) could be kept quiet for hours if left with a small bucket of water. To this, Margaret would add twigs, grass, feathers, and these things she would chase about in the watery sea. Like all of us, Margaret was sturdy in bones and size. When she had gone through but a few springs, she could tote her wooden bucket herself, filling it with fresh water from the well. When she was a taller child, and before the Colonel could set her to work, she spent the warm months by the stream near the cottage until the pink soles of her feet were wrinkled into a terrible mess. She had such a way with the water creatures that she took to catching the trout in the stream. Nobody ever saw her catch fish but she said she held her hands in the water until they came to her. In the last summer before she was taken away, Margaret filled her old wooden bucket with trout and did so with great frequency. It was at this time that the Colonel began to note her strength and endurance and told Mau Mau that the time would soon come to sell Margaret.

It was at this point in the story that I began to tighten up in my stomach and my blood beat faster, always hoping that the story would have a different ending. I thought that if Mau Mau would tell the ending different, then Margaret would still be catching trout and I would run up to her and say Tadpole, Tadpole even though I had never in my life seen her.

The Colonel said that he sure hoped that Mau Mau would produce more children like Margaret because she looked unusually strong and good tempered which is the best one can hope for with slaves. She was taken away by the Colonel’s brother in law who saw fit to put a bag over Margaret when he drove off with her, but he didn’t need to do that. She never made a sound, didn’t speak again until the following summer, Bomefree heard, as he had ways of finding out about all his children. When he was told she wasn’t talking, and was being beat for being feeble minded, he got permission from the Colonel to walk to where she was, which took him the full part of a day and a night. He brought her the wooden bucket and put it where her master couldn’t see it. She spoke then and was no more trouble to them.

I missed Margaret terribly when I heard this story and the sadness that it brought up in me seemed to taste like fish and smell like tadpoles. But at least I knew her from Mau Mau’s stories, and I knew her from the sadness and from the picture of pink soled feet in the stream outside a cottage when times were not so hard in some ways.

CHAPTER TWO

Master Charles never spoke a word to Mau Mau about me and Peter, about us being sold off. If we did not draw attention to ourselves, the thought of selling us might not settle occur to Master Charles.

In our cellar home, we had both an entrance to the outdoors and an entrance to the upstairs kitchen by way of a stone stairway that made several turns. The stones were most often glistening with water except for the hottest and driest seasons when the cool stones became a comfort unknown to the Hardenberghs upstairs. Mau Mau was the first to rise and she did so long before sunrise. She was mostly an indoor slave. Her day started with adding wood to the fire in the kitchen and then preparing the cooked grain for breakfast. When Peter was a baby, a time filled only with sketchy memories for me, she had to nurse the Hardenbergh’s baby Karl first thing and make sure that Peter did not suckle at all during the night. If her breasts were not full to bursting in the morning, Mrs. Hardenbergh could have her beaten with the whip or could have Mau Mau sleep outside their door to keep her from baby Peter. The trouble was, Peter howled like a wolf when he was hungry and could wake people from all over the house if Mau Mau slipped out of his sight, or more to the exact point, if her milk filled breasts moved out of his hungry sight.

Most slave mothers who are nursing white babies will teach their babies not to cry, either by whipping them, or by making a sucking cloth mixed with goat’s milk and watery mush. While most slave owners will no sooner kill a healthy slave baby than they would a healthy calf, we had heard stories of babies who were whipped if their mothers could not keep them quiet. The problem here was that the slave had to keep her baby healthy and valuable and yet not give her baby the nursing that the babe needed to stay healthy. No creature was in more danger of being killed off than an unhealthy colored baby.

Mau Mau taught me to give Peter the sucking cloth and to muffle any of his cries with a blanket. After she nursed Karl, emptied the chamber pots from each sleeping room, started the midday meal, and began the washing if it was the day for it, her breasts would fill up enough again to nurse Peter. His nose would be covered by snot and he’d be exhausted by crying and his probable lack of breathing air as I tried to cover his cries with a blanket. By then, I was about ready to throw him in the river myself.

I watched as Mau Mau cooed to him, letting him gulp away at her. She had found us in the barn, or maybe she had told me to take him to the barn and hide in the hay with him, I don’t remember. But I do remember the three of us easing into the hay as Peter finally stopped his struggling. His baby hands clutched open, close, open, close as he sucked and his eyes with his thick, black eyelashes beat time to his hands. His belly heaved, making room for as much milk as possible. He then fell asleep every time, exhausted from crying, waiting and fighting me off with the moldy blanket.

I don’t know how this body makes enough milk for both these babies. Karl is a weak sucker and wastes half the milk down my dress. It’s Peter who keeps my milk coming in so strong. He has a need to suck me dry, said my mother.

It was understood that Mau Mau could nurse Peter as long as Karl came first. She also knew never to nurse Peter so that Mrs. Hardenbergh could see. She said if she did, there would be extra work and extra trouble.

Slave babies are blessed when there is no white baby in the neighborhood who needs nursing. Mau Mau said I was able to have my fill until I took my first steps, crashing my head and bottom as a regular course. By then, another white baby was born to a daughter of the Colonel’s (as we were still with him then) and she needed a wet nurse for the winter visit. Mau Mau said she beat me off the breast. How? I asked her as Peter’s soft lips pulled on her breast, liking to drag her stretched teat straight from her body.

Don’t ask me now. You’ll learn soon enough when your babies want your breast and the white babies have to have it.

When Peter was older and both of us would take to wrestling with each other on the far side of the sheep herd if we were sent to watch the animals, he had a weak spot that would allow me to win. When he had me pinned down and it looked like all hope was off and he could be declared the winner, all I had to do was cover up his nose or his whole face if I was able. This flew him into a rage and would sometimes make him cry. I knew why he hated it so.

CHAPTER THREE

Keeping track of the sheep was a job where Peter and I found the most pleasure. We were out of sight of the farmhouse, not so much by distance but because the meadows were separated by a hill and a thick stand of trees. Our job was, among other things, to see that the arrival of new babies was reported to Mr. Daniel, the hired man. Mr. Daniel was a brown haired, white skinned man who managed the animals of the farm. If the lambs came out as they were supposed to, all wobbly legged at first then knocking their heads at their mother’s teats, we could wait until we drove the sheep back to the barn late in the day to tell him of the event. During lambing season, when lambs were popping out every which way, the sheep were brought into a fenced area near the farmhouse. This was to protect the lambs from being eaten by wild cats who found them an easy meal.

Daniel rarely spoke to us. He might say, sheep or fences. He spoke fewer words to us than he did to his dog, who drove the sheep hard by nipping near their heels. The dog was long-haired, and her soft dark fur hung off her sides, bobbing as she ran. She ran low to the ground, nipping if she needed to make them change direction, then lay in the grass watching, waiting for one of them to get out of order. Then she leapt into action and started all over again. She did not stay all day with the sheep as we did in the spring, only when it was time to drive them from one pasture to another.

The dog’s name was Mutton. She had cream colored paws and snout. When Mutton was not working with the sheep, she was with Daniel. He had hand signals for Mutton that we learned one spring. Across the field, Daniel would raise his right arm, pointing it across his chest and we and Mutton knew to go right with the sheep. If he did the same thing with his left arm, we went off the other way. Our lessons were held in the outer field with Daniel booming out solitary commands.

It was toward the end of spring when Peter and I came to tell Daniel that two lambs arrived in the field. We raced across the meadow, through the opening in the trees and up the grassy lane to the barnyard. We started to tell him how exciting, how red was the blood and how the mother had eaten the sac around the lamb and other raw parts that looked like liver. He gave us the sign for quiet and sit. We had been with Mutton for so long that both Peter and I sat in the dirt stopped talking. Mutton was given a fresh bone from the stew for her hard work. Peter and I were dismissed with the release sign from Daniel. We raced across the yard to the cellar door to find Mau Mau to tell her about the big liver thing that comes out of the sheep after the baby comes. We saw her standing in the window of the kitchen looking out at us. We knew not to go inside the house unless we were told, so we went in search of Bomefree. We found him stacking wood and we helped him as we told our birthing news.

That night, Mau Mau took to one of her crying spells from which she could not be consoled. When this happened, Bomefree was no help in relieving her. Her crying spell made my father crash about, slamming the iron pot to the floor when he burned his fingers on the handle. It was as if Mau Mau’s spells hurt Bomefree’s skin, scraping him deep, slicing open the shiny scars on his back that ran diagonally from shoulder to waist. He would do anything to make her stop, to stop the way her cries pierced his skin.

Mau Mau could work up a wail and if she was going to wail, she would leave the cellar to get all the noise out of her, past the ear shot of Hardenbergh’s house. In this case, she wrapped her shawl around her shoulders and head. She was moaning deep and rocking her upper body.

They are not dogs. My children are not dogs, she said.

I didn’t know what struck this sorrow in her because I knew we weren’t dogs. Peter and I looked at each other sideways and wondered where our mother got the idea that we were dogs. Mostly we wondered if we were in trouble and would have to answer for it in the strap or the stick.

Peter said, Mutton is a dog.

Peter liked to clear up muddy waters. I could see he offered this bit of news as a way to save the situation.

This made our mother moan again and Bomefree hissed, It’s not my fault Betsy. What can I do, what do you expect me to do?

She was in the doorway, bending her head, ready to shrink down her tall form to make her way out our door. The whites of her eyes were shot through with red till I feared blood would run out the corners and down her face.

I will not have them trained like dogs. They were not born into this world to be trained as dogs.

Bomefree stood still, the cold night air pouring over him. He was halted by the words of our mother.

I will do it, I will speak to Mr. Hardenbergh.

Mau Mau left the cellar door and ran into the cold spring night, leaving us to ponder what had gone wrong and what was the price we would pay. The rules of existence had been made clear to us by our parents; if we were not working, then stay clear of the Hardenberghs or any of the white people. If the white people told us to do something, we were not to question them. It was Mau Mau’s hope that if everything went without trouble, we might all be able to stay together at the Hardenbergh’s farm. Mau Mau would not be having more children arriving by water, wind, or from comets. I didn’t understand how she knew this but I didn’t question her wisdom. Because we were to be her last children, Mr. Hardenbergh might be reluctant to sell us.

There was also talk of a new law that might let slave families stay together. Mau Mau told us about this law (which she explained was a rule that white people decide on) because she had heard about it from Mr. and Mrs.Hardenburgh’s arguments. They had considerable arguments, followed by further loud noises from their bedroom.

Mr. Hardenbergh traveled to Albany to help with the making of laws, particularly about the unfairness he saw happening to the Dutch.

We are being squeezed out of our right to farm. We are slowly giving every damn thing away. We were the first ones here. We brought the slaves here. We shall do as we damn well please, said Master Charles.

I had this part memorized. He said this all the time. It came up with every visit from his brother Emory, with the men after church every Sunday, every time he prepared for a trip up river to Albany, and as a way to start an argument with Mrs.Hardenbergh.

She was a yellow haired woman one head shorter than Mau Mau. What with her yellow hair, light skin and blue eyes, she had a ghost-like appearance. As I understood ghosts from Peggy the hired girl, they were light and almost see through. That’s just what Mrs. Hardenburgh seemed like to me. From across the yard, I couldn’t see her eyebrows, lips, or eyes.

I also memorized what Mrs. Hardenburgh answered back to her husband during their evening arguments.

The Negroes will be the death of us. We have some good ones here, but I’ve seen others in New York City, in Albany, who have murder in their eyes. It’s too much work taking care of them, feeding them, selling off the little ones. We have the hired help. If you weren’t so tight with the money, we’d only have the hired help.

Their arguments about slaves were never any different. They might interrupt each other, repeat what they just said, accuse each other of being crazy, lazy, too lenient with slaves, ruining the blacks for sale, and worse.

The day after Mau Mau’s crying spell, Bomefree was awake before any of us, drinking a root tea that Mau Mau hoped would relieve the stiffening and twisting of his fingers and joints. He sat on the chair he had made from alder wood. In his younger days, Bomefree was known for the furniture that he made of willow, alder, and pine. He bartered chairs and tables among the hired help and the few traveling tinkers who appeared in our part of the valley for which he got cloth, dried meat, sewing needles, and other comforts of life. The chair in which he now sat was tall backed and high seated for his long legs.

My father smoked a clay pipe. Not often and never before noon. His soft, full lips tugged at the stem of the pipe, drawing in the tobacco that he was allowed to grow for his own use. To see Bomefree smoking so early in the day meant something was off. I went outside in the dim light.

I pumped a bucket of water from the well and drank a ladle full of it to wash away the thick taste of sleep. I carried the bucket down to the cellar, emptied it into the jug by the door, and poured the rest into the kettle hung over the fire. I kept Bomefree in my sight the whole time. He had not moved except to gaze into the small fire and tap his pipe from time to time. I looked over at Mau Mau’s sleeping mat. She lay facing the wall, her knees pulled close to her body, making her look folded up. From the quietness that came from her, I knew she was awake.

I went back to the well to pump another bucket of water for the Hardenbergh’s kitchen. This was Mau Mau’s job but she had recently turned it over to me. She said it was important to have the jugs filled with fresh water in the kitchen, to have the water going hot over the fire for tea and porridge, and it was especially important not to spill any water, which Mrs. Hardenburgh regarded as a sign of slovenliness.

My mother was a confusion to me. She picked jobs for me based on her idea of what would please the Hardenburgh’s. But she said she walked a narrow bridge because she didn’t want them to sell me off. So I needed to be valuable just to them and to no one else. Mau Mau’s consuming passion was to keep us all together. I did not spill a drop of water from the bucket, not even when I lifted the latch on the kitchen door, or poured the water into the kettle.

Bomefree was gone when I returned and Mau Mau was shaking out her cotton dress with sharp snaps. Wake your brother, Isabella. How can he sleep through my noise?

Peter and I took flatbread in our pockets and headed out to the sheep corral where Mr.Daniel was opening the gate to drive the animals to pasture. The lambs were trotting close to their mothers. We spent a good part of the day watching how the lambs pull hard on the sheep’s teats, yanking milk. I tried to get Peter to pretend to be a lamb and to tug hard at the teats with his mouth but the sheep wouldn’t let him get that close. He came close to getting his head kicked by hard hooves.

When Peter and I drove the sheep and the lambs back across the two meadows and through the opening in the stone wall leading back to the farm, we could see Daniel and Mr. Hardenbergh standing together. Bomefree was stiff and off to one side. Mutton was with us of course, nipping at the heels of the sheep, keeping them from running off in the wrong direction. One more lamb had been born. We delivered the news to Daniel as we had been instructed to do.

One more lamb, Mr. Daniel. She stood as soon as she hit the ground.

Mr. Hardenbergh and Mr. Daniel paid no attention to my news of good fortune for the farm.

Show me what these children have learned Daniel. I don’t quite understand what you’ve been teaching them.

Mr. Daniel said, Get and Mutton ran to the center of the farm yard and lay down, keeping her eyes dead center on Mr. Daniel. Peter and I scrambled after her and squatted on either side of her. We kept our eyes on Daniel too.

Mau Mau had given us no warning of this. Was this one of the things that would make Mr. Charles sell us off or was this one of the skills that he would particularly need, letting us stay together? Should we show him how we know every command of Daniel’s? What if we do and the next day a wagon pulls up for me or for Peter of for both of us? A wagon had come for each one of my sisters and brothers. Should we feign ignorance?

Peter and I stole a look at each other over Mutton’s head. Do it, I hissed at him.

Daniel raised his right arm and the three of us ran off in that direction, following the point of his hand.

Show me what they do with sheep. Bring out the sheep, said our master.

I looked at Mr. Daniel. He nodded. I lifted the latch on the rail fence and let out a handful of sheep, hoping that it was the right amount.

No lambs you idiot, said Daniel.

This was the longest string of words he had ever spoken to me. I wanted to tell him that I knew not to run the lambs needlessly but that it was impossible to get the mothers out without the new babies. Daniel did not take being spoken to and certainly not in front of Mr. Charles Hardenbergh. I picked up the two lambs that bleated to their mamas and put