Good Dirt

by Charmaine Wilkerson

She is no stranger to keeping time by what she has lost.

In this way, Master Oldham was just like other men. Quick to look away when there was something that he did not wish to see.

“As if a slave who sails the seas with the permission of his master doesn’t have eyes and ears of his own. He’s a man, is he not? He has a tongue to tell stories of what he has seen and heard, does he not?

“There will always be men willing to steal the freedom of others if they think it will bring them an advantage,”

But in the meantime, they were out there, seeing the world, learning things, and carrying the stories of what they’d experienced from one shore to another.

“Our ancestors have been going to sea for as long as anyone can remember. It is only natural that some of us return to ride the waves. To listen for the voices of those who went before us. We cannot undo the worst days of our past, but we can always look to better days. A man might have fear, young Willis, but he lives all the same.”

Words had the power to feed resistance, and for this, an enslaved person who could read and write words would continue to be feared.

But this was no monster. Willis had lived among monsters. Willis was running from monsters. No, this was one of God’s creatures. Like those stars at night, this was the world that God had intended. This was the world as it was meant to be.

And so Willis from the South Carolina backcountry became Edward Freeman in Massachusetts. Because words had the potential to remake a man.

Why is it that some people in this world feel so little responsibility toward others? How is it that the man she loved turned out to be one of those?

Is this what it means to be a woman? To be nearly thirty years old and still afraid to say what you want in life? Or, at the very least, what you don’t want? Sometimes, Avery thinks, one of the hardest things in life is, simply, to sit with yourself and allow yourself to be. Listen to your instincts. Admit that you don’t always know how to move forward. Or, rather, that you think you know how to move forward but are afraid to take that first step.

“Dad, you taught us that our family’s connection to the jar was special. And I believe that. I respect that. But maybe Willis was wrong about something. Maybe Old Mo was never meant to be ours alone. Maybe the Freemans were only meant to be caretakers of its story until it could be shared with others.”

Perhaps the only way to cope with loss, or guilt, is to name it and defy its potential to destroy you.

Maybe all you can do is give yourself permission to embrace the rest of your life. To play, to love, to risk. To take the beauty that someone brought into your life and share it.

We may think of love as something that cannot be quantified or held in one’s hands, and yet we know that through that system, love could be stolen from people, for a fee. And so, too, their future.

History, too often, has been told from only certain perspectives. This is not good enough. History is a collective phenomenon. It can only be told through a chorus of voices. And that chorus must make room for new voices over time.

In the beginning, Old Mo had been full of possibility, just like a person. Even in its final form, the jar has continued to transform people’s lives, just as they, in turn, are leaving their mark on the life story of Old Mo. Soh loves that jar more than ever. She loves to think that something that has been broken can be pieced back together.

There are no words for this moment. There are no words to capture the meaning of a person’s life.

They are the words that Moses wrote after Betsey lost her life. They are the words that Willis saw before he decided to make a run for freedom. They are the words that Ebby’s dad showed to her mom on the day that he led her into his family’s library. The students have written the words exactly as they appear on the jar: The Mind Cannot Be Chained Ebby nods as she reads the words again. At least, this, she thinks. At least, this.