Maybe Be Auntie had no choice. Maybe after so many times of being beaten in the fields by Massa only to return, scarred, to the shack to be beaten by her lover’s hand, she had finally decided to yield. Maybe she thought she could influence manhood in another way, shower them with a tenderness they could carry with them and share with other women they encountered, if they remembered. That was the problem. The desire for power erased memory and replaced it with violence. And Be Auntie had the bruises to prove it. Nearly every woman did.
