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That night, Rachel prepared herself to see Micah in her dreams, but he never came. After a dreamless sleep, she woke in the early hours of the morning, to see only the shadows of Mercy, Cherry Jane and Thomas Augustus standing by her, while Nobody and Mary Grace lay next to each other, sharing the bed for the first time. For Micah to have left even her unconscious—that was too much. Finally, tears flowed again. She sat there in the dark, stifling her sobs to avoid waking the others, while her still-lost, maybe-dead children looked on gravely.
Rachel did not doubt, in that moment, as she watched a vein throbbing in his temple, that Mr. Beaumont would beat her. That he would fabricate some charge out of spite and have the Georgetown police arrest her and throw her in jail. That he would send word to Barbados and seek out her old master. There were no limits to his malice—and yet, though her heart was racing, Rachel stood tall. Her hands gripped the bar behind her, and she refused to blink. “No,” she said. Whatever Mr. Beaumont had been expecting, this was clearly not it.
Good for you, Rachel!
My father, the others in the village who spent time on the river, they always said if you keep quiet and you respect the caiman, he won’t hurt you, and I always believed them, but . . .” He closed his eyes, swallowed hard. “The one that came to the village. There was a baby crawling down by the riverbank. The caiman leaped out of the water and grabbed the baby. I was the only one that saw it happen.”
Dang, nature! You scary.
“They are living the life my mother wanted,” Nuno said. “The inland life, far from the white man. But he says it is hard. Many of my people come from the coast, and sometimes they bring the white man’s sickness with them. He says there were many of them in his village once, but now it is just him, his wife and the child. They hear that the white man comes closer each day. People say they see boats on the river—not so far up as here, but in time they will come. He and his family will journey farther into the forest, because he fears this home will not last.”
“Thomas Augustus say he born in Barbados.” “Me come a long way to find him.”
!!!! So he’s alive??!
She felt rather than heard Tituba speak, a distorted sound vibrating through the water. She got back to her feet. “Sorry, what you say?” Tituba was also standing. Water from the ends of her hair ran down her chest, along the stripes on her stomach and down into the river. “I said you are not happy here.” Rachel dropped her gaze, watching the water moving around her body. Tituba continued. “It seems like there is something on your mind.” Rachel managed to look up and meet Tituba’s eyes. She was afraid that admitting her unease was an insult, after all the runaways had done. But standing before
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She wondered if Tituba was right. Perhaps she, like so many others, was struggling with the gap between freedom as she had imagined it and freedom as it was. The question that had dogged her every so often, ever since the first morning after emancipation, resurfaced— What now?
“Me glad you come here.” Thomas had to lean in close to make himself heard over the beat of the drums. “Me glad, too,” said Rachel. “Me never hope . . . me did not imagine it. You, here. It seem impossible. So . . . me glad.” Of all the words he had spoken to her since their first reunion, this speech—quiet, fragmented, his voice cracking a little at the end—moved her the most.
The boat was lighter now, too, which helped its speed. They had left Nuno behind in the village, as he had no desire to come back downriver to all the sites where he had suffered.
He held her gaze, and accepted her touch without tensing or recoiling, hinting at by far the biggest change within him. He had settled into himself, no longer a wild, lost little boy ready to fight or flee at a moment’s notice, though his eyes showed that there was still a little of the old wariness left inside him.
What did they see in this marshy place that made them so eager to kill one another to have it? But then, Rachel had always been confused by the lengths to which white men would go for the sake
of possession.
They would search all they could, then when the money ran out, they would leave, and take their chances elsewhere.
Oh nvm, she said we not gonna offer any labor this go-round
Rachel wasted no time. She worked her way methodically around the square, asking about Mercy. Sometimes, she received only stares, or apologetic murmurs in unfamiliar tongues. Some people were a little more sympathetic as they told her that no, they knew no one by that name.
hand. Rachel’s gaze was drawn to the center of the room, where a woman in a pink dress had thrown back her head in laughter. The woman turned. Her eyes met Rachel’s through the window and the shimmering heat of the street outside, and Rachel knew. It was so impossible, and yet the force of knowing stopped her in her tracks, almost bowled her over. “Cherry Jane.” At first barely a whisper. Then louder. “Cherry Jane!”
Imagine looking for one daughter and seeing another daughter who was thought to be lost, not only living but in high society circles.
A man stood next to the woman that Rachel was certain was her daughter. His skin was so fair he looked white. He frowned and put a hand on Cherry Jane’s arm, his mouth forming words that Rachel could not hear. “Cherry Jane!” Rachel was now pressed against the glass, and she watched as her daughter looked to the man beside
her, shook her head and turned away. Some of the others in the room were gesticulating to Rachel, their message clear. One of the servants came right up to the window, glaring. “Go on or me gon’ fetch the police,” she said, her voice muffled through the glass. Cherry Jane, her back still turned to her mother, disappeared out of the room.
Ooooooo Cherry Jane. She dont even know what her momma been through to find her and she acting like she doesnt know her. WOW.
Had she imagined it? She doubted her senses. How could Cherry Jane be here? Of all the places, on all the islands—here? And in this grand house, with all those elegant people? Rachel was becoming an expert in all the impossible paths a life could take—away from plantations and across oceans or into forests. Yet this vision of her daughter in a pink dress was the one thing her mind could not accept. Cherry Jane could not have been taking tea in a grand reception room with an almost-white man, when in Barbados she had been little more than a house slave.
Cherry Jane passing??
Walking back to the inn, Rachel’s chest began to ache, the way it had so often ached for the sake of her children. This time, the pain was like acid, hollowing out her heart. With a few deep breaths, she was able to banish it. She had come too far and lived too much for such bitterness. She would see Cherry Jane once more—this daughter who would rather invent a new mother for herself than be seen in the street with the mother she had—and then she would leave.
I'd be so upset if I journeyed and suffered to find my children and one of them, after believing it was impossible to find them, wants to deny who I am smh
She had borne much in her life, but to have her own child look down on her was at the limit of what she could tolerate. Mary Grace put her hand on Rachel’s shoulder. The tiniest gesture, but through it, she asserted herself. She asserted the worth of all of them, refused to let them be seen as small by her sister.
She tried to keep her mind blank, to control its restlessness, focusing on the simple sensations of the sun’s warmth on her face, the cool water lapping around her ankles and the slight burning of the smoke as it filled the inside of her nose and the back of her throat.
A form of meditation
Mary Grace touched her mother’s arm, a gesture that made clear her resolve to walk whenever and wherever Rachel wanted. But there was no mistaking Mary Grace’s touch for a sign of meekness, or a willingness to put others’ needs before her own. Rachel often worried that Mary Grace was giving up too much to join her on their journey around the Caribbean—a settled life with Nobody, a chance to be happy rather than chasing after brothers and sisters who might be dead or gone, or so deep into lives of their own that they could not be persuaded to rejoin a broken family.
Mary Grace who led the way, started walking again and did not stop, not as the rain pounded their skin, soaked their clothing, their hair, dribbled into the corners of their eyes.
Sensing some foreshadowing here
“You must go,” said Mercy. “It’s not safe.” “The overseer?” said Rachel. “Yes.” “We already meet him.” Mercy blinked a few times. The words did not seem to sink in. “We already meet him,” Rachel repeated. “He offer us work. We take it so we can come to the village. To you.”
Rachel, this was a bad decision
By the time they all went back to the village on the cusp of nightfall, Rachel was flushed with the thrill of her new discovery—that she had no interest in the kind of life she had once lived, resigned to doing someone else’s bidding.
Um, what delusion is Rachel experiencing? She literally signed them up for slavery. This new feeling of determination within means very little when you signed your newlywed daughter and her hubby into "apprenticeship," which you JUST escaped from last yr
Mr. Thornhill cut Mercy down, her legs giving way as she slid to the floor. Her back was a mess of angry red welts of flesh, ribboned with strips of hanging skin.
Smh whipping on a pregnant woman, especially after you killed her husband, is too much
She saw, in the whites of his eyes, that he felt the same way she did. He immediately glanced toward the forest. He said nothing out loud—they did not want to risk frightening Mercy—but a look passed between them. Nobody left the women by the bank and headed for the trees. He would stand watch. If Thornhill came, they could not run—not with Mercy like this—but at least death would not take them by surprise.
The feeling was at once universal—an animal instinct she knew she shared with all things—and singular. It was the urgent thought that she must deliver this baby that, through Mercy, carried her own blood inside it. Mary Grace started rubbing Mercy’s back again, more insistently this time. Rachel spoke to the rhythm of Mary Grace’s hands. “Breathe, Mercy. Breathe and push.” Mercy’s whimpering was punctuated by howls of pain, but the howls, the hands and Rachel’s gentle commands all pulsed together. They worked as one to bring the baby forth. The noises Mercy made grew deeper, more guttural.
