Wild, Beautiful, and Free

by Sophfronia Scott

What mattered was her husband loved a slave, loved her enough to bring her into his house, into a white person’s bed, to bear his child.

five thousand acres, called Petite Bébinn. It was land Papa had set aside for me, on which he planned to build me a house so I could be free and safe. It was land that would give me a living.

I’d known Papa’s warmth longer than I’d known the heat of the sun.

“The land belongs to us. Papa always said so.” “We’ll see about that. You may be fair enough, but at the end of the day you’re just a little nigger girl. You have to go where you can remember that.”

I was old enough to know that being angry wasn’t easy. Dorinda used to say that cursing someone wasn’t a matter of spittin’ out words. You had to stay focused on the curse, nursing the words and the hurt, and after a while you wouldn’t even know that some part of you was still working the curse, because it got so deep inside you.

“Who gon’ say so? Me? A court of law? Girl, I know you smarter than that. If the children I birthed from my own body aren’t mine, what claim I got to three hundred dollars?”

They were being whipped at the same time, so both man and woman cried out in a way that was both frightening and unseemly, like a man should never have to hear his wife screaming like that, and she shouldn’t have to hear him plead for mercy.

The changes in my body embarrassed me. Maybe this was why Calista had kept to herself so much before Papa had died. It felt like all I wanted to do was cover myself up. I think those were the loneliest days of my life. If this was what it meant to become a woman, then the condition didn’t have much to offer, as far as I could see.

“Even if they don’t catch you, killing anything hurts your soul. Ain’t none of these white men worth you harming your soul. Remember that. They’ve taken enough of us, and they don’t get any more. Your soul is precious. You wound them, and that’ll be just fine. Understand?”

Seemed like humans were killing humans so that humans could have the right to be humans.

“If I’m supposed to be doing it, wouldn’t I know that by now? Wouldn’t I be moved like you? Wouldn’t I hear a call?” “Maybe you’re not listening good.”

think about how this is and isn’t the life Papa wanted for me. He wanted me to be protected, to have a home and not want for anything. That I am, and that I have. But

We live, no matter what is happening, in a shining, perfect now.