Wild, Beautiful, and Free

by Sophfronia Scott

If I, at age six, seven, or eight, should know better, why shouldn’t big people older than that know the same?

To me the word mother is the same as father because he was so completely both to me.

I was a slave and an orphan, and I didn’t care if I never spoke again, because no words could catch all the damn hopelessness running at me.

“I don’t need no church. I feel God around me all the time, even when I was little. Don’t need no white man waving a big old book at me to tell me about God. And I suspect that white man making up a lot of what he talks about anyway.”

Like how, with each encounter with Boss Everett, my heart reconsidered the story of Jean Bébinn and my mama and my living in the world. I thought about what it had been like for my mama, whether Papa had gone stealing into her bed and, night by night, taking her soul away in pieces.

“I’m not good at carrying a baby.” I put my arms around her. “It’s not your fault,” I said. “You’re good at everything.”

“So I went in there and got my money and gave it to her. That was six months ago. Ain’t seen a dime from her since.” “But that’s not right.” “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?”

“I used to be scared. Scared enough to be scared for every soul under this roof. Scared about being cold, scared about not having enough to eat, scared about gettin’ whipped.” He sat in a corner, cleaning and polishing boots. “What happened?” “Just got tired of being scared, I guess. It didn’t do nothing.

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. I didn’t know how they could look at each other after that.

As her baby grew, I felt a resentment growing within me. It was like I was watching my papa and mama’s story play out in front of me—my mama having no choice but to take Papa into her bed. Giving birth to a child who could never have any place or standing in the world.

“Don’t it make you mad?” “Mad about what? Mad my mama left? About getting whipped? That’s the way things are. What good would it do to be mad? I’d have to be mad every day.”

Now I can tell you what I’d be mad at.” “What?” “If you let all that being mad turn you into something else, like a different girl from when you come here. That girl? She special.”

“What did he want you to know, Jeannette?” “That he loved me. That he loved my mama.”

Now you can go round here feeling bad like I seen you doing, or you can walk like you loved. Nobody can touch that

I looked at Missus Everett and saw the purple welt bleeding on her chin and realized I could hate this woman, but what would I be hating? I saw a soul so sad and furious she didn’t know herself. And I was no more to her than a spider she wanted to crush underfoot. I’d have to work hard, make numerous changes in my brain, to create hate for such a pitiful person. What would I have to mold myself into to conjure such hate? Fanny had been right. I wouldn’t be myself if I did it.

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.

Since Fanny and her baby had died, I didn’t consider myself on good speaking terms with God.

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.

If I killed Madame, I would never be rid of her. She’d be in my blood, itching and impatient—a ghost underneath my skin. I didn’t want that. And more in line with what Miss Maude was saying, Madame didn’t deserve it. She didn’t deserve to have so much of me. But, I decided, that wouldn’t stop me from hoping bad things might happen to her all on their own.

She had spoken what I most wanted to hear—that it was possible for me to be independent and look after myself in the world.

a quiet life didn’t mean an unchanging one.

Should I wait now, and for how long? Maybe only long enough to figure out my plan. Not a day longer. Because suddenly I was that impatient—three years of calm had evaporated within an afternoon. I wanted my life to begin, a real life, with the independence Papa had once envisioned for me.

I didn’t think too kindly of the world, that’s for sure. I was prone to believe I had value because I’d seen it in Papa’s eyes. And I was God’s child, too, which meant everything. That was what I believed, and because I believed it, it was hard for me to accept what little was offered to me, a girl the world only saw, as Madame had pointed out, as a little nigger girl. It didn’t seem right, not when Papa had meant for me to be more.

“I don’t concern myself with what I can’t change, sir. I know who I am. I know what I look like.”

I tried to say that we didn’t treat our slaves badly, but of course that was such a shallow argument. We were holding human beings in bondage.

‘When you die, Christian, will that be your argument to God? That you enslaved his creation but treated them well?’

He kept asking how the plantation would run without the slaves. I told him I didn’t see why we couldn’t pay people. Did we really need to make the level of profit that kept us in luxury?

“You have more places where you can be. You have money. You have land. And forgive me for saying so, but you’re a white man. This country is made for you because men like you made it. Someone like me? I’m not even supposed to be here, let alone have the freedom to live like I want. It’s not the same; that’s all I’m trying to say. We’re not the same.”

I knew, and it pained me to think it, that love flourishes when it is least supposed to do so. Wasn’t that the story of my own parents? Had reason had any influence in that case?

“But I know my own value,” I said as I pulled away from him. “I’m not afraid to be alone, because it is what I have always been. I know how to be apart and solitary and still know that I am loved.”

Them soldiers? They do the fighting in the field, but you just as brave as they are.”

“I wouldn’t want to think like white people do. If being lighter means I might see myself as better than someone else, I don’t want no part of that.”

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

“He the other side, right? He want us in chains, would take you and me right back down to Holloway’s. Probably wouldn’t lift a finger to save my life.” I went to him and put my arms around him. “But you did bring him in.” “That’s because I realized”—Silas swallowed and pulled away—“under the uniform his body was the same as all the other wounded. He a man, somebody’s baby. Like we all one.

Yes, called by my name, but free to run toward my heart, toward whatever my life held in store for me. And it would be all right. God would not, would never, forsake me.

Learning to read must have given him a way to escape the nightmare of all the fighting as the war dragged on. It made me feel like I’d really done something. For all the men I couldn’t help heal, I had taught some of them how to read. And now here was a kind of healing happening because of it.

Small moments of grace and happiness comforted my heart, and I was glad of it. If such things no longer moved me, I would be in danger.

“It’s the cycle of it all,” he said. “Knowing that it’s still going on, even though I’m not there.

“Yes, life going on. You’re right. That’s mighty comforting.”

I paused as the sting of that first blow came back to me. It was shocking how the pain could be so alive.

She was the only thing keeping me going every day. We were cold sometimes and hungry sometimes and tired all the time. But we were together.

“Can I stay in here, with you?” I was afraid to wake up in the morning alone.

“Someone taught me that a person takes risks for what and whom one loves.”

‘Don’t make up fights that aren’t there,’

‘Take care of what’s in front of you, what you have now. Don’t waste time being afraid.’

We talk constantly, even when he is away, because in my mind, always, I am thinking about what I will tell him when he returns, and I cannot wait to hear what has happened to him in my absence. All my trust is given to him; all his trust is devoted to me. He is my love as I am his.

I 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 I think he envisioned me as alone and obscure, a beloved china doll kept well and safe in a cabinet. Instead I am vibrantly full of family, life, and love. And I am myself, with nothing hidden or pretended.