She rubs her head and hangs her mouth open like she can’t believe I hit her. I know she’s scared of me. She should be scared of me.

She swallows and her brown eyes go small. “You keep on and I’ll tell Bessie you’re stopping me from helping Ben.” Ain’t no force behind her quiet voice.

I spit air through my lips to show her what I think of that. “Bessie ain’t got nothing to say over Miss Martha,” I say, and snatch up a rag to take her pot of weeds off my fire and out of my kitchen.

“No,” she says, standing between me and her pot like she thinks she’s gonna block my way. “But if Bessie tells Master, he’s gonna take her side in it. Bessie raised him up from a babe.”

I make a warning face and plant my hands on both hips. Miss Sassy-thing needs to learn her place. I got half a mind to tell Miss Martha to stick this one in the fields.

“Cooked for him till she went blind,” she says. “And he still talks about how he misses her cornbread.”

I squeeze on the rag in one hand and slap her across her head again with the other. Ain’t no way this uppity thing is coming into my kitchen and talking about my cooking after what she and Bessie done.

She jerks away from me and flings her arms up around her head in case I come back again for another blow.

“Miss Martha gonna take your side,” she says, “but Master got the say around here. Ain’t no way he’s gonna side with you over Bessie. And maybe not even over me.” She brings her arms down and juts out her chin. A challenge.

She’s been getting uppity ever since that night she stood by watching me nearly get whipped for something she and Bessie did, with Master’s words making her bold: You’re mighty fortunate Sarah was here. I swipe at a bundle of her dried herbs on the table beside us, knocking them to the floor. “You better clean your mess up out of my kitchen. I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to smell it. And if you got so much extra time to be brewing up potions, then you need more work.” I step toward her, crowding her till she steps back. “You scrub that porch, front and back. Them pillars too. And you best get it done before dinner ’cause you gonna be serving. And washing up after.” I throw the rag into her simmering pot and leave her to it.

April 1849

Chapter 9

Sarah

I walk along a dirt road running through an open stretch of scrub sprinkled sparse with trees. I been five days at the Welleby plantation, rented out to Edith Welleby on account of she’s expecting her fourth child and wants just about her whole house redone before that baby comes. I been sewing curtains till I can’t see straight no more. Don’t know how much she’s paying Master for my work, but that woman was hell-bent on getting her money’s worth.