Chapter 29

Maple

Standing in Master’s study is like being in a cage with books on every side of you trapping you in. I once knew a slave who could have read them. A reading slave. Master Jeremiah bought him that way and, when he found out, he blinded him.

Master sits at his desk and points me to the chair across from him. I stand behind it, figuring he forgot himself, and I don’t want to be sitting there when he comes back to his senses. He picks up a letter and puts it back down again.

“I’ve heard back from my father-in-law about buying your daughter.”

From the flat line of his mouth, I know what he’s gonna say, but I still clasp my hands, hoping.

“I’m afraid he’s not inclined to sell.”

There’s a dropping in my stomach like falling from a cliff.

“It seems Rose is held in particular fondness.” The pulled down line of his mouth says he don’t think much of that.

My dropping feeling shoves outward, pushing up the hairs on my arms. Fondness ain’t always a thing you want Jeremiah Keeler feeling for you. But he’s her grandfather. Much as he don’t want to admit that, he surely wouldn’t forget it.

It feels like I got a fire blazing in my head, but my voice comes out soft as spring leaves when I ask, “Master Keeler take a shine to my Rose?”

He turns two shades whiter than his natural-born white, seeing what I’m asking. He shakes his head. “His nephew, Nathaniel Keeler, has become a frequent visitor. My father-in-law tells me that your daughter is a particular comfort to him.” He dips his chin, looks at his desk.

I grip at the high-back chair in front of me, clutching with both hands. Nathaniel Keeler is the worst kind of no good. Hearing his name splits me open like gutting catfish. I want to scream. I want to pound my fists and tear the walls down. Time was, he made me his special comfort. I get hot and cold with the shame of thinking about those days. How he liked to grab at me when folks turned their backs. How he’d laugh when he scared me, springing out from behind the smoke house. How he smiled when he called me and I came, trembling. How he made me look at him when he did what he did.

That last winter he came to stay, he’d wait for me to lay the morning fire in his room. When I got it going, he’d close the door and lay me down on the cold floorboards. One hand on my mouth in case I howled.

I never talked to Freddy about it but, when Rose came out dark brown, he lay his cheek to hers and called her “my child” and cried over her. And he thanked God.

I thanked God that after Rose, Master Nathaniel stopped coming around the plantation. Maybe he didn’t like that she was my husband’s baby. Maybe he just got busy somewhere else.