“Isaac,” I call out. His eyes snap over to me. I touch the wooden carving I wear on a string round my neck and Isaac nods at me. He says my name and something else I can’t make out.

“Come on, boy. Don’t dawdle. I didn’t buy you to dawdle.” The fat man tugs on the rope and Isaac stumbles after, led away like an old cow.

My whole chest squeezes in tight. I want to scream out, but I know better than that. The tears creep down my cheeks and I rock back and forth, my arms hugging at my knees. Mister Maddox reaches down and jerks me to my feet.

“Wipe your face and perk up, girl. I won’t have you driving down your price looking like that.”

My stomach knots and my hands tremble, but I do like he says. The tears come back again.

“Look here,” he says, quiet in my ear. “If you want to stay a house slave, you better cut out all that crying. No one wants to hear you blubbering all day long.”

I nod and he waits for me to stop, but I can’t.

Nostrils flaring, he says, “You’re going to cost me money, girl. I’ll be damned if I let you get yourself sold as a field slave.”

I cringe from him, but I also wipe my face and stretch my mouth to a smile, trying to look like I won’t be no trouble to nobody. I don’t know what he paid for me, but I know Master George wouldn’t let me go for no field slave price. And I know field slave work would break me in two.

I can tell my smile don’t sit right ’cause Mister Maddox looks me up and down, scratching his chin-stubble and frowning. He pulls at my clothes and pushes at my breasts till he’s got me just about popping out of the top of my dress. I want to slap his hands away. Instead, I blink back my tears before they spill out and he sees them. He looks me over again and nods, and then he pulls me to the block and orders me up.

The auction block is as high as a table with just one step for climbing up. I grip the rough edges with both hands to keep me steady as I struggle on.

Beside me, the auctioneer points with his cane, calling me a prime house girl. He makes me turn in a circle while he boasts about how quick I clean, and how I never been a day sick, which is a bold-faced lie. He don’t say a thing about knowing the healing herbs. Guess white folks don’t care about that. Guess quick-cleaning-slave-who-don’t-get-sick is about all they need to hear.

Then they start in with the money.

There’s near on twenty men crowded round, but only four of them that’s bidding. Right in front of me stands a raggedy man with caterpillar eyebrows who looks like the liquor got hold of him. He’s staring at what Mister Maddox done to my breasts. He don’t put his eyes nowhere but there, and I’m some kind of glad he ain’t bidding. It gets up to seven hundred and they start to slowing down. Then the raggedy man says seven hundred and ten and my heart takes a panic jump right up to my throat. I start praying, not him, Lord, not him. Someone else bids and it all starts up again, but this time that man is hollering out prices with the rest of them. Ain’t no secret what he’s after me for.