He did not answer immediately, and she waited. “How could I believe that? He’s married to you!”

“It’s true. He is your father.”

The boy looked away, wondering about it.

“How old are you?” she asked, as if they were going over a lesson to make sure he understood a point that had been unclear.

“Fourteen,” he answered mechanically.

“How old am I?” she asked, echoing something of his mechanical tone because it helped her to keep her voice steady.

He brought his mind quickly back to her. “You’re twenty-four, ten years older than I am.”

“So you see, he could not have been married to me when you were born. He wasn’t so very much older than you are now. Nor was your mother.”

It took a long minute for him to absorb that. “I bet she knew what she was doing! She never did anything she didn’t know!”

She took his hands and shook them roughly as if scolding him. “Your mother is free; Roscoe Elk is free. Your brothers are free.”

“They’re not my brothers!”

“You have the same mother.”

“They’re niggers! I’m half white—you said so!”

“They are free,” she repeated. “You are a slave. Do you know why?”

“Because nobody wanted me,” he said.

“That may have been so,” she agreed, “but it’s no longer true. You’re a slave because I want you.” He stared at her, not understanding what she meant. “Roscoe Elk tried to buy you today,” she continued. “I told him you were not for sale.”

“He’d have made me free?”

“No, he would not have. Buying you would have made you his slave.”

For the moment during which he considered what that would have meant he looked terrified. Then he said, “Instead, I’m your slave.”

“I wish,” she said, “that you were my son.”

“You’ll have white children; you won’t want me!” he shouted at her, drawing back and away as if to rise from the ground and leave her. She did not touch him to make him stay, so he stopped himself. She did not answer him, which made him feel better than if she had tried to. After a time she said, “As soon as you’re old enough so that he can’t claim a father’s legal rights over you, you’ll get papers to show you’re free. I promise. Then you can go anywhere you please, do and be what you want to do and be.”

He thought for a time before replying. “Yes’m? And till then, who am I?”