In response to your recent inquiry concerning the matter of my deceased father’s debts to Hale Plantation and Estate for various resources borrowed before his death and bequeathing of all property to my brother and me, I have devised what I feel to be a mutually beneficial solution. In hopes of dissolving the current debt (plus interest) of $5000, which primarily represents the borrowing of articles of husbandry and farming implements, I am offering you a choice purchase of one healthy, fertile, young colored girl. In particular, allow me to suggest our current house girl, whom records show my father bought in 1830 from an Anderson Buckley of South Carolina as part of a family, her portion costing $600. She is currently pregnant and, as far as I know, capable of further breeding. Her mother had previously produced six offspring for my father, most of whom he sold before his death in order to stave off bankruptcy. One of which, an older buck, I recently sold for $1,400 and just received a most glowing report on his productivity. But this one I offer, a perhaps 14 or 15-year-old girl, remains here and has to date conceived one child. Therefore, I see no reason why she could not birth six to eight offspring, especially since she has gotten off to an early start.

Because she is in her reproductive prime, I am sure I could get close to $2000 if I sold her alone on the market today. What I am urging you to consider, Sir Hale, is the opportunity to benefit not only from her productivity but also from the potential value of her offspring. For such old and high debts these are long-term considerations, I know. However, I am urging you to take into account your decades-long relationship with my father, as well as the future of this property. Its survival at this point is dependent upon the generosity of men like you. I urge you to look within your heart for kindness and mercy, as I am doing all I can to keep my father’s legacy alive and to secure the financial future of this estate for my own offspring. I thank you for your many years of kindness, and wait eagerly for your reply.

Sincerely,

Mr. Jonathan Parnell

Once Helene had gotten all the way to the bottom a third time, the newborn started howling again so loud even the swallows sheltered in oak tree leaves scatter. A six-year-old girl walks toward them, smiles under a mud-coated bonnet, her scratched, ashy, and lanky limbs buried under her shift of compounded refuse.

“Why y’all crying, Miss Helene?”

“We sad, Daisy Mae.”

“How you know my name, Miss Helene?”

“Why wouldn’t I? I know’d you since before you was born.”