“It’s colder up here in New York,” he said. “I didn’t think a place could be colder than Philadelphia, but Kings County has it beat.”

I did not feel right talking badly about our town, but I also felt my cheeks stinging in the bitter air. I nodded politely, not committing to my guest’s belief but trying to be neighborly, which is what we learned in Sunday school.

Our house, and the road that led to it, were all on higher ground than the rest of our settlement, and as the path sloped down, as our feet began to angle to the earth, the ground became wetter. My boots were spotted in mud, and Mr. Ben’s began to squelch.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “We will tell Mama, and she will find better shoes for you.”

“She will, will she?” he said.

“You don’t like Mama,” I said. It had not occurred to me, up until then, that anybody, anyone colored anyways, could dislike my mother. I always saw people speak to her with respect, and even the sick children, who knew to be afraid when they saw a doctor, did not have dislike in their fear, only a kind of awe. So it was a revelation to meet someone who disliked her, and it was so strange that I did not understand it as a threat.

Mr. Ben did not deny it. He only kept walking until finally he said, “You always been free?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“You ain’t never been a slave? Your mama neither?”

“No,” I said.

He sighed. “They tell us over and over again what’s not possible. White folks say this ain’t possible, this place ain’t possible. But it’s real. It’s a glory, but it’s … it’s … I wish my Daisy was still here to see it with me. She told me there was places like this. She said if she was ever free, she’d spend all day in silk and she’d paint her face pretty. I wish she was still alive to see it. She knew what she would do with freedom. It wasn’t man’s work she’d do with freedom. Not like your mama. She knew better than that.”

Then he stopped, and was silent, and seemed to have gone away to another world, too. Not the one where Mama went to figure out how to make a body work right, but somewhere else, probably with his Daisy in her silks. But in the moment, I decided to apply Mama’s new lesson for me and not ask questions.

“This it?” Mr. Ben said.

Sampson Lane had reached the crossroads, where the main road stretched to downtown and the waterfront—the journey most people who lived here made every dawn and dusk for their livelihood. In the other direction, the road stretched deeper into Kings County, to the farms some of us worked. The final fork spread south. Around us was some of the land cleared for fields, the cabins and houses built close together so that neighbors could share gardens and animals and conversation.