The captain handed Maria her papers, which stated that she belonged to the Jansen family of Willemstad. She was to work for them until the age of sixteen, at which time Maria would be a free woman. She now understood that her father had sold her into servitude; he would likely say it had been for her own protection, and perhaps he meant no harm. She was a girl on her own after all, with nothing to her name.

“Are you free?” Maria asked Juni as they walked side by side on the dock crowded with fish vendors and sailors, some of whom had no allegiance to any country and sailed only for themselves, pirates and traders of the roughest sort.

“I’m the same as you. Not a slave and not free. That’s another way of saying we’re nothing.”

Juni’s skin was a warm brown and her black hair was as long as Maria’s. Her African mother had been bound to the Jansens’ household as a slave, and her great-aunt had been granted her freedom only after working for the family for thirty years. Juni herself was a servant, and had been so all her life, since the time she was born, with no papers that affixed a time to her servitude. To Maria, that sounded like slavery.

“You have no papers?” Maria asked. “No date for your freedom?”

Juni was extremely beautiful, and men of all sorts stared at her as they walked along. “Mr. Jansen holds on to them for me. I’ll be free when I marry.”

But in fact, each time a suitor came around, Mr. Jansen found fault with him and sent him on his way. It didn’t matter if a man was African or Jewish or Dutch. None would do.

“Niet goed genoeg,” he would say every time. Not good enough.

“I plan to never marry,” Maria announced. She had seen a daughter in her future, but no husband. Only the man with the diamonds, who, as they walked along the wooden dock, under clouds of parrots, seemed an impossible fate.

“That’s what you say now,” Juni responded. “Just you wait. If you’re married you won’t be a servant.”

“I’m not certain I can be that now,” Maria said, a scowl on her face.

“We do as they tell us until they go to bed, then we do as we please.”

Maria had never had a friend and had never seen a need for one, but now in this faraway place she was grateful that Juni had a kind heart and had taken her under her wing.

“Do what I do, say what I say, and you will be fine,” Juni assured her.