Mawuli chewed his bottom lip: There is no power greater than you.… No thing more lovely, no one more precious, no being more righteous … We know this.… But we do not understand your ways.… We know that they are correct, but we do not comprehend them.… You placed the stars and planets in the sky.…

“Two hundred! Two hundred! Will someone give me two hundred for this black boy?”

And you put fish in the waters and birds in the trees … You are the only thing everlasting … and we need you now. One lone tear streaked his right cheek. Cover us until this lesson is complete.

“Sold! To the man in the back for two hundred dollars.”

Mawuli never looked at him. The man came forward, slowly, confidently, and took Mawuli’s arm. He did not grab it or shove him the way others had done. He took it strongly but sensibly, like one leading the blind, and walked him to his wagon. There, he nodded for Mawuli to stand and wait. He obeyed, but he did not stop praying. His name meant “Never forget that God exists.”

The man returned to the auction and bought two more of us, Damani and Njeri. He led them to where Mawuli stood. Then he unchained them and motioned for them to climb onto the back of the wagon. They obeyed, looking at us from the corners of their eyes. They were sad to leave our womb, but glad to be together. We were happy, too. It was strange, really, our gratitude for being sold together. We’d started out furious at being sold at all; now, simply not being sold alone was a relief. So much of our way of life had changed. We cared less for grooming; we simply wanted to be clean. We didn’t think of favorite foods; we just wanted to eat. We didn’t care for a soft place to sleep; we longed merely to sleep uninterrupted. Without the torment of nightmares and hungry rats. We saw, in our minds, excess and abundance in our villages, and we wondered if it had angered God enough to spawn this lesson. If it had, we had gotten the point. There was no luxury here, no abundance of anything, nothing lavish at all. The only thing we treasured was each other. But couldn’t we have learned this lesson at home?