Binta was next. She was thin and shapely, though sickly in the eyes. Too tired to conceal her exhaustion, she assumed the block and dropped her head. Akinyemi prayed his buyer would buy her, too, but another pale man won the bidding. She wept as if tomorrow wouldn’t come. She’d tried not to cry, but her heart couldn’t be restrained. She was the mourner among us. Not the weeper—there had been several of those—but the carrier of grief. She could sit next to a person and feel their sorrow. It was a vibration, she explained, that moved from hand to hand, hip to hip, like a contagious virus. All of sudden she would burst into tears, leaving everyone astonished and overwhelmed. Then, moments later, when her wailing waned, others would feel cleansed and light, as if some invisible power had washed their souls anew. She’d wept practically the entire journey. Some, she said, could not cry for themselves so they borrowed her heart. It was a difficult life, but it was hers, so she gave her best. Standing on the block that day, we stared our heaviness into her spirit and she took it—without hesitation—and purged what we could not say. There was something absorbing about Binta, something we could not explain. All of us hoped to go with her if with no one else. She knew us without having to know us. One of her eyes was noticeably larger than the other. Pale men undoubtedly assumed the irregularity to be a birth defect or a childhood accident. Each day they rejected her. But there was no defect, no youthful mishap. She’d been sent this way. Without her, many of us would’ve died of misery. When she looked at us for the last time, we saw in her eyes the eyes of God—perfect in their imperfection—and we smiled. She smiled. Her name meant “She is always with God.” She would go with Him alone.