The School-house was brightest after dark. All the sconces lit, all the girls scraping themselves out of bed, or back in from wherever they’d been. The light scattered like water from a pail, shining the drapes, beeswax masking the smell of sweat. Henry was my visitor for the evening. I stripped his clothes, made him wear the frilled apron, stand at the grate where I could keep an eye on him. I made my voice harsh. ‘No costume tonight. You going take me as you find me.’

Henry wanted me to sound ‘African’. The more African, the better, he always said. I heard his breath catch. ‘What’re you going to do to me?’

I shrugged.

This is all the freedom there is, I thought. Take it where you find it, or you don’t get it at all.

The smell coming off him. Salt, sharp. There was a whine in his voice. ‘Miss Fran? What are you going to do to me?’

‘What?’ I wondered aloud.

I’d taken the birch out of the bucket where it had been soaking. There’d be a sting in it. I tapped it into my opposite palm.

Raised my hand.

And then the clock slid down into some deep hole. Black. Blank. Sticky as coal-tar.

I heard steps running upstairs, down the hall, outside my door. Boots. Keys.

One moment, I raised my hand and next moment Henry was being carted away by Mrs Slap, and there was that hot blister through me all over again. Like the drug.

Then it was me who had to wait. I crossed the red carpet. A churning in my stomach. Not so much that I had shocked myself. No. It was that I’d thought maybe it was coming back. The old violence. The blood on my hands. In my mind’s eye, I saw Paradise. I saw the coach-house.

I heard the door open, heard the creak of the bed, and looked behind me. Sal.

I pressed my brow to the glass. A carriage pulled up outside.

‘My head hurts,’ I said.

Sal gave out her coconut-husk laugh. ‘Not as much as his back.’

‘It’s like they expect us just to pass through like shadows,’ she said to me later. We were in her bed. She’d taken my head into her lap and was plaiting my hair into rows. ‘Just don’t make no fuss. Don’t let them know we here. Is them bring us here yet still they act like we just come to eat up them little white babies! That’s what the real trouble is, you know.’ She laughed. ‘White babies. No African better get in the milk, not even one drop. Maybe one day this whole place full of mongrels like you.’

Sal had said sorry for calling me a house-nigger, I’d said sorry for being one, made her laugh.

‘What do you think Mrs Slap will do?’

‘Some questions don’t have right answers. Just have to wait and see.’

‘Wait and see is the trouble,’ I replied. ‘We’re always waiting and seeing.’