Pat said that Maysville was where I was born again as a free person. He said that I’d chosen Maysville, and the first place where you choose to live was where you are truly from. I asked him if his name was “Pat de Cincinnati.” He shook his head no.

I didn’t have the cold heart to correct him. I didn’t choose Maysville. I returned to it. Tabb Plantation was nearby, and I went there to look for my mother. I didn’t find her. The old folks who were still there didn’t know of her whereabouts because I couldn’t remember her name or what she looked like. An old woman looked me over for a good long while and said, “Your face is your father’s.” I asked her what she knew about him, and she told me.

Later, when it was time to register a name with the government men, I kept Alethea because I believed that my mother had given it to me, and Foley because I wanted her to be able to find me again. I stayed in Maysville for the same reason. I thought that one day I would see her and she would see me, and we wouldn’t even need to trade our names to know. But once we did, we would have proof.

I didn’t know how to find paying work in Maysville at first. Who did back then? Work was something that found you. So I did what came easiest to me. I talked. I would tell whoever was listening that I was a cook and list all the dishes that Molly had taught me. I talked until the person walked away. After a couple of days of doing this, I met a very old woman—she looked like a sweet potato left too long in the hot ashes—who told me that I wasn’t a cook, that she was a cook, and that the family called her Sweetie. I called her “Aunt Sweetie” because no one so old should be called something so young. She needed a helper because hers had just left for Cincinnati, in broad daylight with a little skip in her step, like she were headed to a picnic.

“Can you picture that?” asked the old cook.

“Yes, I can, Aunt Sweetie,” I replied, though I knew it wasn’t really a question.

I worked for food in my stomach and a roof over my head, and that wasn’t that different from my life at Salee, as Pat would later say to me. I told him it wasn’t the same. I could leave and find a new roof, and I did. I worked in two other houses in and around Maysville before I too headed for Cincinnati. I wasn’t in any condition to be skipping though, by the time I left.