“Hosea,” she said. “Hosea Maxey. His parents had taken our name. My husband used to own them and, of course, him. He was a stable boy at Marshlands. He’s now the principal of a colored high school in Virginia, and he and I correspond, now and then. I taught him to read and write at a time when, as I told you, it was illegal for Negroes in this state to learn to read and write. Hosea bears the scars of his knowledge, and I do mean that literally.” As she spoke, her eyes did not lift from the picture, as if she were addressing it. “One day—this would have been in 1860—Mr. Foley, my husband’s overseer, caught Hosea reading in the barn from a speller I had given him instead of grooming the horses. The offense was reported. Caleb confronted me. You’ll recall, he’d forbidden me to teach our coloreds and that I had defied him. Caleb knew me well. He knew that if he laid down the law again, it would only strengthen my resolve, so he had Hosea whipped and made me watch the proceedings. Owing to Hosea’s young age, Mr. Foley went easy on him. A dozen strokes across the back. I won’t forget that. Hosea on his knees, his wrists lashed to a wagon wheel, and the sound of the whip on his flesh and the blood and his cries.” She shut the album softly and put it in a drawer and locked the drawer. “That was the end of my educational career. I could not bear ever to see such a sight again and know that I was responsible for it.

“After the war, Hosea attended school over to Mitchellville, on Hilton Head—that was a settlement for freedmen the Yankees had built during their occupation. He finished his secondary education and passed examinations to Howard University, up in Washington. He was in one of the first graduating classes. When he got his diploma, I heard from him. He wrote to thank me, to thank me, for all I had done for him. I cannot express how that moved me, because I thought that all I had done for him was to get his back laid open at the age of thirteen. Your age, isn’t it, Andrew?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Drew, feeling ashamed of himself without knowing why.