“Oh gosh, I’m so sorry.” His mother rushed up. A chubby woman, with round, reddened cheeks. She wore a red visor with an insignia on the front of it, the outline of the Big House with WOODLAND PLANTATION printed underneath. She yanked her son’s arm and pulled him back in a way that felt more insulting than the boy’s question. “He thinks everyone is part of it,” she said.

The woman rushed her son along and they disappeared among the crowd. “What are you?” the boy had asked and not, “What are you supposed to be?” The ambiguity in the question unnerved her. Had he been referring to what she looked like? Throughout her life she’d been asked that many times, within the question the expectation that of course she was something else besides black. She glanced at her arm, at her skin, wondering what he’d meant. No, it should have been obvious to him what she was, just like she knew her place in the hierarchy of this revisionist story. This was all a performance dressed up as a history lesson, and everyone who’d bought a ticket was here to play a part. She knew where she was supposed to belong, and it made her want to escape it.

When the sun got too hot or their feet too tired, the tourists migrated to the restaurant or bar for refreshments. They congregated in the distance to sit under the cool shade of the outdoor porch. She decided to follow them in the hope of finding a break.

A lot of money had been sunk into renovating the grounds with the idea that visitors finishing the Big House tour would venture out to have a drink and admire the view, so a bar had been built along the back patio. The bar did not serve much. A few mixed drinks. Bourbon lemonades. Mint juleps. As she made her way over, winding through the wrought-iron tables and chairs, Mira heard a couple, having just gotten their drinks, affirm each other’s decision to order the rum punch.

A young black girl tended the bar. While her frame suggested she was barely high school age, the way she manned the bar told otherwise, working with the careful ease of someone who’d been doing the job for years. The girl wore the same uniform as every other service worker Mira saw on the grounds—a short-sleeved black collared shirt tucked into tan slacks. Her hair was pulled tight in a bun at the nape of her neck. She wore no jewelry, no makeup, nothing differentiating or uniquely identifying her from the other employees. Mira watched her as she moved seamlessly between taking orders and making the drinks. She did each in batches to save time, ringing up customers first then shifting over to begin filling glasses with ice before pouring the bourbon.