It was so rudely spoken that I believed my ears to be hearing a little devil’s prank. So I replied, ‘Wha’ ya say?’
He blow out his breath in a sigh; for my son is such a gentleman that he prefers his mama not to speak in this rough way but to say pardon, like I am some lordly white missus. ‘Oh, pardon me, son, but did I hear your words correctly?’
‘Mama,’ he go on, ‘July gave birth to a son whom she then abandoned at the door at the Baptist minister’s manse. Why is there no telling of this within your story?’
Reader, those words slapped my face as fierce as any hand my son could have raised. What was he now demanding? Does he require to direct what I write within these pages? I am sure that within those publishing houses in England, the ones my son does speak of with such licky-licky praise, those white people do listen with a greedy ear upon what the storyteller has to tell. Them do not say, ‘Oh, let us know the devilment of this person here, or the nasty-nasty deed of that character there.’ No. Them is grateful for any story told. But not so my son.
This tale is of my making. This story is told for my amusement. What befalls July is for me to devise. Better that my son save his wrath for those parts of his household which deserve to see the anger he can raise, was my reply.
‘Mama,’ he say to me, ‘do not take me for a fool. This is the story of your own life, not of your creating, I can see this.’
‘No it is not,’ I tell him.
‘It is,’ him say.
‘It is of my making,’ I tell him.
‘It is not—it is of your life lived,’ him tell me.
‘Oh no, it is not.’
‘Oh yes, it is.’
We did step this fancy argument too long for my delicate stomach. And my son’s finger did wave upon me for the whole time. It is not for a son to wag his finger upon his mama, but the other way about! And he huffed and puffed to me that I needs tell why he was abandoned and that I must speak true.
Sometimes his demands upon me are as constricting as the corset they bind me in to keep me as a lady.
But I must do as my son bids. Else I may wake to find my valise—with my piece of lace and my cracked plate—placed outside the gates of this house, and my aging nagging bones cast out to join them. My son may shake his head upon this circumstance, but his old mama has now witnessed that possibility within his eye.
So I must upon this page affirm that a son was indeed born to July. After the grievous pain of birthing—for July was still a young girl who did not possess the width within her body to push out this child’s enormous head with any ease—Nimrod’s son was born in upon this world.
His legs did not bow (unlike those of the man who sired him), and up to now, that son has a good head of hair. But still, July, at that time, did look upon this tiny newborn and think him the ugliest black-skinned child she had ever seen. There, these words are true—so does my son find joy within them? He has a mama whose lip curled with disgust when first she saw that a child of hers was as black as a nigger. And even if my son now wishes to beg his storyteller to change this faithful detail, alas, it cannot be done.
July had no intention to suckle this misbegotten black pickaninny. But neither did she wish to leave him mewling upon a mound of trash, nor whimpering within the wood. She found no strength to smother him, nor will to hold him under the river’s swell. After two days of hiding her son from all that was this world, July fixed upon the notion of leaving him to the minister-man. For July had heard tell that minister-men did say that even ugly-ugly slaves with thick lips and noses flat as milling stones were the children of God. So she wrapped her pickney in a rough cloth, tied her red kerchief at his head and within a moonless night walked the stony trail to the baptist minister’s house. There was no hesitation shivering her breast as July placed her baby