in this havoc, all running around pell-mell until none could tell who was chasing who.
Caroline at once pinioned herself to the wall, for she feared she might be tripped and trussed in this commotion. Then two boys, barely clothed, appeared upon the scene from who-knows-where to jump around in this sport. All at once a piercing yell, as mighty as a tree splitting at its trunk, cried, ‘Me chicken done gone. Bring back de chicken.’ A negro woman, no larger than a child but with a skin wrinkled as dried fruit, appeared banging a large cleaver against a metal bucket. If it were not for her continuing to screech, ‘Where me chicken don gone?’ over and over, Caroline would scarce have believed that such a diminutive creature could raise so much holler.
Soon all that Caroline beheld were negroes, like solid shadows prancing before her. Oh, how many besieged her there? And where could they all have come from? Chinks in some wall, holes within the floor? Did they reside one-on-top-the-other in some chest? Or scurry like galliwasps under the house? Where? Where? Caroline cursed that the lord only gave her two hands! For which should she do—cover her ears against the calamitous din or her nose? For the stench of their swirling bodies was malodorous as a begrimed mule in the heat.
Her brother, finally appearing, seemed to walk on through this confusion paying it no heed, ‘Come on, I’ll show you to your room,’ he said. Then, noticing the fright which sat upon his sister’s face as if sketched from a comical cartoon, he shouted, ‘Will you all be silent! Be quiet. Do you hear me?’ before guiding Caroline by the elbow through the fleeting breach in the bedlam.
After a few days upon the island, Caroline was moved to enquire of her brother whether all of his fabled upward of two hundred slaves did, in matter-of-fact, reside around and about them in the great house. Her brother had believed it not a serious question and therefore supplied no answer but that of a small smirk. But for Caroline, it was asked in earnest. For there seemed to be no place in that mighty house where solitude was to be found. No corner where she did not find a negro lurking. No room that was free of a negro affecting some task. No window that, when looked through, saw a view that was other than these blackies about some mischief. Even the cupboards, when opened, seemed to contain little more than black boys who, like insects caught in a trap, peered out at her from the inside.
And yet, for all these house slaves that swirled around her every day, Caroline found the summoning of any of them to do her bidding a toilsome task for which she had no skill. They just stared on her entranced, like children upon Bonfire Night before the pinwheel starts to spin.
The negro girl, Molly, the one with the bruised, swollen eye, was charged by her brother to act as Caroline’s temporary lady’s maid. And act she did. For this girl seemed to know nothing of the duties that were required of her. Why, every morning this dull-witted creature would attempt to incarcerate Caroline into her spotted linen spencer the wrong way round; no command in an English language Caroline knew could get this slave to place it about her shoulders in the right way. As for the tape ties at the seam of her dress, the girl merely played with them like a kitten with string, for she was unable to tie a simple knot, let alone a delicate bow.
She combed hair as if untangling some rogue threads on the fringe of a carpet and tipped a full bucket of cold water over Caroline as she sat naked in a bath believing warmed water about to be brought. When Caroline summoned her brother to protest her behaviour, this slave girl, with hair matted as carding-wool, threw herself at his feet, clutching his legs and begging, ‘Me make mistake, massa. Me no do it again, massa. Me learn. Missus gon’ smile pretty ’pon me soon,’ to avoid her punishment.
Caroline’s sister-in-law, Agnes, having been born upon the island a Creole, found no trouble in procuring the required help. Her clothing was pressed and presented to her in the mornings, a jug of water brought for washing, her night pot collected and cleared, her room swept when she was not present to choke upon the dust, and her