Had I heard this elsewhere, under other circumstances, it would have been a relief, for I would have been filled with thoughts of home. Immediately I began shuffling through a deck of questions, uppermost being how this woman had gotten hold of my name.
“It’s all right,” she said. “It’s all gonna be all right now.” Then she extended a hand and said, “I’m Kessiah.”
I declined her greeting, but she continued on, registering no insult.
“I’m from your place—Elm County, Virginia. Lockless. You don’t remember me. You remember everything, but you don’t remember me. It’s all right. I used to look after you when you were a baby. Your mother would leave you with me when she had to—”
“Who?”
“Your mother—Momma Rose, we called her—she would leave you with me. And the way I have heard it, you know mine—Thena is her name. She lost her children some years ago. All five of them sold on the racetrack of Starfall, sent off to God knows where. But I am here now with the Underground, and I have heard that there was one who was here too, who came up just as I did, and I have heard that that one is you.”
“Can we walk?” I asked.
“We surely can,” she said.
I led her farther away from the Convention toward that outer portion of the green, on higher ground, where we had tied up our coach and pitched our tent. I helped her into the seat and then climbed up and seated myself next to her.
“It’s true,” she said, looking straight ahead. “It’s all true. I can tell you how it happened if you like.”
“I most certainly would like,” I said.
“Well, it’s as I told you, you know? I’m Thena’s baby—her oldest one. We lived down on the Street and I have some fond memories of that time. My daddy was a big man in those days, a headman on the tobacco team, and that is to say he was about as big as you can be when you was Tasked.
“We had our own house at the end of the Street, set off from the others and bigger too. I thought this was all on account of my daddy and the high esteem in which he was held by those up top. He was a hard man. I do not remember him speaking much, but I recall that when the Quality came down to address him they spoke with him in a kind of respect that they accorded no other tasking man.”
And Kessiah paused here, and a look of realization came over her. Then she said, “Or perhaps that is all in my mind. Perhaps it is the memory of a child, trying to recall things as I would have liked it to have been. I do not know. But I do have it that way, I tell you. I remember the games we used to play. I remember the marbles. I remember the ball and string. I remember playing the Knight and the Whistle. But mostly, I remember my momma, who was as warm and lovely a woman as I ever did know. I remember Sundays, just laying up in her bosom—all five of us—like kittens. My daddy was a hard man, but I think I knew even then that something about him had protected us, that he was doing something, or had done something, for all of us to have that cabin, set off at the end. We had our own garden out back, our own camellias. And that was my life.”
Kessiah was looking out over toward the tents we had just left, lost in a reverie. I was lost in my own, remembering Thena all those years ago, puffing on her pipe and recalling that man she loved, Big John. It seemed incredible to me that this Kessiah could be their daughter, could be here of all places.
“But I got bigger and was soon put to work—at first carrying water out to the folks in the field, and then after that in the fields myself. But I did not mind, all my friends were there too and I was close to my daddy. It was hard labor, that I knew, but I was always inclined to hard labor, it’s what put me here on the Underground. But back then my world was the fields and the Street, and the Street is how I knew you, Hi, and knew your