THE BOOK OF NEGROES (32 page)

We were rowed out in the rain, mustered on the
Joseph
and sent below to await our interviews. For two days, the ship was loaded with salt beef, dried peas, suet, wine and water. Finally, three British men began inspections for the Book of Negroes. I didn’t know any of them. Two American officers were watching our every step. They took Chekura before me.

Chekura, 41, little fellow, says he served the British in Charles Town, left his owner, Mr. Smith, Beaufort, 1779. In possession of General Birch Certificate.

It seemed to me that the less I told them, the better. I even gave them my Anglicized name, to keep things simple.

Meena Dee, 38, Guinea born, served behind British Lines in New York since 1777, previously owned by Mr. Lindo of Charles Town. In Possession of General Birch Certificate.

With a few businesslike scratches of the quill on paper, we were free. Chekura and I moved below deck with the last of the inspected Negroes. But just as the
Joseph
was preparing to lift anchor, a loud voice called out:
“Meena Dee. Return here please.”

The British and American officials conferred in whispers. The Americans
produced a slip of paper, and were pointing out details to the deputy quartermaster.

Finally, the deputy quartermaster spoke. “Meena Dee, there is a claim against you. We cannot allow you to leave at this time. You must go with these men.”

“But—”

“There will be no discussion.”

“But I have a General Birch Certificate. I served the British for years. I worked from April to a week ago on this very Book of Negroes, under Colonel Baker.”

“You will be allowed to respond to the allegations of your claimant.”

“What claimant?”

“Gentlemen, please remove this woman.” Chekura took my hand. “I am her husband, and I go with her.”

The deputy quartermaster frowned. “Look here, boy. If you get off this ship, I can guarantee you that you will board no other. If she prevails over her claimant, she may board another vessel. But if you leave this ship, you stay in New York. I will personally see to that. I have no time for this.”

“Stay on the ship, Chekura,” I said. “I will be back.”

“I can’t leave you, wife.”

“Go with the ship. It’s the only way. We will find each other in Nova Scotia. Send out word for me, and I will, for you.”

He hugged me. I held his hands. His fingers slid away as I was pulled off the deck, down the ladder and into a boat that rowed me back to Murray’s Wharf. The whole way back, I kept my eyes on the
Joseph.
I knew Solomon Lindo had put in a claim for me. He had helped separate me from my son more than twenty years ago, and now he had just separated me from my husband. I didn’t like the feeling of hatred in my heart, so I tried to put Lindo out of my mind and to think instead of Chekura’s arms around my body.

I spent the night in jail. They took my bag, which contained some spare clothes and all my savings. I didn’t even have a few shillings to bribe the Negro jail guard. But I whispered to him anyway and pleaded with him to go tell Sam Fraunces of my fate. If he could do that for me, I promised, Sam would surely reward him in some way.

The guard smiled at me. “I was going to do it for you anyway,” he said. “I know who you are.”

“You do?” I said.

“You taught my daughter at St. Paul’s Chapel, and she reads fine now. She taught me some reading too, after you taught her.”

THE NEXT MORNING, Sam Fraunces came to see me. At other times, he had always been impossibly optimistic. But now, he wasn’t smiling at all.

“I trusted the British,” I said. “They said they would protect us, and I believed them.”

Sam took my hand. He said that some of the plantation men who showed up with proof were being allowed to claim their runaways.

“I can’t promise to get you out of here, though I’m going to do everything I can,” he said. “But I do have some bad news.”

“What?”

“I’ve just heard that Solomon Lindo is in town.”

I cupped my face in my palms. “I’m done for now.”

“Don’t give up,” Sam said. “I’ll see what I can find out.”

The guard escorted Sam from my cell. I rubbed my belly and whispered the songs of my childhood to soothe the baby inside me. I didn’t want to be afraid. I didn’t want that baby to learn fear from me. To stave off my anguish, I tried to imagine the shape of my baby’s mouth and the sound of her first cries.

AFTER TWO DAYS IN JAIL, I was taken—wrists tied and legs shackled—to the Fraunces Tavern, whose meeting room had been converted into a court for claims.

I waited with the jailor and a justice of the peace, who would not even name the man who claimed me.

The door swung open, and into the room stepped Robinson Appleby. My mouth fell open. I hadn’t seen Appleby since leaving St. Helena Island twenty-one years earlier. He was bald now and had a bulging belly, but his confidence had grown over the years. He had a huge smile on his face.

“Meena, what a pleasant surprise,” he said.

“How dare you?”

“Careful how you speak to the one who owns you.”

“You own nothing but your own conscience,” I said.

“You made quite the name for yourself in New York,” he said. “It was easy to track you down.”

Appleby told the justice of the peace that he still owned me. He said that I had only been loaned out to Solomon Lindo, that Lindo had absconded with me and that I had run from Lindo. Therefore, Appleby said, I had never been freed, was illegally in New York and still belonged to him.

Appleby unfolded a worn-out piece of paper. “This, sir, indicates that I purchased this woman from Mr. William King in Charles Town in 1757.”

“What is your response to this?” the justice of the peace asked me.

“That part is true,” I said. “But he sold me in 1762 to Solomon Lindo.” And then I had no choice but to go on with a lie: “Mr. Lindo manumitted me in 1775.”

“Where are your papers?” asked the justice of the peace.

“I lost them,” I said.

“She claims to have had papers, but she has lost them,” Appleby said. “I make my claim with documentation.”

“Have you anything else to say for yourself?” the justice asked me.

“He is lying.”

Just then, Sam Fraunces slipped into the room.

“Mr. Fraunces,” the justice said. “Have you something to contribute to this process?”

“You know me to be an upstanding businessman,” Sam said.

“Your reputation is steady,” said the justice.

“Then I ask for a brief delay. I need two hours. I am in the process of obtaining proof on behalf of the woman.”

The justice sighed. “I have three more cases today,” he said. “I shall hear them. Afterwards, if you have not brought forth your proof, I will have no choice but to decide this matter.”

I sat under guard, still shackled, while Appleby stepped out to lunch. At the back of the room, I heard claims against two other Negroes who, like me, had been pulled off ships in the harbour. Both—one man, and one woman—were given over to men who said they owned them. I despised the Americans for taking these Negroes, but my greatest contempt was for the British. They had used us in every way in their war. Cooks. Whores. Midwives. Soldiers. We had given them our food, our beds, our blood and our lives. And when slave owners showed up with their stories and their paperwork, the British turned their backs and allowed us to be seized like chattel. Our humiliation meant nothing to them, nor did our lives.

Appleby waited with two strong aides. The better, I feared, for carrying me off. Finally Sam Fraunces came into the room.

“Mr. Fraunces,” said the justice, “have you made progress?”

“I have.”

“Submit it, then.”

“I will.”

Sam opened the door, and into the room stepped Solomon Lindo.

Solomon Lindo? Sam had to be out of his mind. Had he turned
traitor? Was he now sealing my fate? Perhaps Lindo had offered him money. Perhaps times were so bad that Sam needed it. But it didn’t seem possible. Unlike Appleby, who stared with his lips pressed together, Lindo walked with a shuffle and kept his head down. He did not look at me.

“Please identify yourself,” the justice of the peace said.

“Solomon Lindo.”

“Place of residence?”

“Charles Town.”

“Type of business?”

“Merchant.”

“Do you own property?”

“I own property, yes,” Lindo said, “a house in Charles Town, and an indigo plantation on Edisto Island.”

His indigo grading must have slipped during the war years. He must have been running the plantation out of desperation. I couldn’t imagine how I could go on living if he made me oversee his indigo production or do his books again.

“Have you come to New York to claim this woman?”

“I came to discuss indigo trade with the governor of New York. But I knew she was here.”

“What stake have you in this case?” the justice of the peace asked.

“This man,” Lindo said, nodding in Appleby’s direction, “sold Meena Dee to me in 1762. I have the papers here.”

“So you are saying that she belongs to you? You are claiming her for yourself?”

“Mr. Appleby does not own her,” Lindo said. “I do.”

“Mr. Appleby has already shown his papers,” the justice said. “Do you have more recent proof of purchase?”

“Yes. Shall I show it to you?”

“Mr. Lindo, this has been a long day. Just read it out.”

“I would prefer—”

“Just read it, Mr. Lindo.”

Lindo cleared his throat and removed a paper from his pocket. He unfolded it carefully, scratched his chin, cleared his throat and began to read.

“‘Bill of sale between Robinson Appleby of St. Helena Island and Solomon Lindo of Charles Town. Dated February 1, 1762. Terms of sale of Meena, a Guinea wench.’ Will that suffice?”

“Read on,” the justice said.

“‘Solomon Lindo agrees to purchase the said wench Meena for sixty pounds sterling, and—’”

Lindo paused at this point. I could see the paper rustling in his hand.

“We don’t have all day, Mr. Lindo. Please go on.”

Lindo continued reading: “‘… and to arrange the sale of Mamadu, son of Meena. Said sale to be effected in Savannah, Georgia, on terms suitable to Robinson Appleby. Proceeds of sale of son to be divided, three quarters to Mr. Appleby and one quarter to Mr. Lindo.’”

Three-quarters of the profits to one man, and one-quarter to the other. I didn’t want to poison my own heart with hatred, because I had another little one inside me now. For that baby, I wanted to be as calm as a Bayo villager walking with a bundle on her head. I placed my palm on my own belly and waited for the men to finish talking.

“Was that contract signed and executed?” asked the justice.

“Yes.”

“And you call yourselves gentlemen?”

Appleby said nothing. But Lindo raised his hand to speak.

“Sir, I am not proud of the things I did, but I wish to correct the record. Mr. Appleby was determined to sell the baby to one owner and the mother to another. He was obsessed with a desire to punish his slave because she had resisted his authority. I could not persuade him to let me buy the two
of them. But, with a substantial sum of money—much more than the usual fee, at the time—I finally persuaded him to sell Meena to me. Even this, he allowed only if I served as a broker for the child. I did my best to place the boy in the hands of a man who was respected as a gentleman. And as for Meena, it is true that I wanted to buy her, and that I planned to make use of her labour. But I also felt it would be better to take her with me than to let her go to a rice plantation in Georgia.”

The justice of the peace shook his head. “Mr. Appleby, do you care to reply?”

“I have nothing to say to the Jew,” Appleby said.

“Let me see the contract,” the justice of the peace said. He accepted it, smoothed the crease in the paper, looked at it carefully, then handed it back and turned to Appleby. “Mr. Appleby, you give white men a bad name. You have one day to leave New York. If at noon tomorrow you are still in this city, I will have you arrested. And if you are not out of this room within thirty seconds, I will arrest you right now for perjury. Now get out.”

Appleby passed through the door without looking at Lindo or me.

“Mr. Lindo, you may take your property,” the justice said.

“She is free to go,” Lindo said.

“You came all this way to manumit your slave?”

“It is a matter of making peace with my past,” Lindo said.

“Set this woman loose,” the justice told the jailer, “and let her go.”

I was released from my shackles by the smiling guard whose daughter I had once taught. He touched my shoulder, then left the room behind the justice of the peace and the court clerk.

Lindo looked at me with a mixture of reverence and shame. “Meena,” he said, “may I have a word with you?”

I wasn’t ready to receive Lindo’s sorrow, or to thank him for giving back what had always been mine. I could see that Solomon Lindo was a better
class of man than Robinson Appleby. But he was tainted by the very world in which he lived, and from which he too richly profited. I did not want to hate him, but neither could I forgive him.

Suddenly, a new fear erupted inside me and engulfed my thoughts like flowing lava. What if the baby growing inside my own body had just heard the evilness of these men and all their manoeuvrings?

“Meena,” Lindo repeated. “May I—”

“No,” I said, “I can’t.” I grabbed Sam Fraunces’s arm and ran from the room.

NO MORE SHIPS LEFT NEW YORK CITY until the final day of the British occupation. On November 30, 1783, I was rowed out to the
George III
, inspected for the Book of Negroes by men who did not know me, and allowed to leave the Thirteen Colonies. I knew that it would be called the United States. But I refused to speak that name. There was nothing united about a nation that said all men were created equal, but that kept my people in chains.

I had lost my belongings in jail and there would be no husband to meet me in Port Roseway. Annapolis Royal had been my hope, since that was where Chekura’s ship was heading, but there was no ship leaving for that location and I was given no choice in the matter. I had my legs, which were still in working order, and my hands, which could still catch babies, and I had the little one growing inside me. I wondered who would catch the baby for me, when its day dawned bright in Nova Scotia.