Someone Knows My Name

Aminata arrives in Charles Town with Solomon Lindo in the year 1762. She smells the rotten stench of slave ships and immediately recognizes this as the place her slave ship docked five years prior. Negroes walk freely as fruiters and hucksters; Lindo tells her that though they are slaves, they are allowed to keep some earnings. He expresses that he prefers to call his Negroes servants. When she sees a slave auction, she realizes that she can help neither them nor herself.

Mrs. Lindo is a kind woman who treats Aminata as a guest when she arrives. Dolly—the Lindos’ pregnant slave—becomes another mother figure to Aminata. Dolly cooks and cleans for the Lindos, spending the rest of her time as she pleases. For her first few weeks Aminata aids Dolly in her errands. Charles Town is full of self-hire Negroes, and Aminata is baffled when she sees a group of Negro boys for hire as party entertainment with William King, who doesn’t recognize her. One Saturday at a fair, Aminata walks about freely “like the very Negroes she watched with confusion after coming off the slave ship” (197). While in town, she learns that she has to be careful, as many men stare and try to grab her.

Aminata becomes accustomed to the comforts of the Lindo home, sleeping and eating better since leaving Bayo. Lindo teaches her arithmetic so she can keep his accounts. He also allows her to become a self-hire midwife on the condition she pays him 10 shillings a week. He places an ad in the South Carolina Gazette, and Aminata is uncomfortable with the language. She asks if Mrs. Lindo is a wench and says she is not from Guinea. Lindo shares that he helps Aminata because his faith considers it a good thing to help another person become independent. She wonders why he doesn’t free her. When she learns about forms of payment, coins confuse her—she doesn’t understand why someone would want to be paid with a useless metal coin. Mrs. Lindo helps her perfect her writing, after which she begins composing Lindo’s business letters. Because of her success as a midwife, she is trusted to deliver the sons of both Dolly and the Lindos. In return, Mrs. Lindo offers Aminata a gift, and she requests to see a map of the world. Lindo takes her to the library, and she is disappointed with the maps of Africa, which lack detail. Though she sees the shape of Africa, there are no village names. Disillusioned, she feels the buckra do not know her or her land at all. She hopes to one day understand the white man’s world enough to leave it.

During her years a self-hire midwife, Aminata experiences the loss of many loved ones. Georgia passes away in her sleep, and a night patroller kills Fomba. In the fall of 1774, after 13 years with the Lindos, a smallpox epidemic takes the lives of Mrs. Lindo, Dolly, and their sons. Aminata and Lindo barely speak in their grief. Aminata mourns that unlike herself, Lindo has friends. She especially misses Dolly and her son, as she spent years close to them. Dolly cared for her like a mother, and Aminata taught Dolly’s son to read. Her grief at Mrs. Lindo’s death surprises her most—she never imagined she could mourn the death of a white person. She trusted and loved Mrs. Lindo, who never abused Aminata and gave her a book every month.

Now in hard times, Charles Town sees a shortage of coins and a ban against paper currency; diseases like smallpox keep people in constant fear. Lindo and other locals blame their problems on the British. In January 1775 Lindo travels to New York City hoping to convince the British to protect bounty on poorly selling Carolina indigo. When Lindo leaves, Leah—his severe sister who dislikes Aminata—moves into the house. She refuses to allow Aminata inside, telling her that she is on self-hire and can fend for herself. Aminata struggles to feed herself and finds she was right about the uselessness of coins—chickens are now more reliable than silver. The nights are lonely, so she rereads her books and thinks of the people she has loved.

One night Aminata hears someone calling her African name; she is overjoyed to find it is Chekura. They cherish every moment of their night together. Though she is upset that he can visit only once or twice, they make love. Chekura asks Aminata to run away with him, but she refuses. He reveals that Mamadu died of smallpox in 1762, and that Lindo was the one who arranged his sale. Chekura offers to kill Lindo, but Aminata wants him to stay alive. When Lindo returns a month later, he demands she pay him, complains about the possible collapse of the Carolina indigo economy, and slaps her when she refuses to cook. Aminata confronts him about selling her son, and he is ashamed. They settle into an uneasy truce and keep out of each other’s way until one day Lindo tells Aminata that she will travel with him to New York City. For Lindo, this is an attempt to repair the damage between them. For Aminata, it is her exodus.