The Book of Negroes

Chapter Six returns to the past, as the slave ship arrives at Sullivan’s Island, with only one hundred captives left alive. Aminata has become ill—she believes she is dying, but Biton brings her food and urges her to eat. The captives are cold, unused to the Northern climate, and spend most of their days waiting. Aminata is with Biton, Chekura, Fomba, Fanta, and a young woman named Oumou. They sleep close together for warmth, but Aminata shuns Fanta—she cannot forget what Fanta did on the ship. She tries to pray, but Biton warns that she will be beaten. She asks if the homelanders, her people, will come to save them. No, Biton says. Gradually, thoughts of Allah and prayer fade. One night she awakens to see Oumou and Biton having sex, and she recalls hearing her parents’ sexual encounters. They are fed well because they are being fattened up in order to be sold. They are required to oil themselves, in order to appear healthy. Aminata continues to have diarrhea, so her captors force a clump of earth into her anus. The captives are loaded onto a ship heading to the white mainland. They land in Charles Town (the pre-Revolutionary War name for Charleston, South Carolina). Everywhere she sees black Africans, “homelanders” (110), dressed in bright clothing, carrying goods, shouting, even laughing. She notices they have no shackles. There are whites everywhere, too, as well as goods of all kinds, like grain, hay, and livestock.

The healthy captives are sold first. Chekura is “pulled away from her,” as are Biton and Fanta (111). Aminata remains with the old, weak, and infirm, including Fomba, whose mind is now gone. They are the “refuse captives” (115), and one by one, they are lined up and tied to one another. They are fastened to a cart and made to walk for miles on end with no food or water; they are forced to relieve themselves as they walk. The next morning the march continues, and everywhere Aminata sees other homelanders, some in chains, some in ropes, some unescorted. She tries to find others from her land, but the whites watch closely to prevent the blacks from communicating with one another. A slave named Nyeba, who speaks Bamanankan, tells her she will find her missing friends in “the fishnet” (121), but they are interrupted by an overseer before she can explain. Later, after being loaded onto a canoe, a native-born black man explains that “the fishnet” is a secret message conduit for enslaved people to find relatives and friends. He also tells her she is African, a word she does not recognize. She is someone else’s property now, he explains, and she must no longer pray or she will be beaten. The canoe then arrives on land and an armed homelander takes the prisoners away.

Cold and injured, Aminata and Fomba stumble onto Robinson Appleby’s indigo plantation on St. Helena’s island, South Carolina. It is January 1757, and she is about twelve years old. All around her, Aminata sees men, women, and children in all shades of brown. The women have all kinds of hairstyles and wear colorful headscarves. They are cooking. It has been six months since Aminata experienced food that smells good. Keeping watch is one white man, with a blond woman by his side. An elderly, well-dressed negro helper stands watch too, wielding his cane like a weapon when necessary. Later she learns his name is Mamed.

Aminata, very ill, collapses during a body search as they try to spread open her legs. A strong woman scoops her up and carries her to a thatched cottage. The woman tends to her, and Aminata sleeps soundly for the first time in months. In the morning, she comes upon Fomba, and tries to explain to the woman, in her native tongue, who they are and where they are from. But Aminata realizes it is she who must learn the language—this black woman is a native and only knows English. Her name is Georgia, and she cannot pronounce Aminata’s name, which now becomes “Meena” (127). She teaches Aminata the ways of the plantation and also how to speak English. There are two forms, Gullah, the language of the native-born enslaved people, as well as the form to use with whites. She cautions Aminata never to teach Gullah to the whites.

While cleaning the indigo vats for Mamed, Aminata hears her father’s voice, guiding her. She grows healthier, and her menstruation resumes. She and Georgia go together to deliver babies after Aminata proves her expertise delivering twins for a Fulfulde slave on a neighboring island. Georgia is also valued for her medicinal and healing skills, and always asks for some form of payment for her midwifery, especially Peruvian bark, which has great healing properties. She uses this plant to inoculate Aminata against the pox.

When the indigo is ready, all the slaves harvest the plants. The smell is putrid and the work is exhausting and unending. Appleby watches Aminata, and later he questions her. She answers simply, just as she was instructed to by Georgia. When she accidentally drops a sack of indigo powder, Mamed is about to beat her when he hears her utter a prayer to Allah. He responds in Arabic, and tells her to visit him later; he befriends her and starts teaching her to read and write. Upon Aminata’s advice, Mamed allows Fomba to build a canoe, and also to row and fish. The other slaves begin to accept his strange ways and admire his usefulness. Aminata also reconnects with Chekura who has found her through the fishnet and comes while she is away, studying with Mamed. The second time he visits, Aminata runs into the woods and finds him hiding, waiting for her. She throws herself into his arms. He is sexually aroused but also protective, as she is not ready to be fully a woman. He gives her a red headscarf as a gift, and after this visit, he comes once a month, sneaking away from his plantation on Lady’s island. Appleby gets wind of the visits, and he rapes Aminata to punish her. The black cook, “Happy Jack,” appears (161), and carries her, bleeding and battered, back to Georgia’s hut. 

After the rape, Aminata is careful never to be alone with Appleby, while he turns his attentions to a new slave named Sally. Two years pass, and Aminata dreams of escape, learning all she can from Mamed and Georgia in the meantime, and honoring the spirit of her mother and father. Eventually, Chekura’s touch awakens Aminata’s burgeoning sexual desire, and their relationship becomes physical. When Georgia discovers that Aminata is pregnant, she warns her not to reveal Chekura’s name to Appleby. And, to protect the baby from being taken, she must be able to give it milk.

One day during indigo season, Appleby comes by with two visitors, William King, the well-known slave trader, and Solomon Lindo, an indigo inspector. Lindo takes an interest in Aminata, and when the others are not looking, her tricks her into revealing that she knows how to read. He says he will not reveal her secret. Later, she learns that he has tried to buy her from Appleby, but her master refused.

Aminata and Chekura get married by jumping the broom, a black tradition witnessed by all the enslaved people on the plantation, complete with gifts, music, and food. When Appleby discovers her pregnancy, he punishes her by burning all her gifts, all her clothes, and beating her. He humiliates her further by shaving her head in front of all her fellow slaves. As she walks proudly to her hut, he reminds her that he owns her baby. When Aminata gives birth, she names the baby Mamadu, after her father, and the other slaves pay their respects. She is angry when Appleby sees the baby before Chekura does. Fourteen days later, when her husband finally comes to visit, he explains that a new overseer is cracking down on slaves’ nightly wanderings. Aminata, allowed to rest for only one week, must return to half-time work after that. One day, when Mamadu is just ten months old, Appleby sells him in the middle of the night. The fishnet turns up nothing—the baby has gone beyond the reach of their secret network. Now Chekura no longer visits, and Aminata is convinced she has failed him. Depressed, she catches a fever. She is nursed back to health by Georgia, but she has lost the will to live. She stops working no matter how many times Appleby beats her. In the end, he gives up and sells her to Solomon Lindo.

Longing for her baby and her husband, Aminata arrives in Charles Town and recognizes its putrid smell: it is the place she was brought to when she first arrived in America. Lindo begins instructing her in the ways of the town. He prefers the term “servant,” he says, not “slave” (187). He tells her that she may now speak “properly”—she asks whether that means “talk[ing] like the white folks.” (187). He has figured out her abilities, and explains that he is a Jew and is therefore an “outsider” like her (188), an idea she doubts but finds fascinating. They live above his shop, and Aminata receives a kind welcome, almost as if she were a guest. She meets Dolly, their only other slave, who fears Aminata will replace her, despite Mrs. Lindo’s reassurances. Following Dolly in her errands, Aminata must get used to the stench of the city, the rotting food, human waste, and the corpses. She learns to be extra careful when out without Dolly, as men of all colors grab at her.

Aminata now grows accustomed to her life: she eats well, sleeps more, and works less than she has since being enslaved. Lindo informs her that he will to continue to teach her, and that she will learn accounting. In the mornings, she will work on his books; in the afternoons, she will earn money as a midwife, from which wages she will pay him ten shillings a week on a “self-hire system” (200). He seems to value her, and claims to want to “lift [her] up,” and teach her to use her “God-given abilities,” (201). They discuss the Bible and the Qur’an. But Aminata does not trust her new master. She learns quickly and as a reward he gives her Gulliver’s Travels, which she says, “looks as good as Exodus” (204). He tells her that Jews, Muslims and Christians all share the Exodus story in their holy books.

Lindo’s income derives both from his salary as an Inspector, but also the fees he collects from plantation owners who pay for his services. As Aminata practices midwifery, she wears a tin badge on her chest to show she has the right to “travel about town on self-hire” (206). She has learned all her healing skills from Georgia and becomes a savvy negotiator who knows how to barter and bargain. Once her accounting lessons are complete, Mrs. Lindo begins teaching her to write. Again, she progresses quickly, and begins handling the business correspondence. Lindo brings her books from the library, including Swift, Voltaire, and the South Carolina Gazette, where she looks at the runaway slave notices.

Aminata is thriving but she misses her friends back on St. Helena’s island. She becomes well-known for her midwifery, delivering Dolly’s son, Samuel, and, later, Mrs. Lindo’s son, David. To reward her, the Lindos offer her a gift. She asks to see a map of the world, but this request enrages Solomon until his wife placates him: as a Jew, he is not accorded the same respect as the Anglicans and was barely allowed to join the Charles Town Library Society. Mrs. Lindo convinces him to honor Aminata’s request, but when she sees the maps, she despairs. Maps of the white man’s world show important details, such as the names of villages. But maps of Africa show “foolish” (212) pictures of monkeys and a child sleeping with a lion. She had hoped the map would show her the way back home, but now she feels she will never find a way back to Africa.

Years pass in the same manner, until Aminata learns through the fishnet that Georgia has died peacefully in her sleep, and Fomba has been accidentally shot by a white patroller. Loss piles upon loss. In 1774, a smallpox epidemic claims hundreds of lives, including Mrs. Lindo, Dolly, and each of their sons, Samuel and David. Solomon, in a fog of grief, mostly ignores her. Most of Aminata’s friends are dead or have left town with their masters. After thirteen years of service, Mrs. Lindo was the only white person Aminata had ever trusted. Her mistress had always been kind to her, giving her a book each month, as well as whale oil for her reading lamp.

Hard times now come to South Carolina. The people are angry at the British government for their shipping restrictions and high taxes. Disease runs rampant—fever, syphilis, smallpox—so the authorities temporarily bar slave ships from docking at Sullivan’s Island. Lindo must go to New York City to transact business. His sister, Leah, moves in to care for his household. She hates Aminata and tells her she must fend for herself. Aminata scrounges and barters for food, as coins are now hard to come by. She ekes out a living on her earnings as a midwife. Alone at night, she longs for her parents and for Georgia. One night, she hears someone call out her real name, not “Meena.” It is Chekura. She has missed her husband terribly but she is angry that he has been absent so long. He explains that his master and Appleby conspired to sell them in order to break them up. He was sold before he learned that Mamadu had been taken from his mother. Chekura is bald now and missing a finger—a punishment for sneaking off to visit his wife. As soon as he returned to Lady’s Island, he found out where Aminata was and made his way to Charles Town. Aminata, now thirty, thinks about their little family and how she had hoped they would remain together. She sobs, and he comforts her. They make love. He tells her their son was sold down in Georgia, in Savannah—he learned this news from the fishnet while working down there. He said he considered suicide after learning of Mamadu’s and Aminata’s disappearance. But the hope of finding them again kept him going.

Chekura does not trust Lindo. He tells Aminata that their son died of smallpox in 1762, about a year after he had been sold. A wet-nurse in Savannah had passed word through the fishnet that Lindo had arranged for Mamadu’s sale. She claimed that “the Indigo Jew” was with the family when the baby arrived in her care. This news shatters Aminata, who runs out crying. Chekura must leave soon, so she barters in town for their meal. He offers to kill Lindo—he wishes to avenge his child’s kidnapping. But Aminata tells him not to, for she wants him alive, and she wants him to “stay good” (225). They part, hopeful that they will meet again soon.

When Lindo returns, he demands that Aminata pay him the two pounds that she owes him from her weekly earnings. He has been fired from his inspector job and money is scarce. She refuses, and then she talks back to him. He grabs her wrist and slaps her. She then confronts him about Mamadu, but he claims Appleby sold the baby, and asks if she has been going through his papers. She fears he will rape her or throw her out, but instead he tries to tell his side of the story. She refuses and they settle into an uneasy truce. She stops making payments to him, and he does not provide her with food, oil, or any assistance. But he allows her to sleep in his house without any trouble. For the first time since coming to Charles Town, Aminata is hungry and work is scarce. Chekura does not return, but Aminata knows it must be because he cannot find a way to travel safely. Lindo sends for her, and she suspects she will now be sold. This time, however, he tells her he is going to New York again and he is taking her, too. She will work for him and he will make sure she is fed and clothed. Aminata knows she must go: “It would be my Exodus,” she tells herself, vowing never to return to South Carolina (229).