Here's a preview of the book
Taking Liberty: The Story of Oney Judge
by Ann Rinaldi
One day when I was three, my mama took me by the hand and dragged me to the slope of lawn that ran down to the river in front of the mansion house.
It didn't even have the piazza on yet. There was lumber and stone to one end, and builders working. She put her hand on the back of my neck, the way you hold a chicken just before you're about to chop its head off.
'You see that house, Oney Judge?' she said to me. 'Do you?'
Well, I saw it, all right. For me and all the other little children on the place it was always in our line of sight. Like the Throne of Grace the mistress was always reading about in her Bible. We couldn't help but see it. It was there when you woke up at dayclean, and in the night you could see it in the mists from the quarters, candles glowing in the long windows.
'Yes, Mama,' I said.
'Well, you just take a good look, Oney Judge. 'Cause that house is where you gonna work when you get old 'nuf. You ain't gonna be no hoe Negra. You gonna be a fine mistress of the needle, workin' in that house for the mistress. Like your aunt Myrtilla do. And me. And Charlotte. And that's why I want you inside now, plyin' your needle, and not in the quarters listenin' to those tall stories that old no-'count Sambo Anderson be tellin' you.'
'He tells me about Africa, Mama.'
She hit me in the ear. 'You doan need to know 'bout Africa. You here, not there. And if'n you doan wanna spend your grown-up days trudgin' in the hot sun and pullin' weeds all summer, you best listen. You hear?'
All I heard was a ringing in my ear. But she was mouthing more words, and I knew they weren't good. And if I didn't say yes, I'd get another hit in my other ear. So I nodded my head yes. And I promised I would practice my stitching. And she walked around to the back of the house to go in and have her morning time of sewing with the mistress and my aunt Myrtilla and Charlotte. Because they were all mistresses of their needles.
Other things about my first years on the place I disremember. But I know of those things. I suspect I was told them by Aunt Myrtilla.
Some was told by old no-'count Sambo Anderson, who hunted and trapped and wore gold rings in his ears and adorned his face with tribal scars and tattoos and was anything but no-'count to me and the other children. Because he was a saltwater Negro, come from Africa, he had great esteem on the place. So that everyone, Negro and white alike, listened when he spoke.
Some things were told to me by One-Handed Charles, who could salt fish better than anybody with two hands. Some by Nathan, who worked in the mansion kitchen with Hercules, the cook. And some by Lame Alice, who mended the fishing nets.
It was Nathan who told me the business of 'first and second mourning.'
It seems I had practiced with my needle enough to be allowed in the mistress's bedchamber early of a morning with Mama and Aunt Myrtilla and Charlotte. This was a privilege given to few Negro women. All Negroes who worked in the house had to be not only the best at their chores, they had to be mulatto. Which, I soon learned, meant half white.
I was half white because of my daddy. He came from England. All'st he ever talked about was England. One time I heard him telling my mama about a place called Newgate. I thought my daddy was a squire, like the Fairfaxes, who lived next door. They came from England and they were fancified gentlemen.
I thought Newgate was his estate. And that someday he would take me and Mama there.
But when you play with other children, be they Negro or white, they soon set things right.
(Copyright by Ann Rinaldi)
Return to the page of book previews.