Good Fortune (9781416998631) Read online

  Good

  Fortune

  Good

  Fortune

  Noni Carter

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people,

  or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents

  are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events

  or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2010 by Noni Carter

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or [email protected].

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  Book design by Laurent Linn

  The text for this book is set in Arrus BT

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Carter, Noni.

  Good fortune / Noni Carter.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Brutally kidnapped from her African village and shipped to

  America, a young girl struggles to come to terms with her new life as

  a slave, gradually rising from working in the fields to the master’s

  house, secretly learning to read and write, until, risking

  everything, she escapes to seek freedom in the North.

  ISBN 978-1-4169-8480-1 (hardcover)

  [1. Slavery—Fiction. 2. African Americans—Fiction. 3. Southern

  States—History—1775-1865—Fiction. 4. Youths’ writings.] I. Title.

  PZ7.C2474Go 2010

  [Fic]—dc22

  2009036270

  ISBN 978-1-4169-9863-1 (eBook)

  To Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandma Rose,

  my ancestor; my angel

  For more information about facts versus

  fiction, visit the author’s website at

  www.nonicarter.com.

  Recommended reading includes

  The Norton Anthology of African American Literature,

  edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Nellie Y. McKay.

  PROLOGUE

  THE NIGHT WAS CALM AND PEACEFUL, ALMOST SEDUCING TO A child of four years. I watched as a strange light blanketed the sky, as if to package reality and toss it out, over the horizon. Then the night came alive; moonlight flickered; the trees swayed more wildly than the wind dared them to; the stars danced, clapping the earth like the feet of tribal people, black skin digging into ground. The night reveled in its boundless freedom, and allowed the calm to dip into a careless chaos. The night grew tense and swirled about me as I held the woman’s neck loosely, my four-year-old arms resting on her soft shoulders. She stood tall, her movements both gentle and confident, and the trees about us beckoned towards her, jealous limbs reaching down to grab and claim for their own. Her teeth glistened, smile radiant, so outstanding that the moonlight itself found a need, in all of its magnificence, to try and steal its glow. To these I shot angry glances and held on even tighter. My mother was mine, and they needed to know it.

  I turned my small head, searching for the eyes of Mathee, and found myself gazing into their brilliance. Bringing her lips to my forehead, she wrapped me in a kiss, and set me down on my feet, robbing her warm hand from the flesh of my own palm so I could dash away into the hut.

  My small knees bent, and I dropped to the floor, sitting on hands, watching Mathee follow me inside. Her hips swayed daringly, and her smile remained set, making real without words the depths of her love only a child could understand. Objects stirred, suns and moons passed by as Mama knelt by me, but I took no notice; I was oblivious to it all.

  There was nothing, there was no one but my mother and me.

  The two of us breathed in unison, our smiling lips just a hair’s-breadth apart, one palm pressed lightly up against another palm, a nose loosely brushing the tip of another nose, eyelids fluttering against each other’s. She closed her long fingers around my small hand.

  I’ve missed you, my child.

  But, Mathee, I’ve been here.

  You forget, my beautiful flower, you’re dreaming.

  No, Mama!

  She disappeared from the hut, and I was suddenly standing outside, alone.

  The stillness hung like a shadow in the air. It was the calm before the storm, before that stillness disappeared with abrupt suddenness and tumbled into turmoil. The clouds burst open, and the thunder put forth the loudest noise I had ever heard. A lightning bolt struck the ground and the sky breathed fire upon the roofs of the village huts. Frantic villagers poured out, screaming, panicked, and terrified, running every which way. Four-legged beasts galloped about, carrying on their backs monster-men who bore fire sticks in their arms that cracked louder than the storm above their heads and that left bodies lying dead on the African soil. Flames grabbed what they could, devouring the land, feasting swiftly and with greed.

  Then I was back in the hut, as was Mama Mijiza, or Mathee as I called her. She sat looking tenderly over my shoulder. I turned and followed her eyes, her soft smile that bounded across the room toward a small boy who sat still and silent on a gray cloud. He was gazing at nothingness, large eyes watching everything with a calm, distracted patience, taking it all in.

  I’ve missed you, he said to me.

  But Sentwaki, I’m here.

  You forget, Ayanna, you’re dreaming.

  No, brother!

  The little boy leaped past me, his legs long and quick like his mother’s, and disappeared into the confusion of the night.

  With a furrowed brow, I turned to reach out for Mathee again, to brush my nose against hers, to feel the soft touch of her fingers against my own fingers as she counted out my four young years in a singsong voice. But instead I found myself staring into the face of a monster-man. His eyes were deep red, and his snarl brought screams to my lips. He opened his mouth, and from it, silver chains flowed like snakes, wrapping my body round and round. …

  Mama Mijiza!

  I called, but no one answered. I ran out, searching, climbing over houses, ascending to the tops of trees, flying above the waters, searching, searching, and searching some more for that face—soft cheeks, warm skin, light kiss.

  My feet splashed against the mud, the African soil snatching at my ankles, trying hard to steal me back.

  Where is she?

  Here.

  Sentwaki was back by my side, holding tight to Mathee’s hand.

  Mama Mijiza, what’s going on?

  Hush, my child!

  There was fear in her, I could feel it, I could see the panic lining her forehead. She began running, moving with the rest of the villagers, her dark skin glistening in the rain, her hair smelling like home. I could hear my mother’s heartbeat, the only sound that filled the air: thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump—

  Crack!

  The world around me shattered into a million pieces as her body came crashing to the ground. A trembling hand, dark liquid smeared on chest, on skin, Mama’s blood staining the cloth I had ripped from her clothes.

  Mathee, get up! Answe
r me, get up!

  A shudder, a horrible scream, and then nothing left but scowling silence and a lone, faltering heartbeat: thump-thump, thump-thump, thu—

  It stopped.

  We stood, Sentwaki and I, saliva dripping from our mouths, bloody cloth grasped in my hand, staring at Mama who lay there silently, her eyes fully open, unblinking.

  I followed the trail of blood with wide eyes, blood that reached up past my toes, grasping my ankles, binding my wrists, and reaching inside to snatch my heart. It blinded my vision and choked the breath from my lungs. But like water trapped in a circling current, my mind kept spinning back to the image of Mama’s blood-smeared face and her unmoving eyes.

  And again, the little boy sat on his gray cloud, gazing at nothingness, large eyes watching it all with a calm, distracted patience as the blood swallowed him, too.

  Someone was screaming.

  Mathee!

  I realized it came from my own lips. Then my world went black.

  Bound by the Whip

  CHAPTER

  1

  HIS HAND CAME DOWN UPON MY CHEEK HARD AND FAST. Stunned, I staggered backward.

  “Look at all dis cotton you left behind, gal!” I looked up to see the overseer’s hand nearing my face again. I flinched as he smacked me once more, sending me to my knees. I stared at the ground, seven years’ worth of hard labor in the fields burning under my veil of obedience.

  “Next time I find you skippin’ ova cotton like it don’t matta nothin’ in the world to you, you gonna find yo’self beaten, gal, you understand me?”

  “Yessuh,” I answered.

  “Now get up and pay attention, understand?”

  “Yessuh,” I said slowly, lifting my body from the ground.

  Doing cotton for Masta was a lot of work. On his plantation in the western part of Tennessee there was the land preparation, the spring planting, the weeding and the plowing, and the harvesting near the end of August. Then, after it was picked, some folks would remove the small green seeds from the cotton in the ginnin’ house. When we weren’t working on the cotton, we tended to a small cornfield Masta also owned.

  The year had come back around to the harvesting of the cotton. Picking was tough, especially when the frost would start biting the bolls. I preferred the hoeing or the planting, but for now, it was time to pick.

  When I first started fieldwork, I admired the folks who could pull that cotton out of the bolls with a single hand, a single swipe, their eyes set somewhere else. Then they’d take that cotton and easily slip it into their sacks. Not a single branch would break in the process. The breaking of a cotton branch or the destroying of an entire plant in whatever manner was cause for punishment. The overseer would ride by and strike any slave who committed this crime with the whip that hung by his side.

  The work didn’t seem so bad during my first days out in the field; that is, until the days started stretching out longer and the work sent aches throughout my body. My young hands would clumsily snap a branch and struggle to pull the picked cotton out of the brown bolls and get it into my sack. At the end of the day, my hands would be bloody and calloused.

  Even before the sun rose in the mornings, we were awakened to begin our workdays, sometimes having to line up in rows for a slave count before heading to the fields to pick. Our bodies were so accustomed to this work that sometimes I felt as if we were merely walking flesh, our minds still lost in sleep. The overseers would come by nearly every day to check our progress, warning us with a slap if we were too far behind. There were two of them, and they’d always find an excuse to drop three or four extra bags near our feet to fill up. They’d never forget if we happened to pick more one day than we did the last, and they’d be sure we picked a little more the next. We couldn’t leave until the last bag strapped to our backs was filled with that cotton. Then, at the close of the day, we’d watch, grateful almost, as the sun set, giving us relief from its hot rays. I don’t know why the sun chose to glare at us like it did, hours on end, bringing glistening sweat to our bodies as if we’d done something against it. Only long after sunset would we be granted leave.

  On that day, with the overseer’s hand imprint still burning in my flesh, I continued with my work. There was nothing else I could’ve done. I hated the fields that stretched as far as my mind would allow. It took me a long time to figure out how I could daydream, like I did when I was young, and work at the same time. The overseers thought they had snatched that mental freedom. But Aunt Mary, the mother figure that cared for me on that plantation, used to tell me that you could always find the greatest joy and freedom in your mind. Even so, it felt like a slap in the face to stand there, sometimes, staring at the never-ending rows of white cotton. With a quick reminder from a slave hand yanking at my dress, telling me to “bend down an’ pick so I wouldn’t get lashed,” I would return my attention to the row of cotton that surrounded me. With anger spinning in my mind, I would think of how we were engulfed in the white man’s world—nothing but a world of whiteness. If only we could get rid of all that cotton!

  Later on, when the sun had set and the moon was high in the sky, I finally trudged home. My legs were heavy; my feet dragged behind me.

  I walked past several silent houses in the slave quarters and only picked up my pace when I spotted a woman standing and waiting for me in the doorway of a small cabin. Mary’s posture looked anxious, and I quickly embraced her as I reached the door, my cheek brushing up against her chin.

  Mary spent most of her time as a house servant but helped out when needed in the spinning house, making clothing and other materials. I was very small when I first came to the plantation at the age of four, and Mary was the one who took me into her arms without a word. Mary said as soon as she saw me, she knew I was a child of hers, just not blood-related. From then on it went without saying that she would be the mother I had lost and that her son would be the brother who’d been sold—and so, lost to me—when I first came across the seas to this land. Daniel was two years older than I was and was born a year or so after Mary’s first child, which she had lost. He had never been afraid of much, and that worried me a little bit. It didn’t take much so-called wrongdoing around these parts for a defiant slave to end up limp and lifeless.

  Mary ran a hand slowly across my short, black hair, which rounded my head and sat two or three inches high on my scalp. Then she pulled back and looked me over, her eyes running past my large, dark ones, past my eyelids batting with fatigue, past my shoulders slouched with a long day’s worth of work, and on down to my dirt-caked feet.

  “Look at you—got holes in them pants I just done sewn you, from workin’ hard out there in them fields. And looka here, you growin’ out of ’em already.” She shook her head back and forth, but that gesture and the heaviness lurking behind her voice were negated by the kindness in her eyes.

  “Seem you even darker today than you was jus’ yestaday,” Mary said quietly.

  “That sun ain’t got no mercy.”

  My skin was very dark: When I was younger, the children told me I looked like the nighttime. I preferred to remember images from my homeland, from the black land way across the seas, images of me rolling in the dark soil and rubbing its similar color into my skin. It was something that made me a bit different from others around the plantation. It was clear to Mary, and to many others, my native origins weren’t from close by, and Mary said there weren’t too many folks like me who came straight from their ancestral lands. It had changed she said, from the days of her youth.

  It was early in the year 1821. I was young, just about fourteen years old, according to Mary, who had helped me keep track of my age. Like most other slaves, she didn’t know hers. She told me once that when I first came here, it had taken quite a while to break past the resistance I had layered myself with. I wouldn’t talk, I wouldn’t look at anyone straight, and I could never sleep through a full night. Then one day, after a few weeks of the same, Mary found me crouched in the corner of the cabin, hold
ing up four fingers and touching each one with a finger from my other hand. I repeated this over and over again. She figured that wherever I had come from, someone had taught me how to count the years I had been on this earth, and she decided to continue with that cycle. Mary knew children well, and I seemed to be around that age. She had walked over to me, silently, and touched her own fingers as she had seen me do. She then brought one of her fingers to the four I was holding up and then repeated the same. After a while, she had taken my hands in hers and brought my fingers to her lips, kissing each one by one. It was the first time we had bonded, and she kept that moment close to her heart by helping me keep up with my age.

  It was nearing the end of September and, if we’d kept track right, I’d be turning fourteen when the first flower bloomed, signifying the beginning of springtime. Mary told me I was growing up slowly; she said I’d be as pretty as they get, and that made me smile a bit.

  I wiped away the sweat on Mary’s forehead that glistened in the moonlight, and gazed past her drained face into her eyes. She shook her head back and forth again.

  “You sho’ had a bad one last night, Sarah.” I nodded solemnly, remembering Mary waking me that morning, silencing my muffled screams from distorted dreams. She’d wiped away the sweat I was drenched in and dried my streaming tears, which seemed to flow from a place deep inside that connected those broken dreams with a reality I couldn’t remember well at all.

  “You rememba it this time?”

  I shook my head and sighed. “Only bits’ve it, Mary. Ain’t no dif’rent from befo’.”

  “What ’bout them parts that got you cryin’ like that?” Again, I shook my head, but with less assurance. My nightmares didn’t come often, but when they did, I’d wake up, baffled, wondering why I couldn’t remember the images that had flitted so quickly and disjointedly across my mind’s eye. Most of them remained buried in a place inside of me, perhaps for the best. And yet in all the years I had been having those dreams after arriving on the plantation, some of the same images had returned to me again and again: a smiling face, a warm hand, large and staring eyes, the smile wiped away, empty, lifeless, and that word, that name, Bahati. …