“Your true mother?”
Mama rocked and nodded. Her jeweled hands lifted, blocking some unseen memory from striking, and Ester swallowed tears.
“Father bloodied my mother’s face—done with his big hands, his hands. Then I grew older and saw a lot more of what evil his hands, those awful hands, could to do to me. I was my mama, but just white as a ghost. He let me know that.”
Ester dropped to kneel at Mama’s feet and clasped the woman’s fingers so tight, hoping Mama knew she was here, not Jamaica, and Ester had the strength to protect her. “Mama, I’m here. I could get your knitting to draw you back. Stay away from the memories. You’ve said enough.”
“Sometimes, Ester, the fight is in your head. You have to win there to win anywhere.”
A full sob broke, twisted free from her gut, deep and pained, and ushered from Ester’s lips. She held on to Mama’s knees. “I’m so sorry I judged you.”
Mama patted Ester’s head, smoothing curls. “Some things don’t pass so easily.” Mama’s voice was low, but Ester heard her, and that was all that mattered.
“When your grandfather wasn’t around, my true mama told me about her family in Africa who had escaped theZhondathe first time it came. Her baby boy with a star birthmark above his left eye. He was learning to fish when she was taken by theZhonda. Then she grew sick and died. Cholera, I think.”
“TheZhonda.” Ester lifted her head and caught Mama’s eyes. “I’m so sick of that name. I wish I’d never—”
“Bex has memories that don’t pass so easily. My story is Bex’s, too. Mama tapped on the box in her lap. “You must see this. If I hadn’t sheltered you and Ruth from these memories, maybe we’d all be stronger.”
The box had to be a piece of the puzzle of Mama’s story, and Ester held her hand, would hold her hand forever, so her mother would tell her story. “I’m here and I’m listening.”
Fast blinking, as if she watched a play with actors in front of her, Mama stared ahead. She twisted a gold ring on her thumb. “My father took us to England. He needed to testify at a trial. A big insurance claim, about his lost shipment on theZhonda. I saw the manifest papers in his things. One of the ‘cargo’ had a star mark above his eye. It could have been someone else, but in my heart, I knew theZhondahad killed my brother, the last remaining part of my African family. The only part of my family left was an evil father who I thought loved me until he showed me he didn’t.”
Ester’s throat thickened. “Is it Bex’s story because of his uncle?”
Mama put a hand to Ester’s cheek. “Mama Rose caught me crying. She knew what my father did in secret. She gave me a fist of money and told me to stay in London. She said I could be truly free here. I wouldn’t have to fearhis handsanymore. I took the money and I ran.”
“Mama, you just stayed in London, alone? That’s terrifying.”
“It was, but I wanted freedom more than fear. Ester, it was hard for the first couple of weeks hiding, knowing if my father found me, he’d be so cruel, but I kept up with the trial in the papers to see when he left to go back to Jamaica.” She opened the box and pulled out clippings. “I read in one article of a young man, barely twelve years old, who bravely testified against theZhonda’scaptain, and all the evil the boy saw and tried to stop.”
Ester was so shy she couldn’t imagine standing up in front of strangers to testify. She drew her arms about her knees. “That’s brave for one so young.”
“It’s worse, Ester. Bex had to testify that his uncle, the captain of theZhonda, the man who’d raised him since he was six, was a killer, ordering the crew to toss my brother and the other men into the ocean to drown. Bex said many still had chains on them. Chains, in the middle of the ocean.”
Ester couldn’t swallow, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t imagine the terror of the heavy irons dragging a body down. But she also couldn’t imagine the pressure a young, twelve-year-old boy was put under to do what was right.
Bex. Her poor Bex.
She took up the clippings and read the horrible truth, the young boy’s terrifying testimony. Ester scooped up the paper that readHero Unmasked.
It said very much the same but added that he still struggles with being on that boat from age six, even though he had not known about his brothers’ plight in the cargo below. Ester wiped her dripping nose. “Doesn’t he know that a six-year-old couldn’t have changed grown men?”
“Ester, I don’t think anyone has ever told him. He was on that boat. He was almost tossed overboard, trying to reason with the first mate. Bex’s account led to the captain’s hanging. His uncle’s hanging.”
Ester picked up the box again and went through the clippings, landing on a caricature of the courtroom with a young boy drawn with slave’s shackles labeled “Zhonda”about his neck.
Mama wiped at her blank eyes. “The captain was hanged because of the large-scale fraud he tried to perpetrate on the insurance company, not for the killing of my brother or any of those men. Keep reading the papers. See the interviews of dock workers. They thought Bex a traitor to his own kind. At age twelve he was left all on his own, just for doing what was right.”
Bex said that he wanted someone to believe in him. Ester didn’t want him alone, but he still courted danger. “Then he’s done enough. He should seek to be safe and build a safe, secure life.”
Mama shook her head. “There’s a guilt about surviving that haunts, just as there’s a squeamishness about being powerless. I know it, for I was small when I watched my siblings being sold away. We Croomes live in this house and have freedom, but my plantation brothers may not have lived past fifteen.”
It wasn’t possible to hurt more, but Ester held her chest like it would explode. Everything churned inside—guilt, betrayal, and so much anger at herself. “Bex once said all he ever wanted was for someone to recommend him beyond his faults, to know he was good. I thought he meant his snoring, not this. I let my fears push him away. I betrayed him, Mama.”
Her mother took a finger and swiped the tears from Ester’s face. “He did what was right. Gave me peace for my lost brother, but it doesn’t take the hurt from him.”
“I didn’t let him explain. My anger or stubbornness made me deaf to his pain. And to yours, Mama. I’ll never forgive myself.” Ester reached up and hugged Mama’s neck. “There needs to be a better word to express how empty I feel inside. Mama, how could you be so strong and forgiving?”
