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on it.
I reached down to pluck them, but they lay flat. I knelt, staring at them.
    Everyone laughed.
    "Silly thing. She's trying to pick the flowers off the carpet." The girl said this. She was young and not as pretty as her mother.
    "Hush, Mary. You never know when to keep a still tongue in your head, do you?"
    I looked up. The boy was sitting with a flat object that had leaves in it in his lap. When he set it aside I saw the leaves had squiggle markings on them. His voice was deep and sure. He came over to me and raised me up to stand. "What's her name?" he asked.
    "Phillis," Jesus told him.
    "Come, let us start prayers," the lovely woman said.
    The boy took me on his lap. "Hush," he told me. "These are evening prayers."
    I did not understand the words, but I understood that I must be quiet and still. It was not difficult in the protection of his arms. He had white fluff at his neck and wrists. He wore breeches the color of the sun when it goes to sleep. He smelled very good. And when no one was looking, he took something out of his pocket and slipped it into my mouth.
    It tasted so lovely and sweet!
    I fell asleep in his arms. Vaguely, I heard the family's murmurings to their god. And I heard the mention of this Jesus who was so important to them. But I saw no water, no fountain. So I could not figure out how they could pray.
    Then their murmurings stopped and the boy carried me out of the room. I opened my eyes for a spell. The house was getting dark. There were blazing candles set around, on tables and in holders on the walls. Then we started going up the piles of wood. Climbing.
    I whimpered in fear.
    "Hush, it will be all right," the boy said. The sureness of his tone becalmed me. So I closed my eyes and drifted again to sleep.
    It was the first time I'd felt safe since I slept on my pallet at home. Now I was set down on another pallet. It was very soft. And I was covered.
    "Sleep well," the boy said.
    In the morning he was gone. I thought I had dreamed him. In the morning there was only Mary, the girl. And she was angry.
    "She cries at night, Mother. She wakes in fits and yells. I can't have her in my room! 1 tried to put her on the chamber pot and she wet the floor! Do something else with her!"
    I was shamed. I had done wrong. I had not known what the chamber pot was for. My soft garment was wet and smelled.
    Aunt Cumsee had to take me in hand and wash me again and give me clean clothes. I stayed with her in the kitchen.

    By the time of the next full moon, I knew what the chamber pot was for. And I'd also learned the other important things I needed to learn to survive.
    The blocks of wood that went upward were called stairs.
    The boy and girl were in their seventeenth summer. And they had been born at the same time. In my land this was considered great good fortune. And benevolence from the gods.
    Here it was called twins.
    The boy's name was Nathaniel. He went out of the house every morning to a place called Latin School.
    "His mother wants him to be a man of God," Aunt Cumsee told me. "But I think he wants to be a merchant."
    Daily, I was learning their language from her. One word at a time—but everyone seemed surprised that I was learning so fast.
    Mary did not want me back in her room.
    "Someone must train her, Mary. I want to make a Christian of her," Mrs. Wheatley said.
    "I'll take her only if you give her to me as my personal servant. All my friends have Negro servants."
    Mrs. Wheatley looked perplexed. But she agreed. "Remember kindness, dear. Her little soul belongs to God."
    As far as Mary was concerned, my little soul, and my body, belonged to her. From that moment on I was at her beck and call. And kindness had naught to do with it.
    All day I fetched for her, picked up her discarded clothing, held her things, followed her around. By the time of the next full moon, I learned that not to do what Mary asked, when Mary asked it, earned me an immediate slap.
    She washed away all her meanness, of course,