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Mae came. She sat down next to me on my pallet, then she told Belle and the twins to leave. “Abinia,” she said firmly, “why you rockin’ like this?”
    I rocked wildly as I clung to the memory of pain, to the memory of my mother. I couldn’t release it; I would lose her again.
    “Abinia,” she said, trying to hold me still, “you tell Mama Mae why you rockin’ like this.” She held my face and forced my eyes to meet hers. “You talk to Mama. Abinia, you got to talk. Don’t you go away like this. You talk to Mama. You tell her what the trouble is.”
    I tried to pull away, needing the force of motion to still the nausea, but Mama took my rocking self to her lap. Pressing me to her strong bosom, she slowed my rhythm to match her own. “Mama gonna take this pain from you,” she said. Rocking back, she breathed deeply, pulling me in to herself, and as we rocked forward, she exhaled in deep guttural moans the sorrow I was holding.
    Back and forth she rocked, bringing to the surface the festeringpoison of the nightmare I had been hiding. I tried to breathe with her, but my breath came in short rasps, and I felt as though I were drowning.
    “Now,” she said. “You tell Mama.”
    I whispered the horror. “Baby Henry is in the water.”
    “Baby Henry not in the water,” she said, “that baby is with the Lawd. He in a good place. He laughin’ and playin’ with other children of the Lawd. He not hurtin’ no more! He in a good place.”
    “My ma is in the water,” I whispered again.
    “Abinia, your mama is with the Lawd, just like baby Henry. Matter of fact, she be holdin’ baby Henry, and they playin’ together right now. Listen, you can almost hear them laughin’. This world is not the only home. This world is for practice to get things right. Times, the Lawd say, ‘Nope, that mama, that baby Henry, they too sweet to stay away from Me no more. I brings them home.’ I knows this, Abinia,” she said, her solid arms and words of conviction anchoring me. “Mama sayin’ there are times we got to trust the Lawd.”
    Somehow I heard Mama Mae’s truth, and my heart believed her. Having found my past, I clung to this mother who now gave me my future. “ Ma!” I keened. “Ma!” and my cries finally released the tears I had stored since my arrival.
    “Mama’s here,” I was reassured. “Mama’s here.”

C HAPTER F OUR

     
    Belle
    T O TELL THE TRUTH, WHEN baby Henry passes, he’s suffering so much, it’s the best thing that he goes. Poor Dory’s wanting to save him, but Mama says she sees this before in the quarters and it always ends bad. Now Dory’s eyes look like Miss Martha’s after she loses her babies.
    When Lavinia sees baby Henry going in the ground, she goes off her head. When Jimmy brings her back, I can’t do nothing with her, but Mama knows what to do. Then Lavinia remembers being on the ship and seeing her mama and papa dying and them being dropped in the water. What are those men thinking, letting a little one see that?
    Now she knows where she comes from, Ireland, but she says that her mama and papa had nothing there and come here looking to work. She says she has a brother, Cardigan.
    Funny name, Cardigan. I don’t ask more because I see she still have a hard time talking about him.
    Since her day of remembering, it’s hard to believe the change in that chil’, though she’s still like a mouse, skittery and scared of the world. She makes a big thing of doing her chores, and when she’s done, she always comes for me to look. When I say “good job,” her little face has a smile to light up the kitchen house.
    I got to say, when the twins tell me that she’s bringing food to Ben, that little girl warms my heart. She don’t know why I give her extra to take down, but I got to laugh when I think that we both got our eye on the same man.

C HAPTER F IVE

     
    Lavinia
    A FTER I REMEMBERED THE DEATH of my parents, other memories began to surface. Of course, at that tender age,