talking across the ditch. After the meal the freedmen led prayers to Tual's statue, and we lifted our own prayers to Kamye, and then people went to their beds, except for those who lingered to 'jump the ditch.' Some nights, in the summer, there would be singing, or a dance was allowed. In the winter one of the grandfathers — poor old broken men, not strong people like the grandmothers — would 'sing the word.' That is what we called reciting the Arkamye. Every night, always, some of the people were teaching and others were learning the sacred verses. On winter nights one of these old worthless bondsmen kept alive by the grandmothers' charity would begin to sing the word. Then even the pups would be still to listen to that story.
The friend of my heart was Walsu. She was bigger than I, and was my defender when there were fights and quarrels among the young or when older pups called me 'Blackie' and 'Bossie.' I was small but had a fierce temper. Together, Walsu and I did not get bothered much. Then Walsu was sent out the gate. Her mother had been bred and was now stuffed big, so that she needed help in the fields to make her quota. Gede must be hand-harvested. Every day as a new section of the bearing stalk
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comes ripe it has to be picked, and so gede pickers go through the same field over and over for twenty or thirty days, and then move on to a later planting. Walsu went with her mother to help her pick her rows. When her mother felt ill, Walsu took her place, and with help from other hands she kept up her mother's quota. She was then six years old by owner's count, which gave all assets the same birthday, new year's day at the beginning of spring. She might have truly been seven. Her mother remained ill both before birthing and after, and Walsu took her place in the gede field all that time. She never afterward came back to play, only in the evenings to eat and sleep. I saw her then and we could talk. She was proud of her work. 1 envied her and longed to go through the gate. I followed her to it and looked through it at the world. Now the walls of the compound seemed very close-
1 told my grandmother Dosse that I wanted to go to work in the fields.
'You're too young.'
'I'll be seven at the new year.'
'Your mother made me promise not to let you go out.'
Next time my mother visited the compound, I said, 'Grandmother won't let me go out. 1 want to go work with Walsu.'
'Never,' my mother said. 'You were born for better than that.'
'What for?'
'You'll see.'
She smiled at me. I knew she meant the House, where she worked. She had told me often of the wonderful things in the House, things that shone
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and were colored brightly, things that were thin and delicate, clean things. It was quiet in the House, she said. My mother herself wore a beautiful red scarf,
her voice was soft, and her clothing and body were always clean and fresh.
'When will I see?'
I teased her until she said, 'All right! I'll ask my lady.'
'Ask her what?'
All I knew of my-lady was that she too was delicate and clean, and that my mother belonged to her in some particular way, of which she was proud. I knew my-lady had given my mother the red scarf.
'I'll ask her if you can come begin training at the House.'
My mother said 'the House' in a way that made me see it as a great sacred place like the place in our prayer: May I enter in the clear house, in the rooms of peace.
I was so excited I began to dance and sing, 'I'm going to the House, to the House!' My mother
slapped me to make me stop and scolded me for being wild. She said, 'You are too young! You can't behave! If you get sent away from the House, you can never come back.'
I promised to be old enough.
'You must do everything right,' Yowa told me.
'You must do everything I say when I say it. Never question. Never delay. If my lady sees that you're wild, she'll send you back here. And that will be the end of you forever.'
I promised to be tame. I promised to obey at once in everything, and not to speak. The more
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frightening she made it, the more I desired to see the wonderful, shining House.
When my mother left I did not believe she would speak to my-lady. I was not used to promises being
kept. But after some days she returned, and I heard her speaking to my grandmother. Dosse was angry at first, speaking loudly. I crept under the window of the hut to listen. I heard my grandmother weep. I was frightened and amazed. My grandmother was patient with me, always looked after me, and fed me well. It had never entered my mind that there was anything more to it than that, until I heard her crying. Her crying made me cry, as if I were part of her.
'You could let me keep her one more year,' she said. ' She's just a baby. I would never let her out the gate.' She was pleading, as if she were powerless, not a grandmother. 'She is my joy, Yowa!'
'Don't you want her to do well, then?'
'Just a year more. She's too wild for the House.'
'She's run wild too long. She'll get sent out to the fields if she stays. A year of that and they won't have her at the House. She'll be dust. Anyhow, there's no use crying about it. I asked my lady, and she's expected. I can't go back without her.' 'Yowa, don't let her come to harm,' Dosse said very low, as if ashamed to say this to her daughter, and yet with strength in her voice.
'I'm taking her to keep her out of harm,' my mother said. Then she called me, and I wiped my tears and came-
It is queer, but I do not remember my first walk through the world outside the compound or my first sight of the House. I suppose I was frightened and
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kept my eyes down, and everything was so strange to me that I did not understand what I saw. I know it was a number of days before my mother took me to show me to Lady Tazeu. She had to scrub me and train me and make sure I would not disgrace her. I was terrified when at last she took my hand, scolding me in a whisper all the time, and brought me out of the bondswomen's quarters, through halls and doorways of painted wood, into a bright, sunny
room with no roof, full of flowers growing in pots.
I had hardly ever seen a flower, only the weeds in the kitchen gardens, and I stared and stared at them. My mother had to jerk my hand to make me look at the woman lying in a chair among the flowers, in clothes soft and brightly colored like the flowers. I could hardly tell them apart. The woman's hair was long and shining, and her skin was shining and black. My mother pushed me, and I did what she had made me practice over and over: I went and knelt down beside the chair and waited, and when the woman put out her long, narrow, soft hand, black above and azure on the palm, I touched my forehead to it. I was supposed to say 'I am your slave Rakam, ma'am,' but my voice would not come out.
'What a pretty little thing,' she said. 'So dark.'
Her voice changed a little on the last words.
'The Bosses came in ... that night,' Yowa said in a timid, smiling way, looking down as if embarrassed.
'No doubt about that,' the woman said. I was able to glance up at her again. She was beautiful. I
did not know a person could be so beautiful. I think she saw my wonder. She put out her long, soft hand again and caressed my cheek and neck. 'Very, very
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pretty, Yowa,' she said. 'You did quite right to bring her here. Has she been bathed?'
