Great Oak Plantation
South Carolina 1853
It seemed to Anna that she was always hungry, all the time. She lived down on Slave Row like a wild barn cat, eating any crumbs that got tossed her way, staying in whichever dingy cabin she could sneak into at night, sleeping in any bed full of young ones that had room to spare. It was easier to find someone to curl up alongside in the wintertime than it was in the summer—as long as she was willing to be on the edge of the bed where the cold air came in and not snuggled down in the middle where it was nice and warm. And Anna was willing. She took whatever scraps of warmth she could find, dodging blows when she got in someone’s way, scrabbling for enough food to quiet her empty stomach.
Every morning before the sun rose, the horn blew to wake everybody up. Folks would rise from their beds, weary in body and spirit, as if they hadn’t slept at all. Nobody talked much as they made their way to the rice fields, their lean bodies moving like they always ached. Most of the time they’d go off singing, their voices slowly fading into the distance. But Anna knew by the sound of those songs that working in the rice fields was a hard, hard life. Folks called them songs, but they seemed more like groans to Anna, the way people moan in their sleep when they’re having a bad dream.
It would be nearly dark before those grown-ups made their way home again. And they returned home bone tired, too—day after day, year after year. Theirs wasn’t any kind of life, just a dreary existence, laboring and sleeping and laboring some more. And that was bound to be Anna’s future, too, in another year or so. But for now she was still too young to go off to the rice fields, still young enough to be cared for by Old Nellie, even though Anna never needed much tending.
The spring morning had been warm the day Anna wandered into the carriage house and discovered the kittens. One of the cats had hidden a litter of them in the back corner behind an empty barrel. They were wild things, nearly as skittish as Anna was, but she petted those kittens every day until they got used to her. They brought pleasure and pain in one tiny bundle, their soft fur tickling her like feathers, their prickly claws raking like briars. They quickly became Anna’s best friends, even if the sting of their claws did make her eyes water. Most of all, she loved the warmth of them, the life she felt in their purring, rumbling bellies.
One day when the kittens were old enough to leave their nest in the barn, Anna carried two of them down the long driveway and across the grassy yard to her favorite spot beneath the Great Oak Tree. She was sure to get a licking for wandering this far away, but Anna didn’t care. She wanted to share her special place with her new friends. Together they played on the shady grass and climbed one of the tree’s low hanging branches. Anna teased the kittens with a feathery strip of gray moss, watching them chase it in circles. Then, when both she and the kittens had played themselves out, Anna curled up beneath the huge tree with them and nodded off to sleep. A shrill voice startled her awake.
“You have kittens! Give me one!”
Anna opened her eyes to see a white girl hurrying toward her. The girl’s eyes were as pale as water, and her pinkish-white skin made Anna think of a newly plucked chicken. She’d watched the kitchen girls scald a bunch of chickens in hot water and pluck out all the feathers until they didn’t look anything at all like the chickens that ran around the backyard. That’s how this strange girl looked to her, barely resembling the real live, dark-skinned persons Anna lived with. She’d only seen the white folks who lived in the Big House from a distance, never this close. In fact, Anna had always run off whenever one of them came near, afraid that whatever had happened to make the rich, brown color fade from their skin would happen to her, too.
“I want a kitten,” the pale girl insisted. “Give me one.” Her voice was very loud, and as she walked toward Anna, something beneath her skirt made a rustling noise like a dog going after a rabbit in the bushes. Her hair was as ugly as the rest of her—straight as straw and as thin and colorless as smoke. She scared Anna half to death, and of course her kittens were just as scared as she was. They ran off and hid in the boxwood bushes at the edge of the garden. But Anna couldn’t scramble to her feet fast enough to get away.
“Hey! Where did they go?” the girl asked, planting her hands on her hips. She was taller than Anna and a few years older. Anna could tell because the white girl had her two front teeth already, while Anna’s were still growing in.
The girl stomped her foot. “Answer me! Where did the kittens go?”
“Y-you scared them away,” Anna said.
“Well, go catch them and bring them back. I want to hold one.”
No one had ever told Anna that she had to obey white people, but she knew. The girl was loud and bossy like the white overseer, and the look in her eyes was as sharp as knives.
“They’ll scratch you,” Anna warned. “Kittens have claws and they scratch.” She held out her bare arms to show the claw-stripes, hoping the girl would change her mind. Anna didn’t want to share her kittens.
The girl stuck out her chin. “They won’t scratch me.”
Her words made Anna curious. She wanted to see how this homely, white-skinned girl could tame those prickly kitten claws. Anna got down on all fours and crawled over to the boxwood where they had disappeared, meowing like a cat, trying to coax one of them out. The girl turned and skipped off shouting, “Mother! Mother come here. That little darkie has kittens and I want one.”
Anna peered out from the bushes and saw a large white woman strolling across the lawn followed by Bertha, the Big House mammy. Bertha pushed a strange wicker chair with wheels and an umbrella on top, and riding inside was a fat little white girl with a round pink face.
“Don’t shout, Claire,” the large woman said. “Young ladies don’t shout.”
“That darkie has kittens,” Claire said. “I saw a gray one and a striped one. I told the darkie I wanted one, but they ran under the bushes.”
“It’s just as well. They’re wild animals, Claire. They probably carry all sorts of vermin and diseases. I don’t want you anywhere near them.”
“But I want one! I want to take one up to my room to keep!”
“Absolutely not. I won’t have wild cats running around inside our house. They’ll destroy the furniture and all the carpets.”
All of a sudden it was as if an invisible animal had leaped on top of that girl and was tearing her limb from limb. She threw herself on the ground, kicking and wailing and making a terrible racket. “I want one! I want a kitten! I hate sleeping all alone in my room!” she wailed.
Anna had never seen such a fearsome sight, nor could she imagine what was wrong with the girl. But her mother didn’t seem to notice anything wrong. “You know Mammy Bertha needs to sleep in baby Katie’s room,” she soothed.
“I hate Katie! I want Mammy with me, and if I can’t have Mammy, then I want a kitten!”
“I’m sorry, but it’s out of the question. They’re nothing but mangy old barn cats. But if you stop fussing, maybe your father will buy a little dog for you the next time he goes to Charleston.”
“No, now! I want a kitty now! Make that darkie catch one for me!”
The girl’s angry red face was so terrifying that Anna got down on all fours again and began meowing and acting like a cat, trying to coax one of the kittens from its hiding place. Quick as can be, Claire’s tears turned to giggles. Anna couldn’t imagine how she could do that—switching from one to the other just as fast as you could blink.
“She’s funny, Mama.” Claire said. “She makes me laugh. I want the darkie to be my kitty.”
“Oh, good heavens, Claire. She’s just as filthy as those cats are. We can’t have such a creature in our house.”
The terrible wailing started up all over again, and Anna wanted to stay hidden in the bushes with the cats. Claire’s mother must have known that the only way to stop the racket was to let her have her own way because that’s what she finally did. And if Claire was going to make her mother choose between bringing a kitten into the house or bringing a darkie, Anna turned out to be the preferred choice.
“All right, Claire. All right. Stop fussing. Mammy can fix a blanket for the darkie on your bedroom floor. But first we’ll have to find her kin. We can’t have her crying for her mother in the middle of the night and waking everybody up.” She bent down to speak to Anna, wrinkling her nose as if she’d smelled something sour. “You, there … come on out of the bushes and tell us your name.”
“She’s Kitty,” Claire said before Anna could reply. “I’m going to call her Kitty because that’s what she is—my very own kitty.”
Anna crawled out from beneath the bush and saw that the angry red color was slowly fading from Missy Claire’s face. Her mother turned to the nursemaid.
“Bertha, do you know who this darkie belongs to?”
“That one? She don’t belong to nobody, Missus Goodman. Child’s mama has been gone a long while back.”
“All right then, come along,” Missus Goodman said, but she didn’t sound very happy about it. “We’ll start by getting her cleaned up. She certainly can’t come into the house all filthy. I won’t have her bringing in fleas.”
Anna scrambled to her feet, but Claire pushed her back down. “Not on two legs. Kitties don’t walk on two legs. And meow for me again.”
She did what she was told, following Claire on her hands and knees, all the way across the grass to the yard outside the kitchen where the house slaves lived. Daisy and two other slaves had set up the laundry tubs and were busy washing clothes. Missus Goodman ordered them to scrub Anna, too. “I don’t want her bringing fleas and lice into my house,” she said. “And find her something decent to wear.”
Anna had never had a bath in her life, as far as she could remember, and she didn’t like it one bit—especially when they dumped water over her head to wash her hair. The harsh soap stung her eyes, and Daisy scrubbed her skin until Anna thought for sure all the color would come off. She really started to panic when she saw how black the water had turned. But when Daisy finally decided she was clean and hauled her out of the tub, Anna was glad to see that her skin was still as brown as it had always been. It felt good to be clean. For the first time in her life she didn’t feel all itchy. Daisy dried her off.
“Here, put these on,” she said. “We found you an old pair of Missy Claire’s bloomers and a muslin shift she’s outgrown.”
“Come on, Kitty. Follow me,” Missy Claire said in a sweet, singsong voice. Anna crouched down on all fours and followed her through the back door and into the Big House, meowing every few steps. Missy Claire led the way up a tall staircase, and Anna had never seen so many steps before, much less climbed them on hands and knees. When she reached the top she thought for sure she’d climbed up to heaven as Missy led her into the most beautiful room Anna had ever seen, filled with sunlight and color. It was bigger than any of the cagins on Slave Row, and Missy had it all to herself! Missy slept in a high, curtained bed that was as soft as a bale of cotton.
The floors were made of wood, not dirt, and were covered with brightly colored rugs. Anna gazed around in wonder and saw a small horse made out of wood that had rockers on the bottom like Old Nellie’s rocking chair. Beside it was a little house, made to look like Massa’s Big House, with tiny furniture inside the rooms. In the center of Missy’s bedroom was a little table and four chairs that were just Anna’s size, with beautiful, child-sized dishes at each place. Missy’s dolls perched on two of the chairs, but they weren’t at all like the cornshuck dolls Anna had played with on Slave Row. These dolls looked almost real with their beautifully curled hair and delicately painted faces and tiny hands. For a moment Anna forgot to meow as she tried to take it all in.
“Jump up on my bed,” Missy ordered. She slept in a high, curtained bed that felt as soft as a bale of cotton. Missy climbed up beside Anna and began petting her head. At first Anna flinched because she wasn’t used to being touched, but she quickly discovered how good it felt.
“Ooh, your hair feels funny, like a sheep,” Missy said. “Now make that purring noise kitties make.”
Anna was so happy she barely needed to be told. She curled up on that beautiful feather bed and purred like a contented kitten all on her own.
A week later, Missy Claire still wasn’t bored with the game. Neither was Anna. She was quite content to pretend she was a cat and had even learned to answer to her new name, Kitty. Bertha put a blanket on the bedroom floor where Anna was supposed to sleep at night but after she and Missy were alone, Missy would sometimes let her jump up on the bed and sleep near her feet. Anna’s knees were getting bruised from crawling all around on them, but she didn’t care as long as Missy fed her and petted her. She would be a cat for the rest of her life and forget she’d ever been a little girl named Anna, if it meant living in the Big House from now on.
Every morning Mammy Bertha brought Missy Claire’s breakfast up to her room on a tray, and Anna was allowed to eat the scraps when Claire was finished. Anna ate her evening meal outside in the kitchen with the other house slaves, and at first they weren’t too friendly toward her. Cook made her feel about as welcome as a stray dog.
“Well, well! You sure moved up in the world, didn’t you, now?” Cook said when Anna had been eating there about a week. From the way Cook stood with her head cocked to one side, Anna knew she wasn’t too happy about it.
“Leave her alone,” Mammy Bertha said softly. “She’s just a 41 child.”
“Don’t you be getting used to this,” Cook warned. “That Missy Claire’s a spoilt one. You’ll be heading back down to them cabins just as soon as she gets tired of you.”
“Leave her alone. She’s Lucindy’s girl, you know.”
“You gonna be a kitten the rest of your life so you can stay?” Old Henry asked with a grin.
“That’s my new name,” Anna said. “I’m called Kitty now.”
Henry laughed out loud. But later on, after dinner, Bertha took Anna aside. “They’s right, you know. Better be making yourself useful if you don’t want to be sent back down where you come from. Mind you, I could use some help with them two girls. And Missus Goodman’s gonna have another baby, couple months from now. You keep Missy Claire and Missy Kate laughing at your antics, and maybe they let you stay. Otherwise, you be going back down to Slave Row.”
“I don’t want to work in the rice fields,” Anna said.
“All right, then. Pay attention and work hard. That’s the best way to make sure you’re staying here. If Missy Claire takes a liking to you, maybe you can learn to be her chambermaid someday.”
Anna paid attention to everything Mammy Bertha said and helped her every way she could. She emptied Missy Claire’s chamber pot in the morning, fanned her when the afternoons grew hot, and swished away the flies while she ate her evening meal. If Missy got tired of her, Anna would go play with Missy Kate, turning somersaults, playing peek-a-boo, and doing anything else she could think of to keep the younger girl happy.
Meanwhile, Anna was starting to lose some of her scrawniness after eating in the kitchen every night. And the other house slaves were getting used to having her around, even Cook. There were a dozen or so house slaves and all their different shades of black skin fascinated Anna. She still thought white people’s skin was sickly-looking, like the faded grass and pale worms you find when you move a stone. Old Henry’s skin was the darkest of all, so black it almost looked blue—like the sky on a moonless night. Anna must have stared at him a little too long one day because he suddenly asked, “What you looking at me for?”
“B-because,” Anna stammered, “I never seen anybody so dark. It’s the most beautiful color ever. How’d you get skin like that?”
“Born with it, same as you.”
“But it’s not the same as me. It’s not the same as anybody’s. Daisy’s skin is coppery brown, just like that kettle over there. And Cook’s is like a plowed field. Mammy Bertha’s is just the same color as ashes, and Mary’s skin looks like molasses.”
There were ripples of laughter all around the table, but Anna didn’t know what had caused them. “How about your own skin, then?” Daisy asked, pointing to Anna. “What color are you?”
“Me? I’m like the crust on a fresh loaf of brown bread.” The others laughed again. Anna still didn’t know why. “We’re all different colors, ain’t we? Just like trees. Sometimes their bark is dark brown, sometimes lighter—just like our skin.”
“You’re wrong!” Cook said, frowning. She was the only one who hadn’t laughed. “There’s only two colors of skin—white and black. All the in-between ones is still black. And as far as the world’s concerned, the only good color skin to have is white.”
That was the first time Anna had heard anyone say it outright, but when she thought about it later, she knew Cook was right. People with white skin never did any work. They slept in soft beds and ate the very best food and had scores of black people to wait on them. Missus Goodman seemed terrified that Missy’s milkwhite skin would get dark, so she was always reminding her to use a parasol or wear a hat whenever she went outside. Anna couldn’t understand why. Dark skin was much, much better—even if it did mean she had to work hard and sleep on the floor.
She was learning to do all kinds of things in the Big House—helping Missy get dressed and undressed, filling and emptying her washbasin, running and fetching things for her or for Mammy Bertha. Anna had no time to play with her kittens anymore. And by the time they’d grown into cats, she had quite forgotten that her name had ever been Anna.