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When Poppa was stolen from Guinea, he said the ancestors howled and raged and sent a thunderstorm to turn the ship back around, but it was too late. The ghosts couldn’t cross the water to help him so he had to make his own way in a strange place, sometimes with an iron collar around his neck. All of Momma’s people had been stolen too, and taken to Jamaica where she was born. Then she got sold to Rhode Island, and the ghosts of her parents couldn’t follow and protect her neither.
    They kept moving us over the water, stealing us away from our ghosts and our ancestors, who cried salty rivers into the sand. That’s where Momma was now, wailing at the water’s edge, while her girls were pulled out of sight under white sails that cracked in the wind.

Chapter V

Wednesday, May 29, 1776
    THE INHABITANTS [OF NEW YORK] ARE IN GENERAL BRISK AND LIVELY…. IT RATHER HURTS THE EUROPEAN EYE TO SEE SO MANY SLAVES UPON THE STREETS…. THERE ARE COMPUTED BETWEEN TWENTY-SIX AND THIRTY THOUSAND INHABITANTS… THE SLAVES MAKES AT LEAST A FIFTH PART OF THE NUMBER. –LETTER WRITTEN BY PATRICK M’ROBERT, A SCOTSMAN VISITING NEW YORK
    The Hartshorn docked in New York the next morning, just after a sailor brought down some old biscuits for our breakfast. I picked out the worms and tossed them through the porthole, then gave the biscuits to Ruth.
    Madam Lockton’s voice rose above the shouting sailors. “Bring those girls up,” she said.
    A fellow missing most of his teeth stuck his head down the hatchway and waved us over to the ladder. We climbed up, shading our eyes against the bright light of day. Men of all types and colors swarmed the deck, carrying casks and chests down the gangplank, scurrying up the rigging to tend to the sails, unloading gear, loading gear, and making me feel very small and in the way.
    Ruth stood at my side and stared so hard, her thumb fell out of her mouth.
    The ship was tied up at a long dock, one of many that jutted into the river. The sun sparkled off the water so strong I had to shade my eyes. Tall houses of brick and stone faced us, with rows upon rows of windows looking down at the street. They reached higher than the oldest trees back home. There were smaller buildings, too, all crowded shoulder to shoulder, with no room for a feather to pass betwixt them.
    We had arrived soon after a heavy rain. Soldiers splashed through the glittering puddles, toting wood, emptying wagons, carrying buckets hither and fro, and standing about on corners conversating with each other. Some wore uniforms and carried long muskets. Others, in homespun clothes, dragged fence posts to a barricade.
    There were ordinary people, too; maids with baskets over their arms moving into and out of the shops and cart men pushing their barrows over the cobblestones, calling out to each other and yelling at the dogs in their way. The working people were dressed muchly as we did out in the country, but there were a few gentry who stuck out of the crowd like peacocks wandering in the chicken pen. Some of the working folk were black. In truth, I had never seen so many of us in one place, not even at burials.
    A wagon drawn by two thick-necked horses stopped just beyond the end of the dock. Not far behind it came a beautiful carriage drawn by two pale gold stallions and driven by a stout man in livery with a three-cornered hat on his head. He clucked to the horses to walk on until he stopped behind the first wagon.
    The toothless sailor approached us again and pointed down to the dock where the crates and casks stamped LOCKTON & FOOTE were being stacked. “That’s where you belong. Don’t wander off or one of them soldiers will shoot you dead.”
    He laughed as he walked down the swaying plank. We followed with tiny steps, Ruth’s hand in mine. As I stepped onto the solid dock, I stumbled.
    â€œThere you are!” exclaimed Madam Lockton, coming around the stack of crates. “Be