"     You won’t likely read about it in the books that the White Folks teach their children from, but not all colored people were slaves and sharecroppers, although it pleases some to think so now. There were black Pharaohs and great kings, my Nana told me so and my Nana never lied, even when it might be kinder at the moment than telling the truth! Mary Beth and I were near to the same age. I had been born a slave but before I was weaned, we were granted our freedom. Her father and her people had always been wealthy. Cultured, rich, and amicable. But only met that spring because of the sickness in her lungs. It was thought that the sea air would heal them and being on an island among her own kind, of all classes and skin colors might help to draw her out of her timid shell. The daughter of a banker as rich as her father should have felt she owned the world and held it wrapped around her little finger, the way she did her Daddy, but she was hopelessly shy and stuttered when she felt pressured. I would have thought God would have rewarded their kindness and generosity by giving the Man several beautiful daughters, each as wise and desirable as Job’s own, for his goodness came from his core, it wasn’t a garment he slipped off and on when White Folks were near, and we both learned much from him in those nine months.

            I made her laugh by chanting “ My name is Nettie~ and that rhymes with SETI, and he was a great king too. “  And from that moment, when she stepped out of the shadows where I saw her for the first time, to her last choked breath in my arms nine months later on the island in South Carolina surrounded by our own, we were as inseparable as Siamese Twins, and I am the better person for it. "