The Good Lord Bird (National Book Award Winner): A Novel
Now a Showtime limited series starring Ethan Hawke and Daveed Diggs
Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction
From the bestselling author of The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, Deacon King Kong (an Oprah Book Club pick) and The Color of Water comes the story of a young boy born a slave who joins John Brown's antislavery crusade--and who must pass as a girl to survive. Henry Shackleford is a young slave living in the Kansas Territory in 1856--a battleground between anti- and pro-slavery forces--when legendary abolitionist John Brown arrives. When an argument between Brown and Henry's master turns violent, Henry is forced to leave town--along with Brown, who believes Henry to be a girl and his good luck charm. Over the ensuing months, Henry, whom Brown nicknames Little Onion, conceals his true identity to stay alive. Eventually Brown sweeps him into the historic raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859--one of the great catalysts for the Civil War. An absorbing mixture of history and imagination, and told with McBride's meticulous eye for detail and character, The Good Lord Bird is both a rousing adventure and a moving exploration of identity and survival.
Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction
From the bestselling author of The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, Deacon King Kong (an Oprah Book Club pick) and The Color of Water comes the story of a young boy born a slave who joins John Brown's antislavery crusade--and who must pass as a girl to survive. Henry Shackleford is a young slave living in the Kansas Territory in 1856--a battleground between anti- and pro-slavery forces--when legendary abolitionist John Brown arrives. When an argument between Brown and Henry's master turns violent, Henry is forced to leave town--along with Brown, who believes Henry to be a girl and his good luck charm. Over the ensuing months, Henry, whom Brown nicknames Little Onion, conceals his true identity to stay alive. Eventually Brown sweeps him into the historic raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859--one of the great catalysts for the Civil War. An absorbing mixture of history and imagination, and told with McBride's meticulous eye for detail and character, The Good Lord Bird is both a rousing adventure and a moving exploration of identity and survival.
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Community Reviews
I don't get this book. I fundamentally don't understand the main message that's being conveyed here, and I think one of the reasons is because the main message, like this book's narrative, is jumbled, confused, and multi-faceted. First of all, I enjoyed the book in a conventional sense. I liked the whimsical nature of the narrative voice (to a point -- after a while I wished Onion would take it all a little more seirously) and for the most part I found the subject matter interesting. Where I veered off of enjoyment, however, was the fact that the book meandered to the central point and did so in such a way that I feel like its major impact was lessened. The main character, Onion, did so much going here and there, flip-flopping between supporting John Brown and scheming to run off, remembering he was supposed to be a girl and forgetting,and being wishy-washy on the topic of slavery that by the time there was any kind of meaning to the book, it was largely lost on me.
The novel centers around Onion, a young black slave boy who gets freed by John Brown, the famed abolitionist, in an altercation in his master's tavern that also kills his father. Onion gets mistaken for a girl and John Brown decides the kindest thing would be to take "her" along with him, and Onion spends the next several years kind of sort of going along with John Brown. Onion never really has convictions, not until the end of the book, and then his conviction is mostly that John Brown was really dedicated to the abolitionist cause. Onion is always flipping and flopping and forgetting and not caring too much about one thing or another. He seems to care greatly about two things: food and saving his own skin. I feel like at the heart of this book, that is the message. There are so many passages about how the black people don't like slavery but also either don't know what to do about it or won't do anything about it. Black people are never allowed to talk for themselves by the white characters in this book, and when they do talk, they talk mostly about laying low and waiting until all this nonsense is over. They certainly don't like slavery, but perhaps the best example is when they get to Harper's Ferry. When Onion blunders around town shouting about John Brown to any black person that will listen, they all ignore him and shoo him away, because John Brown is too controversial and even talking about him will get them in severe trouble. They're not doing nothing, though. The blacks in that town are saving their money to free their relatives, playing nice, and trying to get out using the Underground Railroad (which John Brown kind of ruins, as well). In this book, the slave and black characters are almost viewed as the sensible, reasonable ones who would rather sit back and wait than do anything active about getting rid of slavery. This might also be because the Old Man, as John Brown is known as, is certifiably nuts and has the worst plans I've ever heard of, like killing people for no good reason other than he's riled about slavery or trying to fight off the US military, to the detriment of all of those around him. It seems to me like the white, violent people are the ridiculous, caricatured ones who should not be emulated.
At the end of the novel, Onion finally says that John Brown did more for the cause of abolitionism in the last three weeks of his life than he did with all the violence and the shooting. He was the good lord bird, a metaphor that seemed largely forgotten throughout this book. Only at the very end did they talk about the bird at all, saying that he would fell dead trees in the forest so that other things could grow out of it. Apparently that was John Brown and his martyrdom: falling down dead so that other things could grow out of him. Okay, but I really don't think that this metaphor was touched on enough to justify it being the title of the book, nor was it subtle enough to come up right at the end and whack you in the feels, like To Kill A Mockingbird. It felt forced in, wedged in to make a tired and hasty point. The very first review of this book said that this book was all about how sometimes you need someone a little violent and crazy to stir things up, but it seems to me that the book itself says that the best work John Brown did for abolitionism was while he was waiting for execution. Maybe you could argue that he wouldn't have gotten the attention had he not been violent, but at the same time it was his words and letters that genuinely spurred people on. If he had just died at Harper's Ferry most people probably would have called him a fantastical lunatic who had failed in yet another insurrectionist misadventure. As it was, he was allowed to live a little longer and spread his word. Additionally, I think it is worth noting that John Brown actually had a spectacular failure rate when it came to things like freeing slaves. As this book rightly shows, whether intentionally or unintentionally, most of the slaves knew that his plans were foolhardy and that when they failed they would get in more trouble, and therefore stayed out of it. All John Brown ever managed to do for the slaves was to get a couple of them killed. I also sincerely doubt these people who say that the Civil War would never have happened had it not been for the powder-keg that was Harper's Ferry. That's ridiculous. The Civil War had been brewing for decades. All Harper's Ferry did was stoke the flames -- it was in no way shape or form the deciding event. In my eyes, all this book has done is cement my view of John Brown even firmer: he was an ineffective lunatic who did nothing but shed unnecessary blood.
One last problem I had with this book was that it had no solutions whatsoever, just contradictory messages. Onion muses on the problem of himself. He says:
"You can play one part in life, but you canât be that thing. You just playing it. Youâre not real. I was a Negro above all else, and Negroes plays their part, too: Hiding. Smiling. Pretending bondage is O.K. till theyâre free, and then what? Free to do what? To be like the white man? Is he so right?"
Which I totally get. But then John Brown's last advice to him? "Whatever you is, Onion, be it full". But by Onion's own admission he is nobody and can be nobody because there are no options available to the black person at this point. And then the book just ends a page or two later with some soliloquizing about what a great man John Brown was (whatever). So the ultimate advice of the book is not discussed or even able to be followed by our protagonist. Then what is the point? Why make such a point if there's no follow-through?
I have heard some people say that this book was reminiscent of Mark Twain, but in my opinion the only real truth to that is that a.) McBride can weave an interesting yarn (and yarn I would call it) and b.) the use of dialect in the same time period was nicely done. The dialect made me feel weirdly fuzzy inside, seeing as how most of my ancestors and kinfolk come from grand land of Oklahoma and I feel genuinely like this way of talking is in my blood. Aside from that, however, I felt Twain's lessons more keenly. This book felt jumbled and uncoordinated to me, and while I enjoyed it, it did not change my view of John Brown, abolitionism, slavery, or the Civil War one bit, nor did it deliver the emotional impact I would expect from a National Book Award winner.
The novel centers around Onion, a young black slave boy who gets freed by John Brown, the famed abolitionist, in an altercation in his master's tavern that also kills his father. Onion gets mistaken for a girl and John Brown decides the kindest thing would be to take "her" along with him, and Onion spends the next several years kind of sort of going along with John Brown. Onion never really has convictions, not until the end of the book, and then his conviction is mostly that John Brown was really dedicated to the abolitionist cause. Onion is always flipping and flopping and forgetting and not caring too much about one thing or another. He seems to care greatly about two things: food and saving his own skin. I feel like at the heart of this book, that is the message. There are so many passages about how the black people don't like slavery but also either don't know what to do about it or won't do anything about it. Black people are never allowed to talk for themselves by the white characters in this book, and when they do talk, they talk mostly about laying low and waiting until all this nonsense is over. They certainly don't like slavery, but perhaps the best example is when they get to Harper's Ferry. When Onion blunders around town shouting about John Brown to any black person that will listen, they all ignore him and shoo him away, because John Brown is too controversial and even talking about him will get them in severe trouble. They're not doing nothing, though. The blacks in that town are saving their money to free their relatives, playing nice, and trying to get out using the Underground Railroad (which John Brown kind of ruins, as well). In this book, the slave and black characters are almost viewed as the sensible, reasonable ones who would rather sit back and wait than do anything active about getting rid of slavery. This might also be because the Old Man, as John Brown is known as, is certifiably nuts and has the worst plans I've ever heard of, like killing people for no good reason other than he's riled about slavery or trying to fight off the US military, to the detriment of all of those around him. It seems to me like the white, violent people are the ridiculous, caricatured ones who should not be emulated.
At the end of the novel, Onion finally says that John Brown did more for the cause of abolitionism in the last three weeks of his life than he did with all the violence and the shooting. He was the good lord bird, a metaphor that seemed largely forgotten throughout this book. Only at the very end did they talk about the bird at all, saying that he would fell dead trees in the forest so that other things could grow out of it. Apparently that was John Brown and his martyrdom: falling down dead so that other things could grow out of him. Okay, but I really don't think that this metaphor was touched on enough to justify it being the title of the book, nor was it subtle enough to come up right at the end and whack you in the feels, like To Kill A Mockingbird. It felt forced in, wedged in to make a tired and hasty point. The very first review of this book said that this book was all about how sometimes you need someone a little violent and crazy to stir things up, but it seems to me that the book itself says that the best work John Brown did for abolitionism was while he was waiting for execution. Maybe you could argue that he wouldn't have gotten the attention had he not been violent, but at the same time it was his words and letters that genuinely spurred people on. If he had just died at Harper's Ferry most people probably would have called him a fantastical lunatic who had failed in yet another insurrectionist misadventure. As it was, he was allowed to live a little longer and spread his word. Additionally, I think it is worth noting that John Brown actually had a spectacular failure rate when it came to things like freeing slaves. As this book rightly shows, whether intentionally or unintentionally, most of the slaves knew that his plans were foolhardy and that when they failed they would get in more trouble, and therefore stayed out of it. All John Brown ever managed to do for the slaves was to get a couple of them killed. I also sincerely doubt these people who say that the Civil War would never have happened had it not been for the powder-keg that was Harper's Ferry. That's ridiculous. The Civil War had been brewing for decades. All Harper's Ferry did was stoke the flames -- it was in no way shape or form the deciding event. In my eyes, all this book has done is cement my view of John Brown even firmer: he was an ineffective lunatic who did nothing but shed unnecessary blood.
One last problem I had with this book was that it had no solutions whatsoever, just contradictory messages. Onion muses on the problem of himself. He says:
"You can play one part in life, but you canât be that thing. You just playing it. Youâre not real. I was a Negro above all else, and Negroes plays their part, too: Hiding. Smiling. Pretending bondage is O.K. till theyâre free, and then what? Free to do what? To be like the white man? Is he so right?"
Which I totally get. But then John Brown's last advice to him? "Whatever you is, Onion, be it full". But by Onion's own admission he is nobody and can be nobody because there are no options available to the black person at this point. And then the book just ends a page or two later with some soliloquizing about what a great man John Brown was (whatever). So the ultimate advice of the book is not discussed or even able to be followed by our protagonist. Then what is the point? Why make such a point if there's no follow-through?
I have heard some people say that this book was reminiscent of Mark Twain, but in my opinion the only real truth to that is that a.) McBride can weave an interesting yarn (and yarn I would call it) and b.) the use of dialect in the same time period was nicely done. The dialect made me feel weirdly fuzzy inside, seeing as how most of my ancestors and kinfolk come from grand land of Oklahoma and I feel genuinely like this way of talking is in my blood. Aside from that, however, I felt Twain's lessons more keenly. This book felt jumbled and uncoordinated to me, and while I enjoyed it, it did not change my view of John Brown, abolitionism, slavery, or the Civil War one bit, nor did it deliver the emotional impact I would expect from a National Book Award winner.
Damn I loved this book.... a little Huck Finn and Little Big Man.
"See, my true name is Henry Shackleford. But the Old Man heard Pa say “Henry ain’t a,” and took it to be “Henrietta.” which is how the Old Man’s mind worked. Whatever he believed, he believed. It didn’t matter to him whether it was really true or not. He just changed the truth till it fit him. He was a real white man."
****
“I couldn't make head nor tails of what he was saying, for I was to learn that Old John Brown could work the Lord into just about any aspect of his comings and goings in life, including using the privy. That's one reason I weren't a believer, having been raised by my Pa, who was a believer and a lunatic, and them things seemed to run together. But it weren't my place to argue with a white man, especially one who was my kidnapper, so I kept my lips closed.”
****
“Back in them days white folks told niggers more than they told each other, for they knowed Negroes couldn’t do nothing but say, ‘Uh-huh,’ and ‘Ummmm,’ and go on about their own troubled business. That made white folks subject to trickeration in my mind. Colored was always two steps ahead of white folks in that department, having thunk through every possibility of how to get along without being seen and making sure their lies match up with what white folks wanted. Your basic white man is a fool, is how I thought, and I held Fred in that number."
****
"Come on sister." She turned to the others and said, "We'll give you an example, then obey."
She stepped up to the noose to let the rope get drawed around her neck first, and Libby followed.
I wish I could express for you the tension. It seemed like a rope had knotted itself around the sunlight in the sky to keep every leaf and fig in place, for not a soul moved nor did a breeze stir.
Not a word was spoken in the crowd. The hangman weren't pushy nor rude, but rather polite.
He let a few more words pass between Sibonia and her sister, then asked if they were ready.
They nodded. He turned to reach for the hood to place over their heads. He moved to cover Sibonia's head first, and as he done so, Sibonia suddenly sprung away from him, jumped high as she could, and fell heavily through the galley hole.
But she only went halfway through. The knotted rope weren't adjusted right to make her drop all the way. Instantly her frame, which was halfway down the opening, was convulsed. In her writhing, her feet kicked and instinctively tried to reach back for the landing where she had stood. Her sister, Libby, her face turned toward the rest of the coloreds, put her hand on Sibonia's side and, leaning forward, held Sibonia's wriggling body clear of the landing with her arm, and said to the rest, "Let us die like her." And after a few shaking, quivering moments, it was done.
By God, I would'a passed out, had not the thing gone in the wrong direction entirely, which made the whole of it a lot more interesting right away. Several rebels in the crowd started muttering they didn't like the business at all, others said it was a damn shame to hang them nine people in the first place, since one colored'll lie on another just as easily as you can snap your trousers, and nobody knows who done what, and it's better to hang them all. Still others said the Negroes hadn't done nothing, and it wall just a bunch of malarkey, 'cause the judge wanted to take over Miss Abby's businesses, and others said slavery ought to be done with, since it was so much trouble. What's worse, the colored watching the whole thing become so agitated after seeing Sibonia's courage that the military rushed up on them to cool them down, which caused eve more of a stir. It just didn't go the way nobody expected it.
The judge seen the thing winging out of control, so they hung the rest of the convicted Negroes fast as they could, and in a few minutes Libby and all the rest was asleep on the ground together."
****
"This is what happens when a boy becomes a man. You get stupider. I was working against myself. I risked being sold south and losing everything 'cause I wanted to be a man. Not for myself. But for Pie. I loved her. I was hoping she would understand me. Accept me. Accept my courage about throwing off my disguise and being myself. I wanted her to know I weren't going to play girl no more, and for that I reason, I was expecting she'd love me. Even though she weren't being good to me, she never turned me away outright."
****
"Captain," I said. "It's true. I fell in love and had my heart broke."
"Did you commingle with anyone in a fleshly way of nature without being married?"
"No, sir. I am still clean and pure as the day I was born in that fashion."
He nodded grumpily, then glanced down the alley as bullets zinged past him and struck the shingles of the building next to him, pinging the wood out into the alley in splinters. He was a fool when it come to standing around getting shot at." p195
****
"The Old Man descended the train, and the two shook hands and embraced warmly. “Onion,” he said, “meet Mr. Frederick Douglass, the man who will help lead our cause. Frederick, meet Henrietta Shackleford, my consort, who goes by the name of the Onion." "Morning Fred," I said. Mister Douglass looked at me coldly. Seemed like the bottom of his nose opened up two inches as he peered down. "How old are you?" "Twelve". "Then where is your manners young lady? What kind of a name is Onion for a young lady? And why are you dressed in that fashion? And why do you address me as Fred? Don't you know you are not addressing a pork chop, but rather a fairly considerable and incorrigible piece of the American Negro diaspora?" "Sir?" "I am Mr. Douglass." "Why, howdy, sir. I am here to help hive the bees." "And hive them she will," the Old Man said cheerily." p216
****
"Sipping blisters at Miss Abby's had whetted my whistle for tasting the giddy water when things growed tight, and once I got off the freezing trail and fell into the good-eating life, I growed thirsty from all that squeezed-up, settled-down living. I had the thought of cutting out from the Old Man at that time, slipping off and working in a tavern of some type in Rochester, but them taverns there weren't nothing compared to the taverns in Kansas Territory. They were more like libraries or thinking places, full of old farts in button-down frock coats setting around sipping sherry and wondering about the state of the poor Negro not prospering, or drunk Irishmen learning to read. Women and girls weren't allowed, mostly. I thunk about getting other jobs, too, for every once in a while a white woman in a bonnet would saunter up to me on the sidewalk and say, "Is you interested in earning three pennies to do laundry, dear?" I was twelve at the time, coming on thirteen or even fourteen is my guess, though I never knowed to be exact. I was still allergic to work no matter what age, so washing folks' drawers weren't an idea I was game to surrender to."
****
"My dear," he said. "You are a waif in the darkness."
"I am?"
"A tree of unborn fruit."
"I am?"
"Yet to be picked." Here he tugged on my bonnet, which I quickly pushed back in place.
"Tell me. Where were you born? What is your birthday?"
"I don't know exactly. Though I reckon to be about twelve or fourteen."
"That's just it!" he said, hopping up to his feet. "The Negro knows not where he was born, or who his mother is. Or who his father is. Or his real name. He has no home. He has no land. His station is temporary. He is guile and fodder for the slave catcher. He is a stranger in a strange land! He is a slave, even when he is free! He is a renter, an abettor! Even if he owns a home. The Negro is a perpetual lettor!"
"Like A, B, and C?"
"No child. A renter."
"You rent here?"
"No, dear. I buy. But that's not the point."
****
"She looked off out the window. It was snowing out there. She looked right lonely at that moment.
"I had a husband once," she said. "But he was fearful. He wanted a wife and not a soldier. He became something like a woman hisself. He was fearful. Couldn't stand it. Couldn't stand being a man. But I led him to freedom land anyway."
"Yes, ma'am."
"We all got to die," she said. "But dying as your true self is always better. God'll take you however you come to Him. But it's easier on a soul to come to Him clean. You're forever free that way. From top to bottom."
****
"Even though I'd gotten used to living a lie — being a girl — it come to me this way: being a Negro's a lie, anyway. Nobody sees the real you. Nobody knows who you are inside. You just judged on what you are on the outside whatever your color. Mulatto, colored, black, it don't matter. You just a Negro to the world."
****
"Frederick. I promise you. Come with me and I will guard you with my life. Nothing will happen to you." But, standing there in his frock coat, Mr. Douglass werent up to it. He had too many highballs. Too many boiled pigeons and meat jellies and buttered apple pies. He was a man of parlor talk, of silk shirts and fine hats, linen suits and ties. He was a man of words and speeches. "I cannot do it, John."
The Old Man put on his hat and moved to the wagon. "We will take our leave, then."
"Good luck to you, old friend," Mr. Douglass said, but the Old Man had already turned away and climbed into the wagon. "
****
"Besides, how can somebody love you if you don't know who you is? I had thoroughly been a girl so long by then that I'd grown to like it, got used to it, got used to not having to lift things, and have folks make excuses for me on account of me not being strong enough, or fast enough, or powerful enough like a boy, on account of my size. But that's the thing. You can play one part in life, but you can't be that thing. You just playing it. You're not real. I was a Negro above all else, and Negroes plays their part, too: Hiding. Smiling. Pretending bondage is okay till they're free, and then what? Free to do what?"
"See, my true name is Henry Shackleford. But the Old Man heard Pa say “Henry ain’t a,” and took it to be “Henrietta.” which is how the Old Man’s mind worked. Whatever he believed, he believed. It didn’t matter to him whether it was really true or not. He just changed the truth till it fit him. He was a real white man."
****
“I couldn't make head nor tails of what he was saying, for I was to learn that Old John Brown could work the Lord into just about any aspect of his comings and goings in life, including using the privy. That's one reason I weren't a believer, having been raised by my Pa, who was a believer and a lunatic, and them things seemed to run together. But it weren't my place to argue with a white man, especially one who was my kidnapper, so I kept my lips closed.”
****
“Back in them days white folks told niggers more than they told each other, for they knowed Negroes couldn’t do nothing but say, ‘Uh-huh,’ and ‘Ummmm,’ and go on about their own troubled business. That made white folks subject to trickeration in my mind. Colored was always two steps ahead of white folks in that department, having thunk through every possibility of how to get along without being seen and making sure their lies match up with what white folks wanted. Your basic white man is a fool, is how I thought, and I held Fred in that number."
****
"Come on sister." She turned to the others and said, "We'll give you an example, then obey."
She stepped up to the noose to let the rope get drawed around her neck first, and Libby followed.
I wish I could express for you the tension. It seemed like a rope had knotted itself around the sunlight in the sky to keep every leaf and fig in place, for not a soul moved nor did a breeze stir.
Not a word was spoken in the crowd. The hangman weren't pushy nor rude, but rather polite.
He let a few more words pass between Sibonia and her sister, then asked if they were ready.
They nodded. He turned to reach for the hood to place over their heads. He moved to cover Sibonia's head first, and as he done so, Sibonia suddenly sprung away from him, jumped high as she could, and fell heavily through the galley hole.
But she only went halfway through. The knotted rope weren't adjusted right to make her drop all the way. Instantly her frame, which was halfway down the opening, was convulsed. In her writhing, her feet kicked and instinctively tried to reach back for the landing where she had stood. Her sister, Libby, her face turned toward the rest of the coloreds, put her hand on Sibonia's side and, leaning forward, held Sibonia's wriggling body clear of the landing with her arm, and said to the rest, "Let us die like her." And after a few shaking, quivering moments, it was done.
By God, I would'a passed out, had not the thing gone in the wrong direction entirely, which made the whole of it a lot more interesting right away. Several rebels in the crowd started muttering they didn't like the business at all, others said it was a damn shame to hang them nine people in the first place, since one colored'll lie on another just as easily as you can snap your trousers, and nobody knows who done what, and it's better to hang them all. Still others said the Negroes hadn't done nothing, and it wall just a bunch of malarkey, 'cause the judge wanted to take over Miss Abby's businesses, and others said slavery ought to be done with, since it was so much trouble. What's worse, the colored watching the whole thing become so agitated after seeing Sibonia's courage that the military rushed up on them to cool them down, which caused eve more of a stir. It just didn't go the way nobody expected it.
The judge seen the thing winging out of control, so they hung the rest of the convicted Negroes fast as they could, and in a few minutes Libby and all the rest was asleep on the ground together."
****
"This is what happens when a boy becomes a man. You get stupider. I was working against myself. I risked being sold south and losing everything 'cause I wanted to be a man. Not for myself. But for Pie. I loved her. I was hoping she would understand me. Accept me. Accept my courage about throwing off my disguise and being myself. I wanted her to know I weren't going to play girl no more, and for that I reason, I was expecting she'd love me. Even though she weren't being good to me, she never turned me away outright."
****
"Captain," I said. "It's true. I fell in love and had my heart broke."
"Did you commingle with anyone in a fleshly way of nature without being married?"
"No, sir. I am still clean and pure as the day I was born in that fashion."
He nodded grumpily, then glanced down the alley as bullets zinged past him and struck the shingles of the building next to him, pinging the wood out into the alley in splinters. He was a fool when it come to standing around getting shot at." p195
****
"The Old Man descended the train, and the two shook hands and embraced warmly. “Onion,” he said, “meet Mr. Frederick Douglass, the man who will help lead our cause. Frederick, meet Henrietta Shackleford, my consort, who goes by the name of the Onion." "Morning Fred," I said. Mister Douglass looked at me coldly. Seemed like the bottom of his nose opened up two inches as he peered down. "How old are you?" "Twelve". "Then where is your manners young lady? What kind of a name is Onion for a young lady? And why are you dressed in that fashion? And why do you address me as Fred? Don't you know you are not addressing a pork chop, but rather a fairly considerable and incorrigible piece of the American Negro diaspora?" "Sir?" "I am Mr. Douglass." "Why, howdy, sir. I am here to help hive the bees." "And hive them she will," the Old Man said cheerily." p216
****
"Sipping blisters at Miss Abby's had whetted my whistle for tasting the giddy water when things growed tight, and once I got off the freezing trail and fell into the good-eating life, I growed thirsty from all that squeezed-up, settled-down living. I had the thought of cutting out from the Old Man at that time, slipping off and working in a tavern of some type in Rochester, but them taverns there weren't nothing compared to the taverns in Kansas Territory. They were more like libraries or thinking places, full of old farts in button-down frock coats setting around sipping sherry and wondering about the state of the poor Negro not prospering, or drunk Irishmen learning to read. Women and girls weren't allowed, mostly. I thunk about getting other jobs, too, for every once in a while a white woman in a bonnet would saunter up to me on the sidewalk and say, "Is you interested in earning three pennies to do laundry, dear?" I was twelve at the time, coming on thirteen or even fourteen is my guess, though I never knowed to be exact. I was still allergic to work no matter what age, so washing folks' drawers weren't an idea I was game to surrender to."
****
"My dear," he said. "You are a waif in the darkness."
"I am?"
"A tree of unborn fruit."
"I am?"
"Yet to be picked." Here he tugged on my bonnet, which I quickly pushed back in place.
"Tell me. Where were you born? What is your birthday?"
"I don't know exactly. Though I reckon to be about twelve or fourteen."
"That's just it!" he said, hopping up to his feet. "The Negro knows not where he was born, or who his mother is. Or who his father is. Or his real name. He has no home. He has no land. His station is temporary. He is guile and fodder for the slave catcher. He is a stranger in a strange land! He is a slave, even when he is free! He is a renter, an abettor! Even if he owns a home. The Negro is a perpetual lettor!"
"Like A, B, and C?"
"No child. A renter."
"You rent here?"
"No, dear. I buy. But that's not the point."
****
"She looked off out the window. It was snowing out there. She looked right lonely at that moment.
"I had a husband once," she said. "But he was fearful. He wanted a wife and not a soldier. He became something like a woman hisself. He was fearful. Couldn't stand it. Couldn't stand being a man. But I led him to freedom land anyway."
"Yes, ma'am."
"We all got to die," she said. "But dying as your true self is always better. God'll take you however you come to Him. But it's easier on a soul to come to Him clean. You're forever free that way. From top to bottom."
****
"Even though I'd gotten used to living a lie — being a girl — it come to me this way: being a Negro's a lie, anyway. Nobody sees the real you. Nobody knows who you are inside. You just judged on what you are on the outside whatever your color. Mulatto, colored, black, it don't matter. You just a Negro to the world."
****
"Frederick. I promise you. Come with me and I will guard you with my life. Nothing will happen to you." But, standing there in his frock coat, Mr. Douglass werent up to it. He had too many highballs. Too many boiled pigeons and meat jellies and buttered apple pies. He was a man of parlor talk, of silk shirts and fine hats, linen suits and ties. He was a man of words and speeches. "I cannot do it, John."
The Old Man put on his hat and moved to the wagon. "We will take our leave, then."
"Good luck to you, old friend," Mr. Douglass said, but the Old Man had already turned away and climbed into the wagon. "
****
"Besides, how can somebody love you if you don't know who you is? I had thoroughly been a girl so long by then that I'd grown to like it, got used to it, got used to not having to lift things, and have folks make excuses for me on account of me not being strong enough, or fast enough, or powerful enough like a boy, on account of my size. But that's the thing. You can play one part in life, but you can't be that thing. You just playing it. You're not real. I was a Negro above all else, and Negroes plays their part, too: Hiding. Smiling. Pretending bondage is okay till they're free, and then what? Free to do what?"
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