White pickney and black pickney play all the time when they little, as if they be combolo, one and the same.
Then there was the time when she get a well- deserved thumping for telling a white playmate from Coulibre Estate that she be a damn fool for saying that sky wet when everybody know it dry ’cept for when rain fall. Lilith cuss under her tongue and say, Is you must go to grave since you already stink like dead puppy. Some take as sign when at seven Lilith tell them same boys that is ’cause they have worm between them legs why they can’t run fast like she and the girl get a swift kick from a passing niggerwoman who tell her that there be a grave already dug for the uppity. Lilith cuss and ask if manchild can’t win if girl don’t lose and she get another slap. She swing the club, clap the ball clear ’cross the field and make one run to all four base and beat the boys but couldn’t understand when the wet nurse slap her and say that a good girl was supposed to make manchild win. People recall when she was still a little pickney on the Montpelier Estate, them few years when a nigger not black, playing rounders with boys. This much was for sure, Lilith be the only girl to grow up in a hut calling a woman mother and a man father but she didn’t look like neither. Girl like Lilith don’t born with green eye because God feel to be extra kind to nigger girl. Nobody did want the young’un and the overseer Jack Wilkins had to make special arrangement for a niggerwoman to take care of the child, for the mens and womens did content to just leave her in the bush and make the land take her back.
As soon as Lilith born the womens regard her with fear and trembling because of them green eyes that light up the room, but not like sunlight. Two thing you should know if you want to know her.
A black baby wiggling in blood on the floor with skin darker than midnight but the greenest eyes anybody ever done see. A weak womb done kill one life to birth another. Two black legs spread wide and a mother mouth screaming. It soon come to pass when red no different from white or blue or black or nothing. Not when blood spurt from the skin, or spring from the axe, the cat- o’-nine, the whip, the cane and the blackjack and every day in slave life is a day that colour red. Not when the midwife know that the mother shed too much blood, and she who don’t reach fourteen birthday yet speak curse ’pon the chile and the papa, and then she drop down dead like old horse. Not when the baby wash in crimson and squealing like it just depart heaven to come to hell, another place of red. Not when blood wash the floor she lying on as she scream for that son of a bitch to come, the lone baby of 1785. People think blood red, but blood don’t got no colour. (Disclaimer: This excerpt contains content that may not be appropriate for all readers.)
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