A woman's voice cut through the din. I saw a red scarf, a neck as dark as mine, a broad nose, a flash of teeth. The woman had a small cloth tucked into her clothes at the waist. I saw her rub her hands once on the cloth, and heard her sing abuse at the Negro with the cane. Her mouth let fly a thousand words. They flowed together like soup, and it didn't seem possible that anyone could understand her. The Negro and the toubab took a step back and the big woman scooped me up in her arms.

Up and down I bumped against the woman's biceps. I could hear the breath whistling out of her nostrils as she carried me, but she did not speak. At the far end of the clearing, we came to a series of homes with mud walls and thatched roofs. The woman manoeuvred her broad body through a doorway. Inside, two men were standing in a damp room, bent over and laughing and clapping hands. The woman put me down on my feet, but held me by the arm so I wouldn't fall. The men fell silent and motionless. It was as if they had never seen anything like me before.

The men backed out of the tent as if retreating from a miracle, and the woman led me to a bed of straw. She covered me with a blanket and brought a gourd of water to my lips. I took a sip. Her eyes were deep brown and hard to read. She didn't look like she would die anytime soon. I felt safe in her presence, and fell into a sleep more profound than any I had known for many moons.

Sometimes I was aware of the sound of the woman fussing with a collection of calabashes. Their hard leathery surfaces tapped each other musically, almost like toy drums, and made me dream of home. I knew vaguely that I was being propped up and made to drink. A warm, wet cloth moved across my face. One time I heard a bird singing in the pitch black of the night. For whom, I wondered, was it chirping? Maybe it was calling to me. A warm body slept beside me. I liked the smell of the woman and felt reassured by her snoring, the deep life inside her singing out.

When I emerged from my long sleep, I had a rough gown hanging from my shoulders. The woman who had been sheltering me in her bed took me by the hand to greet all the people living under the thatched roofs. The men stared at me in wonderment, sometimes touched my wrists and spoke words that I did not know. The women clasped my shoulders, hugged me, used their fingers to trace the moons on my face, laughed insanely and brought me calabashes of water, boiled cornmeal, sometimes meat. I sniffed the meat and turned away. Pork. The big-armed woman who slept with me snatched a chicken from a pen, held it by the feet, pointed to my mouth. Yes, I nodded, I would eat chicken. But no, I waved my finger, pointed at the big animal with the snout in the mud pen. Not that. Not pork.

Three men emerged from a hut, and I saw that one was Fomba. His eyes grew wide, and I ran to him. He felt sturdy and strong; he felt like he had been eating. He opened his mouth and tried to say my name, but no sound emerged.

"Fomba," I told the woman. "He is Fomba, from my village of Bayo."

She smiled. She didn't seem to worry or wonder about what I was saying. And I knew why. I knew exactly why. She was a Negro, but she was not a homelander. She was from this place. This place was her home. It was not for her to understand me. It was for me to understand her. I could go nowhere and understand nothing until I could learn to speak with this woman. I knew that I would have to learn for myself, but also for Fomba.

When we got back to our own sleeping place, the woman sat me on a stump outside the door and spoke slowly to me. She gripped my hand in a palm twice the size of mine. She had broken nails, calloused fingers and skin creased like a dried riverbed. She tapped my hand, slid her finger along my rib cage and sat her palm on my shoulder. She dug a finger into her own breast, said "Georgia," and opened her hands toward me.

"Aminata," I told her.

Three times, Georgia made me repeat it, but the best she could do was to say "Meena." In this new land, I was an African. In this new land, I had a different name, given by someone who did not even know me. A new name for the second life of a girl who survived the great river crossing.

THE MOONS CAME AND WENT. The air was warming up, growing heavy. Mosquitoes hummed angrily, landing in my ears, stinging my calves and back and neck.

We had to work "albees albees albees," as Georgia said. "Albees," I came to see, meant until we had done our work, six days out of seven. There were hogs to feed and kill. There were hens to pester for eggs, soap to make from ashes and lye, and clothes to wash and mend. Robinson Appleby, the toubab chief, was away most of the time, and his woman rarely joined him on his visits to the plantation. When Appleby was gone, another toubab lived in the big house and watched over our work. Overseer was one of the first words I learned. But not more than a moon or two after Appleby had left, the overseer died and Appleby returned. When he left a few days later, Mamed-the Negro with the hitting cane-was in charge. Mamed had two helpers. All of them had firesticks, clubs and whips. Most of the time there was nobody on the plantation but fifty Negroes, watched by a Negro overseer and his two Negro assistants. There was not a toubab in sight, but still nobody tried to escape the island.

Georgia took me everywhere she went, talking all the time, naming every thing she did. She gathered long grasses and wove them into baskets. When men brought her possums, she skinned them. When others brought her turtles, I watched her put them in soup. The shells came off easily after she boiled them. Georgia was forever gathering leaves, berries and roots. "Elderberry," she said one day, examining a tall leafy plant with white, bunched flowers. Back at her cooking pot, she brewed the leaves in hot water and kept the liquid in a calabash. She stewed the flowers in hog fat and stored that concoction in a ball-shaped gourd with a thin neck. The gourd came from a collection of calabashes of every size and shape that hung from sticks and nails in the walls of her cabin. "Elderberry flowers and lard," she said, over and over, until I could repeat it. One day, she smeared this concoction on the open sore festering on the foot of a man who came to her home. He gave her a gourd of his own, filled with a strong-smelling liquid. She drank a big gulp and opened her mouth, as if exhaling fire. "Likker," she said.

I repeated every word that came from Georgia's mouth. After one or two moons, I was accustomed to the way she spoke. As it became possible for me to follow her speech, and to talk to her, I came to see that she was teaching me two languages. It was like Maninka and Bamanankan-different languages, but related. One sounded a little like the other. There was the language that Georgia spoke when alone with the Negroes on the plantation, and she called that Gullah. And there was the way she spoke to Robinson Appleby or to other white people, and she called that English. "Bruddah tief de hog" was Gullah, and "brother done steal the hog" was the way to say it to the white man. "De hebby dry drought 'most racktify de cawn" was one way to speak, but I also had to learn to say "The long drought done spoil the corn." "De buckra gib we de gam; demse'f nyam de hin' quawtuh" was Georgia's normal way of speaking, but I also had to learn to say it another way: "The white people done give us the front quarter, they done eat the hindquarter themselves." Buckra was the Negroes' word for white people, but, Georgia warned, I was never to call a man "white."

"You call a white man white, he beat you black and blue."

"So what do I call him?" I asked.

I was to call the man who owned this farm "Master Apbee," Georgia said, explaining that when he spoke to me, he would say "Master Appleby." His wife was to be called "Missus," or "De Missus."

The lessons and instructions were never-ending. Appleby had the first name of Robinson, but I would surely be beaten for addressing a buckra by his first name. If I didn't know the last name, "Master" or "Missus" would do. I was never to look a buckra in the eye when he spoke to me, nor to act like I knew more than him. It was equally foolish to act stupid, Georgia said. The best approach was to follow the buckra's conversation like a well-trained dog. I was to do my utmost to keep away from Appleby, especially when I was alone. Finally, Georgia said, I was never to forget that the buckra did not know Gullah. They understood only their own way of speaking. I was never to teach a buckra a single word or expression that the Negroes used. And I was never to let on that I understood too much of the buckra's way of speaking.

Georgia was clearly pleased that I had learned to speak so quickly. She started taking me to other women and men on the plantation, so she could boast about my progress.

"She done learn so fast," she said. "Zing zing zing. Words fly out her mouth like eagles."

I laughed. I did love to hear that woman talk. Every time she opened her mouth, she said something astounding. Something in her way of speaking made life tolerable.

"Honey chile," she said to me one day, "why don't Fomba speak?"

I said that he had lost his words on the big ship.

"He done crossed the river with you?"

"Yes."

Georgia nodded and put her hands on my shoulders. "You done cross the river, and your head is on fire. But grown man done cross the river and shut his mouth forever." Georgia seemed to be thinking about it, making sense of it all. She crossed her arms and put her hands in her armpits. "You all done cross one nasty shut-mouth river."

I didn't tell Georgia that Fomba had been the village woloso. I didn't want anybody to know. "He works good," I said. "Strong like an ox."

"I know," Georgia said. "Yesterday he done lift a hog off the ground and string him up in a red oak to bleed. Work for three men, but he done string the hog up lonesome."

I wanted Fomba to live. I worried about him being unable to speak. On this plantation, I learned that there were two classes of captives. There were "sensible Negroes," like me, who could speak the toubabu's language and understand orders. And there were the other ones. The insensible ones. The ones who couldn't speak at all to the white man, and who would never be given an easier job, or taught an interesting skill, or be given extra food or privileges.

I thought that if it were widely understood that Fomba could lift and string and bleed a hog by himself, perhaps he would be taken care of and left in peace. I understood enough about him to see that he became distraught when people confined him. But when he was free to throw quicklime in ponds to stun the fish and scoop them out, he did well enough. In those moments, he was capable and strong. I hoped desperately that he would stay that way. Around me I wanted only the strong.

ONE DAY WHEN THE MOSQUITOES were particularly hostile, Mamed interrupted my work at the washtubs with Georgia and told me to come with him.

"Ain't no call for pesterin' her," Georgia said. "She busy as a bird wit' nest."

Mamed pushed her aside and grabbed my wrist in an iron grip. It felt like the clamp of a leg iron on the slaving ship.

Georgia dropped her arms to her sides and called out, "You'll have to mess with me if you lay a hand on that girl."

Mamed headed behind the shacks, pulling me along. Something about his knee-the right one, on the same side that he kept his cane-didn't bend properly. But it didn't keep him from moving fast, and he certainly wasn't lacking in strength. His breeches were cut off at the knees, and the muscles in his lower legs slid and slithered like snakes. His silver hair was not curled as tightly as mine, and he had lighter skin than most people on the plantation.

When we were out of Georgia's sight, Mamed let go of my wrist and led the way through the woods. We came to a clearing. I saw a large thatched roof suspended on long poles, without walls or floor. The roof was just for shade, and under it were rectangular vats made of cypress. There were six of them, in two rows of three, and they stank of urine. In each row three vats were placed side by side, but each elevated at a slightly different height. Pipes ran from vat to vat.

Mamed handed me pine needles and a brush. He showed me how to climb into the vats, dip the brush in lye and water and scrub the wood. Then he watched to see if I followed his instructions. It was hard work, but I showed him that I learned fast and would do the job well. I had no wish to anger him.

At night, I asked Georgia why I was cleaning the vats.

"For indigo," Georgia said.

"Indigo," I repeated.

She said it had something to do with dye for buckra clothing. I couldn't understand what brushing an empty wooden vat had to do with clothes. She explained that while I was working with Mamed, she and the men were hauling stumps from a patch of land. "Snake-biting, bee-stinging, bug-crawling no-good dirty work," Georgia said.

Day after day, Mamed brought me back to clean. One day I looked up from scrubbing and saw Appleby walking toward me. Mamed shouted that I had missed a dirty spot on the vat, and he whacked me with his cane. I felt Appleby's eyes resting too long on my body and I was relieved to have the osnaburg cloth, no matter how rough, wrapped around me. Appleby soon left us, and my work continued with no more lessons from Mamed's cane.

When he was alone with me, overseeing my cleaning work, Mamed did not use the Negro language. He spoke in the buckra way. I wondered if it had something to do with the way he looked. He was much lighter than me, but darker than a buckra. I wondered about his parents, but dared not ask a word.

Eventually, Mamed began to leave me alone to scrub off the muddy stains. "Clean to here," he would say, marking a spot on a vat. When he came back, he would check to see if I had reached the target mark. To avoid beatings with the cane, I hurried to do the work quickly and kept myself company by imagining encouraging words from my father. What a difference a father would make. A father to speak to me in my own language, to show me how to avoid being hit with a cane or having my wrists pinched in a big man's hand, to show me how to be in this new land. I ached for someone who knew everything about me and knew exactly how to guide me. Inside my own head, I tried to hear the sound of my father's low and steady voice while his fingers lit gently on my arm. This is what they want, Aminata, and this is how to survive. Chickens, for example. They don't bleed them in this country. You just lop off the head and rip out the guts. Avoid the pork, if you can, but don't worry about it too much. You are in a new land now. Do what it takes to stay alive. I am watching over you, Daughter. I use the stars for eyes, and I see you in this new land. You crossed the big river and you must keep on living.

Mamed came back to check a few times a day, nodding grudgingly and occasionally bringing water or food. After seven days of work, the vats were finally cleaned to Mamed's satisfaction.

In our bed at night, Georgia told me she had heard Mamed saying that I did good work.

"Where is he from?" I asked.

"He is just a Negro," she said, "born here in the Carolina low-country."

I stopped for a moment, listening to how she said the word. She made it sound like "Ky-ly-na." While I was thinking about how she had stretched out each sound in the word, almost pausing as she went, Georgia whispered another detail.

"Mamed's mama pure African."

"She is?" I shouted.

"Hush up, chile."

I grabbed her wrist and whispered, "Mamed's mama is African?"

"Uh-huh."

"Where is she from?"

"Let go my hand, girl."

I released her wrist. "But where is she from?"

"African is African and that's all I know."

"Is his mama alive?"

"Dead and gone long ago."

"Did you know Mamed's mama?"

"Never done meet her, but that ain't all," Georgia said.

"What ain't all?"

"Mamed's daddy was a buckra. Had his own plantation on Coosaw Island."

"His daddy living?"

"Daddy just as dead as mama."

"But how come Mamed is a slave?"

"Overseer," Georgia said.

"Isn't he a slave too?"

"Uh-huh, but more uppity than you 'n' me."

"But his daddy was a buckra?"

"True as day," Georgia said.

"Then why is Mamed a slave?"

"Got a slave mama, then you is slave. Got a slave daddy, then you is slave. Any nigger in you at all, then you is slave as clear as day."

I was going to ask how Mamed came to our plantation, but Georgia already had the answer ready.

"When Mamed's mama done passed away, the buckra daddy done sell him to Master Apbee."

I fell silent for a while, but could not sleep. It seemed absurd that I should be scrubbing wooden vats, washing clothes and slitting the throats of chickens for a man who didn't even live with us. How did it come to be that he owned me, and all the others? I wondered if he owned me at all times, or only when I was working for him. Did he own me when I slept? When I dreamed?

Georgia was snoring hard, but I couldn't stop myself from tapping her arm.

"Hunh?" she said.

"What is a slave?"

"Don't wake me up with foolish questions."

"How exactly does that man own us?" I asked.

"In every way."

"And if we don't?"

"Don't what?"

"Don't work."

"If you don't work, you die," Georgia said. "Buckra man has things to grow and houses to build, and if you don't do his work, you die."

"Before we was done here. Before the Negroes. Before the Africans. Who did the work?"

"I was having myself a good dream," Georgia said. "Why are you messing my head with all this talk? Who, what, where. Gal, I am smacked down tired. I got tree stump pulling all through my bones."

I lay on my back and pressed my lips shut. Perhaps another time I could ask all these things. Now that I knew how to converse with her, my mind was spilling over with questions.

Georgia shifted away from me in the bed, stayed that way a moment, then let out a snort and turned back to face me. She slapped my hand teasingly. "In your land, do Africans yap all the time?"

"No more'n you," I said. "When you get going, you yap like a dog wit' tail caught fire."

Georgia laughed and got up to relieve herself in the bucket outside the door. When she came back to bed, she said, "Your African mouth is like a galloping horse. Slow down and steer, honey chile, or you will hit a tree. Now let me sleep before I beat you black and blue." She patted my back once, but then turned and was soon snoring again.

It took me some time to fall asleep, but I felt comforted by the sounds that she made and by the way her warmth swam across our bed.

ONE CHANGE OF THE MOON later, Mamed led a group of Negroes- including Georgia, Fomba and me-down to some farmland. While he watched, we planted seeds. It was just like back home. I would dig with my heel, drop a seed in the hole and cover up the hole with the toes of the other foot. I could see that Mamed was impressed with my ability. The men used long hoes, though, and could move much faster.

We sang with the people who worked near us, and Georgia often took the lead. While we dug soil, planted seeds, covered the holes and did it again, each of us working in our own row, Georgia would sing in a low, plaintive voice. I never knew where all of Georgia's songs came from. Sometimes she just sang them straight, and at other times she waited for us to respond at the end of each line. In those moments of singing together, we would slide into a rhythm of planting seeds with each response.

On our last day of planting, while we dug the hole, Georgia sang out a line: "Had a big ole daddy but he done gone."

And we dropped down the seed and called back, "Big ole daddy but he done gone."

Fomba, who was working in the row to my left, dropped his seed too, even though he didn't sing. We covered up our holes, stepped forward and paused for a moment. Then, as Georgia sang again, "He pull ten stumps in da burnin' sun," we dug another hole. Down dropped our seeds, and with the others I called out, "Ten stumps in da burnin' sun."