Miriam choked on the akara she ate when Mrs. Wells called her a brute. “Me a brute? Then I presume you’re worse than I am because you’re older and of course, you’re my aunt.” She chuckled and drank some apple juice, willing that her aunt let her eat in peace. “This tastes lovely by the way.” Commending the sweetness of the African snack, Miriam hoped the distraction would be welcomed. For all that mattered, she was satisfied with what she earned as it was sufficient to take care of her son, Samie and support her aunty, Mrs. Wells. There was therefore no use reaching for more than she could contain. There was no use aiming for more than she had been apportioned in life. That had been what had left her in her fixated state – the quest to change her fate. She had sworn to never again be plagued with the curse of discontentment. “I won’t be accepting the vicar’s offer. I don’t need the job.” Her voice was a fry, but it lacked determination.

Mrs. Wells furrowed her brows, noticing this. Her lips quivered but she refrained. A sigh. “I hope someday, you start to explore this treasure – you. So gbo?”

“I hear you.” Miriam lifted a shoulder, her eyes averted in indifference. As with her African roots, Mrs. Wells always made to remind her of things that once were but not anymore. Things like her beauty, talents, her dreams and aspirations. She stood from the dining table and picked her plate and Mrs. Wells’. “I hope I don’t become fat as a cow with these bean-cakes of yours.”

“I don’t mind feeding you fat.” Mrs. Wells gave a thoughtful smile and returned to an abolitionist pamphlet she had been reading.

Muttering thanks, Miriam left for the kitchen where she would do the dishes. The bubbles of the soap with which she washed resembled her former life. Six years ago, she had been a slave desirous of freedom and willing to pay any price. She had not considered the possibility of betrayal or abandonment when Mr. Fredrickson, Samie’s father professed his love for her beneath the shade of a mulberry tree, on her master’s homestead. He had tipped her chin and had sung her name, sweet as the melody of a piano forte. Miriam, my Miriam. She remembered the coyness of his voice, the slippery tone only a fox could possess. “I could help you get your manumission. What? Do you really think I take no thought of your wellbeing?”

Overcome with hope, Miriam had melted in his arm as ice would on hot slab and had swiveled into a merry-go-round of unrestrained affection. It had not taken five months however, for Samie’s father to prove that he was neither what he said or inferred. Miriam dried her wet hand with a napkin, trying to ignore the hurt that followed the realization of her pregnancy. Had God not been merciful to her, had He not sent Mrs. Wells who came to her rescue and offered Miriam’s master money he could not resist, for Miriam’s manumission, she would have died – both she and Samie. That mercy, she long concluded she had exhausted, though within she craved for a home and a man to call her own. She returned to the parlour, sat cross-legged on a stuffed chair and busied with a jacket she had been knitting. She thought again about the offer to cook in the vicar’s home and decided to continue with her job at the alehouse. Although the vicar would pay more, she preferred the alehouse because it shielded her insecurities. There she felt unseen, and even if her proprietor, Mrs. Phoebe seemed to sense her struggle, she was grateful she never probed. Her gentle smile and kindness seemed sufficient.

Miriam hemmed the sleeves of the jacket with an intricate tapestry of flower patterns. She smiled, admiring the product of one of her many talents. Like Miriam’s late mother, Mrs. Wells always reminded Miriam that she was fierce as the wind. “You’ve got passion in your heart and fire in your eyes. Any man who finds you will be lucky he did.” Miriam ignored the thought, and with it, the longing for company as she would a jester at a circus. She was certain no one could want her, at least not after knowing the ignorance of her past.