Not available anywhere else: an excerpt from The Small and the Mighty, my new book that comes out tomorrow, on September 24. Please feel free to forward this email to anyone who might enjoy it.
The marketplace buzzed with activity on a sizzling Kentucky day. And just up ahead, to the right, near the wooden platform in the center of town, a heartrending scene was unfolding.
Clara Brown clutched her youngest child close, Eliza Jane’s tear-sodden face disappearing into the fabric of Clara’s dress. Eliza was prone to “fits” of behavior she had difficulty controlling, and she was now sobbing.
“Shhhhh,” Clara whispered to her. “You have to be a brave girl now.” She tried to dry Eliza’s face. To wipe her nose. To imbue her with her motherly strength so Eliza could take her turn on the auction block and be sold to a “decent” family, one that would not punish her too harshly. A family that would give her somewhere warm to sleep, and enough food to sustain her and help her grow tall and strong. If Eliza stood there looking like a blubbering mess, she might fetch a bad price and go to a family that couldn’t–or wouldn’t– care for her.
When Clara was born around 1800, she was born enslaved to enslaved parents. As a child, she was sold to a man in another state, a fate that would soon befall her own offspring. Kentucky wasn’t home to the vast plantations of Virginia, where she came from; the land was more mountainous, the farms more compact.
It's likely that Clara had many jobs as she grew up, learning to cook, clean, garden, wash, and iron alongside the other enslaved women she lived with.
Unusually for a woman in her circumstances, Clara married for love. Because so little has been recorded about the lives of enslaved people, and what was recorded was often from the perspective of the people who owned them, diaries and letters from the time tell us that Clara’s owners were very happy that she married Richard, and that they threw the new couple a wedding feast to celebrate the union.
It’s difficult today to not be cynical about these accounts – if the enslavers felt genuine affection for Clara and Richard, why didn’t they free them? What were they actually happy about? Was it that they had a family of strong workers living on their farm now, a family that would soon bear children they could sell or enslave as well? Was the marriage for love anything more than dollar signs in the eyes of the people who owned Clara and Richard?
Clara and Richard welcomed a son, Richard Jr., daughter Margaret, and twin baby girls, Paulina Ann and Eliza Jane. Unlike many enslaved people, the family was allowed to live together and to tend to their own garden plot. In the evenings, the children could play in the creek that ran through the property.
Clara’s life changed forever one summer day. In the distance, she heard the unmistakable sound of her eight-year-old daughter screaming, “MAMAAAAAAAAAA!” Clara felt a punch in her gut and a weight on her chest that made it hard to breathe. She took off in the direction of her daughter’s voice, her legs moving her six-foot frame at a speed they had never carried her before.
She found Eliza creekside, pointing downstream. “What! What happened? What is it?” Clara cried, the panic rising in her throat.
“PAULINA!” Eliza cried. “PAULINA!”
Eliza had tried in vain to reach her twin, Paulina, who was tangled in the branches that swirled at the edge of the creek. Eliza had watched as her wombmate disappeared under the surface.
Paulina’s body was recovered a short time later. But Eliza’s mind was not. Clara worried desperately about her, worried how she would be treated the rest of her life if she couldn’t snap out of her episodes of staring blankly off into the distance and the crying jags that lasted for hours unabated. Eliza barely slept, which meant Clara barely had a chance to close her eyes.
Today we would recognize the PTSD that Eliza was experiencing, the flashbacks of trying to rescue her entangled sister that seized her at night. The crippling feelings of guilt that it was her fault, the regret she felt because they shouldn’t have been in the creek to begin with.
When the family’s current owner, Ambrose Smith—the one who had thrown them the wedding feast—died in 1835, the family had to be separated and sold, one by one, to settle his estate.
Each member of Clara’s family, her husband and beloved children, took turns stepping up onto the auction block, hoping against hope for some kind of miracle that might allow them to stay together. But none came.
The sight of fragile little Eliza with her tearstained face, eyes swollen from crying, being wrenched from her arms and hoisted atop the platform, caused a pain unlike any Clara had known.
When Paulina died, Clara grieved. But delivering her dead baby girl into the arms of the Lord–Clara was a woman of great faith–was far different than delivering her sobbing, living daughter into the arms of an unknown enslaver.
She knew there was a good chance they would never meet again outside of heaven. It was a grief she shared with many thousands of mothers whose babies were taken and who never again had the chance to kiss the tops of their heads, to remark on how much they were growing, or to marvel in pride at who they were becoming.
“SOLD!” the auctioneer yelled, pointing at the man who had just purchased her flesh and blood. Eliza was carted away, nestled in the back of a wagon among sacks of feed and bolts of fabric.
Clara watched her disappear, praying that Eliza would not be afraid, that she would find the strength to be a good girl, and that she would always know that she was loved.
She vowed to find her again someday, even if it took the rest of her life .
You can read the rest TOMORROW, September 24, when The Small and the Mighty finally, FINALLY, lands in mailboxes and stores everywhere.
I wrote this for you. I hope you’ll love it. Thank you so much for supporting my audacious dream.