Free The Family Greene by Ann Rinaldi Page B

like tales told out of school. I should be punishing you, not rewarding you by promising you a trip. But yes, I'd like to take you. Only after your mother is well again and we see how fares the baby. Do you think you could stay good until then? And go to school, despite your dislike for Mr. Miller?"
    "Yes, sir," I promised.
    "All right, now I'm going to see your mother. Go downstairs and make yourself useful."
    ***
    T HE BABY DIED before nightfall. And I blamed myself, though neither Mama nor Pa did. But if I hadn't blamed myself, I could always count on Martha, who reminded me before I went to my room that night.
    "Well, I hope you're proud of what you did this day. It's all your fault, you know, that we lost our little sister."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
    W E BURIED the baby the next day, in the small cemetery plot Mama and Pa had on Mulberry Grove.
    Mama was not in attendance. She stayed in bed, Eulinda by her side. The rest of us gathered round the small coffin. And all the slaves sang their songs to oblige Pa, but I knew the sad cadence of these spirituals only brought him lower than he needed to be.
    When Pa and Mama had lived up north, they'd never had any slaves. They did not believe in slavery. But after the war, Pa had no money. He'd given thirty thousand pounds sterling to merchants to cover debts because they'd supplied his troops with clothing and other necessities. All his wartime investments went bad. His privateers lost fortunes. The iron furnace showed no profit.
    That's what Mama had told us.
    That's when the Georgia legislature gave him Mulberry Grove.
    Pa had once written to his friend Abel Thomas, a Philadelphia Quaker,
On the subject of slavery, nothing can be said in its defense.
    And then, of a sudden, he had Mulberry Grove, which had more than 1,300 acres and included "fine river swamp" for cultivating rice, and a "very elegant house."
    South Carolina gave him a plantation called Boone's Barony, 6,600 acres on the Edisto River. And ten thousand guineas to go with it.
The land without means of cultivation will be but a dead interest,
Pa wrote when he petitioned the South Carolina legislature to buy the Negroes that went with Boone's Barony.
    Pa came to realize that you could not have plantations without slaves to run them.
    He began buying more slaves.
    He had to make a trip to Philadelphia, where he wanted to buy fifty-eight more slaves for Mulberry Grove. He refused to pay more than sixty pounds sterling per person.
    He now had a slave broker. The man advised him that the prices he wanted to pay were far too low:
Common field negroes sold at St. Augustine for 50pounds to 70pounds sterling and on credit, of course, they sell much higher. The lowest terms that have been offered were 70 pounds per head for a gang of 72, viz. 25 men, 24 women, & 23 children,
the man wrote, advising Pa.
    Pa paid a just price, though it was more than he wanted to, and purchased fifty-eight Negroes in Philadelphia and had them conveyed to his estate in Georgia.
    By that spring, the slaves had two hundred acres planted in rice and corn. And it looked, Mama said, as if the plantation would start to pay for itself.
    ***
    I CRIED ALL through the funeral for the baby. And just before it, I marched myself into Pa's library and made a demand of him.
    He was bending over his desk, writing something. He looked up. "What is it?" he asked.
    "The baby has to have a name," I told him.
    From wherever he was in his mind, he brought himself forward. He straightened up and stood, pen in hand. "A name?" he asked.
    "Yes, sir. She can't be buried without a name. What is it to be?"
    He gave a heavy sigh. He closed his eyes for a moment. "She only lived a few hours, Cornelia."
    "Please, Pa, she has to have a name. Didn't you and Mama give her one?"
    They had not. I could see that now.
    "Why is it so important to you?" he asked.
    "Because she would be alive if not for me. I killed her."
    "Don't say that."
    "I did, Pa."
    "I heard Martha say that to you when