“You bess go fetch Tom Allan so’s he can get the doctor,” Ruthie said.

“Doctor ain’t helped last time,” TimTam said.

Ness stood behind a row of women, their shoulders squared as if headed into battle. She pushed her way through to the center to catch a glimpse of the child. Pinky was small and sharp-edged, as though her body were built from sticks with no bend to them. Her hair was tied up in two big puffs. The whole time the women were watching her, she made no noise save for a quick intake of breath.

“Ain’t nothing wrong wid her,” Ness said.

Suddenly, TimTam stopped his pacing as everyone turned to stare at Ness. “You ain’t been round here long,” TimTam said. “Pinky ain’t spoke a word since her mama died and now she can’t stop with these hiccups.”

“Ain’t nothing but hiccups,” Ness said. “Those ain’t killed anyone yet, far’s I know.” She looked around at all the women shaking their heads at her disapprovingly, but she couldn’t tell what she had done wrong.

TimTam pulled her aside. “These women ain’t told you?” he whispered, and Ness shook her head. The women so rarely spoke to her, and she had finally gotten good at tuning out their gossip. TimTam cleared his throat and hung his head a little lower. “See, we know ain’t nothing wrong wid her but the hiccups, but we been tryin’ to get her to speak, so…”

His voice trailed off as Ness began to understand that the whole thing had been nothing more than a plot to trick little Pinky into utterance. Ness pulled away from TimTam and looked at the small congregation of women carefully, from one to the next and then the next. She made her way to the center of the room, where Pinky lay on the pallet, her eyes staring up at the ceiling. The girl turned her eyes toward Ness and hiccuped once more.

Ness addressed the room. “Lord, I don’t know what kinda foolishness I done walked into at this here plantation, but y’all need to leave this girl alone. Maybe she don’t want to speak cuz she know just how crazy it make you or maybe she ain’t got nothin’ to say yet, but I reckon she ain’t gon’ start tonight just because y’all makin’ like you actors in a travelin’ show.”

The women wrung their hands and shifted their feet, and TimTam’s head sunk a little lower.

Ness walked back to her pallet, finished beating the dust out, and lay down.

TimTam walked over to Pinky. “Well, les go,” he said, reaching for the girl, but she pulled away. “I said, les go,” he repeated, shame coloring his voice gray, but the girl snatched herself away again. She went over to where Ness lay, her eyes shut tightly as she begged sleep to come quick. Pinky’s hand brushed Ness’s shoulder, and she opened her eyes to see the girl staring at her, round moon eyes imploring. And because Ness understood loss, and because she understood motherlessness and wanting and even silence, she reached for the girl’s hand and pulled her down onto the bed.

“You go on ’head,” she said to TimTam, Pinky’s head already nestled between the soft cushions of her breasts. “I got her tonight.”

—

From that day forward, Pinky could not be separated from Ness. She had even moved from the other women’s cabin into Ness’s. She slept with Ness, ate with Ness, took walks with Ness, and cooked with Ness. Still, she didn’t speak, and Ness never asked her to, knowing full well that Pinky would speak when she had something to say, laugh when something was truly funny. For her part, Ness, who had not known how much she missed company, took comfort in the girl’s quiet presence.

Pinky was the water girl. On any given day she would make as many as forty trips to the small creek on the edge of the Stockhams’ plantation. She carried a plank of wood across her back, arms folded over it from behind so that she looked like a man holding a cross, and on each end of the plank hung two silver pails. Once she had reached the creek, Pinky would fill those pails, bring them back to the main house, and then empty them into the large water buckets that lived on the Stockham porch. She would fill the basins in the house so that the Stockham children would have fresh water for their afternoon baths. She would water the flowers that sat on Susan Stockham’s dressing table. From there, she went to the kitchen to give two pailfuls to Margaret for the day’s cooking. She walked the same worn path every day, down to the creek, back up to the house. By the end of the day, her arms would throb so hard Ness could feel her heart beat in them when the girl crawled into bed with Ness at night and the woman hugged her close.

The hiccups had not stopped, continuing since the day TimTam had brought her into Ness’s cabin hoping to scare the child into speaking. Everyone pitched in with a remedy.

“Stand da girl upside down!”

“Tell her hold her breath and swall-ah!”

“Cross two straws on top her head!”

The last remedy, put forth by a woman named Harriet, was the one that seemed to work. Pinky made thirty-four trips to the creek without a single hiccup. Ness was on the porch getting her fill of water on Pinky’s thirty-fifth trip back. The two redheaded Stockham children were out and about that day. The boy, named Tom Jr., and the girl, Mary. They were running up the stairs just as Pinky rounded the corner, and Tom Jr. knocked the plank so that one of the pails went flying into the air, water raining down on everyone on the porch. Mary started to cry.

“My dress is all wet!” she said.

Margaret, who had just finished ladling out water for one of the other slaves, set the ladle down. “Hush now, Miss Mary.”

Tom Jr., who had never been much for gallantry, decided to try it just then for his sister’s sake. “Well, apologize to Mary!” he said to Pinky. The two were the same age, though Pinky was about a foot taller.

Pinky opened her mouth, but no words came out.

“She sorry,” Ness said quickly.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Tom Jr. said.

Mary had stopped crying and was staring at Pinky intently. “Tom, you know she don’t talk,” Mary said. “It’s all right, Pinky.”

“She’ll talk if I tell her to talk,” Tom Jr. said, shoving his sister. “Apologize to Mary,” he repeated. The sun was high and hot that day. Indeed, Ness could see that the two wet drops on Mary’s dress had already dried.

Pinky, eyes welling with tears, opened her mouth again and a wave of hiccups came out, frantic and loud.

Tom Jr. shook his head. He went into the house while everyone watched and returned with the Stockham cane. It was twice his length, made of a dull birchwood. It wasn’t thick, but it was so heavy that Tom Jr. could hardly hold it with both of his hands, let alone the one it would take to snap it back.

“Speak, nigger,” Tom Jr. said, and Margaret, who had long since stopped her ladling, ran into the house crying, “Ooh, Tom Junior, I’m gon’ find yo daddy!”

Pinky was sobbing and hiccuping all at once, the hiccups blocking whatever speech she might have given. Tom Jr. lifted the cane in his right hand with great effort and tried to snap it over his shoulder, but Ness, who was standing behind him, caught the tip of it in her hand. It tore through her palms as she tugged so hard that Tom Jr. fell to the ground. She dragged him half an inch.

Tom Allan appeared on the porch with Margaret, who was breathless and clutching her chest. “What’s this?” he asked.

Tom Jr. started crying. “She was gonna hit me, Daddy!” he said.