It made Dr. Oludara curious about where those other folks had gone, especially since her ancestor’s two children had been sold from her at the auction. And though Dr. Oludara knew her search for those children would be fruitless, she hadn’t stopped looking. She’d framed her book outline as a story of her own family, interwoven with the larger, public history of the auction and what became of some of the other enslaved folks sold there. And maybe another pair of eyes could help her. And since I’d been so great at organizing her research, could I stay on and maybe reread some of the materials? She’d already done the reading herself, but after seven years of research, she was so close to the material; she wanted a pair of young, fresh eyes.
I looked at her bookshelves. There were at least seventy books on those shelves, and at least a hundred articles that I’d filed.
“Um . . . I’d have to think about that. I’m not trained for this kind of work. And, you know, I might be going back to the City soon.”
“Really? I thought you were staying here for a while. That’s what Dr. Hargrace told me.”
At home, I told the old man I was not an indentured servant. He couldn’t loan me out to his friends however he felt like it. And those articles were too dense for me. I’d cracked a couple open, and they were worse than my college biology textbooks.
“There’s a way to read them, sugarfoot. I can show you, if you like. It’s a magic trick.”
“You mean, how you tricked me to take this damned job as a research assistant?”
“Oh, no, sugarfoot. That was basic manipulation.”
The next morning, I called Dr. Oludara’s office on campus. If she still wanted me to work for her, I could start on reading her materials. But with respect, I would need a raise. She asked, how about twenty-five more dollars a week? I told her that sounded fine to me.
*
During the summers, Routledge didn’t offer classes. The campus was closed to students from the third week of May until the first week of August. I let myself into the faculty office building and listened to the quiet. I knocked on Dr. Oludara’s door and told her that I was headed to work. She answered that she was working herself. I whispered, afraid to break the quiet. She told me she would let me work in private, but when I got back home, don’t forget to shower and pray before bed. Put on something white or light.
“Don’t forget, okay? And if any research ideas come up, call me, even if it’s late. Don’t worry about the time. If you don’t want to call, just write it down. Remember, I need fresh eyes.”
She had left typed notes for me, telling me where the white side of the story had started. It was easier to start with that side; unlike African Americans, white people had decent records. Their names, their birthplaces and dates. Sometimes even the color of their hair and eyes. Dr. Oludara had put a copy of a diary on the office table, written by an actress known as Frances Anne “Fanny” Kemble. She was the Englishwoman who had been married to Pierce Mease Butler, a slaveholder who’d been so wealthy he’d owned an island that carried his last name.
When Mrs. Butler aka Fanny went to live with her American husband, she was so appalled and disgusted by the way he’d treated the Black folks of Butler Island she’d left him, but she’d also kept a diary of the human offenses she’d witnessed. Mr. Butler wasn’t only cruel to his slaves: after his divorce, Mr. Butler sued for and gained custody of their daughters. He thought that would be the end of his trouble with his English ex-wife, but in 1863, fifteen years after their divorce, his ex-wife published her diary during the Civil War, under her maiden name. But even before its publication, manuscripts of her diary had privately circulated for some years. Mr. Butler’s reputation in the north had been permanently damaged, as the news of his brutality toward his slaves spread among abolitionist circles. Abolitionists added Mr. Butler’s name to the growing pile of evidence of slavery’s evils, a hill already built by narratives published in the north by escaped slaves. But Mr. Butler’s name was damaged even further: he’d been very bad with money, and in 1859, he sold at auction over four hundred of the enslaved Black folks who’d lived as one community on Butler Island. One village on an isolated island off the coast of Georgia was destroyed in the auction called “the weeping time.”
Beside the diary, Dr. Oludara had included a copy of the original newspaper article about the auction, written by a dude with the most ridiculous name ever, Q. K. Philander Doesticks. And though Fanny Kemble’s journal hadn’t yet been published officially—that wouldn’t happen until four years later—apparently, Mr. Doesticks had seen a private copy of the diary, because he called his article “a sequel to Mrs. Kemble’s Journal.” He had been at the auction and had witnessed the group of over four hundred enslaved people waiting for their fate. At the auction, these people had been broken into parcels of four or five enslaved folks. But Mr. Doesticks had focused on individual, personal stories of the Black folks who would be sold, like that of Jeffrey and Dorcas.