Our Own Country: A Novel (The Midwife Series) by Jodi Daynard

was so overcome with fatigue that she fell back asleep after the bell had already rung. Everyone had left for the cane fields.
    Cassie awoke to dark shadows above her: the overseers. They were white men with lean bodies and cruel eyes. Perhaps thirty or even older. She sat up to dress, but one of them reached out and pressed her back onto the floor, his hand braced between her small breasts.
    They reached under her shift and groped between her shaking legs. Then they took turns with her body. When they were finished, they told her to get dressed and into the fields, and that if she breathed a word they would kill her. Ten months later, at the age of thirteen, she gave birth to a baby girl, but the babe died within a few days.
    “Oh, Cassie,” I said, forgetting my own misery for a moment. “These were my own father’s men?”
    “Yes, Miss Eliza. Your own fadder’s men. But he don’t know what goes on when he not dere. ’Ee don’t even tink about ’eet.”
    “Well, I shall make him do so,” I said with conviction, though I had not the strength to stir from my bed.
    I lay back on my pillows. Cassie caressed my hair, combing her rough fingers and long, ragged nails through it. Her nails gently scraped my scalp and made it tingle.
    “You shall be well ’een time, Miss Eliza. You not de first, nor de last, woman who have dees happen. And some day soon you meet a good man. Like my Cato was. A good, decent man—”
    Suddenly, there was a knock at my door, and we started. It was Mama.
    “Oh, Cassie. I didn’t realize you were already here. Are you better this morning, my dear?”
    I grasped Cassie’s hand. “A little, I believe. Cassie has made a tea that has eased me greatly.”
    “I’m glad. Shall we see you at breakfast?”
    “Not today, Mama. Tomorrow, perhaps. I shall no doubt be much better tomorrow.”
    “I’ll tell Papa you are better. He worried all night.”
    My dear papa, who allowed little girls to be ravished on his own property. Once Mama had left, I entreated Cassie to tell me the end of her story.
    “So, what happened to those men? Were they ever punished?”
    “Punished?” Cassie’s eyes widened. “Oh, no.” Here she flashed her broad white teeth. She said, “Mama and I make dem someteeng good to eat. Very good. Dey puke for two days. And den dey die.”

11
    WITHIN A FEW DAYS, I WAS OUT of bed, and in a week’s time I was to learn that I was not with child, for which I thanked God in Heaven. But I was beset by terrible cramps, and so retreated to bed once more. Cassie told me several times, “Bring dem heah. Cassie give dem someteeng very good to eat.”
    The two culprits, however, vanished directly after the party, and we knew nothing of their whereabouts until spring, when we learned that Mr. Inman was with General Howe and the British army in Boston, and that Mr. Hutchinson had left our shores to join his family in England.
    Our situation by this time—February of ’75—was quite degraded. The weather was dreary, the markets were empty, and there was little to eat except for cod, biscuits, eggs, grain, and what preserves Cassie had been prudent enough to store that summer past.
    My seventeenth birthday had come and gone without fanfare. Mama now thought it all but hopeless that I should marry, as those men who had not fled had either joined the army or stood in wait to fight.
    Thanks to my dear Cassie, I survived the attack upon my person. Yet my soul was in turmoil. I had nightmares, and feared leaving home. Upon stepping abroad, my breath caught in my chest, and I thought I would faint. Worst of all, I had begun to feel a roiling anger that knew no outlet—toward Papa, once more, wh o’d given Mr. Inman his consent without informing me. Toward Mama, who, I now believed, surely knew of this consent.
    And yet, he had been right about my not telling anyone—for who might I tell who would believe me? Who might I tell without doing irreparable damage to myself? I knew the answer