The Last Days of Dogtown by Anita Diamant

with one piece of the puzzle that had always eluded her. The slaying of Dr. Henry Brimfield’s slave girl was an old tale, but such a juicy story that it was repeated whenever any murder was mentioned. When Gloucester had first discovered that the younger Brimfield had disappeared on the very night the corpse was discovered, covered in his coat, killed with his sword, the court of public opinion pronounced him guilty. That turned out to be the only form of justice ever meted out as Dr. Brimfield, the father, had friends in the law. No warrant was ever issued and no search ensued, a breach of fairness that remained a shocking and satisfying detail of the gruesome story. Long after the slave girl’s name was forgotten (she was “the slave wench” or “Brimfield’s girl”), the locals continued to tut-tut about the murder: “Respectable is as respectable does.”
    But of all the times Ruth had heard the tale repeated at Easter’s hearth, there was never any mention of a baby. That knot was unraveled for her, but there were new mysteries now, and there was no way any of them would be solved.
    She unfolded the paper packet again. The lock of hair was tied with a pink ribbon faded nearly white. Had he cut this from her head after she was dead? Did he use the saber that killed her to remove it as a souvenir?
    The silver ring would not pass over the first knuckle of her littlest finger. Were her mother’s fingers so small? Could a Yankee slave have owned such a thing? Was it a reward from her master, a gift from her mistress, a stolen secret? Did she wear it on her hand?
    The twist of fabric was tight as a nut and hard, the size of a thimble. Ruth pried it open carefully, but there was nothing inside but a pattern of yellow flowers. She put the scrap to her nose, but it held no scent. What was this? Why had it been saved?
    The questions buzzed like bees inside her head. She put her treasures away and laid her chisel on top of the boulder where her mother had perished. And then she walked down the steep slope to the water’s edge.
    Ruth turned her face to the south and started along the banks of the ’Squam River, putting one foot in front of the other along the muddy shore. She kept her eyes on the ground ahead of her, with no thought to where she was headed. She saw nothing of the lingering golden sunset nor did she notice the rise of a nearly full moon. She succeeded in forgetting herself altogether until she found herself in Gloucester Harbor. Ruth crouched under the wharfs and hid behind pilings, hurrying silently between shadows to avoid detection, running from the fouled water and greasy smells until she reached the quiet of Wonson Point.
    From there, she scrambled over the Bass Rocks, trudged the white Good Harbor sand, and clattered across Pebblestone Beach. From dry granite to slick granite, skirting low tide and soaking her boots at high tide, she let her legs make the case against death.
    Only when she arrived at the farthest reach of Halibut Point did she stop and allow memory to have its way. Brimfield said he’d returned to Cape Ann to make peace with his past. She had come for the same reason, after all. And because of Mimba.

    The short, wiry, coal black woman had been Ruth’s mother from the moment Ruth had appeared in the Prescotts’ kitchen. Mimba pulled the frightened four-year-old onto her lap and kissed her on both cheeks. “You gonna be my dearest-dearest?” she whispered. “You gonna be Mimba’s apple-sweetie?” Her words bore the stamp of the West Indies, where she’d learned housekeeping and English, but she never forgot the African names for “milk” and “home,” for “honey” and “memory,” which found their way into her stories.
    Mimba was born to tell stories: old wives’ tales from Africa and Barbados, gossip about whites and blacks alike, family histories of all five of the slaves on the Prescott plantation on Narragansett Bay, in Rhode Island’s South County. Mimba told