Booth by Karen Joy Fowler

Author:Karen Joy Fowler [Fowler, Karen Joy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2022-03-08T00:00:00+00:00

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This is the last time Asia will see Pinkney Hall on the farm. A few days later he and his sister Mary Ellen run. Aunty Rogers takes this as a personal insult, a suggestion that they don’t take care of their slaves, that their slaves are not, in fact, practically family. If anything, Elijah has been too indulgent. Hasn’t he let Pink see his parents more often than a slave could hope? Hasn’t he always behaved with tolerance and generosity when another owner might have noticed laziness and insolence?

She turns a suspicious eye on Ann and Joe. Someone gave Pinkney and Mary Ellen the money to escape—they could never have managed without money.

Ann listens soberly to Aunty Rogers’ grievances. She says that this comes as a big surprise to her as well; she had no idea. She says that she can’t imagine what insanity came over her children. She agrees that they had no cause, assures Aunty Rogers of her own fundamental goodness. She admits to nothing. The Booths could take acting lessons from her (and probably any other slave in the South as well).

Asia would have been entirely convinced had she not, just a week or so prior, happened on Ann and Rosalie whispering together in conspiratorial fashion, a conversation that stopped immediately when Asia walked in.

Aunty Rogers remains insulted. She comes less often to visit the Booths, where she is so likely to run into Ann. Asia doesn’t want to choose between these two women—she loves them both. She feels there must be blame on both sides. Aunty Rogers should have forced her husband to emancipate Ann’s children. But Ann shouldn’t have participated, if she participated, in this illegal flight.

John says very little about it, noting only that the Booths depended on Pink to care for their horses and what are they to do now? It’s an inconvenience rather than an outrage. He grants the Hall family an exemption from his usual politics.

So two more of Ann and Joe’s children are free. But they won’t see their mother again until the end of the Civil War. And they have looked on their father for the very last time.

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