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another’s side, rebuffing advances from men whose attentions they viewed as dangerous. They finished their second decade and began their third, marching faithfully toward the destiny carved out for them. It did not prove difficult, for their beauty was not such that men vowed to have them, and more than one frightened person whispered that the sisters danced in the woods at night.
    Then Frederick Kingsley arrived, and Sarah Lou lost her mind for a brief time.
    As Sarah’s belly inched out the waist of her dress, the other two sisters shunned her. But by the time Madge was born and Kingsley had moved on, the sisters, satisfied with his departure, forgave the middlesister. Instead they blamed the baby, and as soon as she could walk and talk, Madge knew what it meant to be an unwanted child. She had been born into a community of women whose survival depended upon their loyalty to one another, and she upset the balance. Just as their neighbors working the nearby plantations had been born into slavery, Madge inherited a set of memories she had not chosen.
    W HILE M ADGE WAS STILL TRYING to claim some kind of love from the sisters, the armies fought in Tennessee near the Kentucky border. By April 1864, the war had reached within a hundred miles of the sisters. Folks nearby claimed there were thousands of men fighting on the banks of the Tennessee River. The sisters could hardly believe it, but they still bolted their door at night. Stories of slaughtered men left lying on the battlefield and tent hospitals stretching as far as the eye could see hinted to the women that a time would come when their healing services would be needed more than ever.
    After the battle at Fort Pillow, groups of slaves with armfuls of belongings began to make their way through the woods. Folks were on the move, and Madge wanted to move, too. If she stayed in the same house of her mother and her mother’s mother, continuing to serve the same folks they had, then the war meant nothing. She wanted to know what this newfound freedom had in store for a colored woman born with papers. She had seen and held the documents none of them could read, buried beneath the floor, declarations containing their names, complexions, heights, the dark pepper-shaped scar over Berta Mae’s left eyebrow, the missing fingertip on Baby Sister’s left hand. In return for removing a red hill off a white man’s foot, he had read the words to them, precious pieces of paper that were more than paper, containing words worth more than scripture. In the meantime, Madge could not resist the restlessness that the word freedom created. She had shoutedout loud when the first battle cry sounded, but the three sisters had merely shut the windows. Good news, they said, was usually followed by bad. Dark-eyed and uncertain, desperate for a life better than the last, the newly freed people boarded northbound boats and wagons, walking in groups or alone, trickling into contraband camps. Madge decided to join a group walking north to a city of ships and trains. She had no idea how many weeks of walking it would take to reach that land, but she was determined to go.
    As she prepared to leave that hot summer morning, she carried a head full of noise: This woman is my mama. Surely she feel something more than nem other women . She had figured the two would not speak to her that morning as she put her free papers into a satchel. She had expected their silence.
    Her mother stood in the yard washing clothes in a barrel, her hands moving up and down in the water. On the line, two dresses swayed, headless bodies.
    â€œI be leaving soon,” Madge called out.
    Her mother did not swipe at the thicket of hair netting her face.
    â€œI come to say my good-byes.”
    Hot water sloshed up Sarah’s forearms, reddening them in the early light.
    â€œAin’t got much time.”
    Sarah rose from the stool, wrung out a pair of drawers over the ground. She did not appear to notice