Summary

Ness – On the Stockham plantation in Alabama, field slave Ness picks cotton. Narration reveals that she is the light-skinned daughter of Esi, and that Esi was loving but unsmiling and not warm. Narration also describes Ness’s barely-friendly relationship with another slave, TimTam, and how the beautiful Ness was rejected for house service because of the scars along her torso and shoulders. Finally, narration reveals that Ness got her name in the aftermath of Esi being whipped for not speaking properly: at one point Esi cried out “My goodness,” which she took as a sign of her daughter’s name, a sign that was eventually shortened to Ness.

One night, TimTam brings his beloved daughter Pinky to the women’s slave quarters. He needs the women’s help: Pinky has not spoken since the death of her mother, only hiccuped. Ness takes Pinky...