Freewater

“She strained to see beyond the muck and fog to the plantation lands. She was a free child of the swamp and those lands were a mystery to her. It was a miracle her parents and the others had run from there and found this piece of elevated swamp land, small and dry. Their own secret island in an ocean of mud.

Tales had spread among the swamp island children like herself about what lay in plantation lands: two-headed men, turtles without shells, and skeletons that rose from the dead. Although she was twelve and almost grown, at least in her mind, Sanzi still wasn’t sure how much of it was true, but she did believe that dangers lay out there.”

This quote introduces the distinction between possible and impossible. Sanzi recognizes her parents escaping enslavement and founding a community of free people in the treacherous swamp as miraculous. However, though she questions the existence of specific monsters, she has yet to learn enslavement is a worse “monster” than the machinations of children.

“‘Homer, you hear those monsters?’ asked Ada. […]

‘It’s animals you’re hearing—ain’t no monsters, Ada.’ […]

‘You think we could get up North from here?’ Hope shone in Ada’s eyes as she said it. […]

‘Ain’t no heading North in this here swamp. Besides, we can’t go North without…’ My ending hung in the air. Mama.”

Ada’s belief in both monsters and miracles is initially dismissed as childish. However, both ideas are necessary because the monstrosity of enslavement is real, and chasing them. Belief in the impossible leads to innovation, and though the siblings won’t “fly,” they will walk on sky bridges and eventually save Mama.

“Master Crumb’s father had made a gift of Old Joe to his son on his wedding day. I’d seen many kinds of ways we moved from one place to another. We were sold, loaned, taken, and ran away, but gifting was the strangest. Gifts sound nice, but slave moving was always ugly. It didn’t seem right to call it gifting.”

Homer has to actively unlearn the racism instilled in him by Mr. Crumb and other enslavers. Here, he exposes the dissonance of giving away a human being and calling it “gifting.” Euphemisms disguise the horrific reality of enslavement, which Homer needs to overcome in order to achieve true freedom of body and mind.