Show Me a Sign

of Papa’s two farm laborers, are walking slowly toward us. Thomas is a former slave with broad shoulders and a long stride. He is dressed in worn workman’s clothes.
Nancy starts to climb quickly down the tree. I follow her. She would hate to be compared to her fussy, pious mother, but I have seen Mrs. Skiffe shrink back from freedmen as Nancy does now.
When she reaches the ground and smooths her gown, she can barely get out the signs for “remember tomorrow” before she starts back up the high road to her house.

Thomas approaches the stone wall. Some sheep have strayed from the flock, so he herds them by bumping their rears with his knees. They are an unruly bunch. I climb over the wall and try to help steer them with my birch stick.
“Hello,” I sign. He nods amiably in response. “How is Helen?” I ask after his wife. She works as a housemaid at Nancy’s house. “I have not seen her lately at the Skiffes’.”
“Her mother has been ill, Mary,” he tells me, “and she has been walking back and forth from home to be with her.” Helen is Wampanoag from Gay Head.
“Is Sally with her?” I ask.
Sally is their ten-year-old daughter who sometimes works with her mama or spends time with her papa at our farm. She is a lively girl, full of sweetness and laughter. I envy her deerskins and moccasins with fine beadwork, which look more comfortable than my stays and gowns. But Mama forbids me from wearing such clothing.
“She’s around here somewhere,” Thomas signs, waving his hand in every direction.
Thomas used to help only in the spring with the big sheep shearing. But with George gone, he stays on year-round now.
When Thomas was a slave, his last master granted his freedom. Mama is cordial to him in their brief interactions, when he carries wood or butchered meat to the kitchen door, but he isn’t invited into our home. Neither is our other hired hand, an Irishman, Eamon Reilly.
In our town, the Irish are seen as inferior to the English but superior to freedmen. Papa pays those ideas no heed and stubbornly hires both when others will not. I used to be embarrassed when our neighbors commented on Papa’s radical notions. But George’s death has opened my eyes to new ways of thinking.
“Might I follow you for a few minutes?” I ask Thomas.
“I cannot stop my work,” he reminds me, “but you are welcome to join me.”
In the distance, I locate Sally leaning against the railing of the paddock where we keep Bayard, a brown colt who will take orders from no one since George died. Is she not afraid of the sleek, volatile beast?
Once the sheep are reunited in the pasture, we head for the barn. I notice that while Thomas is dressed in broadcloth and wool like Papa, he has a new pair of deerskin boots.
“Is it strange for you to live among the Wampanoag?” I ask.
“Not at all,” Thomas signs. “Why would you ask that?”
“Because you are not Wampanoag and they live differently from us,” I sign.
“There are differences between Chilmark and Aquinnah,” Thomas signs. “But the Wampanoag are my people now.”
“Why do you say Aquinnah instead of Gay Head?” I ask.
“For the same reason I say Noepe instead of Martha’s Vineyard. All Wampanoag use the names of our ancestors to name our land,” Thomas signs.
I remember Papa saying the Wampanoag don’t want their land divided into private parcels under the control of settlers, and that Chilmark was once a sachemship, a common land of the Wampanoag. I wonder what it was like then. Maybe they think that by using their ancestor’s names they can hold on to Wôpanâak, the Wampanoag language that has almost disappeared since we settled on the island.
“But they are not your ancestors.” I make the sign for a tree with long branches to indicate ancestors.
Thomas is scouring a table in the barn where a lamb was butchered. He rings blood from a sea sponge into a wooden bucket.
“They are my ancestors, Mary,” Thomas explains. “My place is with the Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe.”
“But you don’t have Indian blood.”
Thomas looks squarely at me while he dumps the water in a trough and puts down the bucket to sign. “The Wampanoag don’t see it the same way,” he explains. “It’s not just about blood. My wife, daughter, and I belong in the town of Aquinnah. We share the same beliefs and customs. We participate in ceremonies to honor the Great Being Moshup. We work hard to sustain our small community.”
That doesn’t make sense to me. Some Indians have joined our society. They are our neighbors, but we are still different and separate.
“What about Sally?” I ask. “She is half Indian and half black. Mama says that means she can’t lay claim to Wampanoag land.”
“My daughter will inherit her mother’s lands. My history is also her legacy. A few in Aquinnah disapprove of my marriage to Helen, but Sally belongs fully to the Wampanoag Nation.”
“But Mama is half French, which means I am a quarter French,” I sign to Thomas.
He smiles without answering and goes back to work. I think he knows he set my mind spinning.
Outside, Sally has entered Bayard’s paddock. She extends her hand to the agitated animal. He snorts and kicks up dust. Sally holds still. Bayard does not take the treat she offers. He rears up on his back legs. I hold my breath and count to twenty.
Sally calmly slips under the fence, throws the dried corncob in the pen, and watches him eat. I release the air trapped in my chest. How can she be so unafraid?
George was bold too. He could ride Bayard. And while he pitched hay or raked Bayard’s stall with Thomas, George would ask for accounts of his bondage, which he sometimes shared with me. It gave me nightmares to imagine children sold away from their parents, parted forever.
I want to be brave like