Excerpt from The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

'Frances!'

The fan stopped.

'I'm sorry, missus,' I said. 'I'm sorry.' I fished it out and swiped at it with a corner of my frock, fright rattling inside my head. She slapped me. My head like a fish on a line, her hand the hook. Legs flowing to the floor.


That whole island was sun-addled. Heat like biting ants. Light like blades.

I wiped and wiped and wiped. I used my hands, my skirt, shook that book like a mop-head, trying to coax it dry. I wanted to cry but dared not, not while Manso was watching. When I was small he might have given me one of his skewed winks as he passed by, or let me hold the salt on my palm, feel a cow lick, but not any more. House-niggers were the one thing they all hated worse than cane.

I sat by the stables, wiping. I could hear the horses and their whining breaths. Even after the others had gone in from the cane-piece and there was only the mockingbird's kee-kee-pip to tell me I wasn't alone, I was still there, wiping. My shadow in the dirt. She'd said I must sit there. 'Make sure you don't try to crawl into any shade. I'll be watching.'

Would she?

She and Phibbah would be in the receiving room, Phibbah setting out the rum. Who knew where on that estate her husband would be?

Early on, in the days when she still rode out, Miss-bella had Phibbah make up the basket with breadfruit and cold turkey and shaddocks and some of the mangoes they'd picked that morning, saying she would take them out for her husband's lunch. It was when she was trying to pour a pint of wine into a flask that Phibbah told her it wasn't a good idea, and when she wouldn't take no for an answer that Phibbah decided to go down with her. She felt sorry for the woman, with her corn-yellow hair and her wrong expectations. They found them under the cocoa-tree, the only place to get good shade that far from the house, Langton sitting like a cocked gun, back to his wife, facing the two girls he had out there. It was lucky he only had them dancing, Phibbah said. They moved easy as water, those two. Dark bodies, bright eyes. Nutmeg nipples waving like streamers. They cut their eyes at the new mistress, and went right on singing:

'Hipsaw! My deaa! You no do like a-me!
You no jig like a-me! You no twist like a-me!
Hipsaw! My deaa! You no shake like a-me!
You no wind like a-me! Go yondaa!'

They'd probably still be right there under that tree, Phibbah said, because for a long time it seemed Miss-bella couldn't move. Except that at last Langton heard the basket drop from her hand and finally turned around.

That had been the end of the riding out, the picnics, and the expectations. Though not the end of the dancing. Miss-bella just had to learn to do what everyone else did. Make sure to look the other way.

I glanced up towards the house, where Phibbah would be closing the shutters, lighting the candles with the taper, pulling the mosquito netting from its hook. Miss-bella settling herself on one of her silk stools, putting her feet up.

You will not leave that spot until my book is dry, she'd said. After a time, I gave up, stared down at the letters, small and black and sharp, like little claws. I tilted my head, as if I could hear what they were trying to tell me. They seemed trapped, each one shackled to the next one. Line after line. I snapped the book shut, sat back on my haunches. The old carthorse strained up along the sea road, cart loaded high with Indian-corn, the pickneys running beside, yelling and kicking the geese that jostled the wheels.

The back door opened and Miss-bella picked her way through the grass, puffs of dust kissing her feet. She crumpled her face down at me. 'Dry yet?'

I shook my head, twisted my lips. I must have been the very image of misery, sure that now I'd be cast out. No more little head-pats, no more Turkish sweets, no more muslin frock. By then I must have been sun-struck, for I pointed to the D, asked what it was. She leaned over me. Her breath was hot and dry as the air. 'That? Dee. Ee ... Eff. This spells Defoe.'

Excerpted from The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins. Copyright © 2019 by Sara Collins. Excerpted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.