In the days of toteminovidia, they called me “found,” and when, at 19 years old and three cases, they revealed my fragile body and rendered a verdict, they began to believe them. My name is Thomas Bowmont Callahan. I am 19 years old, and my body has always been a crime—a collection of bones and muscles that never formed properly. Born prematurely in 1840, two months premature, during one of the coldest winters Mississippi has ever seen, I was taken away. My mother, Sarah Bowmont Callahan, unexpectedly went into labor during dinner; my father is a thoughtful mother to visiting judges and planters. The midwife, who is her principal, a slave to the administrator, Mama Ruth, who is received among the white children at the front door, pointed at me and shook her head. “Judge Callahan,” he told my father, “this baby won’t survive the night. He’s too small. His breathing is shallow.” But my mother, delirious with fever and exhaustion, refused to accept that prognosis. “He’ll survive,” she whispered, cradling my tiny body to her chest. “I know he will. The sound of his heartbeat. It’s faint, but he’s fighting.” She was right. I survived that first night, the next, and the primary one. But survival isn’t the same as flourishing. At one age, I weighed a mere three kilograms. At six months, the others don’t share their own heads. One year, when other children are already solid, and some steps are taking them, I’m barely accessible. The doctors my father brought in from Nachez, Vixsburg, and even from as far away as New Orleans, all say the same thing: premature birth stunted my development in a way that will affect my entire life. My mother died when I was six, a result of the fever that swept through Mississippi in 1846. I remember her lying in bed, her skin stained by old parchment, her eyes yellow and unfocused. As punishment, she sent me to bed the day before her death. “Thomas,” she whispered, her meaning barely audible. “You’re subject to challenges throughout your life. People will ignore you. Death the next morning. And I won’t fully know its words until years later. My father, Judge William Callahan, was a man in every way I was. He stood six feet tall, had a broad ridge, and a voice that could silence an entire courtroom with a single word. He built his fortune from scratch. Starting as a poor Alabama lawyer, he married into the family’s modest Bowmont plantation, and through shrewd investments and strategic land acquisitions, he transformed those 800 acres into an 8,000-acre technology empire.

“I know.”

 

 

 

“So I had to think creatively – very creatively – about solutions that… push the boundaries of convention.”

 

 

 

Something in his tone worried me. “What do you mean?”

 

 

 

He stopped pacing and looked me straight in the eyes. “I give you back, Delilah.”

 

 

 

I looked at him, sure I’d heard wrong. “Sorry. What?”

 

 

 

“Delila, a farm worker. I give her to you as a companion. Your wife in practice.”

 

 

 

The words made no sense. “Father, you can’t suggest…”

 

 

 

“I’m not suggesting. I’m telling you what will happen.” His voice had hardened now. The tone he used in court, announcing the verdict. “No white woman will marry you. That’s an indisputable fact. But the Callahan line must continue. The plantation needs heirs, even if those heirs are unconventional.”

 

 

 

The full horror of his proposal struck me. “You want me to… with a slave girl? Father, then… even if I could, and the doctors say I can’t, that’s not how inheritance works. A child born to a slave girl wouldn’t be your heir. It would be your property.”

 

 

 

“Unless I free them. Unless I legally adopt them, unless I carefully draft a will, which as a judge and lawyer I am uniquely qualified to do.”

 

 

 

“This is madness.”

 

 

 

“It’s necessary.” He sat down again, leaning forward. “Thomas, listen to me. I’ve thought this through from every angle. You can’t have children. The doctors were unanimous on that. But children can be fathered in your name. Delilah is strong, healthy, and intelligent. I’ll arrange for her to be bred with a suitable male from another plantation. Strong bloodline, proven fertility, good physical specimens. The children she bears will be legally mine through documentation I’ll prepare. When I die, I will leave them to you, along with documents that will free them and establish them as your adopted heirs. They will inherit everything.”

 

 

 

“You’re talking about breeding people like cattle.”

 

 

 

“I’m talking about ensuring the continued existence of this family and this plantation. Is that unconventional? Yes. Is it legally complicated? Absolutely. But it is possible, and it solves our problem.”

 

 

 

“That’s not my problem.” I stood, my hands shaking more than usual. “Father, what you’re describing is wrong. You want to use a woman’s body without her consent to produce children whom you manipulate through legal fictions into becoming heirs. You treat people like reproductive material, like animals.”

 

 

 

“In the eyes of the law, they are animals.” His voice rose to match mine. “Thomas, I understand you’ve read those abolitionist books. Yes, I know about them. I’m not blind. You’ve filled your head with sentimental nonsense about the humanity of slaves, but the legal reality is that they are property. I own Delilah as much as I own this house or this chair. And I choose to use her in a way that will solve the problem.”

 

 

 

“What does Delilah think about this?”

 

“She’ll do what she’s told. She’s your property, Thomas. Her opinion is irrelevant.”

 

 

 

Something inside me snapped. All my life, I had submitted to my father’s authority, accepted his decisions, tried to compensate for being a disappointing son, but it was too much.

 

 

 

“NO.”

 

 

 

He spoke the word quietly but firmly. My father blinked. “What did you say?”

 

 

 

I said, “No.” I will not participate in this. If you wish to implement this obscene reproductive scheme, you will do so without my participation or cooperation.

 

 

 

“You ungrateful…” He stood, his face flushing. “Do you have any idea how much I’ve sacrificed for you? The opportunities I’ve lost because I had to focus on finding solutions for my disabled son. The social embarrassment of having a successor who can’t perform the one basic function that comes his way.”

 

 

 

“I didn’t ask to be born this way, and I didn’t ask for a son to end the family line.” He threw a glass, which shattered against the fireplace. “I’m trying to find a solution, and you’re throwing it back in my face, guided by some misguided moral superiority you gleaned from abolitionist propaganda.”

 

 

 

“This is not propaganda that people should not be bred like animals. Father, if you do not see the evil in what you propose…”