Next is the field niggers, headed by the Johnny-jumpers who be the right hand and left hand of the slave-drivers. After the house slaves come the artisan niggermens, like the blacksmith, the bricklayer, the tanner, the silversmith, niggers who skilled with they hands, followed by the stable boys, coachmen and carters. Other house slaves be cleaning and dusting and shining and manservanting and womanservanting and taking care of backra pickneys. Then you have the cooks who the backra trust the most, because the cook know that if the mistress get sick after a meal there goin’ be a whipping or a hanging before the cock even crow. Sometimes is the prime pretty niggers or the mulatto, quadroon or mustee that work there. After she, there be the house slaves who work the rooms and the grounds and the gardens. Position can make a negro girl forget herself and there is always the cowhide, the cat-o’-nine and the buckshot to remind her of her place. Homer careful not to cross the line, though. The head house nigger get charge with so much that she downright run the house, and everybody including the massa do what she say. That position so hoity-toity that in some house is a white woman who be that nigger. The number one prime nigger who would never get sell is the head of the house slaves. From highest to lowest, this be how things go.

In this place two thing matter more than most, how dark a nigger you be and where the white man choose to put you. “Truth be told, slaves in Jamaica have more ranking among themself than massa. A black baby wiggling in blood on the floor with skin darker than midnight but the greenest eyes anybody ever done seen.

Two black legs spread wide and mother mouth screaming.

It soon come to pass when red no different from white or blue or black or nothing. Not when blood spurt from the skin, on spring from the axe, the cat-o'-nine, the whip, the cane and the blackjack and every day in slave life is a day that colour red. Not when the midwife know that the mother shed too much blood, and she who don't reach fourteen birthday yet speak curse 'pon the chile and the papa, and then she drop down dead like old horse. Not when the baby wash in crimson and squealing like it just depart heaven to come to hell, another place of red. Not when blood wash the floor she lying on as she scream for that son of a bitch to come, the lone baby of 1785. “People think blood red, but blood don't got no colour.

The Book of Night Women by Marlon James