“What happened, Mama?”

“Well, my great-great-grandma, she survived the journey, but her mama and her daddy, they died on that ship and they was thrown over into the ocean, and my great-great-grandmother, she was just six months old, just like Layla. She had nobody but that woman who gave her the necklace. She and the baby, they made it, they made it to New Orleans and they was sold as slaves. Her French name they gave her was Anne and she told everybody that the baby she was holdin’ was her baby. Some nice people took them in and as it turned out they was Christian folk and they’d buy slaves to protect them. They ran a home for abandoned girls in the early days of New Orleans.”

“Amazing,” I said.

“Yes, and this Anne she had a lot more to give than most ‘cause in her village in Africa she was the healin’ woman. Everybody from far and wide would come to her when they was sick and she’d pray and sing and dance out all the sickness in their body and their spirit.”

“What happened to her?” I asked.