“Jockey had a good birthday plan, Cora thought. Jockey awoke on a surprise Sunday to announce his celebration and that was that. Sometimes it was in the midst of the spring rains, other times after harvest. He skipped some years or forgot or decided according to some personal accounting of grievance that the plantation was undeserving. No one minded his caprices. It was enough that he had survived every torment big and small white men had concocted and implemented. His eyes were clouded, his leg lame, his ruined hand permanently curled as if still clenched around a spade, but he was alive.
The white men left him alone now. Old man Randall said nothing about his birthdays, and neither did James when he took over. Connelly, the overseer, made himself scarce every Sunday, when he summoned whatever slave gal he’d made his wife that month. The white men were silent. As if they’d given up or decided that a small freedom was the worst punishment of all, presenting the bounty of true freedom into painful relief.
One day Jockey was bound to choose the correct day of his birth. If he lived long enough. If that was true, then if Cora picked a day for her birthday every now and then she might hit upon hers as well. In fact, today might be her birthday. What did you get for that, for knowing the day you were born into the white man’s world? It didn’t seem like the thing to remember. More like to forget.”
Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad, 2016