Fonsiba

Fonsiba Beauchamp is the fifth child of Tomey’s Turl and Tennie Beauchamp, descended through her father from Old Carothers McCaslin and related to Ike McCaslin, whose mother (nee Sophonsiba Beauchamp) is the source of Fonsiba's first name. After Emancipation, when she is seventeen, she marries a Northern black, and moves with him to a farm in Arkansas, where Ike finally finds her some years later and arranges for her $1000 inheritance to be issued to her in monthly installments. Although Ike attempts to remove her from the squalor of the life in which he finds her, her priorities are evident in the two words she offers in return: "I'm free" (247).