Alex Zhang

Once a Slave, Always a Slave

Once a Slave, Always a Slave By Alex Zhang My elderly torn hands planted a seed into the sterile field as the once brilliant sky darkened. The tobacco fields were jet black, sweet jasmine aromas lingered in the air, and my feet were bare, walking into the chilled soil. Crickets chirped as if it were the last time they were going to chirp, as if they were going to die; die in misery. I wondered if I were ever to see light. Looking up visualizes a barren field, frozen with snow, with miles of field standing there, in front of me, that didn’t move. As a small little rodent hurried its way across the dead vegetation as a hungry vulture swooped down from where the brilliant teal-blue sky hit the valley, catching its prey. I looked to the valleys as a blurry image of a ramshackle village entered my eyes which wondered what brilliance was like. A few out of focused figures of thin unnourished men walked out of their villages. The sun rose out of the vast valleys that housed the soothing Tagus Tajo river, following into the Atlantic Ocean. A rooster called out to the sunrise. I needed the sun’s great nourishment or I would perish in a few weeks. Beside the impoverished fields laid the cotton pickers’ field. The old field filled with creatures like me standing lonely in the burdensome grass. Every step I took, soil crumbled beneath me and with every blink I conducted, a sweatdrop would penetrate my beaten white tank top. I gasped in awe at a scent, what could it be? Due to our immense hunger for every scent we smelt, we rushed towards it closely followed by a crowd. Was it Saturday? Or had I lost track of time? Every Saturday, starving slaves rushed to the farmland, holding out their cracked bowls for food. My mind jumped back to the scent. Like a hounddog, I traced back to its source. In the distance, I saw a ranch-style house with a wide covered screened porch with a yard with cows and goats grazing in the fenced pasture. In the sky of the fields, flies and bees buzzed in rejoice to the freshly harvested sugar, as they circled above it. All of a sudden, a distinctive figure walked out of the cabin, it was the landowner; my owner. I had no rights on this land, I could get shot or wipped anytime he wanted. I had completely lost hope. The farmland wasn’t the only place the slaves worked at, there was also the deep dark shafts filled with fear. Full-time slaves down in the shaft wondered always if they were to seek light in their life. Life was miserable down there, usually you would never come back out if you went down there; it was either death (they were very usual from stone collapses) or you were just stuck there. Nowhere in this grim and appalling land holds a paradise for us, it was all just a desert waiting for us to be killed in the midst of the sun beaming down on our faces. As the sun rose, I started to worry about the scenarios where I would get whipped. Pessimistically, I dropped my head in chronic fear; fear that one day I would get killed in an instant. Many things could have killed me in an instant in my condition: Smallpox, a huge virus that wiped out millions of slaves with no hygiene, getting tortured to death, getting shot for misbehaving, or starving to death, as we were fed very little from food that was rationed a lot. I accepted defeat, or did defeat accept me.