I’ze a ready to go home, massa

I watch as Jemma walks through the patch of field behind all the other slaves, Big Joe, old Tom and Lucy. Head hanging, she’s always wishin’ that her tribe will come cross the ocean for her and massa’s three children.

I’ve got the life of Raleigh sittin’ here under this big ole’ shade tree, drinking Mint Juleps, all day, as the day is long. I haven’t done a lick of work worth talkin’ bout. My needlepoint is staring at me, not I, at it.

She hates master, my father no less, but loves her funny looking children. “They isn’t master’s color, or my color, but they his’n tho.”

She tells me all the things she shouldn’t. I figure she’s gotta tell someone bout’ all the years of pain.

In my world, the Negro feels no pain. The pain of the Negroes don’t matter. See, slaves ain’t allowed to feel pain, but to just, keep on working. All they do is work, work, work, work, work.

I kinda wish her tribe would come for her. Daddy and all my uncles and cousins would probably kill em all, Jonny on the spot, or make them slaves too. Nah, Jemma will die a slave.

Her children too.

I hear talk that uncle Theodore wants to take her oldest gal to his plantation. It’s way bigger than ours. I think he kind of fancies her, but I hush my mouth. I shouldn’t write of such things, even if it’s true.

Jemma doesn’t know and I can’t say nothing, but I will visit her every Sunday. Jemma can’t visit her, but I will tell her everything I know, till l get married and move with my husband’s family up to Boston next summer. What a pity.

I will miss this place, specially Jemma. We played together, while her mama was in the kitchen makin’ hot butter biscuits. When she got older, they put her in the field. She’s not as light skin as her mama.

She couldn’t work in the big house cause she is too dark. If only she coulda been a shade lighter. Things woulda been much better for her, working in the kitchen instead of the fields and such.

Her husband works in the field and I think she just wanta be near him, since the baby in her belly is probably his.

Daddy was sick last winter.

He’s better now and he keeps asking me about Jemma. Ever since mama died, he’s had his eyes fixed on her. There were plenty of good white women from across the state that wanted to marry my daddy, but he wouldn’t marry them.

Not even for show.

I used to hate Jemma because of it, but then the babies kept coming. I hated my father too. Yes, I’m a southern white woman, but I feel as powerless as a slave, sometimes.

Jemma is a kind hearted soul who wouldn’t hurt a flea, even after she’s had bad things done to her by bad people, mostly my family. I often wonder how she can still smile and how she lost her front tooth.

It would be too rude to ask. My goodness, sometimes I find myself treating her like a southerner instead of a slave. I don’t think slaves feel pain.

How could they. Their feelings have been whipped clean out of them, I reckon. One day I’m gonna write a book about the south .

I’ma write a book about Jemma, looking over the horizon for a ship carrying her tribe. “Freedoms a coming,” they say, there’s a big ship on the horizon, that will free our people.

Jemma is all the time talkin’ bout what it’s like in Africa. When we’re alone, she tells me all about it. She says her little grass hut was 100 times better than her cabin now.

There was no winter snow blowing in her hut, like the time they had to cut Big Joe’s toes off because they got too cold. There was no snow, no cold and one, what she calls, a rainy season. She always tells me, “cold is death”. Bless her little heart.

I have never seen a free Negro. I hear tell there are many in Boston. My father thinks the Negro is inferior, lazy and dirty. My fiancé says there are Negroes as smart as white men in the north. I told him don’t say that round my daddy.

The south is not a world of equals. It’s a world where, you have no choices.

Jemma has no choice bout nothing. She controls nothing, not even the milk in her tits. Her children can be snatched away at my father’s whim. Jemma is not human. At least not in my father’s eyes.

The black skin she lives in is a curse. It is cursed at, spit at, whipped and fed all manner of filth.

Even, hung from trees.

Amazingly, it sheds no tears. I saw a man’s foot get chopped clean off. Not one tear was shed, not one!

How could you do that to a dog, much less a slave. It happens too often round here. The spirits know the secrets, while listening to your lies.

I love my daddy, but these slaves belong to him. He can do whatever he wants with em’. I don’t care. It still makes me sad to see them hurt. Sometimes, it feels so evil.

There’s people up there in Boston who think the slaves oughta be free. That’s so silly. Who’d do all this work? My cousin is as lazy as a June bug sitting on a leaf. When his daddy dies, he will be the richest man in the county.

When you’re the richest man in the county, you get what you want, even Jemma’s little Mary. Harper killed Jemma’s first husband by buckbreaking him to hard. He never was right after.

Truth be told, nothings safe around here once they fix their eyes on you. It could be a sheep or a slave. Once the belt comes out the loop and the pants come down round’ the ankles, it’s going somewhere.

Feels like the southern white man has a sexual affinity for the negro. The attraction seems unnatural to me. My skin gets goosebumps at the thought. I believe each to his own kind.

Ain’t that what the good book says, anyways?

My daddy said a slave’s body is fulla sin. It glistens in the sun and makes you want to touch it. At least that’s what he told my mama, for she died.

I think that’s why she died. Just the thought killed her.