My name is Hester and I am a slave on a Gentry plantation. I wake up the moment the sun goes up to have a small breakfast with my family and the rest of the slaves on my plantation. I live in a small cabin like home on the edge of the plantation, very close to the fields we work on. I share the one room home with Mother, Father, my brothers Henry, Thomas, William, George and Jacob, Aunt Bertha, Uncle John and my cousins Solomon, Emanuel, Abraham and Linus. We have to spend a lot of time together, so we have become very close. Mother, Aunt Bertha, George, Jacob, Linus and I work in the Indigo field. Father, Uncle John and the rest of my brothers and cousins all work in the Tobacco fields. The plantation owner will often make my father or my uncle sleep in the tobacco barn to keep the tobacco safe at night.
Once, my father’s friend had to sleep in the tobacco barn, but a raccoon came in and ate some of the tobacco, our master was so mad that he sold my father’s friend the first chance he got. No one wanted to buy him at first, but then he was sold to a plantation in up North. I think that the reason he wasn’t bought right away is because no one wants an untrustworthy worker, Mother agrees with me.
At around noon, we take a break to eat lunch, our lunch is very small, but we have to like it because it’s all we’ve got the next six hours. During fancy events or parties, my mistress, Mrs.Moore, will have me and my oldest brothers, Henry and Thomas, serve food, she says it’s because my brothers are tall and well built and because I am the only girl who is just old enough to seem like an adult (without being one) and just tall enough to fit in her daughter, Phoebe’s, old clothes. When I serve at the parties, I learn many knew things and I get to see many good things. Phoebe is a very terrible singer, but every one tells her that she sings like an “angel”, I find this offensive to angels. I wonder why no one will tell her the truth. Once Phoebe asked me if I thought she was a good singer, I was going to tell her the truth, but then my brother told me not to, so I lied. Mother always told me that lying was a sin, so afterwards I prayed to God and asked him to forgive me and to fix Phoebe’s horrible singing. I guess God is angry with Phoebe or didn’t hear me, because she is still a horrible singer.
My mother is a 3rd generation American, but Father only came over when he was 10, he will often tell us stories of freedom and life in Angola, his home. Father tells us many stories, some of them he will tell to us in Portuguese, his first language, but one story he always tells us is the story of the day he was captured (he always tells it to us on Christmas), it goes something like this. It was a rainy day in my home, the fog was thick, you couldn’t see past where you hand reached. Despite the weather, my friends and I still wanted to go play games. We played for what felt like hours, when suddenly five large men who looked like mountains had surrounded us. “Execute! Execute!” someone shouted “Run!Run!”. No matter how fast we tried to run, the men had surrounded us completely. They chained us together and forced us to walk for miles. Everyone was complaining, “Meus pés doem!” “Minhas pernas doem!” “Eu não posso ir mais longe!” If the men heard you complaining, you would get your chains tightened. We walked until sunrise. There was a large ship, we were all loaded onto it and packed into the cargo hold. That was the day I discovered there wasn’t a good God, only the devil, changing and tampering with fate in the bowels of Hell, he has corrupted us all. At which point Mother (who is very sad at this point) come to bring us out to visit our grandparents, who live on the other side of the plantation. Mother believes that God brought Father over so he could make her and her family happy, Father will just smile and kiss her hand, he knows she is right.
Father denies Christianity and the existence of a God because he says that “If there were a God, and if he was a Christian, we would all be free” Mother counters by saying “Because God is good, we are free. Our physical being may be bound to our masters, but our souls are free” at which point, Father will simply shake his head or grunt and go back to work, he’s lost.
Everyday of my life since I was 6 has been the same routine, wake up, eat, work, eat, work, eat, work, sleep, repeat. On Sunday, we have no work at all because it is a holy day. My mother and the rest of my family will often go by a river or stream to pray because it is more peaceful. My father will spend the day playing cards or cleaning, he says that he refuses to worship, mush less pray to what is merely a seed that has been planted in the heads of mankind that only the foolish and the week tend to, the wise and strong will let that seed die. Mother disagrees by saying “By accepting that there is something larger than ourselves out there with little proof, we are making ourselves vulnerable, we are the strong and brave ones.” This debate has yet to come to a close.
Our master, Mr.Moore, is a foolish man and a drunkard. He spends his mornings sleeping, his afternoons trying to get people to like him, and his evenings drinking. Sometimes, he would skip sleeping and trying to get people to like him and just go straight to drinking.
Mr.Moore is an obnoxious drunk. Three years ago, he once became so drunk that he set our sugarcane field on fire after he became jealous of his brother-in-law’s three sons. We had to spend the entire night putting the fire out and cleaning out the ashes, we worked until the sun came up. Mr. Moore was greatly hungover the next day, he gave us all the day off to go into the market. Since no one was in the fields, our crops became ill and dry in the hot summer sun and we had to burn all the fields down anyway. That was the year that Richard died.
Richard was the son of Mr. and Mrs. Moore, he was eleven. When we were young, he and my brothers would secretly play together, he was kind and he listened to them. Richard impossible to hate, even mother thought he was kind. Richard was killed in a hunting accident, Mr.Moore shot him in the shoulder. It was to deep, to much blood. We heard it, we heard the gun, the screams. They made us keep working through it all. Richard was pronounced dead by the doctors an hour later.
Mr. Moore blames himself for killing Richard, and blames his wife for not being able to have another son. So, Mr.Moore takes it upon himself to make all of our live miserable. I know he is cruel and unkind, but I pity him.