I stand at the back of the crowd, watching as them wheel in Stella, chained up, sitting in the back of a horse-drawn cart. Notice that she don’t look at people. Only look at things. The leaves. The clouds, the blue of the sky. The stones in the road. The fancy houses piled up one beside the other. The horses pulling the cart she riding in. And when they reach the town square, the soldiers drag her out the cart, make her walk up the steps of a wooden platform them build in the middle of it. Get her stand beside a hanging rope, but is like she don’t know that hanging rope is meant for her.

They turn her to face the crowd. Is a big crowd, all dressed in them Sunday best. Clothes I know she wish she have. She don’t look at them backra faces. Only search out the black. Search and search to see where her first born standing. Hoping him not going be there. Hoping I is. Finally she see me, standing off to the side. Resting against the tree trunk. Not knowing that the tree holding me up because without it, I going fall down in a heap. And when her eyes find me, I look everywhere else, except at her.

And I wonder if Stella, in her last moments, look pon me and see how the world shape me. See how I grow big. Grow strong. See how Massa face mixed up with her face. And what she see is a good face. At least she give me that. Is me she been the hardest on. Going all the way back to when I was a pickney. Carry the burden of the lie that I is not Massa son.

Why? Why she want to hurt Massa so much? Hurt him the way him hurt her, it make her hurt me even harder.

‘Love is one cruel taskmaster,’ Calla used to say.

Can’t change nothing now. But Stella’s last act was a good one. Make sure I have a chance at life, take all the blame for killing Massa. Make sure backra know the truth of it, that I didn’t do the deed. I knew, though. We all knew, that one day she going take her eye. Sacrifice Massa to the ancient Ancestor god. Make Massa pay for all the things him done, specially what him done to them daughter. And I come to understand, Massa death was the only way. The only way she could free Eliza from him web. Not have to watch as him strangle the life out of Eliza, like him strangle hers. Even if it mean she have to sacrifice herself in the doing of it.