I walk to the head of the table, pull out Busha Annand chair, sit down. It don’t feel that much different to any other chair. If anything, it need to be fixed. One of the legs feel mighty wobbly. I look down to the end of the table, imagine the other chairs filled with family, with friends. I pick up one of the glasses, drink deep from the imaginary wine, break the imaginary bread.

The rebels call out again, so I push back the chair, pick up the carving knife off the table, put it in me belt. Is only then I realise where me really heading. To Busha bedroom. A room where things take place in the dead of night with slave women against them will. Where skin meet skin, where backra loins fill up with the power, the control him over the black flesh that lay naked, limp on the white sheet before him. The young slave girls laugh bout how much heaving and groaning backra do. The older women only bored by it. Them minds full up with more important things, like if them sick child going recover from the yaws, or if rain coming so there going be enough to eat. Whether they going make a good sale at the markets.

Sometimes, when backra feel a little guilty, him pay the women with a bolt of cloth or with extra coins, but most times him just do him business, order them out the room.

I look down on the bed and it take me back to Rock Pleasant. How Massa have him way with Stella, with Eliza. And before I know it, I hold up the carving knife, rake it cross the bedspread, cutting, ripping it to pieces. Dig deeper, cut through the mattress, plunder the inner workings, me rage growing with every rip, every tear, until the room get covered in bits of cloth and matting and the bed look like it been torched by a hurricane. But is not enough to cool the rage that been roaring inside me. I pick up anything I can get me hands on, throw them on the ground, smash them up. Open up the closet, rip the clothes to shreds. We supposed to collect all the things we think we can use when the fighting done. Sell them and use the money to help build back up the plantations we pull down. Plant the cane, cut it, take it to the mill. Reap the rewards backra been reaping. But not this time, not this room. This room going be left shattered. Just like me family.