When Massa decided to sell Jane and Ellen, was a big surprise. Nobody think him going sell Sydney and Winston pickney. Didn’t have much to do with them girls anymore. Just used to peek at them through the shutters, when them cleaning in the Great House. When we cross paths, them stick them nose up at me, just like how Sammy teach them to do.

‘Pretty slave girls like them fetch a good price, and Massa need the money,’ Stella muttered to Melon, acting like is nothing.

But what a ruckus Sydney made, weeping and wailing when she found out she going lose her children. Cry even louder when them girls sitting up in the back of the cart, calling out to her as it rumbled away. I never see Sydney run so fast. Followed that cart till she couldn’t run no more. Fell down in a heap like she dead. Take a long time before Sydney face light up with a smile again.

As to the young cattle Massa didn’t sell, them got branded with a red-hot branding iron. CM, it say, and no animal and no slave escape Massa mark. Even me and Sammy. Happened after last crop-over. Stella got very upset when she heard me and Sammy screaming. Make no difference that Winston rub on a little palm oil before him press that hot iron into our skin. Stella took us back to the hut to calm us down, but I ran away. Ran up the hill, go visit Calla instead.

‘What a wicked man,’ she said, when she hugged me up. ‘How can Massa put him cruel mark pon him own children?’

Even with Calla potions, the burn, it hurt too much to make a sound. So I and the young cow them, we said nothing bout it at all.

Now that planting season come round and finish, everybody waiting for the cane to ripen. Waiting for the long days and nights ahead, when is time to cut the cane. Mean I get to spend longer and longer out in the pasture before somebody come fetch me to do any extra jobs.

At noontime, when the sun sit high in the sky, I rest under the breadfruit tree. The same tree Calla take me to when I was young, trying teach me how to survive in the world I come to be in. It seem so big and tall back then, now it seem smaller, but it still give off the best shade in the pasture. I lay there, resting, drifting in and out of sleep. Watching the sky. Watching, waiting for me friend to show up.

Rainy season.