Watch as him call Sammy into the room. Teach him how to make them marks. The word and number them. See how proud it make Stella, when she find out. But it only make her angry when I ask her how come Massa don’t teach me the marks the way him teach Sammy.

If I want answers as to how come things is the way them is, I know who I must ask. Like always, Calla don’t want to talk bout it at first. Then one day as I follow her up to her hut, she tell me a story.

‘Is the shadow,’ and I hear deep sorrow in her voice. ‘It protect Stella. It also give her a mean streak. Make her see the world in only one colour. If something bite her, no matter what, she must bite back.’

‘What the shadow have to do with it?’ Looking back at ours as them follow us up the hill.

‘Not that kind of shadow,’ Calla say. ‘The kind that live and grow inside us. From the moment we born and backra turn us into a slave. Right up till we die as one. And that shadow is like a tear. Have jagged cruel edges. And is not a little tear, is a tear that get bigger and bigger. Fill up with worry, with dread, with fear. And this shadow, it sit in the pit of our belly. Give us no rest. But,’ Calla say, banging her knuckles on me head so I going listen good, ‘is also what push us to survive. And Stella, well she have one big, deep shadow running through her. Clawing at her guts. Make her the biggest survivor of us all. Stella mother drown when she was a little pickney. No brother, no sister to look out for her. Nobody but old Calla here.’

‘What this have to do with Sammy and me?’ I ask, when we get to her hut and Calla give me a cool drink from her water barrel.

‘Every pickney a mother give birth to is special. But the first born is the one she fret over the most. You is the first thing Stella have that belong to her, belong to her alone. And she don’t want nobody else to have claim over you. Not even Massa.’

Nothing Calla say make any sense.

‘Never mind,’ she say. ‘You going understand when you have few more years on you.’

That may be true, but all I come to know is brother or not, Sammy is no friend of mine. One day, when I sneak into Massa room to have a look round, him suddenly show up.

‘What you doing in this room?’ him ask, as if him own the place. ‘Is not cleaning day.’

‘What you doing here?’ I ask back.

‘Massa send me to collect him book dem,’ sticking him nose up. ‘What you waiting for? Take dem!’