Then him make a move to shove me out the door.

‘Me wait for you to go.’ I shove him back.

‘Me leave when me want to.’

‘Stay then! But me going tell Massa you always in him room. Looking at him things. That you up to no good.’

‘Why you want to do that?’

‘You think because Calla favour you mean you special? You is nothing. Just a lazy good-for-nothing boy! Is what Massa always saying.’

Then I hear the word them that cut me even deeper.

‘Me the only son Massa have. Me and only me. And,’ Sammy carry on, get all puffed up, ‘Massa tell me, one day him going send me to the Mother Country. Get proper ed-u-cay-shon. Then when me come back, is me going be the Massa. And you going be the slave.’

I look at Sammy like me seeing him for the first time. Him seven. Three years younger, but him world already different from mine. Him carving out a place for himself in this world. A place him have no plan to let me enter. Is then I see. Sammy no longer brother, no longer friend. Him a rival, and I must move careful, stay clear away from him dark intentions.

Deep in me heart, I know is not him fault. Sammy just follow along the way things shape up to be. Sometimes after Massa have him supper, him call Stella to him room. Watch her with him pale, caneleaf-colour eye them as she slip through the half-open side door. Go in, make herself comfortable, sipping on Old Massa William rum. Tell Massa all the coming and going in the slave village. Help him to see the slave them that do good. The slave them that do bad. Just like what she did for him father. Sometimes she even bring Sammy in there. Have him play at them feet on that frayed-up old India carpet. Make it look like them is one big happy family.

I sit in the dirt, watch from behind the wait-a-bit thorn hedge, looking at a life that was never meant for me.

The Long Road Home

Seasons start. Seasons finish. Plantation life go on as usual. Then one night, old cripple Jonnie up and dead. Is me that find him in the dawn light, sitting outside on the step of him hut. Hunched over, mouth open like him having a little sleep. I run up to the Great House, tell Stella and she send out word to Busha Davis and Massa. Soon the whole plantation know old cripple Jonnie gone over to the Ancestors. Then is plenty wailing and weeping from the other slave them.