‘Stella suffering from two sides of her nature,’ Calla tell me. ‘The bitter and the sweet. All that pain and suffering, working and saving she done, in the hope of freeing herself, turn into freeing James. She get what she been praying for, but not the way she want it. She beg Mistress Caroline to take Eliza. Get down on her knees, beg her to take her girl pickney, take dem both. But her pleading fall on deaf ears.’

‘We can only afford to take one child. A child not so overcome with the ways of slavery,’ Mistress Caroline say. ‘And it must be the male, the one who can carry forward the family name.’

The Reverend

Music is the first sign we getting close. Music calling out to us cross the sunlight, drawing us ever upwards along a dirt track towards its crown, the little white stone church high up on the hill. A hill that rise steeply with green on every side. The track is famous, many feet walk pon it, been there a long time. Calla tell me is the Maroon them that first discover this hilltop place. Even before the Baptist them build the church, long time before even the plantations. And if you follow that little dirt track, it going take you safely all the way up to the coast in the north. All the way up to Montego Bay. And when I look back on the morning I spend in that little white church, it going become like a sign to me. A sign that maybe me life can move in another direction, just like little James life did.

Soon after James got taken away, Stella started up with her churchgoing ways. She took Eliza with her and them went as much as them can, whenever Massa gave permission. Sammy refused to go. ‘The Lawd and him son Jesus done nothing for me. Why should me go listen to all that foolishness,’ and true to him word, him never went. I used to go, sometimes. Just to get away from the plantation.

Cropping season almost done when word reach us that the next church service going be a special one. A young pastor been invited to preach and he is one of us. A slave, coming up fast through the Baptist ranks. Rumour is that when him preach, it stir the heart so much, you think you gone to be with the Ancestors. I decide to go, to see if the rumour them is true.