Possessed (22 page)

Chapter 30

The Capture

A few miles outside of New
Orleans July, 1830

I woke up to the sound of tracking dogs
and the harsh laughter of bounty hunters. Groggy, I was too slow to
fully understand what was about to happen.

A tall man with greasy brown hair
hovered over me with his tobacco stained mouth and dirty clothes I
knew exactly who he was. He was a slave trader and he knew that I
was a runaway.

“
Thought you could get away,
did you?” His squinty green eyes were filled with fire as he
clutched my arm.

Despite his pain, Jacques leapt up from
the ground and tried to shake him off of me, but the man put a gun
to his head.

“
It’s okay,” I said, as I
glanced at Jacques. His dark eyes were furious but they weren’t
defeated.

Arelia would have screamed what the
hell and kicked the guy, but Marie knew better.

“
I’ll find you,” said
Jacques. “I’ll never forget you. You saved me, m'ange de le lux.
J’taime.”

I wanted to smile and believe him, but
I knew better. I knew exactly where I was going and what was going
to happen to me. I saw it every day. Children separated from their
mothers. Husbands, wives and countless other family members ripped
away from one another. The few hours of joy he had given me were
enough to keep me going until one day, death, the only the only
freedom I could hope for, would come for me. I didn’t regret my
decision to stay there with Jacques. I had fulfilled one of my
greatest dreams, falling in love. I had fallen in love. Maybe it
was a simple dream but it was still my dream. It was something that
no one could take away from me. Only I could decide if I wanted to
stop loving someone or not. My dreams were the only things I
possessed.

“
Thank you for your
kindness,” I said. It was the only thing that I could think of
saying. “I’ll never forget you. I love you.”

“
Move. Your master’s already
sold you. Off to New Orleans you go.” The grimy trader pushed me
forward and I walked to my fate without resistance. Maybe I should
have resisted and fought but I knew where that got most people.
Cruel beatings and harsh punishments.

My heart sank, knowing that I would be
headed to an actual New Orleans slave pen. So far I had been lucky
enough to have avoided that fate but now everything was about to
change.

We walked in silence until we reached
the end of the swamp and got to a dusty country-side road.
Yesterday the world had been a beautiful place but now it was ugly
again and I knew that it was about to get uglier.

There were hundreds of other slaves
waiting on the dusty road. What a miserable sight they were, with
ripped clothing, mud, and sweat-stained faces. The brutal Louisiana
summer mercilessly shone down on them and soaked their skin with
harsh rays. Who knows how long they had been walking in the heat
without food or water. They stood in silence as they watched me
approach.

I’d never seen an actual countryside
slave coffle and the sight horrified even me. The men were chained
together two by two while the women and children were lucky enough
to have no chains around their wrists and ankles because they were
less likely to run away. Women with children had something to live
for and protect. I suppose when you have at least some reason to
live it helps you carry on and you’re less likely to take risks
that will put your life or the lives of those you love in
danger.

“
Move.” The man pushed me
into the line where I took my place without question. The more I
struggled the more it would give him reason to humiliate me and
that was the last thing I wanted.

“
Hello,” I said to the woman
next to me. She wasn’t much older than me but had an old aura about
her.

She quickly averted her startled eyes
from me and stared at the ground.

I felt a forceful hand take hold of my
neck and the rancid smell of stale tobacco filled my nose. “Were
you given permission to talk? Next time you say a word you’ll get a
lashing or two.”

I fought back tears of shame and stared
at my feet. It occurred to me that we weren’t actually allowed to
speak to one another. Exchanging information and building bonds
gave us power and anything that gave us power was strictly
forbidden. It made the traders nervous because it meant a
revolution was brewing.

Why more of us didn’t revolt, I wasn’t
sure. Judging by the faces around me I came to the conclusion that
trying to be brave while you’re fighting the hunger in your belly
and the pains in your heart was a very difficult thing to do. I
suppose it would have been easy for someone on the outside looking
in on us to question why we didn’t overtake the trader and his men.
In reality the situation was much more complicated. People on the
outside always assumed they had the best solution to everyone’s
problems.

We marched down the dusty road and past
the lush Louisiana country-side. We marched without daring to look
at one another or attempting to make eye contact with the trader.
My bare feet ached and bled and the hunger in my belly was too much
too take, but that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part of the
entire ordeal was the embarrassment I felt. People stopped on the
side of the road to leer at us like we were some type of circus
act. They had no shame bluntly staring.

I could hear their whispers and laughs
as they pointed at us. Some were mortified but others were simply
fascinated. I wanted to cry but that would only give them more
reason to stare so I bowed my head low and kept on walking. What
made me sad was that they didn’t see me as a human; they saw me as
a spectacle. It was okay to stare at me because to them I didn’t
have feelings or a story. I was simply another random piece of
property. I wasn’t human.

From the moment I was born I had been
trained to look at myself not as a human but as a product. At Deep
Oak, my height and weight as well as my health had been carefully
monitored. The slightest change in my appearance would
automatically place me in a different category and devalue my
worth. I remembered poor Annabelle, and how she had gone blind in
one eye. Her worth automatically decreased by one hundred dollars.
All my life I tried my best to keep my worth as high as possible.
The higher your worth, the better the chances that a rich buyer
would buy you and maybe you would be lucky enough to work in New
Orleans city rather than the countryside.

Aside from my mother, Jacques had been
the first to see me as an actual person, and I would never forget
him or stop loving him for that. Little did I know, the one person
I loved more than anything in the entire world was the one that was
about to cause me the greatest pain.

Chapter 31

In the Pen

New Orleans September,
1830

The heat, mixed with the smell of
death, manure, cattle, batter-fried fish and smoke was unbearable
but somehow I got used to it. The sounds of laughter, conversation,
and horse carts were somewhat comforting because they reminded me
that there was life on the outside of the walls. Even the spirits
abandoned me on the inside because I had nothing to offer them. I
was a powerful queen, but not powerful enough that the spirits
willingly spoke to me. I had to always make an offering before they
would consider opening their secret world to me.

My home for the past month or so had
been inside a slave pen with walls that were twenty feet high. I
guess the trader didn’t want anyone on the outside to catch a
glimpse of what went on in the inside. The pen was the size of a
medium-sized store lot and was filled with one hundred of us. It
was a mess of filth, sweat and desperation that consisted of brick
jails with bare pine floors, the trader’s office, and of course the
showroom. I shared my jail with a dozen other woman who seemed to
have it worse than I did.

Lotty had been separated from her
husband and thirteen year-old son, so she spent most nights howling
in pain. Madeline refused to speak or make eye contact so I assumed
that her previous owner was worse than mine. I was one of the lucky
ones.

When I slept I dreamt of seeing Jacques
again but I wasn’t really hopeful; yet I still couldn’t get what he
said out of my head. I couldn’t stop thinking about him. He
consumed my every thought which made living this life so much
easier. Sometimes living in a dream world was the only thing that
kept me going. Maybe one day he’d find me, but I knew the chances
of that were really small.

Tomorrow was inspection day. My body
was going to be poked and prodded and my market worth was going to
be evaluated. It was September and the heat was less oppressive
than it was during the summer months, so trading season was about
to start. I was told that trading season started in September and
lasted until May. After May it was simply too hot to trade and less
buyers willingly came into the city. It was also when traders went
to capture other slaves and brought them to the pens.

The next day, a hundred of us were
lined up and inspected by Dr. Charles, a tall red-haired man with a
heavy beard and light blue eyes. I was healthy and young, so my
market value immediately increased. I let out a silent prayer of
thanks that I didn’t have a disease. Everyone knew what happened to
slaves who had a disease- more than often they were sold off at
discounted prices to doctors who were free to do medical
experiments on them. I shuddered at the very thought of being
turned into a medical experiment.

Next we were inspected by the pen
owner, William Cotton, a round-headed man with really horrible
tobacco breath and squinty brown eyes.

All one hundred of us were assessed
according to our skin color, age, skills and gender. We were split
into categories. The tallest, healthiest and most muscular men were
always Category 1, because they were the ones capable of working
the hardest in the fields. The harder you were capable of working,
the more profit you were capable of bringing in for your master, so
you were worth splurging on. I was Category 4A. Category 4A was the
one in which healthy young woman who didn’t have any children
belonged in. Women were always placed in a lower category because
their bodies weren’t capable of toiling in the fields as long and
as hard as the men, meaning they weren’t able to bring in as much
profit.

In my world skin color, height and
gender were a badge. They were a badge of your worth as a human;
basically your fate was decided even before you were born. I
glanced around the room and looked at the faces around me; we
ranged in color from the lightest ivory to the darkest
ebony.

I looked down at my hands and realized
that I was somewhere in the middle to the lighter end of the scale
since my mother and father had been of mixed race. I could cook,
sew, and thanks to the spirits had nursing skills. I’d always been
told that I had a pretty face with my smooth skin, wide eyes and
pleasant smile, though I never thought that of myself. The first
man to ever tell me I was beautiful was Jacques, but I tried not to
think about that, even though it was impossible.

It was decided that five hundred and
fifty dollars was a fair price for me but my worth was open to
negotiation. I had nothing to say about that estimate. I suppose it
was a fair price. How does anyone really argue their own worth? In
my world you couldn’t. So I never did.

Since trading season was about to
start, William Cotton kept us on a steady diet of fattening butter
and bacon. The fatter we were the better because it gave buyers the
impression that we were happy and healthy. Any grey hairs the older
slaves had were dyed to give the illusion that they were younger
than their actual age, so that they could be sold at a higher
price. In my world illusions were always more important than the
truth. Nobody cared about the truth.

Chapter 32

Corner of Chartres and
Esplanade

New Orleans December, 1830-
Christmas Eve

The air reeked with the stench of burnt
animal skins, livestock, and gunpowder. Death carts, carriages and
finely dressed men and women walked the cobbled streets and
momentarily stared at us. It was Christmas time, which was my
favorite time of year. The air was cooler and the sound of
excitement was everywhere, along with new faces coming into the
city to buy clothes for the holiday season. The festive sound of
gunshots and firecrackers only added to the atmosphere and reminded
me that the city was alive and hopeful.

What gave me the most hope was how
diverse the city streets were. The population of free people of
color had grown considerable over the last few months and I somehow
hoped that maybe one day I could join them.

I imagined what it would be like
wearing a fancy ball gown and dancing at one of the many balls held
in the city with Jacques by my side. He would look so handsome
wearing a long waistcoat and top hat. However, my reality was far
from that of fancy balls.

We stood outside dressed in our finest
clothes. The men wore blue suits while the women wore blue dresses
made out of calico along with matching headscarves. We stood on an
elevated platform from the smallest to the tallest and were divided
by gender. Our faces had been greased with oil to give our skin the
illusion that it gleamed and that we were healthy. I hated having
grease slathered on my face because it prompted my skin to break
out in an odd rash and that made me feel shy.