Under the Tulip Tree

by Michelle Shocklee

Before I could keep it from happening, my bladder released itself on the parlor carpet.

I’m in tears, afraid to read on to find out what will happen to this tiny enslaved girl.

“I will teach you to never do such a dreadful thing again.” She lifted the poker and brought it down on my head before I could react.

Gasp! More tears.

Aunt Liza appeared at my side. “Tell Mistress Hall you sorry for all this trouble.” I stared up at her. I’d just been struck with a fireplace poker, yet she wanted me to apologize?

God…..

“Thirteen pages? What else could she possibly tell you that she hasn’t already?”

Only a man could ask this. Lol!

People who owned large parcels of land prior to the Civil War required vast numbers of laborers, the teacher said. Slaves had been brought over from Africa for that purpose.

Required. Laborers. God!

I stared at her. A slave trader could mean only one thing. “You were sold because you looked at a book?” “Yes’m.” She took a shaky breath and turned away.

Awwwwwgggggghhhhh!

By then I’d discovered I could get extra food and privileges using my body, and I became pregnant when I was fifteen.

That’s awful.

It was a girl child, but she was tiny and sickly and didn’t live long. I got pregnant three more times but lost ’em all. Master whipped me and said I was worthless if I couldn’t bear chillens.

God!!

It seemed unimaginable to me that this elderly woman seated in her cozy living room had once been a runaway slave, chased by dogs, and forced to watch her lover gunned down. What insanity had the world known to think such things were right?

What indeed?

don’t let anyone, not even your mother and father, keep you from doing what you know you’re called to do.”

Mrs. Patsy Hyde was a sweet elderly woman whose stories of her life as a slave were touching yet far different than those told to me by Frankie. Patsy spoke of her days as a child on the plantation with a fondness I wasn’t sure what to make of, and I struggled to keep to the list of questions provided by the FWP.

I wonder if Mrs. Patsy is telling her the whole story.

Maybe confidence in oneself had nothing to do with what other folks thought or did. Maybe it was deep down inside you, just waiting to be let loose like a spring of water gushing to the surface.

“Everything changed. Lucindia refused to come to the house after you were taken away. Mama wanted to sell her and your brother and sisters, but Papa refused. He said he’d never sell another slave again, especially a child. He and Mama argued all the time after that. Charlotte wasn’t the same either. She cried a lot and had nightmares.”

… Because you can’t buy and sell human beings and treat them harshly and not be affected greatly by it. You can’t treat people this way and your heart not be harmed. You cannot.

The Halls had taken everything away from me except my hatred. That I refused to relinquish.

Oh Frankie.

And despite the horrors I’d witnessed in the hospitals, a small flame flickered somewhere inside me at the thought of becoming one of the first black nurses. If I walked into the river and let it carry me to my death, I would allow fear and hatred to win.

Mingling as one of only two white people in a crowd was quite another. They belonged here. I didn’t.

That’s how it is for us all the time. The only one

He had far more experience with people from different walks of life than I did.

Girl he IS from a different walks of life. Wait till your parents find out he’s Jewish!

The result was over 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery as well as 500 black-and-white photographs, all archived in the Library of Congress today.