River Sing Me Home

by Eleanor Shearer

when the white men came, they tore children out of their mothers’ arms. And so, we learned to live without hope. For us, loss was the only thing that was certain.

Mothers turned their heads when a baby was born, refusing to meet its eyes.

The soil ran rich with our blood, and the roots fed on our bodies. It made the roots strong. Shallow, but strong.

A stone-faced set of white people waited for them—the master, on horseback, flanked by the overseer, with the master’s wife and three children standing on the steps of the house.

The nerve of them being stone faced like they didn't have the back up plan of 6 years an indentured servant on their back pocket

They all knew what was coming. Some of the slaves even smiled. Rachel was among those who didn’t. She was old enough to remember other times when there were whispers about the end of slavery.

Eventually, the master rode his horse through the crowd at a gallop, just to get them quiet again. Its hooves kicked one woman’s head in, and she died instantly. But she died free.

There was more, the master said. They were no longer slaves, but they were instead his apprentices. By law, they would work for him for six years. They could not leave.

"Apprentices" wow

In the forest, Rachel asked herself again: Was this freedom? A violent rupture, a body driven to flight, a mind paralyzed

People began to leave, most of them tacking west, the sun on their backs, returning to their plantations.

Wait why go back when theyre in the woods

Sunlight was a reminder of the endless march of one day into the next, the unstoppable passage of time to which Rachel had been enslaved all her life.

Rachel had never heard him talk of running. He just slipped away. For a whole day, the plantation felt different. The boundary walls looked weaker, and the cane no longer seemed to tower over their heads. Men and women stood up straighter. Something sparkled in their eyes. The overseer and the foremen saw it and they feared it, were even freer with the whip than usual. White and Black alike felt like the world could change—until Atlas was dragged

back at dusk, a seeping wound on his calf where a dog had seized him.

Atlas had his nose sliced off as punishment. The wound had grown infected, and he died with foul pus oozing from the gaping holes in his face.

She counted them one by one. Eleven children in all.

Eleven children snatched say from her? I couldn't even imagine

Since the massa leave, me try and keep this place for them folks that have no place to go.”

I wonder if its more to the story here. No matter how much trouble yt men could get in, I doubt they would just up and leave their plantation and slaves

Puckered skin patterned out the memory of whips, while the unmarked corners of backs and shoulders showed where freedom had cut short the process of searing slavery even deeper into their flesh.

obeah

A sense of reverence overcame her at being in the presence of something so ancient. The tree preexisted even her distant ancestors, and would remain long after her own death.

“The connection between all things. That we can’t just take; we must also give.” Mama B, too, touched the place on the tree where the bark had been peeled away. “All healing start from there.”

Rachel took the bark, and gave the child’s mother a small smile. The younger woman’s lip was trembling, but her eyes shone with hope—hope that Mama B had the cure, but also hope that Rachel could help. Stirred by this trust, Rachel knelt beside Mama B.

Everyday, I have to remind myself of the blessings we have with modern medicine but in the same breath, acknowledge natural medicine

Below them, sugarcane fields spread like a rash across the flat landscape. No inch of land had been spared—it had all been forced to submit and produce. The cane was the white masters’ dominion over the island made manifest.

As Rachel stared at the cane fields, imagining white men descending on horseback to drag her by a rope back to Providence, something else rose inside her. A kind of longing mixed in with her fear, tugging at her heart, pulling her back to her old plantation. Back to familiarity, and the soil that held the bodies of Samuel, Kitty and the stillborn child. There was certainty in their bones, unlike the vast unknown that lay ahead.

Many slaves, once free, probably felt like they needed to return to the plantation out of fear and familiarity

Horses trotted imperiously through the crowds, carrying soldiers in flaming-red coats.

British?

Hope looked down at her lap. “I don’t love what I do, you know,” she said. “Some of the other girls do. They say it makes them feel powerful to be so desirable that someone would pay to have you.”

A young woman walked through the door clutching a shopping basket. Strands of dark, wet hair clung to her forehead. Her eyes slid from the seamstress to Rachel. A mouth, with lips thinning from lack of use, quivered in shock.

Nothing is coincidental. She was meant to go into the shop

The shop was rather busy, he said in a level tone that suggested he was keen to get back to his customers. Perhaps Rachel could come back after closing time, and see her daughter then?

Dude, she escaped a plantation, snuck through town, searched for this daughter for days and just ducked a foreman from said plantation a few moments before. Nobody cares about your shop! Men are so insensitive, no matter the time period

His wife was kinder. She introduced herself as Elvira Armstrong and her husband as Joseph. She said it was nice to meet Rachel, and she seemed to mean it. She also suggested that Rachel and her daughter could sit in her sewing room at the back of the shop so as to be out of everyone’s way. “You must have so much to catch up on,” she said. “Although Eliza doesn’t speak,” said her husband. “Perhaps you already know that.”

Omg, I wish HE was a mute

Mrs. Armstrong frowned. “Eliza. That’s what we have always called her.” Mary Grace dropped her gaze to the floor. Rachel, reaching out, lifted her daughter’s chin with her hand. “Mary Grace,” said Rachel, loud enough that a knot of customers by the front door turned and stared. “Her name is Mary Grace.”

Black momma moment. HER NAME IS HER NAME. Talkkng bout that's what we called her

“It must be such a pleasure to be reunited with your daughter,” she said. “How long has it been?” “Twelve years,” Rachel murmured. She could feel every day of them. “My goodness.” Mrs. Armstrong’s face was mercurial—it jumped through warmth, curiosity and concern in an instant. Beside her, her husband’s face hardly moved at all. “What is your plan now?” said Mr. Armstrong.

I. Dont. Like. This. Man.

Even at this time of evening, Bridgetown was bustling with workers and lovers and drunken brawlers.

Bridgetown must operate like the Mason Dixon line in the states. Once on the other side, although not far from oppression, its free

When Elvira was five, she was taken from her mother and given to one of the house slaves. It was common for fair-skinned children to be taken out of the fields; she was not the first of the master’s sons’ indiscretions, nor would she be the last. She was given to a woman called Peggy, who came from a long line of house slaves. Peggy had recently lost a daughter to a fever, and perhaps the mistress felt that she would benefit from a replacement child. What, after all, was the difference between one young slave girl and another? If the plan had been for Peggy to adopt and nurture Elvira, it failed.

People really dont realize the intricate horrors caused by slavery. It wasnt just the hard labor and ppl being sold. It was also those mothers who were raped by the masters and other white men, bore the children resulting from that trauma, and then getting those children snatched away to be raised as someone else's child

Once, when Peggy caught Elvira sneaking out to visit her mother, she slapped her. “Your place is here now,” Peggy said. “Inside. That dark-skinned savage gon’ fill your head with trouble.”

The old master passed away, and his eldest son inherited the plantation. Much to his mother’s horror, he took a slave woman openly as his mistress. He began to place his own offspring in the positions of greatest authority in the house. One day, he summoned Elvira and a few of the other slaves. Waiting for him to speak, she realized she was surrounded by the sons and daughters of his brothers. “You are all to be sold,” he said curtly. “I cannot stand to have my brothers’ bastards in my house.”

THE SCANDAL But how you just gone up and sell your nieces and nephews like they aren't your kin, either

Mr. Armstrong was a hard worker, and he had saved as much money as he could, ever since he was a young man. He had dreams of opening his own shop, one day. Instead, he took all his savings to Elvira’s master and offered to purchase her freedom. Her master, after some haggling, accepted. She was free.

Joseph Armstrong is honorable in this instance, but still an ass

Mary Grace raised her head. Lips, cracked and bleeding, spoke. “Me have so much me want to forget.” — Rachel jolted awake. Mary Grace’s face was inches from hers, eyes open and brimming with the same pain as the dream-daughter’s. Rachel touched Mary Grace’s cheek. “Me understand,” she whispered. Some things were best left unsaid.

Being a parent and unable to protect your children from unspeakable horrors is a horror in and of itself. Then, to be the child experiencing the horror and knowing that nothing can be done, is suffering unlike no other

“It must be nice to be with your daughter again.” Rachel turned the word nice over in her mind. Here was a man who knew dozens of words for what to Rachel looked like identical shades of blue—who could fashion out of his vocabulary elaborate gowns trimmed with lace, sporting a sash made from some daring color of contrasting ribbon—and he asked her if it was nice.

Mrs. Armstrong tied off her thread and laid the dress down on her lap. “My husband and I have tried, but . . .” She turned her face upward, eyes closed, to where the light spilled into the workroom from a high window. “I don’t think I can.” Her skin gleamed, and it was hard to tell where the sunlight ended and she began. “On the plantation, one of the other women used to prepare herbs for those who . . .” She sighed. “They worked, but they’ve gone on working, all these years.”

“You gon’ look at this register?” “I can’t directly, but I know a man who has worked at the records office. He should be able to help.” “And you know,” Rachel said slowly, “that me gon’ want . . .” Mr. Armstrong smiled. It was not his shop-smile—smooth lips stretched over even teeth. It was a smile from the heart. “I know. You would want to leave. And you would take Mary Grace with you, I expect.” She nodded. “I will not stop you,” he said. “There are many people in this town in need of work. Elvira and I will manage.”

Is this him being a good person or him trying to get Rachel out of his hair

“Perhaps you are wondering how I came by my unusual name?” A little embarrassed, Rachel averted her gaze, but he did not seem displeased. “Well, I will tell you. On my old master’s plantation in Antigua, a woman was accused of witchcraft. They claimed she had been burying things in the corners of the field to cast a spell—the heart of a goat, the berries of a poisoned bush and the afterbirth of one of the slave women, still wet with blood. Rather than denying the accusation, she accepted it proudly. She told the master that she had cursed the land, and that nobody would be born on his plantation again. “The master’s wife was at that time with child. A week later, the baby was born too soon—misshapen and dead. For many years, the curse appeared true—the slave women were barren and the master’s wife bore him two more dead children. But one day, I was born. And so my master told my mother to name me Nobody. For it was true that Nobody was born on his plantation.”

“Listen,” she said. “Me understand how hard it is to leave behind what you know. But it is time.” She squeezed his hand tighter, and he looked back to her. “You can stop running now.” The smooth skin on his face quivered, holding back the tears that, aged ten, he had never had the chance to shed. Rachel could see his mother in his eyes—a faint outline, a distant memory with her features blurred—and she knew that he could see a piece of his mother in her, too. Together, these echoes of his mother were enough. They released him from the decades-old command.

Rachel was thinking of a way to say delicately that she and her daughter did not need his money or labor or protection, only his company, when Mary Grace brushed a hand against Nobody’s wrist. A tiny movement, before she moved away to look out the window, but Nobody’s hands, which had not been still since they left the ship, stopped clasping and twisting. He finally stepped through the door.

I still can't deal with his name being nobody

“Well, me sorry we can’t help.” He glanced at the sea. “We looking for someone, too.” “Not looking,” said his father sharply. “Waiting.” The young man closed his eyes for a moment, a pained expression flashing across his face. Rachel tried to guess his age. Probably around the same as Thomas Augustus, wherever he was now. “Who you waiting for?” she asked. “Me mother,” said the young man. “We come from St. Lucia about a year ago, because we hear they pay a little more here. Me mother say she gon’ join us when she can.” He gave Rachel a sad smile. “Her ship come in today?” Rachel asked. The old man said, “Yes,” as the young man said, “We don’t know.” The young man cast his eyes downward, embarrassed. “We hope she gon’ come today,” he said. “We always come in the mornings and wait, just in case.”

Awwww

But then he said, “Idle hands only turn to trouble, after all,” and she accepted there was a less charitable reading of his words. In his eyes, the Negro was a brute kept in check only by the wiles of white men like himself, who found ways to control them.

White people really wanted to believe black people were analogous to animals or children

But Mr. Beaumont was a waspish and unpleasant master—hard to please and quick to cast a critical eye over anything that crossed his path. He left Rachel no room for error, so once again, her life was forced to conform to the exacting demands of another master.

Her ability to read the face of a white man, honed over years of enslavement, had failed her. Instinct had told her to look down, but now Mr. Beaumont had commanded her otherwise. “Where have you been?” he pressed. “Have you been out all night?” “No, sir. Me—me just go for a walk.” “Well, if I catch you out walking again . . .” His lip curled as he trailed off, as though he found everything about this encounter distasteful. He wielded his power bluntly—nothing about his tone made the threat less clear—but he seemed to take no pleasure in it.

“Where was it you came from?” Rachel opened her mouth, but was too slow to answer. “I said—where?” “Barbados, sir.” He nodded slowly. “You think I don’t know people in Barbados? You think I couldn’t write to them if I wanted to? Have them send me the runaway notices? You think I couldn’t collect your reward?” All Rachel could do was stare mutely back at him. But of course, she had known. Of course, she had always known she would not be safe. How could she have forgotten

In the time they had been in Georgetown, her face had grown more expressive. Underused muscles twitched beneath her skin, stretching her mouth into wider smiles than Rachel had ever seen before, so wide they made the features spread across her face seem in perfect proportion.

Mary Grace is coming out of her shell and becoming more resilient, while Rachel is starting to fold back into her old self

Rachel was aware of the way she was standing, shoulders hunched over to make herself smaller than she was. She let herself stand upright. This small act of unbending herself was not enough to undo the weeks in Georgetown, and years in Barbados, spent being subdued by labor. But it injected her with fresh hope.

“Nobody says you’re looking for a son, came to Demerara around that time?” If Captain Grafton felt any awkwardness, to be confronted with a mother whose son he was complicit in tearing away and casting across the sea, he didn’t show it. His muddy-eyed stare was unblinking. “Can’t say I remember anyone of your resemblance. Don’t usually pay much attention to the cargo, unless there’s trouble.

As soon as she spoke her son’s name, Rachel saw pure, abject grief seeping into every pore of Orion’s face. The lines on his forehead deepened as his eyes screwed shut to hold back tears. His mouth trembled. His hands tightened their grip around his spade until his knuckles looked ready to split his skin. That was when Rachel knew. She knew that Micah was not just somewhere else. He was nowhere. He was gone.