River Sing Me Home

by Eleanor Shearer

All her life, nothing had belonged to her, not even the children pushed out of her own body. With her world boxed in by Providence’s walls, and its perimeter patrolled by the overseer’s whip, it had seemed as if there was nothing the white men did not own. But now, here was the sea. Vast, defiant and unowned, for who, even white men, could claim it?

At the plantation, Rachel had always been made to feel small. With the sea spread out in front of her, she felt small in a different way—not small in herself but a small part of everything that surrounded her. Immersed in the infinite sea. There was freedom in this new kind of smallness, an exhilarating sense that she was in the world, and not just passing through it at a white man’s pace.

Without the sun, and with the stars remote and half-shrouded in wisps of cloud, the night had a chill to it, but Rachel did not mind. She liked the cool air, and the sound of water running over stones. Her mind felt sharp and clean. She went to sleep with her thoughts whittled down to a single point, and that point was love.