River Sing Me Home

by Eleanor Shearer

Without roots, things die.

Many of us did die, at the hands of the white men or in the heat of the midday sun. The soil ran rich with our blood, and the roots fed on our bodies. It made the roots strong. Shallow, but strong.

obeah

There was nothing inevitable in the child’s survival, but

there was nothing impossible in it, either.

mercurial—it

obstinacies

This was the real power of slavery, the long shadow it could cast after its formal end—that even with all this distance between her and Providence, Rachel still lived in fear.

austere.