Voices of Humanity

Chapter Three

    After the birth of my son, my mother continued to act distant, her demeanor when speaking to me bordering on icy. It only added to my resentment. She'd taken my baby without giving me the chance to say goodbye. She'd refused to show sympathy to my pain and now she was keeping me at arm's length.

        Some part of me knew it was childish to resent her for things she could not control. She'd warned me again and again not to grow attached to a baby that would never be mine and I willfully ignored that advice. But I was young. I was angry. I needed someone to take the brunt of my frustration and sadness. My mother was an easy target. Somehow I managed to forget the reality I should not have forgotten. To miss the urgency with which Mama now reminded me of her rules and secret recipes. Where she had hidden the few precious belongings she'd managed to acquire in her lifetime. She was preparing for the end and in my pettiness, I was oblivious.

    Even weeks after my boy was taken I remained angry. Her refusal to offer comfort had left me feeling as barren as my womb now was and I was intent on punishing her for it. I developed the habit of rising even earlier than she to go for a walk in the field before facing the kitchen where I still labored by her side every day, denying her my presence any more than circumstances dictated. One morning, however, when I arrived in the kitchen, my mother was not there.

    Not thinking too much of it, I donned my apron and went to Lexia who was already instructing the others on their day's tasks but when she saw me, the sibla woman stopped, staring at me strangely.

    "Alice," she said. "I'm not sure I expected you so early."

    "So early?" I replied with confusion. I was exactly on time. If anything I had wandered a bit more than I ought to have. "I feared I was late," I admitted. "I'm surprised my mother has not already arrived by now."

Lexia's expression grew somber. She really was a kind woman, never going out of her way to be needlessly cruel to any of us. In that moment I saw nothing but sympathy in her gaze.

    "Then, you don't know?" she asked.

    The question and the expression on her face was all it took. I knew where my mother was. In an instant I was running from the kitchen, tearing off my apron in the process and leaving it on the floor even as Lexia shouted for me to come back.

    By the time I reached to main gates, the butcher's truck was there as I knew it would be. Dulane hadn't even had the nerve to complete the task himself. He was shipping my mother off to the slaughterhouse with all of the other cull animals. His favorite. The woman who had given him more than 30 years of service and 13 of her offspring. In the end? She was nothing to him but a used up animal. Meat.

    I caught sight of her immediately, in line with a variety of older men and women though Mama's eyes were downcast, entirely resigned to her fate. In place of her clothes, she was dressed in a burlap shift, standard for those being shipped to death. Dulane would never waste precious clothing on his animal's comfort. These poor souls were already dead in his mind.

    Wrists and feet shackled, Mama stood perfectly still as a strange sibla man inspected her, lifting the cloth covering her form and taking down notes on his clipboard. He grabbed hold of her arm and with a black pen, wrote down numbers on her wrist. Her weight. That was all we amounted to in the end. The pounds of our flesh marked in indelible ink.

    My Master was nowhere in sight. Instead, he'd left Everett in charge of the human shipment, no doubt to stop any from daring to resist. None would dare step out of line for fear of his blows. I didn't care. I couldn't let my mother go without saying goodbye.

    "Mama!" I cried out to her in desperation, so angry at myself for not having seen the signs. For having allowed my resentment to get the better of me. But I hadn't understood my mother's coldness. I didn't realize she was trying to put distance between us to make our final separation less painful. All of that would take years to comprehend. In that moment I was a child, alone and afraid, watching the only woman who had ever cared for me being taken away.