Dear Diary,
It has been 25 years since Maggie and I escaped from the McAfee plantation, but I still remember it like it was yesterday. I am 37 years old now, but unmarried. This is unusual for a woman my age, but I did it for Maggie, since I would not like her to feel left out if I had a husband. I talked to Maggie about this and she said that she did not mind because wanted me to be happy. I think she's just being polite.
Maggie is 32 years old now. She is not married, either. Maggie and I are very happy together, and currently we are living in Kansas, a free state as of the Kansas Nebraska Act, which allowed the people to decide whether or not slavery was allowed.
Tomorrow, Maggie and I are going across the border to make a delivery to a town there. Maggie will be coming with me because she wants to make some money of her own, and I promised that I would split the money I earned today.
A year ago, when we first moved here, I got a job as the assistant to a laundry woman on the other side of the village. She pays me good money for delivering the laundry, 5 cents per trip. If I deliver 6 bundles a day, it's 30 cents per day. That's the most (and just about the only) money I have ever earned for performing work.
Thankfully, I no longer have to write in secret, or hide my diary under the mattress. In fact, people here in the North are proud of me for being able to write and ask me to teach them. Unlike how I had Mistress, there are free blacks who did not have a person to teach them how.
I hope our delivery tomorrow goes well, and that I earn double the money!
See you in the morning,
Ruth
YOU ARE READING
Freedom At Last
NouvellesRuth finds herself away from everything familiar when she leaves her master's plantation. Little does she know that she has quite a journey ahead of her. This is set back in the 1800s. Created with @cakebaker666
