My Life of Slavery

My Life of Slavery

                  By: Grace Avery

  

    When Ma and I were out fetching water, we heard terrible news!!!  WHITE PEOPE ARE COMING TO KIDNAP US!!!!! They’re going to make us work as slaves.

               “It’s terrible Ma, they’re gonna come, take us away and possibly separate our family,” I cried.

“Well Alyssa, we can’t do anything about it. We don’t have equal rights; the only thing we can do is hope for the best.”  Ma said trying to comfort me.

   Ma and I hurried back to the house and spread the news. Pa, Jacob and Heather were all worried. They didn’t know what was going to happen and when they were gonna come.

    We heard guns crack, people yelling “Get out here ya fools! We’re here now.”

We knew we didn’t have any rights, so we did as we were told. Each time someone got on the boat they had shackles put on them. Shackles are chain things that go around your ankles. Even babies wore them. Also we had to go under the boat. There had to be a good 500 or 600 people down where I was. We were on the boat for a few months with out fresh air. It was known as the Middle Voyage. We made more and more stops to pick up more and more people. Many people died because of being down under the ship with no food or clean air.                                                          

 “Hey Ma, when are we gonna get off.  It’s crowded and there is barley any room. Also do you think we’re gonna get separated? And why are we even on here in the first place?”

 Ma replied, “I don’t know when we’re gonna get off. I hope we don’t get separated, and most all we’re going to be slaves. We’re gonna do farm work, house work and chores. We don’t have equal rights so we can’t stop this.”

 “But Ma-”

 “No buts. We can’t stop this no matter how hard we try.”

  The boat finally stopped. One by one people waddled like penguins because of those dang shackles. Each person was sold like property. Babies got taken away from their parents. But I was glad my family didn’t get separated.  When someone bought us we got to take the horrible, itchy shackles off finally!!!!!!!!

 We were taken all the way to a place no one knew existed. We didn’t get to learn how to write, how to read, nothing.  Me, Jacob, Pa and sometimes Ma worked in the fields. Ma mostly did house chores because she had to take care of the baby. Jacob and I used tools for digging up old plants and gardening. Pa worked on picking the food. Each day someone got whipped. Either it was for doing something wrong or calling his master sir or sometimes nothing. I don’t know why, I guess it’s just that way. There was this time when it was Jacob!  I bawled but Ma and Pa didn’t even shed a tear.

 I yelled, “How can you not cry during this? Do even care about Jacob or not!?”

  “No, we do care about him a lot but we learned to keep our feelings on the inside. So we are crying, you just can’t see it.” Ma answered calmly.

   “How do you do that?”

     “Practice, that’s all it takes.”

   Days passed. Backs grew achy, and fingers swelled. Every where I touched I was bruised. My clothes tore.  My whole entire life was ruined. This was not how I wanted it to be. I was only happy when I heard we only had to work 6 days a week, so we got 1 day off from the miserable work.