Letters From A Slave Girl by Mary E. Lyons

Author:Mary E. Lyons
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aladdin Paperbacks
Published: 1992-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Uncle Stephen

September, 1835

Dear Stephen,

It is hard to breathe in here, the air is so close and stale. Makes me feel like I been buried alive. I think of you out at sea, and remember what you tell Aunt Betty once when you come home from a trip: Bet, you say, I belong to Mister B and I work his ship. But when we sailing along, I am free as a bluebird!

This hiding place reminds me of a sailor’s bed. The space is only nine feet long and seven feet wide. The high part is three feet, then it slopes down to nothing. But I dont feel like any bluebird. More like a dressed chicken, ready for the spit.

Being sick with fever, I dont remember my first days here, and that is merciful. Gran and Mark helped me stand on a barrel to climb through the trapdoor. I sleep for hours and hours on a bed of blankets, unknowing that mice run over me.

Under my blankets are rough boards that make the ceiling of the room under me. Five years ago, Uncle Mark build a storeroom on the piazza for Gran’s barrels of flour and meal. While I was in the Snaky Swamp, he quick built a cupboard in the corner of the storeroom. Then he cut a hole through the top of the cupboard into my space. When not being used to pass messages or food, the trapdoor fits back into place. It is my door to the world.

The heat was bad at first. There is only thin pine shingles between me and the sun. And after the heat come the red mites. Hundreds of little tiny insects no bigger than the point of a hemming needle. They poke into my skin and burn like sparks from Gran’s oven. She give me cold tea compresses. After some weeks, the sting went away.

Today was a small victory. I hit my head on a gimlet that Mark forgot and left stuck in the wall. So I use the gimlet to drill three little holes, one above the other. Then I make holes between the holes, till I got a peephole one inch long and one inch broad. I been sitting by it for hours, taking in as much fresh air as I can.

Sometimes, Uncle Stephen, I think I might start to holler and never stop.

Harriet

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