Born: 1845
Owner: Paul Saddler
ID: 637
Name: Stella
Height: 44.0
Sex / Age: Girl, 6
Mama says my feet ain’t little girls feet. Say I shouldn’t be akin like no boy. But I likes running and the way my toes feel wiggling through the mud. I likes the gooey wetness, even the way the red dirt taste too. And I watch the little dusty balls go up in the air and cover up the cotton I was too short to reach anyways. So’s I likes running through the fields to see how high I’s get. One time I’s made it wheres I touched the sun. It wasn’t even hot either. It didn’t feel like nothing but air. I told mama the sun was tricking us.
“And how it do that?”
“Cuz mama, I touched it and it ain’t burn my finger none. It feels hot but it ain’ts really.”
Mama laughed but that’s only cuz she ain’t touched it. And the next day all of us had sticky skin, peeling and sweaty like creepy crawlers running down our backs and foreheads. The grown people say something bout a heat wave, but yesterday mama laughs so’s I know’d it was jest the sun.
1864
Stella Mae, Age: 19
Words can’t explain my excitement. For the first time since befoe Mama died I was actually happy to finish the last of the chores. I think even Ole Marse Saddler noticed it. He commanded me to wipe that ugly smile offa my face. Said nobody’s ugly as me deserved to smile, but I didn’t care none. I’s jest couldn’t stop feelin good. I was ‘bout to leave this place.
– Stella
Stella never did leave the Saddler Plantation as she intended. Find out why in Book #1 of this short story and discover what’s really between slavery and freedom.
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