Diary Entry from Ned

It has been 18 months since I ran away from that old Mrs. Bishop and I’ve been on the constant search for July and our child ever since. When July and I were together on the Bishop plantation, our love for each other lessoned the torturous existence of being a slave. Despite Mrs. Bishop’s cruel and ignorant behavior towards us, all sins and atrocities committed against us by these so-called men of God, dimmed from our mind when we would turn into bed each night holding each other. When Mr. Bishop was still alive, we didn’t even have the guarantee of seeing each other every night. Occasionally, when Mrs. Bishop was away at a church camp or at a ladies’ book club, he would come to July’s cabin to have his way with her. Every time I would see him that walk from the back porch toward poor July’s cabin, the blood in my veins would rush with fury and pure hatred yet the invisible chains on my hands and feet prevented me from carrying out the murderous thoughts that consumed my mind and heart. Thank the Lord took him away before my chains broke.

I don’t know what God these white people pray to every night but I know it can’t be the one and the same that is mentioned in the Holy Bible. No, this god ain’t no god of love and forgiveness. This god is about receiving pleasure through cruel and evil acts.  Our master’s treatment of us was especially worse whenever she would return from one of those hoopidy-ha church camps. Unfailingly, the pompous and self-righteous air about her would hang on her like a thick fog, always hovering around her and suffocating those whom she dealt with, which was mostly us. It was worse enough to be subjected to the work and treatment that they place on us slaves but to claim that our state in slavery is ordained and condoned by God, makes me sick and rubs salt in our deep wounds.

But their cruel treatment and their feigned piety comes nowhere close to what Mrs. Bishop did 18 months ago that drove me to run away from the godforsaken woman and her damned plantation. Unbeknownst to Mrs. Bishop, my dear July was pregnant with our first child. The effect of childbearing were particularly tough for her, often rendering her bed ridden and invalid. Mrs. Bishop, being the ignorant and uncompassionate bitch that she is, was hollering about July’s laziness and worthless. “What good does it do me to have a nigger in bed all day?” she would use to complain. Although July and I could have told Mrs. Bishop about our baby, we were so worried that she would sell our treasure that we decided to keep it a secret. I don’t know how practical our plan was but for a moment in our lives we had something that was our’s, just our’s. However, believing that July was incurable of her chronic “laziness,” Mrs. Bishop decided one day to lure my dear July to town and sell her away on slave auction day. When I noticed that the misses returned home alone, I inquired about July’s absence. “Oh, I sold that good for nothing wench to a slave trader in Georgia. I figured that the Southern air would be good for her health.”  That same night I left the plantation, not caring if I got caught by slave stealers or blood hounds and since then I’ve been roaming the south for my Daisy and for my child that I sometimes pray did and other times did not make it to this cruel world.