Gathering Flowers

Ms. Jacobs,

Through your narrative, we can view one of many silenced stories, and see the intersection of slavery and womanhood for what it was--a series of broken promises, an existence of contradictions. Your grandmother faithfully built her family under the watchful eyes of a slave-holding family her whole life, with the hopes of earning her natural right to freedom. Yet all of the pretenses of familial bonds between her and the white family she devoted her life to amounted to all of her children being sold. You lovingly spoke of your mother as though you had to defend her humanity, justify your claim to have any emotional attachment to a slave woman, saying "[she] had been a slave merely in name, but in nature was noble and womanly" (14). Perhaps the truest metaphor for the falsified care that a "kind" slaveholder might have for a slave woman's mental, physical, and emotional well-being is seen in the image of a young, naive you--weaving through a field of flowers to decorate your mistress's house whilst your father lay buried not far away. When did you come to realize that nothing--from your grandmother's house to your own body--could truly belong to you, a slave girl? From a young age, you were exposed to the stark contrast between your girlhood and that of your mistress. How did it feel to toil under the shadow of a lustful slaveholder while still struggling under the burdens of slave life? As I read your words, I imagine you carefully arranging flowers for your master's celebration, when all you wanted to do was grieve.