The Slave
I noticed it was midnight on the dot. I let myself sleep again soon after, thinking that despite me sleeping the entire day prior, I was going to have a full nights rest.
I only slept for about two hours. I dreamed again:
I stay with a family of slave owners, and they have enslaved black people on a plantation. I’m, for some unknown reason, indebted to them, unable to leave yet having the privilege of being as I am— a white woman. I befriend the slaves, and try to bring them food and medicine as often as I can.
We almost get caught one time. I’m giving medicine to a wounded young man when someone sees our exchange from afar and sends dogs. They chase us, baying and gnashing. The thunder of paws on dead, hot grass. We cut ourselves on stray branches as we run from the forest, to the field, to the slaver’s house. I get on the far side of the house, in the shade, wiping my brow and panting. I then realize my friend is far behind me, still betwixt houses, exposed. I run for him and whistle loudly, taking the role of the slaver, and the dogs heel to me. We’re safe.
The next day, the same man gets hurt at work in a mine. It’s worth noting I never saw a slave in a field for this entire dream. The other slaves frantically carried him while his legs dragged. They were leading him past to the house. Blood and sweat and soot everywhere. I rushed over, helping him. I usually tried to use utmost caution when engaging with slaves, as I knew my presence could make things worse for them, should the slaver see. In this moment, caring about the slaver was no longer an option. There was no considering the slaver, nor the other slaves. The slaver could’ve killed us all. I just acted, and ran towards my friend. Taking him to the house meant death.
He was wailing, passing out yet agonizingly awake. Once I had him in my arms, I wiped his face with my raggedy dress and apologized for my presence, as it puts the group in danger, and told them to leave. One giant man insisted on helping and stayed behind to carry my friend. He leads us back into their underground home, which I had never been to.
I never knew where they slept, and was surprised to be lead underground, in the very shaft as the mine. It was a dirt room with cots and makeshift beds, a cob fireplace made from hay and clay, still crackling. We laid him down, tended to his wounds, and left him to rest.
I cracked jokes with the big man around the small fire, sitting on a bail of hay. Suddenly, a wooden trunk starts shaking. The man looks petrified, then stands up quickly, and urges me to leave, pulling my arm. I hesitate long enough to catch a glimpse of what comes out. He yells at me, intent on locking every door on the way out— a slave woman, bald and naked, covered in sweat, levitating. Somehow she was also me, and I knew her immediately, though I only saw a sliver of the back of her head and back as the man pulled me away and slammed the door.
The man, sweating and hysterically screaming crying “she’s not even human”, like it was his first time seeing her too. I ran away, back to the safety of the slaver’s house, yet didn’t go inside. I went to the same side of the house I ran to when my friend and I evaded the dogs.
I rocked back and forth, begging God to wake me up again. I couldn’t wake up again. I panicked, screamed, kicked the walls of the house, remembering it was just a dream. I went back to crouching, rocking, crying.
I remembered that I was once a “slave”, and battled this thought, kicking the house again. I screamed externally, internally saying “it’s insulting to say I was a slave when horrors like this exist! What about them?”
I only woke up after I accepted that one’s trauma doesn’t delude another’s. I also had to accept I wouldn’t have helped me, if I saw childhood-me before me today.