Your Life as Every Level of Slave

Level one captured. The raid comes at

dawn. You wake to screaming, to smoke,

to men with weapons speaking a language

you don't understand. Your father

fights. Your father dies. Your mother

runs with your sister, and you never see

either of them again. They chain you to

17 other people, a line of bodies

connected by iron and rope, and they

march you toward the coast. The walk

takes 3 weeks. You sleep on the ground

when they let you sleep. You eat what

they give you. Grain and water never

enough. You walk until your feet bleed.

Then keep walking because stopping isn't

an option. People die along the way. The

old man at the front of the line

collapses on the fifth day and doesn't

get up. A woman develops a fever that

burns through her body until she's gone.

A boy your age simply sits down one

morning and refuses to move. What they

do to him convinces everyone else to

keep moving. Their bodies are unchained

and left where they fall. The line keeps

moving. The line always keeps moving.

You learn quickly what happens to those

who resist. A man two positions ahead of

you tries to run on the fourth day. They

catch him within minutes. What they do

to him takes much longer. You watch

because they make everyone watch. You

don't try to run. The holding cells at

the coast are underground. Stone rooms

packed with bodies. The smell of waste

and fear so thick you can taste it. You

wait here for weeks. More captives

arrive daily. Some are taken away and

don't return. You don't know where they

go. You don't want to know. Level two,

the crossing. The ship is worse than

anything you imagined. They pack you

into the hold. Hundreds of people

chained in rows so tightly that you

can't lie down without lying on someone

else. The ceiling is so low you can't

stand. The darkness is absolute except

when they open the hatches to throw down

food or remove the dead. The voyage

takes 2 months. You measure time by

meals twice daily. A paste of rice and

water that keeps you alive but barely.

You measure time by deaths. The bodies

that stop moving that are unchained and

hauled up through the hatch that splash

into water you'll never see. You measure

time by the rocking of the ship. The

endless rhythm that becomes the only

constant in a world reduced to

suffering. People go mad. The man

chained next to you starts talking to

his dead wife. Somewhere in the third

week, he describes meals she used to

cook, arguments they used to have, the

children they raised together. He

doesn't stop until he dies in the sixth

week. Still mid-sentence, still speaking

to someone who exists only in his broken

mind. A woman across the hold screams

for 3 days straight until her voice

gives out. Then she keeps screaming

silently, her mouth open, her body

shaking, no sound emerging. Children cry

until they learn that crying changes

nothing. The ones who survive longest

are the ones who learn to go somewhere

else in their minds to separate from

bodies that have become prisons within a

prison. You find your own way to

survive. You count things. the number of

breaths between meals, the number of

bodies removed since you boarded, the

number of chains in the row ahead of

you. The counting gives your mind

something to do besides remember what

you've lost and imagine what's coming.

You survive. You don't know why you

survive when others don't. You're not

stronger or smarter or more determined.

You're not more worthy of life. You just

keep breathing when breathing is all you

can do. You just keep counting when the

numbers are all that's left. Level

three, field hand. The auction happens

on a wooden platform in a city whose

name you'll never learn. Men examine you

like livestock, checking your teeth,

squeezing your muscles, looking for

defects that might reduce your value.

You're sold for a price spoken in a

language you're beginning to understand.

To a man who owns land you'll never

leave. The plantation is sugar. The work

is cutting cane, which means swinging a

machete from sunrise to sunset, which

means blisters that become calluses that

become the only skin you remember. The

overseer carries a whip. He uses it

freely. You learn to work through pain

because stopping means more pain. Your

quarters are a wooden shack shared with

11 others. You sleep on the floor on

straw that's changed twice a year if

you're lucky. You eat what they give

you. cornmeal, sometimes pork. Never

enough to feel full, always enough to

keep you working. Sunday is rest, which

means time to tend the small gardens

where you grow vegetables. To supplement

rations that were calculated to maintain

bodies, not nourish them. You own

nothing. Technically, you can't.

Property can't own property, but you

accumulate small things anyway. A carved

wooden figure that reminds you of home.

a blanket traded from another

plantation. Knowledge and memories that

can't be confiscated because they live

inside your head. The things you carry

become who you are when everything else

has been stripped away. You are nothing.

You're a tool that happens to breathe.

Your name on the plantation isn't the

name your parents gave you. It's a new

name assigned, easier for owners to

pronounce. Some people forget their

original names over time. You repeat

yours every night silently. A prayer to

a self that existed before all this that

might exist again if the impossible

happens. The deaths continue here too.

Accidents in the fields. Beatings that

go too far. Diseases that spread through

quarters built for six and holding 12.

Suicides though they call it something

else. Every season new people arrive

from the ships. Every season familiar

faces disappear. You learn the rules.

Don't look masters in the eye. Don't

speak unless spoken to. Don't run. They

have dogs. And what happens when the

dogs catch you is worse than the work

you're running from. Don't hope. Hope is

the most dangerous thing of all. Level

four, skilled labor. After 3 years, they

move you to the sugar house. Processing

instead of cutting. It's still brutal.

the heat from the boiling vats, the

hours that stretch past midnight during

harvest. But it's skilled work, valuable

work. They can't replace you as easily

as they can replace a field hand. The

promotion isn't kindness. It's

economics. You've proven durable. You've

learned the process. Training someone

new costs time and money. Keeping you

alive costs less. Your world expands

slightly. You interact with more people.

Learn how the plantation operates.

Understand the systems that keep you

enslaved. Knowledge becomes a form of

power, even if it's power you can never

use. You know which overseers are cruel,

and which are merely indifferent. You

know which routes the patrols take,

which hours the masters sleep, which

weaknesses exist in walls that seem

impenetrable. You think about escape.

Everyone thinks about escape. At night,

in the quarters, people whisper about

it. the routes north, the signs to

follow, the people who might help along

the way. The information is precious and

dangerous. Knowing too much can get you

killed if someone decides to trade your

secrets for favors. The mathematics are

brutal. Most who run are caught, and

being caught means death if you're

lucky. Examples, if you're not. The dogs

can track a scent for miles. The patrols

know the land better than you do. The

reward posters spread faster than you

can travel. And even if you make it past

all that, the North is hundreds of miles

away through territory where anyone can

ask for your papers. Or free blacks get

kidnapped and sold back into slavery. Or

freedom is a destination that keeps

receding. But some make it. You've heard

whispers about people who reach the

north, who built lives there, who sent

word back through networks you barely

understand. You've heard about a

railroad that isn't a railroad, about

conductors who aren't conductors, about

stations that are houses with candles

and specific windows. You file the

information away and keep working.

Escape isn't a plan. It's a possibility

you nurture against the day when staying

becomes impossible.

Level five, house servant. 10 years in,

they move you to the main house. You're

trusted now as much as property can be

trusted. You serve meals, maintain

rooms, attend to the family's daily

needs. The work is easier physically.

The work is harder in every other way.

You see them as people now. The master

who signs documents that determine

whether families stay together or sold

apart. The mistress who considers

herself kind because she doesn't beat

servants personally. The children who

will grow up to own people like you, who

already treat you as furniture that can

follow instructions. You smile when

required. You perform gratitude for

small mercies. You become invisible in

rooms where they discuss business,

politics, the futures of people who have

no say in their own fates. You learn

more than they realize. You remember

everything. The other house servants are

your family now. You share information

in whispers, in glances, in the private

language of the enslaved. You protect

each other when you can. You mourn

together when you can't. Some house

servants identify with their masters.

They've been inside so long they've

forgotten the fields, forgotten the

ships. Forgotten that kindness from

owners is still ownership. You don't

judge them. Survival requires

adaptation. You've adapted too in ways

you don't always recognize. Level six,

driver. They make you a driver, which

means supervising field hands, which

means carrying the whip you once feared.

The position is impossible, too lenient,

and the master punishes you too harsh,

and your own people hate you. You walk a

line that doesn't exist, trying to

minimize suffering within a system

designed to maximize it. Some drivers

become monsters. The small power

corrupts them, or maybe it just reveals

what was always there. You try to stay

human. You warn people before

inspections.

You fail to notice small infractions.

You take the punishments meant for

others when you can absorb them without

breaking. The field hands don't trust

you. They can't. You carry the whip. You

enforce the rules. Whatever mercy you

show is mercy within a system of

absolute cruelty. You understand their

hatred because you would feel it too.

But you also have access now

information, movement, the small

freedoms that might become real freedom

if the moment ever arrives. Level seven,

the reckoning. The war comes like a

rumor first, then like distant thunder,

then like liberation you stopped

believing was possible. Union soldiers

march through the plantation. The master

flees. The overseers disappear. For the

first time in 32 years, no one is

telling you what to do. Freedom is not

what you imagined. There's no

celebration, no instant transformation.

There's just confusion and fear and the

slow realization that you don't know how

to be free. You've never made decisions

for yourself. You've never owned

anything. You've never been anywhere

without permission. Some people stay on

the plantation. There's nowhere else to

go. No skills that translate to the

outside world. No family waiting

elsewhere. Some people walk away and

never look back. Some people search for

family members sold away decades ago,

following trails that have long gone

cold. You walk north, not toward

anything specific, just away from

everything behind you. The roads are

full of people like you, formerly

enslaved, wandering, searching for

something they can't quite name. Some

are looking for family members sold away

years ago. Some are looking for any

place that isn't here. Some are just

walking because walking means they can.

The journey takes months. You work when

you can find work, harvesting,

construction, anything that pays enough

for food. You sleep where you can find

shelter. barns, churches, the homes of

people who offer rooms to travelers. You

eat when you can find food, which isn't

always. The hunger is familiar. The

freedom is not. You're robbed once by

men who see a black traveler with no

protection, and calculate the odds

correctly. They take the small amount of

money you'd saved, the shoes you'd

bought, the jacket that kept you warm at

night. You keep walking anyway,

barefoot, cold, because what else can

you do? There's no system to appeal to.

There's no authority that sees you as

fully human. There's just the road and

the destination and the stubborn refusal

to give up. The freedom is terrifying

and exhilarating and nothing like what

you dream during all those years in

chains. In dreams, freedom was simple.

No masters, no chains, no fear. In

reality, freedom is complicated. You're

free to starve. You're free to be

exploited by employers who know you have

no options. You're free to be arrested

for vagrancy if you stop moving. The

cage is gone, but the world that built

it remains. Level eight. After you

settle in a city that didn't exist in

your childhood, in a country that

considered you property until recently,

in a world that hasn't decided yet

whether you're fully human. The city has

other people like you. thousands of

them. Building communities, starting

businesses, creating lives from nothing

but determination in each other. You

work. The jobs available to people who

look like you are limited. Hard labor,

service, the positions nobody else

wants. The pay is low. The respect is

lower. But you're being paid, which

means you're choosing where the money

goes, which means you're building

something that's yours. You marry a

woman who survived her own crossing, her

own plantation, her own liberation. You

don't talk much about what happened

before. Some things don't need words

when both people already know. You build

a home together, brick by brick, a

foundation for the life you're never

supposed to have. You have children who

will never know the ships, the fields,

the weight of chains around their

ankles. They'll know other struggles.

The country won't solve its problems

overnight or over decades or maybe ever.

But they won't know your specific hell.

That's the gift you give them. That's

the point of everything. But you

remember. You remember everything. The

village before the raid. The crossing

that killed half the people chained

around you. The machete that became an

extension of your arm. The whip you

carried because carrying it was better

than receiving it. The small acts of

resistance that kept you human when the

system tried to make you something less.

Your grandchildren ask you about it

sometimes. You tell them some things and

hide others. They need to know what

happened. They don't need to carry all

of it. The scars don't fade. The

memories don't soften. You lived through

something that should have killed you a

hundred times over and you survived. And

now you're free. And freedom after

slavery is its own kind of complicated.

You watch the sun set over a city where

you can go anywhere you want. You can

walk down any street. You can enter any

establishment that will serve you. You

can speak your mind mostly to people who

will listen. Sometimes small freedoms

that would have seemed miraculous 40

years ago, that still seem miraculous on

days when you let yourself remember. The

country is changing slowly, imperfectly,

in ways that might take another century

to complete. You won't live to see the

end of it. Nobody will. Freedom isn't a

destination. It's a direction. Every

generation moves a little further along

the road. Fights the battles that need

fighting. Leaves the world slightly

better than they found it. You've done

your part. You survived when survival

was victory. You built when building was

rebellion. You loved when love was the

only resistance left. You still

sometimes can't believe it's real, but

it is. And you're still here to see