The Night Reporter ✔

-Recovered Diary Entry 2-

Indentured servitude is not as bad as it sounds. In my case, it was better than outright slavery.

Part of my contract entailed seven years of work for the English family. After, I was promised freedom. In exchange for scrubbing pots, peeling carrots, and wiping snotty noses, I was clothed, fed, given a spare cot in the servant’s barn, and trained to read and write English.

During my time in Virginia, I witnessed other foreigners, like me. That’s what the English called anyone without their language, their religion: a foreigner. All foreigners were workers, and there were two types: indentured servants, and free-wage workers. The free-wagers  were treated like animals, being beaten, cowed, and made to grovel. I would pass by auctions, human auctions, filled with pity. I also felt lucky to be me. Though the dirty Swedes had disdained my kind, the English at least counted me above the free-wagers. My Polish heritage had spared me the chains and whips.

My owner, like many in Virginia, owned a sprawling estate. His business had expanded, and after only a few years ashore in the New World, he was a very wealthy man. I was very glad when his wallet expanded, because it meant he could afford a wife. When his wife, Julia, showed up, he stopped visiting my cot at night. And so, I regained a part of myself after two years of being stolen from.

Julia gave me another gift: teaching me to read. I had already picked up easy words, but couldn’t get through a book. With her help, I devoured the stories in her library, my favorite among them New Atlantis and The Blazing World.

The idea of a better world enthralled me. The horrors I had seen a handful of years earlier were far away, buried by hope.

Hope smashed when, two years later, Julia died. My owner’s nightly visits began anew.

Hope obliterated when, six months before my contract was set to expire, my owner informed me how my contract had been extended. I owed him “more,” according to him. He smirked as he told me, and I imagined knifing him in the groin. In the afternoon, I slipped a butcher’s knife under my pillow, intent on doing just that.

The Mayan arrived by ship that night, and She was the real hope I’d been waiting for.