Competition Twenty-Seven Highly Commended: Fires & Ashes by Lily Séjor

******What you lost in the fire, you’ll find in the ashes.

******Mama often said that… right until they sold her, yesterday. Those words applied extra ointment to the spirit whenever she mended bones and salved lacerated backs. They formed a prayer, a chant, a reminder that every obstacle shelters a kernel of hope. They whispered Stay. Live another day. Them boo hags in the big house will get they comeuppance some day.

******Then Massa needed money more than he needed Mama. That fire is scorching my soul, right now, like it was kindling. Ain’t no ashes to sift through; only the burn to deal with. What else was I supposed to do? A girl of thirteen with no mama is a gift to disgusting overseers everywhere.

******I had to run.

******Tonight, I doused the sugarcane field in tafia and set it ablaze. My goal was to smoke out the demons from the big house. When they stumbled out, wailing, I snuck in and out to do the same by the fireplace—where they knew they were not supposed to be storing firewood. Ayibobo!*

******Before disappearing for good, I admired my work. I inhaled the distress and pain I was inflicting on those ghouls. I watched them scatter like vermin, crying over losing everything—conflicted—not knowing whether to save the prestige built into their house or the wealth growing in their fields.

******Watching them scurry around nourished what was left of my soul with dignity and freedom—everything I had been denied from the day I first drew breath on this hell of a plantation.

******Today, what they are losing in the fire, I am finding in the ashes.

Lily Séjor is a writer from Guadeloupe who loves to share Caribbean culture and the cultures of the African diaspora (among other themes).

*Amen

Image by Николай Егошин from Pixabay