They pass her to me, silently, in the dead cloak of night. I look down at the bundle and bright blue eyes peep up at me, like stars shinning in tandem with the effervescent moon of her face, pale, smooth, and milky. As she stirs in my arms, a golden tuft of hair peeps out from under the ragged cloth swallowing her. I send one last questioning glance up at her parents, huddled together in the frigid cold. This winter has been tough. Their crops didn't fare. She is all they have. They nod at me grimly and I slip them the pouch, jingling with coins and crisp bills. The life drains from their eyes as they collect the pouch and shuffle away.
As the sun rises on the infant, I feel the weight of the great sin we've put against her. Though I shirk from the thought of condemning her, the money is green. I remind myself that there is no white, no black, no them, no us, just green. I try to hold onto this thought but it is disintegrated as the darker ones burst through. Just yesterday she was one of us. From now on, she is one of them. I've seen the great brutes working in the fields, incessantly scalded by the crack of the whip. I wonder if she too will feel its weight. I brush the thought away as I remind myself of the whiteness of her skin. Surely, they will station her in the house. This realization puts my mind out ease. Until, that is, I think of the prowling master that is sure to pounce down upon her fair beauty and glowing purity. It is then I realize that there is nowhere in this peculiar institution of ours where insults will not reach her. I think about the lifetime of torture, anguish, fear, and loss ahead of her. I think of how she should suffer so! I ask myself as a cold chill snakes down my spine, mustn't they?
I am shaken from my thoughts as I bump shoulders with a slave and his peculiar-looking master, whose arm is bound in a sling. We exchange our pardons and I hurry off to deliver the babe to her new overseers.
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