The Emancipation of Robert Sadler by Robert Sadler, Marie Chapian

almost two. My new chore was to mind baby Anna.
    I sat crying on the woodbox in the kitchen the first morning I was ordered to live up at the Big House. Big Mac saw me, and he came striding over to me and slapped me hard across the cheek.
    â€œThere’ll be no more of that, hear?” I was stunned. I knew nothing else to do but cry. I couldn’t fight back; I couldn’t even talk. I could only hate and cry.
    It was almost noontime of the first day at the Big House when I got what you might call my official welcome. It came in the form of the dreaded overseer, Thrasher.
    I had heard many terrible things about him, but I had never seen him. When the overseers came for their meals, I had made it my business to be out of sight. This day, however, I was caught off guard. Besides, the Big House was now my prison, and I was not allowed to go to the slave quarter anymore. I could go only as far as the woodpile, by orders of the master.
    It was while I was coming from the woodpile with wood and sticks in my arms for the cookstoves in the kitchen that I met up with Thrasher. I was trying to hurry with my errand because I didn’t want another biscuit pan in the head from Mary Webb.
    Around the corner of the yard came Thrasher riding on his powerful brown and white horse, and he straightened in the saddle when he saw me. I stopped, bowed slightly, and tried to say “Good day, suh.”
    Thrasher’s voice boomed at me, “Niggerboy!”
    I whirled in my tracks as he removed the long black whip he carried on the horn of his saddle. He raised his arm high in the air and the whip came cracking down on my neck and shoulders. The blow brought me to my knees with wood and sticks falling to the ground.
    â€œYou call me Mr. Thrasher, suh, hear?”
    Mary Webb came to the kitchen door when she heard the sound of the whip. Thrasher turned his rage on her.
    â€œYou better learn this here niggerchile how to talk right or he goin to be a sorry niggerchile, hear?”
    â€œYessuh, Massah Thrasher, suh,” she said in a high, mocking voice.
    When I tried to get up, I wobbled on my feet and fell backwards in the dirt. Mary Webb watched me go down, wiped her nose on the back of her hand, and went back into the kitchen to finish her work.
    The pain burned like a hot fire on my neck and shoulder. I finally struggled to my feet and dragged myself to the kitchen door of the Big House. Mary Webb was standing at the cookstove. Her eyes flashed when she saw me. Then in a high, shrill voice, she called, “Roberrrrrt! Where’s that wood I tole you to git?”

6
    It was the winter of 1917. I was six years old and so was Thomas Beal. We discovered one another the very day that Thrasher had given me the lash in the yard.
    I stood by the doorway of the room I was to sleep in with the white children. The pain in my neck and shoulders was awful bad, and I was feeling nauseous; I wanted to lie down but I was afraid to in that room where the white children were.
    Thomas saw me standing in the door and he said, “What’s yor name, boy?”
    â€œRobert,” I answered. (It came out like “Wobber.”) I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to call him sir or not.
    â€œMy name is Thomas. Are you seven yet?”
    I couldn’t answer that. I didn’t know if seven came before or after six.
    â€œI’m gonna be seven and have a birthday,” Thomas told me proudly.
    He showed me the bed he slept in and the bed his brother, John, slept in. Anna’s crib was right near the little cot that had been set up for me. In addition to the little cot, there was a tiny dresser for me. I had nothing to put in it, of course. I stared at the room. There was a real ceiling, and the walls had blue flowered wallpaper on them. The bare wood floor was polished, and there were little rugs here and there. Pale blue curtains hung on the long, low windows, and the sun was shining in the room, making it seem warm