Outside Macon Georgia
April of 1855
If she could, she would ride her horse a thousand miles on the currents of any chance breeze in any chance direction it took her, so long as it was far from here. And just now, her eyes closed and mesmerized by the thundering cadence of beating hooves, her whole world bordered only by the heavy rhythmic panting of her mount, the wind in her hair and the warmth of the sun on her cheeks, she experienced a thrill of emancipation that she, as a slave, seldom dared dream of. Her horse ran true and steady under her experienced command, in a tempo more natural to her than a ballroom waltz, harmonized freedom in motion. Even the shrill chatter of her half sisters and their friends did not interrupt Ellie’s reverie.
Ellie took satisfaction in knowing she was by far the superior horsewoman of the group, a fact she carefully masked from her siblings, especially her eldest half sister, Debra. It was best if a slave did not publicly outshine her betters. Ellie had learned the hard way doing so only earned her a reputation for being “uppity.”
Ellie opened her eyes to watch Miss Deb ride her great white horse, overweight, clumsy and far too large for her. She rode poorly, and, prone to falls, had badly injured a leg the year before. Ellie knew one reason she rode poorly was her frequent surreptitious pulls on the whiskey flask hidden in her saddle. But then, smirked Ellie, most of the girls did the same. Fox hunting expeditions, more often than not, were really excuses for the ladies to get away and drink. Ellie thought it a miracle they stayed in the saddle at all.
Miss Deb was tall and the least attractive of her half sisters, with a mannish figure and shoulder length straight brown hair framing a long narrow nose and horsy face. Vain, self-absorbed, intellectually lazy and careless, she was like most of the women of the planter aristocracy Ellie knew. Not that the men were different.
Despite her lack of beauty, she would soon marry the most eligible bachelor in town, Colonel Thomas Collins, and become Mrs. Debra Collins. The family fortune, made early on from a freight hauling business, had bought Miss Deb her position in Georgia society. Now the Smiths were planters, the customary route to social acceptance, and the family owned over 100 slaves of which Ellie was one, although one, she considered bitterly, with a special status. Her father was also Miss Deb’s father, which explained why, although the daughter of a slave, Ellie was as white as any of the ladies on the hunt.
Miss Deb pulled up her horse and the troupe followed her lead. Swaying slightly in the saddle, she called, “Ellie, we’ll have our picnic under the shade of those trees.” Pointing to a grove of nearby oaks she added, “Please make the arrangements.”
Although treated well by slave standards, Ellie reflected that she learned from her earliest childhood she was a source of shame in the family and certainly not the equal of her half sisters. Ellie looked at Miss Deb, remembering when that inequality first hit her square in the face as a child. Debra and a friend held a tea party under a table in Miss Deb’s bedroom. They played with a miniature china tea set hand painted with delicate blue flowers, a Christmas gift to Debra from her parents. “Take the teapot to the kitchen and ask the cook to fill it with milk,” Miss Deb had said to her, and she happily complied. When she returned, she placed the teapot on the floor under the table to rejoin the girls.
“You don’t do it like that,” Miss Deb ordered, sounding like her mother. “You have to stand up and pour us the tea. Then you take your own teacup and sit over there on the floor next to the bed.”
“No, I don’t want to,” Ellie had complained. “I want to sit with you and drink our tea together.”
“This is your job, Ellie,” Miss Deb said. “You bring tea to us and then you sit down in the kitchen with the slaves. We’ll pretend next to the bed is the kitchen.”
Confused and only beginning to grasp that while she would grow up playing with her half sisters, she would always be subject to their whims and demands. When the girls received gifts, she was forgotten. When her sisters received new dresses, Ellie wore their castoffs. When the children went to school, she stayed home to clean. Everyone but her ate at the big table in the dining room. She went to the kitchen to eat with the house slaves and their children.
She so wished her father truly loved her, even yearned for it, and yet hated him for what he had, in fact, made of her.
“Ellie, you goose, did you hear me?” called Miss Deb again. “We’ll set up our picnic under those yonder trees.”
Ellie shook herself from her reverie. “Yes, Miss Deb.”
“Well, hop to it, girl.”