Bittersweet Boundaries

The first thing I ever stole was a key. The second thing I ever stole was a book.

I was born in the year of our lord 1814, on a plantation in the colony of New South Wales. My mother died giving birth to me, and my father never spoke of her again. There were other young black children there, but I don’t remember them at all. I don’t even know if they were still alive when I was old enough to remember anything.

We lived on the grounds of the great house, which lay at the heart of the farm like a cathedral. The great house had more rooms than any other building we saw, but it was always empty--all except for one room where we slept. It was a big, echoing place, with many dark corners and little light. We played there after our duties were finished: we ran through it like clockwork mice, hiding from our keeper when she came looking for us. She hated us, but we were only trying to keep ourselves warm.

Eva was the lady of the house--the madam--and she loved to have us whipped if we got too bold or made too much noise when she or her guests arrived at the port city nearby. Her husband mostly stayed in England, doing whatever rich men do; he sent his money home each week and Eva spent it as she pleased--shopping in Sydney or sending parcels of food to London so he wouldn’t have to eat Australian food. She didn't see him or her daughter very often, but they would arrive every few months--then Mr Eustace would go back to England soon after and Miss Lila would stay with Eva until another ship came in from Britain.

I liked Miss Lila more than I liked Eva. She wasn’t cruel like her mother; she always tried to talk to us slaves when she visited, and sometimes she brought sweets for us to give away among ourselves--though that always annoyed Eva, who would take them back from us later and say that we were supposed to eat them ourselves and not share them with anyone else! One day Miss Lila gave me a book for my birthday--a small blue book with gold lettering on its cover that I couldn’t read because it wasn’t written in English. But its pictures told me everything I needed to know: they showed me white people in clothes as bright as butterflies flying through blue skies filled with clouds that looked like some kind of food or drink in fancy glasses! They walked on roads paved with jewels like you might find inside an oyster shell! And they sailed on ships so big that you could sleep inside them and never wake up again!

The book must have meant more than just words for Miss Lila; it must have been something special for her as well as for me. But one day it disappeared from where I had left it behind a tree near the road where Mr Eustace's carriage would pass by on its way back to his ship at Sydney harbour. When I asked everyone around me if they knew what had happened to the little blue book with gold lettering on its cover, no one seemed to know what I meant or what had happened to it at all--not even Miss Lila herself. When she returned a few days later without visiting us again, I asked Eva if maybe she had taken it away from me instead when she found out that her daughter had given me something so precious instead of keeping it all for herself as usual? But Eva just laughed at me and said no such thing could have happened at all; she said that any books that belonged to her family were hers alone, not shared between her daughter and an ugly little black boy like myself! So then I asked Miss Lila again when next she visited us at the great house two weeks later: why did you give away your beautiful little blue book showing things you should never want to see? But this time Miss Lila said nothing at all -- just walked out through the door into the fields where we worked all day long cutting down trees and burning them down so that new ones could grow back again in their place -- as if she didn't hear my question at all.

A week after that visit from Miss Lila, Mr Eustace himself arrived with his sailing ship full of supplies and some new slaves who hadn't been there before -- not even me or my friends who'd been working there since we were babies! The new slaves looked like they'd been through hell itself during their journey over here; they had big scars covering their backs like angry snakes sleeping under their skin instead of real skin itself -- and they looked tired and weak like they wanted to die right there on our plantation without even getting a chance to live there first! As soon as Mr Eustace arrived back home, he went straight over to speak with his wife about how much money he'd made this time round across the sea -- though he agreed not to sell any more of us black people off until after