We entered the cabin. It was a single room, about 12 by 14 ft, with a dirt floor and rough plank walls. A fireplace occupied one wall, cold now in the mild evening. Three rough wooden pallets served as beds. Delilah shared the cabin with two other women who worked in the laundry. There was a crude table, two stools, a few cooking pots, and some clothing hanging from pegs on the wall.
This was where three human beings lived. The contrast between this and my bedroom in the mansion—with its four poster bed, imported furniture, soft carpets, and walls lined with bookshelves—was staggering.
Delilah stood uncertainly in the middle of the room. “Is something wrong, Master Thomas?”
Where to begin? How do you tell someone that your father is planning to use her as breeding stock?
“Delilah, I… I need to tell you something my father is planning. Something that involves you.”
Her expression became carefully neutral, the look enslaved people adopted when dealing with white people who might mean danger. “Yes, sir.”
I told her everything. About my sterility, about my father’s desperation for heirs, about his plan to breed her with a male slave from another plantation, about the legal minations that would turn her children into my adopted heirs.
As I spoke, I watched her face cycle through shock, horror, and then a kind of weary resignation. When I finished, she was quiet for a long moment.
Finally, she said, “So, the judge plans to use me like a broodmare?”
“Yes. And I wanted you to know. I wanted to warn you so you could… I don’t know. Prepare yourself. Resist if possible. Though I know that’s almost impossible given your situation.”
“Why?” She looked at me directly now, fear temporarily overcome by curiosity. “Why are you telling me this, Master Thomas? Why do you care what happens to me?”
It was a fair question. Why did I care? I’d lived my entire life benefiting from slavery without questioning it. I’d worn clothes made by enslaved people, eaten food prepared by enslaved people, lived in luxury built on enslaved labor. What made this different?
“Because what my father is planning is wrong. Not just morally wrong in some abstract sense, but practically, specifically wrong in a way I can’t ignore anymore.”
“You think slavery’s wrong.” There was skepticism in her voice.
“I think…” I struggled for words. “I think I’ve been reading too much lately. Books that make me question things I’ve always accepted. And when my father laid out his plan, when he talked about you like you were livestock to be bred for his purposes, something in me couldn’t accept it.”
“But you still own slaves. Your father still owns me.”
“Yes. And I don’t have an answer for that contradiction. I’m complicit in a system I’m starting to understand is evil. But I couldn’t let my father’s plan happen without at least warning you.”
Delilah sat down on one of the stools, suddenly looking exhausted. “Master Thomas, I appreciate the warning. Truly. But what am I supposed to do with this information? I can’t refuse. If the judge orders me bread, I’ll be bred. If I resist, I’ll be whipped until I comply or sold to someone worse or killed. There is no escape from this.”
“There might be.” The words were out before I’d fully thought them through.
She looked up. “What?”
“There might be a way out. I’ve been thinking about it all day. If you were to escape.”
“Escape to where? We’re in Mississippi. There are slave patrols everywhere. I have no papers, no money, no knowledge of the roads north. And I’m a 6-ft tall black woman. I’m not exactly inconspicuous. I’d be caught within a day and sold south—probably to a Louisiana sugar plantation where I’d be worked to death within a few years.”
“What if you had papers? What if you had money? What if you had someone to travel with who could deflect suspicion?”
She stared at me. “Master Thomas, what are you suggesting?”
“I’m suggesting…” I took a deep breath. “I’m suggesting that maybe we both leave together. We go north. I have money. My mother left me a trust fund that I can access. Not a fortune, but enough to get us started somewhere. I can forge travel passes in my father’s handwriting. We take a wagon and supplies and we just go.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I’m completely serious.”
“Master Thomas, if we’re caught, do you know what would happen? You’d be imprisoned for slave theft. I’d be killed. They don’t just whip runaway slaves in Mississippi. They make examples of them. Public hanging—sometimes worse.”
“I know.”
“But if we succeed—and if we somehow make it north, then what? You’d be throwing away everything. Your inheritance, your social position, your family name… you’d be poor. You’d be an outcast. And for what? To help one slave escape when your father owns 300?”
It was the fundamental question. And I didn’t have a good answer except the truth. “Because I can’t save 300 people. But maybe I can save one. Maybe I can stop one evil thing from happening. And maybe that’s better than doing nothing.”
“Why me? You don’t even know me.”
“Because you’re the one my father’s planning to hurt. Because I can’t stop him from continuing slavery, but I can try to stop him from breeding you like an animal. And because…” I hesitated. “…because I think maybe we both need to escape. You from slavery. Me from a life of complicity in a system I’m starting to realize I can’t morally accept.”
Delilah studied me with those intelligent eyes that had been trained to hide their intelligence. “You really mean this?”
“Yes.”
“You’d give up everything to help me escape?”
“Yes.”
“Even though you barely know me. Even though I’m just one slave among millions. Even though it might not make any real difference in the grand scheme.”
“Yes. Because it would make a difference to you. And right now that feels like the only thing I can actually control.”
She was quiet for a long time. Outside I could hear other enslaved people moving around, preparing evening meals, settling in for the night. The sun had fully set now and the cabin was lit only by faint moonlight through the window.
Finally, Delilah said, “If we do this—and I’m not saying yes yet, I’m just saying if—we’d need to be smart about it. We’d need to plan carefully. The judge has connections everywhere in Mississippi. He’d send people after us.”
“I know. And we’d need to move fast. If he’s planning to bring in a male slave to breed me with, that could happen any day. When would you want to leave?”
“Give me two days to think about it. To prepare what little I have to say goodbye to people in a way that doesn’t alert suspicions.” She stood up. “Master Thomas, I don’t fully understand why you’re doing this. Part of me thinks this is some kind of trap or cruel joke. But if you’re sincere—if you really mean to help me escape—then I’ll take that chance. Because you’re right. What your father’s planning is worse than the risk of running.”
“I’m sincere. I swear it.”
