Sold into Slavery: The Story of Adaku, A Black Slave Woman Part I

Sold into Slavery: The Story of Adaku,

A Black Slave Woman

Part 1

By Mary Devey

All rights reserved. Copyright © 2011 Mary Devey

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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The characters and events in this book are purely fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by author.

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States (1809-1865)

Contents

Preface

Call me Nellie

Caught!

Traitors to Africa

Life in a Baracoon

Killing

Nkem Plots

Goodbye Africa

Preface

When we read with pride the rich and deep history that is the United States and page through the wheels of time in books that yield the most profound greatness of mankind, we know that it is this country that the world bears its ears to. That it is on this soil that the world listens and hears the roots of freedom spelt out for all to follow and when we cry for truth, we follow with our hearts and spirits held high because we are Americans. We know the power of freedom, the right to exercise our civil liberties and we know that every step towards humanity is a step towards a greater realization of the laws of our country where freedom to pursue the right to civil liberties is but the right of all who live on this great land.

But how many of us have turned away from the pages of time that told on all those who have but suffered the seeds of terror that sowed this soil when slavery was a way of life and when the life of a man cast no value on his soul but on his skin? How many of us have wondered about the men and women who lived their lives with no wants, with no love and with life being just a commodity for trade? That all that comes down to being a slave is to work the fields and live like a rat with a chain that says you have nothing but pain in your heart to carry, that when you hold your child in your hands, it is but for another who tells if he lives or dies or be sold and that you are just traded because you are but black? How many lives have been lost so another could enjoy the fruit of labor so ill conceived that blood is shed in the most horrific way, when a man and a woman cannot share the love they seek and when a child is born only to be killed by a mother who contends that the pain of bearing is no more joy than the pain of being torn from the little one they seek?

We have yet to understand the use of human labor conceived in the most hateful way when human beings were forced to create a life that is far from equal and just. We have yet to understand the machinations that drove man to make slavery a way of life and we have yet to usher the world when race can no longer impede justice, when the works of a man is seen through as the works for which he offers in the betterment of human kind and none other.

The Story of Adaku as you would read hereon is based on my perceptions of what one Igbo woman would have yielded to, being stripped of her rights to the land she calls home. It is the land where the works of nature yields the most beautiful, where food can be abundance and where life is construed in the most harmonious and significant way. It is the land Adaku calls Africa. It is my first story on slavery and it is the first story I write that attempts to discover the mindset and emotions of this woman who travels through a passage that bears nothing but misery and a loss which institutes upon her mind and soul, many, many perceptions about what the white man's rule was. It is my hope that this book will provide better the workings on the mind of man as he was then, allowing of course incidences which far exceeds the obvious and it is my hope that a new world and order is what will greet us one day when human brotherhood will be achieved through love and understanding than through the call for arms and through the creed of color. Let the abominations of the past stay never to be resurrected again!

To that, I leave you with this beautiful poem written by Ms. Phillis Wheatley in her book of poems entitled Memoir and Poems: A native African and a Slave. Ms. Wheatley was the first African American poet whose brilliance was fostered through the loving arms of the Wheatley family. Even till today, Ms. Wheatley continues to astound much of the literary community across the shores with her inspiring collection of poems and of life as she had done in her days as a young woman:

On Being Brought from Africa to America

'T was mercy brought me from my pagan land,

Taught my benighted soul to understand

That there's a God - that there's a Saviour too;

Once I redemption neither sought nor knew

Some view our sable race with scornful eye -

'Their color is a diabolic dye'

Remember Christians, Negroes black as Cain

May be refined, and join the angelic train

Call Me Nellie

My name is Nellie. I was not given the name Nettie or Jellie or even the name Mary which my owner thought was good for me since I was christened before I took that monster ship for my journey across the transatlantic. As I remember that terrible day, it wasn't something I understood at all when this tall, white man in a black cloak threw water on my head and made it wet but Ms. Mary later explained to me it meant I had become a Christian now and I should be happy. It was now a new life I was coming into, she said but for me it was fear that day. Fear that came because I did not know what they wanted to do with us. My hands were tied to another woman, I was almost naked and with child, and I remember walking not so long go, on wooden planks to enter a big and horrible ship, so big that even the little ones we used to move around on the waters could not compare. What I saw in there was horror none would ever imagine.

I remember it frightened me so much that day when I first made my walk on its deck and it frightened me to see people fall into the waters and break their head hitting the sides of the ship in a terrifying way. Sometimes two or three men would suddenly bang their heads on the sides of this monster ship until you could hear the wretched sounds of their skulls crack and you know they had committed nso ani. Now, a terrible life would await them once their souls left their bodies. We cried so much that day seeing the men shout desperately and then fight to take their own lives. The face of the young woman choking herself with her hands and the terrible flay of the whip on her skin frightened the children. Young ones, they were who had yet to see life and what they saw was cruelty and the whips of a lash they never deserved for watching the horrified scenes. It was horror which turned to fear and over the weeks, we lived through the terror of the cruel subordination of our people by these men who knew nothing about us or our lives.

Ms. Mary was so wrong. So wrong because I was frightened and I was raped and I hated the men touching me in places only my husband did. They raped the women and the young girls and so, why should I have to be proud of these people bringing us on land that used my bodies in ways I never agreed to? I felt like spitting on this black woman when she said that! How ignorant she must be to speak so highly of her slave masters? What is it that has gotten into her black mind that she would forget so easily the fears of being captured against your own will? I will never forget what they did to me to get a free body for their trade and now, they want to change me into a slave woman to do their dirty work for them! I will not submit to this atrocity! I will not!

The name Nellie was not something I liked because my real name of Adaku meant so much to me. When I was born, I was the only female child to my parents and my father who was already happy with his eight sons from his other wives, told my mother that Adaku was a perfect name for me. I was the only child born to my mother. I was small and a little fairer than most of the other girls of my age, so my father said I was his little charm and he was proud of me. Now, they tell me I have to use my new name of Nellie because it was the name they wanted for me. Why could not they just call me Ada if their tongue does not permit them saying my name in full? Everyone in my village called me Ada and it was easier to say that than their white man's name.

When I came to this land, I had to learn this new name so much so don't misunderstand that I ever pronounced my new given name wrong, because Nellie was really the name they really gave me, spelled with two ls and an n in front. And they said I should always be proud because now I had a white name I could be remembered by. They even told me to write it many times on the sand with a stick so I would remember always and it was funny following the strokes Ms. Mary told me to do because they looked like lines to me but I was told every letter I wrote meant something and I should learn it. The white man's language would be my language now. There was no more need for my language Igbo which I had learned as a child. This was now my new life here on the soil of Maryland. I was in America now.

You may think maybe I never fought to keep my name but tell me, did I have a choice? When I told them I already had a name and it was Adaku, they laughed saying my new name was a better