Welcome to the wonderful world of perpetual servitude. You won’t have gotten the orientation packet at the door, because you don’t read, not if you have any sense of self-preservation. It’s worth anybody’s life to teach you that, so don’t ask.
You will have been born into this.
However much your mother might have sheltered you from this—that is, if we let her keep you by her, and that might not have been a profitable decision, especially if she needed to go back to work in the fields after you were born—there will have been a moment when you realized what you were.
It may have happened as you were sleeping in the ashes with the rest of the children of your condition, in the charge of the dour old cook.
E. P. Beaumont 
Terrific six. Now I’ll scroll back and read some of the others. 🙂
wow, creepy and terrifying. Great voice/cadence here too!
Wow, this is really emotive and intriguing. Very nice six!
I wonder what emotions would be felt in that situation… knowing what you are… would they even have the intelligence to “know” and if did – this is their world and they would not know something more is possible – or to be dreamed of. The psychology of this fascinates
The godfather of this passage is Frederick Douglass, who talks about his own moment of realization of slave status. The detail about the slave children sleeping in the ashes of the hearth fire comes from his 1845 autobiography. It’s well worth reading his autobiographical works, which trace the social, moral, and political development of one of America’s most incisive thinkers.
thank you
There is so much weight in these words, it just pulls you down into despair.
Very interesting, that it pulls you down to despair, because I took as my literary model here the perky style of corporate trainings and self-help books.
Hmmmm. Leaves me with lots of questions. Good six!
Great six! Frightening, but intriguing.
All too true.
What a terrible realisation to come to. That no matter what talents, skills or abilities they posess they are consigned by virtue of their birth. Quite humbling really…
Excellent six. Compelling, distinctive voice.
That’s quite the realization. Great six!