Dear God,

If you can hear me, if you can read me, then you will know that I am not as horrible a person as these words will transform me into. Do you remember me? Yes it’s Harriet, the innocent soul you brought into this world, the one you were so proud of for squinting towards the shocking sun and praising you simply for the color yellow. She who tasted the naïve pleasure of life and once had nothing but gratitude to offer up to your unreachable sky. As you know, things have changed, so no matter what you hear from me these days, please God, don’t forget the girl I used to be.

Why did you create my body? Offer me skin mimicking the night while cursing my womb the ability to bear fruit? You of all people know the hatred and shame that lies within this mixture. How could you do this to me? Was there reason for allowing my baby to live, letting it take its first breath, cursing his own body with the fetid, bitter air that has consumed the slave’s existence? Why did you not kill us both, allow me to escape the bloody bed of childbirth while carrying my tiny baby with me? Am I not deserving? Would I, desperately clutching my illegitimate child to my bosom, cause too much shame to your Kingdom? If so, you are as similar to the white man as he claims through his holy discourse come Sunday prayer.

As if guiding my babe into this world was not enough, as if forcing us both to endure did not suffice, you push my limits further, oh Gracious God. For no less than a year after my childbirth, you granted neither me nor my child good health. Are you aware at the depth of suffering you force upon us? You know, then, that his tormented limbs, racked unremittingly with pain, will later be the devices with which he is forced to degrade his dignity and toil over the white man’s field? You knew, bringing my sickly child into this misery of a world, that he would be a slave. Maybe God, I can comprehend that a useless Negro woman deserves no more than you have offered me. I shamed you, I have hated you, and there have been many a day, beneath the agonizing hiss of the whip, that I have forgotten you. But my baby, what has he done? He does not deserve the life, that with hasty hands, you shoveled onto his plate. If I will ever ask one thing of you as long as I continue this existence, dear God, it is to please take my child out of this place. He is not shameful, for the burden of how he was created lays heavy on my spirit alone. His heart is too innocent yet to hate. And his fragile mind too new to remember or forget you. If my crude prayer should reach far enough to embrace your ears, Lord, I beg you, please spare him.

Harriet