Secrets of a Queen bee

Massa had me tend the bees. I understand them and they understand me. They be biting me so many times, that now they no longer do. I believe that the bee venom in now a part of my blood and they can smell and sense it. I read in secret about the likes of bees.

As a child of Mama Mynda and the white Massa's son, I am considered neither black nor white, I feel lost in between it all. Still, I feel very much Black deep down inside me.

I was playmate for the white daughter in the big house, we were the same age. They never realized, but I paid keen attention when she learned her lessons, me sitting quietly in the corner, listening and observing. I learned the letters and sat close as she struggled to form them. Then I went home with the scraps of paper and discarded ink containers, using sticks and anything available to practice in secret, hiding my work to preserve my life.

As the years passed, she went off to schooling somewhere and I tended the bees. My speaking and writing could rival any white person's. I learned to never speak White around them, and I bided my time.

I saw my people killed, beaten and inhumanely treated. I myself had felt the lashes upon my back, innocently earned by a jealous wife who could not tame her wayward man's desires. The Massa's son loved to dress me in fine clothing in the little house he had built for me, how she hated me. Did she not know that I loathed them just as much, that I had no choice in the matter. She knew, she just did not care, and it gave her great evil satisfaction to see me suffer.

I learned my writing. I used the nectar and honeycomb to make my skin glow despite the cruel treatment, he always made sure that my face be unscarred by the awful whip, she hated me even more for it. I had to remain lookable for my plan to work.

That February night in 1827, I organized my people in the dark. I opened the window and released a great swarm of bees inside the house while they slept. George, my friend, stuck one in the foreman and his cronies quarters as well.

That night we ran.

........................................................................................................

Real Poetic's February challenge