Sometimes when the night falls heavily upon the sleeping house, I rise from my cracked straw pallet and slip down the stairs outside to the garden. There’s a stone bench surrounded by lush tangles of flowers in the center of the garden that glows in the moonlight. My toes sink into the thick grass as I walk towards the bench, and the night opens up around me to reveal my private sanctuary. When I’m out in the open, lying on the bench looking up at the sky, the constricting pressure on my chest releases and I can finally breathe.

I’ve been with my mistress since the day I turned four, the age my mother thought I was old enough to be trusted helping a lady dress and polishing her silver spoons. Sometimes at night, when I’m looking up at the heavens, I wonder if she ever regrets giving me up. I wonder how she could have looked at her sleeping child, whom she had borne and held close for countless days, and left her with a stranger in exchange for a few coins. I understand desperation now, but I will never be able to understand what she did. Even today, with a unplanned and unwanted life growing inside of me, I can’t imagine giving my baby away. There is a jolt in my stomach, the kick of a healthy child, and I smile, smoothing my palms over my rounded belly. When I feel my baby moving inside of me, it feels like God has given me a gift for living through that night. But the memories remain branded into my mind sparking bitter tears that blur the stars and mold the constellations into a single incomprehensible glow.

It happened on a frigid night just months ago, as the last blazing remains of fall faded away and a chill fell upon the land. I lay shivering under my worn blanket, feeling every knot on the wooden floor dig into my side through my thin pallet. Discomfort kept me awake and alert to the whispering voices on the other side of the wall that separated the slaves’ quarters from the master’s bedroom. The conversation took on a sharp tone, hissing whispers laced with tension and anger piercing the silent night. The mistress’s voice rose, laced with tears, and I heard her shout for the master to go. He murmured something low and I heard her clear her throat and reaffirm herself, telling him softly to follow the plan. The door to their room opened with a low creak and I heard the master stepping heavily across the floorboards and through the open doorway of my room. I curled my body up tightly under my blanket and squeezed my eyes shut, feigning sleep. He stopped beside each blanket, searching, and I could hear his heavy tread circling the room. He came closer and closer to my pallet and my stomach sank, filled with foreboding. Suddenly his hands were on me, pulling me up from my blanket with his palm covering my mouth roughly. I struggled in vain against his strong arms as he pulled me down the stairs and threw me to the ground in the sitting room. And then he was on top of me as I thrashed and screamed, and I heard the sickening slap of his hand against the tender skin of my face before pain rolled over me. I lay limp on the floor, my body burning from shame and discomfort, as he moved above me. When he was done with me he left me shivering on the cold stones staring at the ceiling, shocked into immobility and silence.

The next morning dawned cold and clear. I had tossed in a fitful half-sleep after crawling up the stairs back to the servants’ quarters hours after the master had left me. When the mistress pounded on the door, signaling for us to wake up, I sat up and could feel a tender swelling rising above my right eye. My body ached. I dragged myself up and stumbled outside though the garden, the flowers dulled by the harsh daylight. As I approached the outhouse, I could see the mistress out of the corner of my eye. I kept my head down and stretched my hand out to open the latch, but an icy hand latched on to my wrist and yanked me away, turning me roughly. We stood on the outskirts of the garden facing each other, and she looked at me with unchecked bitterness in her eyes. “Do not think I was uninvolved in what happened last night,” she hissed. “I knew what your master was doing - in fact, I put him up to it. I know how slaves talk, but I make myself clear -- you are not to shame me by telling what has come to pass, nor are you to think it puts you in a superior position than you were yesterday. Nothing has changed.”

Anger and shame boiled up in me, thick and dark, and impulsive words sprang to my lips. “Do you really know how slaves talk, Mistress? For if you did, you would have heard the tales the midwife tells and the rumors your chambermaid spreads -- that you are barren and cold, and that you will never bear the master a son. I may be a slave, but at least God has not turned His face from me in that way.”

The mistress stared in shock for a moment, and then her face contorted in rage. She slapped me hard and I stumbled backwards, reeling. She came towards me again, hand raised, and I ran. I ran past the stone bench and around the house onto the front drive. I ran on bare feet down the long dirt road away from town and didn’t stop until the sun was high in the sky. The house was nothing but a speck on the horizon. My feet were flecked with blood from the sharp pebbles of the road, and I limped off the road into the surrounding forest. Under the thick canopy, all was quiet. The air was cold but my chest heaved from running, my body warm from the exertion. A little ways from the road, a small stream bubbled up from under a mossy overhang. I sat on the bank and rested my head my hands, slowly lowering my throbbing feet into the frigid water. The cuts stung, and I lay back onto the soft moss and wept. I cried until my eyes were sore and heavy, and in the middle of the empty woods I slipped into a deep sleep.

I dreamed in bright colors and I dreamed of pain and love and hate. I dreamed of myself as a child with my mother holding me in her arms, but suddenly the vision shifted and I was looking down at a sleeping baby boy in my own arms. I heard a noise behind me and I turned, still rocking my child gently, to see a figure of white cloth and light appear, holding a wooden cradle. The figure’s face changed constantly, but I felt compelled to trust and listen all the same.

It stopped before me and stared at me inquisitively. “Where have you come from, and where are you going?”  

“I am running away from my mistress,” I replied.

The apparition looked upon me with pity in it shifting gaze. “Return to your mistress, and submit to her, for you carry a child inside you that belongs to her husband,” he said. “If you return, I will so greatly multiply your offspring that they cannot be counted for multitude. But for now, you have conceived and shall bear a son, and you shall call him Ishmael.” The figure’s voice faded, and it disappeared in a great burst of light that flashed behind my eyes.

The light remained, and I awoke with a start to see the last rays of the setting sun lancing through the trees into my eyes. I blinked rapidly to clear my vision, shivering in the frigid air, and turned to see a beautifully carved wooden cradle lying on the moss beside me. For a moment I stood there in awe. “Have I really seen God,” I wondered aloud, “and remained alive after seeing him?”. Staring up into the thick canopy that blocked out the heavens, I remembered his commands to me and wept. To return to the house of my master and relinquish my firstborn to the family of my mistress seemed a fate worse than isolation here in the hinterlands. But to stay away would be to defy the word of God. A harsh wind blew through the trees and I shuddered in the cold, tears freezing on my cheeks. A slave should not expect choices, and I was a slave in the wilderness just as I was a slave in the house of my master, bound by the demands of others. I picked up the cradle with icy hands and walked towards the road back home.

Since that day the mistress hasn’t known what to do with me. The master keeps his eyes down and pretends he doesn’t see me or his baby boy growing in my stomach. The seasons turned and I grew larger and harder, my stomach a beautiful rounded half-moon. I guess once the baby is born I’ll hold him in my arms like I did in my dream. I’ll hold him and rock him until the mistress takes him away from me and treats my child as her own. I wonder if I’ll be sent away. I wonder if he’ll ever know about me, and wonder the way I wonder about my mother.  As summer returned and the nights grew soft and gentle, the walls of the house began to press in on me as I slept at night. So now some nights, when the darkness is too heavy and the world is asleep, I slip out to the garden among the late summer flowers and hold myself close and dream.