Bootleg: A Memoir Chapter 3

Chapter 3 — The Romantic.

I deliberated a great deal over how to tell this part of my story. I have decided to err on the side of caution and leave a discreet gap here in my history. This is not to protect myself, but to prevent causing undue pain to others, as I will presently explain.

In short, they sold me into slavery. The very next morning after Andrew and I were discovered, I was aboard the same slave ship I’d seen from the observation tower the night before. Now — things went on aboard that ship that I have chosen not to relate, so I will leave a gap where the account of my captivity should be. Suffice it to say that I do not understand men who force themselves upon women. I was spared that because of my noble blood. I realized quickly that my stepfather had done me the mercy of letting them think that I was a virgin, and therefore of inestimable value. The other slave girls resented me because I did not share their pain, and it is on their account that I choose not to give and dwell on my time aboard the slaver.

Instead I turn to our rescue, which came from an unlikely source — a pirate ship named Freedom’s Dawn. Almost every man on the crew was a former slave and they’d made it their mission in life to take any slave ships that crossed their path, kill the crew and free the prisoners. Usually they turned a tidy profit by selling the ship itself, which they would man with a skeleton crew until they could get tucked away in a safe little port — like Bootleg.

Delray was part of the crew assigned to sailing the slaver back to Bootleg. He was to become one of three lovers who were also good friends. I always fondly thought of him as the romantic one of the group, an unlearned pirate with the soul of a poet. Handsome, with brown hair, blue eyes, and a sturdy sailor’s build, he had a compassionate nature and a genius for understanding other people.

He found me lurking down in a corner of the cargo hold, out of sight of the pirates and the other slave girls who made me feel guilty with their haunted, resentful stares. He took me under his wing, saw that I was warm and well fed. Every evening he’d come down and keep me company, and it wasn’t long before he’d coaxed my entire story out of me.
“And your mother just let him sell you?” he asked in horror.

“She didn’t have much choice. She was a woman, you see.” I said bitterly. Quite naturally, the whole thing still rankled.

He repeated the name of my stepfather over to himself as if committing it to memory. “If I ever meet him Georgette, you can bet I’ll make him sorry.”

Delray was the son of a former slave, and very much against the slave trade. He’d grown up in Bootleg as the eldest of twelve children. Like most of the town, he was completely uneducated, but unlike many, he had a desire to learn. More for something to do than anything, I began tutoring him in reading and writing. He was elated at the idea, but we kept it quiet because his shipmates would never have let him hear the end of it.

Teaching Delray helped keep my mind off the question of how I was to make a living. I’d never worked in my life and was completely unfit for supporting myself.

“Well, you could try whoring,” was Delray’s frank suggestion.