Hello Wattpaders!

I am so stoked to share this story with you - as part of a branded partnership between Wattpad and Myseum.

This story is highlighting Cecelia Jane Reynolds, a young girl who escaped slavery at fifteen in a clandestine sprint across the Falls into The Ward (historical Toronto). This story was a deeply personal one for me to explore as my ancestors on my father's side were also enslaved peoples who escaped into Canada, and settled into Nova Scotia. As I've come to explore myself, my identity and Blackness, I am awed by these remarkable people who in a moment of sheer bravery, found the courage to risk it all for a chance at freedom.

I hope you enjoy this as much as I did writing it (and if you did, be sure to check out my second brand partnership feature for Myseum: WOMEN OF THE WARD about Irish Bootlegger, Annie Whelan). And while these stories are based on real people/events, parts therein may not be historically accurate.

Myseum is an ever-evolving collection of diverse stories, histories and lived experiences that shaped Toronto. They believe that museums are about meaningful exchanges that bring us together and create deep relationships with the city by strengthening their connection to Toronto and each other, one story at a time. You can find more information about Cecelia, along with some other remarkable women and so much more here!

***

My hands ache. A raw, vicious burn, and yet, they are strangely numb.

Free.

I am free.

Spent my entire life wondering what those words would taste like, and now they form awkwardly on my tongue, as if written in a language I can't understand but have longed to learn all my life.

Free.

I am free.

. . . Am I though? When every shifting shadow and passing light makes my skin leap from my bones with cold terror? I am not a woman; I am a child afraid of ghosts hidden in corners and lurking behind doors. I am scared of a past clawing forward like boney fingers from a muddy grave, to yank me back to shackles and misery.

The door opens and I jolt, startled by the abrupt entry.

"Sorry, child. It's just me." Lucie Blackburn shuffles back into the room, minding her right hip as she carries in a tray laden with cloths and a steaming bowl. "There now." She set the tray on the nightstand next to the narrow cot I am seated on. "Let's take a look at you, proper."

Twisting the key on the lamp, the flame burned brighter. Staving off shadows, and the vestiges of grief that clung to them like pipe smoke. In the bright light her stern face softens with rounded cheeks and full lips that offer a warm smile. Reaching for a cloth, she dips it into the steaming water and gently takes my hand in hers, examining it carefully before dabbing at the welts.

Pain flares through my palms, sharp as the strike of a cane, and I wince. She apologizes swiftly. "It's alright," I answer, toes wriggling in my tight shoes, two sizes too small.

"How old are you?"

"Fifteen."

"And what's your name?"

"Cecelia." It sounds strange coming off my tongue. I've said it a thousand times but now it rings differently in the air. I almost don't even recognize my voice.

"You know," Miss Lucie moves over to my second hand, wiping and stroking gently with the re-dampened cloth, "you don't have to keep that name. Not if you don't want to. I was Ruthie, before. But to help put that life behind me I opted to change it. You can, too, if you like."

Change it? The thought brings a burst of immediate panic. If I change it, how could they ever hope to find me again? Momma. My brother . . . I ran. I ran in the middle of the night, sneaking through the dark hotel to escape in a rowboat across the moonlit waters of Niagara Falls. I ran towards the beacon of freedom of the Canadian border knowing this was my chance—my only chance—and left them both behind.

She pauses in her tending of my wounds. Minor abrasions in my palms from swatting at branches or stumbling over rocky ground in the dark when I fled. "It'll get easy." Depositing the washcloth in the basin, she flicks droplets from her fingers before wiping her palms dry on her thighs. "I don't see any bits of wood or debris in the cuts. A bit of salve should help them heal right up."

"Thank you," I murmur, trying to sound more grateful than I actually feel, but misery has a chokehold on me, and I am prostrate in its grip. Every shallow breath burns and while part of me that hungers to live wants to fight and thrash my way out of this horrible dark mood, I am overwhelmed by it all the same.

"Child," she crooks a finger under my chin, guiding my eyes up to hers. So richly dark brown they're like damp, fertile earth. Freshly tilled and ready for planting. Like in Miss Fanny's garden.

I can almost smell the minerals and vegetation, feel the grit under my fingernails as I would often while away on a Sunday, plucking out weeds and tending the plants. I loved gardening. It was one of the few things I enjoyed and offered some measure of solace. It had been comforting—creating life from the earth. Tending it. Watching it grow under my careful and patient touch. Now I could have my own garden, if I wished.

Mine.

A strange, yet wonderous thought. Much like that garden, everything from this moment on would be carved from the world and be of my own making. Little seeds of opportunity to be planted and watered and sown and allowed to bloom into a glorious, new life. The first wicked finger of misery unfurls from around my stony heart before ruthlessly clamping back down in a tight fist.

"Child?" Ms. Lucie asks again, drawing me back to my skin and out of my thoughts. "Something is gnawing on you. What is it?"

My chin weighs like an anchor is fastened to it, but Miss Lucie's grip remains strong, refusing to let me drop a hair. It's shame gnawing on me. A fierce and awful shame.

How can I look to my own future when those I love most are trapped in my past? What kind of daughter leaves her family behind?

"Where you from?" Miss Lucie probes.

"Louisville."

"Hm. So was I." Dragging over a chair she sits down in front of me, and scrubs her hands over her thighs. "My husband and I escaped from there to Michigan. Got caught two years later and were sent off to jail. I managed to get out but as for my husband, well, that took a bit more effort. I had to leave him." The line of her jaw firms with tension. The ache of guilt.

But for the first time since I walked through her front door, guided by the young man who'd picked me up after I leapt out of the rowboat to bring me all the way into Toronto—the Ward, as he called it, I'm seeing Miss Lucie more clearly.

Her dark brown skin, dappled with moles, is wrinkled like old paper. Her dense, curly hair, white at the temple and twisted up into an elegant chignon. The broach at her throat glistens in the lamplight, fastened in the neckline of her blouse. She is elegant and looking at her, one could easily forget she'd once been enslaved.

Just like me.

Of course she would know my pain. My struggle. My shame.

"How long?" I whisper.

"Anything beyond a minute was too long," Miss Lucie answers, and swallows hard. "I can't tell you how much it tore at me to leave him behind. Every second apart, I thought I would go mad with guilt. Wondering what would happen to him and how could I live with myself if he never made it out? What kind of wife would that make me?"

A tear breaks free, and rolls hot down my cheek to splash on the back of my hand. It is quickly joined by two more before I wipe my face clean.

"Who'd you leave?" Miss Lucie asks.

"Momma." My voice breaks, like ice on a winter pond. "And my brother."

She nods again. "I can tell you this, were they in your place and had a chance to run, they'd have taken it, too. And they'd be sitting here worrying about you all the same. Feeling the same guilt. The same fear. All those thoughts firing between your ears would eat at them, too. But as a mother," she continues, angling her head with a smile, "as a mother, nothing would warm my heart more than knowing my baby made it out. Your momma wouldn't want you to cry for her. She'd want you to celebrate your freedom. To live your life."

She would. I know it's true. Momma, all twisted and bent from years of hard labor and beatings. She'd known a terrible road before she'd been brought to the Thruston household with my brother and I in tow. I was too young to remember much of life before. Or maybe I just didn't want to—my young mind blotting out as much as it could to spare me from the blight of awful memories.

It had been my responsibility to tend to the Thruston's only child, Fanny; to clean up her toys, and put away her clothes. Clear crumbs off her table and brush her hair. We both were children, near the same age, and yet she owned me. Like a puppy or a shoe. But in the way of children sometimes we'd laugh and tell jokes or make up silly stories. We'd play with her dolls—mostly when her Pa wasn't around, and sometimes Miss Fanny would sneak me a sweet or two from the candy dish. And if her Pa ever noticed the deficit, she always took the blame.

As we got older, she'd share her secrets with me like when Thomas Fisher kissed her beneath the willow tree last spring, or when Lawrence Holbrook asked for her to be his date to the town fair that fall.

It was strange to think in some odd way, I was going to miss her, too. This girl who I had grown up with as a strange sort of companion. Would it be easier if she'd been vicious and cruel? If I had suffered at her hands the way momma had at so many others before? She never told me the stories of what she'd endured. She didn't need to when it was etched into the skin of her back.

Long, brutal strips of scarred flesh that webbed across her spine like a sinisterly formed tree made of broken flesh and bone. Would Master Thruston beat her now that I was gone? Would her back bear new stripes, these ones bloody and raw, to atone for my actions?

Or worse— God in Heaven, if they sold her . . . cast to the wind like ashes, once scattered, never again to be reclaimed, she'd be lost to me forever.

"You've had quite the ordeal," Miss Lucie comments and once again I am jolted back into my body, this time with such a dizzying rush I am lightheaded by it.

"I'm sorry . . . I think I need to lie down."

Miss Lucie nods. "You should eat a bit first. I'll ask Benjamin to bring up a bowl of soup to warm your belly. I think the boy is smitten with you. Been wearing a track in the carpet downstairs." She winks. "Tomorrow, once you're rested, perhaps we can talk more."

"Thank you." I nod. Suddenly bone weary. "Miss Lucie," I call out before she closes the door to the small bedroom she's so graciously offered me upon arrival. "Can I ask you something?"

"Of course." She lingers on the threshold, tray in hand.

"Your husband . . . how did you get him out?"

Miss Lucie offers a triumphant smile. "I am a tiny woman. There ain't much on me. Couldn't throw a sack of potatoes more than a few feet." She cackles. "But though I may not be strong of body, I'll tell you this—I can write one hell of a letter."

My brow furrows, not quite sure I follow her meaning. "A letter?"

"Hm." She nods. "Words are powerful, child. They can stir people to anger and action, or evoke tears and a broken heart. String the right words together and you can topple an empire. Move heaven and earth. And that's exactly what I did."

"A letter . . ." I say again, this time a little more assuredly.

"Can you write?"

I nod. "And read."

Miss Lucie's brows wing up in surprise as well as admiration. "Well then, I'll bring you some paper and a pen. And let's see what you can make of them."

#

Miss Lucie was right. Words, when linked together by a deft hand, were strong enough to surmount mountains and rattle the stars. It took twenty years. Twenty long years. A million words etched in ink onto paper, as raw and tender as if poured from my very heart, and rendered with blood for ink. But I never stopped and with every letter, I waged a war of mercy that has brought me to this pinnacle moment.

Anxious, I stand on the train platform, flowers in hand and my husband, Benjamin, at my side. He holds my other hand, firm enough to keep me rooted in my body instead of floating away in a cloud of anxiety.

Momma. Will she know me when she sees me? Does she remember what I look like? Will she see me as the daughter who abandoned her all those years ago, or as the daughter who fought tirelessly for her to take the first sweet taste of freedom she's ever known?

The train chugs into the station in Rochester, gleaming black with billows of steam funneling from the grill. Doors open and people pour out onto the platform like fish flowing down a swollen stream. I bounce on my toes and crane my neck, seeking between the faces for any sign of her.

I know she's coming. I know she's supposed to be here and yet there's a part of me that is almost afraid to believe it's finally happening. That we will be reunited at long last.

Benjamin squeezes my hand, two swift pumps and before I can squeeze back, I see her.

My heart opens in my chest. This secret cavern of hope that had been buried deep for so long bursts forth, and spills right through me.

Momma. I don't register the first step, or the many others until my feet are flying, swift as they had the night I fled in the dark toward escape. Toward freedom.

Momma. I fling my arms around her, and hold fast and tight, as my aching hands had held onto the sides of the rowboat, terrified if I let go for a second I'd wake up abed in the hotel room to find it all a fever dream.

Momma. Her arms enfold me, warm and safe and familiar as her scent. I bury my nose in her dense, short hair and breathe deep.

Finally.

At long last.

I am free.