Matzi and the Zebra By Mary Lynn S Chapter 1 A Treasure is Found “Momma, I’m tired,” muttered Matzi through her clenched teeth. “I’m tired of working for that awful Mr. Craig. My back hurts, and I want some water.” Momma stopped abruptly and swung around to face her daughter. “I am too. And you know what? So is everybody else here. They all wanna leave, they all wanna be free and live on their own and have normal, payin’ jobs. But what’re we gonna do about it, huh? What are we gonna do?” Matzi’s cheeks burned with a mix of shame and anger as her mother turned around as her mother’s narrow jaw tensed and her eyes hardened. A couple other slaves glanced up from their work, and Momma gave them a harsh look that immediately humbled them and they resumed their tasks. Matzi was a slave girl in the summer of 1697. Abolitionists were few in the town of which she as well as thousands of other African Americans lived and were forced to work, and when a slave tried to escape he or she was almost always captured or shot during the tracking down of him or her. Momma turned on her heel and resumed her steady pace back up to the storage shed. The large woven baskets on their backs were full to overflowing with cotton, and Matzi was constantly picking up the small balls of cotton that fell from the increasingly large hole in the bottom of Momma’s basket. Momma had never recovered from the shock of Poppa’s death. Poppa was one of the many slaves who had attempted escape and one of the many who lost their lives because of it. She believed they would have made it if Mr. Craig’s dog hadn’t begun to bark when one of the escapees tripped over a tree root and cursed so loudly. Since then Momma hadn’t been the same loving, caring woman she was before the incident, and Matzi missed that woman dearly. Momma’s sister, Aunt Laola, had come to stay in the slavehouse with them to “help keep things in order and care for Matzi”. She did both of these things but Matzi believed that she had really come to comfort Momma and be with her. She had loved Poppa like a brother and was, too, devastated when he died. Matzi adjusted the basket on her back and sighed. She didn’t want to accept the fact that she was a slave just because she was black. It didn’t seem right. She felt the hard dirt beneath her feet give way to gravel that stuck between her toes, and looked up to see Momma letting the basket slide off of her back. Momma dragged a sack from underneath the shed and dumped the contents of her basket into it. Matzi obediently did the same, relieved to have the scratchy, heavy mass away from her sore skin. She rolled her shoulders and inhaled. Back to the hut ‘n’ An’ Laola ‘n’ her new li’l baby, Zachariah, thought Matzi with relief. The sun was setting behind the trees and it was cooling off; the sun was intense today. The girl wiped her sweaty forehead on the back of her hand and followed her sturdy mother back to the house. Matzi admired her mother for her strength. “Ow!” Matzi cried and jerked her foot upwards. “That hurt! What on earth was...” she muttered, bewildered. They were now walking through the plush grass on the lawn and Matzi couldn’t imagine what could have been so sharp, sticking up from the ground. She yanked the object free of the ground and carefully wiped the dirt away. It looked like a horse... no, it couldn’t be a horse. It was striped. It was made of a hard, light wood and had black stripes painted in its sides and legs. And what a strange tail! It looked like a short dog’s tail, with a little black tuft on the end. And its mane stuck up like the cattails by the pond. Matzi was bewildered. “Momma, look! It’s a...?” “I’ve seen dem things ‘afore! Show dat ta Laola when we git back to da house, she’ll tell ye whaddit is.” Matzi was itching to find out the name of the creature she had found. As they approached the house, they could see Aunt Laola sitting out front nursing Zachariah. Matzi thought he resembled something of a large potato, curled up in his brown smock. Matzi hurried around her mother to reach the house before the sun disappeared completely. “An’ Laola! Lookit ‘ere! Looka what I foun’!” the girl squealed as she landed on the ground next to her aunt. “Well, well... who woulda’ guessed... in these parts? Naw...” Aunt Laola chuckled. “Why, I ha’en’t seen onna dese sin’ I was jes’ a chil’. Matzi, dis here be whatchu call a zebra.” “Zee-brah, zee-brah,” Matzi muttered, trying the word out on her tongue. It sounded like the tall grasses next to the pond rustling in the wind, bending backwards ever so gracefully, brushing against each other as they slowly resumed their original positions. She liked the word. “Now, youngin’, boy do I have a story for you. See, when I was a wee one, little younger den you, you know, I was free. We lived wid dese am’mles, and we liked ‘em. Boy, dey made some good eatin’s dey did. We chase ‘em in circles ‘till dey git tired, den we spear ‘em and roas’ ‘em onna fire. “Now, dere was a special one, dere was, an’ her name was Redflower, ‘cause of a pink scar on her rump dat, you mighta guessed, looked like a flower. Dat scar was from a lion attack. We foun’ ‘er lyin’ on ‘er side, jes so, an’ we cleaned ‘er up and brought ‘er back ta de hut after spearin’ down de lion. She stayed wid us fer a while, and we grew ta likin’ ‘er. She was my baby, alrigh’... I miss ‘er.” Aunt Laola had become teary eyed in the telling of Redflower’s story. Matzi agreed that her new treasure should be named after such a special animal. Redflower.