Let Us Descend

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains depictions of enslavement, racism, imprisonment, abuse, and sexual assault.

Annis’ new enslaver and her servant, Emil, bring Annis and three other enslaved people to their new home, a sugar plantation in rural Louisiana. One of the women, a cook named Camille, has just been sold away from her daughter, and Annis tries to comfort the girl. The next morning, Annis wakes before dawn with Esther and Mary, two enslaved women with whom Annis will be working in the house. They go to fetch water, and Mary, who does not speak, kills a snake for breakfast. Esther tells Annis of her new enslaver’s intractable personality and her habit of counting their food supplies, even down to individual grains of rice, to make sure that the enslaved people in her home do not “filch” food. Annis realizes that Esther and Mary eat mostly what they can catch, gather, and hunt. Esther tells her that “the best” food is alligator, and Annis wonders how they go about killing the creatures.

Life on the sugar plantation is difficult, and Annis learns that yellow fever is a yearly occurrence and that although she is lucky for having been placed in the house rather than the fields, she will still have to help in the fields during the harvest.