Excerpts from Luke’s childhood journal:

                                                                                                               January 1, 1763

I have so many thoughts in my mind, the need to share them makes me want to burst, but I dare not tell anyone the things everyone would call blasphemy and heresy. And I won’t tell them how I get back at people who say and do things that tear me up inside. Sometimes my thoughts and plans are so loud and need so much attention, they roll around in my brain until I can hardly concentrate on tasks or games. So I have decided to write my thoughts down. I will keep this journal hidden from all eyes but my own and see if it will ease my busy mind.

…

                                                                                                            February 3, 1763

What a wonder writing is! It’s like medicine to my soul. It helps me think things through. Writing this journal makes me able to sleep well at night—as if the words are things I can scoop from my brain into my book.

Reading my journal back, I can say, Aha! This is me. Not the quiet, obedient child they see on the outside, and not the foolish little “heretic” they saw on my fifth birthday. This is the boy I thought I lost to the rebukes and jeers and embarrassment since that one horrible December morning. I want to leave that day behind and go on growing up. Writing about my problems won’t erase the scars, but it will quiet my raging mind.

Mother said I can turn the tide back and make people like me again if I just act more like the one upon whose birthday I was born. I can scarcely believe she still thinks I’m destined to be some kind of exalted servant of God. “Exaltation” and “servant” don’t go together. The dark-skinned people our family call “the servants” are slaves. No one wants to be a slave. We can’t stand the idea of being owned by someone else. And if I were to be owned by anyone, it would never be the God who stamped me with a curse from my very beginning by bringing me into the world on Christmas and setting me up for heartbreak. But I have taken something from Mother’s advice. I’m pressed on all sides by the hard looks and insults around me, so I’m determined to change my behavior for the good—at least, on the outside. If I don’t look to them all like a saint, I will be called a devil all my life. They have all forced me into that corner with their spite.

Not that I just absorb the curses and blows. I don’t. I’m simply learning to get revenge in secret. Maybe some will even think God’s getting back at them for the way they treated me. That would be something! If they saw me as the one who sets up the trip wires, overturns their stews, or spreads malicious rumors about them, it would only add to the idea that I’m bad.

My secret tricks were cautious at first. I mustn’t be caught. I’m not so afraid of beatings as of being seen for who I really am. If people knew, I wouldn’t gain respect from anyone. I am learning the art of making it look like others are to blame for the things I do. I can charm people with my bright-blue eyes and innocent-looking smile.

I can’t help getting back at people; my anger grows with time, and I must express it somehow. I wouldn’t dare create a scene with explosive fits, as some do. Even my mother would cease to love a raging son… if she loves me at all. Perhaps she loves only the idea of me. If she knew the real me, I wouldn’t be her favorite! As it is, she pities me and hopes God will make me a minister or something, and she cheers me on as, gradually, the taunts and frowns of Manhattan Isle’s gentry fade. She calls me her little angel again.

Father, on the other hand, doesn’t like her speaking so well of me. “The boy will grow up vain and good for nothing!” he’s said more than once. There’s that word “nothing” again. I set my teeth and try not to cringe. He told me last night, “Remember what the good book says. Don’t think too highly of yourself than you ought. Satan himself was once a glorious angel called Lucifer, ‘the morning star,’ and it was pride and the longing for admiration that led him to become the ultimate enemy of God—the dark tempter, the father of lies, incapable of any good.”

I have heard such messages in church. I listen to them with different ears than others. I can say this on the page that no one else sees: I identify more with Lucifer than with Jesus. Yes, everyone in the church loves Jesus, or so they say. Am I alone in my feelings?

…

                                                                                                           February 6, 1763

I can’t compete with Jesus and I don’t want to be like him. He lived a life of humility and suffering, from his birth in a smelly little stable, to rejection by his leaders and countrymen, to friends leaving him, to death by one of the most brutal tortures in history. So what if he rose from the grave afterward? What was the point of going through it all? All that lowliness and suffering aren’t any idea of glory I can see. I want to be happy! I want to feel the glow I lost on my fifth birthday.

My parents argued over me again today. Father yelled at Mother, “If you don’t stop fawning over Lucas, you’ll ruin him!”

I was in another room but could imagine her on the Chippendale couch, shaking her head. “After all the things he’s suffered—he needs love, not stripes!”

They never used to argue. I long for the harmony of the past. I would almost be willing to be a fool again, thinking myself the center of the world, if only this family were happy again.

But saying that is a mistake. My brothers and sisters weren’t happy or kind, even when I was so little. For as long as I can remember, they have blamed me for Mother’s favor. I don’t see how her love is so bad. I know I’m not going to inherit the family estate. Asher will get that, because he’s the eldest boy. Shouldn’t I have something to console me? If no one believes in me, how will I make my way in the world? But father would glare at me if I asked him that, or perhaps hit me with a switch. “Stop whining!” he would say.

I don’t speak out my protests like I used to. I am winning the favor of most by staying as calm and controlled as I can.

…

                                                                                                              March 4, 1764

Looking back, I notice that over the course of two years, most of the buzz of the city against me has died down. It's partly because of my "saintly" behavior. Yet my brothers and sisters are still envious of Mother’s favorite. We keep our rivalry subtle, at least when Father and Mother are near. In private, though, accusations are snide and strong. I try to keep my head up and act like I’m above it all. I think I am. Maybe my first five years weren’t a waste, after all. I don’t know how, but I will be the center of something important someday. Without any help from God, who clearly hates me, I’ll make it happen myself. With that goal still unclear in my mind, I maintain the mask of the family saint. Spiritual superiority holds no wealth or prestige, but it may gain me a notoriety that will far outweigh the criticism I bore up to now. I was only five when I made a fool of myself in the church, and people are forgetting what I did. What they can’t see is that the wound in me never healed. They might forget my error, but I can’t forget their cruelty. And I’ll never serve their God. He’s their God, not mine.