Judges
You do not yet know us.
You do not yet understand.
We who are from the dark, speaking in the seven voices. Because seven is the only divine number. Because that is who we are and who we have always been.
And this is law.
By the end, you will know. And you will ask why we did not tell you sooner. Do you think you are the first to have asked that question?
You are not.
There is, however, an answer. There is always an answer. But you have not yet earned it. You do not know who you are. How could you possibly reckon with who we are?
You are not lost so much as you are betrayed by fools who mistook glimmer for power. They gave away all the symbols that hold sway. The penance for this is lasting. Your blood will have long been diluted by the time reason finally takes hold. Or the world itself will have been reduced to ash, making memory beside the point. But yes, you have been wronged. And you will do wrong. Again. And again. And again. Until finally, you wake. Which is why we are here, speaking with you now.
A story is coming.
Your story is coming.
It is the whole purpose of your being. Being (t)here. The first time you arrived you were not in chains. You were greeted warmly and exchanged food, art, and purpose with those who knew that neither people nor land should be owned. Our responsibility is to tell you the truth. But since you were never told the truth, you will believe it a lie. Lies are more affectionate than truth and embrace with both arms. Prying you loose is our punishment.
Yes, we too have been punished. We all have. Because there are no innocents. Innocence, we have discovered, is the most serious atrocity of all. It is what separates the living from the dead.
Eh?
A what this now?
Haha.
Forgive our laughter.
You thought you were the living and we were the dead?
Haha.
Proverbs
On my knees, in the dark, I talk to them.
It’s hard, sometimes, to understand what they saying. They been gone so long and they still use the old words that are half beat out of me. And it don’t help that they whisper. Or maybe they really screaming and just so far away that it sound like a whisper to me. Could be that. Who can know?
Anyway, I dig in the spot they told me to and I bury the shiny sea stone just like they ask. But maybe I do something wrong because Massa Jacob still sell you off even after he say I a part of his family. Is this what toubab do to they family? Snatch them out they mother’s arms and load them up on a wagon like harvest? Had me begging. In front of my man, had me begging until the only man I ever love can’t even look at me right no more. His eyes make me feel like it’s my wrong instead of they’s.
I ask them, the old dark voices, about you. They say you right proud. On your way to becoming a man yourself. Got a lot of your people in you, but don’t know it yet. And quick, maybe too quick for your own good. I surprised you still living. I ask them, I say, “Can you take a message to him? Tell him I remember every curl on his head and every fold on his body down to the creases between his toes. Tell him not even the whip can remedy that.” They don’t answer, but they say you down in Mississippi now, where whole things is made half. Why they tell me that, I don’t know. What mother wanna hear her child finna be carved up and carved out for no reason at all? I guess it don’t matter. Here or there, us all gone be made to pay somehow.
Ephraim ain’t said a word since they took you. Not a single word in all this time. Can you imagine? I see his lips move, but I be damned if any sound come out his throat. Sometimes, I wanna say your name, the name we gave you, not the ugly one Massa throw on you and we act like it’s okay. I think saying your name maybe bring him back to me. But the way he hang his head, like a noose around his neck that I can’t see, I don’t have the courage. What if saying your name be the thing that take him from me altogether?
“Can I see him?” I ask the dark. “Can Ephraim? We ain’t even gotta touch him. Just take a quick look to know he still ours, even if he belong to somebody else.” They say all Ephraim need to do is have a peek in one of those looking glasses. “How ’bout me?” I ask. They tell me look in Ephraim’s eyes. “How can I do that,” I ask, “when he won’t look at me no more?” All I hear is the wind blowing through the trees and the creek-creek of bugs in the grass.
You like your people. You is like your people. I hold on to that and let that fill the empty space inside me. Swirling, swirling like fireflies in the night. Holding, holding still like water in the well. I’s full. I’s empty. I’s full, then I’s empty. I’s full and I’s empty. This must be what dying feels like.
It ain’t no use. No use in hollering at folks who won’t hear you. No use in crying in front of folks who can’t feel your pain. They who use your suffering as a measuring stick for how much they gone build on top of it. I ain’t nothing here. And ain’t never gone be.
What he trade you for? To keep this rotten land that breaks spirit and bleeds mind? I tell you what: ain’t gone be too much more of this here. Nah, sir. Take me and Ephraim and us leave here. Don’t have to go nowhere, but leave. It be the same like slaughtering a hog. Just a sharp blade quick and deep across the throat and it be over just like that.
And then us get to be whispering voices in the dark telling some other people how they babies is getting along out there in the wild.
Oh, my poor baby!
Can you feel me?
I’s Middle Anna and that there is Ephraim. We your mam and pappy, Kayode. And us sure do miss you.
Psalms
July had tried to kill them.
First it tried to burn them. Then it tried to suffocate them. And finally, when neither of those things was successful, it made the air thick like water, hoping they would drown. It failed. Its only triumph was in making them sticky and mean—sometimes, toward each other. The sun in Mississippi even found its way into the shade so that on some days, not even the trees were comfort.
And, too, there was no good reason to be around other people when it was hot like this, but longing for company made it in some ways bearable. Samuel and Isaiah used to like being around other people until the other people changed. In the beginning, they had thought all the curled lips, cut eyes, turned-up noses—even the shaking heads—signified a bad scent emanating from their bodies because of the toil in the barn. The odor of swill alone had often made them strip bare and spend nearly an hour in the river bathing. Daily, just before sundown, when the others were bent out of shape from fieldwork and tried to find an elusive peace in their shacks, there Samuel and Isaiah were, scrubbing themselves with mint leaves, juniper, sometimes root beer, washing away the layers of stink.