empower: fight like a girl (words empower Book 1)

by Amy Berg

  “Why not?”

  She gave the expected reply: “Because we are no longer in Africa, we have become civilized, we have been Saved. Voodoo is a tool of Lucifer.”

  “You’re coming to church,” he hissed.

  As Mary stood the joints and muscles in her body screamed for vengeance. She kept her eyes down, acting more subservient than Eve. If she hadn’t, he probably would have seen the devil himself staring back at him through her eyes.

  “You said you wouldn’t do it again last week. This time I want you to promise in the name of our Lord. Promise Him you won’t shame this family anymore.”

  She sucked in her teeth. Her mother stood erect, as if expecting a fight. It wasn’t worth it. She didn’t believe in it. It was meaningless to her. So she promised. But her father persisted.

  “I want you to praise the Savior, praise Him and say ‘Hallelujah,’” he ordered.

  Mary flinched. He knew how she felt about that word. Her utter hatred of it would make the devil himself cower. It made her blood burn at the sound of him saying it. The word was so false to her, so, enslaving. Something inside her told her that word was a hideous lie.

  “Say it,” he repeated through clenched teeth, raising the belt again. “Say it or I’ll start again till you do.”

  Her mouth went dry before she could move her tongue.

  “Praise Jesus. Hallelujah.”

  It was like rubbing sandpaper over concrete. Both her parents flinched when she spoke. It was almost as if it wasn’t her voice.

  “I need to tend to my dress, Father,” she said quickly, in a feminine tone she had to force from her barren mouth.

  He held the belt ready to smack her again. Glancing to his wife for support, she shook her head nervously. They didn’t want to make a bigger scene. The other children were scared enough.

  Her mother gasped when she saw Mary’s back. It was gruesome. The spots were already starting to swell and she would have to tend to them every day with cocoa butter.

  Mary’s father gave his consent that she stay behind under the provision that she be at church in twenty minutes—one minute more and he’d take the belt to her again. As Mary’s mother tried to hand her the sewing kit her hand grazed her daughters. Through the touch, Mary could hear her mother’s thoughts.

  “You’re supposed to set an example. Why do you resist so much? Why do you keep hurting yourself?”

  Under her breath, in a hissing tone Mary replied to her mother. “I will not be a slave to a god that doesn’t exist, or a religion created by people who hate us. I will not bow to a people who forced Jesus in the heart of the Negro.”

  Her mother quickly pulled away, small tears forming in her eyes. “Make sure you’re at church on time,” was all she said.

  When the other six children were fixed in their Baptist best, Father lit the lamp and then brought the buggy around. They were having a special church service tonight. Mary didn’t understand what it was about; her father had kept his mouth shut about the details. But she knew it probably had something to do with joining Mr. Petry and his new church called House of Eden. Mr. Petry was a rogue white man in a Southern Baptist community, who may be giving a co-sermon. If her father could get the white congregants to worship with the black folks, that would be history making—not to mention profitable: and white men liked having lots of money.

  Mary didn’t understand why her father was willing to sell out the message he was trying to preach. Supposedly Jesus didn’t care about money, or having massive churches in his name. That’s at least what Mary had understood of it. Of course that had come from her father’s mouth, so it could very well be a lie too. He wouldn’t let her read the Bible for herself. That’s when she’d labeled him the heathen. He was in it for the money, not the supposed glory of his god.

  She remembered the day when her father tried to baptize her. The water had started boiling as soon as she touched the holy wetness. It had scared everyone in the church. Her mother began to wither away after that, believing she had given birth to something not of Him. From that day forward she had been ostracized. Her father refused to have a “demon heathen” in his house. If she was from Satan, then she would be baptized regardless. He had her secretly done over. But as before, the water boiled. She had burns on her skin until she turned ten.

  That was when she discovered how to make them go away.

  She fixed the sewing needle and then retired to her room. He wouldn’t get the satisfaction of seeing her undress.

  “Twenty minutes!”

  She heard the door slam shut. She took off her dress and sat on the bed she shared with her two other sisters. It wouldn’t be long now. She began sewing the seams back together when, with acute hearing, she heard his footsteps. She pulled the dress over her bosom. Just to be spiteful, she started humming and tapping her foot.

  Her father burst in an instant later.

  The expression on his face, when he recognized the tune of “Wade in the Water” turned from disdain to frustration.

  He’d wanted to beat her again. She kept humming and tapping her foot without missing a stitch. “I hope we sing this tonight,” she lied. “It’s my favorite.”

  His lips pulled all the way down to his chin in a frown. He didn’t believe her any more than she believed the Teachings. He had to know somewhere deep in his heart that Jesus couldn’t save them. They had to save themselves. He slammed the door without a word and this time he actually left. She kept sewing on her dress.

  When she knew he was gone, she crawled under the bed and pulled up the center floorboard. Pulling out a jar she returned to the top of the bed. She discarded her dress. She wasn’t going. She removed her underclothes and lay down naked. She examined the fluid in the jar. It was an odd recipe, but it worked. She had taken some of her monthly blood, wild red berries, fat from a neighbor’s cat, zinc, butter, and semen that had been preserved in her mouth after a late-night rendezvous, mixed them into a nice paste and said a recitation. With it she repaired her bruised skin. Rubbing it on, she felt it working immediately. She went ahead and rubbed it on her whole body so her skin tone would be consistent. The darker of the black welts needed a little more, but after fifteen minutes, you couldn’t tell she’d been whipped at all.

  She kept herself there, knowing that her family would stay at church for the whole two hours, perhaps more, not wanting to draw attention. Even her father wouldn’t leave in the middle of his sermon. She had enough of her paste so he could beat her till his hands bled: it wouldn’t change a damn thing.

  She crept back under the bed, taking care to put the jar back so she wouldn’t forget it. The last time she’d left one of her jars out, her little brother had found it. Her father had broken her wrist over that one.

  Nothing meditation mixed with sulfur didn’t fix.

  She didn’t know how long she’d slept, only that she woke up with her Book in her hands. She didn’t remember waking up to get it. It had been hidden behind the chifforobe, in a hole that she’d carved out. She hated to think that her guard was so down that her father could catch her with the Book and burn it.

  If it could be burned.

  Mary rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and stretched her tired joints. She wondered what else she’d done. As she tried to sit upright, razor-sharp, piercing pains shot to her brain. She dropped her book and flopped back down on her broken mattress. She hadn’t had a headache like this in years. She lay still for a few minutes smelling the fresh night air.

  Until the night wind brought the smell of burning flesh. Somehow, the smell was all too familiar. Because it wasn’t just any flesh. It was human flesh. Cooking in the night as if the Demon Gods were having a barbecue. The smell was faint at first, enough to make her mouth water. Then it overtook her senses and she gagged herself awake.

  Somewhere, someone was on fire. It was a mass searing of flesh that tainted the night sky.

  She sat up, her head throbbing. She was still naked, yet she didn’t bother to cover
herself. She walked straight through her house, under the eyes of the Lord, and went to her front door and snuck out onto the porch. She could see the flames from her house.

  The church was burning.

  Even from this distance, she could hear the sound of people screaming, and hooves pounding in erratic rhythms.

  The Klan.

  She immediately knew what was happening. They’d found the Nigger’s Den as white folks in town called it. White Christians refused to acknowledge their black counterparts. It had to be one of them who alerted the men in white sheets. Perhaps even Mr. Petry himself. Her family had been betrayed. Though she liked the idea of her father dying, she did care about her mother and siblings.

  “Enough.” The word slithered from her lips as she turned back to her room.

  The Book was where she’d dropped it. It scared her to pick it up but there was something deep inside crying out, forcing her to.

  As soon as she touched it again she knew what she must do. She was going to call it tonight. God damn this hiding. Tonight she would make the white folks pay.

  And she would make her father pay. Tonight he would bow to her like he bowed to that absent God of his.

  The church had already collapsed in on itself when she arrived. Her bare feet hurt from running through the woods, but her adrenaline was pumping enough for her task. She paused at the edge of the clearing and watched.

  White specks moved in and out of her sight.

  Yes, it was the Klan. Six of them in white sheets on coated horses. They tromped around yelling and cursing in their “victory” Two were already making nooses.

  Not too many members of the congregation had escaped the roof. Those who had were sure to be hanged.

  Mary felt her heritage spreading in her blood like the fire that was eating the church. The Book had belonged to her grandmother. It was time she finally used it in the open.

  Her grandmother had known that it was useless, her father trying to make her a Christian. She hadn’t told her son the truth about his first-born daughter, but there was nothing he could have done anyway. Baptized or not she was what she was sold as, which was not a slave. At least, not an earthly one. Her grandmother knew that within her resided the darkest family lineage that this world would ever see. Evil, original evil, was embedded in her genes. It had been riding the wave of DNA until it found a good host. After her baptism by fire, her grandmother knew which child had gotten what their African ancestors had called “Arsanduolai” The Demon of the Dead. The host had been bargained to be the first-born female. That host would be Mary until she had a daughter and so on it would go.

  Mary remembered when her grandmother told her what she was.

  “It’s in ya, chile, ain’t nuttin ya can do ‘bout it. You the first afta me and you belong to The Demon. He done gone and got himself inside ya. But he ain’t like no tick or no chigger naw, no, scratching, peeling, ain’t nothing gone do no good. He’s in your BLOOD. Just swimmin’ ‘round in dere, waiting for his chance again. Work wit ’em, dat’s all Ah can tell ya. Work wit ’em and it’ll be easier.”

  She then presented her granddaughter with the Book. Mary could hardly read English at the time, and the book was written in something she would later learn was similar to Arabic. But her grandmother helped her learn to read it in secret. From what she’d learned the Book had been written in some ancient African tribal tongue and translated by some mad Arab into the current version. This Book was one of two. The original had never been found.

  She felt the leather of the Book start to pulse. It harmonized with the beating of her heart. She turned it over in her hands. Her skin and the Book’s skin (for that’s what the cover was, human skin) meshed together and for a moment she couldn’t tell where her own hand was. She stared at the words still in the original foreign tongue. It had taken days for her little mouth to learn how to properly pronounce the title of the Book. The Demon inside whispered it through her: NECRONOMICON.

  It had been passed down by her grandmothers over the years. From generation to generation. Brought over by a slave ship many years ago from her ancestor. She’d used the Book to free herself from bondage. At least that’s what her grandmother had said.

  “She made a deal wit ’em. Like Abraham with God, she made a covenant with Arsanduolai. See, her tribe was the one dat had had the Original Book. She had it wid her at de time. She conjured him up on dat ship cause she wadn’t gone be no slave, no sirree, and he came. Oh yes sir he came. Killed all dem white folks on da ship for her. Killed a lot of them slave too dough. Crashed da ship. She escaped, that’s the most impordant thing. But don’t nuttin’ come in this world, or even the next, for free. Huh-uhh. She was a smart won dough, didn’t sell her soul, no sir, gave him something bedder dan dat. She sold her lineage. Smart she was. She sold us. Now we pay for what she did. And ain’t nuttin’ you or yo pappy can do, cause you can break a deal wid da Devil, but you can’t break no deal with God, no matter whose it is.”

  She sold her lineage. This unnamed, faceless woman had conjured an ancient deity and sold her progeny. It meant Mary’s grandmother, it meant Mary, and it meant Mary’s firstborn daughter. They were damned from the time they were conceived. She was nothing more than a cocoon for it. Something that was waiting to show its existence to the world again.

  “Work wit ’em, and it’ll be easier.”

  “Yeeesssssss.” Mary had no idea that she was hissing in her master’s voice. She didn’t realize that her vision was no longer her own, nor her hearing, not even her thoughts. Even if she had she wouldn’t have fought.

  “Work wit ’em…”

  Her sight floated upward, over the trees and weeds until she had an aerial view. Her essence wasn’t in her body but in the air. She spread out over everything, saw everything at once. The white sheets, the black church, the red ground. She was omniscient. The last thing she remembered was her master, laughing. No translation needed.

  Arsanduolai watched from behind the trees with malevolent satisfaction as the chaos ensued. People were still on fire. The smell was overwhelming. But it was good.

  “Cleanse this land! God ain’t got no use for niggers!”

  The leader of the KKK bellowed his commands as he got down off of his high horse. He began stalking the land, looking for any survivors. They were gonna have themselves a hanging in the name of the Lord.

  His minions were fixing the rope to the tree now. A little boy, who was missing skin from most of his small body, had been found trying to crawl away. A woman who was smoldering not far away was found suitable for roping after she’d been kicked and revealed she was still alive.

  They’d find more or they’d hang the bodies that were already dead just for good measure.

  Whether by turning over bodies, kicking them, poking them, even shooting them he’d find someone else. This was just not enough: he wasn’t satisfied. He came upon a child who had died of smoke inhalation long before. It lost its skull under his boot.

  He believed they were filthy fuckers. He believed they needed to go back to Africa with their chickens, their dancing and their hollering. Now that they weren’t slaves God had no use for them. No sir, His American Kingdom was for white and Christian only. Niggers need not apply.

  He kicked over another body. A woman, her clothes burned into her skin. He could still make out tufts of her smoldering hair. “Funny,” he thought, “It still looks nappy.” Not even fire can get the nappy out. He laughed, then wiped his boot on her best Sunday dress and made his way on.

  There were still some alive to be found. Somewhere. Goddamnit he would find them too. A man, a woman, a child. Anybody. His prayers were answered when he came upon the body of a black man, his position betrayed by his coughing.

  Finally…

  Arsandoulai sniggered behind Mary’s eyes as it watched the leader pick up the man by his collar. They listened with glee as he cursed and raved. “Ya’ll niggers ain’t got no business trying to start a Christian church…go back t
o Africa, practice ya’ll’s voodoo.”

  Yep, that’s exactly how Mary’s father sounded when he said it. And now, what he had tried to become was turning on him. Jesus had sold him to the wolves.

  So it was no real surprise when, upon lifting the black man up so he could be dragged to the tree, they saw that it was in fact, their father.

  Vengeance is sweet.

  No one saw the cloud coming.

  The ten members of the Klan were too busy stringing up their victims, or desecrating bodies to see the black cloud come from atop the trees. But after a moment they smelled it coming. The smell was worse than the burning flesh. It scorched its way into their lungs as it crept in behind them.

  The Klan leader was the last to notice. He was in his own world, concentrating on his task. The rope was ready, and it was going to be glorious when he would smack the horse to make it leap forward to snap that nigger man’s neck but good.

  But he would never smack his horse.

  He at last saw the plague of a cloud as it rolled over them. It reminded him of his momma’s blankets, rolling on the line on Sunday morning. Wave after wave after wave.

  Her blanket didn’t look like this though, didn’t smell like it either. His lungs just about imploded upon catching the scent. It was as if Hell had opened up and all the sulfur burned out. He would never realize the irony in his thought because it was then that all Hell did break loose.

  The horses went wild. One horse jumped up so high it fell backward on its rider, who died on impact. The only exception was the horse that stood under Mary’s father. It didn’t move at all, as if it were obeying an unheard order to stay put.

  The mighty leader of the Klan didn’t know what he was going to do. He could barely breathe let alone think. He held close to the ground, trying to find fresh air. But there was only the smell of Hell, it had implanted itself into the grass and was festering in the soil.