Life After Death

by Sister Souljah

  We were all tired and thirsty and filthy and angry. We were all creating such a sound on the ground that it seemed to shake the area. We were all following the sound of the music. My legs were not all the way healed yet. The flute faded out. The cymbals silenced. The heartbeat remained. Then suddenly what sounded like a drum corps of more than a thousand drummers began drumming some driving beats that seemed to give me and each of us a second wind of energy and pep to our movement. We all rushed forward. Then what seemed to be six hundred to a thousand of us, suddenly jerked stop. On the way to wherever we were going, I was already thinking, what happens if so many creatures stop moving without warning? Now I was experiencing the answer in real time. The donkeys in front of me fell back. When I saw them coming. I gathered up all that remained in me and leaped on top of one of them as soon as it landed. Good thing I did, because the pigs behind me fell forward. I dug my nails into the donkey’s skin. He was kicking and sounding off. I ignored him. I just needed to buy enough time to see what was happening up ahead before he shook me off. I saw it! The green atmosphere. Bomber Girl said that when I see the green atmosphere, that meant mercy. So we weren’t being driven by some dope-ass beats into a slaughterhouse. I was relieved. How cruel it would have been if I was executed without Dat Nigga knowing what happened to me. He’d be out searching forever. All I needed to do was to have enough energy to follow the herd into the green and out of the blackness.

  I jumped down off the donkey and landed on a chicken that padded my impact. It flapped its wings like crazy. It then flew up a little bit and fell back down before it could ever get airborne. I was not falling. I was determined. The others must also be determined because they were each squirming or shaking or digging or pulling themselves out of the creature pileup, and getting back onto their feet.

  Slower now, I kept pace in a parade stranger than the West Indian parade that marched and moved and drove down and through Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn causing everyone alive to either stand aside and watch or just join in. It brought everything that was not moving with it to a halt. So did this parade of creatures do the same.

  As my row finally, after what seemed like a long way, was in range of the green atmosphere, something amazing occurred. The donkeys up ahead of me entered the green as donkeys and immediately turned into human beings once they exited the black atmosphere. I rushed forward trickling pee for the last push toward the green. Bam! I made it! I was myself. Everyone in front of me who entered the green were human again. I turned around to watch the pigs arrive. As soon as they did, they turned back to humans as well. I kept looking around, wild-eyed! I was inhaling and exhaling hard. I was glad, though, that I was not panting and my tongue was properly in my mouth. I tried to calm myself down, engulfed in a dense crowd of about six hundred mostly women, who were also trying to calm themselves down. We were all doing a type of body check. Eyes working? Check. Arms working? Check. Legs working? Check. And on and on and on and on to the beat y’all.

  The all-drum corps was doing it. They were in a line up to the left, right, and now rear of where all of us women were standing. In front of us was a huge stage. It was a setup like a rock concert or better yet Summer Jam. The sound system was stacks of six-foot-tall speakers. There were microphones setup as though there was going to be a performance. But on the stage were only young males, uniformed like the ones who set us free from the animal warehouse factory. Once the shock of those six hundred or so of us who were animals moments ago wore off, we started milling around. So there were rows and rows of women milling around. I don’t know if they were each looking for somebody in particular, or were just pacing out of nervousness. I was standing still, expecting the unexpected and observing.

  I don’t know why I was so surprised to see all different types of women weaved and woven into the herd. There were so many white women. There were as many Chinese women, or maybe I should say Asian, because I have no idea what countries they came from. I just call them all Chinese because they all have similar slanty eyes. There were Spanish women, Indian women, African women, African American and Caribbean women, and women of every complexion, color, language, country, and category that I didn’t even know about, or that I left out of mentioning. I guess it would be fucked up if the Last Stop Before the Drop, the County of the Ungrateful, the State of Ignorance, the Land of Arrogance was a place that was reserved for only hood niggas. Wouldn’t it?

  Why are we gathered here? What do these young men want from us? Did Dat Nigga tell them to line up each one until they identified the right one, me?

  Drowning out the sounds of all of the different languages being spoken at one time, my eyes scanned, surveyed, and zoomed in and out like a lens. Quite naturally they would land on the African American women more often than any other kind. They are most familiar and expected to me. I was looking at what each woman was wearing, the fashion and styles, and tallying it up. Then my mind began to wonder, were all of these women wearing their death-day clothes? I noticed that I was back in the white three-quarter-length mink and the white mini and red boots that I had lost track of what seemed like years ago. I wondered if these were all murdered women same as me. I also wondered why none of our garments had bloodstains and why my dress that Dat Nigga had ripped open in a lusty heated rush was back on my body fully intact. The teenage Bomber Girl would say, “It is because the ONE is Most Merciful,” or some words like that, which obviously had a much heavier meaning to her, and no meaning to me. I would be satisfied if Dat Nigga came for me and at me with even more fever and ripped it open again.

  “Remember me?” A bitch walked over to me and sat down like we were buddies. Of course I remembered her. She was the pretty bitch who I bit when I was a dog. The one who petted me without Dat Nigga’s permission. The same one who got a thorough dick-down from him. The kind he gave to me. I hated that. I even hated that I hated it. “Did you sit over here to bite back?” I asked her. But that wasn’t my real question. I wasn’t scared of her. My real question was how could she see me as a woman and know that I was that dog that got her good?

  “I was in the cage next to you,” she said. “When we got set free, I saw you walk out right behind me. I was a rat. I thought about turning around and biting you then. I changed my mind because getting out of that awful place was my first priority. Besides, you looked injured. I knew my bite would kill you.” She said it like she wanted some type of award for giving me a pass instead of taking her revenge. When I didn’t thank her like she seemed to want me to do, she cut the nice routine and spoke her mind.

  “I thought you was a mean little bitch and I was mad as hell that you bit me. Especially after I was really nice to you. But I wouldn’t kill you for that. That wouldn’t be fair,” she said, and still paused waiting for a compliment or a word of thanks. She seemed to need to be acknowledged for her niceness. I didn’t say shit.

  “If I could, I would kill Lucifer 66, though. That was the second time I let him fuck me. The first time I turned into a goddamn monkey. We had fun, I swang on his bars and all. But monkeys are smart, I started to think about how and why I turned into a monkey. Then I figured it had to be because of him somehow. You know like how when you and I were alive on Earth, and some nigga we fucked gave us herpes, and you had to go through your mind and remember all the niggas you fucked and try to figure out which one did it?” she said and then paused. She was really talking to me like we were some type of friends.

  I looked at her. She is younger than me, I thought to myself. I’d say she’s about twenty-five-years-young right now. I hated that when I was twenty-five I was locked and only seven years in on a mandatory fifteen. When I know I did absolutely nothing wrong. She interrupted my thoughts and said, “The point is, when I was alive, I would never let no nigga make a fucking monkey out of me. And if some nigga gave me herpes, I wouldn’t be like, ‘Oh maybe I did this to myself.’ I would be trying to figure out which nigga gave it. But I would be sure that one of them niggas did. With Lucifer, I second-guess
ed myself. Maybe I was in denial ’cause the dick was so good. I didn’t want to believe it. When I went back for more, we fucked like crazy. Then I turned into a disgusting rat. You were there. That’s when you were a pretty puppy. You looked for me on the bed. I had already darted. I was so angry at myself for letting it happen again. I was even thinking thoughts like, ‘I’d rather be a monkey than a rat!’ Now that I’m back to my real self, I’m not fucking with Dat Nigga no more. He better not even look in my direction. How ’bout you?” she asked.

  I didn’t say nothing back to her. Maybe she wanted me to agree. Then I would stay away from him and she’d run right back to his side. I did not know that she had been with him twice. She must have showed up when I was stuck by the stinking sewer for what seemed like forever. If she was fucking with him while I was away, it didn’t matter. That means he had her before, but still showed up to get me from the curb where my legs were paralyzed and I was sick with some virus and rashes and horrible things. He showed up. He got me and kept me. For some time I stayed living in there with him. I was there when she came for round two, I told myself as I sorted it all out in my mind.

  “I guess you will go back to him then,” she said. “Did you see the range of animals in that warehouse we was caged in? What if you go back and Dat Nigga turns you into a snake?” she asked, pushing her face too close into mine.

  “If I was a snake and you was a rat, I guess I’d have to eat you. Chew you up, swallow, and shit you out,” I told her calmly. She got the message, leaped up, and kept it moving.

  12.

  Immediately after the drumming ceased, a voice said, “Please take a seat” over the loudspeaker. And as it did, two sixty-foot canvases rolled down, framing the stage where the voice had come from. One was green and had pretty, gold foreign lettering that of course I could not read. The other was white and was written in English. RALLY OF THE SONS.

  Just then, an eighteen-years-young or so blond-haired young man, all blue-eyed and wearing the same khaki uniform as the guys who let us out of our cages were each wearing, stepped forward. He gestured for all of the women who were on the yard same as me to take a seat. He then started speaking in some foreign language. I was like, Not this bullshit again. As I watched, I could see women who were igging his “take a seat” request, by either standing still or walking while socializing in packs. The blue-eyed boy shifted to a different language. It must mean that when he gave the orders in a language each woman could understand is when she or they finally sat their asses down.

  I was already seated. I wanted all of the bitches to cooperate, to make it easier for Dat Nigga’s army to find me. Eventually, whether or not their language was called out, all of the women caught on and sat down. When we were each seated, some of the young men all in the same uniform began moving up and down the rows of us, handing out a tiny paper package.

  “You each are being given an earpiece that will allow you to hear and understand all that is happening in your own language. Please place it in your right earlobe.”

  The silence that was complete once we were all wearing the dot and seated was a silence that gave me the chills. Then a handsome young black guy, maybe seventeen or so, got on the mic and began speaking.

  “The Most Merciful ONE has allowed all of the UBS gathered here to free each of the women gathered here from the clutches of Shayton and from the House of Evil, which is his franchise. The male UBS who surround you, as well as the UBS on the stage where I am standing, are your sons. We have put our mercies together in a unified effort to conduct a raid that would free our mothers. The ONE has rewarded our effort with success, Ah-hum-doo-lah-lah.

  “We are here today because of love. If we did not love you, we would not be here. Love gives us the courage to fight a war on your behalf. Because we do love you, we also forgive you. Each son here is fully aware that each mother here chose to follow in the footsteps of the devil, and to join hands with evil. We forgive. Our only objective is to use our deep love for you to show your soul a path to a better, cleaner, more peaceful existence and to ensure that you don’t become an eternal occupant in the Eternal Fire, which is more painful than anything that you have experienced so far here in The Last Stop Before the Drop.

  “Your sons know that each and every woman here has never made even one sincere prayer during her entire lifetime and existence on Earth as a human being. This is why your souls are confined here in the Last Stop Before the Drop, the County of the Ungrateful, the State of Ignorance, and the Land of Arrogance. Because we love you even though you chose evil over your sons and daughters, we forgive.”

  Suddenly every other bitch began crying. I mean crying real tears. What the fuck did this all have to do with me besides nothing? I ain’t got no damn kids. So none of these sons were mine. Why was I here?

  “Mommas, please clear your tears. We are here to comfort you and assist you to a better path. Mommas, there is no reason to be confused anymore. Quiet yourselves and listen to the guidance Allah has placed in each of your souls, our souls. All of the males who are surrounding you today, and who are standing with me stage front are UBS. ‘UBS’ stands for ‘unborn souls.’ This means that we each were once in your womb. You each chose to abort us. We sons gathered today are only a handful of more than a trillion unborn souls who were murdered in the womb. We forgive.”

  Instead of getting quiet, the bitches were in a bit of a frenzy. Me, I was tight that Succubus had thrown me against the wall and locked me up with all those animals and got me mixed up in this situation that had zero to do with me, I went to get up. My legs were locked. I was furious. This was bullshit. Why were my legs locked? Was I the only one? Was the reason why each of these women had remained seated and still because their legs were also locked?

  Next, a young Chinese male in a uniform stepped to the mic. His haircut was kind’ve mean. I never ever thought of any Chinese man as handsome. I never paid not one of them any attention whatsoever. The one on the mic was a good departure from the rest of them. Maybe the young ones were learning how to get in the groove with that fashion flow. If they wanted to be relevant, they better.

  Come to think of it, I never been anywhere social and laid back with anyone Chinese. Like everybody in my hood, I have been to the Chinese restaurant. That’s not a place where I would listen to or have a conversation with a Chinese person, though. I’d just tell them my order. They wouldn’t say shit back either, not even thank you. They cook it, put it in the Styrofoam container, staple it shut, then push it into a brown bag. They take my money first, then shove it forward. So even though my Brooklyn hood had the same Chinese takeout spot for all of the years we lived there, we didn’t know not one of their names. We didn’t ask. We didn’t care. Niggas would push through the doors and bark out their orders. “Wings fried hard, shrimp fried-rice, none of that bok-choy shit.” Then when it was time to pay, a nigga would put his money on the counter and say, “Come on man, give me more napkins and soy sauce packs. Don’t be so fucking cheap.” That was the summary of the whole relation of hood niggas to Chinese people who been in our hoods forever but remained strangers to us.

  Forced to listen, the Chinese guy said, “I am able to forgive because I know that my mother was never taught of the existence of the Most High. How could she know that there was a need for sincere prayer to the ONE who made her soul and the souls of all living beings? How could she break away from bowing down to every other powerless thing, a statue, her boss at work, her husband at home, her parents, her dead ancestors, a community leader, a politician, or bowing down to fear of the police, military might, the criminal syndicates and the gun? These people may seem to have some form of power. But, they do not have power over your soul. Only the ONE, Maker of all souls, is All-Powerful. Only the ONE could have protected you from all of the evil you faced on Earth. But mother, you never asked the ONE. You never made one prayer. You asked all of the wrong people and things who you were taught to worship. But if you worshipped idols, money, men, governmen
ts, leaders, history, ancestors, material things, this is the reason you lost your protection from the ONE who made your soul and gave you life and who is the only real protection you have. It’s time to stop. I participated in the raid on one of Shayton’s many animal warehouses today, as an expression of my love and loyalty to you, Momma. Also to say that it is not too late.” He was pleading and begging passionately. The women cheered. Not only the Chinese bitches. All of the women who had the ear plugs. So we all heard his talk in our right language.

  He let the cheering die down and closed out by saying, “But soon it will be too late. I cannot force you to do anything. None of the UBS can force a decision on you. It is a requirement of the ONE, the Most Mercifiul, that ‘each soul is responsible for itself.’ The ONE has mercifully placed within each soul willpower. You have to will your choice into existence. You have to separate yourself from evil, even though it is so familiar to you. Then bow down in sincere prayer to the ONE who created all souls. Lah-il-la-ha-illah-huwa.” He ended his talk. I remember Bomber Girl said that they mix some prayers into whatever language they are speaking in because it is a reminder and a better way to talk. He was applauded wildly.

  The Spanish male youth looked like any Puerto Rican from Brooklyn. He was handsome. Not as handsome as Poppa Santiaga, of course. This guy was obviously no gangster or hustler even though he was strapped. He seemed very emotional. He held the mic with two hands and put it too close to his mouth.