Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories From Social Justice Movements

by Walidah Imarisha

  through the back alley truth

  the criminalized place where love is

  where we all end up if we’re lucky

  or at least move through for a bit

  Exhibit E

  Letter from Alexis after capitalism to Alexis during capitalism, retrieved from email residue algorithm, received in inbox alexispauline@gmail.com on 9/13/10, send date category echo, referenced and archived in Drix’s lecture capsule:

  Dear Lexi,

  Breathe deep, baby girl, we won. Now life, though not exactly easier, is life all the time. Not chopped down into billable minutes, not narrowed into excuses to hurt and forget each other. I am writing you from the future to remind you to act on your belief, to live your life as a tribute to our victory and not as a stifling reaction to the past. I am here with so many people that you love and their children and we are eating together and we are tired from full days of working and loving but never too tired to remember where we come from. Never exhausted past passion and writing. So I am writing you now.

  Here in the future we have no money. We have only the resources that we in our capitalist phase did not plunder to work with, but we have no scarcity. You can reassure Julia we have plenty technology; technology is the brilliance of making something out of anything, of making what we need out of what we had, of aligning our spirits so everyone is on point so much of the time that when one of us falls off, gets scared, or caught up, the harmony of yes yes yes, we are priceless brings them right back into tune with where they need to be. We have the world we deserve and we acknowledge everyday that we make it what it is.

  Everybody eats. Everybody knows how to grow agriculturally, spiritually, physically, and intellectually. No one owns anything or anybody or even uses anything like a tool. Each everything is an opportunity and we are artists singing it into being with faith, compassion, confusion, breakthroughs, and support. It is on everyone’s mind and heart how to best support the genius that surrounds us all. How to shepherd each of us into the brilliance we come from even though our experience breaking each other apart through capitalism has left much healing to be done. We are more patient than we have ever been. And now that our time is divine and connected with everything, we have developed skills for how to recenter ourselves. We walk. We drink tea. We are still when we need to be. No one is impatient with someone else’s stillness. No one feels guilty for sitting still. Everybody is always learning how to grow.

  Your heart sings everyday because your ancestors are thrilled with themselves, a.k.a. all of us. Just breathing is like a choir. And I have the presence of mind and the generosity of spirit to even be proud of the you that I was when you are reading this, back in capitalism with all of our fear, and all of our scarcity-driven behavior contradicting and cutting down our visionary words. Counterpoetics right? I am proud of you for being queer. I am proud of you for staying present to the meaning of your beliefs and to the consequences of your actions even when they were crashing into each other every day. I am proud of you for letting the tide of your revolutionary heritage grind your fear of failure and lack to sand. I love you. The me that I was.

  But breathe this deep because this is the message. We did it. We shifted the paradigm. We rewrote the meaning of life with our living. And this is how we did it. We let go. And then we got scared and held on and then we let go again. Of everything that would shackle us to sameness. Of our deeply held belief that our lives could be measured or disconnected from anything. We let go and re-taught ourselves to breathe the presence of the energy that we are that cannot be destroyed, but only transformed and transforming everything.

  Breathe deep, beloved young and frightened self, and then let go. And you will hold on. So then let go again.

  With all the love and the sky and the land and

  the water,

  Lex

  Black Angel

  Walidah Imarisha

  Under flickering streetlights, A. walked alone for the first time since she saved Tamee. For the first time, he was not waiting across the street for her when she began her nightly sojourn. He wouldn’t admit he was upset, but she knew he was. Tamee had gone to stay over at his mother’s for a holiday. A religious one. A. couldn’t remember which one; she could never keep these humans’ divisions straight. They thought following some book would open the barrier between Heaven and earth for them. It would be laughable if it hadn’t been the cause of so much horrific violence down there.

  Down here, she reminded herself. She had been cast out of Heaven, for trying to help these warring humans. She lived down here with them, and she knew as little about how to ascend as they did.

  A. remembered when she first saw Tamee; surrounded by a gang of racist skinheads, him a beaten, bloody mess in the middle. They attacked him for being Palestinian, for being in New York, for being an antiracist skinhead—take your pick. One thing was sure, they didn’t mean for him to walk away that night.

  A. hadn’t meant to get involved. But Tamee’s eyes trapped hers. His desperate, terrified eyes. She had seen that look so many times before. That look had cost her everything. She would have nothing to do with that look.

  But the neo-Nazis took her moment of reflection for defiance. Three of them peeled off. Menaced toward her. Circled her like jackals. One pulled a knife.

  “You shoulda left when you had the chance, Black bitch.”

  She locked her eyes on them. She knew they couldn’t seriously injure her. They didn’t have the power. But they could hurt her. And she’d felt enough pain for three lifetimes.

  And she just really, really hated boneheads.

  With one fluid motion, A. whipped her trench coat off. Her remaining wing wrapped across her shoulder like a shawl. Tied down by a cord wrapped firmly around her waist. She ripped the cord free, and her wing, black as the night’s sky, snapped back and out with a ten-foot span. Reaching for the lost Heavens.

  “What the fuck?” The closest neo-Nazi to her scrambled backward.

  “Man, it’s some kind of costume or something. Don’t be fucking stupid!” the leader Joker yelled. “Fuck her up!”

  The racist nodded and charged A. She jumped in the air, flapping her wing.

  The neo-Nazi ran right under her, carried by his own momentum. As he passed, she kicked him with a boot to the back of his head. He sprawled on the concrete like spilled milk, unconscious. She lowered herself to the ground slowly, a little off balance. Damn, she grimaced, I really miss my other wing.

  She made short work of the two who bellowed and ran at her, enraged. An elbow to the face. Flurry of punches. Broken nose. Blood. Silence.

  Joker stared at her. Fear and loathing mixed in his eyes. He looked about to rush her. But he must have calculated his odds because instead he turned to run. A. leaped forward. Wrapped her wing around him. Squeezed. Squeezed until he stopped struggling and slumped to the ground, breathing shallowly.

  She surveyed the five men sprawled on the ground, the neo-Nazis and Tamee, who had uncurled himself but otherwise had not moved during the fight. Frozen with amazement and awe. He showed absolutely no fear. He looked as if he was in the presence of something incredible. Exalted. Divine.

  She looked down at Joker. She should just leave them all here for the cops to find and be done with it. This wasn’t her problem. She wouldn’t have gotten involved if they hadn’t pulled her into it.

  A. sighed. She had lived in Harlem long enough to know that sending people into the criminal justice system did nothing but make them more damaged and desperate. She hid in the shadows, saw the police patrolling the streets. Not patrolling. Hunting. There was no mercy behind those shining badges. She watched this scene play out over and over like a flickering film projected onto the city. And she had done nothing each time before. Just waited for the reel to end.

  She kneeled down next to Joker. Like this, he looked so fragile. So breakable. She could end this right now. Do to him what he had planned to do to Tamee. She was an Angel, after all, even if she was fa
llen—she would be merciful.

  A small voice in the recesses of her mind asked, Should I use the Voice? She stared down at this manchild she knew to be a killer. She could smell it on him; this was not his first attempt at taking a life, nor would it be his last if something wasn’t done. She shook her head, trying to clear the thought out, but it clung like a burr.

  When she was an Angel, A. had used her Voice to change hearts, sing humans clean. There were no repercussions as an Angel, with a sanction from the Almighty. It had actually been a joyous communion, and the glow she felt had filled her with even more warmth and peace than she thought possible.

  But God took that, along with everything else. He left her the Voice. But if she used it, she took on these humans’ pain. She tried it only once, when she was first exiled. It was flames licking at her flesh again when she broke through the barrier between Heaven and earth, biting and tearing until she could not take it. She had collapsed; it took days to recover fully. One of the many reasons she avoided interacting with humans when at all possible. She’d already suffered enough pain for them.

  But now that she was faced with this situation, she found she could not just walk away. Even though everything inside her screamed to. She could not shake the look in Tamee’s eyes, the plea for help. Mercy. Grace. It had been a long time since she remembered not only the horror of humans, but the vulnerability.

  A. opened her mouth. She began to sing. It was the most incredible sound Tamee had ever heard. Cool clean waterfalls cascading down into cool green valleys, his mother’s hands cool on his hot forehead, the beauty of a grove of olive trees bright in the sunshine, his whole family, even the ones murdered and lost, gathered arm in arm. Complete peace.

  Golden light shone in A.’s mouth, illuminating through her flesh. She leaned over Joker. The light cracked and rained down on his face. Soaked into his skin. At the same time, a murky darkness crept up the stream of light. Climbed into A. through her mouth. Darkened the glow emanating from her chest. She grimaced and her voice faltered but continued singing.

  Joker’s face, twisted with hate and rage even when unconscious, began to relax. The lines of anger smoothed out. His face became serene. A child curled up in the arms of its mother, protected and safe.

  A. turned and did the same to the others, the light in her chest almost entirely eclipsed by the smoky darkness from their mouths. She could barely reach the one farthest away, had to drag herself over, still singing, but now her voice sounded like that of a small wounded animal.

  When she finished with the last one, she leaned backward. Wavered like a candle in a strong wind. Her head hit the ground with a sickening thud.

  Tamee dragged himself toward her. Reached out toward her slowly, with reverence.

  Her eyes slowly opened, focused on Tamee. A. jerked away, tried to stand up. She failed and only accomplished rolling away onto her side.

  “Are you all right?” Tamee stared down into her face. The color of coffee beans dusted with rose petals. Flawless like glass. Eyes like galaxies.

  “Get off.” Her voice, though thin, was infused with steel. Reached out her hand to try to lift herself up.

  “I—I can’t believe you’re here. You exist. I never thought I would see something—someone like you,” Tamee sputtered.

  A. gave up trying to stand. Lay there breathing shallowly for a while. Reached into her trench coat pocket. Pulled out a cigarette.

  “So you think you know what I am.” The snap of the lighter.

  “Of course I know what you are.” A touch of awe in his voice. “It’s been a minute since I touched the Qu’ran. Years since I went to masjid. But I would know you anywhere. You’re an angel.”

  She paused, and the look of pain on her face had nothing to do with her injuries.

  After a long minute, she growled, “I used to be an Angel. Now I’m just like all of you. Scraping away on the face of this cesspool called a planet until you fucking die.”

  “Wow—um, okay,” Tamee stuttered.

  Silence. Her ragged exhale.

  “Well, thanks. For saving me. I mean. I really appreciate it. Really,” he babbled.

  “Don’t thank me.” Her tone stung more than a slap to the face. “If I’d had my way, I wouldn’t have done shit.”

  Tamee was a little taken aback by her callousness. She didn’t sound much like an angel. For one thing, he had not imagined that an angel would curse. He thought there would be more love and compassion. She wasn’t really at all how he imagined an angel.

  She was a million times better.

  A. reached into her pocket and pulled out some more black cord. She propped herself up against the brick of a building. Gingerly folded her wing forward across her shoulder. Began wrapping the cord around and around, until the wing was strapped down securely.

  “So, what’s your name?” Tamee asked after a minute.

  “Don’t have one.”

  “Well, what did they call you back there? In, you know, in heaven?”

  “Nothing. Angels don’t have names. We know each other. We can—”

  A. had no words to describe the flow of energy. The connected contentment that linked all of the Angels. God. Heaven itself. They were all one. Separate and one. There was a me, but there was no you. No one was separate. Everything was felt. A continuous feedback loop of perfect joy. There were no human words to describe it, because they could not even fathom the depths of beauty that come from being part of God. It made her angry to try to find words to explain the most painful loss she would or could ever have.

  A. barked, “We just feel each other, okay.”

  “Okay, can I just call you Angel then?”

  “No.” She threw her trench coat over her shoulders as she staggered to her feet. She began dragging herself away. Tamee sat, frozen, wanting to yell for her to wait, wanting to say something, anything, that would make her stay. Make her turn around so he could see her face one more time. But he could think of nothing. His heart contracted in his chest as he watched her limp away.

  She stopped, hand on the dirty brick beside her. She turned her head slightly to the right. Enough for him to see her face in profile.

  “You can call me A. Ain’t no Angels in Harlem.”

  • • •

  A. shook her head to clear it as she continued her nightly wanderings through a dark city. Tamee always said she saved him that night. But is it really saving someone if you didn’t mean to? If you didn’t want to?

  A. sighed. Tamee wanted so little. He didn’t even ask for her to love him. Just to treat him … gently. Like the blind sick kitten she found, lifted up by the scruff of the neck and cradled under her trench coat until they got home. Tamee wanted A. to invite him in rather than just leaving the door unlocked as she walked up the stairs, never looking back.

  The kitten died. Despite everything she tried.

  “I couldn’t even save a fucking cat,” she muttered to herself, a sudden pang in her chest.

  She looked up and realized she had walked much farther than she usually did. The Black neighborhood of Harlem had blended into an immigrant one, with bodega signs in at least three different languages, ads for international calling cards plastered on every surface.

  Just as she started to think about turning back, she heard a huge tumult, like a thousand hearts being ripped apart at once. Screams. No matter what language, she knew the sound of desperate prayers hurtled toward an impassive sky.

  Without thinking, A. sprinted towards the noise. She turned the corner to see pure horror. People poured out of a tenement building like a river of tears: families, children, elders. All immigrants. They were shoved, driven, beaten by men in bulletproof vests carrying automatic weapons, the kind usually reserved for military war. The stomp of boots like bombshells exploding. A line of industrial-sized trucks, each branded “Immigration and Customs Enforcement.” ICE. Windows of the trucks like angry slitted eyes on a face full of rage. The trucks engines growled, doors bared like teeth.


  The agents threw people on top of each other into the trucks until they were full, then started on the next. Bodies packed in, shackled together. For the forced passage south to the border. Weeks choking on stagnant and feculent air. Darkness, cries, gasps dying on lips.

  A. had heard about this. Once it had made its arrest quota set for it by Congress, ICE had no use for the undocumented immigrants it snared. Since the economy had bottomed out, all new prison construction ceased, as politicians tried to do triage on the budget. What prisons there were already overflowed with bodies, too often Black and brown. But the ingenious and insidious “waste not, want not” ideology of this system kicked in. After scanning everyone, ICE loaded them into trucks and drove them just across the Mexican border. They sold other humans to the U.S. corporations’ giant factories, maquiladoras, a stone’s throw from the border. The corporations bought these “workers” by the truckload.

  Most didn’t last a year toiling in the unventilated, hundred-degree-plus heat of the dangerous and toxic production lines. Forced to work, night and day. Given food you wouldn’t feed a hog. Each person expendable. Those who ran the sweatshops, the death shops, knew there were always more where they came from.

  A.’s heart sank. This was the embodiment of the evil humans do to one other. Even animals don’t turn on each other unless they have to. Humans do it at the drop of a hat. The slip of a dollar. She shook her head, disgusted.

  ICE must have been at this a while because there were only two dozen or so folks left. How many hours has it taken them to clear this building of hundreds? A. thought desperately. Why hasn’t anyone done something? What about all the people in these surrounding buildings? Why haven’t they called the authorities?

  A reflection of light caught her eye—the luminescence of street light bouncing off the badge of a New York cop. Courtesy Professionalism Respect: the NYPD’s motto.

  The authorities were already here. Watching ICE round up people and send them to their deaths.

  No one was coming to help.

  Out of the corner of A.’s eye, she saw a group of people, in ragged arrowhead formation, charge the NYPD’s perimeter line. As they moved, A. could see eight children protected in the middle, all under the age of ten. One girl, maybe seven, stared back at A. The girl’s smallness emphasized her large eyes, brimming with fear.