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

by Walidah Imarisha

  FRED: Yeah, well, in our tradition if you’re caught with that you will end up being guarded while doing time. [laughter and applause]

  As Sun Ra and Fred nourish their spirits, rollicking frenzied polyrhythms are heard

  FRED: What’s that knocking sound, that beating going on in my head?

  SUN RA: Inner percussion, Mr. Sanford. Vibrations are in you. Bare the tones of life. Be a baritone. The sharps and the flats, the ups and downs. Electrify!

  FRED and SUN RA, singing:

  The sound of joy is enlightenment

  The space fire truth is enlightenment

  Space fire

  sometimes it’s music

  strange mathematic

  s’rhythmic equations

  The sound of thought is enlightenment

  the magic light of tomorrow

  Backwards

  out of the sadness

  forward and onward

  others of gladness

  Enlightenment is my tomorrow

  it has no planes of sorrow

  Hereby,

  my invitation

  I do invite you

  be of my space world

  This song is sound of enlightenment

  the fiery truth of enlightenment

  vibrations

  sent from the space world

  is of the cosmic

  starring dimensions

  Enlightenment is my tomorrow

  it has no planes of sorrow

  Hereby

  my invitation

  I do invite you

  be of my space world

  Hereby

  my invitation

  I do invite you

  be of my space world.

  FRED, singing in his sleep: Hereby our invitation, we do invite you—

  SUN RA, touching Fred on his shoulder: Mr. Sanford. Mr. Sanford.

  FRED, coming out of sleep: Huh? What? Who? [Seeing Sun Ra standing above him, he gives a hard swallow.]

  SUN RA, touching Fred on his shoulder: Mr. Sanford, you were singing to the record in your sleep. I cut it off.

  FRED: You. How did we get back so fast? Where’s Lamont?

  SUN RA: Back from where, Mr. Sanford? And Lamont, China, Jette, and Ethiopia are following right behind. He told me to come on inside the house and meet you. I was knocking at the door. You didn’t really answer, you just started singing.

  FRED: So it was all just a dream?

  SUN RA: I suppose so. We missed you at the show so when our set was over, I insisted on still meeting you.

  FRED: So you don’t want me to take you to my leader or anything? Even though he’s kind of tied up with some tapes. [laughter and applause]

  SUN RA, light laugh: No, Mr. Sanford, I don’t need to see your leader.

  Lamont walks in the door with China, Jette, Ethiopia, and Rollo.

  CHINA: Oh, hey, Mr. Sanford. I see you two have met.

  SUN RA: Yeah, but I think I gave him a bit of a fright at first.

  LAMONT: Let me guess: my pops had one of his routine heart attacks? [laughter]

  FRED: As a matter of fact, no. It’s just that Sun Ra had these two giant birds, and we all got on this space— Oh, forget it. It was just a dream anyway.

  Final Scene

  Fred and Lamont are sitting as Fred relaxes, finishing a drink.

  LAMONT: Well, Pop, it was good having Sun Ra at the house.

  FRED: Yes it was, son.

  LAMONT: Oh, yeah, almost forgot: Sun Ra told me to tell you that perhaps someday we can ride rhythmic equations and all meet up at the Black Sanctuary. [Fred spits out his drink.] He said you would understand what he was talking about. [laughter]

  FRED, swallowing, his hand to his chest: Black Sanctuary?

  Fred looks at Lamont in shock and Lamont gestures confusion.

  Credit music comes in.

  Runway Blackout

  Tara Betts

  Therianthropes. That’s technically what they called them, but they weren’t just throwbacks to Circe or Skin-walkers. They were the replacements for the supermodel. No more worries about weight complaints, skin discoloration, or scars. In fact sometimes, an entire magazine only required one model for all of the issue’s glossy pages.

  Where did it start, you ask? Well, as people started to date more interracially, whatever that means, different genes started popping up. Not just dark-skinned people with green eyes or white-looking people with Afros or albinos with features like elegant African masks and almond-shaped eyes. It wasn’t those surface changes that mattered anymore. It was the genetic traits that no one expected, bigger than illnesses like sickle cell, Tay-Sachs, or Tourette’s. There were the secrets that people had managed to hide from their children and spouses and had started to fade out, but the splicing of gene pools somehow revived these traits—traits of shape shifting.

  This generation of therianthropes was playful. They weren’t only changing into birds, cats, or their scarier cousins, lycanthropes, prowling through horror movie history as werewolves. They started appearing in kindergartens across the country at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Their teachers would often discover them changing in the corner into the twins of their playmates or shrinking down to beige rabbits to rapidly twitch their noses at class pets. No one knew what to do except try to make the children feel welcome. Some people just pretended they didn’t see it for fear of being labeled insane. Some parents got to know their children’s high jinks. There was sitting in on classes for friends during their free periods at school and even eavesdropping like a fly on the wall. But there were no angry mobs and burning torches. These tykes weren’t carted off to secret laboratories.

  As those children grew up, they had children of their own, but the thing that usually made them stand out was their unusual beauty. Therianthropes radiated with healthy hair, glowing skin, perfect teeth, and shapely, muscled bodies.

  It seemed to be little surprise that many of them went on to become models without the trappings of drugs, anorexia, bulimia, aging, weight gain, or attitudes shaped by diva pretenses. They looked at modeling like a regular job, had children, read books, and went grocery shopping like everyone else because they could easily slip into disguise. Now the myth was that it became progressively more difficult for them to return to their original form, whatever it was. However, whatever their original form was, all therianthropes shared one common trait: they all had black ancestry. Because of this, they felt more comfortable in that type of body than any other. Grace Jones, Denzel Washington, Jay-Z, Oprah, Dorothy Dandridge, Eddie Murphy—you name it, as long as some vestiges of the melanin were intact.

  I worked for the highest-paid model among the therianthropes who dominated the modeling industry. Her name was Voile.

  When Voile came along everything changed, and everything eventually went back to the way of old—models starving themselves and sabotaging other young women who wanted to walk down the catwalks.

  Voile had been on the cover of every magazine, including Vogue (even the Italian and French editions), Harper’s Bazaar, Glamour, Elle, Essence, Marie Claire, and Nylon. At one point, Voile even posed for KING and Smooth magazines, and toy stores carried dolls with Voile’s likeness.

  I came across old press photos for those dolls when I was cleaning out my attic recently. I still have so many files, photos, and articles about Voile after years of working for her. Usually people grow to resent being an assistant, because they are treated subserviently, even less than human. It wasn’t that way with Voile. She knew well the dangers of treating anyone as less than human. On shoots, she made sure they provided two meals, one for her and one for me. She always said “please” and “thank you.” She never barked at me or flung papers at me. “Dawn, what do you think of this?” was her favorite question to ask me, raising her left eyebrow. Then I knew she was up to some sort of plot. She’d ask me what I wanted to do when I left here, because I was too talented to stay. She was traveling constantly, and a perpetual flow of peop
le called, emailed, and wrote to her, so I sorted through her mail, logged calls, and filtered all the messages.

  When she was home, she was fond of green tea and watching documentaries, surrounded by stacks of books like small piers among the sea of pillows in so many colors—orange, purple, brown, yellow. Curls of smoke snaked from sandalwood incense toward the sunlight of her half-opened curtains. Voile would look out of the window or stare intently at a documentary about Jamaica, Africa, or historical figures across the globe. Sometimes, if I caught her during a pivotal scene, I’d see her shake her head and sigh.

  Whether she was working or not, Voile always stayed black, even if her shade or shape changed. When she wasn’t shooting, she wore her hair as silver as razors. The streaks throughout it changed color frequently, whether she morphed it into an Afro, dreadlocks, or bone straight. Teenage girls were dying their hair white to imitate the silver and adding a streak. When Voile first heard about this, I remember her insisting, “This is just one way to see me. There are so many ways to see ourselves and see each other.”

  It was this kind of aphorism that made her agency more and more nervous. Her agent Liz thought she was losing her mind or going militant. Voile simply said she was lifting the curtain on what she always thought. No one was saying what was the problem. The magazines were still requesting and using therianthropes as blonde, blue-eyed models, even though there were fewer and fewer people who looked like that all. Voile kept insisting that people should look more like themselves, an act people deny and cringe away from to this day. Voile was one of the few therianthropes who refused to change her color.

  Voile often threw gatherings for therianthropes at her New York penthouse. The warm evenings filled with laughter, tinkling glasses, and the comforting murmur of fountains. I’d check the guest list, catering, decorations, the night’s musicians or DJs, book cabs for departing guests.

  The parties were always festive and bright, but one spring evening Voile seemed more serious than usual. This night differed from all the rest. Voile hosted the largest gathering she’d ever held. She stood at the center of the loft-size living room and chimed against her glass to call everyone’s attention:

  You’re probably all wondering why I brought you all here tonight. What makes tonight so special, so distinct from all our other gatherings: I have a proposal, or a challenge, rather, to issue to every one of us in this room. I’ve heard of the exploitations and degradations we endure on these seemingly endless shoots: the racial slurs, and even the groping from those who seem to think therianthropes are nothing more than moldable clay. We have more dignity than that. We have to assert our claim as human beings who warrant some respect. I say we remain our true selves, our beautiful selves, the selves most comfortable for our bodies. I propose we avoid shape shifting and taxing our physical endurance. I propose each of us stay black, a sort of going on strike, if you will.

  The clicking of heels toward the door by some of the party’s attendants was not lost on Voile. She kept talking, as I checked off the names of guests who stayed. She had known some of them would leave.

  Some of those who remained lobbed questions at her:

  “How do you think we’ll make money when our ability to shape-shift is our greatest asset?”

  “What about the benefits that some of us earn in spite of the occasional discriminatory moment?”

  “What if I like looking however I want on a particular day?”

  “What’s wrong with not wanting to be black?”

  It was when she heard that last question that she seethed:

  I cannot even count how many of you have come here crying to my door or called me complaining about your mistreatment. Vivian, what about the time you had to leave the shoot because the photographer said he wanted to “walk inside your skin”? Malik, what about the time the director asked if you could change the size of anything on your body? Georgie, how many magazines have had you take on the shape of every damn living thing in an entire issue? They may have paid you all well, but believe me: they are making far, far more! I think it’s time we show the industry what a blackout on the runway can look like.

  Some of the guests looked intently into their wineglasses and shifted their feet. None of them wanted to speak, but finally Malik asked what week.

  “Fashion Week, of course. Fashion Week!”

  A few more people walked away, uncomfortable with risking the paychecks that had made them rich, but the majority stayed. Even as they felt indigestion from the fruit, whole-grain crackers, and cheese mixing with their own dissent, they knew Voile was right.

  Fashion Week was one month away. Finally it was decided: everyone would arrive in gloves, trench coats, hats, sunglasses, and especially their black skins.

  • • •

  Bryant Park bristled with camera flashes, and excited throngs huddled behind velvet ropes. The enormous tent housing the runways and seating areas made it seem like a royal entourage had set up camp in midtown Manhattan. Night came and the models began arriving. Trench coats filed in, while some of the early therianthropes began shedding layers, too heavy for the summer warmth amplified by the incandescent lights.

  When it became clearer that there would be no shape shifting tonight, the uproar began. Hair stylists complained that they could not do certain types of hair. The makeup artists had no color palettes to flatter the models’ dark skins. Even designers flapped about their lines long having been deemed NUDS—Non-Urban Dictates—since black people couldn’t wear or afford these clothes anyway. Like many other fashion events in the past, they had planned for a much whiter night. All the backstage staff complained until the therianthropes threatened to leave outright. Every single one of the catty comments was silenced, and no one changed to a shade lighter than a paper bag.

  When the staff finally acquiesced, the models had just enough time to coordinate their looks. When they began their struts down the catwalk, the applause thundered across the tent and outside toward Forty-Second Street. The flashes brightened more than usual. And the gasps and murmurs grew louder as the audience realized it wasn’t a conceptual presentation for one line.

  Every single model in one of the biggest fashion shows in the world was black. The attendees, fashionistas, and industry heads were used to a few black models—maybe one or two in each line, or even an occasional black designer—but this unending parade of black models was stunning.

  The designers tried not to panic. They just pretended it was part of the plan. They knew this Fashion Week would generate more publicity for all their collections, even though the reviewers were already mumbling about reverse racism. Some of heads of clothing lines were mumbling behind closed doors about drops in sales because their clothes would seem less “universal,” whatever that meant.

  The models walked elegantly, fierce and flawless, feeling for the first time that their careers were a little less zoo-like, and the camera clicks sounded less like locks being bolted. Some of them channeled Beverly Johnson, Donyale Luna, Alek Wek, Naomi Campbell, Tyra Banks, Iman, Tyson Beckford, Lupita Nyong’o, and even a young Nichelle Nichols to make a sort of shape-shifting homage to models and beauties who came before therianthropes dominated the industry. The press ate it up, with front-page coverage, but the majority of the models themselves were silent for days, weeks, and some even months after.

  Voile, however, didn’t wait long at all. She thought the blackout had made a clear point. She visited her agency two days later, after she’d waited in vain for her phone to ring. Her tension climbed as the elevator doors opened on her floor, and then she was shocked to see the office completely vacant. No staff, no phones, no desks, just a few scraps of paper and a couple of abandoned cubicles. Most of the other agencies shut down too and reconstituted themselves under new names in an attempt to avoid arguments with the press and clients who ran multimillion-dollar fashion lines. Contracts were not renewed for therianthropes. Political pundits railed against the mutant freaks that had taken jobs from “clas
sically beautiful people,” and some demanded that laws represent the rights of people who did not have the unfair advantage of shape shifting. When non-therianthrope women saw an opening to reenter modeling, they hoped the sentiment around Fashion Week would get them a foot back in the door.

  Voile had thought that her plan would show everyone how vibrant, vital, and necessary therianthropes were in their natural form. What she witnessed, and not just from her silent phone and appointment book scored with cancellations, told her otherwise. Most of her peers stopped speaking to her. Some of the therianthropes created completely new identities, so no one knew they could change, and continued modeling. Others started entirely new careers.

  Fortunately Voile had paid for her penthouse and established investments for herself. She knew beauty always ebbed with time. There was never a made-for-TV movie, a documentary, or a tell-all book recounting her story. She had been the highest-paid therianthrope model of all time, and she faded from the pages of history, except for a one-page spread in Essence that came and went.

  Eventually Voile had to let me go just to cut down on expenses. There wasn’t much for me to do any more. She gave me six months’ severance pay and a generous bonus. Still, it was a painful parting for me—I had loved working for her. She had a good sense of humor, she was generous with my salary, and she’d provided anything I needed to get the job done. Voile had always trusted my abilities, and I know she was committed to taking a stand. I wanted her stand to impact this industry, but her courage did not protect her career.

  She called me into her library, an immaculate nook with books alphabetized by the authors’ last names. She’d had this room dusted every day, even if it was just by me with a damp paper towel delicately polishing leaves and shelves. This room was sacred to her. I never understood where she found the time to read with her nonstop schedule, but I knew she had read almost every book lining the walls. She sat, surrounded by plump jade plants and regal snake plants.

  You know my name’s not Voile, right? Voile’s the French word for “veil.” My great-great-great-grandmother was named Crown because she was the first child born to her parents after slavery. She was able to shift before she was two years old. Their little princess had a power that people insisted was made up by storytellers.