* * *
Obviously, my plan required soldiers, so I was desperate to regain my brethren’s confidence. Used my father. Most knew he was a runaway, a true runagate who had fled, disappeared, never seen again. I told them my mother had shared stories of my father with me. His promise to return at night and steal away with wife and son he dearly loved, she said. As a young man I had waited, anxiously anticipating the great day, the dark of night when he would arrive and carry us north to freedom. Gradually, I grew impatient—I explained to Will, Hark, and the rest—and became a runaway like my father.
Had no notion, I told them, of where I was headed, of what might lie in store for me, but whatever transpired, I assured them, I knew I was seeking my father. Wherever he abided, no matter how far away, no matter under what conditions, no matter what had prevented him from returning for us—captivity, dangers, even death—I believed I could run, run, run and one day I would join him.
Didn’t find him, I told them. My father had vanished into a howling wilderness, so to speak. I was a fugitive, heart full of despair, loneliness, disappointment, and my sorrow, my yearning drove me back here. Here to reunite with my mother and wait for him again.
* * *
Thus, my brothers, in my fashion, I’m still seeking him here where my father has walked the land, cleared forests. Only here could I listen to my mother’s stories, to stories in which other people recalled him or others like him. Here where he’d sowed and reaped, tended beasts, drank the water, smelled the air, wept for missing family, friends, sang the old songs you and I still sing together, I said to them. I stayed on this so-called plantation waiting, waiting, though part of me remained a runaway, runagate like my father, at liberty, no one’s property, waiting until a voice announced, Now’s the time, a new burning day of both darkness and light.
* * *
The voice speaks to us now. A fire burns, now, this very moment. Wait no longer, the voice exhorts, you must rise up, body and spirit. You, all your brethren. Reason together, rally together, the voice demands, now, today. All of us—men, women, runagates—we must seek out our fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, enslavers, murderers, strangers, ones loved, ones hated, invisibles, accused, accusers, prisoners, jailers, ourselves, the forgotten, forgiven and unforgiven, the forsaken and, Oh what a morning, Oh, what a meeting it will be, the old song promises, song we still sing, singing as we seek.
* * *
My confession ending now as it started. Alphabet letters (A–Z) spelling my story, telling it (A–Z). Ending. Beginning (A–Z).
EMPIRE
* * *
By now Empire has sorted out the sole distinction that truly matters—whether citizens are Givers or Gratefuls—and prohibits reference to specious categories (gender, race, religion, nationality, etc.), which had once differentiated and divided humans into warring camps.
Today a crew of Gratefuls can feel free to halt work and sprawl gratefully in the shade to consume their daily rations—bulky, pulpy pills they chew and swallow—grateful for energy the pills replenish, dry pills that miraculously brew liquid inside their bodies as a substitute for water, water long inaccessible to Gratefuls and rumored extinct. Pills generously distributed to all pods of Gratefuls each morning and night so no Grateful starves or dies of thirst or is lonely when a Grateful’s turn to rest while other Gratefuls labor. Waste Not, Want Not, printed in large, bright-blue letters on each packet of pills, an admonition probably addressed less to Gratefuls than to Givers, since the skill of reading a lost art among Gratefuls.
Gratefuls talk. Talk their gift, their delight, the source, some Givers say, of perhaps too much pride—that endless talking all Gratefuls adept at from birth, it seems, silently conversing with their devices. Bowed heads hide their faces, conceal emotions that must be streaming constantly across their features as they engage in unspoken conversations, fascinated by whatever they see or punch into devices inexhaustibly patient, inexhaustibly responsive with infinite reams of pictures and games to provide answers to silent queries, devices that enhance or chide or channel endless curiosity Gratefuls appear to possess about something. Curiosity so insatiable, it’s said, they exercise it even during sleep, their dreams operating as efficiently as their devices to animate silent conversations.
Each Grateful no doubt profoundly grateful for privacy which silence ensures, privacy bestowing license to say whatever they choose to themselves, no matter how outrageous or shy or absurd or irrelevant or lazy or daring or malicious. Or to say silently nothing at all if they choose. Generous license granted by Givers, just as Givers grant moments of pause, of leisure to Gratefuls to sprawl tranquilly in the imaginary shade of treelike art that lines a road they are cleaning, a road itself art, a decorative imitation because no use for it except to encourage Gratefuls to believe. To daydream that roads might lead elsewhere and that Gratefuls are able to go there.
Gratefuls grateful for the gift of art. Gift of pretending that ironclad connections forged by the Givers do not forever lock place to place, task to task, person to person, person to device. Why would anyone wish to believe imaginary work or imagined words soundlessly spoken into a device might actually construct a different Empire than the only one necessary and true.
By now we all accept the fruitful exchange between Givers and Gratefuls as permanent. As permanent as the way time moves. Time that’s eternal though also different, moment by moment. Like expressions that play across a Grateful’s face while it talks to a device. Or like, Givers say, rivers that used to rush past in those days when rivers were common, rivers flowing constantly, never the same water twice. Never still, changing always.
* * *
Though once upon a time, Givers warn us, a Grateful, ungrateful for tasks assigned that day, mistook the daily exchange with Givers for a river that is always the same river, same water stepped into last time, stepped into every time, and cursed sameness with a grimace. That Grateful’s face, emptied momentarily of its smile, broadcast invisible words almost loud enough for another Grateful nearby, who happened to be idle at precisely that nanosecond, to believe it had overheard. A grumble it tried to hear again in the other Grateful’s eyes. As if by gazing at another’s eyes it might see what its own eyes see when they watch the living and the dead. Living and dead who move faster than the speed of light. The living, the dead, the light dancing then disappearing into utter darkness that moves swifter than anything.
Grateful eyes made to open and shut and mind their own business and sleep and welcome darkness, but the Grateful searching for a grumble in another Grateful’s face, started to wonder how it might feel to be lost or found in the other’s darkness, the other’s conversation, to feel another’s device throbbing in its hands, another’s ghost whisperings in its brain. And that wondering confused it. But not for long. Because, as Givers say, life is not long, and in the case of both confused Gratefuls, the usual allotment of life cut even shorter when the curious one communicated to its device a desire to experience again another’s grumble. As if a grumble could form again, bright and blue as letters on packets of seeds.
As if Empire wouldn’t intervene.
YELLOW SEA
* * *
Did you see The Yellow Sea.
* * *
First time I watched I was in bed and Yellow Sea unsettled me. Couldn’t fall asleep. Googled reviews to keep myself company. One mentioned Truffaut’s desire for movies that express the agony and joy of making cinéma. Several noted Yellow Sea’s homage to Taxi Driver. One reminded me Travis Bickle the name of the cabbie Robert De Niro plays in Scorsese’s film. Plenty of information, but no review told me why sleep wouldn’t come after I watched Yellow Sea.
* * *
In Yellow Sea a half-Korean, half-Chinese taxi driver who lives in China smuggles his young, pretty wife across the Yellow Sea to find work in Korea. She doesn’t return, and the desperate, heartbroken driver crosses the sea to find her. Dies trying after a series of bloody, violent encounters with gan
gsters and cops. A thriller chosen randomly to be a sleeping pill, but it turned out to be a movie like Precious and keeps me awake.
* * *
Did you see Precious.
* * *
Yellow Sea and Precious are like the bubbles with words inside that began to appear right before a black girl set herself on fire and burned up in the street.
* * *
Did you see the girl burn.
* * *
A terrible thing to put on TV, but they did and how could anybody not look. One of those rare sights, rare moments life stops because you stop thinking about what will happen next. All the information you will ever need right there in front of your eyes. Too much in fact. Much more than you want, but you know you better not miss any of it. A black girl burning in the street is your life on fire. Beginning, middle, end in an instant. You are a shadow that wiggles inside the flaming pyre of her. The two of you are dancing, a word you try not to think but think anyway. When the girl finishes dancing she will be gone, her world over and maybe yours, too. Nothing could tear your eyes away from the screen.
* * *
She shudders as she washes herself in gasoline. Gas pools at her feet. Big butt splashes down in it. Miracle in all that wetness of a dry matchbook, a dry match and it strikes perfectly first time, last time, every time. Huddled shape of her shivers. A large, dark girl inside flames. Fire shrinks her until she keels over and she’s gone. Gone like the cabdriver’s wife. Like those monks in saffron robes in Vietnam. Like the taxi driver splashed into the Yellow Sea. Later you ask yourself, ask friends and strangers, Where were you. Not where were you during replays like replays of the Twin Towers on fire, buckling, collapsing again and again on TV. Where were you when she was alive. Alive once and burning to death.
* * *
During the week before the black girl burned to death, bubbles had begun to glide across the sky. Large cloud-like bubbles remarkable as the movies Yellow Sea and Precious. Those films remarkable in their way as the bubbles. At first only a few people noticed transparent clouds passing by with words inside. Then rumors became viral awareness. Imagine capsules in comic books floating above heads of animals or human beings to indicate they are talking and thinking. Or picture fluttering banners of words—a new movie, a Bible verse, bargains at Kmart—towed by blimps or prop-driven planes flying just above the tallest buildings. Except banners I’m trying to depict required no aircraft, no strings. A mystery how words stayed aloft. As mysterious as their source. Though some of us knew Jimmy Baldwin, author of many of the messages.
* * *
Clouds temporary as those tiny bubbles of air that rise and pop on a pond’s surface. Clouds with words inside that pulsate and dance yet remain the same. Words visible from anywhere a person happens to stand as a cloud passes. Passing by slow enough for the slowest, barely literate readers to sound them out or popping, disappearing as quickly as swift readers peruse them. Same cloud doing same work for everybody. Efficient as death.
* * *
A month or so ago during my regular walk or jog along the East River, I was confronted by a mini-billboard mounted on a dolly with fat, stumpy tires. Wanted for Sexual Assault/Black Male/Light Skin/17–25 Years Old. A phone number at the bottom to report suspects. Bubble/clouds affected me like that sign. Reminded me of immense power surrounding me, power misused, abused far too often these days, so I decided to terminate my walk and hurried to the local precinct to complain. Insisted that I needed to speak to someone in charge, not fill out forms, and eventually a Lieutenant Orasco arrived. I demanded immediate removal of the blinking billboard. Its message dangerous and offensive, I said. A classic instance of racial profiling. Instead of aiding an investigation, the sign would further alienate fair-minded citizens of all colors from the police. Shaking his head, Lieutenant Orasco dismissed me and my assessment. Information on the billboard accurate, sir. So what’s wrong, sir. His eyes flashed the same challenge as his words, but I was already out the precinct door, wondering who I could convince to help me roll the dolly to the iron fence bordering the river and hike it over. Imagining the splash.
* * *
Instead of more attempts to describe cloud/bubbles, here’s what was inside the first one I saw:
EMPIRE NEVER INTENDED THIS TESTIMONY
TO BE HEARD
Only two words inside the next one I noticed:
PRECIOUS LOVE
And seeing that cloud like hearing an old gospel song.
I had met a Precious in Precious, the movie bearing her name, about a very large, quite dark teenage girl, unloved, unprotected by her mother, abused by a father who gave her AIDS and two babies. Whether or not we’ve seen the movie, all of us who live in this vast city encounter everywhere, every day, girls whose names we probably don’t know who look like Precious. Some of us acquainted with a Precious. Some of us love or loved by a Precious. Some are Precious. Anyway, I steal the name and give it to the girl who burns in the street. Point being if a girl possesses a name and we know it, maybe less chance we will forget or forgive.
* * *
Over and over we watch the girl burn on TV like we watch a president shot again and again in Dallas. First the girl smiles shyly into the camera, shivering as she slops gasoline all over herself. Puddle forms on the sidewalk, and she plops her supersize booty down in it. Sits buddha style. We hold our breath each time, waiting for the match. If we know her name, perhaps we can get her attention. Precious. No-no-no, Precious. Don’t do it, Precious. You can almost hear the match strike before you hear a loud Whooussh as fire explodes. Fire snatching her. Tongues of flame leap, lap, lick, snap, whip. Precious in the middle of dancing flames.
* * *
So much of her, big and black as the child is, a long time burning. How long. Too long. Too sad. Warning label pops up on TV, but who could shut off the set or turn their eyes away.
IF I HOLD MY PEACE, THE VERY STONES
WILL CRY OUT
It wasn’t the words in the air that finally brought us into the streets. It was Precious burning. TV called it a riot. Said woogies rioting because ghetto woogies have nothing better to do. Said it was drugs. Thugs. Drums. Said woogies copycatting African and Arab woogies tearing up their own countries couple springs ago. Said greedy bankers. Said woogies like to burn each other up. Said not enough prisons, not enough cops, too much welfare. Said it was because a man our color in the White House.
WANTED THE WORLD TO SEE
WHAT THEY DID TO MY BABY
Those words I saw in a cloud not Baldwin’s. They were spoken by Emmett Till’s mother, Mamie Till, as she stood beside a glass-topped coffin that displayed her son’s mutilated face.
* * *
I want the world to see what youall did to me, said Precious, when she stepped down off the movie screen and set herself on fire.
* * *
Riot, or whatever it was, starts when a handful of mad, sad woogies pile into the street. Then bucketfuls of black woogies and some white woogies, too. We stop traffic, break store windows, turn over cars, set fires, liberate shit. Wave signs, torches, lynch ropes. Holler and scream for blood or peace or war or love or food or respect. Demand whatever it is we don’t have and want and understand quite well we are never supposed to get. Time for a change is what we shout. Way past time, if truth be told. And change got to start with biting the hand that claims to feed us. Hand that fed poor Precious to death.
* * *
Whole lot of us out in the street that day got burned up almost as bad as poor Precious. We had waited too long. They were ready for us. Licked their chops. They had tanker trucks to spray us with nerve gas. Choppers to lay walls of fire from flamethrowers strapped like dildos up under their potbellies. Cops in blue helmets, SWAT team cops in ski masks, cops inside armored personnel carriers. Half the peacekeepers whose color I could make out colored like me so it hurt worse when they ran over us, ground our flesh and bones to brown oatmeal running alongside bright red blood running in the gutt
ers.
* * *
After a while you couldn’t see shit out there. Just smoke. Just sirens and glass breaking, niggers running, hollering, tear gas thick as Alaga corn syrup. As if we need more tears. Like we ain’t been crying our eyes out twenty-four-seven ever since we got kidnapped and dumped in this wilderness. Rivers of tears. Rivers of blood.
* * *
Brother come flying past me swore he took down one of the peacekeepers. No doubt about it, he shouted, his PLO head rag trailing over his shoulder. Big ole gorilla, he said, but got my Lil David stone up under his blue helmet. Splat. Split his blue nose, blacked both his blue eyes, drew blue blood. Splat. Sucker won’t be stealing people’s blues no more.
* * *
Storm of stones flying like we used to fly Frisbees back in the day at sit-ins and march-ins on college lawns. TV says so much progress today the colored ex-president’s kids and nice colored wife got Frisbees, a cute dog, their own large green lawn to play on. Hope they do. Hope they got every damn thing in the whole wide world they desire. TV says some people deserve it all. Might as well be some of us, right. Far as the rest of us concerned, we ain’t got shit. Got nothing. And no damn body deserves nothing.
* * *
That’s why we out here, Precious. What they did to you, what you do to yourself, dear heart, exactly why we are out here dying.
American Histories Page 15