Shoes on his feet!
Freedom, he imagined, could be some fancy thing if done correctly, papers in hand, watching, quietly, in deference, the disappointment on the faces of the catchers after he told them that his massa had let him be a person, finally. Joy was never meant to be boxed in. It was supposed to stretch out all over creation, like the snow Timothy had just finished talking about. Just like that.
A burning sensation shot through him. He was unsure how the word let had slipped its way into his most private of places, places even Isaiah had only glimpsed. He was too close; that was the problem. For too long, the edge had rubbed right up against him, grabbed his stuff, and licked his cheek for salt. These were the channels for contamination, and he wasn’t sure that a split could reverse the ailment. He had already been exposed. There was no one to tell him how to cleanse the body or gather the right herbs for a healing ritual, no one to show him how not to be a danger to himself or those he loved. It wasn’t his fault, though. He didn’t choose this. It chose his mother, so his selection was umbilical. And he didn’t even have the pleasure of knowing her name. So he gave her one, too: Olivia.
Yes.
He liked that.
Timothy kissed his neck and, for a moment, Samuel thought it was Isaiah. He almost allowed his head to fall back and his eyes to roll to the whites. At the corner of his mouth, dribble had just begun to glisten, his arms nearly ready to embrace. Isaiah would do that very thing: start softly, coaxing. Maybe that’s who Timothy learned it from.
Everything was similar except the smell. No matter how long Isaiah shoveled manure or turned hay or lugged pails of slop, beneath all of that, he always smelled like a coming rain, the kind that would make you lift your head in anticipation. Open your mouth and wait. Because of that, Samuel could roam free in those meanwhiles, touch the veins of leaves, build pillows out of moss, drink dew from the palms of his hands. This, too, was a kind of freedom, for it sought to nourish rather than make the act of living a crime. Who built this? Samuel asked Isaiah as they flew through the woods and smiled at robins as they passed by. We did, Isaiah said. Then the sunset let loose purple and hummed its way into the ground.
Isaiah’s breath smelled like milk and his body curled snugly into Samuel’s. Moonlight did all the talking. It just happened. Neither of them chased the other and yet each was surrounded by the other. Samuel liked Isaiah’s company, which had its own space and form. Samuel knew for sure because he had touched its face and smiled, licked every bit of calm from its fingers and giggled. Then, without either of them realizing what had happened, it snuck up on them—the pain. They could be broken at any time. They had seen it happen so often. A woman carted off. Tied to a wagon screaming at the top of her lungs and her One risking the whip to chase after her, knowing damn well she couldn’t save him, but if she could just stay near him for a few more seconds, his image wouldn’t fade as quickly as it would have had she not challenged death.
No one was the same after the Snap. Some sat in corners smiling at voices. Others pulled out their eyelashes one by one, making their eyes seem to open wider. The rest worked until they collapsed, not just collapsed in the field, but collapsed in on themselves until there was nothing left but a pile of dust waiting to be blown away by the wind.
This is why Isaiah and Samuel didn’t care, why they clung to each other even when it was offensive to the people who had once shown them a kindness: it had to be known. And why would this be offensive? How could they hate the tiny bursts of light that shot through Isaiah’s body every time he saw Samuel? Didn’t everybody want somebody to glow like that? Even if it could only last for never, it had to be known. That way, it could be mourned by somebody, thus remembered—and maybe, someday, repeated.
Well, shit. If their fate was to be found in two piles of dust that would be swept up and scattered, then damn it, let there be a storm beforehand. Let the blood run down and the heat, too. If the Snap was to come, at least they would have known what it was like to be each other, be really in each other, before the brokenness was brought to bear.
This was the balm. And this was the thing that made the ax necessary even though silly ol’ Isaiah didn’t wish to carry his own. Everything was worth it for just a few more seconds of Isaiah’s singing, so it wouldn’t fade so quickly when they parted.
Timothy smelled wrong. Not exactly like whips and chains, although that was there, too, underneath the softness and assurances. Mostly, he smelled like hound dog, fresh out of the river, splashing against fish, wagging its way back onto shore.
“Did you hear me, Sam? I said that once my father is dead, I will set you and Isaiah free.”
But this was a trick of surrender and Samuel refused to buckle. What would they have to wait, forty, eighty seasons? Hope that they survived, intact, the hours; weren’t sold off, maimed, or murdered, whimsically, beforehand? Worst of all, trust a toubab to keep his word—in exchange for what? How many times must they lie with him, endure his affections, however sweet, rise with the smell of hound upon them for a time that might be mirage or fleeting? Whoa, then, man. Whoa!
“I admit,” Timothy whispered to him, “I have much to learn still. But I know this: You are a people. Love is possible.”
Never ask a man his thoughts before he has had an opportunity to come. He’s liable to say whatever is expedient, whatever shall remove obstacles to his orgasm. Speak to him after, when he has been released from the throes, after the spasms have subsided, and his breathing has returned to normal. Wait until he has rested and wishes to scour the previous act from his body and mind. Ask him then, when calm has crept back into his lungs, for that’s when it’s most likely that the truth will prevail. Samuel, however, refused to shoulder such risk. The heat rose up in his back and spread like wings. Malice couldn’t be found anywhere except in the faint smile curling upon his lips. Do it, man! Go on and do it!
“You can look at me, Sam. It’s okay.”
Samuel knew there were two things you never looked in the eye: dogs and toubab. Both will bite, and only from one of those wounds is there a chance to heal. He had never wanted to be with Isaiah more than now. He and Isaiah shared each other. He thought Timothy should know.
“They said we was something dirty, but it won’t nothing like that at all. It was easy, really. He the only one who understand me without me saying a word. Can tell what I thinking just by where I looking—or not looking. So when he look in on my inside . . . the first time anybody or anything ever touch me so, everything in my head wanna say nah, but nothing in my body let me.”
Timothy stepped back and looked at Samuel.
“I understand. If nobody else understands, I do,” Timothy said.
He touched Samuel’s face. Timothy’s smile was telling. It confirmed for Samuel everything that his intuition had already revealed: he didn’t have to be able to read to know that toubab were blank pages in a book bound, but unruly. They needed his people for one thing and one thing only: To be the words. Ink-black and scribbled unto the forever, for they knew that there was no story without them, no audience to gasp at the drama, rejoice at the happy ending, to applaud, no matter how unskillfully their blood was used. The first word was power, but Samuel planned to change that. He bent his fingers to tell a tale that would make the audience scramble for cover.
“Maybe tomorrow you and Isaiah come and visit me together?” Timothy asked softly.
Samuel snapped.
It was as though the room had become untenably wide, like he had all the room in the world to move, to spread limbs, to jump, to hold his chest in glee. From the first time since walking into that house—they called it big, but it, too, was empty, which made its crimes easy to discover.
In this wideness, Timothy shrank in his view, but his pitiful entreaties stretched to meet the size of the room blow for blow. This made Samuel catch a fever that ignited his forehead. The shape of his fury, because that is
what his face became, was a scythe: curved, sharp enough to slit the throat, its edge pointing mercilessly back at its wielder. But that didn’t matter. It never does.
He reared back and his fist came quicker than he thought it could. He knocked Timothy to the floor and the thud tipped the lantern over. Timothy let out a small whimper. Samuel reached behind his back, snatched the ax from its hiding place, and with one quick swipe, he put it deep into Timothy’s temple.
He watched as the blood sputtered and ran down Timothy’s face. It began to form a puddle on the floor. There was no scream, not even a whisper, but the face contorted and the mouth moved, tried to form, maybe, a question. Samuel turned away. He knew that Timothy, in his last moments, was confused, needed to have an answer, and Samuel would ensure that he would never get one. In that small way, this charming young man who fancied himself blameless would know a fraction of what it felt like. Haints did. Countless people whose voices could be heard even if their bodies were nowhere to be found, who followed them all around and would give them no rest because they, themselves, couldn’t rest. The tiny word left on their lips made rest impossible and so they pecked at them not realizing that they had the same question, too.
The body jerked for much longer than Samuel anticipated. Finally, there was a sound that came out of Timothy’s mouth, not words, not the question that Samuel would certainly ignore, but more like rainwater spilling into a hole. Then, suddenly, his body stopped moving altogether and the expression of agony was gone and he looked more peaceful, like someone sleeping with his eyes open.
Samuel stooped down. He had never looked this closely into Timothy’s face. It was the first time he had the chance to study a toubab’s face without having to worry about the chaos such a prideful move could bring. Everyone made such a big deal about those eyes, blue as noon sky. Samuel didn’t understand it. They just looked empty to him, bottomless and liable to suck up anything that waded into them. He couldn’t see himself in them. Isaiah had said the same thing, but never with the conviction that Samuel thought it should have.
He left the ax where it was embedded and he stood up finally, rose himself off of his first kill, astonished by how hard he imagined it would be, but how simple it actually was. He thought that he would be plagued by guilt and shame, but he actually felt like he had, in the tiniest of ways, righted a wrong. He would need to claim more bodies before he could feel proud about his actions, though, and there were more bodies to be had. But he was satisfied that if he had died that very moment, he would have forced them to pay at least a portion of the debt owed. They would have imagined that this made them square.
What ain’t nearly enough to us, he thought, more than enough to them. But they gon’ be fixed.
He looked down at his blood-soaked chest and let out a sound that was somewhere between a sigh and amusement. He imagined that he would smile a little bit, but only a tear could come. He didn’t bother to wipe it away. Wiping it away would be to admit that it was there in the first place. So he withheld and it tickled his cheek but didn’t make him chuckle. It ran all the way down to his chin and quivered there before disappearing into the blood on the floor.
There was still so much to know. Like where did Isaiah learn how to cornrow? And why? The singing. How far back in Isaiah’s family did it go? Was the kink in his hair proof that his mother was a warrior?
He would have to creep now, low to the ground like a night mist, not hugging the eager weeds but teasing them with the promise of his moisture, perhaps leaving behind a thin layer, enough for them to get by.
He put his foot on Timothy’s lifeless neck, grabbed the ax by the handle, and pulled it out. Timothy’s head made a tiny clunk, which was followed by the drumbeat of footsteps headed for Timothy’s room.
Lamentations
A separation from your suffering requires a separation from yourself. The blood has been maligned, which means that conflict courses through your very veins.
It was a matter of survival. But time does not function the way you think it does. We knew this before and we know it now. So judgment must come soon because you have made the conflict, which is now your blood, a matter of honor, and this mostly leads to arrogance. This is the thing that pumps through your heart. Or will. Or has. Sometimes, we must remember that you perceive time as three separate occasions, when for us, it is only one. It will be the thing that pumps through your heart, if you are not careful, if you do not heed. Do you understand?
Given over to this raging war inside, you will not be able to attend to your liberation in the manner that will most certainly set you free. You will make something else, something impossible, the priority. In the interest of preserving your reputation among the children of your conqueror—who are also, oh!, your siblings—you will compromise your living and consider half-life better than death when they are truly the same.
We weep for you.
You are the children we had fought for and lost.
You are the offspring betrayed and bemoaned.
The regret, however, is not on your behalf. It is because of what we unleashed. In damning you, we doomed ourselves.
First the external war, then the internal one. The latter much more bloody.
But there is hope.
We have brought storms with us. Followed you across mighty waters and distant lands to a series of stolen places where we owe other peoples another great debt, all of which rests on their forgiveness. And yours.
These are forces created in your name that will be renamed beyond our ability to control. Forgive us.
It is the only magic we have left.
Song of Songs
The sun was burning high when they were walked above onto the ship’s deck. A strange rotation around the ship, and some of its crew spat on them, laughed, and downed libations. They seemed unaware of their own filth as they pinched their noses and frowned. Some of them held on to guns, others had knives. Kosii looked into their faces. He wanted to understand what they were, see if he could retrieve something from them that could explain all this. He saw pits with hands reaching out of them. He saw little skinless girls lined up to sing. He saw boys running into sea-foam and when they turned to wave goodbye to their families standing on the shore, they had everything except faces. Suffocation was their birthright.
Chains rattled as Kosii and the two others he was linked to shuffled around the deck to the jeers of all. Then he saw him, nearby and partially hidden by the glint of the sunlight and the mask of shadow, but recognizable by the tone of his grievances. It was Elewa. In the pit of his stomach, Kosii felt spikes jut out from a sphere. There was a vibration then, which summoned forth the tremors in his entire body, bringing up everything and taking him down to his knees.
One of the skinless said something to Kosii in their jackal language in which everything landed like an insult. But there was another voice coming from that corner of the ship where the sun couldn’t all the way reach. It sounded so near, the voice, and yet he couldn’t pinpoint its direction. It didn’t matter. He recognized its clicks and timbre, its highs and lows, and on them he could climb, reach the frightening heights generally hidden in the mist and shrouded in treetops. A hand. All he needed was a hand, a signal of some kind, a call, permission. In the silence, seven women, linked by the crooks of their elbows, heads newly shaven and breasts firm—the one in the middle ululated. It had begun.
Then Elewa moved closer, through the crowd, and Kosii saw that it wasn’t Elewa risen after all. It was a boy. He was pale but not hard, looked younger than Kosii even, perhaps had just reached puberty himself, walking in footsteps twice as large as his own feet. Admirable. Dirty, but it was clear that he was a boy denied the playfulness that all boys enjoyed, to give chase and smile mischievous but harmless things into existence. To pick fruit from trees and stain their hands with the juices. Stick a toe in a river and get pushed in by a friend, but only outside of the presence of
the hippos that ruled the water. Watching peacocks bow and preen and walk in circles to impress their betrothed. Someone had denied this boy all of that, had interrupted his flow, dammed it, and replaced it with thorn and dry weed. And it was apparent in the moisture of his eyes, which he wiped away before it had the chance to be a sign of life.
Kosii held on to the boy’s budding sympathy with both hands, marveled at its shape, rubbed its smooth edges, and let its sweetness dance on his tongue. It was alive, curled into its own warmth and only unfurled slowly like a fist opening unto peace. This was kind, but too late. Kosii had already spotted the pulse of life throbbing in the boy’s neck and this, too, had its calling. Loud and rambunctious, wide open and seductive. It asked for him and he obliged.
He shot up and roped his chains around the skinless boy’s neck, then snatched his wrists apart. The boy kicked and struggled and thrashed. Kosii didn’t let go. The others began to charge him, but Kosii had already managed to pull himself back, up against the half wall of the deck. He took a deep breath and shouted.
“This triumph is for Elewa in the name of King Akusa!”
Then he fell backward, over the wall of the ship, the boy in his grasp. With them, the two other people chained to Kosii crashed down into the waves, shocked then comforted by the cold embrace of the water, soothed by the sea-foam and then absorbed.
Kosii wouldn’t swim. He held on to the skinless boy until his body was still then he let out his own breath and together they began to sink.
Such a shame, but he had to do it. Had to. Pressed into this corner, there was no way he was going to die alone. It had already been determined: they shall die together. For this was glory.
Elewa.
As they descended, Kosii prayed for forgiveness from the woman and the man who were chained to him. He didn’t ask them if they had wanted to drown but took it upon himself to drag them into the deep. Way down, lower now than the bottom of the beast they had dropped from. Maybe that was the sin his father left out of the story, the part about how, in order to survive the mountain people, they had come down from a mountain of their own, had to wear the remains of some other people’s children around their own necks. Victors gave themselves the right to rename murder “triumph” and adorn themselves with jewelry made from the bones of the vanquished.
The Prophets Page 31