Jones

She had set the table with unfathomable resentment. White table linen, sharp at the corners, napkin rings strangling, cutlery already its own kind of deadly. All living things smothered, even the picked-wildflower centerpiece. The dim candle lighting cast a brass shadow, making everything, even Maggie, appear appropriately solemn.

Perhaps that was because she couldn’t imagine a thing—not a single thing—worth exposing herself for. Whatever she might ever have loved was taken before it even arrived. That is, until she crept up and saw those boys, who had the decency to bring with them a feeling that didn’t make her want to scream.

He sat in that dark shack for hours. He saw the darkness turn in upon itself, churn, and spasm. He watched it reach out for him, felt it first caress, then clutch and fondle him. When Essie finally returned—eyes bruised, hair awry, limbs weary, bleeding, and missing something—he wanted to handle her like he would a newborn. Instead he whispered to her viciously against his better judgment. He couldn’t help it. She had become a looking glass for his incompetence and he had no courage to place the blame where it actually belonged.

The scars lined them the same way bark lined trees. But those weren’t the worst ones. The ones you couldn’t see: those were the ones that streaked the mind, squeezed the spirit, and left you standing outside in the rain, naked as birth, demanding that the drops stop touching you.

That was the problem. The desire for power erased memory and replaced it with violence. And Be Auntie had the bruises to prove it. Nearly every woman did.

She wasn’t insulted, then, by their choice to leave her without witnesses. That would perhaps mean that her name would eventually be lost to time, and the girls who came up behind her wouldn’t have her to show them exactly who came before. That was where the real shame found roots. She kept it, then, all of it, locked up in her head with the other things that squeezed themselves into that space without even the courtesy of a “How you?

She had not yet arrived at her name, which is to say that she had not grown enough to be given a name since names came from how your soul manifested, and that couldn’t be known until it was time to transition from girl to whatever it was you chose to be after. But everyone had to begin there: girl. Girl was the alpha. Even in the womb, the healers had said, the start was there before anything might change. Circles came before lines; that was what had to be honored. When the babies arrived, they were girls irrespective of whatever peace blossomed between the legs. Girls until after the ceremony where you could then choose: woman, man, free, or all.

She saw the ax in Samuel’s hands and the pail in Isaiah’s. For Isaiah would milk the cows and Samuel would slaughter the hogs. Isaiah’s hard-earned smile and Samuel’s understandable fists: she could precisely attribute glee to one and despair to the other because one’s spirit had clearly sprouted wings while the other took refuge in the echo of caves. Both, she knew, had a purpose, however imperfect. Life was being clung to, whether with balm or sword.

There was no scorn on his face; his lips, however, were bent in sorrow. But even when toubab smiled, they had a streak of despair at the edge of whatever joy they thought they had found. Not regret, no, not that. More like they were waiting for something that they knew was coming but wished it wasn’t—even if they called it down themselves. Sarah didn’t look at James, but she did make a face that arched her eyebrows and shifted her lips to the side. Curious things, these yovo. She meant toubab.

Whether men had seen battle or not, each of them, to one degree or another, came home from wherever it is men go to be with themselves or to do the things they would never admit to out loud, with the same intent to inflict whatever harms they endured from the world onto the women and children closest to them. Relation didn’t matter. Mother, wife, sister, and daughter were all equally targeted for the same rage. Father, husband, brother, and son all had the same blank disregard in their eyes—there, behind the glistening fury, was the thing that shook them so thoroughly that they felt the need to destroy anything and anyone who they believed could see it: nothing.

Feigning ignorance hurt as much as the lash. It was the pretending that all he was good at was toil, and not the chains, that threatened to break him. The jangling of the metal loops that connected his and Samuel’s hands and their feet like the letter I; a spike holding each shackle in place, making the walk more difficult because the legs had to be spread to avoid piercing one’s own ankle with the other.

What pleasure? Samuel, in so many ways, was suspicious of it because he knew how easily it could be taken away. So if he refused to adore it, he wouldn’t miss it when it was snatched from him.

The river would have a bit of salt in it, and any healing comes first through hurt before it makes it to peace. That was a terrible thing, she knew. Yet there was nothing truer. She knew it was why so many people saw no point, didn’t have the resolve to make it through, and got stuck. A sucking mud. The sinking kind. There were a lot of people there. Knee-deep. Some submerged. Some clawing their way to solid ground. How few would make it.

See? That was where Isaiah had faltered. To survive in this place, you had to want to die. That was the way of the world as remade by toubab, and Samuel’s list of grievances was long: They pushed people into the mud and then called them filthy. They forbade people from accessing any knowledge of the world and then called them simple. They worked people until their empty hands were twisted, bleeding, and could do no more, then called them lazy. They forced people to eat innards from troughs and then called them uncivilized. They kidnapped babies and shattered families and then called them incapable of love. They raped and lynched and cut up people into parts, and then called the pieces savage. They stepped on people’s throats with all their might and asked why the people couldn’t breathe. And then, when people made an attempt to break the foot, or cut it off one, they screamed “CHAOS!” and claimed that mass murder was the only way to restore order.

Nameless because Isaiah wasn’t the name given to him by those he truly belonged to. Thus he walked about wearing an insult like castoffs. He answered to disrespect every time he was called, whether the caller adored him or not. Yes indeed, nearly a stone.

Jandel Benjamin: Auntie, I write because you were the first in our family to write. I saw your poems and it made me know that writing didn’t have to be an intangible dream. It didn’t have to be a hobby. It could be real. Thank you for that gift.

To the entire African diaspora and all marginalized peoples everywhere: Together we can create a movement. Together we can smash injustice. Love makes us capable of both things.

There was magic in taking them from where they were, to where they wanted to be. It was a miracle every time.

I knew by then that I would never have my mother back, not in the way I had known her all my life. When you have seen your mother shattered, there’s no putting her back together. There will always be seams, chipped edges, and clumps of dried glue. Even if you could get her to where she looks the same, she will never be stronger than a cracked plate. I climbed into bed beside her and closed my eyes, but I never relaxed enough to forget who I was and what had happened to us.

People say, that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. But they are wrong. What doesn’t kill you, doesn’t kill you. That’s all you get. Sometimes, you just have to hope that’s enough.