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 returnedâeyes bruised, hair awry, limbs weary, bleeding, and missing somethingâhe wanted to handle her like he would a newborn. Instead he whispered to her viciously against his better judgment. He couldnât help it. She had become a looking glass for his incompetence and he had no courage to place the blame where it actually belonged.
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Three times he asked me to finish him off, three times I refused. This was before, before I allowed myself to think anything I want. If I had been then what Iâve become today, I would have killed him the first time he asked, his head turned toward me, his left hand in my right.
Godâs truth, if Iâd already become then what I am now, I would have slaughtered him like a sacrificial sheep, out of friendship. But I thought of my old father, of my mother, of the inner voice that commands us all, and I couldnât cut the barbed wire of his suffering. I was not humane with Mademba, my more-than-brother, my childhood friend. I let duty make my choice. I offered him only mistaken thoughts, thoughts commanded by duty, thoughts condoned by a respect for human law, and I was not human.
I wanted to grab his cigarette from his rough lips. I wanted to burn my fleshâany cigarette-sized section of fleshâwith it. Then, for just a second, I wanted to burn his flesh instead. Perhaps I wanted to see physical pain in his eyes because I couldnât see my own pain, not really, not clearly. I was horrified by my thoughts, but my horror did not quiet them.
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 wasnâtâeven if they called it down themselves. Sarah didnât 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 didnât 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 eyesâthere, 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.
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 Samuelâs 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 peopleâs throats with all their might and asked why the people couldnât breathe. And then, when people made an attempt to break the foot, or cut it off one, they screamed âCHAOS!â and claimed that mass murder was the only way to restore order.