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 Samuelâs 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 oneâs own ankle with the other.
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Nothing was neutral, there was always something attached to it, clinging to it, triggering, pulling, insisting, asking her to look, telling her not to forget. Sheâd tried explaining this one to Adam, but he had shaken his head and insisted that she was going to exhaust herself, that it sounded like she was living several lives at once, all stacked up on her, weighing her down, bottoming her out. Waleed had understood, a little. He had told her it was the same for him, to walk through the city was to walk with ghosts.
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.
She saw the ax in Samuelâs hands and the pail in Isaiahâs. For Isaiah would milk the cows and Samuel would slaughter the hogs. Isaiahâs hard-earned smile and Samuelâs understandable fists: she could precisely attribute glee to one and despair to the other because oneâs 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 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.