Say Her Name

by Stefani Deoul

  In my fantasy world we find a window to sit under, and the crepuscular rays, more colloquially known as Jesus rays, come down and light our way. I’d prefer a musical accompaniment so we know to pay attention before the fickle finger of fate moves along, before that one shaft of light shining on that one piece of paper we need to tell this story is covered by a passing cloud.

  Hey, it’s as good a needle in a haystack as the rest of my thinking.

  Which is pretty all over the map. I twinge at that. But before I meditate on that twinge, from my vantage point down the block I spot Vik and Joe at the entrance caught up in a round of hacky sack, which immediately interferes with my process.

  Because I, of course, deliberately left early so I would get here twenty minutes ahead of opening. Which, quick glance at my phone, I have done. And I’m actually the third to be arriving.

  And even as I’m heading up the block, not only do I now see Imani and Jimmy rounding a corner, but they’re with, I squint, Marcus Johnston, and they’re closer than I am. Which will make me fifth to arrive.

  I am never fifth to arrive.

  “Hey, guys,” Imani yells out as she nears. “Marcus and I were talking at rehearsals, and he wants to help out, too.”

  Or worse, sixth.

  Marcus, yes, robotics cocaptain, now costarring with Imani in the musical, and he of the bounciest, silkiest afro ever. He smiles over in my direction, and I don’t need to see Imani to know she is smiling before what’s coming next even happens, even though we all know it will happen. Yes, I melt. Yes, I know. But it’s not like I’m melting because I want to be his girlfriend or something. I’m not interested in dating him. I was, for the record, interested in dating his ex-girlfriend, but that, alas, was a complete nonstarter.

  Imani and I have discussed my Marcus reaction, and we think I melt because I just want to be him. To melt my way inside, so I can be so chill, so charming, and so pretty that all the girls would want to run their hands through my short crop the way everyone wants to play with his wide, loose, natural fro.

  You know, and this is occurring to me just right now, I think I melt because I exist on some level to be Marcus Johnston’s pathetic twinabe.

  So yes, he’s in. Or he will be, as soon as the doors open. Which is really great, since we can def use more thinking, because I have lots of thinking, and sadly not only is none of it great, but worse, none of it’s easy.

  And none of it feels like a winner.

  I take advantage of our momentary delay and sign to Joe, “Is everything okay?” I motion around, meaning with all of us.

  He shrugs and grins, signing back, “She’ll get over it.”

  We head downstairs to the Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference area, where there’s a small room that allows quiet talking. After everyone downloads the app-in-progress, I begin to lay out the few thoughts I do have.

  “We don’t have anything concrete at this point, but I did call Tsarnowsky and he promised to follow up on the tests for us. The big thing is the year, which we don’t know, but we know its nonconfirmed estimate is roughly somewhere around 1800. So, let’s say we have twenty years on either side?”

  I look at everyone looking at me, and my face lands in my palm and I smush the right side up and down, pushing my glasses right across my nose, rubbing my now-exposed one eye. There’s an overwhelming-ness to all this.

  Okay, I start with things I uploaded last night.

  “In the app, I flagged a couple of places. I marked the African Burial Ground, but that’s an entire topic for us, and I think we need to break down those findings separately.”

  I wait to see if anyone disagrees, but that’s more for me than them. I’m still trying to keep myself out of jackass-friend category again.

  “And there was a,” my hand extends with one of those ‘iffy’ gestures, “maybe,” I stress, “slave revolt in 1741. I say maybe because they called it that, but it’s one of those things like the Salem Witch Trial where they got this one poor woman to testify and, in the end, without any evidence over 100 people were hanged, exiled, or burned at the stake, near the Poor House at the north end of the city and its boundary of Chambers Street. So it might not have happened, but I made it the first flag out of respect, but not for a clue. Because I think if we go with the 1800 estimate it’s way too far back, and so anything earlier is ridiculously out.”

  I pause. Everyone’s kind of nodding, but this time I’m not sure if that’s in agreement, or just overwhelm-ment.

  “I was originally thinking, maybe twenty years on either side, but I’m not sure that’s enough. Maybe we need to look at twenty-five? Thirty?”

  And all of a sudden, all that reading coalesces into a thought.

  “Wait,” and I flip through my phone for notes. “I’ve got it.”

  And unfortunately the three people who have now come in the room, which they apparently reserved, are not interested. We gather our things, give little apologetic looks, and head back upstairs, eventually landing in the Langston Hughes Lobby, where one, benches are available, and two, talking is allowed.

  I now return to my genius thought, which has had the benefit of percolating time.

  “In 1799 New York passed a Gradual Emancipation act. It freed slave children born after July 4, 1799, but indentured them until they were young adults. Then, in 1817 they passed a new law, which would free slaves born before 1799 but not until 1827.”

  My genius does not seem to be resonating. Nobody says anything.

  “Okay, yes, it’s random. But we have to start searching somewhere and it doesn’t make any sense to go back to events that are unlikely, or forward for that matter. So, if it was after 1827, the shackles make less sense.”

  I blanch. And I shrink down into the bench. And I’m not the only one.

  Shackles. Shackles should not make more sense or less sense. Shackles should never roll off one’s tongue.

  Did you know courage is the root word for encouragement? One you have, the other you give.

  Imani is sitting, patiently waiting for me. She nods ever so slightly, an encouragement. She gives. I receive.

  I stand up, wiping my now sweaty hands on my jeans, assuming a sense of command and positivity. It’s fake, but it will have to do.

  “I think we should start by dividing and conquering. I put together a list of resources so we have places to begin.”

  Punt one.

  “Ari, Vik, Marcus, I’m giving you the Slave Voyages and The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. They’re online. It’s a collection that tracked slave ship voyages, and where they could they put in names, countries of origin, etc. I will warn you, it’s pretty massive. They even have an African Names Database with details of over ninety thousand Africans from captured slave ships or trading sites.”

  There is fairly stunned and confused silence, which is broken by Vik, still shaking his head. “So, what, your thinking is that we look at hundreds of voyages to see if someone left a note saying, hey find me when you can?”

  I wish someone had taken a picture of their faces. I have to say laughing feels good. But not appreciated by those I am laughing at. I smack my cheeks in an effort to no longer be grinning.

  “Okay, I know, sounds ridiculous. And it probably is. But my thinking actually is if we concentrate on our girl, and we input only those young girls who came to the US, priority for those that came to New York, within our range, maybe we can get to a decently short list, which maybe, I don’t know, eventually will cross reference to something that’s somehow meaningful.”

  I don’t quite finish with all the razzamatazz I heard when I first thought this up.

  Punt two.

  “Imani, Jimmy, and Joe, you get the manuscripts, archive, and rare books divisions, where you will be delving into The . . .” I pause to check my notes. “The Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery, where you will find hundreds of rare books and papers, including,” I scroll through my notes to read the last par
t. “Something called the Middleton ‘Spike’ Harris papers, 1929-1977. There’s,” back to my notes. “18.2 Linear Feet of it, whatever that means, and at least part of it is a slavery and abolitionist collection.”

  I look up. Imani is nodding and scribbling.

  “Maybe the curators will have some other thoughts once we’re digging. There’s lots of family collections. I just couldn’t tell which ones seemed the most promising.”

  And cue noise. My two recruits, Jean and his idiot pal, Aaron, come racing in. Just in time for Punt, Rule of Three.

  “You two,” I point in their general vicinity, so Jean will know I am annoyed. “You get online and pour through the old issues of the New York Evening Post. You are to hunt for any article, any advertisement, any anything indicating eight slaves specifically.”

  “Nope.” Marcus interjects. His voice edgy, rough. “We don’t know they were slaves. They could have been eight free black people.”

  I think on that and nod.

  “He’s right. However, because they were once shackled together, we’re going to assume they are some kind of group. So you’re looking for anything that indicates a group of at least eight. Missing. Or maybe even found dead. I mean, maybe we aren’t even the first to find them. Some-body dug them up, put them back? And you need to go from 1775 to 1830, just to be safe.”

  “Which reminds me,” I hold up a finger, go back to my notes, and then turn back toward Jean and Aaron, “in 1827 there was a paper called Freedom’s Journal. It was a weekly, and it was the first paper owned and operated by free black Americans. So there’s only a couple of years’ worth for our timeline at this point. Long shot, but isn’t all of it?”

  “Question.” Marcus leans forward, tightening the distance between us. “What if they aren’t from New York? What if they were escaped southern slaves? Then they could have been rounded up long after New York passed this act?”

  His questions are rapid-fire, challenging, laced with emotion. And it’s hard because he’s completely right. Anything is possible. I exhale loudly.

  “Look, for right now, everyone’s right and it’s kind of endless. I mean, hell, maybe they met a whacked-out preacher, chained themselves together, and walked into a pit. Did one of those cult-gone-wild kinds of thing.”

  I look at Marcus. His jaw is rigid, his stare intense. I look at each of us.

  “All we really know today, right now, is we have eight bodies and a range of dates. So, all we can do is build a big grid, and with every piece of information look to rule something out until the closer we get, hopefully gets us to,” I exhale, run my fingers through my hair, look back to Marcus. A confession between us. “Honestly? Being lucky.”

  And I leave it out there, hanging.

  Marcus takes it in, nods, and leans back, maybe not all the way, but enough.

  “Which reminds me, speaking of lucky, there won’t be any luck coming from my thought about the census. I did some more digging,” I pick my phone up from the table and scroll, because one, it’s easier to read this and get it right, and two, it’s easier to read this and not have to watch everyone’s reaction.

  “It turns out slaves were counted on all federal census records from 1790 to 1840, but they were just a number under the owner. In 1850 and 1860 they actually did include a breakdown but it was only by sex, specific age, and color. 1870 is the first census in which all people, including slaves, were named.”

  I pause for just a second, click my screen off. “And since that’s outside our window, it’s of no use.”

  NINETEEN

  And wouldn’t this be an amazing story if I told you we went right to the microfilm and there it was, all these years later, just waiting for us to scroll right down and find it. Kind of like that moment in Ready Player One when the key is his.

  Yeah, not so much.

  Not even close. We all work for hours on end, but when you don’t know what you’re looking for, you’re mostly spinning wheels, like a group of mice caged and running in endless circles. A group of mice, which, by the way, is called a mischief, a little something that might be cool were it not so patently false. Mischief we are not.

  We are angry. Then depressed. Then sad, morose, angry again, and ultimately glazed over. There is a weight to not knowing. But there is even more weight to knowing we are their only chance.

  So we keep at it. All weekend long.

  And on Monday we actually get a break. Tsarno texts, tells us to come by around four.

  We all manage to get here, including Joe, and we cram into Tsarno’s room, where we find yet another person we don’t know. Tsarno makes the introduction. Dr. Stephon Black.

  He’s maybe in his thirties, really close-cropped hair, wearing super hip glasses, a very well-cut suit, can’t tell in this light if it’s black or really dark navy, with a gorgeous lavender tie and matching pocket square, all of which is offset by his very expensive shoes. This would be one seriously good-looking man if everything about him wasn’t so obviously wrapped up in a really tight bow.

  It’s a weird thing how you can just see some people and it’s like the air around them is circling furiously, buzzing with ‘don’t touch me.’ So no big surprise when he turns out to not be a pleasantry kind of guy.

  But Tsarno is unfazed, taking his time, finishing the introductions of all of us.

  Now since I had the questionably good fortune to be first on and off this receiving-huddle, I’m standing off to the side, watching everyone else come through. Can we say dismissive?

  Dude is so antagonistically arrogant that when likes-to-smile, good-natured Joe is introduced, for the first time since I’ve known him he shockingly code-switches. He suddenly turns one hundred percent mute, no longer using his voice, speaking only in sign.

  Then I realize we’re all doing it. We’re all code-switching, changing formalities, using “Doctor” and not our usual Stephon, and other safe distancing tricks, some linguistic and some physical. Jimmy’s suddenly standing in his super tall mode, Vik’s opting for deferential, and even Imani as she’s shaking hands and saying hello is using her very proper accent, the one I haven’t heard since maybe the eighth grade.

  Me, I grab a seat and make a conscious effort not to knee bounce. Instead, I keep pushing my glasses back on my nose. I bend over and grab an eyeglass wipe out of my bag, nearly missing Dr. Stephon Black’s beginning. Fortunately or not, he is now eyeing me and waits just an extra beat.

  Is it possible to both sit up and slouch down at exactly the same time?

  “I’m here because Detective Tsarnowsky tells me you plan to find who was in that grave.”

  Nice intro. Good stress on the “you.” Could you maybe keep the sneer of disbelief to yourself? Part of me wants to actually jump up and answer, “no that’s not it. You’re here because you have a parking ticket you want fixed or something.”

  “So,” Black-the-Disbeliever as I now think of him continues, “he asked me to be here and confirm we did find an artifact at the burial site. It was not in the grave but nearby, most likely scattered by hordes of trampling snowballers, which is why it was missed in the original collection.”

  He takes another break while he glances down at us, the lowly minions gathered below.

  I’d like to point out what I think is the obvious. Without the, ahem, trampling snowballers, or at least one trampling snowballer, there might not have been a body, never mind an artifact, but I’m thinking that’s an unwinnable.

  “Given that the only body which had broken the surface and then been touched was the young girl, and these appear to be remnants from a strand of waist beads, the consensus is they most likely belonged to her. But we have no way of knowing this with absolute certainty.”

  Okay. Good. I guess.

  Apparently, he is finished momentarily, and his arrogant self is just standing here, waiting. So, I’m guessing he thinks he’s shared some spectacular tidbit, but I’m not so sure we think so. Aw heck, I go for it.

  “What about
DNA? Have the results come back?”

  The Doc’s nostrils flare and I watch him choke back something, so when he answers his disdainful, snotty voice is now laced with repugnance. And although I would not have classified him as warm and fuzzy before, now he’s nearly, clearly disgusted. Imani’s hand grabs my arm as we all shrink back.

  And although he’s staring hard, I risk a glance over at Tsarno, who’s positioned himself to stand behind the Dr.’s line of sight, leaning casually against the back wall. He gives me a small smile and a shrug. Great.

  “DNA is not a magic answer. And it’s not going to be one any time soon. When you’re sitting at home, watching your TV crime shows, all you see are winners of DNA searches, but they don’t show you the losers.”

  Lots of wide eyeballs, but no one’s saying a word. No one.

  “For example,” Dr. Black continues, calming, I’m guessing, from our lack of saying anything at all. “DNA tells you there is an eighty percent probability that you are descended from people with no earlobes. But that’s an eighty percent probability of the sample group they have to work with, a sample group that might be fifty people. On a planet filled with billions.”

  Okay. I hate to admit this, but his moment here might be totally warranted. I can honestly say I never thought about it this way. I’m totally in the “hey, we’ve got DNA, let’s go solve this crime” camp. I am completely guilty as charged. We can just color me gullible. Bought into the entire DNA solves everything riff.

  I wonder if gullible and guilty come from the same word. If they don’t, they should.

  “In addition.” Dr. Black stops talking.

  Yeah, that pause is for me again. Apparently, I forgot to put on my listening-even-when-I’m-not face, and the great and wonderful Black-the-Disbeliever is not interested in my inner musings. Bet he’d hate my digressions. I blink, straighten up in my chair, and manage not to snicker as I feel my leg being nudged. I don’t need to look, I know it’s Jimmy at work.