Passage

by Khary Lazarre-White

His father smiled with pride. “You know it is.”

  Then Warrior and his father sat in absolute silence. Warrior sank deeper into the burgundy couch, his father in the cherry wood rocking chair. In the absence of voices, the hum of the refrigerator, the tick of the clock, and the creak of the chair kept the beat, and his father rocked.

  Warrior finished eating and leaned back into the couch. The living room was filled with instruments of every kind. A piano was in the far corner; one of his father’s basses sat at his feet, a guitar lay on top of the piano, a banjo with one broken string leaned against the wall, and drums were everywhere. Near the shelves piled high with books, was an entire silver and light honey brown drum set. There were congas of all sizes sitting around the room, waiting.

  Warrior looked at a photograph of a smoky Blues joint. In the picture people were grindin’, legs wrapped around each other, as the saxophone player on the makeshift stage blew filthy notes. A few feet away on the same wall hung a dark, black-and-white photograph of Nelson Mandela looking out from behind bars in his jail cell. The shadows of the bars cast lines across his face as his eyes looked out in the distance.

  “I saw Mandela on TV the other day, talking about how when he was a child he never thought he’d be where he is today. He thought he would be a shepherd out in the countryside,” Warrior said as his father finished the last of his dinner.

  “A man can’t run from destiny. And his wasn’t bein’ no shepherd. That brutha is a baad cat, one for history,” his father said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

  Warrior stared at the photograph, slowly shaking his head. “Spent twenty years in prison, and then they came to him and told him, ‘Mandela, if you swear you won’t start no trouble, if you swear to make peace, we’ll let you out.’”

  His father continued Warrior’s thought, “And Mandela just looked at ’em and said, ‘No thank you. I come out on my own terms, or I don’t come out at all. Prisoners cannot negotiate.’”

  Warrior finished where his father left off. “And then he turned around and walked back into his cell for seven more years.” Warrior’s father nodded solemnly.

  Warrior brought his eyes down from the picture. “People always say, ‘That brother was hard.’ But he wasn’t hard, he was strong. There’s a difference. He knew that he was the symbol of a movement. A living martyr for liberation, and his position was non-negotiable. Period. If they broke him, they’d be breaking a whole lot more than a man, they’d be breaking a people. He knew that,” Warrior said.

  “He spent twenty-seven years in jail to be free,” said Warrior’s father. “Twenty-seven years,” he said through his tightened jaw.

  “That’s the only hope for this country,” Warrior said. “Only a leader with his moral righteousness, a leader who knows the pain of war but also is not afraid of it, can grab the ear a the youth. If someone doesn’t come along who can reach those filled with rage, the invisible walls are gonna crumble, and America’s gonna see the face of what it’s created. The pain’s gonna be brought to their front door, and ain’t no soldiers gonna have the power to stop it. I’m not sayin’ what I think should happen, I’m not sayin’ what I think shouldn’t happen, I’m sayin’ what’s gonna happen.”

  Warrior’s father responded to his son’s words. “You’ve come up with a angry generation, son. Angry at broken promises, and angry at the situation you found yourselves in. It’s a righteous anger, but it’s gotta be harnessed, directed, or else it’ll take hold a you, and get inside a you like death. And I seen some that ain’t never freed themselves from its grips.” Warrior sat quietly for a few moments, his eyes studying the wooden floors, and then he looked up into his father’s face. “They asked a senator the other day how quickly the violence and bloodshed would end if the children dying were the sons and daughters of senators and congressmen, and he said, ‘It would have ended yesterday.’ So when they say that they want to deal with our anger peacefully, without any bloodshed, what they mean is that they don’t want any of their blood shed. ’Cause while we been talking, our blood’s been flowing in the streets for years, like a river.” Warrior’s words cut through his father, and he met his son’s eyes with force.

  “There must be another path to follow besides making them feel the pain we’ve felt. They can’t never know that kinda pain. We’ve been losing our children for years now. I wouldn’t wish the death of one’s children on my worst enemy. The loss of a child is a bitter pill to swallow. You hear me? A bitter pill.” Warrior’s father spit out the last words.

  Warrior slowly dropped his eyes from his father’s. He looked down at his hands and said, “That’s true, Daddy. But when a child ceases to dream ’cause he spends all his time thinkin’ about whether or not he’s gonna die, a fourteen-year old being hopeless, that’s a bitter pill to swallow too.”

  After a few moments of silence, Warrior’s father picked up the bass that lay at his feet, and his fingers freed the music. He stared off into space as Warrior now lay down on the couch—the only piece of furniture in the house long enough to hold his frame. Warrior closed his eyes, released the tension in his body, and listened to the soft moan of the bass. His father’s voice broke the trance his bass had created.

  “Kila was your great-great-grandmother, on your grandmamma’s side. She was your grandmother’s, grandmother. Same relation she is to you, Kila was to her. Kila’s blood ran with Africa, she was the first of her kin to be born on Southern land.” His voice paused as he continued looking off into space, hearing voices. The bass answered. Warrior’s father continued.

  “Now the way Kila was born was downright unnatural. They still tell stories and sing songs about it. They say the slave owner feared Kila from the day she was born, say that the curse of Kila’s mamma haunted him to his death.

  “Her mamma was a proud woman, known too much freedom to be anyone’s slave. She caused ’em problems since the first day she stepped foot on that plantation down in North Carolina. She was one a the last of the Africans to come here durin’ slavery times. They had already outlawed the trade, but Africans were still comin’ in through the Gullah Islands. Folk on those islands say they saw boats comin’ in right up to the war. One a those boats carried Kila’s mamma in its hull.

  “Well, that owner tried putting her mamma in the fields, but she just stood there, talking her language, pointing back over the hills to the ocean. They tried to force her, but the more they beat her, the more she fought. Seeing as she was already pregnant, her baby strong, having survived the Passage, they figured they’d just let her have the child and then sell her on down into the Deep South. As her stomach grew, so did her anger. It was as if the idea of bringing a life into that world made her that much more vengeful.

  “As her ninth month grew near, she sat one day by the quarters, sitting on an old log, looking at all who passed by. Here comes the owner’s wife, and when she sees this African woman looking at her, she get all red and tells her to cut her eyes away from her. Those eyes didn’t move. When the owner got wind a this, he decided it was time to handle her, once and for all. He got the overseer and some hands, and he went out to the quarters. They grabbed her right off that log, and they tied her to the post. The owner stripped her naked and then told the overseer to whip her till her blood flowed and flowed. This man brought his nine-tailed whip back over his head, and he began to tear her skin right off her back. All the other slaves just stood around, hard red eyes watching.

  “They ripped her skin clear off, and it fell to the ground as the blood ran like a river. They say she didn’t even cry once, just took it, and then when the pain got to be too much, she fell limp, and died right there on that whipping post. When the owner realized she was dead, he got right mad, ’cause she held his property in her stomach. He grabbed his knife, walked around to face her, and sliced her belly open, right down the front. He reached his hand into her womb and pulled out a screaming baby girl. That there was Kila. Born not of woman, born screaming at the world. It is a
story of unnatural things.”

  Warrior lifted his head from the couch and looked over at his father. He sat, his head keeping time, his hands softly beating on the wood of his bass, still looking off at something. Warrior brought his head back down and waited for him to speak again. His father continued.

  “When Kila grew to be a woman, she had two children, one girl, one boy. They took the girl from her and sold that child away. That girl grew to be your great-grandmother, your grandmamma’s mamma. The pain a losing her child was too strong for Kila, and she decided to take her freedom. She rose one night, wrapped her hair in a cloth, put on her warmest clothes, and covered herself with a thick canvas dress. She took her infant son, bundled him up in his cover, and tied him to her back. She wrapped scarves around him and her body to keep him warm, and close. As the moon glared, she took to the woods.

  “She walked for almost a week, sleeping by day in the woods, and walking by night in the shadows. As the week came to a close, her son got a fever something awful, and he started coughing this grinding kinda cough. Kila tried every herb and root she came across, everything she had ever been taught, but nothing worked. The child’s screaming cough attracted too many eyes for Kila’s comfort, and so she took to swampland.

  “That first night in the swamp she heard the dogs. They were on her scent and her baby’s sound. Kila took her child from her back and held him in her arms. She slowly waded into the edge of the swamp’s waters, in front of some trees and under a fallen log. The baby still screamed. Kila sat there, kneeling in the water, singing lullabies to her child. His head was so hot that Kila thought his blood might boil, and his eyes had a wild look to ’em, like the fever was running its course.

  “Kila could hear the voices screaming. She could hear the trackers following the sound in the dark woods of her baby’s cries. Kila moved a little deeper into the water, still singing in a hushed whisper to her child. The boy just wailed and wailed, the night hearing his cries, and the voices bringing their own brand a hell. As the dogs sounded like they were almost on top of her, so close that she could not tell which direction they came from, she closed her eyes and cried. Kila held her screaming baby to her chest. The child looked up into his mother’s face, and Kila held him tighter than she ever had, almost crushing his tiny body. Hearing the sounds of the voices and those dogs, Kila cradled her son’s head one last time and walked deep into the swamp’s waters, allowing its coolness to bring silence to the night.

  “Kila stood in the waters a that swamp through the night, and with silence to hear, the men, led by the dogs, lost their hunt. As dawn broke, Kila walked from the swamp’s waters, holding her silent child. She dug a hole deep in the swamp’s ground and buried her son in the earth of the place that had saved him from chains. Kila stood, her hands covered with earth, straightened her back, placed steel in her jaw, and began to walk. Her eyes looked forward and her feet followed. Kila walked day and night, stopping only to eat and to rest till she could rise again. She walked with a deliberate stride, moving toward what she now knew to be written.

  “They say Kila walked clear outta North Carolina, through Virginia, through Maryland, Delaware, and into Pennsylvania. She walked straight to the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. She stood and turned her head up to the sun. Her eyes scanned the sky for the range’s highest peak, and then she climbed it. She walked from the warmth of the valley to the cold a the peaks. She rose through air thinned and wind whippin’ cross her face. Kila reached the peak and stood there, looking down at freedom-land. She breathed in deeply, and seeing that the air was no different, she spoke to her spirit and then threw herself from that mountain. She threw herself, free. Hear? Free.”

  As his father’s words ended, Warrior still heard whispers in the room. They sat there, without speaking, his father gently plucking the strings of the bass, and Warrior remembering the songs of Kila in his head.

  They sat there for hours, listening to the horn of Bird, and the smooth trumpet of Miles. They talked and laughed, telling and retelling history, cloaked as family stories. They told tales they both knew, and argued about the lies. Warrior fell asleep with warmed liquor in his stomach, voices in his head, and the flow of the bass in his ears, his father’s hands still freeing the song.

  When Warrior woke, it was a couple of hours after midnight. He looked around the room, and saw down the hallway that the door to his father’s bedroom was open. He could hear his father snoring; the sound of him breathing in air filled the room. Warrior looked at the grandfather clock that stood against the wall, and saw the lateness of the night. He lay there and slowly woke himself. He never liked to leave his mother and his sister alone through the night, he slept deeply only when he knew they were safe. If he was not with them, he would wake in the middle of the night, sweating, his conscious thoughts filled with nightmares. Warrior had to get back to them; he knew that his mother slept well only when he was under her roof, and it was so important that she slept well.

  Someone should sleep well in these nights. Someone should wake in the morning rested. If I’m home, the nightmares do not visit her.

  Warrior sat up from the sunken pillows and bent springs of the couch, rubbed his face and stood. It was time to take the long train ride back to his mother.

  Warrior walked into the darkness of his father’s room and stood over the bed, looking down at his father as he lay on his back. His father’s chest and stomach heaved as his lungs seemed desperate to take in as much air as they could possibly fit. As he looked at his father’s face, he remembered when he was in second grade and the teacher asked everyone in the class what they wanted to be when they grew up. Some kids said doctors, some said ballplayers, some said teachers. Warrior had said,

  When I grow up, I want to be my daddy.

  Warrior remembered those words as he watched his father breathe, and thought,

  If I live to be a man, I want to be just like him.

  Warrior reached down gently and woke his father. He opened his eyes and looked at Warrior in the shadows.

  “Daddy, I’m about to go back to Mamma’s,” Warrior said.

  “Why? It’s so late. Why don’t you just stay here the night?” his father asked.

  “’Cause I like to know they’re safe, you know that,” Warrior replied.

  “You an unusual man, son. Most wouldn’t be studyin’ nothin’ else but they beds this time a night,” his father said in the darkness.

  “Well, you know how it goes. I am unusual. I am special. In fact, I’m smarta than Brer Rabbit and slicka than Shine. I might not be the baddest brother in the world, but I’m in the top two, and you gettin’ kinda old. Know what I mean?” Warrior said as he bugged out his eyes in mock challenge.

  His father laughed and his chest shook. Warrior leaned down to the bed and kissed his father on the forehead.

  His father’s hand patted Warrior’s face as he said, “Be safe goin’ home. It’s cold as a mine digger’s ass out there, the Hawk’s in and he’s mad as hell, so dress warm.”

  “Yeah, cold as a witch’s nipple!”replied Warrior.

  They both laughed at the familial exchange. It never got old.

  “I got some wool hats in the closet, take one, it’ll keep the heat in,” his father offered.

  “I brought a hat with me, and I got my hood and my thick leather joint, I’ll be fine,” Warrior said.

  As his father rolled over onto his side, he said half sleeping, “All right. Well tell your mamma I said hello, and give that sweet little daughter a mine some shuga for me.”

  “All right then, good night, and sleep well,” said Warrior as he began to walk out of the room. The sound of his father’s voice stopped him at the door.

  “I love you. Be safe on those trains. And beware of the soldiers.”

  “Always, Daddy, always. I love you too.”

  Warrior sat at the bottom of the staircase and finished tying his boots. He took his leather coat from the hook, zipped the front lining, and buttone
d it all the way up. His spine tingled as he recalled the chill he had gotten playing in the snow with his sister. Hours ago, it had been cold outside when he had first walked into his father’s house. Now, this late at night, it would be downright bitter. Warrior took out the black wool skull hat he had stuffed in his jacket pocket, and pulled it down tightly over his ears. He didn’t put his earphones in, wanting to be able to hear the footsteps. He tried to trap the warm air of the house against his skin, breathed in the sweet, warm liquor smell, and then pulled open the heavy oakwood door. The brutal wind rushed in, and Warrior quickly stepped outside, locking the door and resealing the house. He pushed his hands deep inside his pockets, licked his already chapped lips, and walked briskly down the empty Brooklyn streets to the nearest train station.

  He paid his fare and walked down the long, brightly lit platform. The sudden brightness of the lights hurt his eyes. He sat down on the hard wooden bench, the kind with dividers separating the seats to keep the homeless from sleeping on them. Warrior was the only soul in the station. The tracks were full of the sounds of the humming of distant trains and the crawling and biting of countless rats, scurrying over each other’s backs in search of food. As he sat there Warrior became aware of the eyes.

  They were everywhere, and they were watching. Warrior stood up and walked over to the edge of the platform. Leaning over the edge of the tracks, he looked down the dark tunnel for light, any sign of a coming train, any sign of deliverance from the eyes. Seeing nothing but darkness, he sat back down on the bench, resigned to deal with them.

  Well, show your face. I don’t hear your wolves, but I can feel you watching. There’s no use in you hiding, I know you’re out there, I know you’re watching me. I ain’t running, so stop chasing. Show your face . . .You hear . . . Show your face.

  The eyes remained, and Warrior began to sweat. He didn’t like the feeling of being watched by unseen watchers, so wherever he felt them he stared, meeting their glare.