Passage

by Khary Lazarre-White

  I lay in the dark, damp hull of a two-hundred-ton ship. The boat swayed back and forth, side to side, as if it moved to the memory of the beating of the drum. I could not sit. I could not stand. I could not rise. I was shackled, hand and foot, to the man next to me. The hull stank of shit, blood, and death. This was the passage to the unknown. The sharks that swam next to the boat were the hellhounds who served as guides, ensuring that we were following the marked trail of human skeletons that lay beneath us. A child died, and I slept. The nightmare descended.

  A man appeared. A Black man. A Negro. A Nigger. He was tall, and he wore long, tattered overalls, and a burlap potato sack as a shirt. He wore no shoes, and his feet were hard. His face was like worn leather, and his eyes . . . cold. They were the color of ebony, and they were set deeply into the blue-black skin of his face. They screamed of pain, and warned of the retribution carried in his heart. They told the tale of a man who had seen, and was more deadly for his visions.

  He removed the burlap sack, let down the straps of his overalls, allowing them to hang from his waist, and then he turned his back to me. It was something I had never seen. My worst nightmares had not brought forth such sights. The dark skin of his back looked as if an animal had clawed it to pieces in a rage. It was inhuman. His back spoke of where the path of human skeletons led. His back spoke of the unknown. The scars were the words of his warning.

  The words said:

  I stand witness

  To the treachery

  Here is my testimony

  Listen to my word:

  Good morning Slave.

  Your nightmares

  Are your most pleasant dreams

  Your curses,

  Words to be whispered in a lover’s ear

  I am the signature,

  Announcing flesh that is owned

  The blood that ran,

  Carried memory

  The scars that came,

  History

  I serve as proof

  That freedom is just a word

  Your destiny,

  Has been entrenched on your back

  Hello Slave.

  Your existence began in chains,

  And so it will end

  Good night Slave . . .

  I opened my eyes, remembering ebony eyes that sang of a reckoning, and waited for my new name.

  CHAPTER 6

  Wolves were the sound of the wind. It was all that Warrior could hear. That, and the drums. The speaker’s hands beat them, slowly, forcefully, announcing an arrival. The ceremony had begun.

  As Warrior had lain in bed, the bright sun had shone through his window waking him, the brightness making him squint in its glare. His mother and sister had left the house hours before he had awakened, on one of their adventures created to fill the school snow day. Warrior knew they were either walking the galleries of a museum or gliding around the ice skating rink in the middle of the park. Whatever it was, he had missed out on the adventure, having slept off the effects of the Crazy Horse.

  It was past mid-day. He got out of bed and took a long, hot shower. He got dressed, in black. Black boots. Black jeans. Black sweatshirt. Black leather jacket. Black skullcap. The day called for black. It felt good on his skin.

  He locked all of the locks and walked down the stairs. He wanted to see the aftermath of the storm, to see what remained in its wake. As he left his building and he felt the snow still falling, he smiled. Nature had not yet finished answering. The flakes dropped gently against his face. They were light, as if they drifted with no force. The storm had fought hard, but it had lost the great battle, and now its flakes were melting before they reached the ground. The snow that had accumulated during the night was piled high, reaching to Warrior’s waist, testimony to the great struggle waged under the glow of the moon. But even the fury with which the snow had fallen could not prevent the coming of whatever it was that nature had fought. Surrounded by the sound of the wolves and the beating of the drums, Warrior could feel its presence.

  By late afternoon, he stood in the belly of the beast, a beast whose innards are filled with the chaos that is its nourishment. There was snow everywhere; no stores were open, and the traffic lights swayed, many of their bulbs broken, the wind having won at least that battle. Within this silence, bedlam ruled the streets.

  But the blue soldiers were everywhere. They ran, wearing helmets with long visors that covered their throats, carrying clear, bulletproof shields, their batons raised high to the sky. There was the deafening sound of sirens, of glass breaking, and voices shouting. Blue and red lights flashed, their swirling colors filling eyes, as the blue soldiers’ cars were the only ones that moved through the streets, their tires spitting snow as they turned. The soldiers ran frantically, trying to repair the invisible walls that had been broken. These walls had taken centuries to build; the mortar was hard, but the brick brittle. It had taken only the morning to bring them down.

  But as we speak, the masons are coming.

  Word on the street was that it happened early that morning. The blue soldiers had shot a boy, and finally folks decided it was time. Nobody bothered to ask what time it was, it was just . . . time. Warrior looked out at the commotion as he walked among crumbling walls, and thought of other walls.

  We break down these walls so that they can see what has been done to us, but what we don’t seem to understand is that they know the world being lived within these walls better than we do ourselves, because they created them. Bringing down the walls doesn’t change the lives being lived inside of ’em, it only brings the sight of the lives to those who are blind. Walk the streets with me, see what I see, and tell me what has changed. Salvation won’t come from outside these walls, it will come from within. The sound you hear is the laughter of demons. They relish the fact that we have not learned. That we still believe that if we cry loud enough, that the creators of the walls will hear us, and show us the way out. The demons laugh, knowing that only we can bring about our deliverance from their hell. And instead of attacking the demons, we waste our time on walls.

  As Warrior turned the corner, he saw two young boys running, narrowly evading the swinging batons of four blue soldiers. The batons were getting closer. The boys were out of breath, and though fear drove their weary legs through the snow, they would soon falter and fall into the hands of the soldiers. Warrior continued walking as the speaker’s hands began to sweat, the drums beating faster.

  As Warrior moved through the tense streets, he saw that at least one business in the neighborhood was continuing as usual. In an alley that ran between two high buildings, one of the walking dead was doing business with a shadow. It was a normal sight, one that Warrior had seen almost every day of his life, except this time, standing next to the woman who bartered with the shadow, was a little girl. The girl’s dress blew in the wind, her worn spring jacket offering no protection from the biting cold, and so she pressed her body against her mother, seeking warmth. Warrior stood at the opening of the alley, looking at the scene.

  The woman could have been pitied. She was thin. Bone thin. Her body was withered and had no shape. Where her high, round ass had once met thick thighs, there was now nothing but a long, narrow back. Her bones seemed fragile, delicate and dry, as if a strong breeze might crack them. Her wrists were too weak to hold her hands straight, so they dangled limply in the air. She moved as if she had been broken, and having just recently been glued back together was now afraid that any sudden movement might shatter her all over again. Maybe it was in the way that she hunched her shoulders, or the way she walked, keeping her legs pressed tightly together, shuffling her feet in old, tattered plastic boots. She walked like a child, with her arms folded protectively across her chest, embracing her body. Her head was too big for her gaunt neck, and the neck bent forward from the strain of attempting to keep her head high. And so she no longer fought the strain, and allowed it to hang.

  Her skin was dry and ashy. Her polyester clothes sagged from her shriveled body as i
f she were a little girl playing dress-up with her mother’s clothes. Her once permed hair was now unkempt, her feeble attempts at straightening it had made large patches fall out, and so she covered the ragged mess with a filthy bandanna. It was in her face that one could read the tale of the path she walked. Her cheeks were sunken, emphasizing the stark outline of her jaw. The sharp jawline came together in lips painted with a shade of lipstick that was too red, more fitting for a clown than a woman. Above that painted smile were hollow, haunted eyes that rested in deep, darkened sockets. Her mind struggled to remember the beauty secrets, those taught to her as a young girl. Her body tried to move in the way that had once been instinct, the natural swaying of her wide hips bringing crooked smiles to men’s faces. Now her sight only brought laughter. She had knelt too many times in order to get the rock for anyone to remember who she had once been. Her faded beauty lived only in her mind.

  The woman now stood in an alley. Her small daughter faced the opposite direction, one arm wrapped around her mother’s leg, one hand raised, her extended thumb dangling from her lower lip. The girl’s eyes stared down, and if she still had a spirit that she claimed, it was in hiding. The girl was silent as her mother spoke. The woman had no money, and so she offered the shadow anything for some of the rock. He told her that she was dried up, and that even shadows hear rumors. She offered anything again, this time with her daughter. The shadow handed the woman the rock, removed the small, clutching hand off the woman’s leg, and led the girl into the darkness. The drums beat faster.

  As the figures disappeared into the shadows, Warrior felt heat on the back of his neck and turned around to look into blazing flames. A small four-story stone apartment building between a liquor store and a church was burning. The fiery, red-orange color that engulfed the structure and poured out through its windows shone in contrast to the whiteness that surrounded it. The snow that fell from the broken roof into the fire did nothing to hinder the flames. And in the moments that Warrior watched, the raging fire overtook the slight resistance of the ice-covered stone and consumed the entire building. As the firemen rode up in their truck, arriving to ensure the flames did not spread to the adjoining buildings, Warrior saw that the alley he had been looking into remained untouched by fire. The heat was powerful, and even from a distance it singed Warrior’s face. With the arrival of the firemen, too many blue soldiers had come, and so Warrior moved away from the heat.

  As he walked, Warrior realized that the overwhelmed soldiers were depending on the freezing cold to aid them in clearing the streets. The weather was brutal, and as the sun began to descend, the temperature dropped even further, and many of the people who had been out all day started to make their way home. These crowds had stood on sidewalks, watching the action, observing the rage, wanting to keep a safe distance from the fires. They had not thrown one stone, or screamed one word, they had not even had the desire nor the strength to walk among those who revolted. They were content to simply stand at a safe distance and pass judgment. They hadn’t felt the blinding anger run through their blood, they hadn’t been burned by the heat of the flames, or been chased by the blue soldiers. They hadn’t had to run from swinging batons. They hadn’t heard the wolves howling all day.

  But above the call of the voices, in a different realm from the shrieks of the sirens, the explosion of gunshots, and the breaking of glass, Warrior had heard the wolves. They had kept him company, their familiar sound walking with him as he moved throughout the streets. Warrior had listened differently on this day. He had tried to take himself within their sound. He had tried to enter the world of the wolves, to speak their language, to join their pack. It was no longer enough to hear their sound; he had to know what it was that they sought, what drove them. Warrior walked along the streets, looking down at the pavement, listening to the wolves. When he finally brought his eyes up from the ground, Warrior saw Weatherman.

  Weatherman was outside of the park, and that was something Warrior had never seen. He stood in the middle of the block on the front steps of an abandoned building, mumbling. He held his umbrella in both hands, pointing it up at the setting sun. His head was twitching, but the rest of his body was rigid. The umbrella did not waver, its steadiness remaining true. As Warrior moved closer to Weatherman, he heard that the words were being spoken softly, their muffled sound escaping through Weatherman’s tightened jaw. Weatherman’s eyes stared straight ahead.

  “The wind speaks, an’ no one listens. The rains scream, an’ no one hears. Lightnin’ brings light to blind eyes. Thunder sound to deaf ears. Nature teaches, but don’t nobody follow Her Word. I hear Her Word, She’s my God. And your Gods are?

  “Your fire is here. So what has it brought? Open your eyes, it’s seein’ times, and seein’ always teaches more than bein’ sold. ’Cause now, we don’t even own our eyes. We see through eyes transplanted through centuries, filled with visions of the wrong damn times. So what do we do with a lost people? A wanderin’ tribe that no longer knows the way? The bones know. Ask the bones. Wanna know pain? Imagine dyin’ in the spirit world. We need our eyes back. But since we ain’t got time to wait, maybe we can reach ’em through voice. Maybe they can hear their way to freedom. It’s a long path away from the beast, gotta have a guide. Time to go to the Blood Council and ask ’em for a voice to reach the wanderin’ ones . . . Yeah, that’ll do. Listen now, ’cause the Word only comes once:

  “Bruthas and Sistahs . . .

  I come to you this evenin’, to talk about a Dragon.

  Yes, I said a Dragon.

  Bruthas and Sistahs . . .

  I also come to you this evenin’, to talk about a boy.

  But ya see, the story I have to tell you this evenin’, don’t begin with no Dragon.

  And it don’t begin with no boy.

  This story, begins with a woman.

  What her name was is not important, what is important, is that you know she was strong.

  Now when this woman was large with child, when she carried a life inside a her womb, she engaged in a battle that shook the very foundation of this world.

  I say the very foundation.

  This child that breathed inside a her was her firstborn—not the Seventh Son, but the First.

  And when she became heavy with this child, when it came time for her to bear,

  the Heavens began to swirl.

  Lightnin’ broke ’cross the sky.

  Thunder pounded the Earth.

  And the ground became restless.

  And then, what had been foretold came to pass: the Dragon reared its head.

  The Scripture reads:

  ‘And the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered for to devour her child as soon as it was born . . .’

  This Dragon would not even give her child the chance of life.

  The Dragon lay by the woman’s sweatin’ and strainin’ body, waitin’, seekin’ to make her child his meal.

  And from her womb, this woman brought forth a man-child.

  And we are told that when this manchild was born, the woman was given the wings of a great eagle so that she might soar to the wilderness, and away from the jaws of the beast.

  And in this bosom she would be nourished, and her child would be nourished, for time, and time, and half a time.

  Here, in the wilderness, she would be free from the face of the Dragon.

  And when the Dragon came to realize that the woman had escaped from its clutches, that the fate it had destined for the woman’s young child had been evaded, the Dragon was filled with a fury that could not be contained.

  And it shook the Earth.

  And so this Dragon called forth its demons, and there was war in the wilderness.

  The woman and the angels fought.

  And the Dragon and its demons fought.

  And there was war in the wilderness.

  War.

  And when the Dragon and its kin seemed too strong, when the wrath of the beast seemed too mighty, the woman and the
angels fought harder.

  And it is here that the Scripture teaches us: ‘And they overcame the dragon by the blood, and by the word of their testimony.’

  I said, by the Blood, and by the Word of their Testimony.

  And when the Dragon saw that it was defeated, rage rolled down.

  The Book tells us: ‘And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed . . .’

  The Dragon could not defeat the mother, so it sought out the child.

  But what the Dragon failed to see, what was its fatal mistake, was that this man-child carried the same blood in his veins as that of his mother, and his life had come to pass hearin’ the word of her testimony.

  The Dragon sought to make war with the seed, but others stood with it.

  The seed carried the Blood, knew the Word, and had heard the Testimony. He would not stand alone.

  That is why he is known as the man-child.

  That is why we tell his story.

  That is why we spread the Word.

  And so it has been said . . .”

  As Weatherman finished speaking, his body swayed, resting limply against the side of the stone stoop that led up to the boarded-up building. Then he lifted his bowed head and turned in the direction of Warrior.

  “Imagine that. Weatherman gettin’ the spirit. Ain’t that somethin’? Guess the Council workin’ in mysterious ways these days,” Weatherman said, slowly shaking his head as his voice calmed, regaining its whisper. He moved down the steps of the stoop, his umbrella leading the way, his hushed voice once again carrying on about the weather. He walked down the street, carefully making his way back to the park, to the protection of his true God.

  Warrior stood at the foot of the stoop, watching Weatherman walk away. Weatherman’s words had joined the cries of the wolves and the beating of the drum, and now Warrior’s mind was pulsing, full of sounds and voices. The wolves were shrieking louder than Warrior had ever heard them, their call almost sounding human, tormented souls finally on the heels of their redemption.