It was the rumbling of countless voices.
Now the man is in my head. “We came here in chains. We came here as slaves, owned by another’s hand. We came here naked, with nothing but our blood and our minds. We created a people on memory. You hear? Memory. So what do you know, Warrior? What are your memories?”
I allow my mind to wander, to fly back to childhood, to try to remember what has been stolen. It has been so long since I have dreamed, I have lost so many of my memories. The demons have filled my mind, and often I have thought of nothing else. The demons have made sure that I did not dream. Yeah, Daddy, a bitter pill to swallow.
I hear a voice in my head responding to the man’s question, but it is not mine. The boy speaks, but it is my memories he speaks of. Mine. Now the voice is familiar. The boy speaks in my voice from long ago. It is the voice of “Little Warrior.” It is my voice, and it is his. Here, he is who I was. In life he is a lesson: This is what they do to witnesses who use their eyes. He remembers what has been lost to me.
“My daddy tol’ me that when we was taken over from Africa ta here, that some a us jumped off the ship so we wouldn’t have ta be slaves. He say there’s thousands a bones on the bottom a the ocean floor. He say the people who left them bones was the real warriors. That what he say. You think they passed on to be with they Gods? Or you think they souls are with those bones? And what about us? You think they forgave us? For forgettin’ ’em and all? You think they still claim us? You think when we pass on, they’ll be there . . . waitin’ ? I hope so . . . I really do. But when I ask my mommy and daddy, they say they don’t know. And when I ask the voices, they don’t never answer.”
The man returned to my mind. “And what about now, Warrior, what answers to your questions have you found?”
It is my voice that speaks now. “In this life that we live, those who survive and those named in stone, there are more questions than answers. We have seen so much pain, but then they tell us that we are the ones who are supposed to be free. You survived the Passage, lived through slavery times, and brought Jim Crow to his knees, but it’s my generation that’s dying. And when we bury each other, when the blood runs in the streets around us, when we struggle every day of our lives with the demons, and when we feel lost in the pain, it’s then that I still wonder, what ever happened to my Gods in Africa.”
The man’s voice responds. “And so some a you discard your skin, thinkin’ that’ll bring answers.”
And I say, “You know better than us its force, what it can drive us to do. It’s a sickness, a plague that taints our blood, causing us to forget as the rage drives us blind. We forget where we’ve come from, we forget our kin. We forget how many have struggled, and how much blood has been lost. For four hundred years we have been taught that our lives are not worth living, and many of us have learned well. Our people have all faced demons since we came here, but this has been the one that has always been there, the one all generations have had to battle. Because of the color of our skin, we are who we are. It’s why it’s so.”
Now the woman’s voice enters my mind. “It opens your eyes to the truth. And once they are opened, the seer either goes crazy, a mind lost in the face of such terror, or becomes a warrior and learns the lesson of the slaves: To find the island of your mind, a place their hatred can’t never reach. The hatred of our skin is strong, can make us hate ourselves, but once we come to know the strength of our blood, once we look this hatred in the eye and let it be known that we will not be its creation, that it will not steal our minds, then there is nothin’ that we can’t survive. The hatred of our skin has a mighty power. It takes us into the world of rage and of pain that it has created, and we are forced to seek to survive. It brings you into this world, but it also is the only thing that can bring you out. It opens your eyes. What you do with that vision is up to you.”
And I speak to her. “And what about those who have lost their eyes? What about those who have had their minds stolen? Look around you, who do you think has sent all of these children here? Blindness is killing a generation. We kill each other, but all we have to do is look in the mirror to see that we are killing ourselves. I can’t run from these killers of blood, I can’t be afraid, ’cause they me. But I wonder, if they that lost, then, then they ain’t blood no more. Right? And I can’t carry my own steel to take their lives, ’cause then the chaos wins. And the pain of doing it, I think, the pain of killing blood, of letting the voices win, making me one of the wolves, would kill me.
And she says, “And so you are ready to spread the word? To speak for those who have been silenced?”
“Yes.”
She looks down at her sleeping baby and then raises her eyes to meet mine. Her eyes are hard.
“You give your word, on the life of my child?”
“Yes.”
The man’s voice speaks of demons. “And when they come to make war with you? When they try to send you to the same fate as those of your generation who have departed, when they try to silence the witness, what then? They strong boy, they like wild dogs that never rest. They even almost made you try to fly. What happens when their voices come a callin’, and they seek to drive you from the path?”
And I say, “They’ve called and I’ve declared war, they know where I stand. At one time I was sure that I wouldn’t survive. Now I know that I must. It is a hard path to walk, but it’s my only choice. It’s the path of survival. When the rage comes, the path serves as my answer. The path is what has the power to bring me out, to show me the way. Without it, the madness comes, and the line between those who are strong and those who lose their minds is thin. I know, I’ve been there. As for those who do cross the line, maybe they’ve just seen too much, and decided to fly away. But there’s no way that I can ever lose my way. Too many voices serve as my guides. Too much blood is with me. I am not a man. I am history, walking.”
He nods. She smiles as she rocks her child in her arms. The boy looks at me, and I see myself. Then she speaks. “Go now, your blood is waiting . . .” As I walk from the edge of the trees toward the crossing of the roads, I weave through the path of gravestones. As I walk among them, I hear their voices rumbling. It is a scream. It is a cry. It is a demand. Those named in stone call out aching to be heard.
At the meeting of the dusty roads at the edge of the graveyard, I can still hear the chorus of voices calling out. I still hear the children singing, and the visions of the man, the woman, and the boy run through my mind, echoing in my memory. But as I near the Crossroads, the voices fall silent and the singing fades, and then there is only one sound that I hear. It is the beating of the drum. Keeping time. Counting off the souls as they continue to arrive.
Warrior opened his eyes, saw the Gods around him, and remembered all of his dreams.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There were two women who fell in love with Passage and ushered it through the process—Susan L. Taylor and Marie Brown. Thank you, Susan, for all of your support and faith in this work and for connecting me to Marie. Marie, my agent and editor, I appreciate all of your careful attention to Passage and your commitment to the vision. You both always understood the story.
I would like to thank Dan Simon, the founder and publisher of Seven Stories Press. I will always be thankful to Dan for wanting Passage to be a member of the Seven Stories family of books—and for his deep belief in this novel. Thank you as well to Ruth Weiner, Lauren Hooker, Sanina Clark, and all the dedicated staff at Seven Stories Press for their passionate support of Passage. I would also like to acknowledge Rodrigo Corral for the striking and evocative cover design he created.
As always, thank you to my brother, Adam Lazarre-White, the fiercely talented artist; to my grandmother Lois Meadows White and in loving memory of my great-uncle Alphonso Meadows Sr., the tellers of the family stories and legacy that inspired much of this work; to my father, Douglas Hughes White, the historian who instilled in me his passion for seeking answers and struggling with what one finds; and to my moth
er, Jane Lazarre, my first and always best writing teacher, the one who taught me to love the word.
Khary Lazarre-White
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Khary Lazarre-White is a writer, social justice advocate, attorney, and activist who has dedicated his life to the educational outcome and opportunities for young people of color at key life stages. His support base is far-reaching and diverse, built over the past twenty-two years as co-founder and executive director of The Brotherhood/Sister Sol. He has received awards for his work, including the Oprah Winfrey Angel Network Use Your Life Award, the Ford Foundation Leadership for a Changing World Award, awards from Black Girls Rock! and the Andrew Goodman Foundation, and a Resident Fellowship Award to the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center. Khary Lazarre-White is a highly influential presence among national policymakers and broadcast, print, and social media outlets. He has written for the Huffington Post, NYU Press, Nation Books, and MSNBC.com, and has edited three books, The Brotherhood Speaks, Voices of the Brotherhood/Sister Sol, and Off the Subject. He lives in Harlem. Passage is his first novel.
ABOUT SEVEN STORIES PRESS
Seven Stories Press is an independent book publisher based in New York City. We publish works of the imagination by such writers as Nelson Algren, Russell Banks, Octavia E. Butler, Ani DiFranco, Assia Djebar, Ariel Dorfman, Coco Fusco, Barry Gifford, Martha Long, Luis Negrón, Hwang Sok-yong, Lee Stringer, and Kurt Vonnegut, to name a few, together with political titles by voices of conscience, including Subhankar Banerjee, the Boston Women’s Health Collective, Noam Chomsky, Angela Y. Davis, Human Rights Watch, Derrick Jensen, Ralph Nader, Loretta Napoleoni, Gary Null, Greg Palast, Project Censored, Barbara Seaman, Alice Walker, Gary Webb, and Howard Zinn, among many others. Seven Stories Press believes publishers have a special responsibility to defend free speech and human rights, and to celebrate the gifts of the human imagination, wherever we can. In 2012 we launched Triangle Square books for young readers with strong social justice and narrative components, telling personal stories of courage and commitment. For additional information, visit www.sevenstories.com
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