by M. James Cooper
Promise
The blessing was in their leaving. And with open mouths and exiting sound or quiet glee they gave praise. Praise for the change, for the guaranteed rising of the sun, and the loosening of the thing around their necks, the strain upon backs and for the people that no longer gave them suffering. But as they left living for another place, the remaining ones began to wonder how it would be, how things would change? Never mind, the just-familiar holding thing was no longer squeezing the necks or tying the hands or filling mouths making them unable to speak. It was gone. Think on it later was the resolve. For now just enjoy the freedom to be, the freedom to choose, the freedom to run, fast or slow. Lay down, no work, nothing to do. We are free! Blessed! But the grass grew and the other living things looked to them for guidance and answers and by the time they got up from that period of rest and negligence the houses were leaning and in need of care, the bush had taken over, the children wayward and loose and wanting, them. Had they forgotten what they learned, what the experience of bondage, in all its horrifying splendor was meat to teach them, show them, prepare them for? The Sick of it. The Hurt of it. The Unyielding hand of it had released its fingers, splayed palm now shooing them away. How could they have forgotten the past so quickly? It was their freedom, their day now. What should be done about it?
Service without pay or pride or rights, became service with pay, some pride and the privilege of leaving. There would be another to take care of what needed caring for but men and women had choice now, though the holding thing was dragging on the ground behind them, it existed somewhere between past and future, lightly tethered to the present day, kicking up dirt, turning small rocks over and onto another uneven side, a past needing to be remembered. Of epidemic proportions: the 'why should I care when no-one cares for me or sees value' leaving. Leaving without turning back, leaving and forgetting. Or trying to. Leaving by way of premature death, starving, beating, driving a sharp thing in, or jumping to it. Jumping so that they didn't have to remember, anything. Leaving. The eyes loose their flicker, tongues loose their pleasure, skin looses its luster and the sun receives no praise anymore. What happened to the generations that followed the dead and the children who became men? What happened?
One day I asked Sudden what happened and she just shrugged her shoulders. How could you forget Me? She, like most of them had no answers, they simply didn't know. Survival made them keep waking, keep pushing from knees to rise and stand, tie heads with cloth and place a hat upon it to keep the sweat and the heat at arms length. When the cane burned other scraps covered the nose and mouths, so that the sweet thick smoke that plagued the air allowed the chance to keep breathing. But all Sudden remembered was the sight of her mother exiting what just this morning used to be tall swaying stalks. The sweet things now lay sorrowfully against each other, to the right or to the left, depending on which way you stood, piled together less high now and on the hot ground where she sat and waited, or played, or drifted off to sleep after eating what was given to her hours before. She didn't know what happened but her mother would appear, always, and never too gone from her, wet with sweat and tired, but always smiling. The gentle woman who labored and had little to say smiled and stood there looking at the girl. Though her thin scrappy pieced together shoes let in so much heat she might as well be barefoot. Mother smiled at that new part of her, she was smiling at innocence. And Sudden would smile too. Together while Mother gulped water and daughter sucked cane juice from a once-standing stalk, they watched fire, then the burn, then the smoke; curling, twisting wanting recognition like the white clouds they wanted to be. I guess because they didn't want to be black smoke, be feared as they were born out of heat and fire. No one covered their nose and mouth against white clouds. The canefield workers, though they got up aching and twisted from the day before, they stood erect, looked to the sky, saw the clouds and breathed deep. Eyes closed or opened. Expectant, hoping. Clouds were fresh and clean. Smoke was dark and destructive; it alluded to the death of a thing. As with themselves the men and the women did not see the promise the smoke offered, the renewing cleansing release of it, didn't see what it created, what is promised. The sweet dark brown sugar that came as a result of the burning. The newness, the assurance of something else that had just as much purpose as the white clouds. Perhaps they could not see it because they could not see the promise in themselves, the worth and sweet and reason of their blackness or their children's blackness. Taught not to love their faces, hands, backs; shamed when thought of what was between the legs and how it was used and abused, the sinful feeling of joy it brings. As Mother and Sudden rested and shared the sweet, quenched the thirst and wiped the sweat from faces that belonged to them, faces few would love, little Sudden asked her mother, "Do I have a Daddy?" Mother said, "Yes, you had a Daddy." Daughter say, "Where, where he is?" Woman say, "Gone. Run off. Dead, maybe." She may not have known what happened but she knew her Mammy was here sitting with her and her Daddy was gone. She couldn't have known what happened. Couldn't remember a past not fully experienced. She didn't know where this new smiling man came from or why he was smiling at Mammy and barely looking at her face, maybe he didn't like it. She did know that Love was something Mother gave to the smiling man. They smiled so much at each-other it gave way to Mother swelling and sickness in between cutting cane, no rest, then screaming, and another black face fell from her. But would he be loved? And could he tell her what happened?
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