how can i forget?
Slavery exists in my name. Williams didn’t come over on those ships, obviously, but I don’t know the names that did. It was dark brown skin, full lips, deep, almost-black eyes with long lashes, and coiled hair that filled the holds. Behind the features they gave me, they each carried work ethic, passion, a servant heart, music, a love of language, and commitment that spanned across generations to settle in me, my brother, my cousins. Along with that came fear, poverty, abuse, and pain that is never spoken aloud.
There’s something in the coils of my hair that grabs hold of pain. There’s something in the darkness of my skin that wants to feel distance. There’s something in the blacks of my eyes that finds souls who will abandon. There’s something in the fullness of my deep brown lips that says ruin me. There’s something in the strength of my back that begs to carry more than what’s mine. There’s something in the movement of my hips that turns my body — my existence— into a utility barely attached to my own soul. There’s something in the low smoothness of my voice that turns me invisible and insignificant enough to forget. Is it too late to be someone different?
I’ll never know the pain my ancestors felt or what their days were like, but I’ve seen enough slave movies and read enough books to imagine. The backbreaking work they must have endured in the thick heat of the south and the islands. The 29% that glares back at me on our ancestry report says the women endured a different kind of suffering - one that I can at least relate to. The sweat of an unwanted man dripping down his pasty nose and on to my precious, sun-kissed face. That is physical labor I’ve known too well. That is the only family business to survive, though not lucrative all these years.
What is it like to be treated as a human, let alone an invaluable one? Can you tell me?
Cotton, tobacco, sugar cane - I don’t know. Child-rearing and house duties. The way that it’s retold, you’d believe that they might be happy to have jobs (if you can call it that), food (if you can call it that), a home (if you can call it that), and family (if you can call it that) in this new world. The women weren’t worth as much as the men no matter where you went, but the new south paid more than the plantations in the old south. Based on the places I’ve known my family to live, they likely landed in the new south. I have that going for me, at least.
At my age, I’ve just passed what would have been my prime as a slave. The fact that I also had Scoliosis as a kid, and that my back gives me problems now, means I’d at least be discounted by 30%. I have no real domestic skills, which would raise my price by 15%, if I had them. I guess I could count my skills in the bedroom, but I’m not sure that’s worth much more than the promise of children I have yet to carry.
Would you be more kind if the disappointment in my face was behind straw like strands moved by the wind?
Could you make space for my needs if my skin were pale and my bones just as frail?
What if my body looked less sturdy and resilient? If my dark and strong features turned more European and burned in the sun?
If my tears sparkled under light eyes and not from mine.
Beneath strength, my heart breaks, I bleed, and I cry in pain. Dark and lovely, I too am a woman. See me?
How do you learn to forget a trauma you never lived but feel in your body? The loss of control over one’s body doesn’t die when the body does. The enslavement lives on in the lineage left behind. Joneses and Williamses have come and gone, each inching towards freedom. So many with my dark brown skin, full lips, deep, almost-black eyes with long lashes, and coiled hair that fills our hard earned homes.
