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Safe movement through the world depended on mastery of language, fluency.
“Because they need to know everything before us. Because they need to name everything.”
“There is no God, child. There’s religion but there’s no God of theirs. Their religion tells that we will get our reward in the end. However, it apparently doesn’t say anything about their punishment. But when we’re around them, we believe in God. Oh, Lawdy Lawd, we’s be believin’. Religion is just a controlling tool they employ and adhere to when convenient.”
How strange a world, how strange an existence, that one’s equal must argue for one’s equality, that one’s equal must hold a station that allows airing of that argument, that one cannot make that argument for oneself, that premises of said argument must be vetted by those equals who do not agree.
I am called Jim. I have yet to choose a name. In the religious preachings of my white captors I am a victim of the Curse of Ham. The white so-called masters cannot embrace their cruelty and greed, but must look to that lying Dominican friar for religious justification. But I will not let this condition define me. I will not let myself, my mind, drown in fear and outrage. I will be outraged as a matter of course. But my interest is in how these marks that I am scratching on this page can mean anything at all. If they can have meaning, then life can have meaning, then I can have meaning.
“Folks be funny lak dat. Dey takes the lies dey want and throws away the truths dat scares ’em.”
“It’s a horrible world. White people try to tell us that everything will be just fine when we go to heaven. My question is, Will they be there? If so, I might make other arrangements.” Easter laughed.
It occurred to me that there was no telling which side was free and which was slave. Then I understood that it really didn’t matter.
“Belief has nothing to do with truth.
IF ONE KNOWS hell as home, then is returning to hell a homecoming? Even in hell, were there such a place, one would know where the fires were just a little cooler, where the rocks were just a little less jagged. And so it was in my hell.
