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I do realize that there is a fine bit of irony in the architecture of oppression granting me a measure of peace, but keep in mind I was not always the woman awoken to the dynamics of power I became during my tenure at Miss Preston’s.
After it was done, Miss Anderson made some grand pronouncement, as despots are prone to do, and I knelt there in the dirt without a single regret, because that corn bread was delicious.
“Some of them Indians kept slaves the same as everyone else,” Jackson says, his words clipped. “Ain’t a single body in this entire cursed country that didn’t have a hand in trying to own the African.”
Nothing good ever comes of withholding the truth.
Here we go. I swear, Jane lives to fight. It is her daily bread.
And even the smallest feeling of security is a comfort in a brutal, unforgiving world.
That is why I love the weapon. There is nothing that brings me greater joy than killing the dead, and the only time my brain quiets, where my fears and worries seem far away, is when I wield the swords like an avenging angel.
And I did it all while wearing a corset. Stick that in your eye, Jane McKeene.
I force my voice to remain light. “Maman said that a person becomes whatever they need to be to survive. And that is what I think we are, Jane. Not killers. Survivors. The only goal of this world is to stay in it as long as possible. And no one gets to judge how a body does that, especially when the alternative is being eaten.”
He falls to his knees, wrapping his arms around himself. He shakes, and behind him the sun is rising in a bloody sort of way. It makes me wish I was some kind of artist, that I could render the beauty of Jackson and the sky in oil paints, shades of red and love. I want to stop time, to freeze this moment forever.
He’s a creature out of myth and lore, a satyr dancing and luring innocent maidens into his wood.
What was it Ida had told me back in Summerland? Something about white folks twisting the law to suit themselves. I have no doubt that there ain’t any justice to be found on all the continent for the Negro, and not even the promise of a town full of colored people is going to change that doubt.
And once more, I despair, my freedom taken so easily. It seems I am a caged bird; no matter how far I fly, I inevitably find myself beating my wings against bars.
Most white folks are eager to believe the worst about us, anything to make us seem less like people.
I might be known to steal a kiss or nine, here and there, but I will not have my honor called into question by anyone’s uneducated assumptions.
You want I should march out to that horde, bid it good day, get bit, and then come skipping back like the prodigal lamb?”
