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With all the flag-waving and cavorting, you might forget they was monsters.
“White folk don’t care ’bout pepper and spices. Like they food bland as water.”
Sadie, fix your face, ratatouille not made from rats.
Ku Kluxes don’t have good eyesight, even though they got six. But they can smell better than the best hound. It takes two heartbeats for them fix on me. Then they’re galloping on all fours, snarling and marking me as prey. But like I said already, I hunt monsters. And I got a sword that sings.
Except for the girl, the visions always different. People dead now for Lord knows how long. Their spirits are drawn to the sword, and I can hear them chanting—different tongues mixing into a harmony that washes over me, settling onto my skin. It’s them that compel the ones bound to the blade—the chiefs and kings who sold them away—to call on old African gods to rise up, and dance in time to the song.
Big as it is, the blade is always the same easy balanced weight—like it was made just for me. In a sudden burst the black iron explodes with light like one of them African gods cracked open a brilliant eye.
That’s what happens to a Ku Klux when its killed. Body just crumbles away, as if it don’t belong here—which I assure you it does not.
You see, the Second Klan was birthed on November 25 back in 1915. What we call D-Day, or Devil’s Night—when William Joseph Simmons, a regular old witch, and fifteen others met up on Stone Mountain east of Atlanta. Stories say they read from a conjuring book inked in blood on human skin. Can’t vouch for that. But it was them that called up the monsters we call Ku Kluxes.
They say God is good all the time. Seem he also likes irony.
“My people make money and we are ‘greedy capitalists.’ We call for an equitable society, and we are ‘dirty Bolsheviks.’ Those who wish to hate Jews will always find justification. They hung poor Mr. Frank here in Georgia after all, despite reason or the law.” Chef grunts. “Reason and law don’t mean much when white folk want their way.”
Molly says it’s like an infection, or a parasite. And it feed on hate. She says chemicals in the body change up when you hate strong. When the infection meets that hate, it starts growing until it’s powerful enough to turn the person Ku Klux. Ask me, it’s plain evil them Klans let in, eating them up until they hollow inside. Leave behind bone-white demons who don’t remember they was men.
“I can see,” Emma reminds. Sadie stands up, frowning. “Jews is white folk?”
shouldn't laugh 😭
“You telling me, white folk is niggers?” That leaves Lester speechless. Chef shakes her head. “Lord, you done started something now.” “Well, Miss Sadie … I suppose … Not how I would put it…” “White folk is niggers!”
When his lips start up that creole talk between my thighs, I arch my back and do my own set of singing.
“The enemy, they are the Lie. Plain and simple. The Lie running around pretending to be Truth.”
“They was just the most willing. So easy to devour from the inside, body and soul. Always have been.”
My grandpappy say when we die, we get our wings back, the ones white folk cut off when we come here. Maybe I’ll fly and meet my mama.
“Do you know the abandoned practice of humorism, passed down by the Hamites of Egypt to the Greeks and Romans? It held that each of man’s bodily fluids governed a principle: blood for life; yellow bile the seat of aggression; black the cause of melancholy; and phlegm, apathy. I believe one humor is yet unaccounted for. What men call hate. You and I have seen too much to discount its existence.”
This is my pain. My scar to carry. Ain’t theirs to feast on, to suck dry like marrow from a bone. I’ve had enough of monsters, devouring bits of me, trying to eat me up altogether.
It all set a fire burning hot enough in me I think the rain might sizzle on my skin.
Devil wouldn’t be the devil if he didn’t know how to tempt.
Ain’t we been suffering and dying all this time, at the hands of monsters in human form? What difference then if we make a pact with some other monsters?
They like the places where we hurt. They use it against us.
The places where we hurt. Where we hurt. Not just me, all of us, colored folk everywhere, who carry our wounds with us, sometimes open for all to see, but always so much more buried and hidden deep. I remember the songs that come with all those visions. Songs full of hurt. Songs of sadness and tears. Songs pulsing with pain. A righteous anger and cry for justice. But not hate.
What I have is beautiful music inspired by struggle and fierce love. What he got ain’t nothing but hateful noise.
