The Reformatory

by Tananarive Due

Guessing at a white man’s meaning was a dangerous game.

Mama had kept most of her childhood stories locked in her eyes. Mama’s stories were unsuited for the ears of children—stories of evil without consequence and pain without cease—the unholy things that happen when God blinks. Or maybe sleeps.

Florida’s soil is soaked with so much blood, it’s a wonder the droplets don’t seep between your toes with every step,

“I believe in the devil, all right, but man don’t need no help from Satan to do what folks call ‘evil.’ Man do evil ev’ry day and call it doin’ their job.

Gracetown soil remembers. It’s like a mirror that shines yo’ ugly back at you.”

This land hid bones that had not been properly spoken for.

They wear you down one wrong at a time, Mama used to say.

“Segregation isn’t unique to the South,” Loehmann said, thinking of how often he’d seen colored children chased from his Lower East Side library. “Just… more flamboyant.”

Death might be more real than living, since life was over so soon.

The secret to war is the sacrifices friends make for each other, and this is your war.

Mama used to say Life isn’t fair when he cried over not getting his way, but he hadn’t known then that unfairness was so big, covering the world.

Fire lived in raging beauty and died in silent ash, painting everything it touched black.