For Black Sake

 

            

The pillow cases were nowhere to be found. Adams had gone to school. Mom was sobbing in the balcony and my tooth was aching seriously. I and Victoria were soon going to be on the streets, but I didn’t care, I didn’t care about anything again. Mom was going to come in and rant all she could because I hadn’t made the bed- I hadn’t been responsible. I guess, for the last couple of weeks, my head was floating in the river Nile…

            America was declared free from all forms of black slavery and racism, but in fact, it was only a social construct. I guess, Abraham Lincoln had not done a great job. Living in Brooklyn was hard. The street were always beautified with filth and perfumed with marijuana, and all those other stuff the people of the hood took. Momma had warned us from living recklessly like these people, but as the saying goes, “while in Rome, act like the Romans”. I wasn’t able to figure out how one would live on streets like this and be saints. Mom never forgot to hold me responsible if my younger siblings misbehaved. When Adams attempted to hang out with Jackson, a gang bandit, mom skinned me alive with her naggings. Of course she couldn’t hit a 19 year old boy- she never did. As the first child, Victoria and Adams were my responsibility, but sometimes I wished I never existed and never had to be responsible.

            The whites had finally succeeded in packing us up like abandoned cars, pushing us to live in secluded areas like Brooklyn. There was no integration whatsoever with them as we, the coloured were regarded as unaccepted. It was the same when a white mistakenly finds himself in Brooklyn, Jackson and his likes made sure they did not live to tell their stories or at least, leaved in a bad state. But what were we to do? The government was not helping matters. The blacks had their own schools, different from those of the whites. We were still regarded as slaves and racism was still in its highest ebb. The 1862 proclamation of freedom for the blacks, were as good as useless.

            “Ben” I heard mom scream from the balcony. She had been sobbing all morning. Bills were rising and Adams wasn’t behaving well. Victoria was pregnant for a gang leader and I was having a health challenge. She just couldn’t bear it all.

            “Yes ma’am”, I answered from the room- the only room in the house.

            “Come over here” mom said, still high-pitched. I wondered how she got her voice back after she had sacrificed it on the altar of pain.

            Getting to the spot where she sat, I suddenly realised that this woman - my mother - was aging. Her arms, which I guess had been resting in between her laps, were kinda wrinkled- or was it just protracted vein? I didn’t know, but what I knew was that it was not a very pleasant sight. Hands that have been slaving for the whites since papa died 11 years ago- working as a maid in miss Green’s house. The sides of her face spoke of fears, rumpled in an unfamiliar way. this was not the mother I knew. Getting closer, just before she lifted her face to me, I saw that her lips were broken-just like her heart.

            The memories of papa’s death were still as clear as spring waters, welling up in my heart. How he had laboured on the rail- working for the white men, without being appreciated. They had succeeded in killing him, that train accident was not an accident as it was called, it was their deliberate plan to eliminate the brighter workers like Papa who spoke out when things were going wrong. I envisaged mom to be thinking of him, their souls were so connected, and at that tender age, I knew they really loved each other. Papa’s death almost made us lose our mother too. Then, as I watched her, I prayed silently that we wouldn’t lose her to these hurtful thoughts and memories.