Antebellum (51 page)

“I don't understand you, though, so your logic is off somewhere.”

My father laughed out loud.

“You were always a smart kid. I knew you'd make it. There were times when I held my breath, but I knew you'd eventually make it.”

“How come you weren't there?”

The question took both of us by surprise.

“What was that, son?”

I cleared my throat and pushed the words out like a newborn. “How come you weren't there?”

“I just couldn't be, son. I wish I was. I watched you the whole time.”

“But you weren't there.”

“Yes, I know.”

We walked in silence for another moment, stepping over the dead bodies of both blacks and whites as we moved along. This time, my dad broke the silence. “So...was it worth it?”

“I don't know. I don't really know who I am anymore.”

“That's a lie.”

“What do you mean, it's a lie?”

“I mean, it's a lie. It's fake. It's a falsehood. It's not true.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I'm your dad.”

I realized that there was no better answer to the question.

“So was it worth it?”

“I don't know, Dad. I really don't know.”

“Listen!”

My father grabbed me by the shoulders so suddenly that I almost jumped out of his grasp.

“I would die a thousand deaths if I could've died like you. A thousand deaths.”

And then he turned and walked off into the haze of the Southern day.

“DAD!”

I had been yelling out for my father in my sleep, and the sound of my own voice woke me. I sat up on my bed, and tried to rub the image of my father fading into the distance from my eyes. Slowly, I stood and paced back and forth across my room. I felt as if he was standing somewhere in the room, and the feeling made the hair on my forearms stand up.

“Was it worth it?”

I heard the words, and even though I felt my mouth move, I knew I wasn't the one speaking. I ran over to the door and left the room before I had the chance to turn pale.

I wasn't sure of the time, but the sun was no longer in the sky. I could hear Big Mama, Mama, and SaTia's voices echoing off the walls in the living room. As I made my way down the stairs, I looked at all the familiar pictures on the wall. Big Mama had always kept a bunch of old, black and white photos on the wall. They'd been there since I was young, and I'd long since ignored them. Now, though, I stopped and looked at each one. They each seemed to call out to me, as if the pictures knew something about me that I didn't. I stared at each photo, trying to figure out why they were drawing me closer. And then, five steps from the bottom, I saw it. Hanging there on the wall, where it had always
been, I saw it and my mouth fell open. I stared at the small photo, in a frame no larger than my shoe, and allowed the color to drain from my face. The photo contained two women, adorned in dresses and clearly tired from a hard day's work. The woman on the left I did not recognize, but the woman on the right almost stopped my heart cold.

It was Sarah.

With my hands shaking, I took the picture off the wall and walked slowly into the living room. The women fell silent when they saw me. I could see the concern on each of their faces.

“Baby?” Big Mama reached out to grab my hand. “You gon' be alright?”

Instead of grabbing her hand, I put the picture down on her palm and pointed to it.

“This thing here?” She laughed, holding the picture in front of her face. “Lawd, I cain't tell you how long it's been since my mama gave me that! Now the lady on the right, I never knew who she was. Nobody ever told me. But the one on the left, that's my Aunt Elizabeth. She was Mama's great-great-aunt. They says she was a powerful woman. Say she gave prophecies to slaves.”

I looked at Big Mama, then at the picture she grasped in her hand, and I knew it was time. I felt Roka and Sarah nudge me on the back of my shoulder blades.

“Big Mama...Mama...SaTia...”

At the sound of my voice, Mama dropped the full cup of coffee she held in her hand..

SaTia probably didn't know how to feel. She sat there with her mouth open and her face contorted in a mass of unclear emotions.

Big Mama just smiled and shook her head. She looked back at Mama and SaTia with a grin on her face. “Told y'all she was a powerful woman...”

I smiled at my grandmother, and then turned to face them all once again. It was the first time they'd heard me speak since I'd first come out of my coma.

“Big Mama...Mama...SaTia...I'm ready to tell y'all what happened to me.”

I turned around so that my back was facing them and took off my shirt, revealing the scars from Bradley's whip. My gift from the Talbert plantation.

SaTia became instantly enraged. “Who did this to you? Was it somebody from the hospital? Who did this?”

“Jesus...” Mama looked at my back in horror.

I noticed after a few seconds that I didn't hear Big Mama's reaction. When I turned to see her, she had her rough, calloused hand over her mouth. As her hand began to shake, tears formed and dripped from her eyes like a leaky faucet. It was my first time seeing her cry.

“I know exactly what them are,” she said, choking out the words.

In that moment, the empty space beside Big Mama on the couch was the only one that felt comfortable. I sat down and grabbed Big Mama's hand.

“Speak, child,” she whispered, and looked me dead in my face.

I took a deep breath and looked around the room at the ladies. Again, like clockwork, I saw the commander standing in the corner, in the distance behind my mother. He looked intently at me, and I could tell he had seen the scars on my back as well.

As I sat back, I kept Big Mama's hand in mine.

“After I got shot, out there, on the porch...well...I woke up in a field...”

As the sounds of the night played on, I relived my past life.

17

T
he afternoon sun tiptoed across my face as my eyes fluttered open. The world was becoming more concrete by the second. I didn't wonder where I was, or how I'd gotten here; instead, my thoughts raced back to last night. To the faces of my family as I'd described to them all that I'd been through. They'd hardly blinked as I'd described what it was like to be caged and fed garbage, or to have my bones broken in order for them to heal properly, or to urinate on myself whenever a white person came into the room.

I could tell they didn't want to believe me. To chalk the whole story up to some psychotic break would have been easier for everyone, including me. But they'd sat by my bedside and been with me every second I'd been awake from my coma. They knew, though they may not have wanted to, that there was no explanation for the marks on my back except that my story was true.

We'd been up all night. I'd gone from not uttering a single word, to talking for almost six hours without interruption. I turned over every detail of my alternate life and exposed it. There were times when I looked up and everyone was weeping, and I realized I was shedding tears as well. Other times I had to catch myself, realizing that I was shouting at the top of my lungs. When I finished, I was too weak to move, but so were my family members. They'd taken a portion of my cross and borne it on their own
backs. Eventually it was the commander who—as the birds sang the credit music to my story—took each of us and led us to our respective rooms.

If he was tired, he didn't show it. I figured he'd been trained not to. But as he silently helped me up the stairs, I had the chance to glance in his eyes. I could tell he'd taken a piece of my cross, too.

I'd slept straight through to the afternoon, and now that I was awake, I wondered what to do? Where do I go? Who do I talk to? I'd finally told someone about what had happened to me, but that was just the first part. I still didn't know who I was yet. I only knew who I wasn't.

It suddenly occurred to me that I could make the decision to just stay in my room for the rest of my life. That way I'd have all the time I could ever want to figure myself out. As soon as I stepped out my door, however, I knew everyone would expect that I knew who I was. No doubt Big Mama, Mama, and SaTia had come to their own conclusions about who I was—or who I should be—now that they knew what had happened. And everyone outside of the house was still expecting the same man who'd gotten shot on the porch to emerge better than ever.

I decided I wouldn't leave the room until I had some idea of the person I had become. It would be too dangerous. Preparing mentally to stay confined in my room for an undetermined amount of time, I walked over to the window. I wondered how long it would be until I lay my feet on the small patch of grass outside, and then I turned my head, realizing I was depressing myself.

And that's when I saw it.

It lay underneath the desk, in the shadows cast down by the open drawer. I would have never noticed it, except the sunlight was coming into the room just at the right angle to reflect off of
its screen. Slowly I walked over and reached down, closing the drawer, revealing the iPod lying there on the ground. After turning it on and entering the code, I scrolled through the music. It had every last one of my albums on it, from the first one I'd done with the local studio, to
Hoes In Da Attic.

I could hear the whisper of Sarah's voice through the touch screen.

“You can't knowed who you is till you knowed who you was befo.'”

I put the headphones in my ears and scrolled up to the very first album under my name. Hitting play, I let the familiar bassline wash over me, and studied every word like a chemistry book.

Some hours later, I emerged from my room with my head spinning and my chest tight. My own words had tried to suffocate me. I stumbled down the steps with my lyrics buzzing in my ears around me. I swatted at them like flies and hoped that no one saw me.

It was early evening by now, but because of the late night we'd all had, the smell of bacon, eggs, and pancakes still met me at the doorway. I stopped briefly before I entered, wondering how my family would treat me now that they knew the truth, and then threw caution to the wind and stepped inside.

My family members looked like robots. They moved mechanically around the kitchen, doing tasks that were only completed because they were second nature to them. Their eyes still had the same distant glaze from the night prior, and they didn't utter a word to one another. Big Mama went back and forth between the different eyes of the stove as if she'd been programmed to do so. Mama set the table and started the coffeemaker as if she was a
wind-up doll, and SaTia just sat at the table, staring into space. They all looked at me as I came into the room, and I could tell they had everything and nothing to say at the same time. I sat down beside SaTia as Big Mama began putting pancakes on everyone's plate and Mama poured coffee.

“I wanna have a press conference today,” I said assuredly to SaTia, waking her from her daze. “I wanna call back all the news people who was out here yesterday, and I wanna talk to 'em.”

“Are you sure that's the best idea, Moses? Maybe you should think a little about what you want to say first.”

“I been up in my room for the last couple hours doin' nothin' but thinkin', SaTia. Now that I'm startin' to know who I am, I wanna tell people. I wanna let people know.”

“Alright,” she said, picking up her cell phone. “It's done. They'll be outside in two hours.”

“Also, can you contact Dr. Bailey for me? You know, from the hospital? I wanna talk to him.”

“That's not a problem. Anything else?”

“Yeah. I wanna take you on a date.”

The last line caught everyone's attention. I heard the snap of Mama and Big Mama's necks as they whipped their heads around to stare at me. SaTia dropped her BlackBerry in her pancake syrup.

“You...what?” she said.

“I wanna take you on a date. I'd ask you to marry me, but I think you need to get to know me first. I ain't the same person I used to be.”