Bondage

Dedicated to the good friend who helped me to better this, and who offered her praises - a most important thing...

The first time I was clasped onto his wrists and ankles, he was an African. Now, as I bite my iron-cold, rust-tender kiss into his flesh, he is a non-presence; a small black spot under the thumb of the sun. I clasp him firm, shackling him ore-steady to the others in the chain-gang. But whilst I am inanimate – immaterial in the grander scheme of things, you might say – consider my brief part in this picture; after hearing my story, you might look upon me more kindly.

            You see, I have witnessed the strangeness in these beings, and while I’ve no greater purpose than to bind the blackskins in metallic bondage, I am not the hammer-wielder: I have no choice. I was forged this way; it was beaten into me. But the blackskins are indifferent to my embrace.

            The one whom I bind was once known as Akwambe, but now he is #102. I remember the first time I really bit down into him. On the 23^rd day of the voyage, halfway across the ocean, Akwambe pissed from his cage onto one of the English slave traders.

            They snatched him out of his detritus-filled piss-hole by his wrists and ankles, and as they were about to tie his hands with rope and throw him overboard, the Captain ordered the men to stop.

            But as the sun beat down onto the galley and the whip cracked into his gashed and gushing back, I could sense behind the anger of his gnashing teeth a deep resignation; the subservience was sunk deeply into his grey eyes, which were embedded into his skull like two matt stones.

            Akwambe gazed out listlessly at the ocean and saw two wheeling birds circling the boat, stalking its cargo but hesitant to land. His torture was lifted briefly by the sight of these two seabirds, flying together on high. But then one pecked at the other and it wheeled away, down towards the water, looking nonplussed and downhearted as it rested on the surface.

From that moment, as his limp raw body was taken down and the men clasped me back round his wrists, I knew the future of the whiteskins and the blackskins – for I am ageless, old and present as Time. And as they stuffed him into the heatbox, I bit into his swollen wrists, thankful at the warping heat of the noon sun. But I love him so: he is all I have, and I have come to know him better than the rock of ages. He is the song of the Earth.

But now this African is no more; we are in America, but he is not an American, either. The date is March 10^th 1865, and in one month the Thirteenth Amendment will be passed, and he will be a free man, unchained from the iron vice of bondage. Justice is coming, he thinks, but behind that veneer of pride he is terrified: blown like cotton fluff in this new wind, freedom feels as solid as a breeze; a breeze that blows the seed ceaselessly through the ages.

And though the shackles will have been stripped of him, they will remain: a scar – a memory – still heavy as iron. And I will live for ever, trapped inside the rock of his experience. Blowing there, carried in the wind.

           

***

Walls hear everything, they say. In that case, you’d think the roof would have fallen in by now, the walls long crumbled in despair. But walls are indifferent. Not to Fang, though: he is the one I wall, and he is good. He sometimes sings to me when he’s lonely – ancient Chinese folk songs. But I do not swoon. I must remain stiff.

            Fang was born seven years after I was erected. The ones before him did not sing to their walls, but remained as cold as edifices themselves. Fang has gone from cot to mattress on the floor in that time, which I count to be fifteen years. I guess you could say he’s always been on his back. You can see the age in the yellowing of his smile, not just in my skin. When he smiles it looks like an old man has stolen his teeth, like death is favouring his teeth years before claiming the rest of him.

            He travels two hours out of the Province every day by train to work in a factory. I make that 72 hours each week, judging by clock-time. When he comes home, he changes from his work clothes and goes to watch TV with his young brother in the next room. I can hear the muffled echoes of cartoon chases and comical explosions through my plaster. There would be seven of them, but mothers must keep some secrets. And so must walls. After watching TV, he eats his noodles alone in his room, cross-legged like a Buddha on his mattress. Then he sleeps, wakes up, gets the train, works, travels back, eats, and sleeps. Each day is like this: plain and flat as plasterboard. And, like plaster, he can fill in the holes and cracks.

            A few days ago, I saw him reading a book he’d lifted from his young brother’s nursery. It was a picture-book on the American slave trade. As he turned each page, I could make out images of black people, like Fang but skinnier, bonier, and they were shackled and enchained – by the neck, by the wrists, by their feet. Fang stared at one picture for a long time and then began heaving under his breath. Although he never read – he could not read – he knew about America. He closed the book huffily and threw it onto the dusty floorboards.

            That aside might seem unimportant, but it brings me to the next part of my story: whilst I cannot see all, only what shelters inside my four walls, I can see Fang’s dreams, and dreams are all. Last night, as Fang lay dreaming and lightly stirring, I saw a vision. He was in a large, ventilated room that was full of people; but these others were shadows, and he was alone.

            As Fang sat there on the line that whirred whitely past him, he stared fixedly ahead. When his superior saw this, the man approached.

‘Fang! Why are you not working?’

Fang did not stir.

‘Fang!’ The man struck at him with a length of bamboo.

Fang jerked his gaze away and glared at the man with bared teeth. He reached towards the line, towards one of the tiny white electronic appliances. His hand thrummed like a hot sphere of molten steel as he wrestled with thrusting the gadget against the wall, but then he froze.

            A vision had dropped, a dreamy ghostly pall, into his sleeping brain. A ship tore through water, all sails outblown, and on the sun-baked deck a man was tied to the mast. As the whip cracked and cut bloodied white streaks into his black flesh, the man turned his head, his face a-grimace, and the man had a Chinese face. He voicelessly screamed.

Then Fang was back inside the factory, his anger-contorted face melted into a frightened blankness, his hands holding the object in the air absently.

            Fang started awake – startled, breathless, sweaty – and pulled the sheet from his bare clammy chest up to his chin, the sound of water still in his ears, even though he’d never seen the ocean in his entire life.

            But still the waves seemed to lap and rush in the darkness, washing and breaking silently against my four walls.

***

Call me Nameless. I was born nameless, and Nameless is my name.

           The future is dead now. We are all predator and prey here. We are animals once again, broken through the veneer of humanity, and human flesh is now only worth its weight in protein content. Savages roam the wastes looking for women, victims – slaves. One must be ruthless as the Wolf out here to survive now. But I am not like the others.

I live by the coast with my son, Red: he has red hair, a dusting of red eyebrow. But, unlike the colour, his nature is not violent. He is alive, though, and he is my son: there is no other truth. The coast is the only vaguely living part of this country: the interior is baked, scorched, the barren scrub shit-and-toil land of the Crow.

            We never knew whether it was the warming planet or the nukes. Probably both. But anyway, I don’t care for ‘we’ anymore. There is no longer any we in these lands. There’s only me and I. And my son. I would die for him. I have killed for him: seven men, all of them beasts; monsters clothed in human skin. And yet he must be alone. He must remain alone, for we are alone. I have taught him to trust nobody, for only the blade and the pistol bear truth here.

            For the last seventeen months, we have been heading north from Virginia up the East Coast. We’re headed for Canada, eventually: we figure the nukes probably didn’t get that far north, and it’s milder up there. Heck, shit might even still be growing up there!

            I am like a Chinese hermit, but I must be. You have never seen a mother forced to consume her dead infant. I have. And I have seen far worse besides, believe me. By the campfire hearth, I tell my son about the stars. Once upon a time, they meant something: stories, navigational aids, an unknowable and distant collection of suns in which to take consolation. But now they only seem to mock with their beauty and their tranquillity. I hold this last truth in my heart with bitterness, hesitant to confuse my boy with such nihilistic poetry. But the stars are meaningless; it can’t be glossed over. One day he’ll learn that for himself. Just hold on to the Pole Star, I tell him. That’s the only useful one. I also tell him about the animals – what variety there once was! But animal books are useless, too, for now it’s just the Crow and the rakish Wolf that rule this land, the latter skinny through the paucity of life, death now no longer a commonplace here; but everywhere still regardless, the landscape itself pregnant with decay. And when a bird does split the sky, it is not the Hawk – not even the Lark. I now no longer even recall the sound of birdsong.

            One day, twenty miles from Washington, following the Potomac, I shout at my son to get down and keep quiet. We lay with our chins in the dust as a growing beat deepens in the earth. Hooves, galloping. I look to the distance and see several people on horseback. Horses, I think. How are they keeping them alive? I tell my son I love him, and I tell him to close his eyes. I take my pistol from its holster and press the barrel softly up against the back of his skull, rustling his red hair like feathers. I glass the coming stampede, waiting.

            ‘Halt!’ I hear.

            ‘Daddy!’ says Red.

            ‘Quiet, son.’

            ‘Halt there, I said!’ the rider cries out again.

            I raise my gun and aim it at him, at which point the riders’ horses canter to a stop. They raise their rifles at me and pause, deliberating their next move in the silence.

            ‘Drop your gun, sir,’ says the man.

            ‘If I do, you must promise me you’ll not harm my son. If you do –‘

            ‘We’ll not harm your son,’ says the man. ‘Now drop your gun.’

            I hesitate, the gun trembling in my hands, and then I shakily extend my arm and drop the gun. The man unreins himself and climbs down from the horse, approaching me. I look into his ashen face as he approaches, expecting to see a maddened toothless sneer, but what I see is a calm. Two eyes glare out like cold steel. He extends his hand. I take it, standing up. I reach for Red.

            The man pats my shoulders down, smiling, and then I tend to Red, swatting the dirt from him. It falls from him like dust from a beaten rug, the particles glinting like diamond dust in the dimming light.

            ‘Who are you?’ I say.

            ‘From the Commune; two miles that way.’ He points to the horizon. In the dusk-light, I can see the smouldered remains of Washington somewhere far in the distance. In the foreground, in the direction to which he points, I can make out a walled mound, surrounded by torch-lit outposts.

            ‘Commune?’ I say, sputtering and choking dust.

            ‘Yessir,’ he says, regarding me perplexedly. ‘You sound surprised; you didn’t think you was all alone out here, did ya?’ He grins.

            The dust falls from me and is swallowed in the breeze. We stand there – Red and I, the man, the others on horseback. It suddenly seems the whole world has burst in upon me, biting down toothless.

            The river babbles and gurgles. The sun pours down its last onto the darkening landscape.

***

i am in the room i am on the bed i take off my blouse and skirt and knickers the smell of my Beyoncé perfume spuming up into my nostrils as my blouse rubs against my perfumed wrists i tell him it’s Britney Spears he likes it he tells me it reminds him of bubblegum and parma violets and makes his dick hard and i think good you fuck and he oggles my little tits like i’m a fourteen-year-old girl and i take it all the words dead to me and i laugh and he says ‘bitch, what’s funny’ and i say ‘nothin’ and he says ‘yeah, nothin that’s what i thought, nothin’ and he says to get on the bed so i get on the bed and i spread my legs i look over my shoulder at him and he tells me to look playful and start to touch myself and moan so i moan but i am not getting wet so he says ‘bitch get wet for me, are you wet yet?’ so i think of Tom

           

I am twelve and he is fifteen.

Tom: I say his name in my head, and I can recall the reflection of the trees rippling the water’s surface, the afternoon sun cocooning us in light. He is stroking my hair and he fingers the fringe from my eyes, tucking it behind my ear. He brushes my cheek with the back of his left hand, and with the other he caresses my earlobe between thumb and index finger. He kisses me and then reaches his hand down towards my panties. I trace my hand after his, then grab onto it. ‘Stop,’ I gasp. He stares into my eyes. ‘Baby, it’s okay. You can trust me.’

He starts to play with the hem and then strokes the inside of my left thigh, my toes tingling and my nerves dancing with ecstasy. He strokes me through my panties and then kisses the skin of my thigh, working his way playfully towards that inexorable point where the world crashes into a watery oneness, rushing, and floods through the back of my brain like an ocean tide pulling at my entire world, at everything, crashing down over me.

I close my eyes as his finger slowly enters me and he whispers, ‘Baby, you’re good. Are you enjoying this?’ I moan quietly yes, and I mutter, ‘Just go gentle.’ And he says, ‘Baby –’

          baby, you’re wet for me now huh? he says as he fucks me holding me by the calfs legs splayed out i thought you’d never arrive i’m gonna make you come you want me to make you come huh, you sexy whore? i think about crying but everything is numb everything has always stayed numb and i can’t cry i just take it and say ‘yes yes yes fuck me hard like that daddy’ as he heaves and shudders and then arrives inside me in a pathetic tepid sputter rolls onto the bed and says ‘the money’s on the side bitch’ and i go to the dresser and down the glass of whisky he’s poured and he gets up and stands behind me looking at me in the mirror smirking eyeballing my tits and his own ugly pock-faced mug and he rubs my shoulders i shrug him off and throw on my clothes and escape out the door like hot wind

            And I’m on the bus now, looking out of the window into darkness. Not into the distance, exactly, and not at the foreground. Not even into myself, my own head an impenetrable bright glare. Just into space. And then a voice across from me says, ‘Are you okay?’

I turn my head after a few seconds and say, ‘Huh? Were you talking to me?’ It belongs to a black woman, sitting there with her son. Her eyes are big and concerned, and I can’t believe she feels empathy for me. Her son hunkers down beside her, staring out at me scared through his whites-swollen eyes.

‘Yeah, I’m okay,’ I say, smiling numbly and staring off into the distance.

‘It’s awful cold out,’ she says. ‘You be careful.’ She gives me a smile, full of sadness and despair, like she can see the heavy shadow that hangs in bunches, like tattered black rags, from my small pale form.

            ‘I will,’ I say. I look at her son. He’s sitting there quietly, still gaping at me from those innocent eyes. ‘You’re very handsome for a young boy. What’s your name?’

            He stares straight up at his mother shiftily. She nods at him. ‘The lady asked you a question.’

            He looks back at me. ‘Akwambe,’ he says quietly, a small smile holding his mouth like a single segment of orange, his little cheeks going pink and bunching up.

            ‘That’s very pretty,’ I say. ‘That’s – very pretty.’ I turn to look back out of the window, smiling to myself. We are crossing the Thames, the lights of London looming in the black water; a luminescent fortress breaking the blackness of the night sky, and holding back the stars.

Note: Please feel free to comment - this is my fourth draft, and it would be great to hear your thoughts for suggestions and/or improvements! :)

A Brief Scene from Two Lovers

She looks at him, holding his gaze, and then looks away, down at the floor, eyes glinting nervously, cheeks flushed; a smile warming her face, warping that previous blankness into shape. And he looks back at her, then down at his feet coquettishly, pleased – embarrassed. He raises his head, waiting for her eyes to once again burn into the back of his skull, and his mouth slowly ripens into a grin, stretching from ear to ear.

                But they are not in the same room: they are lost lovers, on opposite sides of the world. Everywhere he goes, walking alone, he is holding her hand. He holds on so tight. Sometimes, when it’s cold, his hands turn blue – and so he knows she’s squeezing back, and the space of air beside him briefly warms, filling with her life.