James

gave a language lesson. These were indispensable. Safe movement through the world depended on mastery of language, fluency. The young ones sat on the packed-dirt floor and I was on one of our two homemade stools. The hole in the roof pulled the smoke from the fire that burned in the middle of the shack. “Papa, why do we have to learn this?”

“And you’re colored,” she said. Norman nodded. “Who can tell?” “Nobody,” Norman said. “Then why do you stay colored?” “Because of my mother. Because of my wife. Because I don’t want to be white. I don’t want to be one of them.” Sammy looked at me. “That’s a pretty good answer.”

“White folks expect us to sound a certain way and it can only help if we don’t disappoint them,”

“Never speak first,” a girl said.

I am called Jim. I have yet to choose a name. In the religious preachings of my white captors I am a victim of the Curse of Ham. The white so-called masters cannot embrace their cruelty and greed, but must look to that lying Dominican friar for religious justification. But I will not let this condition define me. I will not let myself, my mind, dro

François-Marie Arouet de Voltaire

the Bible itself was the least interesting of all. I could not enter it, did not want to enter it, and then understood that I recognized it as a tool of my enemy.

White people often spent time admiring their survival of one thing or another. I imagined it was because so often they had no need to survive, but only to live.

I hated the world that wouldn’t let me apply justice without the certain retaliation of injustice.