Рот Уайт - 400 Days of Oppression

“Oh, baby, what’s wrong?”

He couldn’t stop the sobbing long enough to reply. His mother held him in her arms, rocking him the way she had when he was a baby, until the last tears had fallen.

“I’m never going to see Christie again. I love her, Ma.”

His mother gave him one of those wise, knowing smiles, a smile that said: “You should have asked me all along. I’ve got the answer right here.”

“Why don’t you just call her?”

And so he did.

“Christie?”

“Kenyatta?”

“Yeah, it’s me. Why did you run away?”

“I was scared—I mean hurt. Why did you kiss me like that? Why’d you tell me you love me? I was already missing you. That was just mean. Now I’m never going to see you again.”

“It doesn’t have to be like that. We can still see each other. You can be my girlfriend. I’ll come see you every day.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone.

“My parents would kill me. They don’t believe in that.”

They don’t believe in that.

There was no need to say what “ that” was. They both knew. Black boys dating white girls. Race-mixing. Miscegenation.

“But...” Kenyatta didn’t know what to say.

“Good bye, Kenyatta.” She was crying now. “I’ll miss you.”

“I-I love you, Christie.” This time it sounded like a plea, which it was. He couldn’t believe that this was the end of it.

“I love you too, Kenyatta.”

“Then—”

The phone went dead. She had hung up. Kenyatta was stunned, broken. It was the first time he’d ever been in love and he didn’t know what he was supposed to do with this pain. It hurt so bad it felt like his mind was going to shatter into a million little jagged pieces. He stood up and left his room. He passed his mom in the kitchen.

“How’d it go?”

He didn’t answer. He just walked out the door. He walked all the way to Frankford Avenue and crossed it. An hour later. He walked back home, ran up to his room, undressed, and jumped into the shower. After his shower, he took his clothes down to the dumpster and threw them in the trash. He came back upstairs, passing his mother again who was looking at him with concern.

“You okay, Kenyatta?”

“I’m fine.”

“You want something to eat?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“How did it go with your little girlfriend?”

He shook his head and closed his bedroom door. Kenyatta held the little scrap of paper he’d written Christie’s address and phone number on in his hand. There was a dark stain on it and he smeared it with his thumb. She wasn’t home when he had knocked on her door. Her mom and dad told him she had gone to a friend’s house, staring at him with eyes full of suspicion. It was probably best she wasn’t there. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe things would have gone differently if she’d been there. He didn’t know. It was hard to resist the urge to call her, but he would wait. He would give her a few days to grieve before he reached out to her again.

My name is Natasha and I am a slave, property. I have been owned in one way or another for as long as I can remember. I was a slave to addictions, a slave to my past, a slave to my low expectations of men and even lower expectations of myself. Now, I have stripped away all the pretensions. No more self-deception. The bonds are as real as the need for them. They are honesty, truth, making the metaphor concrete and there is freedom in this, in the spirit if not the flesh.

My master’s name is Kenyatta and I love him. I love him with all my heart, more than my own pride and self-respect, more than all the pain and humiliation. More than the discomfort and inconvenience. I love him and I want to marry him some day, some day soon, and that’s what made it all tolerable.

I panicked as my own humid breath rebounded off the inside of the coffin lid. The press of the pine box against my sides and the oppressive heat escalated my claustrophobia. I blinked the sweat from my eyes and coughed as I inhaled more of the hot moist air. It was hard to believe it contained any oxygen at all. The overwhelming heat, the smell of my own piss and shit coming from the bucket just yards away, was making it increasingly difficult to breathe. The nauseating fumes boiled in my lungs as I choked them down. I tried not to think about it, afraid that dwelling on the situation would bring on a panic attack. I was trying my best not to freak out.

All I had to do was say one word and my oppression would end. I would be free. I could go back to my own warm bed, back to eating regular food, taking regular showers and using the toilet whenever I wanted. All I had to do was say the safe word. But I couldn’t. It just wasn’t in me. No matter what, I just couldn’t say that word.

I hugged my breasts as I began to sob, noting with some remorse that I had lost more weight and my breasts were at least a full cup size smaller. I was wasting away, slowly losing everything that made me attractive to him.

Long rivulets of perspiration and blood trailed down my forearms as I scratched obsessively at the lid of the coffin, wincing when my fingernails snapped, embedded in the wood, and splinters speared my cuticles. It had become almost a nervous habit now. I held no real hope of escaping.

The iron shackles dug deep into my collarbone, wrists, and ankles, weighing me down. The slightest movement tore open the slow-healing wounds where the metal had abraded my skin. Trickles of red stained my chest.

I wanted to get out, to just say fuck it all and end this stupid experiment. But I knew I would stay. I’d endure it all, no matter what he came up with, because I loved him.

I know that makes me sound pitiful, like one of those stupid trailer park whores who stay with men that get drunk and beat them every night, and yeah, I’ve been one of those stupid bitches before too, but this is different. Kenyatta loves me and I volunteered for this. It was what I wanted, what we needed. And ending the experiment would have meant ending our relationship.

The swaying coffin made me nauseous as I rocked back and forth, unhealed wounds scratching against the hard wood. The box was suspended three feet above the concrete floor by chains anchored at its center so that my slightest movement rocked to create the effect of a ship on rough waters. I shifted positions and sent the coffin tilting and reeling. I felt seasick. With great effort I resisted the urge to vomit up the crappy mess he’d been feeding me the last couple of days, choking it back down as the gorge rose in my throat. I was hungry and thirsty, and my bowels were full and threatening to fail. There was no way I could have imagined I’d be this miserable.

The pipes rattled above me as Kenyatta took his morning shower. I was jealous. I wanted a shower too. Even the horrific reek of my bucket/toilet wasn’t strong enough to mask the stench of my own body odor. I smelled like sweat and vomit. I listened longingly to the shower, depressing myself even more. At least now I had some idea of the time. He would be coming to get me soon.

I shifted positions and sucked in a quick breath as a scab on my elbow scraped open against the rough wood. A door slammed above. Pots and pans rattled. The smell of frying bacon drifted down from the kitchen. My stomach roiled. I would have killed for some pancakes with butter and lots of syrup or an omelet with spinach and feta cheese like the kind he made for me the first night I spent at his house, when he woke me up the next morning with breakfast in bed and then fucked me hard on his satin-sheets before leaving for work and leaving me there alone to finish breakfast at my leisure. I had felt like a queen then. Today I just hoped he would remember to feed me.