Рот Уайт - 400 Days of Oppression

“Fuck you, Kenyatta. You’re an asshole!”

“Yeah. I may be. But you’re still in love with me.”

I didn’t know what to say and so I continued to stare at the movie as the penguins marched across the screen and some little kid in the front row spilled his popcorn and began to cry. I knew how he felt. I wanted to cry too. I also wanted to laugh and shout and make love again. I was in love!

And I still was. Even as I served this evil bitch her bacon and eggs and watched her drink her coffee, I still loved the man who had placed me in this awkward, uncomfortable position.

“These eggs taste like shit!”

Mistress tossed her entire plate onto the floor and I quickly, obediently, snatched a washrag from the sink and knelt to clean up her mess. I noted that she’d eaten most of the food on the plate before mounting her dramatic display of displeasure. She scowled down at me as I scrubbed the tile floor.

Kenyatta entered the room, dressed exquisitely in an athletic-cut black Brooks Brothers suit and a pink shirt with a black knit tie from J-Crew. He looked from his ex-wife to me, on my knees, sweeping cold eggs, bits of bacon, and shards of porcelain into my hand. Then he walked past me, over to his hateful ex-wife, and kissed her on the lips. Not a long, lingering, passionate kiss. Just a peck, but my heart sank immediately and I felt like a fool.

“Goodbye, Angela. You have a great day. I’ll see you after work.”

I stood up, trembling, preparing to storm out, wondering if now was the time to scream the safe word at the top of my lungs and fearing what the two of them would do to me if I did. I knew Kenyatta would have simply thrown me out, but Angela, his bitch of an ex-wife, may have attacked me. Then Kenyatta leaned in close to me and recited a few sentences, obviously memorized from the book. He whispered them to me, meaning them solely for my ears, as if we were co-conspirators or adulterers engaged in some scandalous and clandestine affair.

“Contrary to popular belief, female house-slaves were often treated worse than their counterparts in the tobacco and cotton fields. They were frequently raped by their masters and would bear the master’s half-white children. These children, along with their mothers, were subject to the scorn and abuse of their half-siblings and worse, that of the mistress of the house, for whom they were a reminder of the master’s infidelity. Beatings were an almost daily occurrence. Life in the house was a unique type of hell for the female house-slaves.”

That’s all he said, then he patted me on my greatly diminished ass and walked out the door, leaving me at the mercy of the new mistress of the house. I stood a moment, watching the door close behind him as he entered the garage. I heard him start up the Chrysler, the garage door squeal and whine as it rose then rattled back down behind him as Kenyatta exited the garage and drove to work.

“You’re not done.”

Angela’s voice roused me from my momentary torpor. I considered Kenyatta’s final words before he left. What he had set up here was no different from what his people had gone through. I couldn’t give up now.

“Y-yes mistress?”

“I said, you’re not done! There are still eggs all over the floor!”

I looked at the mess then slid down to my hands and knees to finish scrubbing. I scooped up the remaining eggs and shards of broken plate and dumped them in the wastebasket. When I looked behind me, Mistress was staring at me, smiling in a way that made my skin crawl. There was nothing warm or pleasant in the expression. I could almost see the loathsome thoughts slithering around behind her eyes like maggots through a corpse.

I told myself I was just overreacting, but there was cruelty and lust sparkling in her eyes like naked electricity. It was the expression I’d seen on the faces of so many men as they shouted crude seductions from passing cars and pantomimed lascivious acts they wanted to perform on me. The same expression I’d seen on the faces of men who got too grabby in bars and followed me out into the parking lot, causing me to pull the pepper spray from my purse and occasionally to actually use it. The same expression I’d seen on the faces of the men who got violent after I made the mistake of inviting them into my bed.

“Come here, white bitch,” Mistress hissed.

I cringed at the sound of her hateful voice. There were a dozen vile names I wanted to call her in return, a dozen sardonic retorts. Instead, I shuffled over to her, nervously wringing my hands and staring down at her tiny pedicured feet.

“Yes, Mistress?”

“Tell me something, how did such an ugly, flabby, pale thing like you wind up with my man? Hmmm? Tell me that.”

“I don’t know, Mistress.”

She snorted in derision.

“Go make me a fucking drink, a bloody Mary, and hurry the fuck up.”

Kenyatta had chosen well for this part of the experiment. Angela didn’t have to fake animosity toward me. Her enmity was genuine. I could feel it boiling off her in waves, radiating from her skin like August sunrays off asphalt. Angela was a total bitch, and I would soon discover that her imagination for cruelty went every bit as far as anything I would have expected from Kenyatta. She was heartless and she hated me. I was, after all, fucking her husband. It didn’t matter that they were divorced. She had him first and, in her mind, he still belonged to her and she no doubt knew that if I could endure this trial, I’d be his new wife.

I walked into the dining room, removed a bottle from the wet bar, and poured two fingers of vodka into a glass. I added tomato juice, Worcestershire sauce, a splash of lemon, horseradish, Louisiana hot sauce, and a dash of pepper and celery salt. I was tempted to spit in it, but was afraid she was watching me somehow. I walked back into the kitchen and handed her the drink. She took a sip, closed her eyes, and let out a sigh.

“That’s good.”

She squinted at me as I stood there in the middle of the kitchen in my raggedy, secondhand house dress, hands clasped in front of me, eyes averted from her scrutiny.

“Why are you doing this? Do you know how crazy this shit is? Why are you letting him put you through all this bullshit? He’s sick, you know that? He’s a twisted motherfucker and you’re a goddamn fool for putting up with all this. You should run as far away from his crazy ass as you can.”

I stood there, unmoving, head bowed in supplication, not responding, holding on to the memory of that beautiful diamond ring Kenyatta held out to me the day he proposed this experiment to me.

“You’re fucking pathetic, you know that? You’re a disgrace to women letting a man walk over you like this.”

She spit at me and I stood there and took it without flinching. Her saliva struck me in the face and oozed down my cheek. I didn’t respond, didn’t even bother wiping it off. I knew the sight of it would disgust her and my own unwavering obedience would frustrate her even more. My obedience would be my defiance, and she would spend every day trying to break me, trying to make me go back on my commitment to Kenyatta.

“Wipe your face.”

She threw a towel at my feet. I picked it up and wiped her spittle from my face.

“Take off that dress. You want to be a slave, you’re gonna get treated like a slave. Put your hands against that wall.”

I complied without a word.

“You stay right the fuck there.”

Doubts sprouted like dandelions in my mind, multiplying until they filled my every thought as I stood waiting for Angela to return with some new punishment. For the first time I doubted my desire to proceed with the experiment, more than my ability to endure it.

I felt the crack of the whip a split second before I heard it. It cut deep into my skin, searing into the muscle like a heated knife and sending a spray of vaporized blood into the air. I clenched my teeth and waited for the next one.