Mad Like Me Geneviève Hicks
I hear screaming coming from outside of my
this woman but instead, I turn the question
office. At first, I think it’s from the bar across the street. Something about this yelling is oddly familiar, though—the cadence or perhaps the tone, can’t quite put my finger on it. It’s acting like a siren’s call. Part of me knows it’s safer to stay inside and another part of me is being drawn outside towards the parking garage. This black woman is hollering so furiously.
onto myself. What are you so angry about?
“Fuck you, you stuuuupid fucker,” and, “You are a fuck face of an asshole mother fucker.” Her voice grows louder as she escalates and despite my intention to watch from afar, her rage pulls me towards her. “Don’t you ever put your goddamn hands on my shopping cart ever again,” and, “Damn if I’m not going to kill you when I find your fuckered two-face bitch-ass.” Spittle flies as she curses. Not far off, I see a white man cowering behind a large pillar cradling a small dog in his arms. He appears to be waiting the scene out. I am of two minds, worried now that she used the phrase ‘kill you’ that the police will get involved and also feeling my own fury toward this cowering white man. What are you so angry about? I think of asking
*** Bags of cotton carried on black haunches and hips, bent backs forced to toil in the southern sun, the site of auction blocks covered by water fountains, shackles, and whippings, shitting on one another in the bowels of the ship, the door of no return. Tumbling through a portal of transhistorical rage. Treat us like cargo, brand our bodies, disembowel us of organs and fetuses and then have the nerve to cower like a small boy who wet his pants when we show our rage. Without those iron chains, we could have eaten you alive. One fleshy morsel at a time. You, who have committed the most heinous crimes against humanity the world over, have the nerve to act surprised when we show our rage. You should wonder how it is that we don’t allow our rage to consume us. It doesn’t just naturally dissipate because it was over 150 years ago when your ancestor raped my ancestor. I’m fucking pissed that I am the descendant of a slave master raping his enslaved. I’m fucking pissed that I have to worry that this woman who is expressing a justifiable rage might have the police called on her.
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