Maggots

Red blood and clear sweat reflected the blaring sunlight off of skin the color of burnt sienna. The invasive warmth of the scalding sun soaked Solomon’s body, magnifying the pain of the little red stripes that lay across his body, painting red rivulets across the black asphalt. The heat of the sun and the weight of his wounds pressed down upon his body so that he couldn’t lift his throbbing head from the uninviting rigidity of the ground beneath him or open his mouth to break the flow of the piercing words that enveloped him, “You stupid nigger!” “You ugly coon!” sinking the message deeper and deeper into the little boy’s head, “You are nobody, you are nobody, you are nobody.” Long after the other boys had left Solomon lay there on the pavement, apprehensive, naked, and trembling, with his head in his hands, repeating the words over and over to himself incessantly, “I am nobody, I am nobody, I am nobody.”

A child broken physically, mentally, and emotionally, walked desolately through the falling picket fence of a run down house that afternoon. Lying in an old bathtub filled with cold water while his mother swabbed at his wounds with a cool cloth, Solomon asked “Mommy, the white boys say we don‘t belong here. Where do we belong?” His mother stared at him for a long time without saying anything. Then, with a deep breath that seemed to leave her deflated, she replied, “Where we belong is where they can’t touch us, or burden us with their presence. But the journey there would mean meeting them along the way, ensuring our unpreventable destruction. So we’re forced to lie between indecision and resolution, heads held high, waiting for the better day we know will never come.” Solomon listened as he felt the dull ache of his wounds punctured by an incessant stinging… a minor reflection of a far deeper pain he felt somewhere inside of himself.

The sun whose setting usually brought the temporary peace of sleep traversed the sky, pulling with it a soft cloak of darkness dotted with scattered bright lights over Solomon‘s mother where she lay wakeful on a small, black straw mattress next to her bruised and sleeping boy. Slowly, so as not to disturb his fragile sleep, she rolled over to examine him. His scabs were almost invisible in the dark except where they distorted the outline of his profile. “Rest, enveloped in your innocence, before it fades,” she whispered softly. “You‘ll be safe, for I‘ll stand watch over your black bed, absorbing the white demons that seek to corrupt your perfection. And don‘t fear, if when you wake, I‘m standing over you and my eyes are red, for you‘re only seeing the remnants of the battle between black and gray that raged around you as you slept. I breathe laughter into your lungs and watch my life seep through your smile. “

But in the morning the smile that the rising sun usually pulled across Solomon‘s face was replaced with a look of perplexity. “Mommy,” he asked, why do the little white boys hate me so much?” When his mother didn‘t answer with words, Solomon glanced over at her. He stared long and deep into her haggard face, the creases that knit her brows together, her lips pursed into thin lines, her olive brown skin stained with years of labor and oppression and discrimination, brown and dry as leather in the searing sun. Her eyes closed gently, as if she was trying to cover with her eyelids the pain written across her face. What answer could a mother have for such a question from her bleeding boy? No words crept through her pursed lips, so Solomon answered his own question, silently in his head. “They hate me because I’m nobody.”

Solomon remained nobody as he grew older. He was reminded of this every time he walked through the town where he lived that took every measure, legal or illegal, to push him out, the town where his name was “nigger-boy Sol”. He was reminded of his status of being nobody every time he went to school and church and was surrounded by an impenetrable sea of black faces, every time he sat in the back of the bus and the theater, every time he was denied the use of public parks and libraries, every time he met insults with a stoic countenance. He lived on tiptoe so as not to upset the precariously unbalanced overflowing jug of white hatred that threatened to spill burning acid over anyone who provoked it. Each passing day his inner fears and outer resentments tore little pieces out of his soul, making him numb.

Solomon’s search for the “somebody” inside himself that he had never known took him through many hostile towns, towns full of hatred and ignorance. Signs on all sides glared at him during the day, “Separate Door for Whites”, “Colored Dining Room in Rear”, “No Beer Sold to Blacks”. One night, as he lay huddled, shivering, desolate, in the backseat of his inadequate car parked in front of a motel with a bold signs saying “Service for White People Only”, Solomon was jolted awake by the metallic sound of shattering glass as the long, silver, worn shaft of a baseball bat cracked through the window of his car. Angry cries slurred with alcohol battered at him from all sides. “Dirty nigger filthying up our streets,” “Clean his ass with your bat!” Rough hands fortified with rings jerked Solomon out of his car. Boots fortified with steel toes kicked him onto the ground. Blows rained down upon his body. As Solomon lay helpless he became unaware of the pain as he slowly shut his eyes and opened his mind. He reached out with his psyche to the man with the rings and was bombarded with images of confusion and hatred and fear, partially and inefficiently hidden by distorted, false images of righteousness and honesty. Gently but persistently Solomon projected words into the man’s head…

“Come see my cage. Come swim in the filth you dumped me in. Come eat the sh*t you tell us is a feast. Let me scrape the gold off your rings so that you can see the maggots that lie beneath, coiled around your fat fingers. I watch you step away, nervously, forcefully and fearfully telling me how righteous and honest you are. Righteous… honest… you use these words like a shield against accusations I haven’t even spoken yet. You cover yourself with these words and hide behind them. I’ll tell you something that I know because I’ve seen. Honest and righteous people have nothing to fear: an honest and righteous death is so much more pure and true and completing than a life of malice and lies. A righteous and honest person is not afraid: he knows that it is better to die living than to live dying. If you’re as honest and righteous as you say you are, then why are you so goddamn afraid of me? I can’t hurt you; you’ve chained my hands behind my back. And even if my hands were free I wouldn’t hurt you. I use my hands to build, not destroy. And no matter what weapon I have at my disposal, the only weapon I will use is true justice. Justice doesn’t hurt a righteous and honest person. Why do you fear me so much that you hate me? I haven’t threatened you; all I’ve done is look at you. And I see you cowering. Are my eyes really that fearsome a weapon? If you’re as honest and righteous as you say you are, then what are you so scared I’ll see in you? And why do you avert your eyes from me? The only reason I look this ugly is because you’ve painted me this way. A righteous and honest person would see through the paint. If you’re as righteous and honest as you say you are, then why are you wearing maggots on your fingers? Go ahead and beat me to bloody obliteration, I know you want to. And it’s ok. Because you can kill the revolutionary but you can’t kill the revolution. You can kill me but you can’t kill the truth. You can kill my body but you can’t kill my soul…”

Solomon arduously opened his eyes as he slowly became aware that the blows had stopped hitting his body. The face he looked up into was large and white, eyes bulging with trepidation. Solomon’s brows furrowed as he searched the man’s countenance for some symbol of understanding… then relaxed as a final blow of the bat crushed his head.

Millions of people over generations of humanity were embodied in Solomon, who felt the acrimonious claws of segregation and hatred and ignorance rip at him mercilessly, leaving scars like writing across his body, little windows to his soul. He lay with his soul exposed as the waves of his life battered against his body, drowning him in temporary comfort. But each time they pulled back they took a piece of him with them, leaving him emptier than before. Each time they crashed down upon him he clutched hopefully at the water. But each time it slipped through his fingers. He reached helplessly at it as it ripped him to pieces. Yet he continued to lay exposed, believing against reason that someday the water wouldn’t recede, and it would cover him in a cloak of soft blue, washing away his pain.

The ocean rises and falls in a perpetual cycle and continues to tear him apart, until the sun comes out, and dries up what’s left. Ashes float out to sea, remnants of the destruction of a man by his brother. The sea has finally enveloped him but he can no longer feel it… and the waves continue to fall on the empty shore.

This is beyond depressing. The writing's not bad, but the subject is horrible. Do you have personal knowledge of these things, or is this imaginative? I would have hoped that humans would have moved beyond this by now.

horrible as in i chose a bad subject? or horrible as in the subject is about something horrible? as a white student in a school with not a single black person in it, i don't have any personal experience with this type of thing, but this story was based on "a letter to birmingham jail" by martin luther king, one of the most beautiful pieces of writing i've ever read. the story is fictional and based on images from the past, but there is definately still discrimination present today, i live in california so i don't encounter it very much, but i've heard from personal accounts that discrimination is still very present in certain southern states.

Violence inspired by hate is horrible. "Discrimination" is too mild a word for it.

well i have definately had pesonal experience with violence inspired by hate, not always physical violence and not always in the form of discrimination, it is still very present today, humans have certainly not moved beyond this yet, do you think they ever will?

One hopes so. Millions of years have gone by and millions more will too. One must take a long term view.

i think that it's a lot more important to look at things in a short term view rather than assume that things will right themselves in a few million years and therefore avoid responsibility for using what short time you have with life to make as much change as you can... this goes for people in general.

How about a short term view for immediate action and a long term view for comfort?

the problem with that view is that comfort influences us to abandon immediate action.