Beloved by Toni Morrison

The ghost of your daughter,

you felt

each jump

of her baby heart

in your hands,

until there were none.

Only then you put

the handsaw down

and watched the spilling blood

covering your dress.

Your Beloved daughter,

the girl who waited to be loved,

everybody knew what she was called

but nobody anywhere knew her name.

Listen,

and imagine

to live your life again,

you are born to be a slave.

You are born

nearly at the end

of three hundreds years

of slavery,

200 million of people

died in its cause,

but you are not aware of it.

You are 13 years old

brought in chains to another farm.

The last memory of your mother,

hanging from a tree,

fading fast.

You are measured and priced,

just like any other farm animal.

The owner,

who bought you,

can take your whole self for anything

that come to mind,

not just work, kill or maim you,

but dirty you,

but dirty you so bad,

you don't like yourself anymore,

dirty you so bad,

you forgot who you are and can not think it up.

You have a name

and you don't,

your owner decides.

Your pain is skin deep.

The colour of your skin is the only reason for your suffering.

You are the property,

that will reproduce itself without cost.

You are pregnant,

every year,

but you are not allowed to love

not even your children.

As a slave you protect

yourself and love small

or not at all.

You need permission to feel,

but your pain is there,

skin deep,

your children,

as soon as they will be strong enough to work,

they will be measured and sold

just like all other farm animals.

You decide to run away,

pregnant,

from your owner,

all by yourself.

Your other children,

already packed

into a wagonload

of others,

following the route to the Slavery-free North.

You desperately try to get to them,

one of whom is starving for the food you carry,

but your milk for the baby has been stolen

and your back pulped,

you are left to die,

there is six months old baby

inside you,

that wants to be born,

so exhausted,

you shuffle on your swollen and bloody feet,

you crawl,

you give the birth.

“Nothing heals without pain,”

a lawless outlaw,

a barefoot woman with unpinned hair,

wraps your ten-minute old baby in the rags she wear.

“I have to go, I don't want to be caught

with a runaway.”

You climb off a wagon,

your newborn tied to your chest

and open your arms,

freely,

for the first time,

for your children,

who have made it

safely,

before you,

to the North.

Their Grandmother,

the freed old slave woman,

you have never met,

heals your wounds and eases you pain:

“The slave life had busted our legs, backs, heads, eyes, hands, kidneys, wombs

and tongues, we have nothing left to make a living with but our hearts.”

You have had twenty-eight days,

the travel of one whole moon,

of un slaved life.

Days of company of fifty

other

freed slaves,

who teach you,

how it feels to wake up

at dawn

and decide

what to do with your day.

When you see

the four horsemen

coming to the Grandmother's yard,

led by one slave catcher,

you know that is the end.

They find you

with your children,

barely breathing,

killed by your own hands.

You look at them,

so they understand,

there is nothing there to claim.

They left horrified,

your baby girl's blood gurgles

from open wound.

The others survived.

A sheriff comes

to lock

you

away

for murder.

Holding your

living

baby daughter

in your arms,

your dress blooded

with the dead one,

you walk past

your neighbours,

in your silence

and theirs.

Eighteen years will pass, until they realise:

'The atrocity of silence

outweighed the atrocity of the crime.'

You become a cause ce'le'bre in the fight

against the Fugitive Slave laws in Ohio,

but you are not aware of that.

By the time, you and your grown up baby girl

return to the rundown haunted house,

there is no one left to welcome you back.

Your sons run away

scarred for life by the killing spree,

Their Grandmother dies shortly after that.

Her life suspended between

the intolerable present

and murderous past,

the isolation

and mistrust from her neighbours,

the question of approval

or condemnation

of your rough choice

between the slavery

or death for her grandchildren

wore her finally out.

By the 1874 the North have

long

won the war,

in which your sons fought

and slavery is abolished,

but you are not aware of that,

there was a time you scanned the fields

every morning and every evening

for your boys,

until their thirteen years old faces

faded completely into their baby ones,

which come to you only in sleep.

You know, slave catchers are still on the loose,

whole towns wiped clean of freed slaves,

grown men whipped like children,

children whipped like adults,

women raped, property taken, necks broken,

hundreds lynchings in Kentucky alone in this one year,

human blood cooked in a lynch fire,

the stench stinks,

but you barely notice,

you are a refuge

closed off from the hurt

of the hurt world.

A revolting clump of scars on your back

for life

remind you never dare to make more plans.

18 years of disapproval and solitary life

taught you that the future is

a matter of keeping the past at bay,

looking in a mirror,

you see in your eyes,

indifference lodged where sadness should have been.

And yes, you have two children left,

the order and quietude of everyday life

with your deaf and lonely daughter

is violently disrupted by the chaos

of the needy dead.

'Anything coming back to life hurts'.

You are aware of that.

You shut down your rundown house

to the outside world, that punishes you,

and put up with the venom of its ghost,

the only one who has the right...

The ghost of your daughter,

you felt

each jump of her baby heart

in your hands,

until there were none,

only then you put the handsaw down

and watched the spilling blood

covering your dress,

Your Beloved daughter,

the girl who waited to be loved,

everybody knew what she was called

but nobody anywhere knew her name.

And what about the other girl...

A girl who has lived all her life in a house

peopled by the living activity of the dead.

She kept watch for the soul of her dead baby sister

and withdrew from anything else.

It was a greedy ghost and needed a lot of love,

which was only natural, considering.

And she loved it more than anything else,

even you,

she is scared of you,

always watchful,

always afraid the thing that happened,

that made it all right for you to kill her sister,

could happen again,

but you were not aware of that.

And that was this girl,

your living daughter,

you barely noticed,

locked in your own mind,

who saved you at the end....

YOU FINALLY GOT TO A PLACE

WHERE YOU COULD LOVE

ANYTHING YOU CHOOSE;

NOT TO NEED PERMISSION TO DESIRE;

THAT WAS FREEDOM

THAT YOU HAVE BEEN DENYED

ALL YOUR LIFE

YOU SPILT THE BLOOD OF YOUR OWN CHILD

IN ORDER TO MAKE PEOPLE STOP

AND REALIZE

THAT LIFE IS TOO PRECIOUS

AND NO ONE HAS RIGHT

TO OWN SOMEONE'S ELSE LIFE

OR LOOK DOWN ON ONE

YOUR LIFE IS YOURS,

NOW,

BUT YOU KEEP YOUR HEART STILL

AFRAID TO FORM THE QUESTION,

YOU HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO ASK;

THE QUESTION WRAPPED TIGHT LIKE SKIN:

“ WOULD IT BE ALL RIGHT TO GO AHEAD AND FEEL?”

“ WHY NOW AND NOT BEFORE?”

“WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE; OWNERS OF LIVES; WHAT ARE THEY:

MORE THAN KILLERS AND LESS THAN HUMANS; BUT WHY?”

Come back to your own life,

now,

over one hundred and forty years later.

No one is allowed to own someone's life,

and yet,

some of these people from the past,

ready to be,

if the right time comes,

more than killers and less than humans,

survived among us.

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE, who believe that the colour of their skin,

the place of their birth, the type of their religion,the colour of their blood or any

other 'super artificial dividing human trace' make them superior to all of us?

If you meet one of them,

looking down at you,

from his or her privileged and self-important place,

pointing at the colour of skin,

few shades lighter to yours,

as the rightful indicator of their 'fortunate life',

just laugh and point out,

that in the future,

it may be,

the size of your shoes,

the length of your arm,

or just your height,

that will decide,

if you are the one looking up,

or you are the one,

bending down.

The power hungry people of this world

will always find the way

to exploit others

to satisfy their greed

and try to cover it up

with a self-indulging talk

of their artificial superiority.

They will use any dividing trace that will suit their aim.

It is up to all of us to stop them on their track.

WHO ARE WE, those of us ,who believe that the place of our birth make us

superior to all of others, less fortunate?

It is so easy to lock the back door,

on a wagon load,

on a boat full,

on a long line of

starving faces,

when you are

the one,

full,

cosy

and safe inside.

Being born in a 'lucky country'

is not an achievement,

just luck,

that may change any time.

Next time, it can be you,

looking in and wishing,

that someone will invite you in

to share their lucky place under the sun.