If you know not who he is, or who he was and this peaks your interest enough to read about him and his narrative, I have done my work well as a disciple.
If you are American it is your duty to know this - in my opinion. If you are unchanged by it, well than you got a wall up around your heart.
Deborah Poulin
English 253
Response to Frederick Douglass
I am often moved by words. So much so, that I commonly experience physical responses which range from tearing up to feeling literally sick to my stomach. As I uncomfortably made my way through this narrative, I realized that any emotion I previously experienced through fictitious literature or factual had ever evoked such gnawing and raw emotions as this one. I read a good part of it poolside with my earphones on, an attempt to drown out all the playing and laughing children – it worked somewhat although I found myself constantly wiping the sweat from my brow and fighting a gut wrenching cramp that came on simultaneous to the reading. It was hot out yes, brutally so in the sun and forced me to imagine in the moments which I paused and looked up from the small words on the bible like paper, what must it have been like to endure the sun in the plantation fields?
I had to stop reading at one point and get in the pool to submerge myself in the cool water and attempt to loosen my gut muscles which wrenched tight in a fierce and unending spasm. I felt as though I was stuck in a labor contraction that would not deescalate and grant any kind of breathy reprieve. I dove under the water and held myself at the bottom of the pool listening to the underwater sounds that mimic a womb and imagined the earth there – all of us in a continuum of humanity that has suffered set back after set back, so many wars, so much bondage, so much confusion…. I wished that somehow it would stop and know assuredly that it will not and found myself feeling helpless and wanting to cry right there in front of all the playing children. I knew that if I could not control my emotion, these kids less my own, would deem me a crazy lady for they know not the ugliness of the world in their blissful ignorant youth. Why would I ever ruin that, as I know better than anyone the clock arms swim furiously in that direction for each and every child who lives. Innocence is lost too suddenly as it is, and far too often in hatred and ignorance, some bullying of some sort, some question of their own worthiness and where they sit in the chain of command of righteousness. Not today and not in the pool by my example. Instead I let my tears gently stream down my face, imitating trickles of sweat and allowed them to join the salt water and become one with the womb of innocent humanity. I floated in the water on my back and imagined it was a pool of holy water and that I was not one of the Christians that would have hidden behind the biblical verse as a means for justification of beating, lashing, rape and murder. I wondered is there enough holy water in all the churches where the real good do good work in prayer, enough to wash the American white race clean and absolve us of our blood red colored crimes. I determined that in my Christian mind – there is not. I am saddened that the bible was used to beat slaves by verse and hand, whip, chain and now we have coined the term in the south to describe those who are devout to their practice “the bible beaters” even more sick, “the bible belt” ???? – I wonder if that very specific correlation has been made, I am doubtful to be the first to have come across that metaphor and feel the acrid taste of my own stomach contents rise in my throat and mingle unjustly in my mouth. I did not beat anyone and so why do I feel the foul aftertaste? Because I am human and cannot imagine that even under the worst circumstances would I ever have partaken in the dehumanizing enslavement of an entire people who had hearts that beat in their chests as surely as my own does? Then I think on Frederick Douglass and his mistress who he speaks of with such affection and hope, until she too succumbs to the typical fury of a slave owner. How would I have been any different than she? What do I have that she does not and how dare I assume that my skin is thicker than hers or my ego less valuable to me and therefore any less manipulate able? I think I am kidding myself from my comfortable place on the historical American linear time line. I want to believe with fierce conviction that My Northern roots would have dictated an abolitionist spirit, but I say that here in 2011, having been not even a witness to school segregation to Jim Crow. I know nothing of what I would have been for I know only of what I am. You gotta go there to know there and this narrative is as close as I ever want to come to such horror. I thought only about this unique and distinct narrative as my daughter swam up to me and kissed my face that was twisted in discomfort, even the kiss of my freckle puss did little to lighten the burden of the sickened mood that had me in its grip. I turned myself over to a float and looked up into the sky that was darkening with clouds and I imagined it is the same sky that Frederick Douglass would have looked at, recognizing as surely as I was, a brewing storm was approaching. I felt close to him, closer to his words imagining him back a hundred plus years under a similar June sky. I imagined that he could hear my thoughts amidst the rumbling thunder clouds and that he felt my discomfort in knowing his suffering words had reached straight into my own stomach and seized it. My soul hurt for him and through his story knew the raw desperation that had once tumbled unrelentingly through his, even though I plainly acknowledge I know nothing that comes even slightly close by comparison. I felt guilty that my day was plagued by this, felt that more days of my life should be plagued by thoughts such as these, before I would ever dare cry foul at my life or the fates that befall me ever again.
I know of pain, I know of a very distinct female pain that comes with being born a woman. I know nothing, not one single shred of what it feels like to be a slave woman and be shredded literally by a hide lashed on my back for nothing more or less than because the will, will be done….Be done and dismantled.
I hear the words in slave narratives in my ears long after my eyes have left the page – I hear cries and screaming, begging and prayers to a God that did not answer nearly enough pleas. I imagine that if it were me, I would have like Douglass, stood my ground to not be beaten or have died in the fight to prove my humanity. I fear I am misleading myself to ever assume courage such as his. In all honesty I would have quickly lost hope and killed my children and myself rather than face a life of such indignity.
I thank God in this moment that Frederick Douglass was not hopeless enough to ever leave his mission unattended.
I keep pausing as I type to put my face in my hands and breathe, the exhales are labored in shame and disgust and a nagging desire to return to the pool where I can float in my tears and be under a Frederick Douglass sky for just a little while more.
I know I completely said fuck it to any format here – this is a free verse off the coat tails of a dignified free man –
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