Not Resting in Peace
My stomach twists like the leaves blowing around me. Something is off. I feel it in my gut.
Life here in Florida was never easy for me. Born to Freedmen, my path seemed destined for me. I had little say in the matter. No matter how hard I worked or tried or fought or kicked or begged or pleaded. There is only so much a little Black girl can do in Alachua County, Florida in a post-Civil War era.
You see, my parents were born slaves. And died allegedly as freed men. They never had a chance to learn to read or write, but did they love me something fierce. When the first school for Black children opened, they leapt at the chance to enroll me. I remember being so scared to walk through the doors. I gave myself anxiety for weeks beforehand, knowing I had no idea what school was, how to act, how to make friends.
I suppose one bit of relief was the school building had no doors. Or no windows. My smile spread as I realized one fear had been pushed aside by gross incompetence and uncaring. Without windows or doors, the place felt like a prison, yet my parents told me these walls were my escape path. A way out of the life they were born into and supposedly being freed from, but that would never be the case during my lifetime.
As I am here today, knotted with feelings of dread, I know something in the land of the living is unsettled. I can feel it in my bones. The air is thick, uneasy, swirling around the cemetery in a haze. All the injustice I experience as a Black woman living in one of the most segregated parts of Florida hasn’t left me even in death. You see, this county was steeped in racial unrest. Plantations dotted the soil, soil that my parents and grandparents tilled and made profitable for White elites.
I lived a rich life, having married a blacksmith here in the county. We had three healthy children who I got to see graduate from the nearby University of Florida. Slave blood runs through them, yet they are living dreams we could not even imagine. I watched from above as they fought for civil rights. I see my beautiful grandbabies marching in the streets after police brutality. My family, burning down a legacy that still haunts us.
I know things are unsettled because I see it in the facies of my grandbabies when they come visit me. Lines twist and furrow along their brows. I don’t know all the details, as they don’t share them. But I can see the worry, the concern. They want peace for me as badly as I want it for myself. I never knew a life of peace, and I damn sure don’t want a distressing death.
The other ancestors around me feel it as well. Our spirits swirl with the wind, trying to seek purchase on something stable. Something settled. We all float around waiting, wishing, willing. I pick on up tidbits from other visiting family. A fight about who owns this land. Who controls the grass, the stones. They’re fighting over who owns me even in death. So much for being freed men.
