Previously on Episode 7: Miss Wilson tells ReeRee about ReeRee’s father, Becker.   This is what Miss Wilson said about the enslaved Black man that she loved–“I loved your father. You may never understand but having you near me all of these years has kept my love for him in my heart. I still remember the day when they killed your father, hung him from a tree. I loved your father, and the truth be told I will always love him no matter what.”

ReeRee stared for a long time at Miss Wilson. She swallowed the near vomit that seemed to be creeping up in her throat.

“I just can’t give you my forgiveness.” Miss Wilson says in a quiet and stoic way.

“Excuse me, maam,” ReeRee answered with a deferential but questioning tone.

“I know you want me to forgive you for being the bane of my existence, but I just can’t…But I did love your father and I thought that is what you should know.”

ReeRee stood in shock, rising from the bed with the heat of anger rising to her temple. She stood there looking around the room in seething anger, all the fine and wonderful things started to look like the toys of the devil.  The light that came into the room, no longer felt bright and caring but rather sinister and foreboding.  The room smelled of old dying things.

She stood there looking around the room in seething anger, all the fine and wonderful things started to look like the toys of the devil.  The light that came into the room, no longer felt bright and caring but rather sinister and foreboding.  The room smelled of old dying things.

“Yes, go on and say what you have to, and be gone afterward” Miss Wilson said raising her left shoulder up toward her chin.

“I do not need your forgiveness, pity, or anything else you think a mother should give a daughter.  I do not care that you loved him.  I do not care that his name was Becker.  Your love killed him and your hatred of me is what has kept me alive.  What do I need of White forgiveness. Nothing.  I do not see you as holy, only wanting like a dying grape on a sun dripped vine thirsts for water. Your words are like the threads of my dress, just things used to hold a grander cloth but nothing more than that.  Nothing more.  You all think that slavery makes us into animals but we have nobility in our life, we work the fields, we make things grow, and we do all of this under wretchedness.  We bow our heads and pray to the God that you gave us, we have faith in tomorrow.  What do you have, nothing that can fill up your evil soul.  Your lives are makeshift, incomplete, and full of violence.  The only way you know how to love is through being a captor.  Even then your soul shrinks just a little more because no one can love anything that hates for a living.  You children are cursed, your men are weak like willows, and you all die alone with people only wondering how much money you have left them.  You want our hearts to be broken, but our mothers told us things that keep us, things that yall will never know.  Never ever know.  So you think that I am nothing but some old Black woman, but I have people who truly love me for me.  And you, what do you have?  What do you have, even your own daughter laughs at you behind closed doors.  So you call me here to tell me that your love got my father hung from a tree.  I just do not care, Miss Wilson. What happened to you as a young woman is meaningless to me.  My heart is hard as a rock, beaten with every stick the overseer took to me.  Broken down like an old tired horse. Don’t need your forgiveness, as a matter of fact, I don’t need you or your daughter or the cheating husband either.  If you died of course, I would fix your clothes, mop the bed up from your last letting, and might cry a fake tear or two.  Would I miss you?  No, not at all.  I would slap the face of your ghost.  I wouldn’t even waste my spit on your grave.  What do we need with people who have no heart, whose soul tries to leave them with every passing breath.  You call me here to tell me what, that I came from you.  That was the best thing that ever came out of you.  And I may die after this telling but you Miss Wilson, will rot in hell.

“You nigger, bitch!”  Sethaline come and get this piece of trash out of my room.

The door swings open and Sethaline nearly pushes ReeRee out of the room.

ReeRee stops in the doorway, turns and smiles at Miss Wilson.

“Good day maam, good day

Post Date: January 31, 2015