Stories for Chip (5 page)

Again, you smile, halfway. Of course, you are supposed to be black, are you not? American black at that, so I suppose you think nigger may be acceptable. But I'm not a nigger, at least not your nigger—but are you mine, my pretty yella nigga? Ah, a bit of a bigger smile there. Come on, lovely almost-man, sit between my legs and let me run my fingers across your shoulders. They are close to your ears; they must ache. Let's not play games. I know what you are and you, well, you know as much of me as I let you. But we are here for a time. Let's enjoy ourselves. I'm sure that is the instruction you were given. Carrot, stick, stick, carrot. That is the way. I've had three sticks, it's about time for a carrot. And such a fine, long limber carrot, definitely good for the eyes. And maybe the teeth too. If you are very nice I might just nibble on your earlobes.

Goodness but you are tight. Don't you do anything but work out? Now back to your question. You slipped, you know. You said, “How do you know us?” not “How do you know them?” The last male they sent kept pretending to be human for a full week. We had some wonderful sex before he gave up. Simply wonderful. Your kind can be quite attentive. Oh, you move away. Please come back. You are too impatient. Are you a torturer, then? They are so much less patient, so much less patient.

Yes, I do suck my teeth. I picked the habit up from one of my aunts. She always sucked her teeth when she was frustrated or mad and didn't want to show it. But I don't grind them like you do. You are such a tight knot. Lovely, but stiff.

Come, let's walk outside. You'd best get something to cover those ears. You have no fat to keep you warm. You say you have a sled outside. Wonderful; we will go for a ride and have a snow fight and you will pretend to lose and I will feel very proud of myself and we will laugh and fall into bed and then I will whisper sweet nothings into your small flat ears. That is what you are waiting for, is it not? The secret, that one thing I have told no one before. Come, take a chance. I tell you what, if I like the ride I will tell you all of it. All of it. And you will promise to let me free because once you know the secret I am no longer a danger. We will both be happy. Come, let us frolic. I love that word. Frol and lick. Yes let us frol a bit and lick a lot, and then I promise we will talk. I will talk. How does that sound?

2.

What a wonderful sled, what a wonderful ride. Now I see why I did not hear you arrive. Instead of a copter they had you come in on a sled. I didn't hear its quiet motor until you were a few feet away from the door. And you were able to carry so much on the sled. I love the new coat and the wool socks and finally, some coriander seeds and turmeric. Umm.

But why a sled? Are some of your transports being shot down? Has the resistance grown? Ah, your silences destroy you. Yes, there it is. You see I have told you all you need to know. The last male they sent, he wanted me to call him Buck. Is that hilarious? I called him Jimbo. My little joke. He was so taciturn. When he became exasperated with my answers he would bellow and scream and his cheeks would turn red and make tiny beads of sweat rise under his eyes. The veins on his neck actually shivered just a bit and there was even the slightest sound of breath between his words, the breath of a winded man running too long.

No, I don't want to make love yet. You know, just for the record, we can't really make love. You see, you don't love me, and I detest you. It is such a shame because you are a fox, with your smooth caramel skin and thick full lips. Your nose is a bit pointed, but that's all right; it balances the slits of your eyes. Usually I like full round eyes, but your eyes make you look rather Indian. Very pleasant.

I tell you what: We will eat, we will drink tea and sit by the fire and nap a bit, and then I will tell you all you want and need to know. Of course I already have, but I will be clearer. You will understand completely.

You need not remind me of how it was before. How could I forget, the way there was no time, only the endless gray. I never knew if it was three hours, three days, or three weeks in between interrogations. It was one long continuous drone, a light that never went out, a cot that I was allowed to see and sometimes even allowed to lie down on and fall asleep just long enough to be awoken. Then your kind would parade another through when I was half- asleep, in the middle of a dream when I was running arms spread down a long green hill eating the air and the nectar of honeysuckle blossoms as I ran free. Or sometimes I was put in a small dark hole in the wall looking out of a sideboard mouse hole opening and able to see only the scuffed hard-toed black boots that walked back and forth. Sometimes the guards would feed me and bring torturers in to question and harass and sometimes they would starve me and bring them in, always with one question: “How do you know?”

They would parade folk past me: human, alien, human, alien, and I would be fed only if I got every one right. And I always did. They began to suspect the humans were giving me signals, so they put me behind a one-way mirror.

The aliens would talk with the humans, who never knew the difference, but I always knew. Then they made everyone be quiet and all I could do was watch your breath, listen to your silence. And there it was; I would know the truth.

And you need not remind me of your gifts, how you made crops grow so much faster and thicker, how you gave us ways to kill unwanted insects and clean the water. Ah, but at a price; more and more of us die, and more and more of you arrive. You do arrive, don't you? I mean, if you were really simply a different kind of human, wouldn't someone have discovered it long before me? So many books have been written and movies produced about aliens with big black almond eyes and smooth white bodies that humans began to believe that that was what aliens truly looked like. But what if that was a subterfuge you invented? What if they looked just like us, but were simply different in the way they breathed, in the way they smelled, in their silences? Maybe the real aliens had no reverence for the human condition or humans and created ways to slowly kill us off until only they and their kind—you and your kind—were left.

Or are you simply more able to live in this environment, fewer types of animals, fewer numbers of trees, but more of you and fewer and fewer of us? Ah, but enough talk about death and dying.

Come, let me feed you. No, not just cook for you. Let me place these sweet morsels into your mouth. My hands are clean, my nails scrubbed. Yes, it is chicken. I know you are not supposed to eat flesh, but you love it. You all do. Come, no one but you and I will know. It will be out of your body in three days. That is why you must eat some tonight, in case they come to check on your safe arrival before the week is out. You will have the pleasure of the forbidden meat and you will have glory in knowing the truth. I am tired of the lies. Tired of the games. Come, I will give you what you want but it must be on my terms. I have spent five years trying to deny the simplest of information. And you, my Toussaint hero, you will be the one I finally open for. Come, it is a curry. A red curry. I know spices make you a bit drowsy. We have time. We can sleep, and later we will touch and sweat and groan and sigh, and still later I will tell you. Or perhaps before we wrap our limbs around one another and I listen to the silences around your moans, maybe then I will tell you.

Yes, lick my fingers. Hmm, they are sweet you say. Or is it the meat? Or is it the coconut milk? All of it. Every bit. I see your eyes are becoming heavy. Don't despair. Let me pick up these dishes and then I will bathe your feet and rub them until you fall asleep. No one knows but you and I what you have eaten. No one will know but you and I that you slept before I revealed the truth. What glory you will have. What honor. Come, my sweet guard. Drink this tea. Is it bitter? I made a special brew. Let me put a little more honey in, to soothe a savage beast. Yes, to soothe.

Give me your foot. So soft, you do not walk without shoes do you? Yes, you see this spot here? It is connected to where you digest your food. And this one over here? It connects to your lungs and keeps the air flowing. I know many things.

Yes, my dear, please, do sleep. I do know many things, how to brew teas, how to cook meats, how to rub feet. Oh yes, before you sleep, hold this thought: It is your silences that set you apart. That is all, your silences. Yes, sleep. Sleep. Ah, your head is becoming heavy. It was in the teas, you know. The teas and the liquor I have made from the rice given to me. I know your kind is so vulnerable to liquor. But it relaxes you, lets you appear more human. So I put some in the tea. Not poison, just a brew that with your metabolism would put you in a deeper sleep. I tried it on a few before you. I had to be sure it would work. Put you in a deep sleep. And you so obedient, my serious keeper, don't even snore. Always quiet, ever quiet.

You will not be the first I have bound. You will be the first I do not release. I will pull you outside and hide you in the snow cave I fashioned before you came. Bury you in layers of snow. How I have waited for the right season and for a man small enough that I could manage it. How I have waited for one young enough to be vulnerable to my touch. How I have dreamed that you would come. And I am sorry I did not have time to have sex with you. I would have enjoyed the release. But I cannot spare the energy.

Did you know I begged to go on a sled ride? Lied and said that it was one of my favorite childhood memories. Cried that winters were so hard, if only I could go on a sled. And here you come. How wonderful, how perfect.

So now that you are trussed and bound I see you are stirring. Yes, a bit awake, not fully. Do you dream? If so, perhaps you think this conversation is a dream, an invention. Well, let me tell you then. You see, I am a woman of my word. Hear me breathing in your ear, softly, so, so softly. Softly, but not silently. You, my attractive gremlin, have no sounds between your words. You are silent. There is a way we humans breathe and whistle between our words, pause and grunt or stumble and click. They are almost musical, the sounds between our words. When you remove the words, more than breath, there is a cadence almost like a fingerprint, individual and unique. I can even recognize different people without hearing them speak, just by hearing the sounds between the words.

But your kind, your kind are nothing but words and silence. For humans, it is the soul that fills the spaces between our words, it is more than breath, it is soul. And you, my alien compadre, are without that breath, without that soul. So, I have always told you all. It is your silences that tell me. I have always told you the secret. Umm. Always.

Foolish boy pretending to be human man. Such a foolish one. When they find you your legs and feet will be bound, your mouth tied shut. And you will be frozen in the snow. They tried everything. I knew one day they would slip. I have waited these years for them to slip and they did. In your terms, I too do not kill, my sweet pretender. But I know the truth, it is my hand that leads you to death.

Before your dreams turn gray and then black I will have packed what stores I built up over the past year, along with the new stores you have brought, set out on the sled and escaped. It was not easy rationing my food and burying it a mile away from the hut so no one would suspect. It was not easy, although it was fun, teaching myself how to make rice wine to cover the tea's bitter taste. Years of planning, my dear. Years of patience. Years of sighs and tears and so much patience. Things you would know little about, my alien breeder.

If I am lucky I will find a human outpost and be given sanctuary. I heard a human yodel last winter. I had always found yodeling most irritating, but I tell you when I heard the breath in between each phrase I was so excited. I laughed and laughed. I knew it was coming off of a mountain miles away. Who knows? It may have come from another captive. What do I care? Then there will be two of us. Two to struggle, to survive.

Yes, I could be recaptured and returned to a cage. But I will have some days of freedom. And I will take my freedom. And while I am free I will sing, and in between each note there will be the peaks and gullies of my spirit punctuating my breath. Always I am sound, even in my silences. Always you are silent even while you speak. So you have your glory, if only just before death, you have the secret. And I have my victory if only to be recaptured. Of course, there is always the chance that I will stay free. I take that chance. Ah. I will savor that chance. Ahhh.

Isiah Lavender III

“Why study race in science fiction?” I have answered that deeply personal question a couple of times now without including the influence of Samuel R. Delany's work on me as a science fiction scholar.
¹
My previous replies were sans Delany because I knew at those points, as I know now, that Delany deserves special consideration. In terms of my personal experience reading Delany, the dual nature of his influence as a thinker and as a creative writer requires my full self-awareness.

◊

Samuel R. Delany at his finest—black, gay, and erudite—remains a creative and critical force in science fiction. This opening statement encapsulates my many encounters with Delany's writing in my time pondering the significance of race and racism in the science fiction genre, although I first came across the work of Octavia E. Butler and Steven Barnes much earlier. Believe it or not, my first ephemeral encounter with Delany occurred during my initial grad school days at Louisiana State University in the mid-1990s. Science fiction scholar Carl Freedman had something posted about Delany on his office door.
²
It may have been a placard advertising Delany's essay collection
Longer Views: Extended Essays
(1996), or the Wesleyan University Press edition of
Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia
(1976; 1996); I cannot be sure. Though we are now colleagues at LSU nearly twenty years later, I regret not having taken a class with Carl. However, I did not think of science fiction and fantasy as an academic pursuit at that time, only as a category of pleasurable reading and viewing. Besides, I was courting my wife Heather when not studying various facets of black American literature. My time was occupied.