Chapter 4. The Castle

ALICIA CHAY

Settling on the threshold of the elite castle, I saw her, the tyrant, a Queen named Gree Lufu. Infatuated with her beauty, she lovingly stared at her reflection in tinkling glass-encased on a wall in her massive bedroom.

I inhaled her scent to learn her history, the origin of her being, and to better understand her. She came from a lengthy line of royal figures. She was responsible for thousands of deaths in Egypt on her mission for control, power, and blood diamonds.

When she was thirteen, she inherited the throne after her Queen mother and King father was poisoned by an unknown perpetrator in the royal family.

Bearing a resilient blood diamond crown, she ruled for three decades with an iron thumb and a cold heart against her male contemporaries in neighboring countries.

She poisoned her parents and took the throne. That act alone would influence me soon.

Inwardly, I smiled as Queen Gree admired the shape of her breasts. She hated the bend of her frail hips and her flat romp. She was addicted to self-induced pleasure. Power and control were her incorrigible lovers.

I studied her, her breathing pattern, her passion… the unmistakable energy did nothing for me. After four dark-skinned male slaves submissively bathed her, a dark-skinned woman dressed in rations washed Gree’s hair as fear and loss danced in her bright hazel eyes.

Gree gave an unhappy smile as a few slaves told her good night after bowing at her feet, then kissing the diamond pendant hanging on her neck, leaving her with the nappy-headed slave woman. Once the slaves left her bedroom, Gree and the slave noticed a falling star.

Gree wished she could live forever. The slave had another wish. One that befell my ears as if someone screamed it at me with fierce abandon the instant the star lost its shine and faded into the glittery darkness.

The type of wail that buckled bulls from an ounce of its undefined frequency. My heart pounded in cadence with hers. Could it be that when I looked at her, I saw a part of my past human self that happened to be her?

For a moment, the silence was as deafening as finality. Then Gree began to groan, dissatisfied with the performance of her slaves as of late. She should have her guards whip them back into shape with sharp rawhides.

They were her property and property didn’t have basic human rights nor did they get treated with decency.

Gree gazed at the poor woman with a disquieting hate. “I didn’t like how you styled my hair for my last event, Coffey. I should have known. That’s what I get for trusting you to consistently work up to my code of impossible expectation.”

The dark-skinned woman with mountainous thick hair refused to meet her critical eyes. “Coffey, are you deaf? Do you need a beating?”

Coffey began to tremble.

Abruptly, Gree slapped her across the face, hopping up to her feet in the tub. She nearly slipped and broke her neck. A trolley horse captivated the vein in his upper right thigh, briefly crippling her.

“Ow! Ow! Dear heavens, what was that?” Water splashed onto the floor. “I’m speaking to you, imbecile! I didn’t like the way you made me look in front of my contemporaries with that hideous wig. Come to think of it you poisoned the meal! devoured before my bath!”

Coffey kept quiet. As long as she remained idle Queen Gree would eventually move on to more pressing matters in her white privileged life....

Gree snapped, yanking Coffey by the afro. “You still evade my concerns? You ungrateful girl.” Coffey tussle with her master as Gree picked up a pair of sheers, cutting patches of Coffey’s hair from her scalp, tossing it over her shoulder.

“Wintertime is present. I need a new sweater. I wonder what your hair would look like as a form of fashion for the new ages of the future. Yes! I could invent a line of women wear with the texture of your stinking hair and force you to sign over the rights to me!”

Pushing Coffey on the wooden floor, Gree leaned over and scooped up Coffey’s hair with trembling hands.

“What’s so special about your kind to have hair this rich in texture?” Queen Gree pulled out black yarn and thread from a wooden basket on a near-by table by a row of hanging ballroom gowns made by the hands of the elder women slaves that served as maids that even wiped her backside after every bowl movement.

The way her eyes came alive made me frown as this pale faced woman wanted to be that beautiful dark skin woman, who has the same skin tone, skin complexion as mine. I looked at Coffey closely. We had the same type of hair, the same type of skin tone, mouth-watering hips. We were very voluptuous women.

The last slave that rebelled and protested Gree was beheaded.

Once Gree was done sewing patches of thick hair together, she held it up against her temple, burning with jealousy and envy.

“Why don’t my hair have this type of volume and definition?” Coffey looked in the mirror, weakened by huge patches in her head.

Gree put the stitched hair atop her head and took a few steps back from the tinkling glass mirror. Gravely, she looked herself over. “You see, Coffey. I’m just as pretty with your hair. Honestly...” Gree looked to the left then the right, grinning from ear to ear. What do you think, girl? Yes, no...?”

Coffey remained as quiet as the tears rolling down her face....

“I look prettier because I’m whiter, nigger. Never forget that. You work and sweat for me! I am your God! In fact, bow to me!”

Coffey refused. Gree smacked her with the wooden wig.

“Bow to me!”

Reluctantly, Coffey looked away. Gree picked up a rawhide and whipped Coffey until she fell to her knees in pain and surrendered.

“Who is your God, nigger?”

Coffey remained quiet. She stared at the floor, brooding with anger. She knew that if she acted on that anger Gree would have her slaughtered and her husband would be slain as well.

She refused to give Gree Lufu the satisfaction. Coffey never had the chance to mourn being taken from her homeland in Africa, along with her husband. She could still feel the linen cloth that was thrown over her face.

She remembered the smell, it smelled like old, expired resin. She could remember the conversations that filtered into her ears from her captors as she, her husband, others from her tribe were put on metal yolks and whipped as they walked clumsy footing towards the awaiting ships.

Her heart quickened at the enormous sails flapped in the breeze with ear-splitting redundancy, like bats escaping the fires of hell in search of a colder climate.

She could still feel the chains around her wrists and ankles. The rust broke her out in hives.

She could still smell the feces and the urine in the air and the cries of pain of misunderstanding that filtered into her ears once they were subdued on the lowest levels of the ships, juxtaposed like toppled dominoes.

She could still hear the screams of the disabled slaves that were thrown over the ship to the sharks below because they were too damaged to be taken to America.

Four of those that were thrown at the sharks was her only brother, her father, her mother, and her grandmother.

All she could do was scream into the dark air, stale air. Cursing her captors for taking her life, taking her family. Being helpless because there was nothing she could do. She was not strong enough to break the chains of bondage.

She was not strong enough to save herself, let alone her family. If she had half the strength of a warrior, she would have tried to save them all.

She could have been like some of her people, out of the one hundred, that decided that death was better than bondage, so they jumped to the sharks on their own merit and of their free will.

Despite adversity, Coffey had a fighting spirit. Something would not let her give up. She never had a chance to grieve the loss of a family that she had to leave behind. She had to make the most of her situation because she had to survive. She had people to live for, and those people were two seeds that she gave birth to behind Gree’s back.

She hid her pregnancy twice. She ensured their safety for as long as they lived. There were seventy-five slave women on Grease plantation. All of them stuck with her and guaranteed that her children was safe. All of them.

Over time, one by one, the slave women slowly threatened her, because they had eyes for her husband, Spike, who stood six feet, eleven inches tall with a phallus the size of his size twenty foot.

The slave women were the ones that informed Coffey that her husband was having sexual relations with the woman that kept her in bondage.

They hoped that Coffey left him so they could swoop in and take her place.

At first Coffey didn’t know what to do, and she didn’t know how to react. On a cool night during the summer, coffee confronted her husband, Spike. And he didn’t lie about it. He owned up to it. And he told her why.

He assured her that he slept with Gree to keep an upper hand, to stay two steps ahead so their children could survive.

Gree wound up being the victor because Coffey folded and did what her husband asked. She did anything to keep her kids safe. She was willing to kill if she had to.

One by one, Coffey murdered whatever slave woman that threatened her, or threatened to go tell Gree of her children’s existence.

Over two month period fifty slave women mysteriously vanished. Coffey’s kids were fourteen and seventeen years old. The only home her kids have ever known was a dungeon buried deep under a barn of horses Gree didn’t bother to ascertain...

Every single day and night she tended to her kids when Queen Gree retired to her quarters in a drunken stupor, bedding Spike all night.

Imagine hearing the cries of ecstasy from your husband when you are sneaking behind the Queen’s back to feed your children, to bathe your children, to make sure they were safe and secure.

Then you locked them back up in the dungeon, sometimes up to four hours a day. Spike cared for them while she cleaned the Plantation.

Coffey assured her kids that one day they would be free. She apologized for giving birth to them into a system of slavery.

She couldn’t control the outcome. But she could keep them hidden and fed. The one promise her husband did uphold was to keep their children hidden, sacred, and safe.