Other Beloved Paper

RAPE! Can you imagine screaming for help, but no one hears you? If someone did hear you, would they stand frozen in their tracks or join in as the “ghosts without skin” and “figure out a way to tie them [your legs] up?” Or would they figure out a way to help you no matter how unbearable the pain? Can you imagine your entire life being “beloved in the dark and [the] bitch in the light?” White folks really are all the bad luck in the world when you have to live your entire life in fear. Unsure of who you are… where you came from… where your future will lead when “those white things have taken all I had or dreamed.” When this is your life, your reality, you do what you have to, to protect your family from the same turmoil that you experienced. Surviving something so torturous, constantly living in fear looking for answers of why, pushing through frustration and anger, and understanding the cowardess of the ones that left you violated and abandoned is what your legacy is all about, it is what will make you hold onto love that is unforgiving but understood.

Being raped of your dignity is one of the most horrendous things that can happen to a person. It can break your spirit and your soul. It damages you in ways that are indescribable to others, even if they have been raped themselves; each rape is independent of another. The triumph of a rapist, of a weakling, is to violate you physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Intrude upon you in ways that may seem insignificant to others, but not to you physically. No one wants a slave life; a life that ‘“had busted her legs, back, head, eyes, head, eyes… womb…”’ You truly have “nothing left to make a living but her heart.” But having nothing left but your heart; isn’t enough to live. It isn’t enough to give you the strength or the courage to move on. Moving on isn’t an option. Being free doesn’t matter. After being maimed and mutilated you are buried in your sorrows, in your pity, you are nothing. You are alone. All that’s left to do is run and hide… away from the world, away from you.

No more running from the truth. “No more running -- from nothing…” From the hurt, the pain, the suffering, from the legacy that is yours. The legacy that is you; that makes you… you. The legacy you leave behind is a fractured one. One with stories of half-truths, clippings from an old newspaper that one tries to pretend doesn’t exist. Your legacy begins to be that torture that a person feels, the reoccurring visions of being raped over and over again. Being raped in your dreams of your dreams; freedom, if given, no longer means a thing. Unable to heal, unable to escape unable to prevent things from happening. Just watching things happen, from the railing of a barn, in slow motion.  What you see makes no sense. You feel unworthy, like Halle, like nothing matters, like life is not worth living. Like you cant face anyone, not your children, not your mother, not your wife. You disappear inside yourself, inside the butter, covered in Sethe’s milk, trying to make sense of what he saw. When you feel this much pain, you feel justified in your response to it. Sethe felt deprived of her future. “The one set of plans she had made went so awry -- so completely she never dared life by making more.” For Sethe life had ended. She was alone. No Halle, he felt like he failed her. Just Sethe, her babies, and Baby Suggs… But the “white folks” threatened that too.

Sethe was always looking over her shoulder, always worrying if the white folks were lurking around the corner or in the shadows, waiting to hold her down… waiting to take her babies and do the same to them, waiting to violate her again and again. Violating her physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Making her ashamed of herself and of her body. Making her feel ashamed to experience pleasure or happiness. To make her feel like she is invisible; the girl with no lines in her palms and snakes as hair. Making her feel like nothing. That’s definitely no way to live, but for many, it’s a reality. Your personality, your consciousness, becomes split. On one hand you are a parent, a nurturer, just trying to love your family the best you can and provide for them the best way you know how given your circumstances, you are Sethe. On the other hand, you are a survivor, a warrior, always fighting your demons, trying to push through and find a way to move on without letting those same circumstances torture and break you; you are fragile… you are Beloved…

The stories you rememory are those of half-truths, stories that will break your heart, but leaves you stronger. No matter how difficult things are, or how difficult they become, you put your trust in your faith, your family, your strength, and your convictions, so that the legacy you leave behind is one that can be shared, not hidden away like some bad dream never to be spoken of, never to be shared. In order to get to a place that you can understand what is going on, you have to rememory the pain you felt. You have to be broken down. You have to be left alone. You don’t want to be forgiven. You want everyone to be afraid… you want to be justified. You want to protect her. Beloved. “Anything dead coming back to life hurts.” The person that it hurt though was Denver. Denver loved her mother, knew the truth but was “afraid the thing that happened that made it all right for my mother to kill my sister could happen again.” Denver needed help, she recognized her fear, and she got up the courage to ask for help, because although she had Beloved and she had her mother, she was still alone. The love that they shared was made for three, but only satisfied the two of them leaving Denver alone to fend for herself. Leaving Denver to step off the porch of life and begin the path for love, although unforgiving, understood.

Escaping the abandonment of 124 was more about how she left and how she left. Asking for help. Telling her mother’s story. Explaining how the past came to 124 to haunt Sethe and her choices. Explaining how she had become frustrated and tried to escape before Sethe and Beloved’s greedy love would chew her up, laughing. Feeling alone and empty when someone is next to you, no longer able to provide companionship or love to you, for themselves. Allowing them to whither away. Beloved wanted to torture Sethe, for leaving her behind, for not smiling at her, for killing her and keeping the others. Beloved was jealous, disabled, “understood Sethe’s rage, but not her reaction to it.” Not when it meant she was left behind. Alone. Unable to breathe, at the bottom of the water, looking at the diamond earrings, with the reflection of her mother, being raped, stripped, deprived of her mother. A baby, wanting to be loved.

To move on, it took Denver’s strength, the rememory of Baby Suggs’, and friends from the past to cast away Beloved. The spirit that was driving Sethe crazy, killing her, because she couldn’t forgive herself. Sethe didn’t understand what had happened to her. She didn’t understand that ‘“God take what He would.”’ He violated her to break her down, so that she could be restored. So she could use the reoccurring visions of rape and degradation to heal her. To help her realize her self worth. To give her the tools to be loved. Learning and appreciating to be happy, to enjoy what you have even with no support, to cry for help to face the reality that all love ain’t good love. But love is who you are, it’s the courage inside of you, it’s what heals the torture, the violation, it helps in overcoming the obstacles of the excruciating pain of waiting for love.

To be loved after being raped, after having your dignity and worth stripped from you is to understand your past. Embrace your legacy. Enjoy life. Enjoy someone that you can be “embarrassed to be that grown-up and that young at the same time.” Appreciate “when good people take you in and treat you good.” Know you are worth more than fifty bucks; know you are worth more than the milk in your breasts. Know that even though “slaves not supposed to have pleasurable feelings of their own…” it’s okay to “listen to your body and love it.” To be loved is to learn what pain means and to find a way to bring forth the rememory of your legacy with grace. Although the rememory of your legacy is not a story to be passed on, and it may not something to be proud of, it may be horrible and haunting, it is still the legacy that gives you character, that gives you purpose, and makes you the remarkable, wonderful, thoughtful person who is you. To be loved is to know that “I AM BELOVED and she is mine.” A person with a past, a person that survived having a busted heart, survived knowing that “if Sethe didn’t wake up one morning and pick up a knife, Beloved might; locked in a love that wore everybody out;” a selfish, greedy, unforgiving love. Through all of the things you had to live through, you recognized the parts that were clean, untouched by “the lowest yet.” You were able to lie through it all and get through to be here to be who you are. You are not a “little girl with a ice pick…”who “everytime a whiteman come to th-9e door she got to kill somebody…” you are a woman with a knife who defends your “beloved”, your daughters, your family, no matter the cost. Who knows “you your best thing” and you can NOW BE LOVE