I'm now going to read "Peggy in Killing."
Now this is--
I guess some of you are aware of Toni Morrison's book
Beloved in which she used this slave narrative as the basis
for her book.
As I was doing research on this woman Margaret Garner,
I found another narrative.
There were about three or four narratives on her
but the story is this.
She escaped from her plantation and she
got on a boat that was going to take her to Philadelphia.
But the boat had an accident.
And in the water, another boat came and picked her up.
But in the meantime, she drowned two of her children.
In those days I don't know how much you know about slavery but
they were plenty--
some of the mothers who had killed their children
rather than have them become slaves.
Terrible stories of how they did that.
But terrible stories of how they saw the murders
and the life of a slave for their children
even worse and Peggy was one of them.
She to me is an archetype.
And she will give you--
you will hear her exercise herself
and she will give you a definition
between murder and killing.
And in the end she will redeem herself in her own way.
She's not Medea.
Somebody told me she was Medea.
I don't believe that because Medea
killed out of a kind of anger and viciousness.
This woman is not doing that.
Traveling.
They done found me, Lord, they done found me again.
I'm dead and they don't know it.
Sometimes I don't either.
Except the spirit come creeping in my body like hot fire
and I burn and burn all inside turned to dust blow way
out over they heads when they finds me crying in a sack.
I listens and listens.
I'm traveling in my bones and the spirits
swooshes out before I get the chance to say amen.
Oh the wind, the sea, I'm dead on this boat.
Go away, go away nigger they say so I go.
Don't touch me yet.
Got to get home to my mother.
Ain't that what the Lord say when
he rise from the dead going home to his mother.
Well, somebody row this boat out of hell.
Can't be no slave forever, not me and my children.
All pretty and soft all wet and they skin moist like the sea
air they've been burying me in.
Can't be no slave ever, make way Lord, here I come, here I am.
They say boat they put me on with my children
because I tried to escape from the dark breaths, the glories,
hallelujah, they fine houses and sweet fields they
murders, murders, murders.
That coffin stenching and they smiles.
They come here Peggy dress my little one then
fix her something to eat, maybe some cake and milk.
And mine sitting on the stairs in cold
and the dark waiting to do some waiting on, waiting
for the milk to sour, the cake to crumble.
Hearing all this without a word, a whimper.
Eyes freezing in their dreams, hungers freezing in they
dark, taking they dreams to supper like candles melting.
After a while, no more light.
They walking softly, making sure they seen and not heard
and they dreams screaming in they bright soft eyes.
My soft little ones, my children.
My John and Mary and Lottie, brown and golden-black
listening in the dark, bright in they black but it'd be a gift.
Out of they misery I become blacker
than the skin of a tree in the rain
and I be rooted in the rich black Earth.
Out of me flies the swallow.
Lord, I'm here because I went with my little ones.
We's all going to something better,
there has to be something better and my death gives me a chance.
Can't be no slave forever.
Oh Lord, I've got wisdom and hope
and I don't think about it, don't believe it,
don't not believe it don't carry them around
in my misery like sick animals.
Got to go, got to live inside death in the wheelchair
if I must there be some energy left in that.
Caught me in Philadelphia, put me in a boat down,
down in the hollows of its ribs in the hollering
of the sea with my three little ones crying to me no, I lies.
They be silent, no tears, no murmurs, no moans, no sighs.
And I knew then that death give me
a chance a great salvation, a fine, early night.
So I waits in the dark and dampness.
I sat there till my skin broke and I held my children close.
But that boat wasn't meant for nothing but glory.
And when it crashed into the sea I
entered that water like I was being baptized.
So my John's head stretched among the waves
and near him Mary and near her Lottie laughing.
Oh Lord what a sight, baptized to the death.
I denounce you, Satan.
I denounce this unfree calling.
I denounce shackles, bondage, escape, darkness,
the quiet of the pain in my throat when I scream
for nothing, nothing at all.
When I watch my children sit on stairwells in the dark and ice
forms in their mouths.
I denounce the evil of remembering.
I denounce pieces of property, pounds of pain.
Nothing be free but the misery.
My hands over their heads was such a little matter.
Just taking them on them putting them there for the water
to purify, for their own blooming under the sea.
Lottie she kicked a bit but that be all, it be over.
They be flowers under the water now.
Lord, how cleansed I be when the water
come rushing beating against my bosom through me to them.
I feel like I be giving suck and the sea
be my milk and my health and babies be fed and wholesome
and warm forever.
I'm here now in this place don't know it
but it moves and they'd be water about, another boat.
I can see a tiny window but the light hurts and wants the dark.
Now and then some peoples come and look at me,
ask me if I wants to eat, leaves me
some corn bread and cold tea.
Be crates and chunks here like the other boat.
I think we've been moving.
They found me in the water I reckon,
brought me again in a backward time.
I'm dead.
I know it because I'm happy.
The children are flowers now baptized in joy and hope.
I shiver when I think of their beauty.
Can't cry because I be dead.
This whole tarp round me, my flesh rotting,
my bones drying out, my eyes moving through some kind
of cheesecloth like a fog.
I'm going to reach out now soon, so my death
will stay away from my babies.
Can't upset them now.
They's pure.
And these ghosts that come and watch me in the night?
I'll sing to them, like a star.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.