Iron Gut, Golden Lung Pt. 6

21

HoumaTrapQueen! Retweeted

Khadijah the Bak Choy Queen @KhadijahQueen Aug 18

Never underestimate the power of cooking for yourself. Takeout teaches us to be helpless. It takes advantage of our poverty and lack of time. Home cooking takes the power back. #BlackVegans

HoumaTrapQueen! @The_Jae_Freeman Aug 18

YASSSSSS GIRLLLLL GIT IT 🔥 🔥🍲🍲

22

Jaelin Freeman read.

Date of entry: Mon, May 30, 1892. Newspaper: Times-Democrat. State: LA.

She read. And read. And read. And read.

Victim’s name: Walker. Location: 6 mi from Sparta. Offense: improper relations w/a white imbecile girl.

She compared the crude hundred-plus-year-old coroner’s report to three modern-day stat sheets, one of which specified the lynching took place in Bienville. Sitting at the computer in an office cramped with filing cabinets and old reference books, she typed Bienville into the rudimentary DOS database. Through the window she watched dealers do handoffs outside the Vietnamese grocer.

It would only take five minutes to enter the rest of the information. Instead she scrolled the Black Vegans Twitter. She retweeted words of wisdom and sent funny memes to her friends.

Twice a week she did data entry at the Houma office for the National Lynching Database. Important and necessary work building a memorial to the fallen, but emotionally draining, and after two months she found herself taking breaks wherever she could find them. She knew at three p.m. she would leave the office, run into a white person and shudder inside because she could see the burning churches in their eyes.

Her boss entered through the front door and she hid her phone in her lap. Dr. Rivers was a potbellied middle-aged man on sabbatical from Northwestern University, dressed in a well-traveled brown suit. What hair he has left he wore tied back in a gray nubbin of ponytail. He looked more tired from his break than he was before he left, dabbing a handkerchief at his bald pate, the bridge of his nose dotted in fat bubbles of sweat.

“We’re going to have to let you go,” he said matter-of-factly. “You did a good job. I’ll write you a reference.”

“Oh,” she said after the initial shock. “You can’t afford to pay me anymore?”

Without eye contact, he moved to his iron desk which had until recently belonged to the principal at Ellender High. “Let’s not talk about all that.”

Of course. Black people never talked about money. She should have known better than to ask. But she wanted to stay, and, frustrating old bougie that he was, she respected Dr. Rivers as a scholar and justice seeker.

“I have no problem volunteering. This means a lot to me. We’re doing this for the ancestors.”

He looked her in the eyes, curious, paternal. “Aren’t you going back to school soon?”

The reminder hurt. “I still haven’t heard from LSU. But I’m going to. I could volunteer until then,” she added with extra pluckiness.

He lit a Newport, took a drag, then broke into a coughing fit.

“No, sweetheart,” he said when he could speak. “Never work for free.”