Theory of Slavery | Hamilton

V

Memory is short. So short. At the crucial point the President is on the stand, a potential criminal needing but one push to be impeached, scorned by the upright for leagues around. Let him be acquitted—and in a year all is forgotten. "Yes, he did have some trouble once, just a technicality, I believe. He's a businessman, after all, not a humanitarian." Time passes quickly, like an epileptic fit, and his sins are all washed away. Oh, the memory is so very short! How I wish it was the same with murder.

Get up, something tells me, it's getting late

I woke up with a droning in my ears and a feeling of utter weakness all over. I was still on the floor, head on the bundled dress. I must have pulled it off the hanger, and gone to sleep there. The air was pungent with an organic smell of flesh, sweat and a tinge of iron, from the blood, and another smell, more animal, that was coming, it must have been, from me. My hands were sticky and bright pink, but my body was dull and white and dry. I could see it in the mirror, out of the corner of my left eye. Mary, blessed mother of God. I slowly got up, moaning, and shed my clothes to take a better look at myself. Everything, including my underpants and socks, was anointed with thick drops of congealed blood, and as I reached my hand behind my back, I realized that I was still bleeding. My heart swelled up with misery. Ignoring the pain and the sick feeling caused by the pain, I attempted to produce a smile.

"Well, it could've been much worse," I said to myself, smiling with helpless stupidity. "Why, it could've been so much worse."

I moved at last from the mirror and began to cover my salty nakedness with a fresh dress. At last I said a quick prayer and stepped outside the room, cautiously, noiselessly, like a cat, my mouth hurting from having over stretched it, and went downstairs. Inevitably I began to feel in myself a faint, dreadful stirring of something unshakable; a great cold, and trembling, and ache so painful I thought my chest would burst. As I saw Vella, who was leaning absent-mindedly over the banister, I felt almost merry. As she saw me, she turned deftly away. I drew a long breath of relief.

"Miss Smith, what time is it? I might have overslept."

But without even as much as a glance in my direction, Vella hurdled right past me and disappeared upstairs. I was confused and disappointed, but I was also cold and not quite myself, so I took refuge in her indifference.

About a week ago Lee and Belcher dragged from the basement a wash-tub of unbelievable dimensions and placed it in our bathhouse (no question, naturally, of there being an actual bath), but pretty soon they found out that it was too small for any other men to fit in it, that is, I was the only one who could use it. We didn't have hot water, so I never took the opportunity; but now I felt a strange need for it, maybe to soothe my back, maybe to perform a second Baptism. I really can't remember.

On the floor of the bath house there was no skimpy glorified towel of a rug—instead, a succession of white rags layed out as a sort of path leading to the tub, like a great stretch of snow presided over by a cold and formidable sun of a flickering lightbulb. The scalding water, turned pink from my touch, held me down like hands and was as sharp as broken glass. Shivering, I lathered my head with soap and poured the water down my back. Instantly I felt a sharp tug of pain and had to gather all the forces of resistance left within me not to cry out. Something heavy rolled up through my loins and throat. The misery and anxiety of the last hours weighed so heavily upon me that it became almost unbearable. Tears started into my eyes. I covered my face with my hands and wept hard and quietly for a while, shaking in the same parts as a weeping woman.

At that moment in came Charles, who seemed not in the least disconcerted to see me.

"Here's our little John Brown! I was searching for you all over the place.Where've you been all night?"