Douglass, a Last Letter

“Am I always to be a black man, the runaway slave, living within and without the strictures of a corrupt society?”

In 1830 I might have been twelve and already a rare beast marked time in my head, one whose incessant growls

meant to drive me mad unless I could open my skull and unpen the sleepless thing. Truthfully,

it was as if some creature, cold and hungry, were trapped in a room with two openings—both too small for escape—

beyond which a sunlit orchard shone warm and redolent with every kind of fruit, the taste and feel of which

could only be regarded with agonizing wonder and thirst.

Playing with some white children in Baltimore, it was clear that my life was not to be a life like theirs,

that decisions had been made about skin and the road to be taken by anyone born darkly clad.

Being half-white helped little, unless one considers the twist of the knife in the wound a help. As I approached twenty

I wasn’t religious exactly, but I’d come to believe any God that could author these circumstances could not merely sit

“on high” while I worked with the lash at my back, with my head bursting with the wrongs I’d witnessed

and the alternatives to them which were, in fact, within human reach. Why do white people persist

in a system that makes them monstrous? It’s like being invited to an endless party,

the central requirement for admittance being a willingness to torture a select group of others

who find themselves detained as servants Why? Why, when good conscience must be bled

and good ears made deaf to shrink the heart enough to enjoy the feast? I imagined God

shared my sympathies, but His procrastination worried me. Such was the noise in my head

as I climbed the years. That I was not killed by the weight of these ruminations—or murdered because of them—strikes me

daily as a near miracle. I wanted freedom. Even the sound throbbed like a broken rib inside me.

But I didn’t really understand what being free would mean. I must admit that, in this way, freedom

is similar to love: none can sing its complex harmonies without having suffered its long silences.

When I met Ottilie Assing I was already married to Anna Murray, the woman who made my escape

possible. How could I not think her an angel? How could I not feel a perennial debt, no matter how

much love I gave? Sometimes I resented her doting, her kindness that had a tinge of something

else—as if she were entitled to me, which, in part, I suppose she was,

though I’d drawn my fill of being anyone’s property.

Without her help, of course, I could have been many more years in bondage. The nauseating horror

of that prospect may never be clear to someone who has not worn the yoke,

but suppose today people began to see you and treat you

like a dog. Thought you stood and spoke like a man, you were given scraps to eat and were obliged to fetch

endlessly—knowing that any discontent could bring the cutting snap of a cow-skin. Imagine

how long a single day of this would be— a month a year. I think you would rather die

than know what I know. When I met Miss Assing, I had never known such a woman, boasting both

a boiling mind and a beauty that was distracting. I had not been long from slavery. I did not know my voice

would bring me into such company. The kind clasp of her bright hand. The way she regarded me unshyly. Her

heavy-blue eyes that said she believed in a country as yet invisible. Was it possible

to touch this woman and survive? Even to think it seemed insane, but if I was free—

like other men—didn’t that mean my heart should be my compass? Of course, I was married

to a good woman, and Miss Assing bore the color worthy...