400 Days of Oppression

I

My name is Natasha and I am a slave, property. I have been owned in one way or another for as long as I can remember. I was a slave to addictions, a slave to my past, a slave to my low expectations of men and even lower expectations of myself. Now, I have stripped away all the pretensions. No more self-deception. The bonds are as real as the need for them. They are honesty, truth, making the metaphor concrete and there is freedom in this, in the spirit if not the flesh.

My master’s name is Kenyatta and I love him. I love him with all my heart, more than my own pride and self-respect, more than all the pain and humiliation. More than the discomfort and inconvenience. I love him and I want to marry him some day, some day soon, and that’s what made it all tolerable.

I panicked as my own humid breath rebounded off the inside of the coffin lid. The press of the pine box against my sides and the oppressive heat escalated my claustrophobia. I blinked the sweat from my eyes and coughed as I inhaled more of the hot moist air. It was hard to believe it contained any oxygen at all. The overwhelming heat, the smell of my own piss and shit coming from the bucket just yards away, was making it increasingly difficult to breathe. The nauseating fumes boiled in my lungs as I choked them down. I tried not to think about it, afraid that dwelling on the situation would bring on a panic attack. I was trying my best not to freak out.

All I had to do was say one word and my oppression would end. I would be free. I could go back to my own warm bed, back to eating regular food, taking regular showers and using the toilet whenever I wanted. All I had to do was say the safe word. But I couldn’t. It just wasn’t in me. No matter what, I just couldn’t say that word.

I hugged my breasts as I began to sob, noting with some remorse that I had lost more weight and my breasts were at least a full cup size smaller. I was wasting away, slowly losing everything that made me attractive to him.

Long rivulets of perspiration and blood trailed down my forearms as I scratched obsessively at the lid of the coffin, wincing when my fingernails snapped, embedded in the wood, and splinters speared my cuticles. It had become almost a nervous habit now. I held no real hope of escaping.

The iron shackles dug deep into my collarbone, wrists, and ankles, weighing me down. The slightest movement tore open the slow-healing wounds where the metal had abraded my skin. Trickles of red stained my chest.

I wanted to get out, to just say fuck it all and end this stupid experiment. But I knew I would stay. I’d endure it all, no matter what he came up with, because I loved him.

I know that makes me sound pitiful, like one of those stupid trailer park whores who stay with men that get drunk and beat them every night, and yeah, I’ve been one of those stupid bitches before too, but this is different. Kenyatta loves me and I volunteered for this. It was what I wanted, what we needed. And ending the experiment would have meant ending our relationship.

The swaying coffin made me nauseous as I rocked back and forth, unhealed wounds scratching against the hard wood. The box was suspended three feet above the concrete floor by chains anchored at its center so that my slightest movement rocked to create the effect of a ship on rough waters. I shifted positions and sent the coffin tilting and reeling. I felt seasick. With great effort I resisted the urge to vomit up the crappy mess he’d been feeding me the last couple of days, choking it back down as the gorge rose in my throat. I was hungry and thirsty, and my bowels were full and threatening to fail. There was no way I could have imagined I’d be this miserable.

The pipes rattled above me as Kenyatta took his morning shower. I was jealous. I wanted a shower too. Even the horrific reek of my bucket/toilet wasn’t strong enough to mask the stench of my own body odor. I smelled like sweat and vomit. I listened longingly to the shower, depressing myself even more. At least now I had some idea of the time. He would be coming to get me soon.

I shifted positions and sucked in a quick breath as a scab on my elbow scraped open against the rough wood. A door slammed above. Pots and pans rattled. The smell of frying bacon drifted down from the kitchen. My stomach roiled. I would have killed for some pancakes with butter and lots of syrup or an omelet with spinach and feta cheese like the kind he made for me the first night I spent at his house, when he woke me up the next morning with breakfast in bed and then fucked me hard on his satin-sheets before leaving for work and leaving me there alone to finish breakfast at my leisure. I had felt like a queen then. Today I just hoped he would remember to feed me.

I smelled the boiled yams that, along with the occasional pot of horse beans boiled to a mushy pulp, had become my regular source of sustenance. In my hunger, even this repulsive gruel sounded appealing. Even with my bowels threatening to give way, my hunger was winning out. At least it meant he had not forgotten me.

I took stock of myself, suddenly self-conscious and embarrassed, as I lay there quivering and sweating, struggling not to urinate in my little pine box. I felt disgusting. I didn’t want Kenyatta to see me this way. I wished I were allowed to take a shower, curl my hair, put on some makeup and lingerie like I used to do when we had first started dating. I wanted to be pretty and clean for him.

I whimpered aloud when Kenyatta’s footsteps descended the basement stairs. I felt like some ridiculously loyal dog, eagerly awaiting the return of the master who whipped and kicked it. The silly little bondage games I’d played with my past lovers had done nothing to prepare me for this. I’d been exploited and abused by men before. Anonymous men who didn’t give a fuck about me. This was different. This was the man who was supposed to love me, the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. I was in way over my head, but it was too late. If I backed out now he’d never marry me.

“Oh God, baby, I can’t take this! I’m freaking the fuck out! I feel like I’m going to throw up,” I cried.

I strained against the lid of the casket, tears weeping from the corners of my eyes, hoping Kenyatta would hear me and hurry to my rescue. Hoping that if I sounded pitiful enough he wouldn’t have the heart to continue this madness. The safe word went through my mind again and I toyed with it, wondering if I could say it. Wondering how bad things would have to get for that word to lose its repugnancy. I mouthed the word but refused to say it out loud, realizing with some dismay that I never could. Even though it was the only way my life would go back to normal, there was no way I was going to say that disgusting word. Just thinking it made me feel guilty. Of course Kenyatta knew from the start that I couldn’t say it. That’s why he had picked that particular word as our safe word. A word that stated quite clearly that I had rejected him. A word that would end our relationship forever. He knew that I’d die in that damned box before I’d say it.

When Kenyatta opened the lid of the coffin, I almost screamed. He stood there staring down at my nudity as I curled up, trying to hide my wretchedness from his eyes. I hated him seeing me like this. But that was the point, wasn’t it? It was the only way I would ever understand.

He switched on the keyless light, little more than a bare light bulb attached to the trusses above our heads, and one hundred watts speared my retinas, unbearable after nearly ten hours of solid darkness. I recoiled from it, temporarily blinded, but more ashamed than anything. I knew how I must look to him, naked and unwashed. He continued to stare down at me as I squinted against the glare. He smiled and my heart felt suddenly lighter. Then his voice boomed, loud and stern.

“Come out of there. It’s exercise time.”

Oh God. How can I exercise with my bladder about to burst?

He sat my meal of boiled yams and rice down on a stool and picked up a small talking drum and a stick.

“Get out of there now! Dance!”

He began to pound the drum. If I didn’t dance he would go for the whip soon. I had no choice but to obey. I crawled from my wooden casket and lowered myself unsteadily to the concrete floor. My stomach lurched as the casket wobbled and tilted, spilling me out. My legs shook and the room reeled as if everything were still swaying back and forth. I fought to maintain my balance and quiet the dizziness as I stood before him drenched in sweat and blood. Soon the room stopped swaying and the nausea in my stomach lulled into the dull ache of hunger.

I stared at the floor, afraid to meet his gaze, forbidden to, but wanting so much to see his beautiful face and finely chiseled body. Kenyatta was an impressive physical specimen, six foot six with thick striated muscles coiled like pistons beneath his ebon skin. His head and face were clean shaven, and smooth, and his strong jaw, high cheek bones, and intense black eyes gave him the look of African royalty. He was the very definition of manhood to me and I adored every inch of him as I had proven on many occasions, as I was proving now by enduring his terrible lesson.

I had lost a lot of weight in the week since my ordeal began. I knew that Kenyatta preferred me thicker. My hips were smaller now, my breasts and thighs not quite as heavy. My ass, which had been perfect for Kenyatta’s tastes, had dwindled away to nothing and I was embarrassed as I stood before him. His body was still perfect.

I began to dance, trying to shut out my urgent need to pee. The drumbeat pounded through me as I gyrated my hips and stomped and wiggled and clapped. I was not a very good dancer and this was one of his favorite humiliations for me. Maybe if he had put on some country music. I knew how much Kenyatta hated country, but I could have done something with a little Toby Keith playing in the background. Maybe an old school two step and a twist. That drum playing alone like that was hard to get into, especially when I was hungry and needed to piss. Kenyatta called this exercise, but I knew it was just another way to further degrade me. I was grateful when he turned the hose on me.

“Keep dancing!”

I danced in the cool spray from the hose and I urinated freely, hoping the water would mask what I was doing. It didn’t work. Kenyatta turned off the hose, stood, and slapped me to the floor. I know, I’m starting to sound like the abused trailer trash wife again. But I liked it when he slapped me…usually…when he did it during sex. But not today, when I looked like shit and I was all miserable and hungry.

“That’s not sexy, Natasha. Now dance again without the water sports.”

I started crying again. This was so much harder than I had ever imagined it would be and it had only been a week. One week of constant torture. One week of unending insanity. There were still three hundred and ninety-three days left to go in my lesson. I was tough. I could make it. My life had been hell since I could remember and I’d survived it. I’d survive this too.

I know men like Kenyatta…yeah…black men, think that pretty white girls like me have easy lives. But that’s bullshit. My life ain’t never been easy. I grew up poor. I grew up abused, and I’ve been abused by men in one way or another ever since the first time I let that Indian boy from the reservation fuck me in the back of his daddy’s truck. I was twelve years old and it wasn’t the first time I’d had sex, just the first time I’d consented to it. It didn’t make it any better. He was no nicer to me than the others had been.

Kenyatta finished hosing me off and then I was ordered to stand there and drip dry. The chains were heavy. It made standing difficult, especially with all the weight I had lost on my diet of beans and yams. Despite the oppressive heat down there, I began to shiver. Finally, Kenyatta tossed the plate of food at my feet and watched as I greedily scarfed it up with my bare hands. He had reduced me to some undignified animal, but I could not hate him. I knew his people had suffered far worse at the hands of my ancestors. He was quick to remind me how much worse it would be if I were sharing my cramped quarters with six-hundred others, breathing, sweating, and defecating in the same dank humid air I was inhaling. Lying spooned together so tight that some suffocated from the sheer press of bodies and others died of dysentery and malaria. I knew he spared me these horrors out of no kindness on his part, but only due to the impracticality of trying to get another six-hundred slaves to willingly submit themselves to the ordeal I had volunteered myself for.

Ever since I started teaching English to seventh and eighth graders, I’d had to deal with Black History Month and every year I had made sure to avoid exposing my students to the horrors of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. I would skip past it as if it were a mere footnote in the history of black people and not the single most impactful moment in black history. I would avoid talking about the beatings, the hangings, the families separated and destroyed and just rush right into talking about Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglas and then on to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Now, I wondered if I had been protecting the children or myself.

The food tasted like warm shit. I was so hungry it didn’t matter. Besides, there was nothing I could do about it. I either ate this nasty crap or I starved. It wasn’t like Kenyatta was going to make me steak and eggs. This is what the slaves had eaten, so this is what I would eat until Kenyatta decided otherwise.

I risked a glance up at him as I continued to scarf down my food. The look on his face could only be described as one of absolute disgust. There was something else there though. Pity? Sympathy? Sorrow? It was the look you gave to a crippled homeless person when he pissed himself. I just wasn’t sure if it was for me or for his ancestors. I suspected it was a little of both. If I hadn’t felt wretched and disgusting before, that look had solved that. I lowered my head back to my bowl, trying not to choke on my food as I began to sob again.

Knowing that I could end it at any time made it worse. All I had to do was say that horrible word and he’d immediately unchain me and set me free. Of course Kenyatta, being the type of man he is, made the safe word something as reprehensible as the treatment I was now being subjected to. To go free, all I would have to do is yell “Nigger.” Not just say it. He didn’t want me to whisper it apologetically. He’d made that clear. I had to yell it at the top of my lungs. He knew I’d never do that. That would only multiply my “whitey guilt” as Kenyatta called it. So instead I endured.

I hated Kenyatta standing above me with that look of pity and disgust twisting his features as I shoveled the mushy gruel into my face, kneeling on my hands and knees like an animal. I felt like some loathsome repugnant thing and I wondered if he still loved me after seeing me like this. I was afraid to ask, though I knew he would have answered me. I was afraid to hear the reply. Sometimes, on the days when the beatings were the most severe, he’d break character for a while and whisper to me that he still loved me and that he was proud of me for going through this for him. He’d hold me close to him as I wept and bled and swab my wounds with vinegar and alcohol before putting me back in my box. Both my love and my commitment renewed for a while, I’d lie in my box dreaming of being with him when this was all over. I’d imagine lying in bed with him, nestled against his powerful body, my head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat and the soothing sound of his deep melodic voice as he stroked my hair and kissed my face.

Kenyatta was the only man I’d ever felt safe with. He was the only man who’d ever bought me nice things and taken me to nice places, the only man who’d ever told me I was beautiful, and showed me the difference between making love and fucking. I imagined him saying I love you again as we made love, love without pain. I imagined what it would be like to be his bride. On those nights, the heat and the darkness and the hard claustrophobic confines of my box, even the weight of the iron chains around my neck ankles and wrists, became more tolerable. Everything was tolerable if it meant he would love me.

I finished my food and Kenyatta removed my plate and walked me upstairs. I almost fell as I struggled with the weight of the chains. I had gone with him to purchase them. We’d bought them on a trip to San Francisco from a fetish store on Folsom Street that had a custom welder on staff. Kenyatta had shown them pictures of iron shackles recovered from the Henrietta Marie, the oldest slave ship ever discovered. By the end of the weekend the shackles were complete. We laughed about what the baggage handlers at the airport would think when our luggage went through the X-ray machine. I laughed now despite myself. Kenyatta looked back at me with concern on his face, checking to make certain I hadn’t gone insane. That made me laugh harder.

He brought me into the kitchen. I was on my knees crawling by this point from the weight of the iron chains. That was how Kenyatta preferred me anyway. He kicked a bucket and a brush over to me and ordered me to scrub the floor while he stood over me with his flail. I went to work dutifully. I was grateful just to be in the sunlight. I knew Kenyatta would be raping me soon. Watching me scrub the floor naked on my hands and knees always turned him on, plus I knew he’d have to be going to work soon and this would be his last opportunity. My neck muscles throbbed beneath the weight of my shackles. I couldn’t have lifted my head no matter how much I wanted to. I wanted to see my beautiful master’s face. I finished scrubbing the kitchen floor and Kenyatta brought the flail down across my backside ordering me into the hallway to scrub the porcelain tile. I had barely begun scrubbing when I felt Kenyatta’s breath on the back of my neck, his chest against my back, the top of his thighs against the backs of mine. I let out a sigh as the weight of his body crushed down on top of me.