The Little African American Book

“Walk in the light! Beautiful light! Come where the dew drops of mercy shine bright! Shine all around us by day and by night!” The song echoed in his medium brown colored head like a bell tolling for the dead. He looked at the computer screen with the figure $20,000 emblazoned on it. He sat at his kitchen table.

As the first recipient of the reparations for slavery in America in the First State of Delaware, freelance journalist for the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) Alastar Aaron just kept staring at the figure.

“This is quite the surprise. It’s not as much as it should be but it’s a lot more than they could have given,” he said to himself.

He’d read that he could flip it into some real estate. He studied some stocks just in case he scratched the investor’s itch in that market.

He tapped a video on his smart device.

“Welcome, Mr. Aaron, to your initiation into the funds you received from Senegambia, Upper Guinea, Windward Coast, Bight of Benin, Bight of Biafra, West Central Africa, and Southeastern Africa. The locations secured their funds from each other and cooperated with the American private banking system to give you your bounty. You will be able to do whatever you like with the funds that these locales have afforded you, tax free. Do enjoy your reparations, sir.”

The screen went blank. A knock at the door. It was a delivery man. He left a small package that didn’t need a signature. Aaron opened the door and picked up the box and re-entered his house. His girlfriend, burnt sienna colored Camilla Douglas, came downstairs to greet him.

“Good morning, Mr. American Descendent of Slaves (ADOS). Mr. Foundational Black American (FBA). You’re going to buy me diamonds now, aren’t you?” Camilla asked, wrapping her arms around him. Aaron kissed her forehead. “No. Not in your life.” Camilla sat with her lips poked out and a frown making tiny wrinkles in her brow. She then brightened.

“That’s okay. When you flip that money and make it into some billions, then we won’t have to worry about diamonds.”

Aaron laughed. He then shot a glance at the box.

“What’s in it?” she asked.

“I don’t know yet.” He picked up and removed something from the outer cardboard cube and the plastic packaging. It was hefty. What he revealed was a tiny black book.

“Aren’t you going to open it?”

Aaron grinned and scoffed at her.

An audible crack resounded from opening the book. Camilla moved closer to her boyfriend.

“What is it, A?”

“It’s a list of names. It looks like red ink but I don’t think it’s just any red ink. It’s...blood.”

The notebook was small but extremely dense. It must have weighed about eight or nine pounds. Aaron lifted it out of the box as if it was a barbell. It was nothing more than three and a half by five and half inches.

“We can use this!” Camilla said.

“Huh?”

“You know, as part of the ADOS and FBA roundtables and discussions. We can use it to bring awareness to why the African nations decided to finally pay us.”

“Us?! They paid me, darling.”

“You’re just the first.”

“It’s good to be first.”

“What we have to do is cherish this little book.”

The tiny thing depicted illustrations of bodies being burned, hangings, scarred backs from whips, mixed race slaves. Every name of every slave ever under the watchful eye of an overseer or master in the United States of America bled onto the pages like a gushing wound.

“What’s crazy is, I’m not even black. I mean I’m black but I’m not black black. I’m not technically African-American.”

Camilla looked puzzled. “What are you saying?”

“I’m mostly Trini. I checked my DNA. My dad was. And my mom is Haitian and English if you can believe it.”

“So what you’re saying is that you looked at this notebook and suddenly had a change of mind?”

He nodded his head.

“When were you going to tell them? When were you going to tell me?”

“I didn’t think you’d care and it never came up.”

I just figured your mom was black. Like African-American.”

“She’s not.”

They both stared at the notebook. Transfixed by the tiny, powerful black book, they contemplated their next move.

“I can just send the money back….”

“Or you won’t.”

“I can’t claim this cash. It’s literally blood money.”

Camilla’s eyes narrowed. “You know what you can do with this money?”

“What’s that?”

“Send it back with a note stating that you’re ineligible for it.”

“I think that that’s the best way to do it.”

Aaron opened the book again. This time, as he turned the pages the blood smeared his fingertips. He dropped the book and it opened. He ran to the sink to wash off the red fluid. He scrubbed with warm water and soap like a surgeon preparing for an operation, but it didn’t leave his hands.

Camilla looked as if a corpse had risen from a casket.

“What’s going on?” Aaron asked, his heart pumping.

“I don’t know but you better get back on your tablet and correct this!” she said.

He grabbed his device with blood dripping from his fingers like raindrops. The blood smeared the screen. He wiped away enough to go onto the site where the man had introduced the money to him. He received error messages.

“No, no, no!”

The screen went blank.

He shot up from his seat. Camilla began to weep. Aaron’s breathing got even heavier. He looked down at his hands which were now holding a puddle of blood. He carried them back to the sink. He kept the water running as the blood circled the drain like a crimson whirlpool. Suddenly, the blood cleared from his hands and he clutched the device so that he could find a 501(c)(3) to donate the funds into their account.

“I’ve got to give it all to ARI.”

Camilla sniffled. She looked at her boyfriend as if giant Asian hornets issued from his ears.

“What...why?”

“This is one of the only organizations in the world that would be able to show the idea that slavery was a blight on this country due to racism. Miss Rand said, ‘It is capitalism that abolished serfdom and slavery in all the civilized countries of the world.’ That includes the United States of America. Also, everyone involved in the trade of human beings related to ancient slavery in America is dead. It wouldn’t be right to keep it. I’ll donate this money in the rational pursuit of justice for a bloody past.” His hands once again became clean and the book shut.