Highly curious, she turned the page. There she found "Isaiah 65:1-5".
I am sought of them that asked not for me; I am found of them that sought me not: I said, Behold me, behold me, unto a nation that was not called by my name.
I have spread out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people, which walketh in a way that was not good, after their own thoughts; A people that provoketh me to anger continually to my face; that sacrificeth in gardens, and burneth incense upon altars of brick; Which remain among the graves, and lodge in the monuments, which eat swine's flesh, and broth of abominable things is in their vessels; Which say, Stand by thyself, come not near to me; for I am holier than thou. These are a smoke in my nose, a fire that burneth all the day.
Below, she read:
Qa dhivza námba islav gafioda qa phû hevdhish új bislavuod en ed.
***
She saw redheads, blondes, brunettes, women of every race save one, which she hadn't even tried approaching for fear of the social blast radius, each dangling hope in front of her like chicken in front of a dog. But whenever she reached out, lightning struck her hand and the word came down like a hammer: No!
As her hand sizzled, so did her heart. Over and over it happened, each new shock hurting more than the last. Injury followed by insult, seemingly forever, and the worst thing about it was that the more hope was offered, the more viciously she was denied when she reached for it. She was getting not merely rejected but demonized. To take the risk inherent in breaking the ice was to invite suspicion of an extremely personal and hurtful nature, on an institutional scale. Apparently, it was "creepy" to be sweet. All the while, actual creepiness was rewarded. Even more than the individual cases, painful though they were, the seemingly omnipresent pattern galled her to no end.
This compound frustration combined with the steady stream of general invective that she had been absorbing from the outside since childhood to throw her into a dizzying tailspin. Foul moods overtook her at random times, bringing headaches, narcolepsy, appetite loss, and chest pains in their wake. She saw red all around, then night fell and she saw blue: the cold blue of a computer screen. On that screen was a forum she had just begun visiting as a result of reading the musings of someone much like herself. He had clearly been angry when he wrote them, but they had spoken to her...had given her own pain a voice and thereby relieved some of the pressure inside.
On this forum, she had taken off her armor and allowed her wounds to be seen in the open. The wounded souls there who welcomed her into their number included black men. Lots of them. And they weren't just nerds, either. Many if not most of them looked and talked like they could have been poster boys for the thug life. But none of that mattered here. Even the pickup artists, whom she had grown up loathing, opened up here, and she found herself understanding them.
Much to her surprise, her own posts were resonating most powerfully with the brothas, who quoted them approvingly as truth bombs. They also warned all who would listen that black women were the worst. She smiled indulgently at first, thinking the assertion could very well be just another case of one-upmanship, but then became curious enough to investigate. To say that the ensuing research took her down a rabbit hole would have been a gross understatement.
She saw a tall sista leaning into an even taller brotha's face, shouting, "Hit me! Hit me! Hit me!", taking base advantage of the social protection she enjoyed until he finally snapped and threw a punch that rendered her unconscious.
She saw a little boy staring at the camera in abject terror, his mouth a siren of concentrated anguish as his mother ordered him to leave the house, having stacked his things by the door and physically marching him out into the night, leaving him to stand on a street corner alone. His crime: voting the wrong way in a mock election at school.
She saw a girl with box braids bent 90 degrees over a phone on the table, telling her traumatized boyfriend in shaky, orgasmic tones that nothing was occurring on her end of the line.
This was how she had learned the word "ratchet" as an adjective, watching black commentators analyze clips like those for their talk segments. As rough as her own experience had been, nothing had prepared her for this. Her heart didn't merely break for those boys and men; it shattered.
Eventually she formed the hypothesis that their racial culture was a lot like her own church culture, insulated with the implicit promise that though the rest of the world might want you dead, your sisters would always have your back. There might even be substantial overlap between the two, with religious white men like her on one side of the Venn diagram, secular brothas on the other, and religious brothas right in the middle. Such camaraderie as these circles promised was a warm and comforting thought, but it made betrayal that much harder to forgive when it happened. The emotional effect was nuclear, with results like openly misogynistic rap lyrics and her own gradual hardening into a bitter, myopic activist with no higher goal than politics.
She knew she was in trouble when she caught herself talking about "raising awareness" as if that were her sacred calling. She already knew what that looked like from the outside when the subject was race, and it was not pretty.
As much legitimate pain as there was behind the movement to which she had joined herself, she realized that she could not afford to indulge that sentiment indefinitely. If she did, it would consume her and shrink the scope of her life, sapping her joy in the process. Sooner or later, she would have to put her activism to bed and live the life that God had actually given her, with all of its wonders, joys, and even sacrifices...and so would they. Whether the subject was race or sex, no mere mortal could be right all the time and the price of establishing one's rightness totally, even where that might actually be possible, was too high to be worth paying when the stakes were less than salvation itself.
Politics, though potentially important in its own way, was rather like taking out the garbage. You didn't do it for fulfillment. You did it because your house would stink if you didn't. You cleaned your own house as best you could while pursuing higher things and gave the rest to God, knowing that your own mortal efforts would be subject to the law of diminishing returns. However broken the world might be, He would see to your welfare, and that would be enough.
Don't be afraid. Only believe.
***
She frowned. The cross-racial bond that resulted from them was fascinating to observe, but the examples themselves were so unpleasant, each one featuring a black woman as the aggressor. Such a profound breakthrough...but such an ugly route!
The effect on him testified that the examples were genuine and she had seen enough for herself from the inside to know that these things happened, but did they have to play such a major role? Was this how bridges had to be built? With the bones of people like herself? She gasped. Was this how Lazarus had felt generally as a white man? Demographically singled out, from multiple angles? Pressed into service as the common enemy, whose bones everyone else would build bridges with? Oh man... Who wouldn't feel picked on in that position? Intersectionality didn't sound so cool when she thought about it this way, now that it was working against her.
So...he felt connected to her people by dunamis on one hand and by shared pain on the other. These two factors, though they served a common purpose racially, seemed to contradict each other on the sexual axis. Had there been a war between them when his time finally came? "Dunamis" must have won because if it hadn't, she would not be here. She could find some comfort in that...but why? Why had he done the one thing he seemed least likely to do? Why had he married a black woman, having armed himself with so much negative information? If there was one thing she knew for sure, it was that overcoming pain on that scale was no easy task, so "dunamis" must have been awfully strong stuff. What would she learn next?