A Second Chance

Everything moves faster now. Everything, and everybody, except me. I still look like a 35 year old woman, but I feel my full 102 years in my achy bones, in weakened muscles still warming and stretching, and in my mind -- looking out at a world that has left me behind. I didn’t have a choice. When the men in their gray, wool suits came to my cell that night so long ago, they knew I didn’t have a choice. Still they were polite. They offered me freedom, a fresh start, and something more. Hope. I was tired of the choices available to me in 1952. Tired of being at the very bottom. Being expendable. I have only one regret.

I’ve been wandering all day. I don’t even know where I’ll sleep tonight and I don’t care. I look into the faces of the people hurrying past me on this busy Atlanta sidewalk on this muggy June evening and I’m happy to be alive. I try not to gape at three tall, leggy men in dresses and high heels, their faces shining in the dying light, arms linked as they laugh and talk. A father swings his toddler up into the air and onto his shoulders while the child squeals with delight. A teenaged girl flies past on a bicycle, dark blonde dreadlocks brushing her shoulders, her bare arms covered in ink, an intricate jungle of images telling her story to all the world. A man leans out the passenger window of a battered pick-up truck with a confederate flag painted on the rear view window and yells obscenities at the girl on the bicycle as he passes. Two dark skinned youth sit on overturned buckets on the grass near the walkway making music, one drawing plaintive notes from a violin and the other strumming a guitar and singing a bluesy ballad. People throw money into the open violin case at their feet. Two women hold hands, smiling at each other as they sway to the music.

A woman with coppery skin and dark flashing eyes strides purposefully past in an exquisitely cut, blue silk suit. A slim black leather briefcase swings from one hand and she is shouting into her phone. “That’s the deal. My clients won’t come back to the table. We need your answer by end of the day tomorrow.”

All around me people talk into phones or look at handheld screens as they hurry along. Some look like they are talking to themselves, before I notice the tiny receivers in their ears. Packed together in this jostling stream of humanity heading onto the train or into the city for dinner, breathing each other’s air, a rainbow of skin against skin, intimate in their closeness, yet they are unconnected. I’m sorry so many of them are missing this moment. The laughter, the singing, the shouts, the soft air heavy with the acrid scent of warm bodies and an underlying sweetness of magnolias, lilies, and flowering tobacco. And something else – barbeque. Suddenly I’m famished. I see a van parked in a nearby lot, the menu painted on the side promises soul food. A lithe, young woman in tight jeans and a t-shirt with caramel skin and a smile like sunshine takes orders and hands paper plates through a window facing the thronging sidewalk. I step into the line.

I haven’t eaten since I left the laboratory early this morning. I was there just over three months after the awakening. That’s what they called it when they carefully and slowly reversed the cryogenic process and I opened my eyes in this new century. They wanted me to stay longer, but that wasn’t the deal we made. As I left, I promised to check in once a week for the rest of the year. They have ensured my compliance by promising a weekly stipend which can only be collected in person. I reach into my pocket for the little wallet full of bills. The middle-aged white man ahead of me orders the special of the day -- collard greens, cheesy grits, and fried chicken. My mouth waters in anticipation. The woman takes my order. Her t-shirt has a picture of a black man on the front of it. He must be famous, but I don’t recognize the name, Martin Luther King, Jr. A young man with a shock of orange curls barely contained in a hair net and a splash of freckles across his broad nose bustles behind her, an apron covering his gangly frame, a metal spatula in one hand.

I sit on a bench in a tiny park nearby with the warm plate on my knees. A few feet away, a young black man tenderly kisses the lips of a young white man and they lean into each other, speaking quietly, in a world all their own like lovers in every place and time. On the other side of the park, three white men in their late teens or early twenties are gathered under a tree. Their heads are shaved clean and a large tattoo of a Nazi swastika decorates one man’s muscular neck. He points at the lovers, his finger and thumb simulating a gun.

The first crunchy salty bite of chicken brings a flood of memories. I’m standing in front of a stove in a huge shiny kitchen, hot oil splashing up from the cast iron frying pan as I turn each piece of chicken. I don’t dare burn it. I remember the sour bile of resentment burning the back of my throat as I stood there. My momma had promised my life would be better than hers. That I would go to college. Would be somebody. More than a cook and housekeeper for a white man who treated me like property, cornering me in the pantry to put his sweaty hands on my breasts and under my skirt, looking at me as if I were less than nothing as I brought his dinner and refilled his whiskey glass. If it weren’t for Sarah, I would have left long before.

I look at the sea of faces passing by and wonder what opportunities these people have. Does their brown skin close as many doors for them as mine did for me? Do they have the power to choose their own paths? Or are they as powerless as I was when I finally broke that whiskey glass and shouted into that fat, white face at the top of my lungs, “NO! Do not touch me. I will not allow it. I am someone!” I had felt elation tinged with growing terror as I watched his face grow from red to purple with rage. When his fist slammed into my cheekbone I saw stars. The officers who came to arrest me refused to tell me what I was being charged with. They joked with my employer as they put the handcuffs on just a little too tight, “Looks like your girl needs to learn how to mind better, Joe.”

I had lain on the concrete floor of that cold jail cell for days before someone finally came to collect me for an arraignment. I was charged with assault and battery, as well as theft. I never took anything from that house and I was the one who was assaulted, but the judge and the police belonged to the same brotherhood as my previous employer. They had all of the power and they made it clear that I and my kind would never have any. Even though we had been “free” for almost a hundred years, we would always be enslaved in a world run by these men.

By the time the scientists came looking for a “volunteer,” I had given up all hope of real freedom in the country where I was born and had grown into a woman. I am pulled back to the present when a young woman sits down beside me. “May I sit here?” she asks politely, not waiting for my answer. I nod and continue my supper. The two of us sit in amicable silence for a few minutes before she looks at me and asks, “So what do you think of 2019?”

My eyes narrow as I try to determine her intentions. She is petite, shapely, maybe twenty five. Her hair is short and naturally kinky, but it looks soft. Her eyes are the color of cinnamon with flecks of green and her skin so light that in my time she might have passed the brown bag test that kept so many of us out of places where we were not welcome. She’s wearing a simple cotton dress and white canvas shoes with no socks. She looks familiar. “They asked me to keep an eye on you today, since it’s your first day out on your own.” She explains, as if reading my thoughts.

“Everything is fast and noisy.” I begin in answer to her question. “People come in every shade you could imagine and they all mix together with each other as if the color of their skin don’t matter. Men and women seem to have more freedom to be who they want to be and to love who they want to love. Some women have power. Even black women.”

“But…” she prompts, clearly reading the questions on my face.

“Things have changed, and yet it seems like they are still the same in some ways. It seems like we have more freedom and power. More choices. But I wonder if this is really true.”

“We still have a long way to go,” she agrees somberly.

“Do I know you?”

“Not really. I’m called June, but my name is Le Jeune. Sarah was my grandmother.”

And I see it. The resemblance is striking. Sarah was only sixteen when I left her. She made the choice so difficult. But they promised that she would be taken care of, and how was I going to take care of her from prison? My beautiful girl. My only child. My heart aches as I register the past tense in her statement.

“Where is Sarah now?” I ask.

“Granny Sarah was an amazing woman. She passed away two years ago. She had a good life though. Graduated from Spelman College and married a Morehouse man. They both worked closely with Dr. King, fighting for the rights of people of color. She eventually became an English professor and spent her last years writing about her life and work.”

I nod, surprised by the tears on my cheeks. Tears of immense sadness, but also born of joy that my daughter had a good life. She was successful and respected and free.

“You know, they may be able to cryogenically freeze you a second time. There has been some promising research. Maybe you would like to go back to sleep for another seventy years or so? Maybe things will be better then.” She gives me a half-smile, tinged with sadness.

I consider briefly, looking at the people rushing past on the sidewalk and those lounging on benches and picnic blankets on this little patch of grass as twilight softens everything. The fragrant breeze caresses my skin and I close my eyes just for a moment.

“No,” I whisper, reaching out to fold my great granddaughter’s hand in mine, “I have what I wanted. Hope. It’s enough.”