Page 24 - Demo

BASS
Went back a year later to see what was left but everything I
loved was gone. You know how it was. Folks formed new families after they got separated. All you could hold on to was the memories of those loved ones you lost through sale. Few of my mother friends who were sold when I was a small boy was there to take back their children - and the former owners - still wanted to hold on to the hope of putting them back to work in the slave fields. I bought a listing for the weekly daily searching for my mother. Come to find out she went back to Arkansas. Tracked her down. And when our eyes met I ran up to her and gave the biggest hug a son could ever give a mother. Couldn't let her go. Talking to her I could see slavery had beat her good. I could see it all over her face. What she saw and went though everyday as a Negro woman trying to live up to someone else’s hope of who she should be. She said she told Mrs. Reeves She fixed herself from having more babies after me because she just couldn't bare feeding white children her milk.
What.
LEVI
(BASS walks over near LEVI)
BASS
The Mrs. Would plan her pregnancy around a slave girl.
Sometimes orchestrating sexual violence between two slaves that she owned in hopes of producing a child. As soon as both babies were born she would pull the mother from her child to feed their milk to hers. The Mrs. felt - if she fed her own baby milk she would be a “slave” to that child - believed white people should never ever be a servant to anyone. Four times she did that to slave girls momma said. Four times. And she was up next. Momma felt that the milk from a bosom to a brand new baby is the first contact of any physical bond between the two. When the baby is laying on your chest. When both hearts are beating the same tune. Same time. One.
LEVI
When I got to South Carolina I searched near and far the man
the drifter on the train described. Found nothing. Just as I was leaving town - a horse come trotting up - a man -
extends a photo at me - and it’s us. Me and Gus as small boys back on the plantation. I hadn't seen him since he was 10 years young. I reached out and hugged him so tight. He couldn’t say a word. Just looking at me. He slowly remembered who I was. I blame myself for him being taken. What’n supposed to be him.
22.