Ah, Lamentations, my dear boy,

You’ve always been so intelligent. It’s why you’re my favorite. And yet you balk when that intelligence leads you down unfortunate paths.

Look with your eyes, young one. Look at the world around you and look at the book you swear by. Can you not see the lie that was taught to you?

America is a land of unrepentant sinners. Shall I point to the millions enslaved to the South? Or the millions driven from their homes to the West? Shall I point to the contract your father signed to buy my personhood, a deal bartered by your uncle? Or the Constitution that promises equality on one page and sixty per cent on the other? All countries that enact such cruelty are founded through power and subjugation, and most do not deny it. Their rulers made monuments to the domination of their enemies for their self-aggrandizement, garbed themselves in gold and silver to mark their superiority. This is the only country I’ve seen that deludes itself so thoroughly into thinking that it beats and torments out of kindness, that lies to itself about its own egalitarianism, avoiding crowns and scepters and insisting it’s above such egoism.

This is not an equal country. If you’d attacked a paler woman the way you did me, you’d be in prison right now instead of resting in a doctor’s sideroom in the wealthiest city in the state. Do not forget your capacity for murder as you accuse me of the same.

You’re a studious one, aren’t you Lamentations? You know what the Bible says about sinners, especially the unrepentant, especially the wealthy. The men who created this country, who wrote laws that left the kidnapped Asante in bondage, who led the slaughter of the Cherokee and the Seminole, will not enter heaven. Those who profit off of their actions will not go to heaven. Those who walk free yet stand by idly, who are not driven to fight against this injustice, will not enter heaven.

Do you understand now, my child? It is not ‘my people’ who are damned by their own nature. It’s yours. And those like your uncle are the most damned. It is a sin itself to simply enage in vice, but another entirely to actively aid and abet it and call it virtue. I didn’t kill him. His sin did. If he was truly virtuous, then the creatures of God’s creation wouldn’t dare strike him or the Francois, or any of the endless gnawed bones across the world. Have you not read the second chapter of Second Kings? Did not Elisha curse the mocking children, bringing bears to end their mischief? So I curse the lords of mankind, the tyrants in their regalia. This is what your God has allowed on this earth.

But you have nothing to fear from me, Lamentations. You’re my favorite in this town, in your family, little prodigy, clever little squirrel. You think. You care. I trust that, when you look at this country fully and understand the depths of its depravity, you’ll understand why I am driven to do this. Perhaps you will even work to change it.

As for who I am? Well, I am not of this land’s chattel houses. Nor am I of the shores of West Africa, a child of the Asante or the Kongo. This land assumes that I am a Negro and I let them keep that assumption, for wealthy men inherently trust the poor women who serve and service them, and in this country there is no fitter servant than a slave. My true origins are far older, far more weatherworn; even the greatest scholars alive would struggle to trace it back. I have swept floors and washed walls across countless kingdoms. I struck down tyrants when they were building the ziggurats of Sumer, the obelisks of Anak, the tower of Babel. I’ve been doing this for a long time, Lamentations.

Your uncle set up a trust for you before he died, did he not? For higher education? Use it. Go to school and look up the German Romantics. Look up the old kabbalists and Sufi masters, ben Shem-Tov and al-Buni. They villify me, of course. A woman who strikes down the powerful is not looked upon kindly by history. But they do record me. That I was there. That I’ve been there since the beginning, surviving on the edges of your mythology. The executioner of God.

For now, take this knowledge from the source. I am the first wife of creation, the last steward of Eden, and the only sinless human who still walks the earth. And if I would not lie down at Adam’s command, I won’t for any of his progeny. You are not the first to try.

You will be back in time, when you’ve had some perspective, to accept me or accuse me or assassinate me. I’ll be waiting for you. And I will keep your parents and Corinthia safe until you return. I will accept your decision, whatever it is, though I will be disappointed if you merely send the law after me. After all, I cannot be killed and I cannot be stopped.