SKIN SIN

ATTILLAH SPRINGER

I
I grew up in a Black Power house. My grandmother’s Catholicism was liberally mixed with Afro-indigenous prayers and healing interventions. We never discussed sin as a way to guide our behaviour. Which is not to say that we were not told about right and wrong. It was that our spirituality called for personal accountability, for the weighing of every situation in favour of our survival. Truth is valuable and essential to good character, but if telling a lie could save your life, then lie. Community accountability addressed the hoarding of resources, and excessive consumption was condemned as a rich people’s affliction. Meanwhile, the Christians in our lives made it known that they were praying for the salvation of our souls for turning away from Christ. That we chose to imagine God as a reflection of ourselves — Black, African, joyous, embodied in nature and struggling with the questions and shortcomings of existence — was a bizarre and frightening idea. I learnt about the idea of sin in school, on the playground and in the classroom. You! Yuh black like sin. He looked at me, his mouth said something his laughing, mocking eyes did not fully understand. He said this and it created a halo of foul air around my carefully, lovingly combed hair. He sang it out like a hymn echoing through an empty church, with all the abusive power of recall. Black— Like— Sin— He spat the word sin out. A small bitter papaya seed of a word. A little black boy talking to a little black girl who beat him in a school playground game. He called it out with such precision I dared not turn to face him for fear that his words had sliced my head clean off my body. After lunch we lined up and prayed in the yard.

II
I turn these words over and over in my head. I hear other children say this to each other. The Holy Trinity on this playground is: You Black Like Sin. You Ugly Like Sin. You Black and Ugly Like Sin. This curse is reserved for the most black ones. The ones the colour of midnight and molasses. The ones the sun loves the most. We learn to smile through these words. There is no suitable retort. This statement always ends the argument.

III
It was entirely reasonable. This idea that sin and blackness are the same. Sin is what our bodies do naturally. Our lustful, lazy, savage bodies. The ones bright but black. The ones who get beat for their poverty. The ones who are punished for their lack of interest in an irrelevant education. Black Like Sin is endorsed in the classroom in the teachers’ contempt. This why they had to take us from Africa. This is why we have to work so hard. This is why we have nothing. This is why Jesus is white. Jesus Lord I ask for mercy. Let me not implore in vain. All my sins I now detest them. Never will I sin again.

IV
This is what the stick fighters sang in the 1870s: Jab Se Yo Neg. Me Die se nom-la bla. The Devil is a Black Man. But God is a White Man. Do not be shocked. What they were screaming into the void was this: A Black man died. He went to Hell. He lit a spliff on the embers of a dying fire. Mid-drag he looked up and saw another Black Man. It was the Devil. Thank God, the man cried. I’m free. Through my fault. Through my fault. Through my most grievous fault of being born in this skin. How could God make such a terrible mistake? What is your favourite deadly sin?

V
The one that I have no control over. I am the most unwashable stain. When I die I want to come back white.

VI
Mummy, what is Sin? Sin is something that powerful people do, for which powerless people have to pay the price.

VII
I often think about the boy who told me I was black like sin. I wonder if he ever found peace with his blackness. Or if he still gets down on his black bruised knees to pray most fervently. I wonder if the adults who told him this ever asked for his forgiveness. I wonder if he still believes his words. If he ever figured out his pain. I ask God who looks like me for words of absolution. For acknowledgement of the wrong that is self-hatred. For a dismissal of the fear of Blackness. This is a prayer for the little black boy who learnt to curse himself. For the weight of his words to be lifted from the backs of everyone he spat these words at. This is a prayer for love and forgiveness. For those who still believe they are living in sin.