Poem: "Two Sides of the Same Coin"
This poem fills the "slaves" square on my Hurt/Comfort Bingo Card. It was also partially inspired by a discussion with catsittingstill about how much of Maryam's experiences derive from her father's side of the family rather than her mother's. Well, that's what happens when people get kidnapped and shipped overseas as chattel property; they lose a lot of their culture, so they have very little of it to pass down. For this poem, I researched British slavery and artifacts from the slave days, including this copper token. The poem has been sponsored by catsittingstill. It belongs to The Steamsmith series, which you can explore further on the Serial Poetry page.
WARNING: This poem mentions historic racism, classism, slavery, related artifacts, and the continuing impact on people's lives. If such topics are triggery for you, then you might want to skip this.
Two Sides of the Same Coin
Maryam Smith strolled slowly through the market,
dressed down in a working man's clothes,
glad for the chance to pass as anyone or no one
while she shopped for odds and ends.
One never knew what bits of history or alchemy
might turn up in the booths and bins.
She passed tables of secondhand lace,
glass beads from Venice and solitary teacups from China,
green wine bottles used as candleholders,
and a barrel of broken gears at which she paused
to pluck out a fine silver wheel etched with symbols.
In a box of buttons and buckles,
a glint of copper caught her eye --
a token the size of a penny
and pressed from copper, but not a coin.
Maryam recognized the clasped hands,
a symbol of the British Anti-Slavery Society.
Slowly she turned it over to reveal
a kneeling slave with his hands in chains.
Words scrolled across the surface:
Am I Not a Man and a Brother?
She had seen its like once before,
when her mother Sarah had shown her
the little collection shared by the descendants
of those who had been slaves to the Smith family.
"My parents, your grandparents, wore these
when they came to England from Africa," Sarah had said,
pointing out two sets of iron shackles.
There was a string of clay beads shaped like animals,
and a broken shard of ivory etched with images,
contributed by other people in the community.
They had so little of their past, their people --
time and the ocean had swallowed most of it.
They clung to these fragments along with the songs,
the stories, the scattered words that survived.
Something of their ancestors would be remembered,
even if it was in pieces.
The token that Maryam held was brown with patina,
almost the same color as her bare hand,
and she paid the vendor's price without haggling.
Like her, it combined England and Africa,
images of hope and despair.
What was she if not history made flesh,
two sides of one coin?
Her mother's people had been slaves
and her father's people had owned them.
She could no more separate herself from either of those
than she could carve the bones from under her own skin.
All she could do was refuse to be a slave
to anyone else's ideals, for sometimes the world
held up evil as the law of the land.
Maryam closed the token in her fist
as she walked back to the fine home
that her father's status and her own alchemy
afforded her for her comfort.
It left its twin images, the clasped hands
and the cringing slave, pressed into her flesh.
She added the token to her own collection,
cradled in a glass case -- an ebony drumstick,
a gold bead from the crown of a captured princess,
and three keys of different styles for old irons.
Someday, perhaps, she would hire an antiquarian
to seek out such things and catalog them properly.
In the meantime, Maryam went to her workshop
to craft a special stand for the token
so that it could be displayed
with both sides of the story showing.
* * *
Notes
Certain points of divergence occur between historic-Britain and nether-Britain regarding racism and slavery in the United Kingdom.
1) Ours: Madragana (b.~1230), a lover of King Afonso III of Portugal, was said to be of African descent, but this is generally considered to be unlikely. She was an ancestor of Margarita de Castro e Souza of Portugal and Queen Charlotte of England.
Theirs: Madragana, a lover of King Afonso III of Portugal, was Moorish (probably North African Berber). She was an ancestor of Margarita de Castro e Souza of Portugal and Queen Charlotte of England. More tellingly, Charlotte's mother was not Elisabeth Albertina Herzogin von Sachsin-Hildburghausen; instead Carl I Herzog von Mecklenburg-Mirow discovered that an African slave was a deposed princess, fell in love with her, and married her. Queen Charlotte consequently had a mulatto appearance; she married George III on September 8, 1761 and became the Queen-consort of England. She was the grandmother of Queen Victoria (who is an octoroon, 1/8 black). This background has contributed to racial integration in nether-Britain.
2) Ours: The British abolitionist movement pressured the government into the Slave Trade Act of 1807, which outlawed slave trading within the empire. Then the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 abolished slavery in the British Empire as of August 1, 1834 -- after an apprenticeship period of 4-6 years.
Theirs: Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg promoted racism, and disliked her son George III's wife, Queen Charlotte; she complicated their married life considerably. Following Augusta's death on February 8, 1772, Queen Charlotte embarked on a concerted campaign against slavery. By 1775, she had rallied enough support to pass an equivalent to the Slave Trade Act, followed by the Slavery Abolition Act several years later; slavery was officially abolished as of January 1, 1800. This lacked the apprenticeship requirement but left the former owners obligated to assist slaves during a transitional period rather than turning them out on the street.
The society of nether-Britain in the Victorian Era is somewhat more integrated, although racism is still prevalent. Queen Victoria, given her mixed heritage, takes a very dim view of racism (and sexism).