C5 Hidden Secret - Coffey (Alicia Chay)

Coffey stared at the floor, brooding with anger. She knew that if she acted on that anger Gree would have her slaughtered and her husband would be slain as well. She refused to give Gree Lufu the satisfaction. Coffey never had the chance to mourn being taken from her homeland in Africa, along with her husband. She could still feel the linen cloth that was thrown over her face. She remembered the smell, it smelled like old, expired resin. She could remember the conversations that filtered into her ears from her captors as she, her husband, others from her tribe were put on metal yolks and whipped as they walked with clumsy footing towards the awaiting ships. Her heart quickened at the enormous sails flapped on the breeze with ear-splitting redundancy, like bats escaping the fires of hell in search of a colder climate. She could still feel the chains around her wrists and ankles.

The rust broke her out in hives. She could still smell the feces and the urine in the air and the cries of pain of misunderstanding that filtered into her ears once they were subdued on the lowest levels of the ships, juxtaposed like toppled dominoes. She could still hear the screams of the disabled slaves that were thrown over the ship to the sharks below because they were too damaged to be taken to America. Four of those that were thrown to the sharks was her only brother, her father, her mother and her grandmother. All she could do was scream into the dark air, stale air.

Cursing her captors for taking her life, taking her family. Being helpless because there was nothing she could do. She was not strong enough to break the chains of bondage. She was not strong enough to save herself, let alone her family. If she had half the strength of a warrior she would have tried to save them all. She could have been like some of her people, out of the one hundred, that decided that death was better than bondage, so they jumped to the sharks on their own merit and of their free will. In spite of adversity, Coffey had a fighting spirit. Something would not let her give up. She never had a chance to grieve the loss of a family that she had to leave behind. She had to make the most of her situation because she had to survive. She had people to live for, and those people were two seeds that she gave birth to behind Gree’s back. She hid her pregnancy twice.

She ensured their safety for as long as they lived. There were 75 slave women on Grease plantation. All of them stuck with her and guaranteed that her children was safe. All of them. Over time, one by one, the slave women slowly threatened her, because they had eyes for her husband, Spike, who stood six feet, eleven inches tall with a phallus the size of his size twenty foot. The slave women were the ones that informed Coffey that her husband was having sexual relations with the woman that kept her in bondage. They hoped that Coffey left him so they could swoop in and take her place. At first Coffey didn't know what to do, and she didn't know how to react. On a cool night during the summer, coffee confronted her husband, spike. And he didn’t lie about it. He owned up to it. And he told her why. He assured her that he slept with Gree to keep an upper hand, to stay two steps ahead so their children could survive. Gree wound up being the victor because Coffey folded and did what her husband asked. She did anything to keep her kids safe. She was willing to kill if she had to. One by one, Coffey murdered whatever slave woman that threatened her, or threatened to go tell Gree of her children’s existence. Over a two month period nearly fifty slave women mysteriously vanished. Coffey’s kids were fourteen and seventeen years old.

The only home her kids have ever known was a dungeon buried deep under a barn of horses Gree didn't bother to ascertain… Every single day and night she tended to her kids when Queen Gree retired to her quarters in a drunken stupor, bedding Spike all night. Imagine hearing the cries of ecstasy from your husband when you are literally sneaking behind the Queen’s back to feed your children, to bathe your children, to make sure they were safe and secure. Then you locked them back up in the dungeon to not see them again, sometimes up to four hours a day, and Spike cared for them while she cleaned the Plantation, until you got back to your children again.

Coffey assured her kids that one they would be free. She apologized for giving birth to them into a system of slavery. She couldn't control the outcome. but she could keep them hidden and fed. The one promise her husband did uphold was to keep their children hidden, sacred, and safe. As quiet as it's kept, she wanted to snap her master's neck for using her power to lay with Coffey's husband. Chop her head off and set it up like a centerpiece in the middle of her dining room table and eat dinner around it like she always did when Gree was loving her husband.

There wasn’t a thing Coffey could do about it. If she was real with herself, she would admit she really didn't have a marriage. She was married to him before they were savagely taken away and brought to American soil, and the Bible was forced into their hands. They were forced to be Christians, they were forced to accept punishment because Gree said God put them there to be her slaves. Coffey and her husband hasn't had relations like they should. When you' were a slave it was all about what the Master wanted. Sometimes they were shipped to other plantations to work when said plantations were low on labor, or short staffed. Coffey and the slave women were sent back to Gree’s Plantation overworked and still forced to work.

Coffey worked as much as thirteen hours a day, with very little sleep because of the welfare of her kids.