The bell was loud enough to be heard for miles around. That was my first thought, waking up, wondering what the sound was for. Fire alarm? Nuclear attack? But I was wrong. It was much more serious, and heard much farther away than I realized.
The funny part is what I noticed first. I focused on my bed.
Or the lack of bed. I had been sleeping on the floor.
When I stood up, my clothes were all wrong. The room was all wrong. Only then did I see my arms were all wrong.
I thought I was in the shadows. Or covered with mud.
Or something.
“What is this?” I cried out. Cried is a polite word. I was swearing under my breath and growing more terrified by the second. The alarm bells had stopped, but my legs were quaking.
“It was time to change places.” I recognized my husband’s voice, but it was muted. He was squatting, his back to me, stirring a pot on a burner. It wasn’t even a stove. There was actual smoke coming from the bottom. “Our turn was over.”
“What turn?”
“Our turn at being white.”
I looked again at my arms. My feet. The back of my husband’s legs. “Are we really black?”
His laugh was deep. “We’ll get used to it.”
“But who decided this? It’s not fair.”
“Fair? Did you think fair was what you were born with?”
“It was time to change places.”
I looked at the single square room. It was filled with nothing but junk, bits of things, the useless clutter I kept in the garage before I threw it away or gave it to the thrift store. Bits of old blankets, a beat-up toy, faded paperbacks, a cassette player that had to be twenty years old.
“When do we get to switch back?”
Again he laughed. “Be grateful we have cornmeal for breakfast.” His head was bent over his wooden spoon. “And be grateful I was up first to cook it for you.”
“Will they help us, do you think?”
“Who?”
“The black people. Now that they’re white.”
“Why should they?”
“Because we’re not used to this. At least they’ll understand what we’re going through.”
The back of his shaved head nodded. “That’s an interesting idea.” “It’s not like we chose to be born white.”
He wrapped his hand around the handle of the pot and stood up, lifting it off the burner. He turned to me. The person I knew as my husband was no longer a man, but a woman. He, I mean she, noticed my shock. “It’s not like we chose our sex, either.”
I looked down at myself. I was male. It felt normal. I hadn’t even noticed.
My husband/wife picked up a large jug. “‘I’m off to get water. Enjoy being the man for a while.”
I sat down on the floor. It was dirt, but hard as cement. “How long will this last?”
I heard the soft chuckle of my husband/wife as they walked down the long road to the well. At least, I hoped it was a well. Their voice was a mix of sadness and hope. “As long as it takes,” they said.
Waking Up Black was written by Susan Pieters and was originally published in Pulp Literature, Issue No. 20, Autumn 2018.