The evening and the morning were the thirteenth day.

* * *

Our humming began at a cool, even pace, when beats were slow and lulling. A man purred a dark melody, then repeated it. It wasn’t a groan from pain and desolation, but deliberate lines of constructed meter and time that jarred our spirits and invited our participation. One by one, we joined in—some in upper registers, some in the depths of our voices—having found a language that needed no words. We hummed until we knew we’d survive. We hummed until we released mothers and fathers whom we’d never see again. We hummed until our love for and gratitude to each other was clear. We hummed a celebration for living. For fighting. For refusing to die. For enduring when giving up would’ve been easier. For still believing, against all odds, that we’d get home someday. We hummed our commitment to raise children, wherever we went, in the way of our people. We hummed that our women, slightly above, might know we hadn’t forgotten them. We hummed for the dead lying next to us. We hummed for children not yet born. We hummed for children born, but left behind. We hummed for kinsmen, yesterday’s enemies, who were now precious, coveted friends.

Sometimes we hummed to mute the screeching and pleading of our young women. They were girls, some of them, barely thirteen or fourteen rains, screaming from their very souls. The echo never settled. It rang throughout the hull, disrupting our sleep. Our only defense was to hum, so we hummed that they might know we were with them. That they might be reminded that captors could mar their bodies but not their spirits. That they might know his forced entry did not disturb their beauty. That they might know the day would come when we’d loose our chains and stand guard over their virtue. But until then we believed that, as long as we hummed, the timbre of our voices would keep them.

Occasionally, young men, too, were thus violated. They fought like cornered lions. It always took three or four crewmen to subdue one of our boys. Then, with his strength exhausted and pride wounded, he was dragged up the wooden stairs to the place of defilement. We heard his screaming each step of the way. It was a hollow kind of roar, housed in a deep, innocent place. We saw, in our minds, his mouth stretched wide and eyes bulging. When he returned, his face was a blank stare. They threw him, like a corpse, into his holding place and, once again, bound him with chains. We begged him not to surrender, but our words, we feared, were useless babbling. So we hummed some more until slowly, painfully, he cried and joined the chorus of protection for himself or another who screamed, wept, moaned, fought, and was still overcome in battle. Then we sighed.

The evening and the morning were the fifteenth day.

* * *

Sometimes they bled profusely. It was a peculiar odor, the smell of sexual violation, a mixture of rotting flesh and underarm stench. They shivered even though the heat belowdecks would’ve suffocated the weak. Our desecrated brothers survived because, as best we could, we reminded them of who they were. Still, most were never the same again. Some never spoke another word. Some never married. Some couldn’t look at a woman again, even their own mothers and sisters. Some wanted to touch and hold lovers, but their arms could not embrace. Some conceived thoughts too vile and heinous to repeat. Most considered their own destruction. One tender, beautiful brother, smothered with the captor’s stench, dashed his head against his plank until we were sure his brains would spill onto the floor. An older man turned and whispered something in his ear, restoring his life. The young man did not understand his elder’s words, but he heard his heart, and he survived. Most were not so fortunate.