The Strange Dowry
By Teacherebel Long
October 2025
Narrative Testimony / Historical Reflection
She felt the pressure of cold steel against her temple — a chilling contrast to the warm, inert bond of the infant nursing at her chest in the darkened bedroom.
“If you shoot me, what will become of this baby girl?” she asked painstakingly, as breath escaped her in the throes of hyperventilation.
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He steadied his wobbled stagger and replied, “Hmm. I hadn’t thought of that.”
He lowered the piece. An audible gasp escaped her, and she held her next breath as though her life depended on it — because it did.
History repeated itself nearly forty years later. The purpose of separating families, children, and siblings — to prevent the repetition of old sins witnessed by innocent eyes — had failed again. Somewhere, in a humid room, in a station’s evidence closet, a filing cabinet stood — holding records long since banished from public sight, burying his secret. More than one prophecy fulfilled, all woven in a web of lies meant to choke the life out of me.
“Where’s the piece now?” I asked.
The one that sat locked in a judge’s chambers for years — the one that rested in the top of my closet for more than twenty years while I was married — a strange sort of dowry. The one you now claim you can’t find.
Where is it?
You know the truth — and you don’t like your answers.
