Shadow of Black Within Grey

By D. M. Francis

At the end, Ella was viewed as a crack whore, when found in such tragic circumstances, by those who knew little about her. A law student, she was bright and full of life. Married and devoted to the love of her life and their adorable son, she was loved to the end . . .

It was one of those unique times when the sheer brutalities of humanity, from every global angle, could be witnessed—evidence that war crimes continue in other disguises. Detroit and its people were trudging through a powerful existential crisis, questioning the very foundations of life and the acts of living. The symptoms of mass neurosis, perpetuating hopelessness deep within its roots, and disparity had been growing—a paradigm of primal survival: eat or be eaten! The once grand Motor City had now all but crumbled. Prosperity had now been replaced with cocaine, crack, heroin, prostitution, and all manner of human slavery—trading bodies, sanity, and souls for food within its many dark alleys for survival. It was an escape from the terrors of the gaping lack of hope, power, and purpose! It’s no wonder then that Ella unwittingly tripped and fell into the fate that became inevitable.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Apr 10, 2019
• ISBN: 9781728386973

D. M. Francis

Dr. Francis is a professor, researcher and clinical practitioner in logotherapy and existential analysis. She continues her research in human behaviour having published her academic work - The Psychomatrix: a deeper understanding of our Relationship with Pain - in October 2015. Dr. Francis has dedicated her career to pursuing a better understanding of human behavior and mental health. Having trained as an existential psychotherapist, she uses her education, experience, insights and intuition to frame her clinical practice, within a meaning-centered philosophy. Her education spans from achieving a Bachelor of Arts and Social Work at Ryerson University, Toronto, to a Master’s degree in Contemporary Psychoanalysis in 2007 and a Ph.D. in 2011, in the School of Social Sciences at Brunel University, West London UK. Dr. Francis was also awarded a Diploma in Logotherapy and Existential Analysis, through the Viktor Frankl Institute of Logotherapy, Dallas, Texas US, in 2009 and is an international faculty member of the Institute. Dr. Francis is the founder and director of the UK as well as the Canada Chapters of Logotherapy - Viktor Frankl’s Psychology. She runs a successful private practice while pursuing new research, writing, teaching and training individuals and groups in Logotherapy and Existential Analysis.

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© 2019 D. M. Francis. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 04/24/2019

ISBN: 978-1-7283-8698-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-8697-3 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

To my sons, Andrew and Peter, who remind me of what it means to love

AMDG

CONTENTS

Author’s Notes

A Historical Context

Introduction

Chapter 1     The Feeling of Home

Chapter 2     The Beginning of the End

Chapter 3     A Circle of Love

Chapter 4     Joseph’s Story

Chapter 5     Ella’s Story

Chapter 6     A Place Called Home

Chapter 7     Alone in the Shadows

Chapter 8     Wild Flowers

Chapter 9     Red Lights

Chapter 10   In This Place, Invisible Is Good

Chapter 11   Shadow and Shades

Chapter 12   Living within Shadows

Chapter 13   False Connections

Chapter 14   Black Shadows within Grey

Chapter 15   The Days After

The Afterwards …

Some thoughts to conclude this trial

About The Author

Notes

AUTHOR’S NOTES

Humankind has not woven the web of life; we are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.

—Chief Seattle¹

Some thoughts as I dare set pen to paper, ready to commit myself to the story…

In 2017, decades into my life, I look around feeling lost. It’s as if I’ve woken up within a dream that may well have been a nightmare, judging from the pounding of my heart against my chest and a sense of being nowhere familiar, far from home. It seems that the world is shrouded in grey. Reality, it appears, consists of fragmented, blurred lines in the tapestry of life, where perhaps once the colours may have been clear and comforting. I am awake—not inside a dream but in what exists today.

In my mind’s eye, the colours are as vivid and clear as tiny butterflies on a cloudless sunny day, in a garden of pretty wild flowers, gently floating from petal to petal, sharing kisses of sweet nectar. So gentle, so sweet. The butterfly, like any other part of nature, knows exactly what it’s supposed to do so that all things in nature remain free. There are the anomalies that must happen to balance the beauty, and at times, it is downright ugly, thorny, poisonous, and ferocious. But there is a place and a purpose for all parts of nature, except for human beings.

What does it all mean, anyway? It seems that the ugly, thorny, poisonous, and ferocious bits that are meant to balance the natural processes of living have just become the processes of living. Are we truly free?

The concepts of freedom and responsibility are flexible, matters of perspective and desire. Now, though, it seems that we are at new and complex levels of mass incomprehension. Perhaps the needs of one outweighs the needs of many according to the whims and desires of those who feel they can bend and manipulate the meanings to suit their own ends. To know that something is right or wrong, good or bad, evil, or decent and indecent is no longer clear. And those elements of life needing to be black and white are all rather grey. It appears as if we wander around in an impenetrable grey fog—not only not knowing our own existence but also not knowing or connected to the existence of others, living in a constant state of emotional paralysis.

Society. I guess that means all of us. We are hard-pressed to find those structures and boundaries that guide, support, and protect our fundamental right to live our lives free from fear, anger, worthlessness, and the threat of annihilation. We don’t seem to have a clear understanding of what it means to find purpose in celebrating the beauty of humanity. Consequently, we live in bubbles of isolation.

The lines are blurred. Yet we wander around in the grey and blurry landscape of our lives disconnected and frightfully aware of the haunting shadows of black. They evoke memories, thoughts, and experiences that may give us a sense of reality that isn’t grey. Some things within our human behaviour and the business of living are wrong. Others are right. If we as a society wipe the grey from our sight, we will see more clearly the black shadowy patterns from our past and learn to see how they have woven their way down through time, with human slavery, trafficking humans for sex, labour, drugs, racism, and discrimination of difference—any difference—whether you are a man or a woman. That greyness of how or why an individual goes from being a living, breathing, feeling, sacred human being to an object to be used and sold, traded for money and power, sex, labour, drugs, experimentation, to satisfy one’s revenge, hatred, insecurities, and a justification for one’s thoughts, assumptions, and actions is all around us.

None of this is new or has changed since time began; instead, it has evolved—just as the human race has evolved. It seems that we are blind to the patterns of indignity and are OK to live within a world of grey and blurred lines, free from responsibility. Those of you who strive to draw the lines more clearly suffer the experience of discrimination of being different. A life in greydom is a danger to our sacred existence, as it perpetuates unspeakable horrors of human slavery at every conceivable level and dimension of our lives, leaving a trail of those suffering post-traumatic stress disorders. The evolved evil is clearly bold, overt in its ministration and lives among us, part of the fabric of life, the black shadow.

I began this project as a research treatise—an academic work on the topic of human trafficking, modern-day slavery and the consequences of post-traumatic stress syndrome. My curiosity and desire to investigate these topics have slowly burned over the four decades of my career. You see, I too have been caught up somewhere in greydom. Over the years, in my clinical work, be it with client, colleague, friend, or family member, it has only increased the volume of the questions within my mind. The resonance from the more recent encounters of trafficking and slavery have been deafening. The question is clear.

Why do horrors such as human trafficking and human slavery continue to exist in our highly educated society in spite of tremendous knowledge and information flowing across borders and through communities like wildfire? It is no longer invisible—in fact, it has never been invisible. Even though men suffer this evil as well, women and children are the preferred commodities. Maybe that’s why … Maybe the attitude that women and children still don’t matter as much, even today, because our paradigms and our attitudes have not really evolved from being discriminatory towards equality and fairness to accommodate the entire human race—man, woman, and child. In any case, at the heart of the matter of the continued existence of slavery, at any level, is the desire to overpower, control, conquer, and subdue, at any expense—a kind of recompense for the perpetrator having experienced the same and being left with that all-consuming terror of being small and insignificant. The human slave is deemed an object, to then be used and sacrificed. The lack of remorse is replaced by power.

My research led me to the time of the Second World War. Wading through the atrocities and human mire of that period, I uncovered the threads of terror that continue to reside even now, in 2017—a more modern, high-tech look—and see that its objectives are the same. Different dress, same body. By no means am I an expert on the world wars. However, I am an expert on analysing patterns of human behaviour with a view to understanding how and why certain elements of behaviour remain while others fade into the background—bad or good.

Human slavery and trafficking—trading human beings as objects/commodities for sex, labour, drugs, discrimination, resentment, jealously, and hatred of difference—live on. This, of course, can be traced back to the beginning of the birth of humankind. However, these tragedies of human behaviour converged in World War I and exploded in World War II, to evidence openly and shamelessly the most unimaginable apex of our infinite ability to perpetrate pain and suffering on one another, where, in my opinion, we saw it all played out. From then on, the shredding of human dignity has increasingly progressed—no matter what mask slavery and discrimination wear, no matter what guise they travel in throughout our global society. These live on, from bullies in the schoolyard, Internet, home, and work to human trafficking and political and social situations. We see, feel, and hear the echoes of the Holocaust.

I found several artefacts, man-made, of course, of interest—the horrific Holocaust and ethnic cleansing, Nazi brothels and other forms of human slavery, the Kindertransport projects to save the endangered children, and the battles that killed millions. Putting certain pieces together, I saw a picture that would make the dead sit up in horror and say, I told you so—twenty seventeen is no different. Are we so blind, so deaf, and so dumb?

Therefore, I have digressed from the academic work to bring you this story. It is for those who wish to take off their blinders. All the characters and the events that take place in their lives are derived from my encounters with some of the real individuals over a span of several years. The violence, abuse, and tragic events described here are based on those that actually took place. The suffering of these characters, as that of other characters we hear and read about in the media, is real. The places where these events took place existed, and some continue to exist, were the landscape that supported their journey, individually and as a family.

All the names and any identifying features have been fictionalized and anonymized for the sake of protecting the identity (and dignity) of all the characters in the book. There are many gaps, such as whether or not an investigation was completed at the end and the journey of the surviving family is unknown except for small obscure details that helped me to create possibilities of outcomes, from the known information, with a purpose of creating as complete a picture as possible for you. My main objective and purpose for creating this particular picture is to evidence that the pattern of human slavery continues to weave through our lives and our existence, at every level and dimension of living, to ask when and how it will end. How do we take responsibility for our own part in this global problem? How can we become part of the solution? Is there a solution?

It must be understood that the story you are about to read has been created as a work of fiction, but it is based on real events. I have taken literary licence to create as comprehensive of a picture as I could for you. The historical elements are as factual as most of us know them—for example, the Holocaust, the Nazi brothels, the Kindertransport, the history of Detroit, human trafficking, and the migration of Jews from Eastern Europe. These and other historical elements are drawn from my research and information drawn from historical resources.

The story of Project Kindertransport was one of the elements that touched my heart most deeply. In 1938 and 1939, Sir Nicholas Winton played a significant role² in organizing the escape of endangered children. It was so significant because, as far as my present knowledge, most of the efforts to bring endangered children out of Eastern Europe at the time did not include children from Czechoslovakia. However, Sir Winton created his own rescue operation project independent of Operation Kindertransport. He called it the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia, Children’s Section. He arranged for 669 children to be rescued. However, on 1 September 1939, transportation was halted due to Hitler’s invasion of Poland, and all borders controlled by Germany were closed. The train with the largest number of children, 250, was halted, held in the station, and then diverted to the camps. None of those children were ever seen again.

These are some of the facts of what happened to that last train. In my mind, I searched for an escape for those children trapped and afraid; there is actually no word to describe that kind of fear. My brain cannot bear the thought of trying to describe it in mere words. There had to be a way out; the prison guards had to have made a mistake sometime, somewhere. Although it was not so, I have here taken literary licence. I have created a fictional story involving this last train to provide the character who was Joseph’s mother, Lily, an alternative story of her ordeal and escape, to protect her identity but also to honour her memory. I have also utilized the story of the Kindertransport to honour the momentous work of Sir Nicholas Winton.

In an attempt to placate my own desire to overcome the horrifying thought that anyone could be in such a situation of imprisonment and slavery, where there was absolutely no option for escape, I decided that I had to create a narrative that would provide an escape. Maybe it resonated with something in my own life. Whatever connection it was, it sent shivers down my spine like a bony cold finger of a creature forever dying, living just enough to feel the constant pain of this anguish—no escape, even in death.

The real situation that the character of Lily faced was a horror of which the details cannot be described here, for reasons stated above. The fictitious escape from the train with the character named Grete and their treacherous journey together is a comparable enough story.

After the war, there was, of course, post-war shock and horror, shock of the realities of the murders, abuses, injustices, and every manner of evil that no words can justly describe. There was a refrain that was repeated by all, reminding each other to remember the atrocities so that such will never be enacted again lest we forget. Have we forgotten? The terror continues, even now, in 2017. Women, children, and men suffer under the yoke of slavery at one level or another. We don’t see the small and what seems insignificant ways in which slavery is enacted/perpetrated, weaving its way through the fabric of our day-to-day lives— we only see the news and media flashes of the big disasters. But the big disasters don’t just happen. There is a culmination of all the little insignificant day-to-day actions of each one of us. We must pay close attention and remember that difference is to be celebrated, not used as an excuse to cold-bloodedly destroy huge sections of humanity—unless we wish to live with grey. But be warned of the black shadow …

I was further inspired to write this story, perhaps as a response to some books, journals, and articles that I had read, where there was an undercurrent of an attitude that held that those found to be trafficked or enslaved in any way were whores, prostitutes, poverty stricken, and living on the fringes of society of some demimonde …

The story in this novel is as tragic as most of these stories are. There are also moments where you find love, tenderness, family bonds, and just the day-to-day life of home. It is this love that contained much power—not just to survive but to find meaning in the suffering and a purpose for one’s existence, especially for those left behind.

A HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Setting the stage, each has a part to play

All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages

- William Shakespeare, ³

Set in the Detroit of the 1980s, this is a story based on events that actually occurred within the time period the book is set within. However, it needs to be reiterated that this work has been written within a fictional structure in order to protect all personal identities.

Please keep in your conscious mind an awareness that just because this story has been fictionalized does not make it unreal. It is the same as when we hear in the media about an event occurring in another place, even in our very own neighbourhoods. It is sad, and it is a very real part of our present existence. How can you and I be part of a solution? Stop asking why it exists. We know why: money and power. Let’s ask how we can be a part of ending these atrocities.

In this story, the main character of Ella descended into a shadow of black. It was the kind of descent that can seep into the internal lives of victims experiencing post-traumatic stress syndrome.⁴ Ella was such a victim, unbeknown to herself or others until the end—and still not entirely unmasked.

There are more individuals than naught who experience post-trauma symptoms that by nature are insidious and most times passive manifestations of the emotional impact of what happened to them. There are those who are able to manage such experiences; however, others live in such inconsolable grief just as insidious and passive, creating a facade, warding off any deep speculation, even from the closest of loved ones, unless they know to look much closer. The facade, or mask, is a kind of protection from remembering, explaining, and dealing with their own consciousness due to the curiosity of others—sympathetic or otherwise.

The hidden grieving must have a voice, though, and when it can no longer be held prisoner, the symptoms flow across the fine line into pathology. Its treacherous nature can fool those around them at many levels, giving a false sense of everything is OK, when really it isn’t. Along this continuum where dissociation⁵ resides is a place of escape for the victim, from the unbearable and incomprehensible pain of torture. Ella had crossed into this realm of living between reality and the other side—in between shadows within the grey. It was like trying to run between raindrops …

At the end, initially Ella was viewed as a crack whore by those who knew little about her and due to the tragic circumstances within which she was found. A closer look reveals that she was the offspring of parents and ancestors who were brave survivors of war and struggle, having lived through the horrors of Hitler’s evil enactments towards the Final Solution.⁶ She and her parents had embraced the new life of freedom, opportunity, and home when finally, they escaped to America. A law student, Ella was bright and full of life. Married and devoted to the love of her life and their adorable son, she was loved to the end, yet at the end, no one was then the wiser.

The period of time within which this story spans is strangely fascinating. It is one of those unique times where the sheer brutalities of humanity, from every global angle, can be witnessed—evidence that war crimes continue in other disguises. Still suffering the trauma of its economic crash, Detroit and its people were trudging through a powerful existential crisis, questioning the very foundations of life and the acts of living. The symptoms of the Mass Neurotic Triad,⁷ depression, aggression, addiction, and perpetuating hopelessness, were evident in many urban corners of the once-great city of industry. Deeper and deeper roots of disparity had been growing towards a paradigm of primal survival—eat or be eaten!

Once the grand Motor City, where the likes of Ford along with Chrysler and General Motors provided the economy with financial stability, which in return provided its society with a sense of hope and prosperity, had now all but crumbled. This was now replaced with cocaine, crack, heroin, prostitution, and all manner of human slavery—trading bodies, sanity, and souls for food within its many dark alleys for survival. It was an escape from the terrors of the gaping lack of hope, power, and purpose.⁸ It was no wonder, then, that Ella unwittingly tripped and fell into the fate that became inevitable.

Travelling into the city was not something the suburbians did without a heightened sense of fear and caution. By the time the 1980s had rolled around, the demographics of the city had literally taken on a different colour. Colour was one of the excuses, albeit the most significant one, for intolerance of difference. The Jim Crow laws enforcing racial segregation in the southern states caused massive migrations of African Americans to Detroit as they tried to escape the poisons of racism. As more and more blacks moved to Detroit from the southern states, looking for jobs and stability, the white population migrated to the suburbs, especially after the riot of 1967.⁹ There were many rumblings within the layers of stereotypical prejudices, which made themselves known through violent acts, laws, and economic discrimination.

It was inevitable that the economic downfall raised hatred of differences to a fever pitch. Although it would seem as if the Jews and blacks were fighting the same enemy, they had certain suspicions towards the other, which led to the resulting exodus of the Jews.¹⁰ By the eighties, the Jewish communities had already largely exited the urban centres to settle in the suburbs, creating new communities where they could live, work, and prosper.

Before Ella and her parents arrived in Michigan and joined Elena Neiman, there was already a settled and thriving Jewish community in Farmington Hills. So, they were spared further discrimination from racism and the