Grace (21 page)

29
/ JANUARY 1865

Tallassee, Alabama

G
ENERAL
S
HERMAN AND
his Union Army—Lincoln's army—left behind a three-hundred-mile path of destruction, sixty miles wide, all the way from Atlanta to Savannah, the reports say. So Lincoln offered him Savannah as a Christmas present. Our freedom's coming. But right now, people are hungry, searching for work and food. Whites and runaways. And there's none—out of spite or shortage—and the reasons don't matter when you're desperate.

Almost everybody but us has moved on. Annie lets her hands take what they need from the fields, and leaves beef and pork for Charles and the twelve others still here. And me. I wouldn't miss this.

J
OSEY OPENS THE
front door and steps on the sun-wet porch, barefooted, and breathes in the smoke of burning pine and bacon. Her flimsy white dress wind-presses against her body—the winds change—but her sour expression tells me she cain't feel it.

Her pale skin is drained silver from sickness but not flu. She closes the door behind her and her pupils shrink to pinpricks from morning sun. A fly shuffles the thin blonde hairs on her arm as it staggers over strands, seeking a tangled yellow crumb of cornbread there. She rubs her arms
with her bulby fingertips. Her nails are chewed down to the quick, swollen dark pink. A purple color traces the nail beds. She flicks her blanket, scattering crumbs caught in it, and they spread like chicken feed.

I'll call her name sometimes.

I'll hover out in front of her and watch her watch me the way a blind man watches someone, not seeing, but seeming so. This time, she looks through me, out toward the trees where those changing winds are bending the world. Naked-bare branches stretch to the left in some dancer's pose, and brown grasses reach upward from beneath the snow. She folds her blanket and goes back inside leaving me on her steps alone even though it felt like we was talking.

Josey asked Charles about me once.

Maybe more than once, but that one time, Charles's answer caused me to think Josey was asking about me, and not Annie. It's not strange for a negro to lose parents and for folks to move on in silence. And that day she asked about me, Charles had come home late from working hard. It was almost midnight when she woke him—a six-year-old rousing a giant of a man. But it was her that made him uneasy when she said, “What happened to my momma?”

She hugged her doll baby to her chest and stood doe-eyed, waiting. Charles told Josey that she needed to go back to bed and he'd tuck her in if she wanted. But she kept waiting and he was tired, hemming and hawing, then a rest came over him when she asked again. He said, “Your momma was beautiful,” he said. “Free,” he said. “Free because she decided so. Because she kept some sliver of hope guarded inside her mind.

“She had courage.

“And when she died, she left that courage inside of you.

“So beautiful a young woman, she was, that she glowed from the inside,” he said.

I felt flush as I listened. Embarrassed that anyone would have those things to say about me. So I decided, no, Charles must have been telling Josey about Annie.

Inside, a fire roars from Charles's oven keeping the chill a step away. When Josey comes inside, the flames sway. A kettle boils on top of the stove while a wood bucket of warm water steams from the floor just outside the pocket of warm. Charles puts a tall metal rod in the bucket and stirs. The drowned garments wrap around his pole, layer after weighted layer. He lifts the mound and dumps it back in.

Josey sits at the table in front of a bowl of stew that Charles left her. Her parted blonde hair hangs over most of her face and she swoops it behind her ears neatly.

He's been keeping sharp things away from her. Because sometimes, she cuts. And sometimes, she lies about it. Because sometimes, things can happen that are so hard to understand, so violent in nature, that the mind abandons the body and not all of it comes back right.

It's what happened to Momma, too.

Charles keeps socks on her hands at night now in case her nails grow and make her dangerous to herself. Everything with jagged edges is a threat. It's what made her sickness real to Charles.

She spoons a mouthful of stew while Charles churns the clothes in the bucket, his pole knocking on the wood bottom. He lowers hisself to the floor next to the bucket and picks out a shirt. He wrings it mostly dry and does the same with the next piece and the next 'til his water bucket's empty. He puts the pieces in a wicker basket for Josey to hang.

When she finishes her food, she takes his damp things and joins the wind outside. It gusts in patterns of circles and crosses, blowing her stink off—onion and garlic of stew. Josey hangs clothes on the line to dry, hand-straightening them as she goes. The button-down white shirt that Charles wore for what was supposed to be Freedom Day still has a stain on it.

Josey reaches down for his trousers, her britches, and a dress when giggles of children and the sounds of running-away feet blow by me. Not real.

I hear Josey's thoughts sometimes. They're like her prayers spoken that I cain't answer. I'm not God. But I hear her just the same and I don't know why. Not just hers.

But those noises of running children ain't real. The voices, neither. They're only troubling thoughts. Thoughts like visions that come and go. Not real. Like this fog that she keeps seeing roll in, over the property. Not real.

The real and not real blend together for her like it's doing right now.

The sunshine. That's real. The melting snow. Real. These clothes. Real. That fog near the woods and that black shadowy figure sprinting across the yard. Not real.

Josey reaches down to grab her wet stocking from her bucket.

The bucket's gone.

Our clothes sway on the line to the rhythm of children's pitter-patter. Real. Not real.

The fog near the wood's a blanket. Not real.

A child walks out from the woods, between the trees, surrounded by a gray cloud of fog. She's just a girl. Eight or nine. She waves to Josey, then skips alongside the trees, got a brand-new rolling hoop around her neck. Not real.

The wind blows the hanging clothes and whips Charles's trousers into a split. Real. They flare and behind 'em is Ada Mae . . . when she was just nine years old. She stands alongside the rest of the trash gang. None of 'em are a day older than seven. They take off running, zigzagging, toward a start line finger-drawn in the dirt. They ready to race. They're holding handmade hoops—long broken branches with the leaves wiped off, bent backward and fastened in a circle, end to end.

I don't stop Josey from running over to join 'em. Our hoop is as nice as Ada Mae's was new. We stand on the start line a foot taller and years older than everybody else. We cain't lose.

Ada Mae teeters on her tiptoes alongside us with a white rag in her clutches. Her arm falls. “Go!” she yells. And Josey takes off, beating
the top of her hoop with a stick, moving in front of the others. Ada Mae crosses my path to the finish line, waving us on.
Josey's gon' win! Josey's gon' win!

A big-busted and big-boned girl runs up next to Josey, six foot tall and feral-looking. A challenger. But we move faster, more nimble, 'til that dusty girl curves around us and makes Josey lose her hoop and her balance. Josey slams into the girl and they both tumble over. Josey leaps up, grabs her hoop, and gets us ready to start again but the girl pushes Josey to the ground. “Don't hold me!” Josey say. “If you don't let go, we both gon' lose.”

The other racers are on their way, not slowing down.

“Let me go!” Josey say, kicking the girl.

By the time she breaks free, the racers are passing us. Ada Mae is at the finish line, waving her white rag, but she's beginning to fade away. All the racers do. Our hoops do, too. Only Charles's trousers are billowing. Those, and the feral girl's.

She throws Josey to the ground and puts her hand on Josey's mouth. “I ain't gon' hurt you. Don't scream.” Her words trigger Josey's memory of George sitting on top of her, strangling her, seething through clinched teeth. “You scream,” he say. “I'll kill you!”

Another girl, a woman, runs out of the woods. Real.

She say to Feral, “You get the clothes. I'll hold this one down,” and straddles Josey now.

Josey screams, “Da—!” But the woman slaps her hand over Josey's mouth. Her broken yellow fingernails are murky like grease-soaked paper.

“Stop moving, girl,” the woman say. “We just need warm clothes.”

“Mama!” Feral say. “I got 'em!”

Josey watches the shadow of a tree roll across the ground and touch her shoulder, her neck, all over her stomach. Her eyes widen and her body seizes, helpless from the memories of these trees that once held her prisoner.

“Come on, Mama!” Feral say, running away from our clothesline. She got Charles's shirt and all of Josey's clothes, except one dress. They disappear into the silence of Tallassee.

Scattering noises revive.

They're loud like a flock of nesting birds awakened. It's coming toward us. A space between the trees sweeps open. A gray Confederate uniform. A black man. Under one arm is a pile of her clothes. Jackson throws his bag from his back and lifts Josey over his shoulder, pushes forward to the house.

30
/ FLASH

Conyers, Georgia, 1847

T
WO WEEKS AND
I haven't told Jeremy that I forgive him yet 'cause when you love the way we love, been through what we been through, you ain't got to say it. Staying is enough.

E
VERY DAY SINCE
that day with Mr. Shepard, I been waiting for him to come back to work. It's almost noon and he ain't been here today, either. I scooch back on his piano stool, slide open the cover, and fall on a key. It tings.

I press another lightly.

Ting.

I start playing the only song I know. The same song I learned from watching him play. He up to four songs now but his music never gets old. But my song don't sound like his.

That man with the satchel came by yesterday at sunrise. A Freedom Fighter. The one Albert told me was gon' come and escape us from here. He came a week late. When he rattled the door, I was hung over my broom sulking. The noise made me jump 'cause don't nobody come 'round that early. Almost 8:00 a.m. And we don't open 'til two on Mondays and Tuesdays. So when he knocked, I didn't answer.

I started sweeping my broom toward the door instead, leaned into the crack of it to peek at him. He must have heard me 'cause he took a step back, arms held up, a leather satchel in his hand, and let me look. He was a white man, plain as any but honest-looking—not like those around here. He had a boy's face on a man's body, the only giveaway to his age was the thin creases in his wide forehead. His blonde hair was groomed but not too much to mistake him for not-a-hardworker. Just cut nice, is all.

His brown leather vest laid over his blue-buttoned shirt and above his trousers the round of his silver belt buckle shined.

He said, “I'm looking to hire out a blacksmith and a nurse for the day.” He went on about needing help for his young son, needing horseshoes. “Soon as possible,” he said.

His satchel had an orange stripe across the flap where Albert said it'd be and he shifted it from one hand to the other as he talked, casual-like, made sure I saw it.

He pointed to the wagon behind him where two dark negroes was already in the seats, ones I ain't never seen around here before. Twelve or thirteen was the girl, and the boy was nine or so.

He asked if he could at least see who he was talking to so I cracked the door open and let him see a piece of me. He nodded. I remembered what Albert said, “Nobody'll suspect us if we travel this way. Not only are we traveling in the daylight, we're going the wrong way. Hired-out day laborers, we are. Fancy word for borrowed slaves. And by the time Cynthia realize we wasn't coming back, we'd be long gone and too far away for her to care. Maybe she wouldn't care, no way. She don't own us. But that fact don't keep some folks from acting like it.”

“You do nursing?” the satchel man asked and shifted his bag again. “Is there somebody I can talk to about hiring you out? A blackmith, too. I heard y'all had a blacksmith.”

I looked beyond the man to out near his wagon. Albert weren't on it. He was standing out in the field across the road near his workshop.
I suspect he was waiting for me to decide. He'd never push me the way my sister Hazel did that night she told me to run, and this satchel man was my chance to make her sacrifice worth something, make James's and Momma's killings meaningful. Make it so I belong to myself and my future.

But I already got freedom here. With Jeremy. He's my future.

I can still smell him all around this room. On these piano keys, my fingertips. My face. His scent reminds me of how our love lingers.

Satchel Man said again, “Somebody here I can talk to?”

I didn't answer.

Don't need his help.

Freedom is where the heart is and I got the man who loves me. Whoever heard of running anytime beside night, anyway? And what am I supposed to make of him coming to the front door like this? Got negroes in the wagon. Reckless.

I closed the cracked-open door 'til there was just a line of light between us. I pushed my lips to the space and said, “We ain't open.”

E
VEN THOUGH THIS
is the longest time me and Jeremy ever been apart, longest we been without lovemaking, I know he'll be back for me. I shouldn't have made him mad, said what I said. But I was mad, too, at what happened with Mr. Shepard. It stayed fresh in my mind. Dirty.

A
ND
I
WAS
sorry that I couldn't get past my condition when we tried to lay together, pretended to be like we was. Jeremy went soft and I stayed dry.

I don't remember what I said to make him so angry, but he stormed out, dressing hisself as he went, had me running behind him telling him sorry, then good riddance.

But he'll be back for me.

He'll forgive me.

Nobody can love him like I can.

I'm wearing the pretty yellow dress Jeremy bought me. I'll wear it again tomorrow and the next day, if I have to. Every day 'til he comes back here so he can see me in it and know how much I love him.

This feels like the longest two weeks ever.

For now, though, I got to finish cleaning the parlor before Cynthia wake up and start yelling at me again for spending too much time pushing the broom. “Pretending to be cleaning,” she say. It's one of the only things she's had to say to me. She mostly sit in her room 'til five minutes before opening.

Sometimes I catch her sitting on the edge of her bed mumbling to herself. She probably asking herself why she didn't stop Jeremy and me before it happened. I never promised her nothing and if God don't forgive her for the things she did wrong in her life, it's her own fault not mine. I don't see how she could think what Jeremy and I found has anything to do with her.

She do treat her son Johnny better now. Gave him his own room and put me in it with him.

I don't care.

I ain't got to hear her snore no more and I can pray in silence. I promised God that if he send me Jeremy back, I'll start going to church even if it mean going near those hateful ladies that curse us most Sundays.

Maybe I'll stop doing the things Jeremy and me already do and wait 'til we married.

The jingle and click of a turning key starts at the front door. It excites me 'til I remember Jeremy ain't got no key and we don't open for another two hours.

It's only Albert.

He stands in the doorway, his hair is red and wild as ever. I know what he got to say about me not leaving with Satchel Man yesterday and I don't wanna hear none of it so I don't start no conversation.

I wipe down the tables, mind my own business. I hear him sniffling like he sick. “They captured them slaves and the Freedom Fighter,” he say. “The boy and the girl. The gal they maimed before returning her
to her master. The Fighter they hung by his satchel. Tied it around his neck. Burned his body. Left it blackened and hanging. I don't know about the boy.”

I cain't breathe.

“And I don't know what's worse, burning to death or being left up there with no proper burial. He's still there. Up the road.”

I have to sit down.

I bow my head over an uncleared table, take a swallow of water left yesterday by somebody else. I whisper, “I thought you said it was safe? That nobody would suspect nothing?”

“He was turned in. Somebody knew the plan. The route. It's the only way it coulda happened . . .”

“It wasn't me,” I say.

“You didn't know the route, Naomi. It was a risk for all of us.”

“If he wouldn't have stopped here for me . . .” I say. “Oh! That little girl. That boy. Have mercy, I saw 'em. Jesus! It's 'cause of me!”

“'Cause of what he believed in,” Albert said. “Cause of the freedom those children deserved. What every person deserves.”

“We should've been with 'em.”

“You saved both our lives,” Albert say.

“You stayed 'cause of me?”

Heavy clicks of heeled shoes come up the porch steps behind Albert. Albert leaves directly, down the hallway. The back door opens and closes. The old priest—Preacha Man—is here. He's wearing a wide-brimmed black hat.

“How do, suh?” I say. “We not open. But Sam'll be in in another hour or so. I could help you, though. Remember you take bourbon.”

“I came to see Cynthia,” he say, sliding his hat off.

“She might already have a customer, suh. Or sleep. Folks don't usually come for her or the girls 'til after two. It's just noon.”

“I'll wait.”

“If that's your pleasure.”

I step around the bar and pour him a bourbon. Slide it to him.

He takes a sip and stares at me like he gon' say something, got questions, maybe about Cynthia or this place. I don't want him watching me no more so I say, “I'll go and check on her for you, suh.”

On the way up the hall to Cynthia's room, I can smell her liquor. I knock on her door. “Cynthia?” and push the door open.

She's still in her nightgown. Ain't been dressed yet.

“What the hell you want?” she say with gin spilling out her mouth.

“That priest is here to see you.”

“What the hell for?”

“I told 'im you was busy but he said he'd wait.”

She laughs too loud, snorting now. “A goddamn priest. That'll be a first. Help me up.”

She throws her robe on and stumbles up the hall in front of me. I say, “Don't you want to get dressed first? Put some shoes on?” But she keeps walking, her drunken legs crisscrossing in front of her like sticks with no knees to bend with. She's been drinking more since we stopped talking, since she found out about me and Jeremy.

The first thing she say when she get to the saloon is, “You come for a piece of this, Preacha Man?”

He stands and wrings his hat. She go right up to him with her eyelids drooping, wearing a closed-lipped smile. She grabs his hat-holding hand and puts it between her legs, sliding it back and forth.

When he pulls away, her gin grin becomes a flat line.

“I've come to apologize,” he say. “I haven't been obedient to the word of God and I failed you. I should have been a vessel for your confession the other day, not a hindrance.”

“So you apologizing to me?” Cynthia say.

“Yes, ma'am,” he say, wringing his hat again. “Even the faithful struggle sometimes.”

“I charge by the hour,” Cynthia say. “And since you confessing some bullshit, you're gon' have to pay upfront.”

He reaches in his pocket and slides a wad of money across the bar, surprising me and Cynthia both. She flicks through it like she ain't
impressed. “That'll do,” she say and falls back on the stool in front of him.

From over her shoulder, she tell me, “Get me a drink.”

I make her a shot of gin, the brand she already drinking so she don't get sick, and after she swallows it down, she say to the priest, “Proceed.”

He unrolls his hat and peels a small sheet of paper from the inside flap and puts it on the bar top. He say, “It's the address to a temple nearby. Up the road. The rabbi there's expecting you. Got some from the women's group you might talk to. Could help.”

“What the hell?” she say. Her whole face, her body, slouches in disgust. “What the mother fucking hell! You speaking for me now, Preacha Man?”

“Maybe you'll find what you need there,” he say, putting his hat back on.

“You asking 'round about me, Preacha? You're the one up here in my bar. Drinking my drinks. Smelling the pussy I sell. You're getting God for me?”

“Have a good day, ma'am,” he say, nodding to me when he go out the door.

“Well, goddamn,” she yell to the empty doorway. “You don't know me, asshole. Come in here like you're God. Fuck you!”

She turns to me, grabs my wrist, ripping the stitches on the sleeve of my yellow dress, Jeremy's dress. My face flushes red. My tears come instant.

She point her long white finger in my face. “Don't you come get me for no more bullshit,” and she starts toward the hall.

“You should be used to it,” I say, before I can stop myself. Cain't believe myself, “That's all that ever comes for you!”

She stops.

“You think you smart?” she say. “First piece of ass you ever had and it's got your nose open. You think that Little Dick Jeremy is the shit and you the toilet? You think you got that, huh? Well, I been there,
done that. That loser will sew you up and sell you for his first bad hand. He ain't all you think he is.”

“You're jealous 'cause this
is all
you have. And you cain't buy me. You ain't got no friends, no family, no nothin. And now you cain't have what I got.”

“No. That's what I just said. I've had that. And like I also said, Little Dick will do whatever he can to get over another bad hand.”

I spit in her face. She slaps me.

“Don't you touch me!” I say.

Before I can move, she's got her arms around my neck, throws us to the table. Drinking glasses crash to the floor. She's drunk and I pull her hair. She won't let go of me. I send my forehead into her cheekbone. Her hands follow to the spot.

I cain't see.

“Bitch!” she say.

I wriggle out from under her, wiping the wrinkles out my dress. “Don't you ever touch me again!” I say. “Not my dress. Not my body. Not ever!”

“This is my house!” she say. “I do what I damn well please and what I'm gon' do is send your black ass back to Alabama so they string you up for what you did.”

“How about I send
your
cracker ass back to Charleston for what you did to your own daddy.”

Her eyes widen.

Then a soft voice behind me say, “Mimi?”

I fall into him, crying. “Jeremy.”

He smells of new cologne. This shirt I've never seen before. I kiss his lips, see his hair's combed different. He don't hold me the way he should. Loose, like. He don't look at me.