Nowhere Is a Place (16 page)

And now, twelve years later, Suce had grown into a beautiful girl. And happy too. Seeming to walk in sunlight no matter the hour of the day. Her laughter, songlike, magical, and generous, was always giving the people who heard it the courage to imagine palms as smooth as cream and fingers long, brown, and unblemished by the scars that came along with picking cotton.

___________________

Already wintertime and still they labor. Lessing thinks that he is the luckiest man this side of heaven.

All over, niggers strolling like men. Real men. Backs straight, arms just a-swingin’. Heads held high. Mercy! Who would have ever dreamed it?

But not there, not on the Lessing plantation. Niggers there remained stooped over and shuffling. Shows how stupid they were. Freedom so abundant, you could smell it. Charlie Lessing could. Freedom so pungent that he’d taken to walking around with a handkerchief pressed up against his nose. So ripe was the scent of it, it kept him up at night.

Five months and still his property remained just that,
his
property!

He had decided that no lost war or nigger-loving president was going to just say a few words, sign his name on parchment, and declare that his property—property that he had bought and paid for—could just stroll off and be free.

Not there. Not ever.

Lessing had seen the signs and started the fence just before Atlanta was taken. The fence enclosed the remaining forty acres of land he owned.

There were dogs posted on the borders and a man on horseback who patrolled the grounds.

Malroy was dead now. His sons were dead, killed in battle, but Lessing had his shotguns and two new whips with steel tips to keep them slaves in line. And how he used them, whipping them just because.

Because he hated them.

Because he’d lost so much in so little time.

Because he hated them.

Because he’d lain down with the females and loved it.

Because he hated them.

Because the war was over and his side had lost.

Because, because, because.

He started picking them off with his shotgun. Sunday afternoons, Saturday mornings. His feet propped up on the porch railing, chair tottering on two legs, drunk. Even in that precarious position, he pulled the trigger and was able to fell the unsuspecting target. Even shot dead his horseback-riding man, but that had been by accident.

___________________

Suce rose just as dawn started breaking through every place it could find to slip into. Careful, she thought, Lessing don’t like no sunlight before his eyes can clear and catch hold of something familiar, so she’s careful at night to make sure the shutters are closed tight and the drapes are pulled closed.

Since October he’s been tied down. One leg, one arm, just in case he needs to scratch or wants a drink of water from the glass Suce keeps filled on the nightstand.

When he shot his own man and still no white men came, Brother had walked right into the house, knocked Lessing down, and dragged him upstairs.

Lessing was crazed, that was for sure. A raving lunatic, and if the killings didn’t prove it, well then, him cradled in Brother’s arms like a baby did.

His arms were wiry and pale, those he threw around Brother’s neck, and it disgusted him; he’d seen women wrap theirs around Lessing in the same way. But that was before the war and before the money dwindled to nothing. Before the madness’d started eating at his mind. The women took what they could after they’d drowned him in gin and pussy, then cut and ran north just like some of the Negroes did.

Brother’s skin had crawled beneath the feel of Lessing’s arms, and when he threw him down on the bed, he restrained himself from pummeling him with his fists, the walking cane propped in the corner, and anything else that would leave that white man pulped and bloody.

Brother’s eyes took in the room—velvet drapes, silk-covered chairs, crystal this and crystal that. “Umpf!” he snorted, and punched his palm with his fist.

Here he was, living like a pig: mother dead, father probably dead too, twin brother lynched, burned, and buried. Friends gone. Just him, Suce, Laney, Hop, Tenk, and Spin left.

Brother could have killed him, but things come back and haunt you. Lou had warned him of evildoings early on in his life; she said it was Jim who’d started picking away at Lessing’s sanity.

Not too long after Jim swung, she’d seen two shadows walking alongside Lessing. He’d seen it too, she could tell by the way his feet came to a halt, the confusion on his face, and then the horror before he jumped and ran. After that day, something in his eyes changed. She knew that look, had seen the same change in Buena’s eyes after they took Nayeli away from them.

“Jim ain’t too happy with me, neither,” she’d said, pointing at the swell of her stomach.

Lou’s belly bulged out beneath the tattered gray fabric of her shift. Suce was ten years old by then, and Lou hadn’t had the hand of another man on her since Buena was sold off.

But you couldn’t tell Laney that. She looked at Lou’s growing belly and then at her husband Tenk, who had always seemed to forget himself in Lou’s presence—stumbling over his words, blushing beneath his dark eyes, and grinning like an idiot.

“What you saying, Laney?” the people she confided in asked.

“You know what I’m saying.”

“Well, Tenk may have been a wolf once, but he an old dog now!” they laughed.

“What that mean?” Laney turned on them.

“It mean he may have the heart, but not the might!”

* * *

The rumors had floated back to Lou and she had laughed before the hurt set in. She approached Laney. “You think I would do such a thing? We like sisters, almost,” Lou had said, taking Laney’s stiff hand in her own. “You think Tenk would do you like that?” she pressed.

Laney had snuffed and snatched her hand from Lou’s grip. “Well who it belong to then?” she sneered, indicating Lou’s bulging stomach with her chin.

Lou cradled her belly and rocked a bit on her heels. She smiled, but the smile was heavy with grief, and then she turned those sad black eyes on Laney and said, “Oh, this here is my Jim.”

Laney’s eyes widened. “You got fever, Lou? The sun getting to you again?”

“Nah, I knows it’s him,” Lou said, and rubbed her stomach.

Laney shook her head in dismay. “How you know that?” she asked in a mocking tone.

Lou rolled her head and pressed her hand into the small of her back. “I knows it’s him,” she whispered as she patted Laney’s shoulder and began moving past her, “’cause the way out is back through.”

* * *

Whatever it was, it remained in her for three years, eating Lou from the inside out. At the end all she was, was hallowed cheeks, sunken eyes, and stomach.

The slicing pain came late one night, cutting through her middle and gnawing at her back. Lou sprung up right in her bed and howled. The hounds’ ears shot up and they began yelping and pissing until finally they huddled against one another and curled their tails between their legs and shook.

Lou howled again, curdling the blood of everyone who heard it. Lessing turned over in his bed and pulled the shotgun he slept with into him like a warm woman. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut and prayed.

Brother rushed to his mother’s side, as did everyone else who had heard that horrible noise.

Someone lit a lamp and the darkness was shattered; Lou’s eyes bulged and Brother and the rest of the onlookers gasped in shock when the lamp was brought closer and they saw that Lou’s hair was completely white.

Laney had stumbled where she stood, but Tenk got hold of her arm and steadied her.

“Mama,” Brother started, and placed his hand on Lou’s exposed thigh. Her skin made a rustling sound beneath his palm like dried leaves, and he snatched it back in terror.

Lou pushed, and her belly bucked and writhed beneath her shift. She howled again and, God forgive him, Brother backed away from her.

Lou, up on her elbows and legs as wide as they could go, snarled between howls now, her lips skinned back on her teeth, eyes wild as she bared down,

There was praying going on, sacred words being thrown out into the air, someone humming a favorite spiritual they sang down in the clearing on Sundays, someone else pleading for it to stop, another urging someone to do something, anything.

But no one was stepping forward (too scared) or stepping out (too curious).

Another howl, another push, a sudden gust of air, and the lamplight flickered and then faded. “Git it lit, git it lit!” someone demanded. Fumbling, a cuss word or two passed, and then the sound of water, of breaking waves.

In the darkness they turned bewildered faces on one another and then the lamp finally gets lit again just in time for them to see a blue ocean rushing out from between Lou’s legs.

* * *

That was three years ago, but the memory of it was planted in Brother, dug in deep and rooted like a stubborn weed. That recollection and the feel of his dead mother in his arms, soft and wet and smelling of seawater, her legs grainy with sand.

Thinking about it just made him angry all over again, and Brother balled his fists and turned on Lessing, who was curled into a ball of whining white flesh in the center of his bed. Eyes unfocused and watering, he looked up at Brother and pleaded, “Please, Papa, don’t hit me.”

Laney had followed them into the house and, against her will, she felt some pity sprout in her chest for the old man. She made herself known at the bedroom door, brought to a stop what was about to happen by saying, “What us gonna do with him?”

* * *

There was bread and all types of jam and some pork in the cooler, and ale. Little else, but that was a feast for them. At first Hop and Tenk wouldn’t come past the porch. But Spin stepped over that threshold like it was his house.

So frightened were Hop and Tenk that their kneecaps jumped and their stomachs churned with gas.

Brother came to the door a third time, his mouth chomping contently on something. “Where Suce?” he said.

Hop nodded toward the left of the house. Brother stepped out onto the porch and called for her: “C’mon, Suce.”

Suce slipped slowly from the shadows.

“C’mon now, it’s okay,” he said, looking off into the dark woods and then over at Tenk and Hop. “Y’all too. C’mon inside ’fore someone sees y’all out here.”

Hop and Tenk exchanged fretful looks and then followed Suce through the door.

* * *

At the kitchen table they ate like men and women, Laney dabbing the corners of her mouth with a linen napkin and gushing at the absurdity of it all.

Tenk guzzling down ale so fast, he burped his words out. Hop and Spin roaming through the parlor, Spin scared to touch anything, just staring openmouthed, and Hop greedily snatching up everything that caught his fancy and quickly shoving it into his pockets.

Suce trailed behind them, careful to keep her hands at her sides.

When they were full and Brother told Laney to “sit back down; you don’t have to clear no table here,” the question was asked again: “What us gonna do?”

* * *

Death would have been the best thing for Lessing, but Brother knew if he killed him, he would be condemning the lot of them. He leaned back in his chair and the others leaned in and waited.

No one had been by the place in months. Lessing had run some off, screeching like a banshee, rifle swinging in the air, sometimes dressed just in his drawers, other times in one of his fine suits.

* * *

Brother supposed that when Atlanta was taken, a right good amount of people had just run off, carrying as much as they could handle, leaving the rest behind for the looters who were roaming the countryside.

Not a soul had come a-knocking since September, and by the time Brother had knocked Lessing to the floor, it was just after Christmas.

Brother leaned forward, resting his large forearms on the table and blanketing the waiting faces with an earnest look. “We gonna keep doing like we been doing.”

“What?”

“Laney, you gonna wash and hang the sheets every day, just like always.”

“But—”

“Hop, you, Tenk, and Spin gonna build that pen.” He paused then and pulled at his chin. “Not on the south part where Lessing wanted it, but in the north, where you can be seen from the main and back roads.”

Hop and Tenk just stared while Spin walked in circles, trying to get at an itch on his back.

“In the spring, we gonna work the fields together, just like we always do,” Brother said, and leaned back in his chair.

Laney cleared her throat and scratched the back of her neck, getting herself ready to speak her mind, but then Brother sat up again.

“We gonna keep Lessing in this here house”—and he tapped his index finger on the table—“up in that there room and”—he pointed up to the ceiling above their heads—“quiet.”

They all stared at Brother. It all felt wrong to them. Hop could already feel the noose around his neck, could smell Tenk’s body burning. He looked at Brother and his head was gone. Spin would swing too. Laney and Suce would probably be the only ones to get away with nothing more than a whipping.

“And we gonna move into Vicey’s house,” Brother went on matter-of-factly, and his eyes rolled to the window and gazed down on the old saltbox.

Laney’s eyes bulged. “You done lost your ever-loving mind,” she said, and stood up. “Just ’cause you got some book learning don’t mean you got sense.” She spat and pushed her fists into her hips. “What you ’gestin’ gonna get us all lynched.”

“Ay-yuh,” Hop said, and ran his fingers down his throat.

“Maybe,” Brother said, and folded his hands.

“I wanna move into this here house!” Tenk exclaimed, reaching for the jar of jam. “And take me one of those bubbly water baths I heard about.” He laughed and Hop found his laughter too and joined in.

“Like I said,” Brother continued, his eyes narrowing, “we gonna move into the
Vicey
house. It got four bedrooms. A mite better than what we living in now.” And then his voice tightened when he said, “Only one gonna be ’lowed in this here house is Laney.”