Wash (6 page)

Wash slips into the barn’s small side door then climbs his ladders to settle into the hay with his blankets but he’s too wound up to sleep. He lies there trying to calm himself after his run in with the patrollers. He has long since learned he must manage his mind. Think about Pallas. Don’t think about the men on the road. Seek solace wherever he knows he’ll find it. Step inside his story. As far into the past as he can fall.

It was Mena who taught Wash how to travel like this. How to use his mind’s eye to keep his pictures bright and strong and close. Make himself a world to live in. It was Mena at first and then later, Rufus in his forge at Thompson’s place. These two worked hand in hand to carry Wash far enough into this knowing for it to stick.

Soon as Wash can manage to call Mena and Rufus to mind, he sees them. The darker the barn the better. Mena as lean and quiet as her own grave until she finds herself deep inside a story. Then her hands flutter lightly inside her stillness. Unless somebody else walks up and then she’s back to smooth as stone. Acting like she can’t speak English. Rufus looks so much like her they could have been siblings except he’s thicker and wider, like Wash. Gruff on top but soft underneath. Or at least he used to be.

Wash needs to take care which memories he visits and when. Some always work while others tend to turn on him. The trick lies in remembering which ones are which, remembering to choose and then talking himself into it. Steering his mind, just like he’d been taught. It was this knowing that Mena used to make it across the water with so much of herself still in one piece.

Soon as they put her on the ship, Mena dropped down into that trance of herself, trying to stay safe. But she dropped so far and stayed so gone that after several days, the women could not get her moving around like she needed to be. The captain thought she was sick. Saw her as fading too close to dying and wanted her thrown overboard before she infected the rest with whatever disease he decided she had.

That one crewman had her hanging over the edge, ready to drop her, before the situation came all the way through to her. As the pain of his beefy hands gripping her skinny shoulders made its way to her from across a great distance, she slowly became aware of the weight of her own body. She felt the space between her and the water pulling down on her and realized she’d better find some way to show herself to him or he was going to let her go.

And she did it while he was watching her. She came back from where she’d been, just like she was swimming up from deep underwater, until there she was, looking right at him from inside her own eyes. Seeing her do this unsettled him so much, he almost dropped her anyway.

It was the way she stared at him. She was barely out of her teens and slight enough to seem younger but her eyes hooked him. Not grabbing or desperate but so focused on him it was like she bound herself to him to keep him from dropping her.

He drew his hands, with her still in them, toward his chest. Just as the tops of her feet knocked against the outside edge of the ship’s gunwale, it caught up to her what had almost happened. She saw it all. His hands opening. The outside of the ship rising past as she fell down through the air. Water coming up at her fast.

A shiver ran through her so strong that he did lose his grip but by the time she fell from his hands, there was no more water under her. The smooth hard deck caught her where she sprawled. She scrambled, ducked and ran, stumbling and falling, in amongst the rest of the women brought up for air, trying to look scared enough and enough like the others so that one crewman would forget what he knew he had seen.

After that day, she opened her mouth for the food and she let the women walk her around. She wasn’t trying to do what some were trying to do. Holding their jaws clenched until the captain ordered enough teeth broken to force feed them. Mena was just trying to make it through in one piece.

But once she had dropped inside herself like she’d been taught, it was easy to get distracted. That deep peaceful place was so quiet and soothing that she started wanting to stay there, running her fingers across all that was familiar, forgetting about the life up on the surface she’d left behind. Until that one crewman yanked her back with the grip of his pink chapped hands.

Mena never meant to leave this life. She just lost track of time. From the very beginning, she had carried a strong sense that there was something waiting for her.

And sure enough, once she got here, there he was. She bumped against him as they were being transferred from boat to pen, or from pen to pen, she was not sure which. Each of them trapped in their own slow jerking line while being marched in opposite directions. All hurry up and wait, with most everybody keeping their eyes down on the dirt or on the back of the neck in front of them.

It was when their two lines pressed close together at the narrow part of the alleyway that they were pushed into one another, knocking shoulders. When the whole of both lines got hung up for a minute. Just for a minute. Enough time for them to step away from each other and look up.

Her eyes move from his feet to his face. It is like she is seeing herself made into a man except bigger. After all that ripping and tearing and chaos, after this whole parade of people she does not know and has never seen before, here he is. Somebody who knows her and knows her parents too. Somebody who knows exactly where the path behind their village bends to meet the creek in the shade of that big mangrove.

They can read their stories in each other’s face. She knows how he looked before he shot up, before his voice dropped and before his muscles began to lap over each other under his smooth skin. Before his family sent him inland to stay with relatives, trying to keep him safe. And he knows how she was set apart from the beginning.

And now here they are, moving past each other in long crawling lines to pour into adjoining pens with the fence between them worn rickety and loose where it meets the brick at the back corner, and nobody paying any attention at night because there’s another wall circling the whole compound with broken glass jagged along the top.

Wash

My mamma was quiet but she had a pull to her. When I was little, her draw was real strong. Any gap between us was too much. She’d drag me to her till I was snugged right up against her, curled in the small of her back or the crook of her legs, and I didn’t fight it neither.

But sometimes, her pull went to push and you couldn’t get a grip on her no way. She had roots grown so deep, she’d be here in body but gone someplace else in spirit. Once she started dipping down in her own well, she’d get so gone till all I could reach for was where she used to be.

Guess we should have been glad she still had her inside place, but mostly what I felt was jealous and left behind. But she was right to keep it to herself. Wasn’t enough to go round anyway. At least let her have her peace instead of us fighting over it, tearing it to scraps and none of us having any.

Course I didn’t have any of this figured out back then. All this I’ve come to since.

There was no getting next to her when she got gone like that. And reaching for her just made her feel farther away. I remember sitting there, trying to hold myself steady till she came back close enough to where I could get at her. Just sitting there, rocking and telling myself everything I knew for sure.

Times like that, I felt like I was drifting with no ground under my feet. Like something might snatch me right up and I’d be gone from this world. So when she did pull me close, I’d nestle in, feeling so far from those other times I’d just about forget, till I’d hear that one little tug in the back of my mind telling me watch out. Telling me pay attention.

You see these women round here steady stitching all these little scraps together to make one big piece? That’s what I’d do inside my mind whenever my mamma let me lie close against her. I’d stitch myself right tight to her.

And I remember it all. Seems strange for a grown man to keep so many bits and pieces from being small, but it’s a house I’m building for myself with a roof of remembering to put over my head. Something to lie under and hear the rain falling on at night. I take what I have and I make what I can with it. Some of it is edge and some is smooth, but I take it all and I use it to make me a place big enough to get inside.

She’s who taught me that. But some days, she had to work to show me. Some days I wasn’t even looking, much less seeing. Especially after we got took off that island. Seemed like I could hear her better so long as we were out there on our own under old man Thompson. But once those two boys of his carried us over to his big place, there was no telling me nothing.

I started slipping away from her. Going to see about those new folks. And I didn’t want her getting all fierce, hooking me to her and trying to tell me everything I’d already started to forget. Her wanting so hard scared me more than anything else but I understand it now and she knows I do.

She was African and her staying African aggravated those new folks over at Thompson’s place. There was more countryborn than saltwater negroes, even back then, and most of those countryborn didn’t want none of that old hoodoo. Made em uneasy.

But my mamma just stood there, wearing the distance she came across in her eyes and in her ways both. And she didn’t let it die down. Rubbed most everybody sideways. Like she was disrespecting em by hanging on to her African when this new place kept saying drop it and turn and walk away.

And most of em had. Made sense in a way. Dragging your memories along with you can wear you out, like a mule dragging a heavy load over rough ground. But then here she comes, with her hands wrapped tight round all of it and not letting go. Keeping her knowing for herself.

Made em mad enough, some would’ve tried to knock her loose from it if they hadn’t been scared of her. Her and Rufus both. But he held his African more hidden than she did, saying there’s no reason to tell everything you know.

My mamma was stronger than most, that was part of it. But at the same time, somebody had showed her how. Back before she got snatched up, those old women had taught her what they knew. Pulled her off to the side. Said they saw she had more room inside than most folks. Born with one foot in the spirit world was what they called it.

She told me she balked at first. Wanted to stay in that circle, playing with the rest of the girls. Be like everybody else. But she wasn’t and she knew it. So when her mamma nodded for her to go on and go, she did. She let those women teach her till she knew how to leave when she needed and how to come back both. And how to hold on to everything while she was gone. That’s how she made it over easier than most.

I didn’t know much about any of this for myself back then. I just knew she was different. She was different and my being hers made me different too.

What she showed me was, you had to intend. Keep your mind in mind. Guard it and watch it and get it what it needs. Can’t just go along like you sightseeing cause these sights round here will steal your mind right from you.

Best be stitching yourself to something. Almost don’t matter what it is so long as it can keep you from getting swept away. Those that don’t find a foothold, I keep seeing em pass right on by me. Pouring straight over the edge.

And it’s not just us that’s got to watch it. It’s everybody. Same current pulls on white folks too. Sometimes I think maybe it’s worse for them. So much more pulling on em and so much less to hold on to. What little they got must feel like reeds. After all this bending, those reeds must be getting old and tired and stripped looking, what with this storm blowing more days than not. And that edge getting closer and easier to wash over every minute no matter what you do.

Lord knows what kind of trouble I’d get myself into if I ever got ahold of where they’re standing. I’m tearing things up pretty good from right here. Don’t know what I’d do with the leeway they got. That kind of slack can’t be no good for nobody. That’s like stepping into the mouth of the devil. Walk on in and before you know it, you turn round and can’t get out. You just standing there, looking out at the world through all those teeth.

And this world is full of folks already been washed over the edge but they’re still here, walking round, making things hard on the rest of us. Rest of us feels real few sometimes.

Richardson

All my father ever told me was to make something of myself. He was forever reminding me that we lived in a new world where a man would have to be blind not to be able to get ahead.

It was 1781 by the time my brother David and I made it home for Christmas. We had just retired from the Continental Army, Independence from England secured at last after seven long years. Our mother made her usual teary fuss but he was all business. We’d barely sat down at the table when he started in on me.

“You and your brother were lucky to make it through this damn war in one piece. This water is not going to run clean for a while, if ever. You best bite into this world and chew. If you want to go West, fine. But don’t go empty handed.

“Gather as many land grants as you can get your hands on, go as far as you can and get there first. Once you secure a toehold, you can always parlay it into a town.”

“Look at me,” he was fond of saying. “I came here owing seven years and now everybody owes me.”

I couldn’t even picture him an indentured servant. A ragged and hungry fourteen year old, stepping down into some dank hold, headed for this unknown place. It seemed impossible. But here he was, rich, fat and full of advice.