A stranger stared back at her with dark, surprised eyes. With her hair hidden by the white tignon and a shape created by layers of petticoat and a fitted top, she looked almost grown-up. But pretty? Mama certainly wouldn’t have thought so.
Aunt Winney’s dark, round face appeared over her shoulder. “Now don’t you go running away with the notion that yaller skin make you better than other folks. You hear what I say?”
Why did people kept telling her to be humble? The girl in the mirror looked meek enough to Sophie. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Good. Now, run on down to the kitchen and fetch me a bowl of mush. You can catch a bite while you down there, but no lollygagging.”
The shortcut to Oak Cottage passed behind the maze. Sophie was tempted to run in to look for the Creature, remembered it was off-limits, decided she’d let it go. Being a slave wasn’t as bad as she had feared, now she’d been assigned to the Big House. She liked her many-times-great grandmother, and it seemed like her grandmother liked her, too. Maybe they’d get to be friends, and Sophie could tell her about the present. That would make a good adventure.
When she reached the kitchen, Sophie asked a slave woman shelling lima beans on the bench outside for two bowls of mush. The woman glared at her. “Bowls is in the blue dresser and mush in the iron pot. Wait on your own self.”
Sophie took two steps into what felt like a steam bath perfumed with pepper and onion and browning butter and her stomach turned over. She’d been feeling off all morning—nerves, she’d thought. Maybe it was just hunger. Careful to keep out of everybody’s way, she found the blue dresser and the bowls. The iron pot hung at the side of hearth. Sophie looked in and saw yellow mush mixed with unidentifiable lumps that might be potatoes or yams or chunks of fatty meat. There were flies struggling on it—and probably in it, too.
Heat washed over Sophie like scalding water, her stomach clenched, and she threw up on the stone hearth.
First she thought she’d die of shame and then she just thought she’d die. Everything inside her seemed to be trying to get out and her head beat like a thousand drums. Shrill voices pierced her ears, pinching hands pulled at her as she was heaved up like a bundle of laundry and carried out into the air.
After that, Sophie was conscious of very little except how miserable she was. At some point, her fouled clothes were taken off. She felt water cooling her burning skin, then a coarse gown that rasped her like sand paper. Large, cool hands touched her rigid belly and her forehead. She heard a voice she knew was Dr. Charles’s saying that Robert should never have sent a city girl to the swamp in fever season.
She dragged her eyes open, saw her arm stretched over a white basin. Dr. Charles was beside her, holding a knife as bright and painful to look at as a bolt of lightning.
The knife bit into the crook of her elbow, and she felt very weak and sleepy and Papa was squeezing her arm and telling her that he’d come to take her home.
“I miss my Punkin-Pie,” he said, and opened his mouth wider and wider, swallowing her arm clear up to the elbow. Sophie was wondering, without real interest, whether he intended to eat her clear up when she noticed the Creature floating in the air beside her, its face all puckered like a baby about to cry. She opened her mouth to give it a piece of her mind, then got distracted by Papa turning into an old man with a tall hat like Abraham Lincoln’s. But he couldn’t be Abraham Lincoln because Lincoln was white and this old man was black as his hat, black as the crooked stick he carried, wound with red thread and white shells.
He waved the stick towards a door outlined with a thread of blinding light. As Sophie watched, the thread widened to a scarf, then a ribbon. The door was opening.
“Fetch Africa,” a woman’s voice said. “This girl going fast.”
What girl? Sophie wondered. And where was she going?
“Papa Legba.” She saw the Creature crouched at the old man’s feet. “Can you save this-here white girl? I go to a lot of bother to get her, and there ain’t another one will do as well.”
The old man gave the Creature a look that could have skinned a mule. “Serve you right, duppy, if she do die. You can’t just go dragging folks through time like it was a railway station!”
One amber eye peered up impudently. “Don’t serve her right, though. Dead, she ain’t worth nothing. Live, she might could do some good.”
The old man studied the Creature, his face still as a carving. Suddenly he laughed. “That plan of yours, duppy, is like something Compair Lapin and Bouki might hatch when they been drinking corn likker. Going to be fun to watch. But you best remember all doorways belong to me. I choose when they open, where they lead, and who may pass through.”
The Creature touched the old man’s boot. “I remember.”
Sophie was about to ask the old man if he could open a door and send her home when a dark blue void opened over her bed. She saw a light sparkling in the heart of it, crystal blue. The scent of salt water tickled her nose; the taste of molasses filled her mouth. The bed rocked under her, floating on a gently swelling sea. A wave leapt up, caressed her body coolly, withdrew. The void filled with a velvety voice singing a wordless song, and a queenly figure appeared, crowned with gold and veiled with strings of pearls.
“Yemaya,” said the old man in the hat.
“Don’t you know better than to lead a child through into this time with no preparation? The water and the food are poison to one who is not used to them. You play a dangerous game, Legba.” The musical voice was stern.
“I am dangerous,” said the old man silkily.
“And I am not?”
For a moment, the air around the two entities crackled and buzzed. Then the old man laughed. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, Yemaya. This game belongs to the little trickster, who plots but never plans.”
The Creature grinned sheepishly.
“You play with forces you do not understand,” the woman told it, angry and amused. “Do not do so again.”
“No, ma’am,” the Creature said. “Not ’less I needs to. Can you fix her?”
“I can,” the velvety voice said. “I will.”
The door snicked shut, darkness fell, and Sophie was asleep.
* * *
After a dreamless, drifting time, Sophie woke to an unfamiliar room, the crimson glow of a fire, and a woman bent over a big-bellied pot like a witch in a fairy tale. She felt like she’d done three thousand sit-ups and run fifty miles in a desert, but she wasn’t sick any more.
The woman turned. Without her glasses, Sophie couldn’t see her face, but she was dressed in blue with yellow around her head, like Yemaya, and held herself like a queen.
“Bout time you woke up,” the woman said. “I ain’t got no root for sleeping-sickness.”
It was a beautiful voice, but it was human, and Sophie recognized it. “You’re Canada’s mother. Africa.”
“That’s right, and I’m right glad you know it. You been clear off your head since Dr. Charles bled you yesterday.” Africa put aside a curtain of gauzy fabric, slid an arm under Sophie’s shoulders, and held a steaming cup to her lips.
The mixture was bitter and mossy and thick with bits of leaves. As Sophie choked it down, Africa said, “I don’t know what to make of you, and that’s the truth. The Master of the Crossroads, he goes his own way. That way sometimes bright and sometimes dark, but it ain’t never what I’d call easy.”
Sophie frowned. “Do you mean the old man, or the Creature?”
“What creature is that, sugar?”
“The one that brought me here. I have to find it, so I can go back home.”
Africa smoothed her hair gently. “This your home now, sugar, less Mr. Robert change his mind. You rest.”
* * *
Next time Sophie woke, Dr. Charles was taking her pulse.
“Strong and regular,” he said. “Mrs. Fairchild will be pleased. A couple of days of rest, and you’ll be as good as new.”
Dr. Charles gave her hand a pat and moved awa
y. Sophie found her glasses under the pillow and put them on. The room snapped into focus. Sophie looked around at four iron beds draped in gauze, and a cabinet full of jars and bottles beside a table where Dr. Charles sat unrolling a long strip of linen around a slave woman’s arm. A second slave, an older woman in a big white apron, stood beside him with a jar.
Dr. Charles snipped off the bandage, tied the ends, and tucked them in neatly. “There, Rhodes. I don’t want you back in the fields for another few days yet. I’ll tell Mr. Akins to assign you something light.”
The woman Rhodes thanked him and left. The older woman, whose name was Aunt Cissie, fetched in skinny man with a hacking cough, followed by a big man complaining of a griping in his guts, an old woman bent over with rheumatism, and three or four more. Sophie watched Dr. Charles examine them, peering into mouths and eyes, sounding chests, instructing Aunt Cissie to give them liniment or spoons-full of foul-smelling liquid, asking after the health of a brother, an aunt, a father, a wife, listening to the soft-voiced, respectful answers. When the last patient had left, he dismissed Aunt Cissie, pulled out a long black book, and started to write in it.
The pen scratched softly, the flies buzzed lazily against the ceiling. Sophie was on the edge of drifting off to sleep again when a clattering on the porch jerked her awake. The door flew open and a man stomped in. He was dirty and roughly dressed, and Sophie thought he was another field hand until she saw that he kept his broad-brimmed hat on his greasy curls and looked Dr. Charles straight in the eye.
“Devon Cut needs a new gang-driver,” he said.
Dr. Charles kept on writing. “Give it to Old Guam.”
“Guam? That pipe-sucker?” His voice was like a street car braking. “He ain’t done an honest day’s work since the day his mammy weaned him.”
“Mrs. Fairchild has chosen Old Guam, and I agree.” Dr. Charles laid down his pen. “By the way, Akins, I’ve had a letter from Chicago. The new evaporators are on their way to New Orleans and should be here, God willing, in a few weeks. Have you read those articles I gave you?”
Akins tipped his hat to the back of his head. “Yessir,” he said. “That there evaporator’s a fine machine, but I’m thinking it’s a mite complicated for them niggers to run.”
“Given that a black man invented the apparatus, I have no doubt black men can learn to operate it, given the proper training.” Dr. Charles got up and put on a black frock coat. “Come along to the Big House, and we’ll discuss it. Why, hello, Canada. Have you come to visit Sophie?”
Sophie saw Canada, looking very small and black and meek, standing in the door with a large covered basket on her arm. “Yessir.” Her voice was so low Sophie could hardly hear her. “I brung her some broth.”
Dr. Charles patted the little girl’s head as he left. Atkins ignored her completely. As soon as they were out the door, Canada turned and stuck out her tongue.
“Who’s that horrible man?” Sophie asked.
“That old Mist’ Akins, the overseer. His Mama beat him with an ugly stick so hard, it gone straight on till his soul.”
Sophie laughed. “You’re funny, Canada.”
“White folks calls me Canada.” She pulled a canister from the basket. “You call me Canny.”
Sophie pulled herself up against the thin pillow. There was so much she didn’t know about living in the past. If she was going to be stuck here for a while, she’d better learn—preferably before she saw Mammy again. “Canny, will you tell me about Oak River?”
“Sure. What you want to know?”
“Everything, I guess. I never lived on a plantation before.”
Canny giggled. “You surely ain’t. Flandy like to bust himself laughing when he hear ’bout you asking for a bath-room!”
Sophie flushed. “I know I’ve got a lot to learn.”
“What you want to know?”
“Well, how soap is made and what a gang-driver does and why there’s a curtain over the bed, to start off with.”
Canny nodded. “Well, a gang-driver, he watch the field hands so they don’t slack off. The mosquito bar keep the mosquitoes from eating you all alive in the night. I don’t know nothing ’bout soap-making ’cept it stink to Heaven, but I know lots ’bout doves. I takes care of all the doves in the pigeon house.”
“Tell me about the doves, then,” Sophie said. “But I also need to know about cooking and washing and ironing and—”
“Ain’t nobody know all that,” Canny said. “And if’n they did, they too busy to hang round here telling you about it.” She thought a moment. “Tell you what. Tomorrow’s Saturday. Everybody gots a plenty of chores, but I asks around some, see who can maybe come by for a spell. That suit you?”
“That suits me just fine,” Sophie said. “Thank you.”
Canny unscrewed the canister and poured a fragrant golden stream into a tin cup. “Momi say if this set well, she see bout trying you on boil chicken and white bread. You gots to drink, too—water, milk, sassafras tea.”
“Your Mama sure knows a lot about sick people.”
“Momi know everything there is about everything,” said Canny. “Momi a two-headed woman.”
“Huh?”
“A two-headed woman. Sometimes, when she bring the babies and tend to folks and make gris-gris, she not just herself, but the other one, too.”
“The other one?” Sophie remembered the velvety face in her dream. “You mean Yemaya?”
“Shush—that name a special secret. Maybe Momi tell you about it by and by.” She made a face. “Maybe she tell me, too. Now drink up you soup, and tell you a story. You ever heard how come snakes got poison in they mouth and nothing else ain’t got it?”
“No,” said Sophie.
“Don’t they tell no stories in New Orleans?”
“They tell lots of stories. Just not that one.”
Canny settled down cross-legged at the foot of the bed. “When God make the snake, he put him in the bushes to ornament the ground. But things didn’t suit the snake, so one day he get on a ladder and go up to see God.”
Sophie finished the fragrant chicken broth, took off her glasses, and listened sleepily as the snake complained to God about getting stomped on and God gave him poison to protect himself. Canny described how, when the snake got a little carried away with his gift, the other animals climbed the heavenly ladder to complain in their turn. Sophie’s eyes grew heavier and heavier. About the time God was coming up with an answer to their complaints, she fell asleep.
2011 Rhysling Winner, Long Poem Category
March is blowing wet and snowy when I stumble on the Sea King
He has washed up from the water—all his nakedness like heaven
With his hair so lank and heavy, green and black as
Sodden seaweed, with his harp of kelp and pearl
Cracked to pieces on his knee
“What ails you, my Sea King?” I ask this creature, laughing
I love him—how I love him, immediate and sudden
The way you love a rainstorm, the Milky Way, a leopard
That reckless love of wild things after years pent in a city
“My bride Agneta left me,” says the Sea King like the thunder
Like the salt and surf and thunder
“She has left our seven children, and our castle made of coral
She has gone back to her father, to his bright and airy kingdom
Has maybe found a lover—some brawny freckled farmer
She left me for another.”
“But tell me, pretty sea-thing,” I tease the lonely Sea King
“What motivates this horror? Perhaps—because you beat her?
Or threatened sharks would eat her? Or treated her with seven sons
Got upon her one by one, and not a year between them?
That might just be a reason, if reason’s what you’re after.
It’s a basis to be bitter . . .”
(And no wonder! Poor Agneta!)
His Majesty grows ma
udlin, how he glances
How he glistens! So cunning, yet so awkward
On these sands that bloat and bleach him, in this shape
Akin to man-shape, gills agape and fins aquiver
How the Sea King’s skin is silver, like lightning under water!
“Agneta was my daybreak,” mourns the Sea King on the seashore
“I never knew a morning ’til the morning that I met her
When I stole her from her father, leaving only dew behind us
I cried to her, Come under! Come beneath and be my consort!
She said she feared the drowning, but I covered her in lilies
A crown of purest lilies, white as beeswax, soft as velvet
I combed her hair with sea-shells, and fed her
From my fingers
Her slightest wish I granted with the mightiest of magic
I played this harp of pearl, and it swept away
Her memory.
She didn’t mind forgetting.
I thought I made her happy.”
The Sea King’s eyes are dark and wide, like otters slick with oil spill
I poke his spiny ribcage and the silver fish that dance there
He jumps—perhaps it tickled? At least he can be tickled!
“Cheer up, my doughty Sea King!” I shout in manner bracing
“For I sicken of this city, of its traffic lights and taxes
Of the emails and the faxes, and the work and wage and worry
So, tell you what, my darling: you take me to your kingdom
And I’ll romp with all your children, spin them stories by the daylight
Sing them lullabies at nighttime
And when they’re sound and sleeping, I will creep
Into your bower, to your bed of bright anemone, where
I’ll comb your hair with seashells, pour my palms in perfumed oil
By and by I’ll take you deeper than ever Sea King ventured
We will scour off what’s rotting, all these thoughts of sweet Agneta
Nebula Awards Showcase 2013 Page 35