“Who was that white woman by your house the other day?” Link asks. “I was walking by and I saw her coming out. Plain-looking mousy old thing. Her husband got a few cows but she don’t have the sense to put their milk in her own belly.”
We laugh again.
“Well, she’s been coming over a bit,” I say.
They look up from their food at that, a mix of concern and shock wrinkling their faces.
“Coming by to do what?” Link asks. She has set her fork down.
“Just to talk, she’s lonely.” I already regret saying as much as I’ve said. There was no need to is all. “She can’t have a baby,” I add.
“I could prepare my bath with white women’s tears,” Link says.
“Not just yours but all of ours,” Theron adds. Jericho isn’t thinking about us, just that coffee cake. No, it isn’t mine, and missing lemon rind, but there is no question it is second best, and in a few years she might surpass me.
“Anyway she’s becoming a friend.”
Link drops her fork. “Now, sister, you don’t want no part of that,” Link says. “Not a half of a part, nor a quarter. Our people can’t be friends with theirs, you know that. They’re not capable of it. They think friend mean mule. They think friend means they can take and take and you never get tired of giving. Suppose you don’t give her what she think she deserve,” she goes on. “All that disappointment gon’ turn to rage and all that rage gon’ fall on you.”
“I know, sister.” I am embarrassed now. That I needed to be told that. “I wasn’t asking for advice,” I say. “I was just sharing my day with you, that’s all.”
“Oh,” she quiets down. “Well, just so long as you know you don’t want no part of that, sister. No part.”
I nod, feeling very much like a child, and I am not a stranger to that feeling. As the years tick on I find I become smaller inside. “That’s what I told her,” I say. “I told her that in so many words already.”
They all nod and grunt, back to their food.
I excuse myself for my bedroom. I splash clear water on my face from the bucket I filled that morning, stare into the mirror. Now, this I could do without. Over seventy years. Sunken eyes, sagging neck. It feels like my missus is staring back at me, black as I am and white as she was. Aside from Link, she was the only woman I had seen start growing old.
I walk back toward the kitchen. I can hear them talking about me from the hallway.
“You think she’s all right?” Theron asks.
“She’s fine, she’s just being Josephine. She comes off as rough but it’s the opposite, going and feeling compassion for people who would hang her out to dry if they got the chance.”
Then Jericho chimes in, his little boy voice seeming out of place in that kitchen, in that conversation.
“She’s partial to white girls. Maybe,” he adds. “That neighbor probably reminds her of her little friend.”
“What friend?” Link asks.
“The missus’ daughter. When she was a slave. They were like sisters, then Mama Josephine ran away.”
I clear my throat and walk back in all cool, though hearing Jericho sends those old feelings rushing back, that same sadness I’d felt leaving Miss Sally, guilt too, knowing my mama wouldn’t have approved of befriending the mistress’ daughter enough to miss her; maybe that wasn’t the right way to say it. It wasn’t that she wouldn’t have approved, she wouldn’t have thought it was possible.
It was the reason I had never mentioned Sally to Link.
“Oh, Jericho, you can’t hold water. You sharing my old plantation secrets.” I rub his head to let him know I’m not mad. “Those are just bedtime stories,” I say.
But when my visitors are gone and I am done with the dishes, I pace the floor for hours, kneading my fist into my thigh, fighting the pictures popping up in my mind. Still they won’t surrender.
Josephine
1855
MISS SALLY WAS SLOW TO DEVELOP, AND HER DADDY thought by me being six months older she might mimic me as I grew. He forced us together. Her mother was against it, said there was nothing her daughter needed from a slave, but sure enough it wasn’t long before my head only came to Miss Sally’s chin, and she was teaching me my letters.
And I taught her how to create things that were not there. Started out with coins.
“Call those things which be not as though they were,” I’d say.
“What in the grace of God does that mean?” she’d ask. She had blond hair that her mother let mat, and she was a skinny thing, on account of her baby sickness. But she didn’t seem to know any of that. She’d get so excited sometimes and her joy would pass over to me in a way that I didn’t know was possible between blacks and whites.
And I’d think about her question and shrug. “I don’t know.” We’d fall into each other giggling, but when we’d settle down, I’d repeat it just the way Mama did.
“You see the dollar piece in your hand? Close your eyes until you see two of them so crisp at the edges you can feel the ridge when you reach for them.”
She’d obey for a while, then she’d open her eyes.
“There’s nothing there,” she’d say. “Wait till I tell Papa. You’re just as ordinary as the day is long. I’m just kidding, Josephine.” She’d reach for my arm. “I would never do that to you. Even if you’re no more special than a jar of milk, or than I am for that matter.”
She’d squeeze me and I’d squeeze her back. Her mother would shriek down the stairs all, “Get your hands off my daughter, Josephine. You’re getting too old for that now,” and we’d spread apart like peas from chaff.
Then one night Miss Sally came to the cabin after dinner, and we sidled outside beneath the oak.
She was so excited she couldn’t begin until finally I held her arms and forced her to look at me square in the face. I said her name real firm the way Mama talked to me when she was telling me something important about white folks. Finally Miss Sally started.
“Remember that dollar piece that we wanted to make two? This evening my daddy came back with my uncle from Georgia, and he asked me who was more handsome, him or my daddy, and he pulled a coin from behind his ear, and I said he was of course, and he gave it to me; don’t you see, Josephine, don’t you see, you created it; it is true what everybody says about you, you’re powerful, you’re magic, you’re—you’re special.” She hugged me to her then, and I felt embarrassed.
“I didn’t create anything,” I said. “Your uncle’s the one who created it.”
“Don’t be so modest,” she said back. “Do you know what modest is?”
“No,” I said, but I could have figured it out.
“It’s when you don’t think high enough of yourself. Jesus was modest. He died a prisoner’s death to save us from our sins.”
I nodded. “I know.” The preacher said as much on Sundays, but Mama said no God of hers was saving white folks from a thing.
Miss Sally pulled the coin out of her pocket. “I want to give you this,” she said.
“Oh no, Miss Sally, I couldn’t take that.” It was hers after all, and I could hear what Mama would say: A white woman don’t give without expecting something in return.
But she insisted. “No, Josephine, I wouldn’t have it without you. Now you take it now.” She held my hand open and pushed it inside, then closed my fist.
“You won’t tell anybody, will you?” I asked. I was thinking about her mother, who no doubt would say I stole. It’d be a lie, we’d all know it, but she’d grip it tight because she couldn’t abide what the truth would mean.
“And give up my secret all-powerful magician?” Miss Sally laughed and pulled me closer to her. “Of course not. This is our secret. Not just because of the magic either.” She whispered the next part: “I’d never do anything to hurt you, Josephine. You’re like a sister to me.”
Then a few weeks later, I was fanning her off from the heat. She had nothing but her petticoat on and was quieter than normal before s
he turned to me without warning.
“I wonder if you could create other things too, not just coins,” she said.
“Like treasures?” I asked. “Jewels?”
“Maybe something other than that?” she asked. “Maybe a baby for Mama. She tries every year, but they keep dying. It has made her heart like stone.”
Is that what it is? I thought, but didn’t say.
“I guess I could try, Miss Sally. Does she want a boy or a girl?”
“I think by now she just wants a baby; any one will do.” She paused. “But I heard her say once if she had another daughter she’d have to keep going because Papa wants a son.”
I didn’t tell her but I started right then, rocking the layers of my mind back and forth to the rhythm of the legs of a chair, and there was Missus inside it, her arms full. I drew a picture of a baby boy on a scrap of paper, folded it seven times, and added it to our altar that night. And I wanted it too. Mama said half of it is in the feeling tone, and I was wanting it for Missus, not because of her, a woman whose heart pumped vinegar through her veins, but because of Miss Sally, who had never seemed so somber since I’d known her.
“And, Josephine?” she asked like she already knew what was in my head. “When you’re picturing it, can you picture me beside Mama, and maybe her hand is holding mine? And maybe she is saying I love you?”
IT DIDN’T TAKE BUT A MONTH. MISSUS WASN’T SHOWING yet, but she was sick, and Miss Sally said she knew something was in there, she could just feel it.
“Daddy can feel it too,” she said. “He’s walking around here like the world is sitting on his right shoulder. He caught a slave in the bread bowl yesterday and didn’t even flog him, that’s how happy he is.”
“What slave?” I asked.
“That new one. Jupiter. Daddy says he knew he wasn’t nothing but trouble, that he shouldn’t have taken him on. Uncle couldn’t do nothing with him though, and Mama says Daddy can’t say no to his brother, on account of Uncle’s mental faculties being as soft as they are. Mama says we’ll be carrying Uncle’s burdens for the rest of our lives.”
“So what, did he let him keep the bread?”
“Yeah. That’s how I know there’s a little baby in there, Mama ain’t as big as two fists put together, but I can always tell by Daddy. He said by the time that boy was through with him he had spun him a tale clear from here to the other side of Georgia. He got to thinking maybe he was the one who took the bread his own self. He wasn’t sure. He said that’s one powerful slave, and Uncle just didn’t know how to use him, that’s all. But I don’t think he is powerful at all. I think it’s you who’s powerful. And pretty soon we going to have a pretty little baby in our arms to show for it.”
BUT IT WASN’T TRUE THAT HE WASN’T POWERFUL. NOT true in the least. Because the next morning Missus walked out onto the porch holding her stomach. The porch wrapped around the house and sometimes she stood on it facing the river and sometimes, like today, she stood on it facing the fields. It seemed like her face changed depending on which way she was looking. Today it looked old and worn. She called all the slaves down, and I stood with my parents at the edge of the cane. It was the hardest time of the year, grinding season. There was only so much time to prepare the crop for harvest. Tom had delayed as much as possible so the cane would be sweet but that meant every field hand rose earlier than sunup, returned later than sundown; that they cut, loaded, and carried the cane for milling on Sunday even.
And Missus walked the plank of the porch back and forth, back and forth.
“I’m missing something,” she said. “I’m not going to say what it is, just that it’s gone, and somebody out there knows where it is. The thing itself is very valuable to me. It’s a family heirloom of sorts, and the idea of it being hauled off my property right in front of my very own eyes”—she touched her mouth like she was going to start to cry—“well, it’s heartbreaking.” All the while she talked, she kept walking.
“I’m going to stand out here with you until the first person confesses. No food or water neither, and for every hour you’re out the field, that’s a lash. But I’m going to find that”—she paused—“that heirloom. The truth is,” she quieted, “it’s not the heirloom as much as it is the trust. That’s something that can’t be repaired. Even when I get it back. My husband and I, we go out of our way to not treat you the way everybody else does, but maybe we’ve been naïve.”
Tom stood in the doorway, in his trousers and silk stockings, smirking at the scene, and she glanced over at him.
“Maybe we’ve been naïve,” she repeated. “We’ve certainly tried to give you the benefit of the doubt.”
Just then Jupiter raised his hand and I could see the edge of a long, thick knife in his grip. People said he cut more cane than anybody, even men who had been doing it all their lives. I had seen him from the house myself, so tall he had to bend more than the others to clip the flags, then the green top, next the stalk at its root.
“Yes, are you confessing?” Missus seemed excited at the prospect.
He shook his head in wild swoops, that pigeon that followed him still at his feet. “No, ma’am, Missus, ma’am, I am not, just want to tell you I know what it is you lost. It couldn’t have been me that’s taken it ’cause I’ve been in the field, you have seen to that, but I just want to say I know what it is you lost, know where it is too.”
She seemed disarmed, and she looked through him more than at him.
“It’s your grandmother’s earrings,” he went on, and Missus’s hand dropped to her side. “She didn’t give them to you, your mama did, on your wedding day, told you they were real diamonds, and they’re not real diamonds but you believed they was, ’cause your mama said it, and even when you found out the truth, it only made you love your grandmamma more.”
“Where are they?” she asked in a soft voice.
“They fell behind the head of your bed, that’s all. Nobody took them. Go upstairs, venture underneath, you’ll see them. They sure do sparkle.”
She went upstairs and came back down holding the not-diamonds in her hands, but she directed the overseer to beat Jupiter anyway, to drive three stakes in the ground, two at the top for each hand, and one at the bottom for both feet. The whole while he hung there, Missus whistled the tune of one of the songs I’d hear her sing Sundays on her way back from church, “Amazing Grace.”
WHEN IT WAS ALL OVER, I WALKED WITH MAMA HOME.
“I hate her,” I said, slowing down, kicking my feet until the dust swirled at my knees.
She turned around, gripped me to her, and slapped my face. Then she knelt down beside me, and pulled me into her. I could feel her heart beating. We were so close together we could have been one. She backed up.
“Now, hate,” she started, “ain’t no use in hate, Josie. Ain’t no use in hate,” she repeated. “Whatever you trying to get away from, hate just binds you to it. You find, even when you think you found a way out, God will bring it back to you, slap you right in the face with it. Where you thought it had gone missing. So don’t ever say hate.”
“And especially don’t say it so loud one of them can hear you.” It was Jupiter. I turned to face him. He was shining, good as new, like it wasn’t him tied to those stakes an hour earlier.
My mama seemed like she was holding herself back from embracing him the same way she’d just embraced me. She stood there beholding him for longer than was natural. Far longer.
“How you know about those diamonds?” she asked finally.
“I done told y’all they weren’t diamonds,” he said. But he didn’t answer the question, he just repeated himself. “They weren’t diamonds, that was the thing about them. Although the way they sparkled, I could see why she thought they was.”
THAT NIGHT THERE WAS A BANGING ON THE DOOR. Daddy was in the bed, holding on to Mama from behind. He didn’t hear the knock, and it was Mama who stood up to answer.
“Winnie, come quick, Missus’s bleeding out,” Vera shouted from
the other side.
Mama dashed for her sack and then sprinted off. I trailed behind her but no one saw me go.
We reached the house, then upstairs. Missus was moaning on the bed, and she reached for Winnie. “Not again,” she said. “I can’t do it again.”
Mama nodded and pulled back the sheet.
“I’m sorry, Missus,” she said.
“I don’t care about sorry,” Missus said back, and she started to wail. I could see my mother’s hands from where I stood. There was a pool of blood beneath Missus’s bottom and Mama lifted her to set down quilts. Then Mama reached up Missus’ pee hole. Missus gasped but Mama kept going. I wondered if Mama ever thought about squishing Missus’ insides together, making her hurt. Mama held so much power in her fingertips.
“Everything feels normal, Missus,” Mama said.
Missus was relieved but couldn’t accept it. “But the blood,” she said.
“It happens sometimes. Happened with Josephine,” Mama said. She still didn’t know I was in there.
“So everything’s going to be okay?”
Mama nodded.
“You sure, Winnie?” Missus asked again between gasps.
“Certain,” she said, and I wondered how Mama could be certain of something so grand. Then she turned for the door. On her way to the stairs she saw me, and called me to her with her eyes, but she was not down one step before there was another gasp, this one louder. Then a scream, “Winnie,” and Mama jerked back inside. There was more blood now, more than I had ever seen and I closed my eyes against it, imagined it halting, imagined the source of it all closing in on itself and imagined that rocking chair, tilting back and forth, back and forth, and there was a baby boy in it, Missus holding him, a bonnet. I ran the scene through my head like a wheel turning over and over and over again.
Mama was frantic. I could hear her panting, and Missus moaning, the sounds mingling so I could barely focus, but I fixed the picture in my mind. It didn’t take long for things to slow: Missus stopped screaming, and Mama’s hands were on me. I opened my eyes. Mama was pressing me toward the stairs. I looked back at Missus. It seemed her bleeding had stopped, but she stared at me like I had taken something from her, something final that would never be returned. As we walked down, I saw Tom at the foot of the steps waiting, gripping the rail so hard his knuckles were red, and he said, “You see to it she has that baby this time, Winnie,” and Mama said, “By the grace of God,” and Tom said, “I’m not talking about God, I’m talking about you, Winnie.”
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