“Normally I can’t keep him off me,” she said that day. “But now, since I’m carrying, he hasn’t laid a finger on me. Some men can go without. My mama taught me that, some men can, but Tom’s not one of them, he just isn’t.”
I was filling a basin with heated water, waiting on it to cool.
“Your mother, what was she up to last night?” she added. My finger was an inch into the water. It wasn’t too hot, but I knew Missus. She liked it almost cold. Sometimes I thought we wasted our time boiling it.
“My mother?” I asked. I tried not to show my nervousness. The draw was just days away and the last thing we needed was more eyes on Mama.
“She cooked me my supper, sat with me while I ate it. Then we went to sleep,” I said.
“You sure about that, girl?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
Then I helped her out of her petticoat and into the water.
I TOOK MAMA ASIDE AS SOON AS I COULD TO WARN HER, but she brushed it off.
“She’s a weak woman,” she said, “reaching for a hold on something so she won’t fall down.”
I brought it up again the night of the drawing, but Mama said, “I don’t want to hear nothing about no Missus tonight,” as we walked the three hundred yards to the swamp. Tom had company and Mama had to wait longer to clear their plates, so we were the last to arrive at the crossroads.
The others shuffled their feet in a circle around the altar, patting their thighs, rolling their necks, jerking their shoulders, and swinging their hips. They were singing too, and when they saw us, they shouted louder, their mouths agape:
Oh brothers will you meet me,
Oh brothers will you meet me,
Oh brothers will you meet me,
On Canaan’s happy shore?
Daddy stood, burst into the middle of the circle, hopping around on one foot, then the other. With his hands behind his back, he jerked his upper body back and forth, breathing out on the upswing, then in, until I thought he might fall out.
By the grace of God I’ll meet you,
By the grace of God I’ll meet you,
By the grace of God I’ll meet you,
On Canaan’s happy shore.
He turned toward the altar, then floated more than walked over, and when he reached it, he bowed. The song softened. The dance slowed. Mama turned to face us.
“Call those things which be not as though they were.”
“Call those things which be not as though they were,” we repeated, our palms up.
“Call those things which be not as though they were,” Mama said again.
And we shouted it out after her.
“Now take a deep breath, in and out. In and out. Close your eyes. Turn your vision inside out. Drift into a softer part of your mind, the part you don’t show nobody, I mean nobody, the part that remembers coming into this world, that knows the exact minute you’re going out. That’s the part I want you to unlock, that’s the part I want you to use, to consider your mamas, to set your mind on her face. Was it wrinkled? Black? How many teeth did she have when she smiled? Or remember your lady, your man, your child. You ain’t got none of those? That’s all right. If you don’t have none of those, think about your breath. You didn’t tell your heart to pump, did you? Your lungs to fold in and out? Something inside you just knew. Who was it? Who was it? You know who it was. It was the part of you that’s going to linger when we’re all dead and gone. It’s the part of you that remembers walking free, breathing free air, bearing free children. It’s the spirit of God that lives inside you. It’s the spirit of your ancestors guiding and protecting you. Give thanks to it. Tell it hello. See if you can give yourself over to it, see if it will order your mind, take charge of your body, see if you can tell it to help you fly on out of here.”
As she spoke, the singing started up again, low at first.
Oh brothers will you meet me,
Oh brothers will you meet me,
Oh brothers will you meet me,
On Canaan’s happy shore?
Then it rose higher still.
By the grace of God I’ll meet you,
By the grace of God I’ll meet you,
By the grace of God I’ll meet you,
On Canaan’s happy shore.
Oh brothers will you meet me,
Oh brothers will you meet me,
Oh brothers will you meet me,
On Canaan’s happy shore?
By the grace of God I’ll meet you,
By the grace of God I’ll meet you,
By the grace of God I’ll meet you,
On Canaan’s happy shore.
Mama rang the bell, and we opened our eyes. She had placed a basket on the altar too, and she held it up, jingled it. Then she reached in and pulled out a rock so small I could barely see it before she lifted it to her eye. Without even twisting her face, she turned it toward us, but I could read the answer in her still expression; she was staying.
No matter, she walked through the circle with the basket outstretched like all her hopes hadn’t been aimed at this one night. The others reached in. Earl would stay, then Miss Bertha, Agatha, Elijah, Belle, and I started to wonder if it was a mistake, if the mark of the star hadn’t been included. All the while we kept singing, our voices rising in a new, great rush.
By the grace of God I’ll meet you,
On Canaan’s happy shore.
There were only three people left. Lionel, then Seamus, then Daddy, and I wondered if it would be Lionel or Seamus. Lionel had a family in the field, and they could use the break more than Seamus, who was light as pancake batter.
There was a rustle in the grass just beyond us, and we knew to make the song rise higher because nothing scared white folks off like the Holy Spirit. Seamus was next to the altar and he swept its contents onto the ground. Mama slipped the remaining rocks in her skirt. She crept toward the sound. We kept singing, our eyes facing forward until I felt him. I turned. Jupiter. He wasn’t supposed to be here. I looked to Daddy to object but he kept singing, bracing for his turn. Jupiter knelt beside me like it was where he sat each week, and he started telling me things without his mouth moving, that we were the chosen ones and we were free, we were born to be free and no one was going to take it from us any longer and we weren’t just running through the tunnel, legs rolling, arms flapping, we had run, we had flown, and we were already looking back weeping because so much was lost, but it was over now and I could see it with him there; he cleared out a haze in front of our faces and if I squinted hard enough, I could see myself but it was not myself, it was a woman, that same pretty, pretty woman I always saw, and she was standing alone but her daughter was walking back toward her.
Seamus pulled, then Lionel, and it was neither.
It was Daddy’s turn next.
Fred started shouting before Daddy even pulled. “You’re fixing it for your man, for your family. Ain’t nobody that lucky.”
Jupiter looked over at him, and just like that Fred was quiet. Daddy pulled, and when Mama nodded, the whole group burst into a cheer. They raised Daddy up on their shoulders. I looked up at him, then back at Mama; she was happy, hesitant, but happy. Even Jupiter seemed like Daddy pulling was his path out. I looked back up at Daddy; he was mouthing a new song I’d never heard before:
And he’ll open the door
Yes, he’ll open that door
And it won’t be long
No, it won’t be long
Up beyond the velvet pass
below the reeds
and through the haunted grass
I’ll press on to the largest star
that will lead me on
He was mouthing it, and he was fisting the air, but he wasn’t smiling.
When we got back in the house after the draw, we could still hear the merriment in the quarters. Mama said that when you spent months imagining another person’s freedom, homing in on it, desiring it with the beat of your heart, you forgot you were separate. The other
s were happy for Daddy, yes, but they had become Daddy too.
Mama and Daddy sat at the table. “They always said you were lucky, Domingo, but twice in a row.” Mama shook her head, which was in his lap, and he twirled a strand of her hair from the middle of her scalp where it was coarsest. “Never would have imagined it,” she went on. “When I didn’t pull, I just knew we weren’t going.” She paused. “I was disappointed because I had seen it, you know, even felt the hem of my dress swirling around my ankles, felt Josephine’s hand in mine. But more than disappointed, I was confused, like maybe all of this, the preparation, the prayer, the belief, the visioning was for nothing, like maybe I was making it all up. You ever feel that way? You ever wonder that?”
Daddy paused, then he moved his hands out of her hair. “You saw me running beside you?” he asked.
“Of course I saw you running,” she said.
He paused. “You sure it was me? Or was it Jupiter? I know he got it in his head to run too.” He jumped up and Mama’s head fell on the chair where he’d sat.
“Well, he can’t run,” she said, sitting up too. “He didn’t draw the stone. He not as lucky as you are,” but she said it like in a way she wished things were different.
Daddy was up in her face now. “You wanted it to be him, didn’t you? Admit it.” He was not hitting her—he never would—but it felt like he was, and I put my hands over my ears and I closed my eyes. I imagined myself as the woman I’d just seen. She had family, she wasn’t with her family, the way I was with mine, but she had somebody, peering over her shoulder, tapping on a window, only the woman didn’t know to let her in.
“I hardly know that man, you know that,” Mama went on. “Get offa me with all that.”
“Say it then, you’re happy that I’m going with you. Just say it.” But he wasn’t threatening her as much as he was begging.
“Fine. I’m happy you’re going with me. There.” And she was crying now.
And Daddy wasn’t crying, but he should have been, I could see a little boy inside his body weeping.
“Just quit it,” I screamed. “Just quit it.”
They ran over to me. They were extra sorry now. They rubbed my head and pressed it into their stomachs. They held each other’s hands.
“We’re going to all be together soon,” Daddy said to me. “It’s all going to be okay.”
“We’re together now, Daddy,” I said, but Mama and Daddy just looked at each other.
Ava
2017
A FEW DAYS AFTER MY MOTHER’S WELCOME-HOME PARTY, I am driving King home from Harper’s when the phone rings. I look down and see it’s not the first time. I’ve somehow missed five other calls from the same unknown number.
I answer. It’s Juanita. Grandma Martha has been missing for hours. They’ve looked all over the house and are afraid she’s snuck outside. They are most concerned about the streetcar tracks and Binh has offered to ride up and down St. Charles to make sure she isn’t walking in the wrong direction up one. I speed through yellow lights and park at the house. Juanita is standing outside holding a flashlight, calling out Martha’s name. King and I join her then decide to knock on the neighbors’ doors.
We walk past Grandma’s house, the street car tracks to our left, her neighbors’ gas lamps shining to our right. Oak trees line the sidewalk, and their roots lift the pavement and forge inclines and drop-offs between each square. Traffic is slow this time of evening, and when cars slow down beside us, their drivers turn and look us up and down.
We are almost at Jefferson Avenue when we hear a muffled voice call out, “Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”
It’s Grandma’s medical alert. King runs toward the sound and Juanita and I follow him. The voice is coming from a double gallery house a couple of blocks from Grandma’s. Approaching it, I see the back gate is ajar. I hear the voice again, “Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” We look through the crack the open gate makes and see Grandma huddled up in an oversized jacket between two bushes.
King runs to her.
Juanita and I are right behind him.
“Grandma,” I say, when we reach her. She blinks a few times. The back door of the house is windowpaned. I can look through it and see a living area not unlike Grandma’s, and I want to get out before the owner sees us too.
“Grandma,” I repeat. “What are you doing out here?” I am angry at her still—I haven’t forgotten the incident with her book group—but I am relieved too, and I pull her toward me.
“I was looking for the cabins,” she says, standing. Her knuckles are scraped and bloodied from the thorns. The owner of the house has come, and I try to wave at him, motion to somehow explain the situation, but I see him reach for his phone.
I tell King to grab her other side, and we hustle out to the sidewalk. The whole while, Grandma is talking nonsense.
“I saw the fields but I didn’t see the cabins,” she says. “I was looking to apologize to you again, for the other day, but I didn’t see the cabins.”
“Okay, Grandma,” I say, “don’t worry about it. It’s okay.”
It is a short walk to her house and I set her up at the dining room table with a cup of tea.
Juanita whispers to me, “She’s getting worse, hallucinating now. I’ve seen it all before. It’s normal,” she says. “But she can’t be alone anymore.”
“Absolutely not,” I say. I walk back up to Grandma and rub her shoulder. “We’re so glad you’re safe, Grandma.”
“Oh yes, I only wonder, who was that handsome colored boy?”
“Grandma, we don’t say that word.” I am harsher than I have been. King doesn’t hear her, but he could have.
“But who was he?” she asks again. “The one who found me? He was a nice boy, and he ought to get a reward.”
THAT NIGHT, I CAN’T SLEEP FOR A LONG TIME, AND when I do it is only for an hour. I wake up and I think I hear singing, an ancient, sad song that would accompany an organ at my mother’s old church. It is two in the morning but the voices are so near I expect to find their source as soon as I reach the window. I pull aside the curtain and look out, but nothing’s there, just a pigeon, not rooting in the ground, or positioned to take off, but standing straight up, chest puffed out like a man’s. I raise the curtain all the way, and the bird looks up at me with flashing red eyes. The singing stops.
I HAVE TO FORCE MYSELF TO TELL KING THAT WE’RE leaving. I feel terrible—he has just told me how he feels about this girl, Harper. And he won’t understand my urgency. He is oblivious to Grandma’s condition. He knows she’s fading, but he didn’t hear her call him colored, he doesn’t know that she was looking for cabins.
“Maybe we can figure out how to stay at the school, King,” I say, “but either way, we need to be on our own. You’re getting older; shit, so am I. It’s time for us to be on our own,” I repeat.
He doesn’t even respond, just pretends he doesn’t hear me, slides his new headphones on, and turns toward the car window.
AFTER I DROP HIM AT SCHOOL I HAVE AN APPOINTMENT to meet with Hazel. My mother is better, but she’s still not up for the drive alone.
When we get to the house, we practice breathing techniques and visualization exercises, help Hazel draft a birth plan.
She is in better spirits. She says she’s starting to get excited without the dread. Her baby daddy is back in the picture. He was just getting nervous, that’s all. It’s a lot on him, and he retreats, but they talked about ways of coming together when they’re stressed, and he’s on board.
I don’t need to look at my mother to know she’s not impressed.
“Whether he’s there or not, you can do this, Hazel,” she says.
“I know, Miss Gladys, I’m just saying he’s going to be there this time.”
My mother looks at her hard until Hazel meets her eye. “Whether he’s there or not, Hazel,” she says again.
Hazel looks away, not unlike the way I would when I was a child and my mother would chastise m
e. It’s quiet for a while, with Hazel looking down and my mother staring at her, until I stand.
“How are you feeling, Mama?” I ask, to change the subject. “You look good.”
“Better than ever,” she sings out. “I’m just glad I made it out of the hospital without catching pneumonia. In my condition, something like that could put me in the ground.”
We talk about King and his lil’ beige friend, as my mama calls her.
“Aww, poor baby,” Hazel says. “I got some friends I could hook him up with. Some of them don’t have kids yet.”
“Girl, stop,” I say, laughing, though I might consider it.
My mother asks about Grandma for the first time since she left the hospital, and I tell her I started looking at townhomes. I have a little while before I have enough for the down payment, but I’m getting there. It will fly by.
Several times I start to say more, about the previous night, how Grandma wandered off for the first time, how I’d had to increase Juanita’s hours, but I’m embarrassed that I’m even in this situation in the first place, that I let it go so far; it has felt so good to be needed by Hazel, and I don’t want her looking down at me.
My mother doesn’t need to hear me say it. “Come home,” she says.
“Ma, I keep telling you—” I start.
“I had another vision last night.”
“Yes, I know, the swamps,” I say.
She shakes her head. “It was different this time,” she says. “I’m telling you, I saw a house, and it was just like the house you’re in. The oaks leaning over it, the shutters, the walkway leading up.”
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