Fingerprints of Previous Owners

by Rebecca Entel

  Looked back at Lem. Wondered if he could smuggle me out the way he smuggled pallets of plastic bottles back in. Had to force my mind to race to the finish line, though: what leaving the resort meant for Mother. The features of his face had slid apart, like he was chaos, too. I couldn’t tell anymore, with men, when their eyes were sad or their eyes were mean.

  I knew I had to go out into it. Only thing between me and other people a sheet labeled nakedness.

  All around me: shrieking and jostling. Some of the others ran by, their sheets flapping with their zigzag paths. The saggy, almost bored fear on their faces: Was it part of the show or for real? In my toga sheet, I was supposed to be running like a frightened native, running for my life. Men baring teeth all around. Wished for the wind on the shore that would billow the sheet out so much I’d feel more covered.

  I turned around and almost ran right into Taylor, same look on his face as he’d had on the road. But now something extra. Sneer a little higher on one side, like, Here you are without your machete. But there was no way those boat staff guys would recognize me, not really. All they’d seen that night on the road, I knew, was the uniform on my body—and the glint of the blade. My blade. Besides, half the maids were draped as natives, and half were draped but labeled cows, and no one seemed to be keeping track of the two halves. All was chaos, blind: no one could see what I was doing versus anyone else, with or without a white sheet all over me. Same sneer all the same.

  He jumped on top of a pool lounger, arms thrown up in triumph above me, but the strips of the seat buckled under him, and his feet fell through, tangling him up enough for me to back away. Feather hat skittering to the ground.

  I backed away slowly and more slowly. Felt the cool aura of glass behind me, reached back to turn the handle, and stepped backward onto the tile of the hallway. Looked out. People running around every which way. End of the world, looked like. But no one looking in: made me feel ghosty in my sheet.

  When I heard a thud behind me, my veins felt like steel rods. Turned and saw Katelynn had crept inside, too, Nathan in her arms again like a twiggy bird. His face wet as a wound. Couldn’t blame him in This Storm they were creating. He twisted the broken hair, crisped white, that had fallen out of her braids. His face contorted into a question mark, tiny O mouth. She just looked nightmare woken up.

  To my left: hallway to the B wing. Figured she could follow me and would never tell, looking at me like I had the tools for draining the terror from the pools of her eyes. My own fear seeped out of me, replaced by a hunger in my hands. Like fear could be a cloak when it was someone else’s.

  Found myself in front of B3. Key card for cleaning still around my neck. Katelynn and the boy stood in front of B4, looking at me. Me: like I could make the storm outside wither to an innocuous drizzle, or make the AYS forget words. I realized she didn’t know I’d lied about talking right away to the AYS—of course she didn’t know how I couldn’t, even if I’d wanted to. I’d only asked Lem knowing he probably couldn’t either.

  Everything we did got done by hands the tourists never saw. Rooms came apart by invisible forces. Put back together the same way. All the evidence the guests left of themselves scoured out of the rooms—without any evidence of us doing the scouring. Beds unmade and made by the wind. The turquoise-and-beige curtains torn back toward the walls, muslin-like layers left behind, fluttering like a spirit had been there and gone.

  Everyone was outside. Not a body tracking where I was.

  Doorknob in my hand, then carpet under my feet. Room coming apart, coming back together. Until.

  The Cruffey Plantation Journal levitated for an instant while my other hand—instinctively folding around an imagined rag—made an efficient swipe across the dresser beneath it.

  When I came out of the room, B4-one and B4-two were still standing in front of their door, eyes still on the spot where I’d been.

  My ankle turned on something, and I couldn’t keep my footing, with so much pool water messing the deck and the corners of the book poking my bare thighs. My sheet good for something, hiding the shape beneath my skirt. I regained my balance, looked down to see I’d stepped on a crab, the crushed stones of them scattered everywhere.

  Christine’s face—“at-work” smile—came flying toward me. Her speed creating wind in her sheet and in her hair.

  Someone called, “Christine,” and she turned around, and her cheekbone smacked against the knuckles of Captain Columbus. I gasped, and my heart pounded up in my neck. The chaos kept on and on around us. A pile of girl and sheet against the ground. Her eyes catching mine.

  Book knocking at my kneecaps as my legs went as fast as they could to the path.

  Getting inland on the tourist path was just like being a tourist anywhere, open walk ahead. Or open run. (Not like last night when my cutout trail felt like a hiding place to get off the road. When I’d sat up in the brush, covering my ears until I was sure Andre’d be gone.) Even with a maid knocked to the ground behind you—an easy way up. I could feel the pounding of my feet in my knees, my chest, my forehead. But my only way up—away—was on their path.

  The book bulked out the corners of my skirt. Only book I’d seen in my life with Cruffey Island written on it—its cover thick and dull, its pages bookmarked by its last reader with a Furnace Island brochure that was slim and slick. I told myself I’d put it back when I was done with it. Borrowed it. But that wouldn’t matter if anyone saw me with it. Or if Katelynn told anyone. Or if the Manions reported it gone before I could put it back. My name would be on the week’s room log. I’d be gone. Mother sitting at a barren table.

  My feet just kept moving, though.

  The brush was a growing beast that overtook anything in its path. Once I was away from the resort’s clearing, it closed around me as if it had a vendetta. But I knew I couldn’t be that far from the path I’d been cutting myself to the corner of those two walls. How to reach that path without Dad’s machete or anything else? Under my uniform my legs were bare, so instead of crawling I put my head down and pushed forward, with the book’s back cover held up to protect my eyes from swinging-back branches. I had to push through the brush so long I thought I might get stuck, but if I could make it back to that corner, I might be able to figure out where I was in relation to the House on the map. This map that had turned up in my hands—couldn’t quite believe it yet. Finally I sensed my arms meeting less resistance and looked up to see the clear sign of a path wandering diagonally away. My path.

  With no machete, there was no way to make more progress. I was left with whatever was already cut away. But at least I had some sense of direction between here and the House. I brushed the fire ants from my legs, sent them racing around the ground as I lowered to my knees, shooed dirt away, and put the book on the ground. Leaned at an awkward angle so I wouldn’t sweat or bleed on it. Opened it to the centerfold where five tiny stitches seemed, against all odds, to be holding the whole heavy thing together. I smoothed the left page to the left and the right page to the right. The map was rough, and out of sight of the resort’s clean path it was hard even to orient myself north, south, east, west. The buildings were an archipelago of blue dots labeled storehouse, kitchen, well, lockup, gin house. Slaves’ quarters. If I could figure out which building my corner of two walls was, I might be able to map out most everything else up here. Know which way to head when I returned, with my machete, to find the rest. Felt it skimming in my blood that I could find it all, see it all. Like all my skin was seeing. I stared and stared at the map and back at the walls, worrying I wouldn’t make any mental progress either before it was fully dark.

  I hoped I’d start seeing the map transposed on the land. But that wasn’t what it was like. Neglect, nature, tricks of the eyes. No sense of the whole estate once my eyes left the pages.

  I thought about Dad, describing how he matched up the smoky X-ray pictures to the cavernous mouth in front of him. The rocks of teeth half submerged, hiding their pains. As he explained this to me he
’d closed his eyes and fiddled his fingers in his food, lining up whatever chunks of vegetables we were eating.

  “That’s nasty, Horace,” Mother had said. “We’re at the table now.”

  And Dad, smiling: “Yes, Daphanie, so just look away from my messy fingers.”

  And Mother—smiling, too—closed her eyes and continued to eat. Mouth seeking food like a blind baby bird’s.

  Running into the brush the other night, feeling Andre’s voice, my eyes were Mother’s pinched-shut eyes. But there was no smiling for me: thief who stepped over a girl on the ground.

  There were some loose stones along the foot of the wall, and I decided on something I’d never attempted before: climbing through the window. Thought of Mr. Harper’s leg. But the danger of not naming the stones’ ghosts seemed worse than the danger of the stones, worse than the danger of stealing and trespass. Couldn’t let the past alone like Dad couldn’t leave a bad tooth to rot.

  I perched the book in the crook of the cactus and felt with my foot until I found a part of the pile of stones that wouldn’t shift with my weight. Closed my eyes. Next thing I knew I was on the floor inside the building, not remembering the fall. My knees bloody, my arms pricked, my face burning. But the book had stayed safely lofted in the menacing green arm.

  Branches taller than I was grew up through the floor, but there was room to move around a little and to see. On the far wall was the open mouth and throat of a fireplace. Nothing else it could’ve been. Tears of gratitude came, silly perhaps, for something just presenting itself as what it was. A horizontal beam of lignum vitae running across higher than my head. Leave it to our vitae: the only wood that would outlast vicious nature and neglect. I could even see two holes where nails had been. Blackened stone lined the three walls of the inside. Swaths of monkey fiddle and cacti choked it. But there it was.

  I returned to the ground with the book. Kitchen. I must be in the kitchen! I put my finger on the kitchen dot and inched left and right on my knees, all the way around in circles and back again, trying to orient myself. It took a while, but I figured out which direction I’d come from—from the only building on the map I could find without question: The Big House. The Main House. The Owner’s House. Cruffey’s House. The only time the word house was used on the map.

  Like an all-gray X-ray clarifying itself into black and white, separating teeth from skull.

  I ducked inside the fireplace and found myself facing a nest vibrating with paper wasps. Slowly I lowered to my knees. Around me the walls were swathed with black, the scorchings still here after all this time. And then, tucked in the corner by my knees, another diamond my fingertips could fit in. The bundle of etched sticks again. But in here the lines had taken in the black, which made their shape clear.

  A ship.

  I pulled my fingers back. Crawled out of the fireplace so I wouldn’t disturb the etching or the nest, shuddering with wings and legs. I was shuddering, too, standing still in the kitchen with the fireplace and the nest and a drawing of a ship.

  All of a sudden I could picture, really picture, the estate. And could picture myself walking on it, from building to building, tracing the steps of the ancestors. A day in the life of ghosts. Who might speak to me.

  I knew I was going to have to copy the map before returning the book. This was going to take a long, long time: lots of machete clearing and lots of daylight needed. Smacking against lots of overtime. Depending on garbage and the rain, could take months and months or more.

  Once I’d climbed back out the window of the kitchen—in the process reopening old scrapes on my knees and deepening new ones—I went down to the road by the trail I’d made with my own hands.

  Cars were steadily zooming down the road. And more streaks of headlights. Maybe because of what happened to Christine. Maybe something worse.

  I wrapped the book in my sheet like a bundle and clutched it to my chest. Stayed just inside the brush all the way home. Could barely see for the scratches on my eyelids by the time I got there.

  Mother already asleep, I could sit at the table with a flashlight. Sat in her chair at the table, since that was where the moonlight and starlight came in. Pedestal of books against my shins.

  The opening pages had lists of first names that I read over and over, playing spooky rhythms in my ears. Wilton, Lloyd, Betta, Joon, Vack, Pittman, Warrant, Mort, Tildy with one arm, Missy, Old Grebba, Nilly, Divvy, Suma. They were listed in columns with their ages, and Xs next to some of them under the column heading Africa born. The dates listed next to some of the names were, as far as I could tell, dates of purchase. The names without dates, I guessed, were born on the plantation.

  Pages upon pages of lists, made by Master Cruffey himself: each entry dated, listing what was done by which “hands.” Who was in the field, how much was planted on planting days, what was brought in from the field, who gave birth (just coming in from the field), what and who came in and out on the occasional boat, which calf broke its leg and got turned into dinner. What his wife, Martha, was doing; what his son was doing. What or who they were doing things to. As I read I figured out some of the relationships among them. Owner doing the writing. Martha, his wife. Son. All three of them Cruffeys, I had to remind myself. I turned back to the column of names and connected them with my fingertip. Finger traced a line from Mort to Tildy with one arm. From Tildy to Divvy. Another family of three but not listed together. Mort and Vack: maybe brothers. Their mother maybe Grebba.

  There were a few diagrams of structures being built: mainly new walls but also what the author labeled NEW BETTER FOR WHIP. POST. In the ink drawing it looked like a thin pen of stones with a tall stick shoved into the center.

  And then, days and days in, more than lists: something happened. Recorded only in the broken-off sticks of half-sentences. As if that surveyor of the plantation, that list-maker—hard for me to call him by name—didn’t know how to account for those hands he thought were his acting not “at work.”

  ’33 Feb 20

  Martha in kitchen & call Tildy with one arm to move pot of hot water Tildy with one arm say, Need help with pot, call Betta Martha say, No, dinnertime, hurry Tildy with one arm drop pot all over and Martha call me & Son Son pull Tildy with one arm to wh. post Give her 4 strikes with stick & count more Mort come back from guinea corn field, put his hand on my back & push me out way to stop Son Martha scream & I tell her, Back in house Mort hold switch from riding, stand behind Son ’Fore I stop him, Tildy with one arm pull Mort’s arm down & say, No Outside all hands (male—female—littles) gather round Son yell, Get back to quarters All stay standing but go after while

  Place on my back where later still feel Mort’s fingers Martha say, A long time Tildy with one arm been too slow adding food to pot, too fast slipping food to her pocket & how she track blood in kitchen sometime, not keep any leaves under her feet Old Nilly come ask for cloth for Tildy with one arm—for burns from water pot Martha say, Back to quarters ’Fore sleep, bring switch to hold in bed Feel real thick like when my hands tired from riding Wrap both hands to hold strong Mutiny Day, say Martha

  ’33 Feb 21

  ’Fore first call every hand, even old women barely walking, stand round the well with sticks Don’t listen when counsel them get to work Still standing while Son ride on horse ’mong them Finally go to work but some carry sticks all day through field, stable, storehouse, around stock By night put sticks down but no knowing if more to come

  ’33 Feb 22

  After Mutiny Day sent Son on more rounds to make sure all hands working He report back, Stones Ask him, Stones? Son says, Stones for new wall now by livestock’s water hole Not there last time Son near water hole But now put in pile Told Son, Keep eye on All male hands take corn to storehouse when I round ’fore dinner Female hands, ’cept Old Grebba, come in from weeding field Son on last round ’fore dark—Warrant not at stable, he sitting on stones pile Talking but stopped when Son come No more hands near Told Son, Report next day Warrant never trouble ’fore
but since Mutiny Day not sure what not seen or not heard by us Dinner, Son comes and says, Betta now on stones Same—talking ’fore saw him Martha says, Stop worrying, but we remind her of Mutiny Day Colder, Nilly not keep fire good overnight

  ’33 Feb 23

  First round, Son see Joon on pile but still talks when Son come, ’bout time punished in stable Warrant stand near, watch Son Son say, Stop Joon leaves, Mort sits on stones Look Son in eye Where Mort, Tildy with one arm & little octoroon not far

  Go with Son next round Tildy with one arm on stones by stock’s water hole Like bench, as Son say Her feet wrapped by rags from barn More hands round water hole Betta, Warrant, Mort Betta water stock like Son say to Told Tildy with one arm check if Martha need her She stayed on stones, not talking Look Son in eye Son go for her & then she go toward Martha quick Son kick stones over Told Warrant and Mort, Spread stones along two walls far apart Send Son to check Tildy with one arm in kitchen Son fast to see about Tildy with one arm, always fast to see about her Rubbed out lines where stones been with my own foot

  ’33 March 1

  All hands in big field ’cept 2 women and 1 little in house with Martha (Tildy with one arm & Nilly & Tildy’s octoroon Divvy) Call Divvy Loitering Boy—he stands near walls, not fetch quick enough Martha call Divvy Boy Whose Eyes Look Like Son’s Always tell her not to say so in front of the hands Martha say, Octoroon gone soon, no matter Tildy with one arm slow again, so post octoroon myself Tie to post all day Weather dry, wind low for boat in Send Son down with 1 horse, 2 hands (Herold and Vack) Letter come on boat with prices of wood, send notice of sale out with boat

  ’33 Apr 8

  Next boat in, bring Martha’s fabric and payment from N Boat out take back mutineers to capital for sale—Mort, Divvy the oct, Tildy with one arm Tildy belly swole ’gain—lose her new little but send anyway, raise sale Take Vack with down to harbor, transport fabric back to house for Martha Vack stand too long looking at boat sail out Have to get going with stick All other male hands weed new cotton field ’cept 2 at stable Amount weeding typical this time of year