Cynthia laughs out loud. “And make a good woman outta me, Nate?” She throws her washrag in the basin. “Take me away from my kingdom?”
She squats above her chair, smacks the wet rag between her legs, and swishes it around her privates, then stands up and sprays a burst of perfume there, too. She slides her frilly britches over her hips.
He puts his hands back on her shoulders.
“Come on, Nate. I got a headache and another customer. Just pay me and go.”
“I’m serious,” he say.
She clears the snot from her throat, hocks it in her rag, and throws it back in the basin, then falls back in her chair and takes a fancy silver box off the table. She pulls out a cigarette. “You still here?”
He grabs his hat and coat from off the dresser. Hiding under ’em is a bunch of yellow flowers. She smiles. “You gettin soft on me, Nate.”
“I know you like yella,” he say. “I could bring you flowers every day, if you let me. Be the man you want me to be.” He crouches on one knee, holds the flowers out to her. She lets him rub her thigh. He say, “I love you. You know that. I could look after you. You could stop what you’re doing here and just be mine.”
Her expression softens.
“Hell,” he say. “I’d even look after your bastard. Every boy needs a daddy.”
She stiffens, lights her cigarette, sucks it started, and blows the smoke over his flowers, say, “I’m allergic to little dicks and spare change. So like I said nice before, get the fuck out.”
His fistful of flowers slam across her chin and her hair spreads across her face. Yellow petals twirl across the room and blood rises from her split lip.
He say, “I . . . I try to do s-something nice for you. Look what you m-made me do.”
She don’t look at him.
“Just leave my money on the dresser,” she say, her voice crackling. She picks up a glass of water and drinks. Blood rushes in.
The door slams when he go. It makes me jump but Cynthia don’t. She keep puffing on her cigarette, then eases down in her chair and lets her legs gap open like a man. The strap of her gown slides off her shoulders, flashing bruises on her back. I ain’t never seen a white woman with bruises like that.
Between her puffs, she spits out bits of blood from her lip, sprinkling her gown with dots of red. She wipes her mouth with the back of her arm, leaving a streak. It makes me scared for her.
“Don’t look at me like you better than me,” she say.
I close my eyes fast.
I can hear her turn her chair around to me.
“I’ve been keeping these dogs off your ass for twelve days.”
I ain’t never heard a woman talk like that.
“What brings you to Conyers, girl?”
I don’t answer. Keep my eyes closed.
“Then let’s start easy. . . . What’s your name?”
I open my eyes. Don’t say a word.
“How about my name is, ‘Thank You For Saving My Black Ass.’ Yeah, that’s a good name.”
She puffs on her stick again, glares at me, throws her feet up on the bed, slides back in her chair.
“Albert found you in the woods thirteen nights ago. Thought you was a wild pig, grunting and groaning so. Nearly stabbed you dead. Felt sorry for you since you busted your head wide open. Caught yourself an infection. Lucky for you, it was nothin I hadn’t seen before.”
Must be a nurse.
She exhales a line of smoke. “What was you doin out in them woods anyway? Ain’t no town closer than forty miles. . . . What? Was you runnin north?”
I don’t look at her.
“You people always tryin to run north like y’all ain’t niggas up there, too.”
I don’t want to talk.
She throws my Bible, spinning it toward me, I catch it with my strong hand.
“Only thing you had on you ’sides this fire poker.” She picks it up from next to the mirror, sucks on her cigarette. Smoke seeps out her nose. “No money, no papers. Like to have thrown you back. Where you from?”
It don’t matter. I cain’t never go back but when I get my strength, I’m gon’ leave here, too. So I ain’t got to listen to her. I press my Bible against my chest real hard, close my eyes real hard and start praying cause Hazel told me that God can understand me even if I cain’t talk.
“Ain’t gon’ do you no good,” Cynthia say. “The gods are dead. There’s only us.”
My ears pop open for the first time and sound rushes in, forcing me to sit up and pay attention. I can hear knockin all around me, behind these walls. I didn’t hear it before, didn’t feel it, smell it—the liquor, the perfume, sweat, reminding me of the times when Massa made Momma dress up and smile.
“This is my house,” Cynthia say. “God don’t own a half cent in my dime.” She blows a funnel of white in the air.
I push myself against the wall ’cause I know God put me in hell. She laughs at me with bloody teeth, the taste of it turns her ’round to the mirror and she leans into her reflection, rolling her lip over and stares at the cut. She licks off what’s left of the blood, then pushes her cigarette back in.
She stares at me through the mirror. “So you a runaway?”
I don’t say nothin.
“Hell, girl. We all slaves to somethin.” She turns herself to me.
I press myself straight against the wall, the furthest I could go without breaking through. She say, “I tell you what . . . runaway or not. You gon’ need to earn your keep.”
My body gets tight cause she gon’ force me.
She reaches under her bed and throws a white sheet at me. A dress. Long and plain. “Here, you wear this.”
I ain’t gon’ be Momma for her. Momma died so Hazel didn’t have to be her, neither.
In one quick move, she grabs my poker from against the wall and shoves it far behind the dresser and relaxes back in her chair. She say, “That dress is the only thing I got decent. Wore it at my momma’s funeral. It’s clean. Mop and pail’s in the closet down the hall. You gon’ be cleaning up after us.”
I wasn’t expecting her to say that.
“I might get used to you,” she say. “Keep things interesting around here. And don’t you mistake it for kindness, cause when losing people get angry, they first turn on the kindest hand. You a loser?”
I shake my head.
“Good. Letting you stay here is no more than my good fortune of finding a slave for nothing. My pappy used to say, ‘everythang cost somethin.’ But you ain’t gon’ cost me, are you?”
I costed Momma.
Costed Hazel.
She grabs my arm and yanks me to her. “Law say, I should send you back where you came from. But I tell you the truth? . . . You steal from me . . . or run, I kill ya on sight.”
7 / 1855
Tallassee, Alabama
LIFE CAIN’T BE taken for granted. ’Cause in the end it’ll leave you with the worst kind of wanting. Like being desperate for something that came and went an hour ago.
That day, the word would rise and stretch and breathe sweetness from her mouth like warming dough. Then it would sink back down into her throat, undone. Just one and a half years old and Josey wasn’t ready to speak her second word. Her first was “yes.”
She’d fallen down that day, scraped her knees and elbows, had hit her head and started growing a knot in that place. When I got to her, I hung over her, listening and praying while she oozed blood and cried. I wanted to hold her, to kiss her where it hurt. And that moment is when the word fully formed in her mouth and she spoke it out loud. That m-word, that mmmm, that rounding, that calling to me, that kneading, wanting me to heal her bruising things, smear her tears away and cool her knots ’til they were all better. But this word wasn’t served to me.
It was Annie Graham who came running. It was Annie who lifted her from the ground. And rocked her pain away. And I could have died again in those moments, quaking from this side of living. Wanted to steal it from Annie, take back wha
t was mine, give back the name I died with—birth mother—trade it for plain Momma. But the choice had already been made for me. When they took my life, they took everything.
I’ve found peace in these years just watching and listening. I’ve swallowed the separation and been floating through this plantation, watching everybody, waiting, and hopeful that my baby’s death far in the future won’t be our first chance at reunion.
Truth is, I hadn’t always intended to stay.
I meant to leave that first night I was killed, wanted to go and find my own Momma since we was both dead. Had said my good-bye to living but it’s hard to leave when the person you saying bye to is still talking back. My baby was my hesitation.
There were things I still needed to tell her.
That she’s beautiful. That she’s loved. That there’s a God who loves her.
That there’s me.
But I cain’t tell Josey none of that now. All I have is this.
It was her cry the night I died that got my attention. Not the smell of gunpowder in the air or the bitter taste in my own mouth. I was still near the place that I died when I heard her. Could see my blood on a broken branch. The moon was still full and merciful. I was on my way to find Momma. I needed to tell her I was sorry. Tell her I shoulda loved her better in the living. I was wrong to want her to be somebody else. Wanted her to be like them other mommas who were thanking God every day that her babies weren’t sold and were kissing their fat cheeks. I wanted Momma to show me love that way, sloppy wet. I didn’t understand life then. What it meant to be wrung dry. But I never found Momma.
The crying found me first.
I followed it through the woods into a warm and humid space. A scattering of footsteps overtook me. It was a white man carrying my baby and she was crying out for me. The man was Bobby Lee, escaped from his cousins on the promise he’d turn my baby into a profit.
Instead, he went to Annie’s with her.
AFTER THE FIRST few weeks, I thought I’d leave Josey’s side when I knew she was safe. Then I decided I’d leave after I saw her lift her head for the first time. Then, after she’d rolled over, then babbled, then walked, then ran. Then when. Then when. Then when.
Then, it got easy to stay.
And Josey’s my reason.
Since daybreak, I been watching the sun shine on her seven-year-old body. Watched its light climb high to heaven, then pour itself over acres of green like spilling lemonade rushing to the floor. It drenched white plantation houses and seeped through trees and through me, splashed down on rows of chalky brown slave shacks, soaking through all of Tallassee, Alabama, and over the brown skins already busy in the fields. Bent over like broken stems, slaves are picking and washing and cleaning, chanting a melody of low tones and sopranos, a harmony set to the drums of palms, clapping. This is how I wait every day. Up in these trees watching the cool lips of morning kiss everything and start new.
This morning, the laughter of young children erased the echo of the bullet that took me. But trees don’t lie so the hole’s still there. My blood on its branches, long dried. Negro children are running past it, a group at a time, escaped from their fields, crunching leafs, swishing ground, and blending earth and the past together. The wind of ’em pass by me, their shapes come in glimpses and blurs—two boys, three girls, four boys, two girls, all of ’em seven-year-olds, all slaves, but the feel of ’em is free.
And there’s my Josey. Happy. Happy ’cause God gives all children laughter. A time for happiness. To be joyful. A time before they learn who they are and what it means to the world—a woman, a slave, black.
What you’ve missed of her life so far only matters to me.
Not you.
Not yet.
“Nobody likes to listen intently about somebody else’s child,” Massa Hilden said to Momma about his sister’s new baby. “Nobody care. Not unless it fucked up or it’s dead.”
Maybe Massa’s right. Not about the harm but the gist.
JOSEY TALKS IN her head sometimes. She pretends to be a boy sometimes, too. She once stood above the pissing pot, holding a short stick at her belly button, and just let her bladder go. It got all down her leg and around her thigh, stopped herself mid-flow to clean up after what girls ain’t supposed to do—stand.
Being a woman means always having to bend at the knees even for the simplest relief.
So she ain’t a bad girl. Just different, is all.
She don’t curse but she spit. Digs for bugs but not boogers. She make knives and doll babies, wear trousers under her dress. Considers things most girls wouldn’t. And certainly not at seven.
Even her singing voice is manly. She’ll puff out her chest and hit low notes like an old black man. She’s out in the field now singing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” Notes as slow and as deep as she can manage. Her “chariot” sounds like “cherry-uh-uht.”
“Josey, please!” Ada Mae say, plucking the cotton from her ears. “Ain’t enough cotton in da world to keep dat dyin dog noise out dees ears.” Josey grins through her blonde strands and opens her mouth to start again, trying not to laugh or run out of breath before she gets the whole verse out.
I used to think she could see me.
I thought the both of ’em could.
Turns out Josey was just recalling the things her daddy had told her in the day and would repeat aloud like she was talking to somebody: “Read my lips,” she’d say. “No.” And, “Didn’t I say no?” And, “No means no.”
I was always near Josey then. Just a step away in her daytimes, and in her nights I’d be standing next to her bed, watchful. Waiting. Now I keep to the trees where I stay, mostly. Back in the corner of her room at night.
“Where’d you learn that horrible song,” Ada Mae say.
“This song? Swing looooooow. Sah-weet, chariot-ut . . .”
Josey chases Ada Mae, sucks in big breaths as she go, sending the air back out in song. They slip-slide on slick purple leafs and around a berry bush, scraping thin lines on their legs and arms from thorns. Ada Mae escapes in a twirl around a tree trunk. Her dress gathers between her legs from speed.
“Stop it, Josey! Promise me you gon’ quit it or I tell you the truth, I’ll leave you here and let the Witch of the Woods get you.”
“These are my woods,” Josey say. “Cain’t nobody find me here if I don’t want ’em to. And if you leave me here, you’ll be here by yourself. Honest, Ada Mae . . . who would carry you but me?”
Josey’s laughter becomes hard coughs. “All these negro children out here alone, about to get ate up,” she say, coughing through it. “But you safe, Ada Mae. The witch would need a big ole mouth to eat you.”
“Well, she ain’t gon’ eat you, neither. You ain’t a negro.”
“I’m black just like you!” she say. “Just not so colored, is all.”
“Fine!” Ada Mae say.
“I’m negro, too!”
Josey’s cough becomes barking. She squats where she is, hard-breathing like she just finished a long race. She closes her eyes and slowly lets air in and out of her throat. Swallows a few times. A whistle joins her exhale. I know these signs.
“You a’right?” Ada Mae say. “Need some water?”
Josey grabs her chest, clawing at it to squeeze a bit of air. Ada Mae pats Josey hard on the back, and each swat brings a short whistle. “You need some water?”
Josey’s eyes redden with strain. She fixes ’em on Ada Mae and they roll back behind her closing lids. “I’ll get Charles!” Ada Mae say, scared now.
But Josey grabs her arm, stops her, mumbles raspy words in a whisper. “Stay. Please.”
Ada Mae sits and holds Josey’s hand, wipes the sweat from her cheeks, hoping that Josey’s panting will fade.
But her whistles rise. “One day,” Josey say, “I’m gon’ marry me a black man . . . dark as blue. . . . Then there ain’t gon’ be no mistakin who I am.”
A whistle.
A whistle.
A whistle.
Conyers, Georgia, 1846
LAST NIGHT I took off running in the dark, escaping Cynthia.
HER CUSTOMERS LURK in dark corners here like shadows, except the whites of their eyes show and move when I move. Their voices call to me in whispers, hissing, one at a time and all together, “Hey! Pss . . . Gal. Come ’ere.” I made the mistake of turning toward the sound last night and saw a man with his trousers down, his hand at his crotch, rubbing and tugging there. That’s when I stole some shoes and ran. A month here’s been long enough.
I had my Bible and Hazel’s poker with me. Found the poker behind Cynthia’s dresser before I left to follow the North Star to Boston where negroes belong to themselves.
I started running from ’round back of this brothel where Cynthia never go, then on the road past Albert’s blacksmith shop. It was glowing orange from the furnace inside. The color traced every gap of the building. Grit from the road rolled under my soles and wet grass lapped my ankles. I was only five steps into the field when a sharp pain shot to my head and forced me to stop.
Blood shot out my nose in rhythm with my heartbeats. I pinched it and spat out what trickled in my throat, then staggered my final steps. I looked to the sky trying to find my North Star but there were so many. Their pinpricks of light grew to suns, blinding and burning. The world spun around me: Albert’s shop . . . black space . . . Albert’s shop . . . black space. I fell to my knees, needing to throw up. It was the last thing I remember.
I woke up late last night and found myself back at this brothel, laid out on the front steps with Cynthia’s foot in my ribs. “What’s wrong wit’cha?” she said, shaking me awake. “Still cain’t talk?”
She kicked my shoes off and said, “Next time you choose whose shoes to steal, don’t let it be Bernadette’s. She got the foot fungus.”
THIS MORNING, CYNTHIA woke me up before daybreak shouting, “If you well enough to go outside in the middle of the damn night, you well enough to cook breakfast.”
So I got up.
A line of blood had dried and cracked between my nose and top lip. She threw a wet rag at me, said, “And I don’t like the way you been taking certain liberties around this place. From now on, you keep to the side yard. And only in the day.” So that’s what I been doing since breakfast.
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