Grace

by Natashia Deon

  I keep to this patch of garden at the side of the house, and from here I can see most of everything east. And since we the last establishment on the east end, we must be double east. The rest of town is built west where I cain’t see. But I got these rolling hills to look at and that empty green field across the road where Albert’s workshop is.

  Cynthia used to let me walk far back as the barn where I could get my tools. Now she keep my tools upside the house. Won’t even let me go to the shed across the road ’cause she cain’t see me good over there.

  She watch me through her side window, always makes sure I’m working. But I don’t mind. I love this garden. It gives me a reason to come outside and breathe. Cain’t let her know that, though.

  She’s watching me now so I gotta look busy. I bend over the garden with my hand on my back, pretending it hurt. I touch my knees like they sore, squint my eyes closed, hem and haw out loud so she can hear me miserable.

  She still watching.

  I’m still gon’ leave here and go north. But I got to get better first. Get all the way healed.

  It ain’t been all bad here. I cook sometimes and clean for all the nice ladies and Sam, too. Sam’s the bartender. He always looks clean even though he got hair on his face—a beard trimmed short and square around his mouth. He keeps it closed most of the time—his mouth—only listening to customers tell him the same stories he’s heard a thousand times. Sam nods anyway, pretends it’s new, lets ’em keep him company while he wipes the insides of glasses and along his countertops, ready to ask the next would-be talker, “What can I git cha?”

  Cynthia likes Sam ’cause he don’t talk much. Maybe that’s why she don’t mind me, don’t wanna hear too much lip from nobody and I don’t talk.

  I look to the window, slow. Cynthia’s laughing at somebody but ain’t looking this way.

  She owns this brothel.

  Said she bought it with family money. I ain’t seen none of her family, though. Not even a husband. She told one of the girls that she too old for marrying, be thirty again next year. But that don’t keep men from asking for her hand ’cause she’s mostly pretty like my sister Hazel was. And if Hazel were here, she’d tell me she loves me, tell me she scared for me, tell me wait before I try running away again ’cause I coulda died last night.

  I hear Cynthia’s voice loud behind the window. Her chair’s scooting like a duck honk across the floor. I sneak my eyes over to the window again.

  She gone.

  I put my hand on my back, lean back and forth trying to crack it and search that window while I do, just to make sure she gone. I hear my name gettin shouted. Again and again, “Naomi! Naomi!”

  I run to the house, through the side door, toward Cynthia’s call. I find her after going to two other rooms first. She in Bernadette’s room, the old washroom. Sam followed me in.

  Bernadette is screaming crazy in the corner and Cynthia’s trying to hold her down, talk to her. A man, a customer, is standing next to both of ’em with no shirt on.

  “Didn’t you hear me call you!” Cynthia say to me. “Get me some towels.”

  I go to the cupboard inside the room, can see Bernadette shaking now. She got throw-up on the front of her dress and in her brown hair. She ain’t much older than me. Cynthia found her at the train station with no money, no food. Been here two months working but she cain’t stand no man touching her if she ain’t had her medicine. Cynthia make it for her by mixing coca leaves in a shot of whiskey. Said Bernadette cain’t live without it. It’s the only thing that stops her from rubbing her arms and from being afraid of the dark, and men, and makes her yes come easier.

  “What’d you do to her, Jessup!” Cynthia asks that man.

  “I swear I ain’t touched her, Cynthia. I took my shirt off and she started screaming hysterical. I swear it!”

  “I told you she wasn’t ready to come off it,” she tell Sam.

  I hand her the towels.

  “Damn if I don’t have to go back to that apothecary every month for you.”

  Cynthia wipes Bernadette’s face. Her hair. Bernadette whispers something.

  “I’m sorry,” is what I think she said.

  “Oh, you will get off it!” Cynthia say. “This ain’t a drug den and you ain’t staying here free. Sam, watch her ’til I get back.”

  Cynthia gets up and starts past me through the door. She stops. “And you don’t go nowhere but upside this house working ’til I’m back. You hear me?”

  “Yes’m,” I say.

  THIS MY GARDEN.

  My piece of life.

  When I’m in, I feel like it belongs to me.

  That’s how I pretend. How I know I belong someplace. ’Cause one day, we’ll all be dirt again.

  I fill my apron with all my vegetables. Two sweet potatoes. An onion. I don’t move when a shadow slides across the ground in front of me. I’ve learned to ignore the fools who taunt me here—name calling, cursing, and those that hide in dark corners.

  I hold tight to the sides of my pregnant apron, close my eyes.

  He touches my shoulder.

  I still don’t move. I hear his footsteps come around in front of me. Just Johnny. The eight-year-old boy that Cynthia dance with. Her son. He squats down beside me with his hands on his knees. Got painted clay marbles peeking between his knuckles like dry fish eyes.

  Sunlight floods his red hair and bursts an orange halo around his head while joined-together freckles start a stripe of brown across the center of his face, exploding in specks of auburn and sticking to all the white skin I can see. Even his bare feet are singed.

  He picks up my sweet potato, flashing three of his knuckles, all of ’em got picked-off scabs. He puts the vegetable in my hand.

  I don’t know what to say.

  I hold my throat, show him I cain’t talk to thank him, nod my head instead.

  He rubs his tired eyes. The bags underneath ’em are purple and black. Like he ain’t slept in days. Cat naps is all he get and when he’s behind the bar asleep on the floor, he’ll shoot straight up awake sometimes, probably reliving his daytimes in his nightmares—because daytimes is when most the men come for his momma. Men, he cain’t stop.

  I saw him attack a grown man once.

  I came in from fetching eggs; started my day in darkness and found him waiting like a cowboy at high noon. He had readied hisself for the man to come out his momma’s bedroom, had his painted clay marbles between his knuckles then, too. He caught me watching him so I smiled. He turned away from me, focused.

  I hid myself behind Bernadette’s door. From there, I watched the boy watch the man through the crack of his momma’s door. Her noise-making wasn’t motherly. Only the parlor music that spilled in the hall offered relief.

  But when Man finished his pleasure inside Cynthia, Man held her the way she holds Johnny at night. So when Man walked out, Johnny beat him around the waist with both fists, caught one in Man’s crotch. Man twisted Johnny’s arms behind him. Told Cynthia, control your son, said, have a nice day.

  Happened so fast, Cynthia didn’t do nothin.

  Johnny lets men walk by now.

  He watches ’em go in her door one way, buckling their belts on the way out. They step over him in the doorway like he ain’t a boy wanting his momma.

  We all hear her good reasons through our thin walls and empty hallways. She yell, she got bills to pay, his mouth to feed, clothes and shelter Johnny needs.

  We only grumble. Go back to our own hard days and hard nights. I tend to my swollen and parched brown ankles—be on my feet all day—got to shut up the voices in my head telling me to leave this place and go north. But Johnny, he’s tracking years, thinking of the future, wanting his momma’s touches, remembering the present as if it’s time already gone.

  So sometimes, he’ll hang on her arm when a customer comes, wanting her to touch him, even if it’s to push him away.

  Sometimes, he’ll kick and scream ’til she picks him up—an accident hug—before she
sets him at the end of the hallway.

  Sometimes, when she in the middle of doing her business, he’ll walk in on her. Stand next to her. Asking for water.

  “YOU CAN HAVE it if you want,” I tell him. It’s the first time I’ve spoke since I got here. “The sweet potato,” I say. I speak because I know what it’s like to wait behind walls the way he do, to listen to a mother’s music. But I had Hazel. He ain’t got nobody.

  He smiles. He don’t talk, neither. Maybe he a real mute.

  “You don’t go tellin nobody I got a voice, you hear me?”

  He laughs like a old man, in hoarse shrills.

  “What’s funny?” I say. He fixes his happy face on me and his expression reminds me of those times I seen him dance with his momma. Dance ’cause they both hurting. Dance ’cause she save her sinless moves for him.

  He shrieks again and the sound makes me laugh the loudest I have since I been here. And it feels good, too.

  Our laughter is the only thing we own.

  9 / 1855

  Tallassee, Alabama

  AFTER THE VAPORS got Josey, Charles brought her here to the Graham house where she been resting. Got hisself sent home to wait ’cause he was pacing too loud and Missus Graham don’t like to be near him long on account of his burn scars. Some people get nervous around bodies that move or look different, deformed or retarded. She’s one of them. But I ain’t leaving. Been passing time rushing ’round this big house and through its downstairs corridors, along dustless floors and hand-carved finishings. Been in the grand ballroom twice, along its papered walls and white moldings, and up to the ceiling where clear crystals hang.

  I settle in this darkened hallway. Useless pretty furniture line the path to the room where Josey is. I go through its closed double door. The sun through the window casts a yellow mist of color, tinting everything. There’s a stillness here. A quiet. This sound of nothing strikes me like deafness.

  There’s a chaos here, too. The way things been put together wrong. Like across the room, there’s a statue of a naked baby angel on a white column and its base teeters on the thick edge of an African rug colored a mess of orange and red and green patterns. Above the fireplace, a gold frame holds prisoner the likenesses of a sad white woman and sad white man dressed in black. And next to it, muted green curtains climb the heights of two tall windows. Between ’em is a redwood bed shaped like a dead horse on its back. Mosquito netting swoops down from where the hooves would be and touches the floor.

  A tapping near the window brings the sound back to the room.

  Missus Annie Graham patters her foot below the hem of her blue satin gown making the fabric bounce and the light reflect off of its sewn-on silver flakes, spitting sparkle. The flakes follow the dress’s neckline and make a trail down her shoulder and her crossed arms, where the white dots of light cast freckles on her angry face. Annie looks broken and old even though she ain’t more than twenty-nine.

  “Bessie,” Annie calls to a dark-skinned field negro she’s trying to train to be light. Light, ’cause most housework’s done by the offspring of the raped: mixed-raced and birthed out of broken wombs. “Bessie,” Annie say again, this time with her voice raised. She steps in front of Bessie and puts her hand near Bessie’s neck. The touching makes Bessie shiver like a wet dog, drenched—a common condition for older slaves that Annie buys new. They must have never been shown mercy.

  “How many times must I tell you?” Annie say. “Your collar needs to be pressed down. The ends are intended to remain straight throughout the day. Properly ironed and cared for. Not curled up in this fashion.”

  “Yes’m, Missus Annie.” Bessie starts crying.

  “There’s a particular way to do everything. A right way,” Annie say. “Do you understand me?”

  “Yes’m.”

  “Why are you crying?” Annie say, stepping away. “Am I harsh in my instruction?”

  Bessie puts her head down, shakes it slowly, “No, ma’am.”

  “When you do it right the first time, there’s never a need to cry. Never a regret. It’s either right or it’s wrong. The sooner you learn that, the better. This will be what’s required of you if you are to remain in this household. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes’m, Miss Annie.”

  Annie snaps a loose thread from the second buttonhole of Bessie’s blouse. “Everything in its right order.” She puts the string in Bessie’s hand. “Discard it properly,” she tells her.

  “Yes’m.”

  “And I don’t mean for you to drop it along the way.”

  “Yes’m, Miss Annie.”

  Next to the bed, water trickles into a basin as a light-skinned slave twists a wet rag in it. When the rag stops dripping, she slides away the mosquito netting that surrounds the bed and lays the rag on Josey’s forehead. Her body is drowned in covers, her head sunk into the pillow. Only the tip of her nose and her cracked pink lips show. She breathes lightly.

  A lanky old white man, a doctor, sits down on the bed next to us and puts his big head on Josey’s chest, listening. He sits up and puts his fingertips on the center of her ribcage, massaging around in little circles. He say, “It’s not my intention to call to question your methods, Missus Graham, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that it is highly irregular for this child to be in this house.”

  “Is her chest clear?” Annie say.

  He lowers his head back down and listens just as Bessie comes back through the door carrying a cup of black coffee. “Place it there,” Annie tells her, and Bessie sets it next to the basin.

  Annie say, “Have you met Bessie, Doctor? She was trained by Mrs. Durand herself. Her coffee would stand against all challengers in these parts. Tea, especially.”

  “Training is one thing, Annie. But this gal in the bed . . .”

  “She is my property, Doctor. I’ll do what’s best to see she’s cared for.”

  “I urge you not to be so giving. This room . . . your good coffee. If Richard were here . . .”

  “Bessie, try to wake her,” Annie say. “Have her drink the coffee. It’ll loosen her chest.”

  “Yes’m,” Bessie say.

  Bessie puts her hand behind Josey’s head to lift her up to sitting, waking her for coffee. Josey takes a few sleepy swallows.

  “I . . . I found that girl, Ada Mae,” Bessie say to Annie. “She was peeking through the window downstairs. I thought you might want to have a word so I . . . She’s in the hall . . .”

  “You brought her in here?” Annie say, meeting eyes with the doctor. Doctor folds his arms like he told her so. “Where is she now?”

  Ada Mae comes through the door slow and with her clothes still stained with berry juice and dirt from playing earlier. She stutters, “I . . . I was just comin ’round for Josey. See how she was. She got the vapors when we was playin and . . . I ain’t too sure how it started. Could be the berries or could be . . .”

  “Do you think it’s acceptable to come in my house dirty?” Annie say, her voice rising. “Like some naked African fresh off the boat. Some kind of vile creature,” she yell. “Answer me!”

  “No no, Missus Graham.”

  “Then why have you insisted on bringing your filth into my house? Get out! And the next time you try to kill another one of my slaves, I’ll have you and your momma strung up like runaways. You hear me?”

  Doctor seems pleased.

  “Yes’m,” Ada Mae say, trembling.

  “Well go!”

  The wind of Ada Mae’s sprint makes the door yawn and Josey comes wide-awake. Annie leans over Josey’s bed. “And you. If I have to spend another dime to treat your carelessness, I’ll sell you off!”

  “Yes’m,” Josey say, breathy.

  From the other side of the doorway, hands clap together, loud and slow. “Bravo,” a man’s voice say before his muddy black boots stomps across the threshold shaking brown chunks to the floor. Newly growed to manhood, about eighteen, George is two feet taller than he was the last time I saw him but he stil
l small—the same size as Annie is now. “Brilliant,” he slurs, drunk. “Wonde’ful.”

  “Bessie, come and clean this up,” Annie say, pointing to the mud.

  “Was that little performance for the doctor’s sake, or yours?” George say. “It was . . . quite amusing.” He burps, then covers his mouth, dainty and polite-like, making hisself chuckle. He steps out of his boots, front ways, over the tongue of ’em, kicks ’em back into the hallway with his heels, then staggers toward Annie in his stocking feet, swaying from side to side.

  “George, this isn’t the time,” Annie say.

  He grabs her around the waist and lifts her up, grunting as he do. She stiffens in his skinny arms, her pretty puffed dress crushed to a wilted flower. “That’s enough,” she say, shoving her forearms in his chest. He holds on to her anyway, pulls her closer.

  “I can’t show my big sister how happy I am to see her? Been back three days and you haven’t even hugged my neck yet.” He swishes his sweaty hair in her chest, laughing, while the sweet funk of alcohol rises off of him.

  “I told you to stay out of the cordial,” Annie say.

  “Always telling me what to do,” he say and drops her directly. He reaches in his coat pocket for a metal flask, undoes the lid and swallows a few gulps of something strong before teasing the flask under her nose. “It’ll sweeten your disposition.”

  “Doctor,” Annie say, clasping her hands in front of herself. “Wouldn’t you like to use the washroom? Down the hall. Last door on the right.” She waits for Doctor to understand that her question wasn’t a question and when he finally do, he nods before he go.

  George strolls around the room, drunk-grinning, pretending to ponder the sad people on the wall. “When’s your husband supposed to be back?” That’s the third time he’s asked about Richard in as many days.

  Richard’s been gone for years and with no word to Annie on when he plans to come home. George has known the fact since the first time he asked, but annoys Annie with the question anyway.