Grace

by Natashia Deon

  “Bessie, come and help me fold these clothes,” Annie say, reaching for her basket of folding.

  Annie shoves a blouse into Bessie’s hand and takes a pair of bloomers for herself to fold.

  George twists his flask open again but before he sips, he stops and squeezes out gas from his backside. A shame, really. George used to be a pretty boy. Striking, even. And polite. The sight of him—dark-haired with eyes the color of purplish stones—used to be enough to stop me from doing my rounds through this property. I’d stop just to stare at him.

  He was twelve years old when I first took notice. It was the year after I first come. He had an odd beauty about him, his features verging on manhood, even at that age. He was slim like a boy, and poised like a young man, but his Adam’s apple was pronounced like full-grown, his lips a dark-pink rose. Girls had noticed him before he’d noticed himself. At twelve, his focus was still on building forts and wooden trinkets. Inventions, he called ’em, and his imagination took him everywhere he needed to be, gave him a place to escape.

  Josey coughs from the bed, hard and will-less, the bout sending coffee through her nose and out her mouth. Annie tells Bessie, “Give her a cloth and a little more coffee. Slower this time.”

  George takes a sip from his flask, then strolls around to the bed, sits down on it, falls back like it’s his, stares up at Josey. “Goddamn, they’re looking more and more like us every day. Pretty soon we’ll all be coons.”

  “Off the bed,” Annie says.

  “Me, off the bed,” George laughs. “What in the hell will your husband say when he finds out you’ve been having niggers in the guest bed?”

  “What I do in my house is nobody’s business,” Annie say.

  “Hell,” he say, getting up. “If you like it, I love it. Just keep it out of my room.” He takes a mouthful of drink and squints from the burn.

  “I heard about what happened in Montgomery,” Annie say, folding a pair of britches.

  George’s manner changes. He slowly puts the lid back on his flask and slides it in his pocket. He walks back to the sad people like he ain’t seen the painting before. “Is that right?” he say.

  “I know what the authorities said . . . ,” Annie say.

  “All I did was give the girl a toy.”

  “You were the last one to be seen with her.”

  “Prove it,” he say, leaning back against the wall. “You believe ’em?”

  “Doesn’t matter what I believe. No one is asking anymore and that other girl, the Humphrey girl from up the road, moved away years ago.”

  “That wasn’t true, neither. Children will say anything.”

  “She was five years old, George!”

  “More reason for her to lie. Play make-believe. Children will say anything.” He pushes hisself off the wall. “I’m beginning to believe you’d trust strangers before your own brother.”

  “I never said I believed them.”

  “Is that why you sent me away?”

  “That school was good for you,” Annie say. “Besides, it wasn’t me who sent you.”

  “You didn’t stop it either . . .”

  “Our parents knew what was best for you.”

  “They’re dead,” he said. “But I’m still here, Annie.”

  “That school was supposed to make you . . .”

  “Distant?”

  “Happy.”

  “You used to hate that place as much as I did, Annie. You used to say it kept us apart. Best friends, remember? Then you let your husband send me there again.”

  “University is not the same. That was a privilege. You could have come home anytime.”

  “That’s funny.”

  “Before then, you were a child. You needed something we couldn’t give you. It helped you to mature . . .”

  “You stopped writing—”

  “To become a man.”

  “Never an explanation why.”

  She shakes a pair of trousers from the basket. “I’m happy you’re home now. That’s all that matters.”

  “That’s all? You mean, that’s all for you. You didn’t have to go through it. That’s all. Telling me that I need to move on, that’s all.” His face reddens and his cheeks quiver. “Eight years, Annie! Three weeks it took for me to get the news that Mother and Father died.”

  “They were my parents, too!”

  “And you didn’t send for me . . .”

  “You’d only been there a few months. With everything that had just happened to you, your state . . . I didn’t know what it’d do to you. It was the best decision . . .”

  He rips the trousers from her hand. “What happened to you?”

  She closes her eyes. “I wanted to protect you. You weren’t ready. You needed to mature. Children have to grow up sometime, George. That’s what they do.”

  “I suppose I didn’t do that right, either.” He flicks the trousers to the floor.

  The doctor knocks on the door, opening it at the same time as he knocks. He walks in and leans over Josey, laying his head on her chest, listening. “Her vapors have gone.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Annie say.

  He gathers his tools.

  “And, Annie?” Doctor say. “You should reconsider your position on the matter. These negroes have no place in the house like this.”

  10 / FLASH

  Conyers, Georgia, 1847

  FOR THE BETTER part of this week, me and Johnny been shooting marbles. We mostly play in secret and only after my chores is done. Mostly. Johnny’s good at keeping secrets.

  His momma’s been spending more and more time running to that store for Bernadette’s medicine and been rough-sketching something she wants Albert to build under her house. She been gone for most of the day already so Johnny drew a circle in the dirt hours ago. We just dropped our marbles in. All but one of our little ones and a big one. Two each.

  The big one is called our shooter. I painted mine blue and it got three stick people on it, holding hands—me and Hazel and Momma. But it mostly look like a spider.

  Johnny’s shooter got all sorts of colors—blue and black and white and tan. He used all the pots of color Cynthia gave him to do it. I think his is pretty.

  I drop my shooter outside the circle and lay my body down in front of it, my flat chest in the dirt. I put my thumb behind it, close one eye to make sure it’s all lined up. My breaths make the dust putter.

  Johnny snatches my shooter, laughing.

  “You cheatin’!” I say. “I was about to shoot.”

  He holds out his hand, teasing me with my own marble, and closes it before I get it. So I wrestle him for it, both us laughing. I twist his arm and shake it from his limp hand. He lifts his chin toward the barn and smiles.

  “What?” I say. “Your momma kill me if I go out that far. And if you keep going out to that barn after she told you not to, she gon’ kill you, too.”

  He raises his brows, daring me.

  I admit, the risk-taking makes me want to go. It feels like freedom. Reminds me of Hazel and our dusk runs.

  I take off with Johnny. Close my eyes and pretend I’m back with Momma and Hazel, pretend that Johnny’s one of Momma’s gave-away babies here to let me be a big sister one time.

  I let the grass brush under my feet, the cool air swish over me, half-waiting for Cynthia’s voice to yell me back to my place and keep me from this stole happiness.

  The barn meets us.

  Its tall front doors are dark-brown masses, three times my height, streaked black and wet. They gap open wide enough for us to slide through sideways without touching.

  We hold hands and shuffle our feet through the hay spread on the ground, then around a column, past another, ’til Johnny stops us near the back of the barn where there’s a broken baling machine. Wood planks lay atop two hay bales there like a roof. He lifts the planks.

  Four yellow puppies are trembling inside. The runt ain’t moving much, though. That’s the one Johnny picks up and holds to his chest. Johnn
y smiles and nods for me to pick one up, too, but I shake my head. I ain’t got nothin to give it. “Where’s the momma?” I say. He raises his shoulders, rubs the sickly one again. It moves for him.

  “You probably shouldn’t get attached to that one. It don’t look well.”

  He turns his back to me, presses the puppy into the crook of his neck, and kneels down to a pail of milk ready for churning. He takes a cloth from his pocket and dips it in the milk, then holds it to the pup’s mouth. Squeezes.

  “Johnny, you steal this milk?”

  He don’t hear me.

  “Johnny?”

  Cynthia’s voice rumbles from up the road. She loud-talking, yelling to somebody. “We in trouble now!”

  Johnny puts the pup in his shirt and points ahead to a open place in the barn wall and waves for me to follow him. We climb through the space, then run across the field, keeping low to the ground. My legs move as fast as they can go, leaving Johnny behind. I wait ’round the side of the brothel house, can hear the clinks of glass from Sam serving, so I take my chance and run toward the center of the garden, my head held back, my fringe bangs flying straight up in the air. I dive, sliding to a stop, pretend I been here all along, looking at something in the dirt. My knees are scraped and burning but I stay cross-eyed, focused on a clover, waiting for Cynthia to see me.

  Instead, I hear her on the porch talking to somebody, but this time, from here, it don’t sound quite like her. Pete is standing where she should be with a voice that’s high, like a woman’s. He’s yelling and talking to Jessup using Cynthia’s tone. I laugh and thank God it weren’t her and spit the dirt out my mouth, stand up and bend over to brush my clothes down.

  A man’s voice behind me say, “I like the look of that.”

  “Um-hm,” another man say.

  “That makes three,” comes a third. My breath catches.

  I turn around and see ’em close to me.

  All of ’em are tall and lanky. Brothers, maybe. It’s their voices I remember. That night in Cynthia’s room, when they came ready to take me in my sleep.

  “Why you reckon Cynthia’s been protecting you so much?” the first one say.

  I don’t answer.

  “What brings you to Conyers, girl?”

  I cain’t speak.

  The second one comes over to me, walking wide-legged. He slides his hand down my backside, pinches my ass with his whole hand. My lips quiver but I ain’t gon’ cry.

  “It’s about time we had a go,” he say, unbuckling his pants.

  “Right here? Right now?” the third one say. “In the broad daylight?”

  I cain’t move.

  “Let her ’lone!” I hear her say. Cynthia is running down the stairs coming this way with her two pistols popping in the air. “Let her ’lone!”

  The first man, the leader, backs up with a hand in the air. With the other, he pulls me close to him, say, “Whoa now, Cynthia,” and puts me half in front of him.

  She waves both pistols across everybody. She say, “I said, let her ’lone, Jonas.”

  “Just having some fun, is all,” Jonas say. “We’d have paid you.”

  “She ain’t one of my girls.”

  “Then this ain’t none of your business,” he say.

  She fires in the air again. “I reckon it is.”

  “You crazy,” the second brother who had his hand on my ass say.

  “I’m crazy, Tommy?” Cynthia points her pistol at him. “That wasn’t what you was saying three nights ago when you were crying on my shoulder about the bitch that stole your shit and you still want her back.”

  Tommy steps behind Jonas.

  “You hiding, now? Way I see it is I made it a fair fight. It was three on one and now, me and my Walkers here make it three on three. The girl don’t hardly count.”

  Jonas tears a pistol from behind his waist and points it at her.

  Cynthia gets real still.

  Everybody do.

  I hear us breathing.

  “We at a stalemate,” Jonas say.

  “I don’t reckon so,” Cynthia say, keeping her eye and one pistol on him.

  She dumps all the bullets except for one out of her other gun without looking, and snaps the chamber closed. “Sometimes, the only thing between life and death is luck. Ain’t no rhyme, no reason, no God to come save you, just Lady Luck.”

  “Don’t give me your bullshit, Cynthia. You can take the girl and we’ll go.”

  “How lucky you think I is?” she say.

  She takes the pistol with the single bullet and presses it against her head.

  I close my eyes.

  She fires—click, click, click.

  I open my eyes, breathing hard. She points the pistol back at the men.

  “There weren’t no bullet in there,” Jonas say. “Some kind of trick. Tommy, grab her guns!”

  Cynthia flicks her wrists, daring him.

  Tommy don’t go.

  “This ain’t none of my business,” the third man say, straightening hisself like he just stopped by to say hi. He say, “So I’ll just go . . .”

  Cynthia stares at ’im with dead eyes and tilts her head sideways, enough to make him want to stay.

  “You ain’t gon’ shoot,” Jonas say. “How will that look to the law? A whore shooting upstanding citizens like ourselves.”

  “Regular pillars of the community,” Cynthia say, laughing. “Hell, law can only take me to jail or hell, no place I ain’t already been.”

  She keeps the fully loaded gun on Jonas. The other one she holds directly at Tommy’s head.

  Jonas say, “Don’t worry, Tommy. Ain’t no bullet in there.” But Tommy don’t move.

  Nobody moves.

  Cynthia lowers the pistol she got pointed at Tommy and fires. Its sound is like rocks hitting together, but louder.

  Tommy screams, grabbing his hand where the bullet grazed, blood spills through. He clinches his hand between his legs, knees the dirt, whining and rolling around.

  Cynthia don’t flinch. “Jonas?” she say. “Now how lucky you think you is?”

  “You bitch!” Tommy say.

  She fires her pistol near him again, burying a bullet in the ground. “Shut up. It’s just a graze.”

  He opens his hand, sees the flesh ripped, holds the wound closed and clinches his teeth, swearing and spitting through ’em.

  Jonas lets go my arm. He pushes me to Cynthia, his voice shaking. “I’m trusting you now, Cynthia. You know we was just messing around. G’wan and take her. We don’t want no trouble.”

  He backs away, pulling the third man away with him, and nudges Tommy with his foot. Tommy’s still whining.

  “Quit yer crying,” Cynthia say. “You can pay me with the other hand.” She keeps her pistol on ’em when she grabs me and together we snake our way backward to the brothel house.

  I think Cynthia’s gon’ keep me safe, after all.

  11 / 1860

  Tallassee, Alabama

  THE WIND SWISHES through ancient treetops, spraying leaves from their perches, tumbling the gold ones to the ground. They roll along green fields, tickling thin grasses—a soft touch to the hard ting of Josey’s daddy, Charles, blacksmithing. Three weeks of rain has brought every living thing to the surface. Worms and even roots are ground cover now, flattened ’cause everybody’s trampling over ’em.

  A dirt road runs between Charles’s shop and the cotton field where rows of negroes are bent over and reaching for the next burst of white on a cotton stalk. Their dark faces and hands seem to sprout from their muted clothing—men in gray overalls and women in long gray dresses and headscarves. The children’s hands sting from pulling weeds ’cause their palms ain’t calloused like Josey’s. Two years ’til she’s a teenager and she’s careless with her picking, careless with her sitting, careless with her running. She rounded a corner this morning, headed toward the slaves’ quarters, going too fast to see the black boy who was carrying the basket of food. She hit him whole-bodied, his
spilled cabbage heads rolled, and Josey crawled after ’em but they were already ruined, he said. “Cain’t sell ’em like this,” he said. Sheets of cabbage leafs peeled away.

  “You all right?” Josey said. He didn’t answer.

  The boy was about Josey’s age and, compared to her, harmless. I gave him the name Wayward years ago because of the way he comes and goes on this plantation without much notice. He don’t belong here. He takes shortcuts through this property three or four times a year carrying vegetables and fruits bound for market trade across the river. If somebody asks, he’ll lie and say he’s selling for the Graham household. Confusion and his look of purpose—his look-busy—keeps people from asking more questions. But I do. I do ’cause of how he stops and stares into Josey’s yard sometimes, waiting for a glimpse of her. And when he get one, his expression turn to mush.

  Josey’s legs are splayed open now like a boy. But she’s covered and sitting next to Ada Mae and near the other negro children. From here, she looks like a white watermelon seed among the black ones. Frail-looking and out of place.

  She sings a made-up song and pulls without looking, belting out another note now, the longest that ever was, and Ada Mae looks to the sky for mercy.

  Across the field, Slavedriver Nelson stands in the dirt with his steed and no hat on letting the sun beat down on his blood-orange face. His lashes shade his pale-blue eyes as he squints through the sunlight to see his negroes in the field. When the light hits his eyes directly, their color disappears, then reappears when the full shadow of his towering horse passes over him. I float around ’em both, watching how Nelson runs his fingers through her mane like he’s petting a dog. Calls her Maybelle.

  The offbeat trot of another horse draws our attention. Up the road, I can see the rider coming closer. It’s George. He bobbles on top of his horse seeming lightweight and as small as a ten-year-old. His bobble becomes quick ticks when his horse picks up speed, jerking George this way and that. Like George cain’t control it. He’s headed right this way in a hurry.

  Nelson yells, “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” But it don’t slow.

  Maybelle neighs. And again.

  George jolts awake and pulls the reins late. He’s laughing when it stops in front of Maybelle. “You shoulda saw the look on your face. You thought I was going to run y’all over.”