Grace

by Natashia Deon

  “We gon’ move it. Just like it is.” Weren’t a question.

  I roll to my butt, put my feet against the tub with hers and we push with our legs. Grunt. Push. It moves. We push it all the way back past the latch. She crawls over to it, holding her towel tight against her chest. I sit up on my knees.

  The latch is in the center of a square door etched in the floor. Cynthia pulls the door open. Dust rises while clumps of dirt, stuck to the bottom of the door, crumble down the passage and rests on the top step of disappearing stairs. Piano music swells up from the dark hole—an echo of what’s going on in the saloon out front. Cynthia starts down the stairs. “You comin?”

  I shake my head no. “It’s dark down there.”

  “Come on,” she say, not asking.

  I say a quick prayer and follow.

  My white dress powders brown in the dirt as we slowly walk under the brothel. Above us are all of its rooms. Light shines through the floor boards touching our faces. A woman’s high-heeled shoes tap and shuffle in the kitchen above us—Bernadette’s in there bent over the sink with her boyfriend behind her. She’s supposed to be working. Cynthia huffs and keeps walking, steps over some lump in the dirt. I kick whatever it was out the way, thought it was a stick at first but it’s a stiff dead thing. My knees buckle and Cynthia grabs my arm. “It’s up this way,” she say.

  Above us, the slits between the floorboards become wider because of the warped boards. “Water damaged,” Cynthia say. “Fools laid the new floor right over the rotten joists.” Some of the wood boards under the bar don’t even touch. They’re opened like a gapped-toothed man, teeth staked in the gums, showing everything inside—food and drink and tongue and voice. I can see everything up there.

  Men dance to the fury of fast-playing piano. Their steps hard-fall as they move with hired women captured in their two-step twirl. The bottoms of the girls’ dresses make them look like caught butterflies. Prisoners who still smile ’cause it’s for the money.

  “They cain’t see us,” Cynthia say. “I bet if they blew out the candles upstairs, they’d be scared if they looked down and saw us spooks staring up at ’em from under the floor.”

  I laugh a little.

  Across the room upstairs, a thin man, vested and white-button-shirted, leans over Cynthia’s piano with his back to us, hiding the black and white keys but unmasking notes. Cynthia looks back at me and her face is bright like a little girl’s—giddy and happy, like she ain’t ever been a day in this whorehouse. She covers her mouth with her hand, giggling.

  She takes a few steps and swoops her backside down on a bench just ahead. She dusts it off and slaps the space next to her. I sit down, too. She whispers, “This used to be my secret place. Still is. You got to do the secret handshake to be here.” She grabs my hand and hooks her pinky finger around mine, then shakes hands with me.

  “I used to come down here all the time,” she say. “At first, to watch my business.” Her voice raises, “People always trying to steal from me. Gotta have eyes everywhere.”

  A new couple shuffles a two-step above us.

  “After a while,” she say. “When Sam came to work for me, ’bout four years in, I changed some things around. Didn’t need to be there all the time. I could be at peace down here. Think.” She smiles, lowers her eyes, like she’s embarrassed she telling me this. So I smile back at her to let her know it’s all right.

  She say, “I imagine some whore before me, before I owned it, snuck down here and did this, too. Watched. Maybe she waited for her prince to come rescue her.” She points to a door behind us. It’s wonky and broken like the floorboards above us. I can see clear through the crooked pieces of the door to the porch steps outside. “Right through there is the front porch. I reckon she made it out that way.”

  “You think she found her prince?” I say.

  “She ain’t here, is she?”

  Cynthia hugs her knees to her chest and watches the dancers do another pass above us.

  “Why didn’t you leave?” I say.

  Her legs drop from the bench. “You dumb or something? This is mine. I ain’t never leaving. Maybe you ought to be the one going. I been taking care of your ass too long.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to . . .”

  She act like I’m not here now.

  I really am sorry.

  Sorry I said it. Sorry I made her remember we ain’t little girls. Sorry we ain’t in a secret club and we ain’t innocent.

  “Ain’t nobody comin for me,” she say, and draws her knees up again. “Don’t need nobody to, neither.”

  I don’t say nothing else. I wait and watch her relax to the swirl above us where red curtains and dim lights paint the room. I could fall asleep right here.

  The brothel door at the top of the steps swings open into the room and behind us new feet stomp up the porch steps. But by the time we turn around to see, the shoes have disappeared. They appear again in the doorway. New customers.

  Cynthia leans forward in her seat to see who it is—“Mayor of Otalika,” she say. “How old you think he is?”

  “Sixty.”

  “He’s forty-five. One of those whose face ages in dog years. But I reckon with all the drinking he’s done, he’s pickled himself to live another forty.

  “And him right there coming in and can’t find a seat . . .”

  “I see him. But there’s at least ten empty chairs up there. A seat’s a seat.”

  “For you and me, maybe. Difference is a serial asshole will walk in any party and look for the one person he hasn’t shat on yet. Anybody else would look for friends.”

  Before the mayor finds a seat, one of the girls is on him. He don’t fight her off. Meets her instead with his hand on her thigh.

  “And him there,” she say, pointing to the corner of the room where a husky old man, dressed rich, laughs hearty. “Our new house dealer. Charlie Shepard. He been working up at the McCullen’s for years. They fell out. Probably ’cause of a woman. As long as it wasn’t stealing, I don’t care. He starts here tonight.

  “Everybody calls him Mr. Shepard, even his wife. That’s her next to him. Soledad.”

  She’s pretty and brown but not black like me. She got red yarn braided in her long hair. Maybe she half Cherokee.

  I met her my first week here. I was pushing my broom by her opened door after she’d flown into a fit, and was slanging ceramics through her door hole. They shattered against the wall.

  She was yelling in something Percy called Spanish. When she saw me, she grabbed my arm. Tears and sweat had drenched her face and hair. Her cheeks, chin, and mouth were hanging loose from anguish. So loose that it was like there was a whole other face underneath hers, and this one was a mask glued on. Her hot tears were steaming it away. If I pinched and pulled her bottom lashes, the whole thing would slough off.

  She held me and shook me, not trying to hurt me, but for balance—drunk—then yelled up the hall, “These games get old, I quit, Cynthia! I quit you. I quit these men! I’m never coming back!”

  Then she said to me, “You’re just her toy, you know that? She will get sick of you. And when she does, you come and see me. Hummingbird Lane.”

  “She used to work for me,” Cynthia say, but I already remember. Though Soledad seems delicate now, dainty and feeble but put together smooth like the ceramics she smashed before she left. She smiles shyly at Mr. Shepard.

  “He bought her a house,” Cynthia say. “Gave her things she could never earn for herself. And now she’s religious, too. You’d be surprised how many women find God for money. Mr. Shepard had the most. He did me a favor.”

  I fly across the room when gunshots pop over the music, put my back against the broke door. But Cynthia ain’t moved. “That’s just Ray and Henry’s stupid asses. Cain’t hit shit. Always shooting and fucking up my ceilings. You can come on back over.

  “Bounty hunters,” she say. “Hunt their own selves if it meant a payday. But they gon’ pay for that one
. . . like the last ones. Look at ’em . . . damn fools.” They’re pulling at one of the girls nearby, rubbing themselves on her like it’s dancing. “The only one with any sense is the one sitting. Bobby Lee. All of ’em cousins, though.”

  He’s slumped over his table, drunk or tired, his face hidden. His blue shirt is rolled up past his forearms where thick copper hairs look brushed.

  “He lost his wife and firstborn, just a month ole,” Cynthia say. “Both of ’em on the same night. Bandits. He been looking for ’em ever since. Folks say he scratched his own eye out trying to stop the tears. He only comes here to drink and to not be by hisself. Good-looking, ain’t he? Hell, I’d give it to him for free.”

  The girl that Ray and Henry was pulling sits on Bobby Lee’s lap. He nudges her off him but Ray and Henry grab her. Bobby Lee shoves ’em all away and they tumble to the floor, jump up ready to fight. Bobby Lee ignores ’em both, walks past ’em and brings the girl with him, toward us.

  “Get back!” Cynthia say. We step back into a dark patch.

  Bobby Lee stops at the bar just above us. Girl’s gone. She’s already working another table.

  From here, I can only see from Bobby Lee’s ankles to his knees so I take a step forward and see under his nose. Even from here he’s good-looking. He fumbles in his pockets for change. Sam say, “What can I get cha?”

  A nickel falls, hits the floor, bounces, flips, flutters, then lays flat, teetering on the end of a plank right above me. Bobby Lee bends to pick it up.

  I don’t move.

  I swear he’s looking me dead in my eyes.

  Cynthia pulls me all the way back, next to her. We hold our breaths, then I whisper under the music, “I thought they cain’t see us.”

  “They cain’t.”

  When Bobby Lee stands again, I can see the whole flat of his face. He gulps his shot of whiskey, spreads his lips to stop the burning, says to Sam, “Tell Cynthia she got rats.”

  13 / 1860

  Tallassee, Alabama

  JOSEY MOVES SLOWLY into the newness of the woods. This is the furthest she’s been from the slaves’ quarters since five years ago when Charles found her ’sleep on the dark ground, glowing white under the moon. Underneath her feet, once-green brush has turned to a dead gray like no rain’s been here. Except for this next step: soupy mud splashes under the soles of her bare feet while the smell of mildew and rot steams from the ground. Josey looks around lost, lifts her damp foot and turns it over where peaks of mud have splotched and mixed with something sticky and binding, eggy and brown. She scrapes it with a stick and leaps back on a small patch of grass, an island in the muck. She wipes her feet there.

  Ada Mae has been trailing behind Josey, looking nervous, carrying her rolling hoop. “We shouldn’t have come out this far,” she say. “I’ve never been out here.”

  “You said you wanted to practice with that hoop where nobody could see, didn’t you? The place I found was just up here.”

  “I don’t want to no more.”

  “You scared?”

  “I don’t feel so good, is all.”

  “There’s a good bush right over there.”

  “You ain’t scared?” Ada Mae say, her eyes widening.

  “No. Yes,” Josey say. “Maybe more.”

  A glint of white catches Josey’s eye in the distance—a house between the trees. “I just want to see what’s out there.”

  “Then take my hoop,” Ada Mae say. “Practice with it and I’ll catch up.”

  The house sits on the edge of the woods with its paint peeling and its porch worn by too many steps. Josey holds her arm up blocking the sun when she steps out of the tree line. Sunlight catches her blue eyes and forces her head down. The warmth rolls over her shoulders, then goes cold like a blanket yanked away. My gut is telling me that Josey should turn around ’cause I feel the dark of this place. No birds are singing. No green’s growing. And now that the sun’s passed, everything looks hollow and drowned.

  Josey stops.

  I reach for her. Hesitate ’cause I cain’t touch her.

  Something darts between us, startles us both—a man with the sun behind him so all we can see is a shadow—eyeless, mouthless—a paper cutout in the sky. We look at him where the eyes should be.

  When the sun passes, flaring nostrils meet us. She’s a woman. Old and hard-breathing, taking a mouthful of air through her nose, trembling her top lip when she breathe out.

  The curly man-hairs on her neck are there like they’ve always been—like they were almost nine years ago—moist like they sweat-glued on. She starts circling Josey, hunched over and slow. Her long dress sways, the back of it is butt-lifted higher than the front. She goes ’round Josey and Josey don’t move.

  She holds her breath, hoping the woman will pass, but it’s too late to play dead.

  The woman leans into Josey to get a better look. A faint blue circle traces the colored part of her eyes where dried tears chalk the creases in the wrinkles packed underneath her bottom lashes.

  She churns her lips, moving something in her mouth—a bit of old food on her tongue—a small yellowish ball like a piece of nut. Her quick blow sends it flying to the ground.

  Josey’s cheeks redden.

  “Well, well, well,” the witch say. “After all this time. There you is.” Her jowls quiver and her lips clinch together.

  “You . . . you work on the Graham plantation, ma’am?”

  “I should cut you to pieces,” Witch say.

  I swear to God, she touch Josey, I’ll learn this moment how to kill a woman.

  Josey watches her circle and disappear behind her. “Forgive me, ma’am, I don’t believe we know each other.”

  “No, no. You don’t know Miss Sissy, do ya’?” She stops behind Josey. “I know you.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “You almost made it, didn’t cha, darkie? You thought you was one of them, didn’t cha, coon? But you just like the rest of us.”

  Sissy moves herself in front of Josey, staring with dead eyes. “I never thought I’d see the day. Nine years I been waitin for you.”

  “Me?”

  “Look at cha,” Sissy say. “I’ve seen some get through. Yes, suh. Seen some like you make it pass. And you pretty good. I admit that. But you had to have it all, didn’t cha?”

  “I don’t know what you mean?”

  “I was up there in the big house, too. Servin high society. Eatin good, dressin good, like a good house negro should. Then you came. A nigga tryin to be a white. Tryin to get for free the place and respect that a lifetime could never get me. But I seen’t ya, didn’t I? Your skin golden all year long, your curls . . . the way they fall. Just one drop. One drop, law say. One drop of our blood can ruin any God-created man, poison so strong that maybe we don’t even know our own power. It’s what got white folks scared. But one thang’s for sure . . . when I saw you poisoned in her arms, I knew who you were. Takes one to know one.” She flicks Josey’s hair and grins.

  Sissy’s aged much faster than she shoulda. Another fifty pounds have reworked her into a different woman. But she’s still in there. Twelve years since the day we first met. Twelve years since the night Annie Graham was given my baby; the same night Bobby Lee left my dead body and his cousins for the road.

  He had been pushing forward in the dark for over an hour, following a light a long way off. Bobby Lee’s fear was opening his senses, widening his sight, helping him to see in the dark. To smell sharply. He could smell a fox that had been that way hours before. His dry mouth tasted the sour of leaves that split as he passed.

  I could hear what he heard. Hear him talking in his own head. Felt his doubt and the tricks his mind was playing. He was hearing shuffles behind him that he didn’t make, started seeing mysteries in the dark.

  It wasn’t long before something was following us. At first I thought his cousins, maybe, keeping him honest, but it was something else—a living thing tasting birth in the air, smelling it on him. Cain’t be sure. We had
to find somebody quick, somewhere to take my baby. But there wasn’t no place but that hell.

  The jagged parts of wild trees and bushes tore into his thighs, scratched his neck, dug in his eyes. He twisted ’em away and threw their broken pieces to the ground. Bugs were sticking inside his clothes, tangling in the material and in his chest hair. They bit at his arms, his ankles, his face for food, but he kept my baby in a world her own, floating her on a cloud inside his coat, sacrificing his own body for hers—not a scratch, not a bite, not a cry.

  The light was finally getting close.

  He pressed her against himself and thought about the lie he was gon’ tell when he got there—this is my baby. And the parts that weren’t a lie—my wife is dead. But he was gon’ keep hisself one secret, though. Like how Ray never let him see his wife and baby after they got kilt that night. How he fought Ray and Henry to get through the door where broken chairs and dishes littered the floor and blood pooled but his cousins wouldn’t let him through.

  Bobby Lee settled it in his mind to never forgive Ray for not letting him in the door to see his family, dead, and now he can’t accept the empty place in his remembering where he never saw ’em newly deceased. He only saw ’em blue and strange-looking in their caskets.

  He put in the place of their death memory his own imaginings, a lie, pretending they ain’t really gone. Instead, he remember how his wife fought off the ones that tried to kill his baby and that she ran away, hiding in the woods with his child until her new husband, a hero, a man who woulda never let this happen, saved ’em both.

  So that night with Josey, Bobby Lee got it in his mind to be that man he never was. Be that hero and save my child.

  The light from the distance covered us. We were five steps to the porch when he stopped to take a deep breath and a sudden tug at his coat startled him. An old slave woman was peering at him.

  She told Bobby Lee, “The plantation mistress is barren. She’ll have the baby.”

  Just then, Josey started crying. Bobby Lee bounced her calm. His last chance to be the daddy. And when he looked back for the woman again, she was gone.