I teeter on the stairs. Filled.
15 / OCTOBER 1862
Tallassee, Alabama
THE “AMERICAN” CIVIL War started a year ago, April, and I don’t know what it means to be American.
I’m not.
The war began when a Frenchman, Pierre Beauregard, a one-star general, ordered his troops to open fire on Americans with fifty cannons at Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina.
Even though folks in town proudly call Pierre “Little Napolean” nobody calls him French but me, ’cause I’m fair. They don’t call him French here ’cause he white and rich and born here . . . mostly. His family was of a French colony in Louisiana, and that French family line led him there from France. He didn’t speak English ’til he was twelve.
So, I don’t know how many generations on American soil you got to live before you’re called “American,” or if English has to be your first language.
No matter, negroes may always be foreigners.
But I’m here.
And tonight, the fall of white light and gray shadow from the moon showers me as I pour myself through the slaves’ quarters—one-room shacks built in a semi-circle around a patch of dirt. I coast along a path of balding grass, trodden over and worn by cats and people. The wispy blades shift as my body brushes by.
I pass door after door. Ada Mae’s is the third one on the right. Charles’s and Josey’s is the seventh or eighth—the last one on the end.
The path continues on without me, leading from Josey’s to a hole in the woods where everybody dumps their leftover food for the critters to finish.
I pass through Josey’s door and round the corners of the main room, blowing by a sheet that hangs from the ceiling. It divides Charles’s part from Josey’s. But right now, they’re sitting together at the table eating hot stew.
Charles gets up and checks the shuttered window, makes sure it’s shut, puts a blanket around Josey, then sits back down. She brings her legs up on her stool and crosses ’em there, pulls her blanket tighter.
The dull scraping of their wooden spoons catch most of the stew left at the bottom of their bowls. The chicken bones have been slid out of the way to get to the vegetables. Charles finishes his meal and waits for Josey so he can clear the table.
She say, “That boy, Everett, made Ada Mae fall again today. Can you believe she call him sweet? Sweet!”
“Nobody knows the ways of the heart,” Charles say.
“That ain’t heart, that’s just dumb.”
“Well, boys are good at that.”
“Be better if they was good at somethin else.”
Josey slides her spoon across the bowl, back and forth while Charles reaches under his chair and sets a soft, burlap-wrapped mound of cloth on the table. It’s topped with a blue bow. Before Charles can speak, Josey swipes her gift off the table and got her fingers swishing around the bow.
The bag blossoms.
A button-down blouse, matching white stockings, and a pleated blue skirt tumbles out.
“It’s the fashion up north, I heard,” Charles say. “If you don’t like it I could . . .”
The hanging sheet that separates the room billows as Josey runs through it, behind it, already undressing. She rolls her new stockins up her bug-bitten legs, then buttons her skirt, her blouse, twirls on her way back through the sheet. She poses. Her blouse is hanging lopsided off her shoulder, her stockings are sagging at her knees, and her skirt is slid down on one side.
“There,” Charles say, satisfied. “A young lady.” She holds out the bottom of her skirt and spins. “Yes, ma’am,” Charles say, his voice quivering. “A young lady.”
She hugs his neck and his chair tilts back from the love of it. “Best birthday of my life,” Josey say, picking up the gift wrapping from the floor.
“The happiest day of mine,” Charles say.
“Two years old when you come. Could hardly talk. Only in pieces. Potty trained you myself that first day. You cried the whole first week.”
“Happy tears, I bet,” Josey say. “You think it was hard for whoever had to give me away?”
Charles starts stacking their mostly empty stew bowls. “Don’t time just fly by?” he say. “Fourteen years ole . . .”
“I love you, Daddy,” she say, leaving her first question alone. She takes the bowls from his hand and nears the front door where she steps out of her stockings and into Charles’s big shoes barefooted. She throws her blanket over her shoulders.
“Happy birthday,” Charles say.
By her third step outside, the cold air finds its way through Josey’s skirt and the gaps between her heels and Charles’s shoes. She lets her blanket slide further down her back and around her legs and waist. She catches it there, ties it around her hips.
She scrapes the tiny bones and smeared food from the bowls and into the hollow of the bushes where critters wait eager and hungry for their turn at it.
A snap of thistle turns her around sudden. She hooks her arm around the neck of a person—a boy—and pulls him to the ground, straddling him, pinning him, lifting her bowls above his head.
“Wait!” he yell.
It’s the boy, Wayward.
“What you doing in my yard!” Josey say.
“I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“You watching me!”
“I . . . I was just . . .”
“You want to hurt me?”
“I . . . I’m sorry!” His voice trembles and his body is limp in surrender but she don’t get up.
“We done talking,” she say, pushing herself off him finally. “You go home and don’t you come back ne’re.” She dusts her knees and puts her blanket over herself, collects her bowls and starts back to her door. He brings hisself to his feet. Tall as she is now. His light-colored clothes against his black skin and the night sky makes his shirt look empty. It’s been months since I last seen him.
“Josey?” he say.
She pause.
“I’m here to see you. To talk to you. To say happy birthday.”
“How do you know my name?”
He opens his mouth to speak but no more words come out.
“How you know anything about me?” She points at him with her bowls. “What plantation you from?”
“N . . . none.”
“So you don’t live no place, ain’t from nowhere, but you know it’s my birthday? How long you been coming around here, liar?”
“Not a liar.”
“For sure a peeper.”
“We met before,” he say.
“Never.”
“Twice.”
“Liar.”
“I promise we did. My momma is Sissy.”
Josey laughs. “You the witch’s son?”
“Ain’t a witch!” he say.
“Evil,” Josey say.
“I shouldn’t a come.”
“I’ll be dog gone, if you ain’t the witch’s son. Wait ’til I tell Ada Mae.”
Before she finish laughing, he’s gone back across the slaves’ yard and path, nearing the woods.
“Good,” she yells from behind him. “You leave. You shouldn’t be coming ’round here peeping on folks no way.” She yanks the blanket around her shoulders and watches him. But she don’t go inside right off. She keeps watching. Watching the way the moon rests in the cleft of his neck beneath the round of his head. A perfect scoop, smooth and hand-shaped under the nap of his hair.
She studies his blue-black skin and her heartbeats slow. He’s an impressive color, the kind of shade that Josey had already wished for in a husband, in the father of her dreamed-of children. And now he’s disappearing deeper into the brush. Her own color leaves her face as she stares, confused now, at that empty space where he was.
“Wait!” Josey yells, breathless. “Wait!” she say to the shadows, coughing now, her breath lost.
When she breathes deeply and puts her hands on her knees, dropping her bowls, her blanket slides off her waist. “Come back here!” she
say, coughing.
Nothing.
A wheeze. She pats her chest to clear the sound. She coughs and finds relief.
She reaches down to collect her bowls and picks up her blanket. Wayward say, “You all right?”
A fleeting smile graces Josey’s face but she pretends not to notice him, sets her bowls on a stump of cut log, and takes her time tying the blanket over her shoulders. She coughs again.
“You all right?” he say.
“What do you care?” she say.
“Well, if you’re all better, I’ll go.”
“You haven’t even told me happy birthday.”
“You ain’t gave me a chance to. Not properly.”
“Go on. Here’s your chance . . .”
“Happy birthday,” he say.
“’Bout time.”
“Awnry.”
“You like it,” she say.
“Maybe.”
“Josey!” Charles calls from the doorway.
“I have ta go,” she say in a hurry, bunching her bowls against her chest.
“Wait,” he say, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a braid of wound-together red string.
“Josey!” Charles calls.
“Coming, Daddy!”
“I made it myself . . . for your birthday. In case I . . . Can I put it on you?” he say.
“I don’t even know your name.”
“Jackson. Jackson Hayes.”
He smiles and reaches for her hand and she lets him tie his strings around her wrist. He scoots the knot around and down her arm.
“This is silly,” she say.
“Can I see you again?” he say. “Tomorrow?”
She only smiles.
“Eight o’clock?”
“Good night,” she say, running toward Charles’s call.
“Good night,” Jackson say to the closing door.
16 / FLASH
Conyers, Georgia, 1847
THE MUSK OF burning wax is seeping through Cynthia’s bedroom door. I knock.
No answer.
I press my ear against the cool door. Cain’t hear nothin.
My hair tumbles over my shoulder. It smells of Jeremy. Makes me smile.
I knock again, ease the door open. “Cynthia? You call me?”
Flames atop two candles sway above their silver holders. The holders are pushed back on the vanity, painting soot on the mirror.
Fancy plates that Cynthia usually keeps under her bed wrapped in a velvet cloth, is out. One of the plates is on the floor, half-pushed under the vanity, mounded with gray chicken bones, thin as thistles. Rib bones are branched off a greasy spine. A leg bone’s still got the white crunchy gristle on the end.
I take a step in.
An empty bottle of wine lays tipped over next to the bed. And next to it is the rest of that chicken—bones piled on a book beside a knocked-over, empty wine glass.
Her naked white toes wiggle off the end of the bed while the rest of her is crumpled on the trunk I sleep on. She got one arm against the wall, propped straight up in the air like she’s waiting to be called on. Her head is sunk in her shoulders, her body is draped in a man’s undershirt pushed up above her stretched-out belly. I pick up the glass near her foot and put it on the vanity next to another bottle of wine. My hip bumps her chair, knocks her hanging dress to the floor. When I reach down to pick it up, her eyes shoot open. “What the hell you doing walking in on me?” she say. She pushes herself up but falls back, pointing a bread roll at me like it’s gon’ hold me in place.
“You called me?” I say.
She washes her hand over her face, says, “I called you a long time ago. Where were you?”
“I knocked but you was ’sleep.”
She strains her swollen eyes open, bends over her lap with her elbows on her knees.
“I was shootin marbles,” I say.
“I can tell you lying. The way your voice just rose.”
She stretches both arms above her head, cracks her back. She sticks her finger in her ear and wiggles it around, snorts at the same time. “Next time you see me not waking, you come see if I’m dead before you go and wait over there with my wine.”
“Yes’m.”
I take the half-full bottle of wine from the vanity and pour her a glass before she even asks and watch the dark-purple color slide in. I give it to her, sit back at the vanity, and work at pushing the cork back in.
“Just so you know,” she say, “I wasn’t sleep. I was praying. I don’t never sleep. You remember that.”
“Yes’m,” I say. The cork is stuck sideways.
She finishes her wine like a shot of whiskey. She say, “You think my momma’s in hell?”
My cork pops.
“If there is one, I reckon she is,” she say.
She reaches her empty glass out to me to refill it. I say, “I thought you don’t believe in heaven or hell?”
“I said if. And I don’t. Come on, have a drink with me.”
“No, that’s all right.”
“So you don’t drink, neither?”
I don’t answer.
She raises her glass. “A toast—to all you bitches that don’t drink and think your shit don’t stank.” She chugs a big swallow of wine, continues with a loud burp, laughing now. “You know what special day it is today? Go’n and guess.”
“Your birthday?”
“Guess again.”
“Johnny’s?”
“Know what Yom Kippur is?”
“No, ma’am.”
“A religious holiday,” she say. “Thas today, started at sundown.” She raises her glass again, sips.
“I thought you weren’t saved. Didn’t believe in Jesus.”
She laughs. “Christians ain’t the only ones that got religion. I’m a pure country Jew. And this is my Day of Atonement.”
“I thought you was white?”
“I am. Wrong kind of white for these parts.”
“And you said you didn’t believe in nothin?”
“I can give God one day . . . most of it, anyway.” She drinks again, leaves a gulp at the bottom. “I’m s’posed to be looking at things I coulda done better this year. Repenting and asking God for forgiveness—saying things like, ‘I’m sorry I slapped my child, I won’t do it again,’ and apologize to people I wronged.” Her breath catches, “If you think I wronged you, sorry.”
“You gon’ give up whoring?” I say.
“I’m talking about the shit I done wrong. What I do for them out there, I do right,” she laughs. “God understands a girl’s gotta make a living. Thas my job, my business. Ain’t nobody gon’ give a woman work unless it’s doing dishes and I don’t do dishes. I sure as hell ain’t getting married, neither. I’m doing me and my girls a favor. A chance to earn a living for ourselves.” Her foot knocks the chicken bones off her plate and onto a book she got on the floor. She reaches down and picks it up, wipes the bone grease off. “What I hope is for God to forgive me for my wrongs,” she say. “Write my name in his Book of Life. Everybody’s fate is sealed tomorrow.”
“What about me?”
“What about you? You ain’t Jewish.”
She fans open her book. It looks like a diary inside. She thumbs through its handwritten pages without reading it. Closes it.
I say, “So what you s’posed to do on this Yom Kippur?”
“If there was a temple around, I’d go to it and pray all day like my father did when I was young. As it is, I’m a woman. So this is my temple. And after the shit I done this year I got a lot of making up to do.”
She puts her diary down, rests her head back on the wall. “Already fucked up, though,” she say. “I shoulda been fasting since sundown—no food, no drink, nothin. But you best believe I’m gon’ finish off this bottle of wine unless God hisself tell me I cain’t.”
The glass in her hand slips through her fingers, spills on my trunk, the wine gathers in its creases, near her book. She yanks her book away and leaves everything else.
I rush to clean up the wine, wipe it with the edge of my dress—the only thing I got but she don’t move except to plop her thigh over the last part I got to clean. It stains her own leg purple. She looks at her spilled glass. “Well, goddamn—a sign. I’m done. Can’t spend much time in contemplation if I’m loaded.”
I take my dress to the basin, soak it in the little bit of water left over at the bottom, scrub my dress between my hands. I dip it in the basin again, but all the water’s used up.
Cynthia don’t apologize to me, like she don’t care, even though it’s her fault my dress is ruined. “Is there something you called me for?” I say, and throw my hand on my hip.
She lays back against the wall closing her eyes. “You think I’m gon’ be saved, Naomi? In the end, I mean?”
I want her to get up off my sleeping trunk.
I say, “Ain’t for me to decide.”
“Why I even ask you?” she say like she’s mad at me now. “What do you know, exactly? Nothing.” She gets off my trunk with her book, plops down in the chair in front of me. “Why don’t you go over there somewhere, make yourself busy. Better yet,” she say holding her hand up, “if this is temple today, gimme some scripture.”
I don’t want to read to her but I go to my trunk anyway and pull my Bible from under my blanket.
“Old Testament,” she say.
“Why you worried about damnation now, anyway?” I say, and sit on my trunk.
She leans into her mirror, wipes the sleep from her eye, pinches her cheeks to bring back color. “You believe in the sixth sense?” she say. “Reading the past, the future, and all?”
“Only God knows the future.”
“Well, when I was seven years old, He told me mine. Told me I’d die before thirty-five. Come October, I’ll have my curtain call. Maybe I’ll slip into a well and break my neck or get some disease that eat me away.”
“Cain’t nobody know when they die,” I say. “Or how.”
“I can and I do. Now, read me something.”
I open my Bible. “‘The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want . . .’” I can feel her watching me. Maybe she seen me talking to Jeremy. Maybe she know I been talking to Albert about south. The worry makes me lose my place reading. I start again. “‘The Lord is my Shepherd. I . . . I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.’”
Grace Page 11