“What?”
She charges at me, grabs my arm. “Let me look at you! You slept with him?”
I shake my head. Fast as I can.
“You did! I can see it all over you!”
Jeremy stutters something . . . nothing . . . “Damn you to hell!” she tell him. “You’ve damned us all to hell! After all I’ve done for you!” She grabs him by his neck and throws him off her porch, follows him down.
“Cynthia!” I yell.
She slaps him over and over—his back, his head—closed-fisted to his jaw.
“Cynthia!” I race down the stairs.
She face me. In her eyes I see all the spite and disappointment. Whatever she was trying to protect me from, whatever protection she was giving me, is gone now. I don’t even recognize her. “How could you give it to this mother fucker? How could you!” She’s crying and I’m crying now, too, and I don’t know what for. “Why this asshole?” she say.
Not an asshole.
“Naomi, you was pure. You were supposed to stay that way. For both of us.”
I shake my head.
“What’d he give you for it?”
I don’t want to look at her.
She backs away from me, throws her hands up, disgusted. She turns her back on me and her boots clap up the porch.
26 / MAY 1864
Tallassee, Alabama
THERE’S NO SUCH thing as justice when somebody’s killed. Only satisfaction. The person cain’t be brought back for no amount of punishment or cost. I cain’t have the old Josey back and I’ve been long gone. My loss is worse when I think about how George got away with it. And how he did it. How he had to have been watching Josey before it happened. Watching her the way animals do prey. How else would he have known that Charles would be gone that day, or the moment she’d come home?
George was there waiting in the dark for her—black. Blending into trees—black. Squatting behind a bush—black. Pushing the leaves aside to make a space for his peeping eye—black.
There’s no justice for that.
Bessie said to let it go but I won’t. She should understand the pain of no justice ’cause she black, too.
And three weeks ago, George came back. Again, I got no justice.
His return was just a shadow of something I’d been waiting for, had hoped for, and crushing disappointment ain’t sour enough a phrase. I was helpless but he was right there. Like needing to buy the life-saving medicine in front of you, but being ten dollars short and finding no charity.
His shadow stretched up Annie’s porch steps and touched me before I knew it was him, shortened when he got closer.
Annie and Kathy were sitting at a stalemate—a woman and a whore, is what Annie said. That’s when he took his first step up the porch and said, “I heard I had family in town.”
A sudden fire started inside me and I rushed his body. The flames were from him. But I was grounded before I even started in. Was on fire, the way Bessie said I would be. Weak and broken, I could only watch him as he smiled from the bottom of the porch steps, popping sunflower seeds, his hair fresh cut and close. I was forced to watch this man who took so much from my daughter and God gave me no charity.
It ain’t fair.
I despise him, and it ain’t fair. I’m trapped this way. It ain’t . . . fair.
He’s the devil walking free. Didn’t even look like half a demon when I saw him standing there, gentle in his disguise. No horns. No tail. Just a man. Annie’s brother. And with joy, she sprinted down to meet him.
I was sickened.
Richard came fast-limping out the house and down the stairs, was laughing when he fell into George’s arms and hugged him. “Bumfucker!” Richard called him.
“And you’re my favorite asshole,” George said, and asked him where the hell he’d been.
“I should ask you the same thing,” Richard said.
“I’m done. I’m staying,” George said. “Followed the fighting far enough. Heard they might go on to Winchester and that’ll have to be without me. Not all my choice. And by the look of that hobble, you’re done, too.”
“It just means they need to bring the fight to me!” Richard said, and almost by instinct, excited to see George, Richard held Annie’s hand. After a pause, he let go, introduced his cousin. “This is Katherine. Your cousin from down in Corinth.”
“Corinth?” George said. “Now that’s some fighting.”
George went up the steps to greet her, and the whiskey on him turned the air drunk. He kissed Kathy’s hand and said, “How do?” then held her gaze. “Corinth’s a dangerous place for a beautiful young woman like you.”
“No place more deadly,” Kathy said. “You know Mis’sippi?”
Richard cleared his throat. “I could use some help up the steps,” he said.
“Will you join us for tea?” Kathy asked George.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Richard said. “George will join me for a drink in my study. A celebration. The brothers have come home!”
JOSEY WON’T LEAVE the house much now.
Not even to wash.
Not without Charles coming, too. He’ll sit on the porch or a few steps away carving the ends of wood branches into sharp tips while he waits. And with Nelson around now, Charles goes to the field, too, instead of the blacksmith shop. Iron’s scarce. It’s all at the mill. But if there’s something needing doing, he’ll take Josey with him. But me? I’m useless. For the first time I realize: this must be what it feels like to be dead.
27 / FLASH
Conyers, Georgia, 1847
SOME OF OUR friendships won’t outlast our usefulness to the other person. When their need for us is gone, so are we. But I cain’t say for certain that me and Cynthia was ever friends. But she wanted something from me that shouldn’t be given away on a handshake deal. A woman’s body is hers, just like a man’s is his. Every woman should make her own choices and consider what’s up for grabs and the consequences. ’Cause she’s priceless . . . ’til she names her price. I got wrapped up in Cynthia’s ideas of salvation. And there was no good ending to something like that.
It’s why I woke this morning in the dark, trying to be as quiet as I could. Didn’t want to wake her. Cynthia don’t keep nothing with no value. Worst, something with no value that cost her something. So I made my bed and pulled the curtains together so the sun wouldn’t come in when it rose, put on my white dress and tiptoed around the room, and held the bedroom door to keep it from squeaking open.
Even though she ain’t got one word to say to me, I keep showing up for work every day.
I don’t eat her food.
Jeremy would feed me but he don’t hardly keep no food at his. “A bachelor,” he say. “In transition,” he say. He got his place up for sale and don’t want to make no rush decisions on what he’ll do next but he said I’m going with him if he go. And even though no minister will marry us, we’ll make promises to each other soon. But right now, we got to be patient. In the meantime, Albert let’s me eat with him every morning and night.
I can already feel it’s gon’ be cold outside. This hallway’s ten degrees colder than my room and it’s even colder in this saloon. I bunch my clothes to my chest. I twist the handle on the parlor door—a shortcut to outside. It’s locked. But there are men’s voices coming from inside. Maybe another holdover that Mr. Shepard’s making a fool.
I keep up the hall to the back door, slide out of it, feel the breeze of cold air blow my night stank off. I take off running toward the henhouse and through its door made of loose planks and wire.
Fallen feathers rise from the gush of the opening door and I take six eggs that Cynthia won’t miss. Two for me and four for Albert. The door clanks shut behind me.
Dry thistles in the grass prick my ankles as I rush across Cynthia’s field out front, then across the road for Albert’s shop. It glows from inside. He’s burning trash in a tin bucket, where orange and gray flakes lift their flat bodies and hang in the air. I fan them aw
ay from my face.
Albert pours a pitcher of water over his hands and head and into that bucket, wipes his eyes when he sees me standing in the doorway. He don’t say a word. Don’t like our morning ritual disturbed by voices.
When he finishes drying hisself, I give him the eggs. He cracks ’em over his metal tray, holds ’em over the fire, lets ’em sizzle. I sit behind him warm, watch him separate mine from his. He’ll put mine on his only good plate—a shiny white platter with painted blue trees.
The firelight on his red hair makes it look ashy and dirty blonde. His hairless arms seem yellow. He flips the eggs with his flat tool and gives me my share. I wait for ’em to cool.
As soon as his finish, he spoons ’em up and eats ’em piping hot from his hammered-flat metal tray. When he’s done, he holds his empty tray in his hands and don’t look at me. He never does. Instead he stares out and around his shop where metal bits and shavings have spiraled to the ground like silver locks of hair.
Metal trinkets are pushed back on shelves. A grinder, a saw, and a sander’s there, too. He got a water pitcher on the floor for drinking and it’s covered with a pie tin to keep the black dust out. It’s everywhere—that dust. A black handprint is stamped on the red-brick wall. Maybe it’s from holding hisself up or bracing hisself to reach down.
After another second of sitting, Albert gets up and starts stacking his iron next to the furnace. That’s his sign that it’s time for me to leave. I take my steaming-hot plate to the door with me, about to push it open. “The Railroad’s coming this week,” he say.
My stomach snatches.
“I woulda told you sooner, but I just got told it last night. Might be the last time. Every time might be. So be ready.”
I nod. Knew happy with Jeremy couldn’t last forever.
My food was cold before I got back to the saloon. The whole room’s freezing ’cause no bodies been in here yet to warm it awake and Cynthia’s not due up for another couple hours. That’s why this is my favorite part of the day. I dream about having my own quiet room one day. Not the house like Albert said, but after I marry Jeremy, it’ll be the room we’ll build together.
I sit in my favorite stool at the bar and rest my plate on yesterday’s paper. I keep it there like a placemat so I don’t ruin Sam’s good polishing. The newspaper letters are showing from under my plate. I pull the top page away. “Wanted,” it say. “Faunsdale Murder. Five hundred dollars.” It got a line-drawn picture of a negro man. Big nose, it got.
There’s chanting outside.
Tones like a song but more like a hum. I lean back on my stool. See out the window. Church people. Same ones that come most Sundays to have service. Young white women and one old one, too. All of ’em got
Bibles and babies and young children with ’em. Even the old one got a baby. This particular lot always comes before sunlight, telling us to burn in hell just after “amen.” But they don’t need to pray for me. I ain’t like these whores here. We’re alike in the way that all women are, but the root of us ain’t the same. They value things that ain’t worth nothin, throw away their lives for pretty things that Albert can melt down and burn up. They do what greedy women who want the easy way out do. Still trying to prove to their fathers that they was worth his love, after all. They have sex for money. But not money all the time. Free things, too. Gifts and special time. Time to be treated like somebody’s spoiled child. But in private, they earn every bit of it, trading their God-made bodies for man-made shit. Exchange their everlasting souls for combustibles. “Free ain’t never free,” Cynthia say.
But love is.
Like the kind me and Jeremy got.
Ours cain’t be bargained or paid for, it just is. Same way God is. He keeps me protected and above this place, shows me Hisself in the way I love Jeremy and the way Jeremy loves me. Keeps me outside their world but lets me wade through it.
So I ain’t worried about them church ladies.
I stand up in the side window so they can see me proud and I tie my apron around my waist, watch the sun rise and feel it on my face.
The ones outside are shouting now. Their children are doing what the grown ladies do, scrunching their faces like they hate this place. Hate me. The old lady picks up a rock, slings it at my window. It clicks against the glass.
She ushers all the children up the road and turns around a last time to spit. It dangles from her chin and she wipes it with the sleeve of her pretty dress.
She should forget about us.
She should save her foul mouth for smiles and kisses on her grandbaby ’cause what Cynthia and her ladies do here ain’t got nothin to do with her. It’s not my business so I’ll mind mine ’til me and Jeremy go. But for now, I’ll bide my time.
It’s my birthday today.
I ain’t told nobody but Jeremy. I reckon he’s gon’ come and surprise me with something special ’cause he like to do that. Maybe sing me my own song that he wrote just for me, and that way every time he play the tune, it’ll be him telling me he loves me, out loud to everybody, but only me and him know.
I pick up the last kernel of egg and poke it through my smile, sweep it down my throat with a wash of water, wipe my hands down my apron and leave Albert’s plate on the bar top for when I get back from the toilet. I hop down from my favorite stool and start down the hall to the back.
The gambling parlor door swings open. I cover my mouth so I don’t laugh. He’s dressed in the same clothes he had on yesterday. He slams his fist in the wall and walks up the hallway the other way. I stay quiet. I don’t want to scare him. And I want him to look for me first.
The sunlight from the saloon window traces his arms, between his legs, his straight hips. He still don’t see me. His strut makes me want to touch him. But I stay quiet.
I tiptoe up the hall toward him, glance in the gambling parlor as I pass. Mr. Shepard’s in there collecting money from the floor. His door shuts from a wind gust.
“Naomi!” Jeremy say, coming toward me. “Thank my lucky stars.”
He wraps his arms around me like he don’t care who else see. He pushes me against the wall the way I like it, kissing me.
Stops.
But I don’t want him to stop. I smile and wait for him to say, “Happy birthday.”
He say, “You got that money I gave you?”
I steal kisses from his cheek, his neck.
“That half I gave you?” he say, pulling away from me. “Do you?”
I straighten my clothes and notice how fidgety he seem. Not because of me. Not no surprise he hiding. He’s worried.
“I need it ’cause of that asshole dealer,” he say.
“Mr. Shepard?”
“He won’t lend me anymore.”
“Then maybe it’s time to stop,” I say. “You told me to save our money for Boston.”
“I can win it back,” he say. “I can feel it. One more roll and I’m back in the game. Get us a new home where we going. Boston is where you want?” He puts his hands on my shoulders like we pals. “I tell you what. I’ll start saving the money for you. Investing it, like. For both us.”
“I don’t know what you mean, ‘invest.’”
“Let me do the worrying. You trust me, don’t you, Mimi?”
“It’s my birthday,” I say, smiling, stopping him talking.
“Oh, Mimi . . . I’m sorry. Happy birthday, doll.” He grabs my face, kisses the top of my forehead. “I’m going to do something real special for you tonight. Something I planned. Jewelry? You like jewelry? When I’m done with you, you’re gonna be sparkling like a Christmas tree.”
“You don’t have to buy me nothing,” I say. “Maybe you could play me a song or . . .”
“Mimi. I need to get back in the game!”
I take our wadded dollars from my stockings and throw it at him.
Instead of asking what’s wrong, he counts it.
“I gave you more than this,” he say.
“I didn’t spend it!”
�
�This is less than half!”
He finally sees my tears. He pulls me under his chin. “Come here, I’m sorry. Happy birthday. I know you didn’t spend it. It’s just not enough.”
When he lets me go, he leans back against the wall. I go to lay on his chest, say, “What we gon’ do for my birthday?”
“We can’t do nothing now, we’re broke,” he say. “Isn’t that what you said? That this is all there is?”
I shrug my shoulders. “I wish I had more to give you. I don’t know what happened to the rest.”
He kisses my forehead again, holds his lips there when he speaks. “You’re my baby girl. The birthday girl. I wish I had more to give you, too. You know I’d do anything for you.”
I know.
“And you’d do anything for me, too?” he say.
I nod.
“Anything?” he say, hugging me tighter now.
“Anything,” I say.
“Then help me, Mimi.”
I want to help.
“You like Mr. Shepard?”
“I suppose so . . . he’s all right,” I say.
“Suck his dick for me.”
“What?”
“Mimi . . .”
I slap his face hard as I can.
He say, “He’s always talking about how he never gets none. His wife is too mean. I’m not asking you to have sex with him. He’ll pay you.”
“Jeremy!”
“It’ll be just enough to get back in the game and you said you’d do anything for us. I can win it all back.”
“Get away from me!”
I’m light-headed. Like the wagon I was in hit a dip in the road and I’m sailing through the air, in flight with wheels off the ground, my stomach in my throat, and my mouth waiting for throw-up to come.
“I’m sorry,” he say.
“I don’t want to look at you!”
“Come on now, Mimi.” He catches my hand and stops me. “I’m sorry,” he say. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It’s like I can’t stop.”
“You sick is all I can say!”
“‘Sick’!” he say. “Sick?” His expression turns from hurting to pissed off. “My last gal used to say that. That’s why she’s my last.”
Grace Page 18