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Was it just this morning we ate oysters for breakfast? I don't feel very well. I wonder if swallowing the pearl will kill me. It can't be the oysters. R. ate them too, and he feels fine. An old melody I made up in Cotton Farm days floats on the waves of nausea to the front of my brain. "The moon's all worn out and silver, trying to climb up the hill. The moon is just a sliver, I believe it never will. The moon I want to wish on, I'm waiting for it still." The moon that hangs outside the brick-faced window of our Georgetown townhouse is a worn-out sliver. I feel as exhausted as it looks. I hum the old melody and realize that I have hummed it before, because he, padding toward me in his silk dressing gown, is humming it too.
He came to me in the bed and we comforted each other. His white hair falling on my shoulder. I kissed his hairy ears and his crepe-y neck, I stroked his prosperity-swollen belly. He strokes the almost flat, still firm flesh of my stomach, and I wonder if I am going to have a baby. Sometimes morning sickness doesn't just come in the morning.
I never had any idea why no baby had come. It was just an unasked-for unthanked blessing. I have no hope. I hold no illusion that he would cradle my baby the way he cradled hers. I believe, I believed, I will continue to believe, that he loves me more than he loved her. That he loved me first and fiercer, that the very first time he saw her what drew him in was not her love for the fey one, the ephemeral boy-man, Dreamy Gentleman, but it was that she looked so much like me, looked like me but was a bright light-of-the day possibility. Dreamy Gentleman was the man his father and Charleston thought they wanted R. to be. Other was the prize to win that would prove He was more than He. But that is not why he wanted her; he wanted her as an echo of me. But I know this, this I remember, the men don't love the brown babies as they love the pale white ones.
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Maybe some men do. I think of Garlic and how he never showed Other the fondness he showed me. I think of Mr. Frederick Douglass; he seemed proud indeed of his Ambassador son. I wonder about the Congressman. There's not much to wonder, is there? I blush to think of his happiness were he ever to discover his seed growing in my belly. I am not with child. I saw it this morning. I wonder if I can still make a baby. If I could ever make one. I never bled too much. We who clean the sheets and drawers know all about blood and talk about it too. You clean the sheets, you know a lot of things. It was never mine to wash the sheets at the plantation, but I washed my many at Beauty's; I am coming to feel I am a sheet-washing woman, a prelude to birth, a handmaid to birth, but not the creator herself.
I know he can have babies, because he gave Other one. I want a little loaf of my own rising in the oven. I cannot stay in this city here with him. It's too much. I have accepted the injustice of all of them loving her different because she was white. If she was just a nigger like me but got the chance to live white, it's too much to bear. But maybe that's just the way it is, so I'm broke. Right in half.
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She was just a nigger. Their baby was just a high-yellow gal in a blue velvet riding habit. It's like she's died again. I ask him what it all means to him, and he makes a joke of it and says, "I guess they're right. Once you go black, you don't go back." He said that to me and I laughed, but he didn't think it was funny and I didn't either.
Lady. Lady love. Lady my love. Mamalady. What does it mean, river deep and summer green to me, that you are black and he was black, and you still wanted to marry him, and have his little may-be-brown babies? Could you have loved me just that much and I didn't know it? Was it always there for me to suck in on the tip of your pap and I didn't taste it, in your eye when you watched Other? In your eye when you watched Planter? The trick you played on him. And what about the trick you played on me? That I was one flavor and she was—other—and better than me? Other and better than my mother?
There was a day you almost told me. I must have been about six years old. Too old to be carried or lifted anymore. Old enough for more little jobs. You pronounced me "herb finder." When the overseer complained to Planter, "You wife is making a pet out of that pickaninny" and Planter tried to embarrass you by quoting the overseer's charges, you lied without hesitation, "Every fine family in Savannah has one, and what precisely does our overseer know about the care and feeding of a tribe of Southern aristocrats?" You held your chin up in the air when you said that; you let your voice shake with pride of birth. The husband could see for himself the blue blood pulsing in the vein of his wife's temple.
Planter was petrified and chastened. He didn't move a finger, blink an eye; it was as if he had turned to stone. The unspoken word "pineswamppeckawood" hung in the air, an invisible syllabic sword of Damocles, and he'd be damned if it fell on his head. He would not stand too close to the overseer. For all his Planter swagger, for all his luxurious clothes, for all his acres, his only genuine link to the aristocracy was his lady, whose lily-white "quality" hand seemed raised to draw a line that placed him on the trash side of the social divide.
All white skins are not created equal; he knew that; and I learned it as I watched them engage in the only argument of their marriage. That he had offended the dignity of magnolia maidenhood and made his lady fainting mad was obvious. He had sinned against the only creed he had sworn to, the credo of milady's fragility, the creed that balanced the vow to protect the particular delicate needs of particular delicate ladies against all the ugly peculiar Southland customs. He let her win—then resumed his place at the victor's side. When the word "peckawood" fell, it was on the overseer's head—right out of Planter's mouth.
After that I was the official herb finder. When guests came to call, I would busy myself with this occupation and thus be away from the house, away from prying eyes, insolent mouths. When the visitors were gone, Lady and I would have dignified reunions in which she would inspect my bounty. Lady would draw pictures of what she wanted me to find. Sometimes when guests would stay a length of days, she would send me out with a long list and I would make a kind of camp down near the cabins and stay away until I had assembled all the specimens. With my bounty she would make little sachets and cures. There was a sachet she made for her own pillow that helped her fall asleep.
I seldom wore shoes and never on these rambles. I was proud of the calluses on my feet that allowed me to move nimbly and quickly over the farm; the calluses on my feet were the only part of my body I found superior to Other's. When my color deepened in the summer, I envied her more.
One day, at the end of an unusually long midsummer expedition, I was passing near the cabins when some of the "chil'rin" started teasing me, saying, "You done ripened right up," "'Bout time to pick her," "Think she'll fall from the tree herself," "Juicy—fruit, juicy-fruit." I ran back home, crying all the way.
But I didn't drop my herbs.
Later that night Lady took me down to where some poor white folks lived. A baby was due at their house and they had no money for a doctor, and even if they had, there weren't none about. She took me on the pretense of needing someone to tote her things into the house.
When we were alone I told her I wished I was white like her. I told her that I hated the color of my skin. She made a list of everything that was brown and beautiful in the world. She named walnut shells and fall leaves. She named tree bark and caramel. She named molasses, she named syrup, she named golden honey and sweet butter, the top of a cornbread, and finally she named the heel of a loaf of white bread. She was still naming and I was still crying, only harder. She opened her mouth to speak. She said, "I'm ... I'm ... I'm tired, and we need to go back home."
Then she took Feleepe's ring, the ring I wear as I write this, from the bodice of her dress, where it lay knotted into a handkerchief. I had seen it on her finger a time or two when we were alone. She took the ring and pressed it into the palm of my hand. The day I left Cotton Farm I pressed it back into her palm.
Garlic told R. that Mammy gave him the ring. She say Lady gave her the ring. Mammy say she want Garlic to give the ring to R. and she wanted R. to give the ring
to me.
My mother, her Mammy. I never had a name to call her that I was fond of. Can you give somebody a name after she's in the ground? Can you hear me, Mama? Do you know which one of you I am calling? Black mama, white mama. Narrow mama, wide mama. None of that is anything. Mama I knew and Mama I didn't. I wonder if Mammy didn't see me as something like a Benedict Arnold, looking and telling all she see. Never learning the rule of silence. The rule of talk talk talk and don't tell nothing. Just the opposite of Lady, who spoke so little and said so much. Let me be greedy. I hope when I die I go to heaven. I know both my Mamas are praying for me. I expect, if I get to heaven, the first sound I'll hear is the sound of Mammy's crimson petticoat, the rustle of her heavenly garment moving toward me. We're going to a ball tonight. I'm going to wear rustling taffeta of my own.
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Three days ago R. handed me an opened envelope addressed to him, along with unopened letters addressed to me. Inside his envelope was a stiff cream-colored card edged in gold, covered all over in flowing black writing. He was invited to attend a ball; he was invited to bring a guest. A ball on Massachusetts Avenue. He invited me to join him.
The host has a long unpronounceable name with many consonants, but I am practicing pronouncing it in preparation for my part in honoring the visiting dignitary from Russia. Rosie says she can finish the bronze taffeta just in time. R. says I must not look too pretty, or an impoverished Count will attempt to carry me back to his crumbling-down castle beneath the snows of Siberia.
We rode to the ball in R.'s new carriage. I wore the new gold velvet cape with which R. surprised me this morning. We are becoming Washingtonians.
Some visitors to the Capital City refer to Massachusetts Avenue as Embassy Row. Many of the streets in Washington are named after states. The wide main streets in the middle of the city are named after important states. The White House is located on Pennsylvania Avenue. Virginia Avenue supports the banks of the Potomac. There's nothing of importance on Georgia Avenue, nothing at all.
I was not prepared for the Embassy. It's a citified building, ornate and fortress-like, gray and tall, with narrow windows. Of course there is no porch, there is no drive. There's a gate, a wall, and then the street. We are in a world city, and world cities exclude before they separate.
Music and candlelight illuminate the general darkness of the large and drafty room. White-skinned, white-gloved servants pass trays of champagne and odd little bits and pieces of smoked fish and boiled eggs decorated with piped mayonnaise and bits of chopped vegetable. A waiter who speaks no English offers me a serving of caviar and I say, "I would love a silverspoon of inky, fishy, gray-black grits." Champagne spurts from R.'s mouth. We are laughing together between nibbles of caviar on toast.
I tell him that Russian princesses live in crumbling-down villas, not palaces. He is pleased with me.
R. talks at the gentlemen and I dance with them; dance with the one he's not talking at.
I like the swirl. It's the swirl I like. The swinging round in circles, the bouncing back and forth, the swirl. The way the colors blend and streak, the way the music gets louder and softer as you swing closer to it and away. Though I wear a gown of bronze, it appears that lilac is the color of the season. It's here in every shade: shiny lilac and muted lilac, bluer lilac and grayer lilac, lilac almost silver and lilac turning into purple. Beaded lilac and lilac brocade. And here and there the new shade of blue and the new shade of red. The swirl. The way it's just like eyes-wide-open dreaming. I would dance with any feet in shoe leather.
The candles burn down. The band gets louder and lazier. I twirl with some gentleman from Boston, a former abolitionist, come to Washington to help create the new national university. I believe it's called, or to be called, the Smithsonian Institution. R. talks to someone from Treasury. "What can he be saying now?" my dance partner teases. I would blush, but the red's already on my face. The butterfly. What is he saying now?
Something he's said before and before. Something he's said before. That's what he says now. And he won't hear what's being said now. There's money to be made after the war. Each year it seems a little more. There's money to be made after the war, but R.'s not making very much of it. He doesn't feel the tides the way he did, or the wind. He doesn't listen the way he did. He's somewhere else all the time now, responding to new acts with old gestures fragilely bridging past to present, ending his span before the future is reached.
Of course, he made money during the war and before the war. Why is it called that way? Collected money, gathered money, from where it had been, resting or clinched, into a grand green pile somewhere behind the doors of his bank. All those words would be better than "made." Behind the door of his bank is a place R. has never taken me. It's the only remaining place I know of for sure.
This gentleman from the Smithsonian is asking me if I knew that James Smithson, the man whose will left the money to start the Smithsonian Institution, if I knew James was illegitimate. "He was born James Lewis Macie. He took his father's name only after his mother died." I smile and start listening a bit more attentively. I didn't know this and it does interest me. He says James's mother was an English lady. It's good to know the daughters of English gentility have illegitimate children too. "The times are changing. Barriers are falling," he says mid-spin. But I'm thinking: I know dimly of clubs and weddings, lines across which no colored can step. Not even me with he. He goes to places I cannot go.
And I'm still playing pronoun games. Who is object; who is subject; is it me, or am I it?
Someone has tapped on the shoulder of the Smithsonian fellow, and I never discover how Macie became Smithson; my waist is released from his vise. The music slows down. I'm in the arms of the dark prince, my Congressman. My new partner and I move in a glorious syncopation. I stop wondering about the places I cannot go and go. This is the first territory into which I have entered into which R. cannot follow.
Prancing across the floor with the Congressman, I hold in my breath, press the back of my tongue against the roof of my mouth to make my chin, my throat, look taut. I want him to see me like I used to be. I want him to confuse the past with the present. I want the past and the future to fuse. I want to scare my Congressman into believing the things I believe about the future. I want to possess him. What would it mean to make him mine? By what skill would I achieve the capture? Is it more than that? I want him to want me. And it's so hard to tell if he does.
He whispered strange stories into my ear. "My Daddy," says he, "had such a headache, my Mama hit him upside the head with a skillet, and I popped out, full dressed in overalls, ready to pick a day's cotton—just so Mama could take a day's rest."
"I don't believe you."
"Find a record that proves me wrong. A birth certificate. A baptism sheet. Anything."
"It's tragic those things don't exist."
"I've told you what I think of tragedy." I wanted to hit him upside the head, but I didn't have a skillet.
When I was short and lived on the farm, I knew my way to a field of exotic wild verbena with orange-colored flowers and lemon scent. They were favorites of Lady's, but this verbena looked like another wild herb that was poisonous. You could tell the difference by looking at the petals—one had tapered petals and one had squat squared petals. I no longer remember which was which. Things I thought I would never forget I have forgotten. Things I have prayed to forget I have remembered. He loves me, he loves me not. Once I stood in a field of somebody else's flowers and had my way with them. Now I've got a man but ain't got no way to have with him or without him. Mammy hated when I talked that way. But I knew that language too. It comes back to me now. Surrounds me now in this Capital City. Now I have a man and a house, but my house has no garden. I don't know where the wild flowers grow 'round here. I have no way to know. And I don't know how I would know. I possess no way to know. None at all.
And I can't recall how to tell a curing from a killing herb.
He has interesting memories that trot ou
t to me in well-turned phrases, my Congressman. His smile is quick. He has the habit of charm. He is a public feast that is gnawed daily, not my private meal. What would I not give for a corner of this bread to call my own? That's easy. My freedom. This feeling I call "free" I would trade for nothing. Not one thing. And I don't even know good what it is. What it is. But I know I saw it, like a crack of light coming in under the door, saw it in the Congressman's eyes. Felt it tingling on the places on my arms he touched while we danced. Feel it in the circle of the dance. Around again and around again till everything collapses or disappears. I felt that free-y feeling in his arms. Now we slither around the ballroom. Am I the invisible feet of the snake? Or am I the horse prancing?
Did I know right then what it was, or was it the moment later? The moment when R. tapped the Congressman's shoulder, waited imperiously for the Congressman to step away, then pulled me closer, like a shackle snapping on my wrist, felt the hand that had signed the paper to buy me caress the nape of my neck. Just as the feeling was escaping, I could named it, free-y. But it was gone, and that old familiar feeling, that comfortable feeling, of being possessed came to me. We danced something gallant, in the old lazy high-stepping way. The Congressman walked away and off the dance floor; the Negro man walks away. R. and I are left on this dance floor become a stage. This is our cake walk. Everybody looks at us high-step.
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The Confederate and his quadroon. Redeemed I was, I was sold and he bought me. I should let him be my God; I have let him be my God. He redeemed me and I have loved him for it. Where do I go, to go and sin no more? The Congressman walked away, arm in arm with some young dark lady, the gap-toothed girl. He walked away as R. twirled me on my aching toes.
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