Sadie chewed on her ragged bottom lip. “Every tramp soul is different. Some stronger than others.” She glanced at Doll who was looking up at the ceiling, her eyes intent on something. Sadie slowly followed her line of vision, but there was nothing to see but wooden planks and cobwebs. She brought her palms together in a resounding clap.
Both Doll and Coraline jumped at the sound.
“Look at me, child,” Sadie gently demanded. She leaned over and brought her nose within millimeters of Doll’s, caught her roughly by the chin, and said, “Esther, Esther, we gonna get you outta this child and send you straight to hell where you belong!”
Doll held the old woman’s gaze, skinned back her lips, and spat, “And I’ma take you with me, witch!”
Coraline shrieked and Sadie lurched back.
“Ooh, Esther,” Sadie sneered as she walked a wide circle around Doll. “When I’m through with you, you gonna be sorry you were ever born!” And then to Coraline, “You go along home now let me do what I need to do.”
The old woman moved to the door and pulled it open. A sheath of daylight sliced across the floor and the multicolored glass canisters and jugs shelved along the back wall.
“Come back for her in the morning.”
Coraline scrambled out the door.
* * *
When Coraline returned the next day, Sadie handed her a sealed jar filled with murky water.
“Esther in here?” Coraline asked, holding the jar at arm’s length.
“Her spirit,” Sadie said.
“Well, what am I supposed to do with it?”
“Dig a hole as deep as you can, pour the water in it, and then cover it up.”
Coraline eyed the jar for a minute and then looked over at Doll who was sitting at the table, nibbling on a biscuit.
“She look well enough,” Coraline said to Sadie, and then cocked her head and addressed Doll: “How you feelin’?”
Doll glanced up from her biscuit. Her lips were covered in crumbs. “Fine, ma’am,” she responded in her five-year-old voice.
“Come on now, you can take that biscuit to go.”
Doll jumped out the chair and moved across the floor toward her mother. Coraline’s eyebrows arched with concern—Doll’s legs were crisscrossed with bright red switch marks.
“Y-you beat her?”
Sadie narrowed her eyes and grabbed hold of her slim hipbones. “I ain’t beat her—I beat the whore inside her.”
Doll moved to her mother’s side and took her hand. Mother and daughter’s fingers entwined and a familiarity surged through Coraline’s veins.
“Remember now,” Sadie warned, “that hole gotta be deep. Dig all the way to China if you have to.”
* * *
Dearest, you cannot bury a soul! Souls are light, darkness, and air. Coraline found this out the hard way, when five years after she buried the jar and thought that she had rid her daughter and the world of Esther and malice, Esther reappeared, stronger and more spiteful than ever.
Coraline had spent most of the day in the yard, boiling, scrubbing, and hanging sheets. Doll helped some, but she was clumsy and easily distracted. Three separate times she’d lost her grip on a freshly washed sheet, and all of the hard work went sloshing down to the dusty ground.
Coraline sucked her teeth in anger. “Girl, you causing me double work!” She sent Doll off with a vicious wave of her hand. “Take your brother with you.”
“I’m sorry, Mama.”
“That you are,” Coraline hissed as she crumpled the sheet into a ball and dropped it back into the pot of hot, soapy water.
Hours later, Coraline entered the house in search of salve to apply to her chafed red hands. Her mood was low, but soared when she heard the joyous laughter of her children seeping from her bedroom. A favorite hiding place for brother and sister was beneath Coraline’s double-sized bed.
Her sore hands forgotten, a mischievous smile lit on Coraline’s lips when she tiptoed into the room, raised one corner of the mattress, and peered down through the jungle of coiled bedsprings.
“Gotcha!”
But she was the one who got a surprise.
Doll’s bloomers were down at her ankles and the hem of her dress was gathered around her neck. Conner, her five-year-old brother, had an index and middle finger inside of Doll’s pussy.
The same two fingers he slipped into his mouth at night and sucked until dawn. The two fingers he stroked Coraline’s cheek with and used to spoon up and eat cake batter.
Coraline went deaf and dumb with rage. She would have preferred blindness—death even—to block out the vision before her.
When Conner saw the shocked and angry look on his mother’s face, he withdrew his fingers and they came out slick with Doll’s nectar.
Coraline snapped, toppling the mattress and the bed onto its side, then pounced on Doll and wrapped her hands around the child’s throat.
Conner ran from the house and into the road, where he stood frantically waving his arms and shrieking, “Help! Help!”
A neighbor, who had been sitting on his porch rolling tobacco, stood up and called to the boy, “What’s wrong?”
“My mama is killing my sister!” Conner screamed back before sticking his fingers in his mouth.
Yes, those two fingers.
Chapter Four
Sadie was dead, and it was the best for everyone really, because her particular type of magic would have been useless in that situation.
So, Coraline took Doll to the reverend.
“You can have her,” Coraline said, and shoved Doll roughly toward him. “Ain’t no good in her, only Esther, and she’s all bad.”
The reverend’s eyes swung wildly between Coraline and her sobbing daughter.
“Sister Coraline, I can’t—”
Coraline backed away. “Nah, nah, Reverend, you gotta take her or I’ma kill her for sure,” she warned as she raised her right palm to the sky. “I swear to God, I will kill this child and then the blood ain’t gonna just be on my hands, your hands gonna be red too.”
August Hilson gently took hold of Doll’s arm and she flinched in pain. That’s when he noticed the black and blue bruises.
“My Lord,” he whispered in horror, “did you beat this child?”
Coraline was already walking away. She turned her head slightly and slung, “No, Reverend. I didn’t beat Doll; I beat the whore inside of her.”
* * *
August led Doll into the house and guided her to the sofa. “Sit here,” he said, and then disappeared into the kitchen.
His wife Ann was standing over the sink, stuffing seasoned rice into the belly of a raw chicken. “Who was that at the door?” she queried without turning around to look at him.
“Ann.”
The seriousness in her husband’s voice was heartstopping. Ann slowly turned to face him. August was gray.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
In the living room, Doll could hear August’s hushed explanation, which was followed by Ann’s shrill “She did what?”
In a moment, Ann was at Doll’s side, cradling her against her bosom.
“My sweet, sweet Jesus,” she murmured. “What kind of mother would do this to her own flesh and blood?”
August shook his head in dismay. “Caroline is hot now. Maybe in a day or two—”
Ann’s head snapped up. “In a day or two what? Don’t tell me you’re thinking about sending this poor child back to that woman?”
August was thinking exactly that.
“Oh, I won’t have it, August. Next time might be the last time for this little girl. Doll is staying right here with us.”
* * *
August and Ann had a child of their own named Vesta. A six-year-old with a lisp and tender ways. At the dinner table that night, Vesta shoveled forkfuls of steamed rice and baked chicken into her mouth, all the while keeping her eyes glued to Doll.
After dinner, Ann dressed Doll in one of her halfslips. “You’ll wear thi
s until I can find you a decent nightgown,” Ann said, before tucking the girl into bed alongside Vesta.
She read them a story, and planted soft kisses on each of their foreheads. The “I love you” Ann shared before closing the bedroom door was big enough for both girls.
In the darkness Vesta whispered, “I been praying for a sister.”
Doll’s hand moved across the empty space between them, found Vesta’s hand, and squeezed it. “Me too,” she said.
* * *
Doll slipped into the Hilson family as easily as a lost puzzle piece they didn’t know was missing.
“See, I told you,” Ann commented to August one day as she sat darning socks, “that Coraline was the crazy one. Doll’s been nothing but a joy.” She smiled to herself, knotted the stitch, and then used her teeth to sever the thread. “She’s just the sweetest thing.”
August, who was seated across the room sucking on his pipe and reading the newspaper, nodded in agreement.
A few years later, Ann’s words—She’s just the sweetest thing—would float back to August as he slid inside of Doll and exploded into a million points of light.
End of Excerpt
More about Gathering of Waters.
Gathering of Waters is available in hardcover, paperback, and e-book editions. Our printed books are available from our website and in online and brick & mortar bookstores everywhere. Digital editions of Gathering of Waters can be purchased from Amazon, Barnes & Noble's Nook Books, the Sony eReader Store, the Kobo Store, Google Play, on iTunes, and on the websites of independent booksellers everywhere.
Following her best-selling, award-winning novel Glorious, McFadden produces a fantastical historical novel featuring the spirit of Emmett Till.
The New York Times selected Gathering of Waters as one of the 100 Notable Books of 2012!
The Washington Post named Gathering of Waters one of 2012's 50 best books!
"McFadden works a kind of miracle—not only do [her characters] retain their appealing humanity; their story eclipses the bonds of history to offer continuous surprises . . . Beautiful and evocative, Gathering of Waters brings three generations to life . . . The real power of the narrative lies in the richness and complexity of the characters. While they inhabit these pages they live, and they do so gloriously and messily and magically, so that we are at last sorry to see them go, and we sit with those small moments we had with them and worry over them, enchanted, until they become something like our own memories, dimmed by time, but alive with the ghosts of the past, and burning with spirits."—Jesmyn Ward, New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)
"Read it aloud. Hire a chorus to chant it to you and anyone else interested in hearing about civil rights and uncivil desires, about the dark heat of hate, about the force of forgiveness."—Alan Cheuse, All Things Considered, NPR
"McFadden combines events of Biblical proportions—from flooding to resurrection—with history to create a cautionary, redemptive tale that spans the early twentieth century to the start of Hurricane Katrina. She compellingly invites readers to consider the distinctions between 'truth or fantasy' . . . In McFadden's boldly spun yarn, consequences extend across time and place. This is an arresting historical portrait of Southern life with reimagined outcomes, suggesting that hope in the enduring power of memory can offer healing where justice does not suffice."—Publishers Weekly
"The rich text is shaped by the African American storytelling tradition and layered with significant American histories. Recalling the woven spirituality of Toni Morrison's Beloved, this work will appeal to readers of mystic literature."—Library Journal
"McFadden makes powerful use of imagery in this fantastical novel of ever-flowing waters and troubled spirits."—Booklist
"As strange as this may sound, Bernice L. McFadden has created a magical, fantastic novel centered around the notorious tragedy of Emmett Till's murder. This is a startling, beautifully written piece of work."—Dennis Lehane, author of Mystic River
"In her new novel, Gathering of Waters, Bernice McFadden brings her own special vision to the unfortunate story of Emmett Till and his murder in Money, Mississippi. This moving and magical novel, which traces the generations leading up to and away from that horrible night in 1955, drew me in immediately and swept me along through its richly imagined world. I couldn't stop reading, caught up as I was in that enticing place between truth and fantasy, the here-and-now and the what-was, the living and the dead, the ugliness and the beauty, the hatred and the love. What a rich chorus of voices Bernice McFadden has fashioned from this place called Money."—Lee Martin, author of Break the Skin and The Bright Forever
GATHERING OF WATERS is a deeply engrossing tale narrated by the town of Money, Mississippi—a site both significant and infamous in our collective story as a nation. Money is personified in this haunting story, which chronicles its troubled history following the arrival of the Hilson and Bryant families.
TASS HILSON AND EMMETT TILL were young and in love when Emmett was brutally murdered in 1955. Anxious to escape the town, Tass marries Maximillian May and relocates to Detroit.
FORTY YEARS LATER, AFTER THE DEATH OF HER HUSBAND, Tass returns to Money and fantasy takes flesh when Emmett Till's spirit is finally released from the dank, dark waters of the Tallahatchie River. The two lovers are reunited, bringing the story to an enchanting and profound conclusion.
GATHERING OF WATERS mines the truth about Money, Mississippi, as well as the town's families, and threads their history over decades. The bare-bones realism—both disturbing and riveting—combined with a magical realm in which ghosts have the final say, is reminiscent of Toni Morrison's Beloved.
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Glorious is available in paperback and e-book editions. Our printed books are available from our website and in online and brick & mortar bookstores everywhere. Digital editions of Glorious can be purchased from Amazon, Barnes & Noble's Nook Books, the Sony eReader Store, the Kobo Store, Google Play, on iTunes, and on the websites of independent booksellers everywhere.
Award-winning novelist Bernice L. McFadden's highly anticipated new historical novel set amidst the Harlem Renaissance.
Glorious was a finalist for the 2011 NAACP Image Award for Fiction!
"McFadden's lively and loving rendering of New York hews closely to the jazz-inflected city of myth . . . McFadden has a wonderful ear for dialogue, and her entertaining prose equally accommodates humor and pathos."—New York Times Book Review
"Bernice L. McFadden's novel Glorious, which starts with a bang-up prologue, has a strong main character (based in part on Zora Neale Hurston), hard-driving prose, and historic sweep of several decades, including the years of the Harlem Renaissance, which has always fascinated me."—Jane Ciabattari, National Book Critics Circle President
"The book is sweeping in scope and brings to life the tenuous existence of an African-American artist in the early 20th century."—Vogue (Italian edition)
"I hadn't read a word of hers before [Glorious], but I will follow her from now on."—Alan Cheuse, NPR
"The novel is so intense and sweeping at the same time. Some of the scenes were terrifying, and some were very comic in the irony of what the narrator was experiencing and what she was actually thinking. The word for a journey like this is picaresque, but the ever-impending tragedy makes that word not quite right for this book."—Susan Straight, author of A Million Nightingales
"A wonderful, rich read full of passion, history, wonder, and women you will recognize: Glorious is just that."—Jill Nelson, author of Volunteer Slavery and Let's Get It On
"The seeming inevitability of cruel fate juxtaposes the triumph of the spirit in this remarkably rich and powerful novel. Bernice McFadden's fully realized characters are complicated, imperfect beings, but if ever a character were worthy of love and honor, it is her Easter Bartlett. This very American story is fascinating; it is also heartbreaking, thought-provoking, and beautifully written."—Binnie Kirshenbaum, author of The Scenic Rout
e
Glorious is set against the backdrops of the Jim Crow South, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Civil Rights era. Blending fact and fiction, Glorious is the story of Easter Venetta Bartlett, a fictional Harlem Renaissance writer whose tumultuous path to success, ruin, and ultimately revival offers a candid and true portrait of the American experience in all its beauty and cruelty.
It is a novel informed by the question that is the title of Langston Hughes's famous poem: What happens to a dream deferred? Based on years of research, this heart-wrenching fictional account is given added resonance by factual events coupled with real and imagined larger-than-life characters. Glorious is an audacious exploration into the nature of self-hatred, love, possession, ego, betrayal, and, finally, redemption.
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The Warmest December is available in paperback and e-book editions. Our printed books are available from our website and in online and brick & mortar bookstores everywhere. Digital editions of The Warmest December can be purchased from Amazon, Barnes & Noble's Nook Books, the Sony eReader Store, the Kobo Store, Google Play, on iTunes, and on the websites of independent booksellers everywhere.
The long-awaited reissue of McFadden's best-selling second novel praised by Toni Morrison, USA Today, the Washington Post, and others—published simultaneously with McFadden's new novel Gathering of Waters.
"McFadden's reissued second novel takes an unflinching look at the corrosive nature of alcoholism . . . This is not a story of easy redemption . . . McFadden writes candidly about the treacherous hold of addiction."—Publishers Weekly
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