Nowhere Is a Place

by Bernice L. McFadden

  “A girl child, six or seven years in age. Healthy. Fieldwork, housework. Fresh, untouched, sure to breed well!” The man lifts his gavel and shouts out to the sea of white faces and black top hats.

  When the bidding is over, Nayeli is no longer Nayeli, daughter of Yona and Winona; she is the property of Henry Vicey of the Sandersville, Georgia, Viceys—cotton farmers.

  Arizona

  I say all that I can say and then stop talking and watch the scenery roll past. I guess I’ve said enough because Sherry ain’t pestering me to say more. She quiet now too, staring hard at the road, thumping her thumb against the steering wheel while she chew on her bottom lip.

  It’s some pretty land outside my window. The mountains and rocks look like someone dragged a paintbrush across them. I laugh and think, Maybe the cactus did it. Maybe at night they come alive and paint the mountains. I giggle again and look around to see Sherry giving me an odd look.

  You all right, Dumpling? she say.

  I nod my head yes and then look at her face and ask, So what’s new with you?

  She flinch, like my question is a straight pin in her side.

  I watch her, look at those big tits she got like mine, down at those hips that spread so far it covers the material of the seat. You gaining weight? I say.

  Her head spin around, eyes big, mouth drop open and clamp shut again. No, she say, then, Well maybe a little.

  Hmm, all them tortillas, I say.

  Uh-huh, maybe.

  Some more miles, five maybe, and then a sign.

  I read it out loud: Flagstaff, Arizona, Twenty Miles.

  Some more miles and then a sign.

  I read it out loud: Best Western Pony Soldier Inn and Suites, Three More Exits.

  Sherry make a sound in her throat and take the next exit. I look at her like she’s crazy.

  What you doing?

  I got friends out here we can stay with.

  Friends? What kind of friends?

  The people kind, she say with her smart mouth.

  The sun dipping and the mountains turn the color of stewed carrots and then the desert put on a show for us. Everything seem to light up and sparkle; it so pretty I forget that we been driving for almost an hour since we left the highway and the road ain’t a road anymore, just a mess of rocks and sand.

  Sherry’s SUV tilt this way and that and she change gears and step hard on the gas while I press my hands over my heart and pray.

  Who the hell live out here? Ain’t nothing out here but cactus and snakes. But then I remember which one of my children I’m traveling with. She the strange one, which means she got strange friends. They probably tent peoples.

  I look around at the backseat then, ’cause I ain’t sleeping in no damn tent.

  I look over at Sherry. Her face a mess of confusement.

  You sure you know where you going?

  She don’t answer me, just bring the car to a stop, tell me to give her the road map out of the glove compartment. Then she lift her hand and flick at the space over her head and a little door flips down; from there she pulls out a pair of glasses.

  I watch her put them on and I feel a pang in my chest.

  How long you been wearing glasses?

  Awhile, she say as she flips on the light, takes the map from me, and stares down at the place she has circled in red.

  I just watch her, and them glasses make me realize I don’t know her at all.

  Oh, okay, she says out loud, and flicks the light off, hands the map back to me, and puts the car—I mean, SUV—in drive.

  Just a little bit farther, she says.

  * * *

  Cabins.

  Thank God, I think as we come to a stop and Sherry climbs out, throwing “Wait here” over her shoulder at me.

  She walk to one cabin and knock on the door. She wait a minute before she knock again, and still nobody come. She look down at her watch and knock again, loud.

  Someone must have asked something from the other side of that door, ’cause my child scream, Little Flower!

  Little Flower?

  Then the door open and a man as tall as a tree, dressed in a white T-shirt and pinstriped pajama pants, step out and grab Sherry around her waist and lift her up into the air.

  He swing her around twice and then set her back down on the ground, step away from her, walk around her, and then give her another hearty hug.

  He seem happy to see her; she beaming like the moon, I suppose she happy to see him too.

  Sherry turn and point to me, grab the man by the arm, and then they start toward me.

  I fidget in my seat, swipe at my hair, wonder if my breath smell, and then finally press the button on the door that make the window come down.

  Elk, this is my mother, Dumpling, she say and then quickly, I mean Clementine Jackson.

  I stick my hand out and he takes it.

  Nice to meet you, he says, and smiles.

  I think he got teeth like a mule. I grin back.

  Little Flower has told me much about you.

  I just nod my head and resist saying, I don’t know shit about you.

  Welcome to my home, he says.

  * * *

  The cabin is small, simple. A couch, a hearth, two chairs, colorful blankets here and there—hanging on the walls, thrown across the couch, rolled like logs and piled up against the wall.

  Sienna and the children are sleeping, he says, and points at the closed doors. I look around and wonder where the bathroom at ’cause my bladder hollering. Where the kitchen at? my stomach growling.

  Ten minutes later I find out the bathroom is outside in a box, behind the house. And ain’t no kitchen; they cook on a split over rocks.

  Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!

  Elk take us back outside, take us to the other cabin.

  It look the same as the first.

  I hope you’ll be comfortable, Mrs. Jackson, he say as he pushes open one of the doors. Single bed, quilted coverlet, stool, piss pot on the floor, small window with something made out of sticks, yarn, and feathers hanging in front of it.

  I know I won’t be, but I say, Yes, of course.

  You want some tea?

  I think that tea only going to run through me. I look out the window into the night, something howl off in the distance—No thank you, I say and then, Goodnight.

  Elk smile, set the kerosene lamp down on the stool, say, I’ll bring your suitcase in, then he turn around and take the keys from Sherry.

  I watch him walk away, long black braid swinging, big calves bulging beneath pinstriped pajama pants.

  Sherry step in, put her hands on her hips, and look around the room like it’s the best place she’s been in a while. Then she walk over to the window and say, It’s nice out here, huh? Look at that sky.

  I sit down on the bed. Look like the same sky in Nevada, I say, then I point and ask, What’s that thing?

  She touch the feather with her finger, smile a bit, turn around and look at me, and say, A dream catcher.

  A dream catcher?

  I just screw my face up to let her know I ain’t pleased ’bout sleeping in no room that got hoodoo symbols hanging ’round the window.

  It’s supposed to catch the bad dreams and only allow the good dreams in, she say in a tone that make me feel like I’m supposed to know this stuff.

  Uh-huh.

  Sherry linger.

  How you know that man? I whisper.

  Elk?

  Any other man getting the suitcases? I hiss.

  Elk’s an old friend. We go way back.

  How far?

  I dunno, ten years or more.

  I ain’t never hear you talk about him.

  Well I have, you just weren’t listening.

  Elk walks back in before I can say anything else. He look at me, see the hurt in my face, look at Sherry, see the spite in hers, and then just set the bags down and ease back out the room.

  Sherry fling good night at me and follow.

  I look at the b
ed, poke it with my finger; the mattress feels stiff. I look around at the bare walls, at the dream catcher and the black sky beyond. I want to be mad, want to feel put out, but that dark sky and the billion twinkling stars set in it draw me in, and as mad as I want to be, I can’t catch hold of the feeling and so put on my nightgown, climb into bed, and watch the sky until sleep take me.

  * * *

  I wake up to the sound of chattering children, adults, and Sherry’s laughter. The sun is high and bright and the black sky is now a watery blue and cloudless.

  Cool morning air sails through my window and I pull the quilt tighter around me. I look at the dream catcher and think that its yarned web has trapped all my dreams, because I had none at all last night.

  A small face with dark eyes appears at my window. I can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl. The face smiles and I decide it’s a girl. Small finger come up and wave.

  Morning, I say.

  She blushes, sets a small blue flower on my windowsill, and disappears.

  * * *

  Later in the morning, I see that there are more than a dozen cabins, all spread out across the land. Women out front sweeping at the desert sand while children scamper about. Husbands backing out decrepit pickup trucks that cough, stall, and then find a life again, kicking up dust as the men wave and roll off to work.

  “Come, come,” say a short round woman in a white dress that is ringed around the collar, sleeves, and hem in red and blue stitching. I think that this must be Elk’s sister, they look so much alike, but that may not be so, because the closer I get to her and the other faces that are seated around the picnic table, I notice that they all resemble—one look the same as the other—hard to tell them apart. I chuckle and think, They look to me like we black people look to the white man—all the same.

  Sherry look different this morning. Her face look open, fresh. She smiling too, slide over on the bench, making room for my wide hips. Introduce me to everyone around the table, slide a plate in front of me. Someone else appear and place a metal cup of coffee near my wrist.

  Everyone talking. Talking to me, over me, around me.

  What’s this? I try to ask, sly-like through my smile.

  Fried bread, Sherry say.

  And this? I use my chin to point at the reddish stuff on the side.

  Wojape, she say.

  Wo-what?

  It’s like a berry pudding.

  I look a little closer.

  Like jam?

  Yeah, something like that.

  I look around for bacon, grits maybe, some link sausage, but everyone got the same thing on their plates.

  When in Rome . . . I think.

  Madeline call? I ask after I gulp down my second cup of coffee.

  Nope, Sherry say happily, then plucks her cell phone from her pocket and shows it to me. Across the face it says: NO SERVICE

  What, you ain’t pay your bill?

  Sherry laugh. It means, she say, that there is no service in this area. Up in these mountains, out in this beautiful desert, she says, waving her arm through the air.

  * * *

  Elk seems sad to see Sherry go. He hug her tight and whisper something in her ear. He come over and hug me too. Say it was nice to finally have met me. Say, I hope you come back again.

  I say, Thank you, hope to come back soon.

  * * *

  We drive off down the road. I look back and twenty people waving at us, then the dust kick up and they disappear.

  They were nice people, I say.

  Salt of the earth, Sherry mumbles and look both ways before turning left onto the highway and gunning it.

  How you know them again?

  I lived there for a year, after I left Berkeley.

  You did?

  I rack my brain and try to remember that year. Nothing comes. She done lived so many place, I can’t keep track.

  Uh-huh, I say. What you do there?

  Worked the land, learned the customs.

  What you want to do that for?

  Because I found their way of life fascinating.

  Really?

  Yeah. For one, they don’t hit their children.

  I open my mouth to say something, then close it again when I realize I don’t have anything to say. I’m sure there were other things fa-sci-nating ’bout her stay there, why she just tell me about that one?

  I don’t look at her direct, but can see her watching me from the corner of my eye. I say, Watch the road.

  * * *

  We ride along for a while and then she say all of sudden, I started writing the story.

  I nod my head, blow at a tiny black bug making its way across my window; it hold fast, wait till I stop blowing, and then start moving again. I give up on trying to get rid of it, feel good that something else stuck inside this SUV with Sherry and her hurtful words besides me.

  The notebook is in the backseat, she say.

  I reach back and grab the red spiral notebook, flip it open, and see plenty of words jotted across the lines. I flip the pages, about fifty filled up—back and front.

  When you do all this?

  Last night.

  Ain’t you get no sleep?

  I only need a few hours.

  You sure?

  I know my body. You gonna read it or just keep asking me questions?

  I look at her, lean back in the seat, and begin with: A broad valley . . .

  * * *

  By the time I’m done, we running on empty and Sherry pulling into a gas station.

  She tell the attendant to fill it up and then turn and look at me.

  What you think so far?

  I look back at her, tap the pages, and say, I ain’t say all of this.

  I know. I filled in the missing things.

  With lies, I say.

  No, with someone’s reality.

  How you know?

  I’ve read enough history, heard enough stories to know.

  I just humph.

  It’s good so far though, don’t you think?

  What I know from? I ain’t much of a reader, you know.

  The attendant come back and say, Twenty-two forty, please.

  Sherry pay him, throw the SUV back in drive, and pull out toward New Mexico.

  Tell me more, she say.

  I think back and try to remember.

  ___________________

  Henry Vicey was a short man with a soft, protruding middle. Brown-haired with shocks of white and ashy-brown eyes that were always smiling. A jovial spirit, with a booming voice and a corny sense of humor. He talked almost nonstop to the young slave boy named Hunt, who traveled with them.

  Hunt drove the horses, fetched the water, skinned and cleaned the possum Henry shot and killed. Hunt had little more to say than “Yassa” and “Nossa.”

  Hunt pays little or no mind to Nayeli, but does as he is told and offers her peaches and bowls of corn mush and possum. Nayeli refuses everything except water.

  She watches from the back of the wagon as the land changes right before her eyes. Mountains rise up in the distance and then shrink away. The dirt goes from brown to red. Green grass shimmers blue and then emerald. Oak trees are dwarfed by towering pines, the yellow sun turns white hot, and the sky is suddenly stripped of its blue.

  On the seventh day, when Nayeli does not think she can take the clippity-clop sound of the horses’ hooves, the rolling resonance of the wagon wheels, or the nonstop jabber of Henry Vicey much longer, they turn off the road and onto a narrow lane shaded by pecan trees.

  It’s slow going. Beating rains have pummeled Sandersville for three straight days, leaving the earth soft and yielding. Hunt uses his whip to urge the horses on.

  An open space greets the end of the shaded path; there, a medium-sized whitewashed wood plank house stands. A porch, four beams, and a black roof that points and then goes long and flat at the back of the house, offering a resting place for the lazy limbs of the weeping willow that grows alongside it.

  Potted
flowering mimosa shrubs sit beneath the shuttered front windows; rocking chairs, one on either side of the screen door, eerily sway in the slight morning breeze.

  Guinea hens cluck around the steps of the house, pecking at the long tails of the sad-eyed hound dogs that lounge in the shade.

  Nayeli stretches her neck and sees that off to the left and right of the house are rows and rows of cotton stalks that seem to stretch endlessly across the land. Just below the cotton rows are two clapboard shacks that look as if they will tumble down the slope they’d been hastily erected on.

  To the right of the house is a barn and pen with two grazing horses and three mules.

  “We here.” Henry turns around and beams at her. “We home.”

  * * *

  A week in and out of the back of a wagon left her smelling like the horses and the gunnysacks of yams and overripe peaches and the bottle of sweet-smelling bubbling bath liquid that broke and seeped when Hunt horribly negotiated a boulder that was embedded in the road. That and the road dust that first settled after the rains and then caked and browned on her skin in the beating heat of the sun. Nayeli smelled and looked anything but human.

  “Couldn’t get a chance to clean her up none,” Henry Vicey yells down to the black faces that seem to float from everywhere.

  “Mary, you clean her up ’fore April and the missus gets a gander at her.”

  Two pair of strong black hands grab hold of the horse’s reins as Henry climbs down from the wagon.

  “Yassa, Massa,” the tall dark woman called Mary says, and reaches a hand out toward Nayeli who is huddled behind a bag of yams.

  “What we callin’ her?” Mary asks as she offers Nayeli a reassuring smile.

  Henry scratches at his chin and thinks about it for a while. “Well, I suppose we should call her Lou.”