The Water Dancer

by Ta-Nehisi Coates

  “No, you don’t,” I said. “You can’t.”

  “Hiram,” she said, “promise me you will not doom us.”

  “I promise that I will not doom us,” I said. But the word-play put no folly upon her, and the less said about our remaining interview the better, for I hold her, all these years later, in the highest respect. She was speaking in full faith and honesty. And so was I.

  32

  I WAS OUT THERE ON my own now, and if Conduction was to be achieved, it must be done by my hand alone. And it seemed to me that there was no longer any avoiding the facts of my departure. I would have to tell them both—Sophia and Thena. I decided I would tell them each separately, for my confession to Thena involved matters far greater than the Underground. So I would start with what I thought was the simpler of confessions—Sophia.

  Thena had begun to have nightmares, we thought from her attack. And so we got in the habit, on difficult nights, of leaving Caroline down below with her to sleep on her bosom and calm her. And it was such a night as this when I felt it was time.

  “Sophia,” I said, “I am ready to tell you for what and I am ready to tell you how.”

  She had been looking up into the gabled rafters, and now she rolled over, pulled the osnaburg blanket over herself, and turned to me.

  “It’s about where I been,” I said. “About where I was and what happened when I was there.”

  “Wasn’t Bryceton,” she said.

  “It was,” I said. “But that was just the start of it.”

  Even in that darkness, I could see her eyes, and they were too much for me to take. I rolled over so that my back was to her. I breathed in deep, and then breathed back out.

  And then I told her that I had, in the time I was gone, seen another country, taken in the easy Northern air, that I had awakened when I wanted and moved as I pleased, that I had trained in to Baltimore, walked through the carnival of Philadelphia, and driven through the uplands of New York, and that I had done this all through my affiliation with that agency of freedom known only to her in whispers and tales—the Underground.

  And I told her how it had happened, how Corrine Quinn had found me, how they had trained me at Bryceton, how Hawkins and Amy were in on the ruse. I told her how Georgie Parks had been destroyed, and how I had been party to that destruction. I told her about the family White, how they had loved me, how they had saved Mary Bronson, how Micajah Bland had given up his life. I told her how I had met Moses, how Kessiah had survived the racetrack, how she remembered Thena, how I had promised to conduct Thena and how I now planned to conduct her too.

  “I promised to get you out,” I said. “And I mean to keep that promise.”

  I turned back over, and I found those eyes waiting for me. There was a kind of deadness in them now—no shock or surprise, no emotion betrayed.

  “That why you come,” she said. “To keep your promise.”

  “No,” I said. “I come back because I was told to.”

  “And had you not been told to?” she asked.

  “Sophia, I thought of you all the time up there,” I said. I reached over and stroked her face with my hand. “I worried for you, worried for what they might have done to you…”

  “But while you were worrying,” she said, “I was down here. Not knowing what was coming. Not knowing what had happened to you. Not knowing anything of that woman Corrine’s intentions.”

  “She got your title from Nathaniel,” I said. “You ain’t going to Tennessee.”

  She shook her head and said, “And what am I supposed to make of that? You come back with this tale, and I do believe it, I really do, but Hiram, I know you, I do not know them.”

  “But you do know me,” I said. “And I am sorry for how it has come down, but I have heard you now, I have heard all of what you were saying from the start. And I understand that it is not just you, but Caroline. I am getting you out. Thena too.”

  “And what about you?” she said.

  “I am here until told otherwise,” I said. “I am part of this now. It is bigger than me and my desires.”

  “Bigger than me too,” she said. “Bigger than this girl who you said was your blood.”

  There was a long silence and then Sophia rolled over again, so that she was staring at the rafters.

  “And you still ain’t said how,” she said. “I told you I needed a how.”

  “How, huh?” I asked.

  “Yeah, how,” she said.

  “Come on,” I said.

  “What?”

  “You said you wanted to know how. Well, you wanna know or you don’t?”

  By then I was climbing down the ladder. At the door I put on my brogans and wrapped myself in my fear-no-man coat. Looking back, I saw Sophia gazing at Caroline, still snoring lightly on Thena’s bosom.

  “Come on,” I said.

  We walked along that route that had now become sacred to me. I had been practicing, experimenting as I could with the powers and reach of memory, so that when we arrived, minutes later, at the banks of the river Goose, I felt myself in control.

  I turned to Sophia and said, “You ready?” To this she rolled her eyes and shook her head. I took her hand, and in the other hand I clutched the wooden horse.

  And then I guided her down toward the banks, and as we walked I spoke of that night, that last Holiday when we were all there together, and more than spoke it, I felt it, made it real to me—Conway and Kat, Philipa and Brick, Thena all wrathy in front of the fire—“Land, niggers,” she said. “Land.” And I remembered, then, Georgie Parks, Amber, and their little boy. And I remembered the free ones—Edgar and Patience, Pap and Grease. And no sooner did I think of them than I felt Sophia jump with a start, and squeeze my hand, and I knew then that it had begun.

  There was a bank of fog covering the river, and over top of it we saw them—phantoms flittering before us, in that ghostly blue, the entire range of them who had been there on that Holiday night. Georgie Parks was on his jaw-harp, Edgar at the banjo, Pap and Grease were hollering, and all the rest circled and danced around the fire. We could hear them, not in our ears, but somewhere deep beneath the skin. It seemed that the bank of fog was alive, for its wispy fingers seemed to move in time with the music, seemed to stretch toward us and, on beat, gently induce us to join.

  It was a simple thing to accept the invitation—all that it required was a squeeze of that wooden horse. When I did this, those same fingers shot out, took hold of us, jerked us forward and released us. I felt Sophia stumbling, and grabbed ahold of her hand. When she’d recovered, she looked back at me stunned. And then when we looked out forward, we saw that the forest was in front of us, and the river, the bank of fog, and the phantoms were behind. Looking back across, we could see what happened—we’d been conducted across the river to the other side.

  Looking down, we saw the blue tendrils of mist retreating off of us, and we heard the music picking up again, louder and louder—Georgie still on the jaw-harp, Edgar with his banjo, while the rest of them hollered and danced, and again we saw the fingers of fog reach for us, beckoning us with the beat. Now I pulled the wooden horse from my pocket and held it aloft—and it glowed blue in my hand. And I looked to Sophia and then I squeezed again, and the mists shot out, snatched us up, and pulled us to the other side of the river. When we were released, Sophia stumbled and fell. I helped her up and we turned again and heard the music rising and saw, again, the fingers of fog beckon.

  “It’s like dancing,” I said.

  And I squeezed again, but this time, Sophia leaned into the fog with all her weight, giving in to it, riding it, so that she landed firm on her feet. I squeezed again and we were again conducted. Squeezed again and were conducted. Squeezed again and were conducted. Then, thinking of my old home with Thena and all my days there, and what it had been to me through all those years, I squeezed again and t
he blue tendrils snatched us up, and this time, when they released us, we found ourselves right back there on the Street, and as the fog retreated, the last image we had was of a woman water dancing, a jar on her head, dancing away from us until, with the most incredible grace, she angled her head so that the jar slid down, and reaching up she caught the jar by the neck, laughed, drank from it, and offered it up to someone unseen as she faded away.

  When we returned to the cabin, Sophia climbed up to the loft. I tried to follow but collapsed back in a heap and crash so loud that I woke Thena.

  “Hell are y’all doing?” she yelled.

  “Just out for some air,” Sophia said.

  “Air, huh?” Thena said skeptically.

  Sophia reached down and helped me up the ladder, and when I got to the top I collapsed into a dreamless sleep. I awoke early the next morning and dragged myself through my tasks.

  The night following, we were there laid out in the loft as usual, in our late-night conversations.

  “Where’d you first see the water dance?” I asked.

  “Don’t even remember,” Sophia said. “Where I’m from, everybody do it. Some better than others. But they start us on it young down there. It’s tied to the place, you know?”

  “I don’t,” I said. “Never knew where it came from.”

  “It’s a story,” she said. “Was a big king who come over from Africa on the slave ship with his people. But when they got close to shore, him and his folk took over, killed all the white folks, threw ’em overboard, and tried to sail back home. But the ship run aground, and when the king look out, he see that the white folks’ army is coming for him with they guns and all. So the chief told his people to walk out into the water, to sing and dance as they walked, that the water-goddess brought ’em here, and the water-goddess would take ’em back home.

  “And when we dance as we do, with the water balanced on our head, we are giving praise to them who danced on the waves. We have flipped it, you see? As we must do all things, make a way out of what is given. Ain’t that what you done last night? Ain’t that what you say you do? Flipped it. It’s what Santi Bess done, ain’t it? She all I could think about when we came back up out of it last night. That king. The water dance. Santi Bess. You.

  “ ‘It’s like dancing.’ Ain’t that what you said? It’s what Santi Bess done. She ain’t walk into no water. She danced, and she passed that dance on to you.

  “And that’s why they came for you, the Underground,” she said.

  “Yep,” I said. “I had done it before, but not of my own deciding. And they had caught wind of me, and had been watching me. And then after Maynard, well…”

  “That’s how it happened, huh? That’s how you come up out the Goose. That’s how you taking us up out of Lockless.”

  “It is,” I said. “But there is a problem, one I do not yet quite have figured. The thing works on memory, and the deeper the memory, the farther away it can carry you. My memory of that Holiday night is tied to Georgie, and it’s tied to this horse that was my gift to him and his baby. But to conduct y’all that far, I need a deeper memory, and need another object tied to that memory to be my guide.”

  “How bout that coin you used to always carry?”

  “Yeah, I done tried that. It can’t carry me far enough. One thing to cross a river. Whole nother to cross a country. Gotta be deeper.”

  Sophia was quiet for a moment and then she said, “That’s quite the power. Gotta be that you are a man of some importance to this Underground.”

  “That’s what Corrine say.”

  “And this is why she won’t let you loose.”

  “It’s more than that,” I said. “But that is the larger part of it.”

  “So then, Hiram,” she said. “What is your intention toward me, toward my Caroline? What is our life to be?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I figured I’d get you set up somewhere. And I could see y’all from time to time.”

  “No,” she said.

  “What?” I said.

  “We not going,” she said.

  “Sophia, it’s what we wanted. It’s why we was running.”

  “ ‘We,’ Hiram,” she said. “ ‘We,’ you understand?”

  “I would like nothing more than to go with you, to leave it all back here. But you must see why I cannot. After all I have told you, after what I have shared of this war that we find upon us, you must see why I can’t leave.”

  “I am not telling you to leave. I am saying that we, my Carrie and me, we are not leaving without you. I have lived here so long watching these families go to pieces. And here I have formed one, with you, with a man who is, as you have said yourself, blood of my Caroline. She is your kin, and I know it is a horrible thing to say, but I am telling you, you are her daddy, more of a daddy than that girl would ever have.”

  “You know what you saying?” I said. “Do you know what you are walking away from?”

  “No,” she said. “But one day I will and when I do, I will know it with you.”

  I felt in that moment something low and beautiful. Something born down here on the Street, and all the Streets of America. Something nurtured and birthed out of the Warrens. It was the warmth of the muck. It was the relief of the low-born. The facing of the facts, the flight from Quality, the gravity and excrement of the true world where we all live.

  I turned away to sleep and felt Sophia pulling close to me and slipping her arm underneath mine, until her hand found the warm, soft part of me.

  “You know you chaining yourself to something here.”

  And for a while the only answer was the soft warm breath on the back of my neck, and then she said, “Ain’t a chain if it is my choosing.”

  * * *

  —

  The next day, Thena and I went out on our route, collecting the washing. And then we spent the next hauling up the water and tubs, beating the jackets and trousers and then hanging them in the drying room down in the Warrens. Sophia was not with us, pleading illness on behalf of Caroline. But there was no illness, it was part of our plan, one that was ill-thought, for now, at the end of the day, with our hands worn and our arms exhausted, Thena was ornery at her absence.

  “What is wrong with her, Hi?” Thena said. We were walking slowly back down to the Street. The sun had faded long ago and we moved like shadows down the path, past the orchards and through the woods. “I wish you had chosen a girl with more back to her. That Sophia don’t know nothing about work.”

  “She work just fine,” I said. “She worked for you while I was gone.”

  “If that is what you must call it,” Thena said. “Way I see it, she only start really doing it once you was here. How you gonna make a way with a woman like that, Hi? All that’s put on a man’s life, how you gonna get it done with a woman who only work for show? When I was young, I outworked every man on the home-place, every one, even mine. I was terror in the tobacco fields, and I kept house too. Of course I sometimes wonder what it all got me—cracked over the head and robbed of my little stack of freedom. So maybe that girl know something I do not.”

  “I seen Kessiah,” I said. All day I had tried to weave this announcement, somehow, into our conversation. I had failed at discovering some decorous way to accomplish this, and knowing that it had to be done, I elected for the most direct route.

  Thena stopped and turned to me. “Who?”

  “Your daughter,” I said. “Kessiah. I seen her.”

  “Is this you being mad for what I said about that girl?”

  “I have seen her,” I said, as firm as I could muster.

  “Where?” said Thena.

  “North,” I said. “She lives just outside Philadelphia. Was taken to Maryland after she was stripped from you. From there, escaped north. She got a family. A husband who is good to her.”

 
“Hiram…”

  “She want you to join her,” I said. “She want you up there with her. Thena, this ain’t no joke. When I left her I told her I would get you back to her. I promised, and I now mean to honor that promise.”

  “Honor? How?”

  And there in the forest, as I had done with Sophia, I explained what had happened to me, what I had become.

  “So this the Underground?” she asked.

  “It is,” I said. “And it ain’t.”

  “Well, which is it?”

  “It’s me,” I said. “It’s me. And I’m asking if you can hold to that.”

  “Kessiah?” she asked of no one in particular. “Last time I seen her she was such a small thing. Willful as hell. She loved her daddy, you know? And he was so very hard. We used to have camellias. It was another time, another time. She would go out back and pick in them until I…”

  She paused here and her face took on a look of confusion.

  “Kessiah…” she said softly. And then the tears came, slow and silent, and without a cry or wail. She said her daughter’s name again and then she turned to me and asked, “Did you see any of the others?”

  I shook my head and said, “I am sorry.”

  And that was when the wailing came, and it was low and deep and throaty, and she moaned to herself, “Oh Lord, oh Lord,” and shook her head.

  “Why you bring this back to me? Why you do this? You and your Underground? Hell I care. I have settled up with it. Why you bring this to me?”

  “Thena, I—”

  “Naw, you done spoke, let me speak. Do you know what I done? And you, you should have known. You who I took in, you bring this back to me! You do this to me.

  “In this very house where I took you in, when you wasn’t spit, and you come down here and do this to me? Do you know what it took for me to make peace with this?”

  She was backing away from me now, backing her way out of the cabin.

  “Thena…”

  “No, you stay away from me. You and your girl, y’all stay away from me.”