I don’t know what to do, so I ask Dad for the last, tiny sip, and after he hands over the wine, it warms my throat and opens my chest. I shake Parmesan cheese from its round green container. I keep shaking and shaking until it’s all gone, and before we’re ready to eat, Dad leaves. I never do tell them what Claudette and Jessica said at school.
On Friday Mom has to leave for a teacher’s conference, so even though I’m old enough to stay by myself for the weekend, Mom insists, “Three days is too long, so you’ll be staying at your father’s. I’m not leaving you alone.”
Friday night I ride the bus over to Dad’s after an awesome field hockey game, where our Canyon Valley Cougars totally wiped out Walnut Creek. When I sit down to dinner in my black game shorts, I’m pleased to find him serving sweet potatoes, my favorite food, and “normally I’d have ham,” Dad says, with a voice like honey, “but since you’re a vegetarian now, I stir-fried tofu into the greens.” He pulls his lips up, as if he’s trying to smile, but instead he looks like he’s about to eat rat poop. Jimi makes a face too. “Eeeww.”
“Stop it.” Dad frowns at Jimi. “Right this second.”
Actually, I hate tofu. I don’t know why everybody thinks vegetarians love it so much. It’s too soft, like snot. I scoop as many greens onto my plate as I can without tofu, until Dad says, “Lilla Bit, you’re not getting any of the good stuff.” Now that I’m so tall, Lilla Bit is his joke, and since he cooked the tofu especially for me, I try mashing one piece into the sweet potatoes. But it’s still slimy and gross. When he’s watching a hummingbird at the feeder outside, I slide two more pieces into my hand and say, real politely, “Excuse me, Dad, may I go to the bathroom?” Jimi sees me and looks surprised, but I know he won’t tell Dad.
After dinner I lie on the Deathbed to read. That’s what Jimi calls the cot in his room that Dad put up for me. It collapses if you even think about moving. But it’s nice to be in Jimi’s room, even though he’s not paying attention to me and I’m not talking either. Everything feels more normal than it’s been in a long time, being near Jimi. He’s slouching at his computer, playing a game with his back to me.
“Got any graph paper?” he asks over his shoulder.
“Yeah.” I reach, moving carefully, until I manage to sit up and pull a notebook from my pack, tear a page, and hand it over. “Here.”
After he grabs it he goes back to his game, while I lie down again and try to get comfortable. Pretty soon Jimi climbs into his bed, but I hear whimpering.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” he whispers, sniffling.
“It doesn’t sound like nothing.” I feel like Mom or Dad, grilling him in the exact same way. Jimi never cries.
“Nothing.” He stops and buries his head under the pillow, and I hear a muffled, “A boy …”
“What?”
“He’s gonna beat me—”
“Beat you? Who?”
“Don’t want to talk—”
“Jimi!”
Silence, until the image I had in class swirls up: Jimi running, chased by someone I can’t see.
“Jimi.” I clump over to his bed and shake him, but nothing makes him answer, even when I threaten to beat him up myself if he doesn’t tell, and I give him a few sample punches. At last, trying to shake off my uneasiness, I get absorbed in a story for Language Arts, until Dad lumbers in with a pile of paper and stands between our two beds—if you can call the Deathbed a bed.
“Sugar, I’m writing,” he says. His face is stretched into a big grin, so he’s all mouth. “A novel based on your great-great-grandmother, Sarah Armstrong. She was amazing.” He reaches over and squeezes my left shoulder. “I think you’re going to like it. She struggled a lot, but she made it, and so will you—even if you have troubles now.”
How did he know? At school, ever since the day Jessica copied Claudette when talking about the looters, it’s been weird. We still eat lunch together, but I don’t text her after school, and she hasn’t texted me. Now suddenly my dad, who teaches accounting—B-O-R-I-N-G—is clairvoyant, and he’s writing a book about some old woman who lived a hundred and fifty years ago. I knew he liked to read history, but now he’s writing it? What planet am I on?
“A friend of mine, Helane, is helping with research,” he says. “She’s a Black History professor at Cal.” He’s smiling and sounds excited, which is not like him, believe me. He’s always been Mister Mellow, at least until this recent incarnation as Mister Militant. “We even found an old journal in Grandpa James’s attic that was Miss Sarah’s! I want to read you the first chapter I wrote.” He flashes another grin so big he looks as if he has chipmunk cheeks.
“I don’t know,” I say. In our family we read aloud a lot, but I’m not sure I’m in the mood. Plus, that seems like baby stuff. Nobody gets it that I’m fifteen now.
“Me, either,” Jimi mumbles, following me like he does. He’s already half gone, with his lids falling over his eyes. Dad reaches over, squeezes a one-handed hug, and tells him, “Go to sleep.” Jimi turns his back, and in less than a minute we can tell by his breathing that he’s out, snoring. He’s so small, you wouldn’t think he could make that big a noise. Five feet away, he’s rattling the Deathbed.
Dad raises his eyebrows, like, Yes? They’re thick and bushy, and whenever he lifts them it’s a whole sentence. “I actually based her character on you,” he says. “You know what they say: ‘The best way to know a parent is to look at the child.’ Well, I figured the best way for me to imagine my great-grandmother’s nature was to take a hard look at one of her descendants, another feisty young woman.”
I turn my head away, then shrug one shoulder. Dad drags in a chair from the dining table and props his feet on my bed. But he has to be careful not to lean too hard, even with me in it. That’s how tipsy this so-called bed is.
“Your great-great-grandmother,” he says in a soft voice, “died the year after Grandpa James was born, when she was ninety-nine. I only know a little about her. She never married, but late in life she had one child, my granddad, Albert. When he married, he and his wife had only one child: my dad, your grandpa James. That was pretty much all I knew until Grandpa James found this diary; it’s just a few pages but it gives the outlines of your great-great-grandmother’s story. We think she wrote it shortly before she died. And we’ve researched other slave narratives from the same time. Well, Helane has. They tell stories like Miss Sarah’s.” He stops and looks at me.
I can tell by how he’s searching my face that he wants me to know about Miss Sarah, but I want to know about Miss Helane. Something makes me wonder: Is she the reason we’re in this scary neighborhood that I have to ride a creepy bus to? How much of a friend is she?
“You’re a lot like Miss Sarah, from what I gather.” Dad’s talking on, oblivious, smiling with his new alien face, until he tilts the light on the wall toward his papers. I can’t imagine why I’d want to hear about an old lady, but I’m snuggled under my covers, so I mumble, “Yeah.”
“First,” he says, “I want to read you the end of her journal.”
Yes, I was born a slave, but when I was fifteen years of age and heaven had been turned wrong side out, I ran for my life. The hound dogs chased me and the white folks were going to hell like a barrel full of nails tumbling over the falls, but I had a strong notion to own my own body. Couldn’t nobody whip me or pen me then. I started out good following the old Pamunkey River north until
“Until what?” I ask.
“She stopped there. But listen, this is what I’m writing about. Here’s the first chapter,” alien–Dad says with an enormous, satisfied grin, and begins to read.
Hanover County, Virginia, 1853
“I’m never going back,” Sarah vowed to herself. She had to keep saying it because her arms hurt from bramble scratches and her bare feet had more cuts than she could count. If she didn’t keep up her chant—”I’m never going back, never …”—she was afraid she would turn around and run straight home. Her feet knew the way
.
“Sarah recorded that vow in her journal,” Dad interrupted. “But of course I’m inventing the details.”
“Stop it,” Sarah said aloud when the devil thoughts, the ones that whispered, You’ll never make it, crept in. “I’m never going back …” she repeated, over and over again until her head was dizzy.
Following the path lit by moonlight, Sarah found little time to think about anything except going forward. She had to keep every sense focused on where she was going so she didn’t trip on roots or vines, and she needed to be sure she stayed near—but not too near—the old Pamunkey. The river would split off into two streams, she knew, and when it did she’d take the right fork. She must stay alert, moving north with the aid of the river, the North Star, and her tiny compass. She gripped the small circle of metal in her sweaty hand; its cool solidity reassured her that the bird man’s sudden appearance back on the plantation was not a dream. “Take this, child,” the stranger had said.
Sarah jerked her mind to her present surroundings. “Don’t think about the past,” she told herself firmly. “No time to dwell,” as Mama used to say. She had to listen carefully for the sound of bounty hunters or the distant barking of dogs set to track her. It was too early for anyone to realize she was gone, she thought, but who knew what ol’ Master Armstrong had seen?
Awoooo! The hair stood up on her arms. The howl pierced the air again, and her skin quivered. Was that a hound dog, set to track her? Her heart stopped then shuddered so loudly she was afraid it would wake the county.
Silence followed. It must be a wolf or a coyote. Or wildcat. She waited. No—it wasn’t dogs. She set out again at a half trot, chanting a new mantra in rhythm with her footsteps. “I can’t go back, I can’t go back …”
Every step took her farther from the Armstrong plantation. Yet while her feet moved north, her mind was split, chopped open like a melon cut in two by her father’s axe. On one side, every bit of her brain told her Go, run, legs, run for your life. But the other side of her mind held one silent howl of NO. When Sarah let herself touch that scream, she wanted to turn, sprint, and fling herself onto familiar earth. Everyone she’d ever cared about in her entire fifteen years had been on that plantation. But now, it was hard to believe, all were sold and scattered.
The soles of her feet had touched every inch of dirt around the cabins; she knew the soil when it was dusty and dry, and when it turned to mud that squished between her toes like cool corn mush or sucked her ankles up to her calves. She knew where to find fat earthworms at daylight, wiggling after she tugged them from the ground. Every spring she waited for the red-tipped shoots that sprouted; later, when evenings grew hot, she knew to expect the sounds of crickets chirping in the night, lulling her to sleep.
A light drizzle started up as the past filled her head, both sides united now in grief. The memories rubbed sore spots in her heart, but still she sucked on them the way she’d savored hard, buttery twists of candy at Christmas, caressing them with her tongue, wishing they could last.
Awoooo! Her scalp quivered and the hair on her head stood on end. Yet her feet kept moving. She told herself that if she could get up to that giant mossy pine ahead, she’d rest there—shutting out the night’s screeches and howls—and give herself in to remembering.
There. Just a few more steps.
“Coo, coo, coo,” little Esther had called, chasing a squawking chicken through the yard. Sarah remembered laughing when she watched her sister clap her hands and run. Her brother Albert toddled along behind, weaving a silly line. Wherever Esther was, Albert, with his mischievous eyes and round cheeks, was never far behind.
Sarah thought of days she and Esther had observed baby starlings. The beaks looked half as big as the bodies they could see over the rim of the nest. “Cheep, cheep!” the babies never stopped shrieking, except when their mouths were full. She and Esther watched until the day the tiny birds fluttered off, one by one, on their first wobbly flights from home. The Sunday after that, the nest was bare.
Sarah had a lump in her throat that day. Four babies, two parents. The hurt felt like the one she had now, waking from a half sleep tucked into the crook of a branch low on the mossy pine, its needles prickling her. Only this lump was worse. It felt like a big cornmeal dumpling that wouldn’t go up or down.
She lifted her head to make herself pay attention to the sounds of the night. Could that be a distant baying of dogs? Stop thinking about the past! she scolded, pulling a biscuit out of her pocket for one nibble. But with the familiar taste, her heavy heart flew open and a flood of memory washed in.
Little Albert could mimic the chattering of jays so well he’d fool them into thinking he was part of the conversation. Then she’d scamper up a tree and bring him down a warm bird’s egg. Remembering her brother, heat swelled Sarah’s throat and chest, and for a minute she couldn’t breathe. She thought of how Albert used to climb into her lap and tangle his hands in her long hair, pulling and teasing. Then she and Esther would tickle him until he begged them to stop.
She forced herself to stand up and start moving again. The half moon was high in the sky. She had only a few more hours until morning, when she should arrive near a road and need to hide. She wondered if the bounty hunters were after her yet. If so, she couldn’t turn back; they might kill her if they captured her. Or make her wish they had.
Now that she was walking, the best memory of all flooded in, the one that made her eyes swim with tears until she couldn’t see the tiny arrow on the compass at all. The memory was about Sundays. Magic Sundays. For a sweet hour, until the moon dipped low on the horizon and the sky showed the first faint signs of pink, Sarah let herself sink into Sundays. Remembering was like being wrapped in a cozy quilt and rocked by Mama. On Sundays, she and her friend Ruth ran to a deep spot in the creek where they splashed and washed. Later they fished with a long strip of green wood, cut from just under the bark of a willow tree. They tied that strip, twisted like twine, to an old bent nail. Sarah forgot how sore her legs were now, after almost a full night of walking, when she remembered her excitement at the tug on the line—”Look, Ruth!” she’d scream—and how it felt in her hands, with the fish jerking one way and her pulling another. The spray was so vivid that for a moment she felt herself flipping up the line, and raised her hand against the water splashing over her head, until, shocked not to feel the drops, she dropped her hand. But she let herself breathe deeply, smelling the fish Mama cooked up on those Sunday evenings, all dipped in cornmeal, and she heard the sizzle in the pan.
When Sarah thought of Mama she thought of Papa standing next to her, giving thanks for their Sunday meal and another day together, and she missed them both so much her chest stung. Then, in the way that pain zigzags through a person like a magnet, one terrible thought triggered another, and she recalled the day that caused the first big crack in her world.
She’d been only six. Turkey buzzards circled high above, and she watched them, wondering. Ol’ Master Armstrong used to tell her that buzzards gave birth to slave babies. “You’re hatched from a buzzard egg,” he’d say with a laugh, his great belly shaking while he swatted at flies. “The stork brings the white babies.”
That day, like every other, Mama was out in the fields while Sarah chipped ice in the icehouse. She had to concentrate, not lose any of the precious, cold chips. Her bare toes dug into the dusty earth while her feet, long for a six-year-old, twitched. The air was always chilly with fear. Even on hot days, a sheer, invisible shadow made goose bumps on her arms. She could almost see it, like frozen screams.
At midday break she squatted, eating from the lunch trough Aunt Sally put out, sucking her fingers, savoring the flavors, tasting crumbled bread mixed with bits of cabbage, collards, and turnip greens, all made juicy with the pot likker poured over it.
Focused on licking her fingers, Sarah hadn’t seen ol’ miss until she was on them, flicking her cat-o’-nine-tails at the children. When they fled, scattering, ol’ miss said quietly, “The more t
hey scamper, the more they grow for market.”
Sarah ran as fast as she could to escape the snaky lash that whipped through the air behind her, arching her back away from the stroke. She stumbled and bit her lip, hard. When she put her hand on her mouth to wipe the warm stickiness off, she saw the dark red blood. Ever since, her stomach had tightened when she caught sight of blood.
That night she waited outside until Mama stumbled home by the light of the stars and moon. “What did ol’ miss mean, ‘They grow for market’?” she asked. It sounded scary, the way ol’ miss said the words.
Sarah saw her mother flinch. “Don’t mean nothing, child. Hush.” Her weary mother comforted her later, stroking her head while they lay together on Sarah’s pallet. “Hmmm …” her mother began as she hummed the familiar chant, “It’s all right.” Even then, Sarah remembered, she had a terrible feeling that in spite of Mama’s words, everything was not all right. But she’d forced herself to burrow deeper into her mother, who hummed and rubbed her head until Sarah fell asleep.
Now, nine years later, her worst fears fulfilled, she was running for her life. When Sarah saw the sky lighten, she knew she had to find another hiding place, a spot to sleep until night gave her cover to walk again. Creeping under a thicket of tangled brush, she unwrapped her provisions. Sarah longed to crawl toward a creek she heard rushing over rocks nearby, imagining how the cool water would soothe her bruised feet. But she couldn’t risk leaving shelter, even in early dawn. While mosquitoes buzzed and bit, Sarah forced herself to stay put, nibbling a corner of her biscuit.
Suddenly she heard a rustling nearby, the crunch of leaves. Her heart pounded. It came closer. She tried to flatten herself into the undergrowth, pressing into the ground. Twigs snapped. Something large was rapidly approaching. Closer, quicker, until two rabbits darted down the path, chased by a fox. After her heart quieted Sarah closed her eyes, praying no trader would find her while she slept.
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