The Loom

by Shella Gillus

  Never would she forget the sound of Grandma Lou’s wailing. It rang high-pitched above the other mourners within the walls of their cabin, though her normal tone flowed thick as honey.

  Brown faces surrounded her, their eyes saying what their lips refused to repeat. Arms embraced and hands caressed, but nothing stopped Lydia’s head from shaking.

  “Sit her down,” one woman instructed, pulling her toward the crate, but Lydia’s body refused to bend.

  “Give her some water,” another suggested, but she could not drink.

  Lydia shook her head faster and faster, her hands pressed against her ears, trying to shake herself awake from this day of torment, this hour of anguish.

  The solemn faces swayed back and forth before her like a turbulent sea. A quivering in the center of her stomach rose until it sat salty in the back of her throat.

  “I need my daddy.”

  “You gonna be all right.”

  “I need my daddy.”

  “I know.”

  “Daddy…”

  “Hush now.”

  Sobbing heaved from her chest until her eyes rolled back and all color faded to black.

  Lydia awoke beside her grandmother to the smell of okra, onions, and tomatoes steaming in a cast-iron skillet.

  A basket of vegetables sat on the table. A gift. A gift already for the bereaving. Please, God, no.

  Only two remained, John and Cora, lingering near the hearth.

  “Where is he? What happened to my daddy?”

  “You need to eat something,” Cora urged.

  “Please… Please!”

  “He’s gone, Lydia,” John said, his head between his hands.

  No.

  Her grandmother closed her eyes. When she opened them, tears glistened in wavy streams down the maple mountains of her cheeks. She turned to Cora. “Tell me. I wanna know. Tell me what they did to my boy.”

  “One of master’s men…” Cora looked down, spoke slowly. “He said he needed to teach him a lesson. Teach us all a lesson.” Cora’s lip quivered. “Slashed his face. Heard they threw his body in the Potomac when they was through.”

  “I ain’t even got his body. I ain’t even got my baby’s body.” Lou’s sniffling erupted into sobs, deep and hollow.

  Cora rushed to her side and wrapped her arms around her. Together, they rocked to the rhythm of their weeping.

  Lydia couldn’t breathe. She sprinted out of the cabin past the other slave quarters and the tobacco fields. She stopped when she saw the pink-streaked sky and tumbled to her knees. Its beauty stung. How can it not weep with me? She knelt alone, fatherless, outside in a world unscathed by a broken heart.

  Lou fought sleep like the devil it was.

  Sneaking up on her, tempting her to close her eyes, alluring her with a gift it never gave. Rest never came on nights of terror.

  Tonight, her first night without her son, she wouldn’t dare shut her eyes. Isaiah could come strolling in at any moment, surprising everybody, telling the tale of how he escaped, fled from evil, and made it home. The Lord had done much greater things, hadn’t He?

  She wouldn’t sleep and miss her son. Or clothe her mind in those awful pictures of him Cora had shared. Why had she asked? Why did she need to know they had cut him, sliced her baby’s face? She shuddered. No, that devil wasn’t going to sneak up on her and force her to see her boy all bloody and beaten like an animal. My baby…

  She wouldn’t do it. She wasn’t going to let sleep win. Every time a wave of exhaustion bowed her head forward, she spoke to it.

  “Liar,” she said when her lids grew heavy, “Yea, though I walk through the valley…,” she slurred when her chin bobbed against her chest.

  Her mother had given her these words to hide on the inside, said it was all she had to give. Even then, Lou knew it was enough.

  In and out of liquid thoughts, she roused herself until light spilled through the cracks of their log house and onto the face of her grandbaby. The girl, balled up on her side, made Lou cry all over again.

  She looked around. John and Cora had slipped away.

  She needed to do something. Keep herself busy. That’s how they were going to make it. One tied-up moment after the other until the good Lord called them home.

  Lou strapped the faded, striped apron around her waist and marched to the crate in the kitchen, pulling out flour, lard, and sugar. In a wooden bowl, she tossed handfuls and pinches until she stirred a yellow dough that stuck to the back of her spoon.

  Isaiah loved tea cakes.

  “Just one more, Mama,” he would plead when he was no taller than her waist. Though she knew they needed the extra for supper, she always gave in.

  “Just one more, Isaiah,” she whispered after the other slaves cleared the table and hurried out the cabin to their day’s duty. Giggling, he would skip out on their heels, clutching the fat, round biscuit against his chest.

  “Grandma?”

  Lou turned to Lydia’s drowsy face, still pressed and pulled by slumber like the dough in her hand.

  “Why you cooking, Grandma?”

  “What do you mean, why am I cooking? We got to eat, ain’t we?” Lou looked at the sad eyes, dropped her hand from her hip, and confessed. “Granny’s gotta keep her hands busy, baby. Got to stay busy.”

  But the lack of sleep was getting to her. Like an old bandit, it crept in, entered one finger at a time. Her hands trembled. She shook them steady.

  She brushed against Lydia as she made her way to the hearth. Didn’t make a lick of sense how they were all bunched up in the smallest of spaces with the large quarters the master had. Didn’t make no sense at all.

  “Grandma?”

  “Yes, baby.”

  “Why’d they kill my daddy?”

  “Oh, baby.” Lou’s withered hands pounded the sugary flour into perfect circles. Yes. They were perfect. Whatever her hand found to do…

  Taste was one thing, the expected thing, that had to be present at every meal. Food with flavor was vital. Not much more pleasure a slave had, but making each dish pleasing to the eye thrilled her more. Why not take the time and make the patties as round as she could? Not too many she knew cared about those type of details. Not like she did. If she’d done it for a master for years, why not for her own? With what little her family had, her special touch made it all the better.

  But now the more she worked, the more she shook. “Do something, child.” When Lydia propped herself against the chair, she handed her a patty. “Knead this.”

  Lou tossed the dough from palm to palm. She kept her eyes on her work and off Lydia. Where eyes focused, the mind would follow.

  “I needed him.”

  She tried to ignore it, but she saw it. A single tear sped down Lydia’s cheek before others raced to join it. She smudged them with the back of her hand and sniffed. “We needed him.”

  “I know, baby. We did. Granny knows.”

  Lou glimpsed the girl from the corner of her eye and a chill shot through her. Her son sat, young, innocent, unbroken. She shuddered back into the present. Her granddaughter. She wanted to reach for her but if she stopped—if her hands stopped moving—she would feel the burning, the ripping of soul from spirit. She tossed instead and blocked the words, the thoughts, the feelings.

  “It’s not right.”

  If the girl would stop talking…

  “What ain’t right? Hurting your daddy? No, ’course it ain’t.” What happened to her perfect circles? Girl sure didn’t take after her. “You ain’t doing it right, Lydia. Take it like this.” She pressed into the tea cakes. “Push your palm in deeper.”

  “I mean all of it. Treating us like we don’t matter. Like we don’t cry. Like we don’t bleed. Like we don’t have the same needs they got.”

  Lou nodded. She needed her to be quiet.

  “But God knows.”

  “He sure does, baby.”

  “He knows.”

  “Hush now, Lydia. Hush.” Not another word.

&n
bsp; Lydia’s hands fell still. She rocked, her eyes in a distant place. “He knows.”

  “I told you to hush!” Lou snatched the patty from Lydia’s hands, but when she touched the thin fingers, felt the warm skin of her offspring, the shaking took over. She couldn’t stop. It rode through her body like a loaded train.

  Isaiah. Her boy. Her baby boy. Beautiful, beautiful boy. Not my baby. Not my baby! All her children taken away. Now, on this side she had none. A flood of tears surged. She slumped against the wall, slid down on her son’s dark blue blanket, fingernail prints pressed hard into the cakes still in her hands. She was drowning, drowning in quivering images of a boy who stole her heart with his first breath.

  “Isaiah. My baby.”

  She shook with her granddaughter holding her, Lydia’s arms wrapped around her. She shook, squeezing the patties, harder, deeper. She couldn’t fight it.

  “I can’t stop shaking. Please, Lord, have mercy.” Lou clung to her grandbaby and wept. “Have mercy on me.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The next morning, Lydia dragged herself toward the house she would never call home again.

  When she reached the old colonial, her heart weighed against her, heavier with each step it took to arrive. Covered in dust, her shoes slid against each plank until she was standing where her father had stood, struggled, cried out to her. She knelt and glided her fingers across dried scarlet drops on the damp wood.

  No life at all.

  How much more could she bear? How much longer could she remain? If she stayed she could die at their hands or worse yet live at their feet. She thought of Lou, stripped of the last child she had. Dead is better than us alive.

  At least Daddy was free.

  When she could sit, bow no longer, she rose, stronger, and marched right through the front door. She wanted them to tell her something, ask her anything, and she would give them what they wanted, whatever they needed to shut her up. She could feel the heat blazing from the pit of her belly to her chest. Let them kill her. Let them stop her heart, quench her breath. She had nothing to lose. They couldn’t take what she never had.

  In her room, she stretched across her bed and wrapped herself in the blanket she had weaved for John. She had only a few rows to complete but even that would prove challenging now.

  Her door creaked open.

  She rolled to her side. Lizzy stood under the door frame, shaking. Loose blond strands shimmied over her red eyes.

  “Lydia”

  She sat up and stared at her.

  Finally, Lizzy inched closer. “I’m sorry, Lydia. I’m so sorry.” Her words gurgled in tears.

  Lydia watched her, weeping, trembling, and she knew, she knew Lizzy felt the same hurt, carried the same weight, experienced the same pain. They were not friends. They were family.

  She ran to her, clung to her, and cried.

  “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” Lizzy said. Over and over she said the words until they soothed like a balm for a wounded heart.

  She stepped back and looked at Lydia. “I didn’t know. I never said anything.”

  “I know.”

  “I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know why, Lydia, but—”

  “I know.”

  There was nothing else to say.

  When she nodded and turned to leave, Lydia wanted to scream. Don’t go! Stay! But she said nothing and watched her slip away. Another back to her.

  When she heard the door close, she stood still for a long time before her knees locked and buckled. She slid to the floor, felt the cold oak against her legs, her spine, her scalp. It penetrated, chilling her until she shivered.

  As cold as it was, she remained. Didn’t have the will to rise.

  Emma rocked on the edge of the wing chair, clutching the cushion that spilled out beneath her, and watched her husband ease the front door open.

  She knew where he had been.

  He bumped his head on the silver candelabra hanging in the center of the room and winced. He looked drained, weathered, sorely out of place in a sunlit room of lilac and crushed velvet.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, kneeling at her side.

  For Isaiah? Or the countless women?

  Even on his knees, she had to look up to him. The smell of sweat clung to his clothes, lingered around the collar of the same bloodstained cream shirt she couldn’t scrub clean. He had worn it the evening before when she sent him out on the porch with his boys.

  She had heard the moaning.

  The sound of muffled cries from covered mouths. They echoed like screams that fought to escape but were bound by fear, shoved down deep into the pit of souls. It was this anguish that drew her to the window.

  The people below moved slowly, cautiously, as if they could be stung at any moment by angry white bees swarming above.

  The men lowered their hats over icy sneers as they strutted across the porch, raising their fists.

  Then she saw Isaiah. Bare-chested and bound. She saw for the first time in years. She had watched the seasons change, her child grow, and her marriage fall apart, but she hadn’t seen any of it. Until yesterday. It was her on the porch. She was Isaiah. Hands tied behind her back, subject to a man in control, bound to one who took her kindness for weakness.

  She hadn’t expected to feel anything. But when her eyes locked with Lydia’s, something happened. She saw the silent horror of a girl begging, pleading. It was her grappling for life, begging to be saved without sound. And in that bedroom, for the first time in years, she felt her eyes blinking back tears, her heart beating, her fingers sprawled against cold glass, her hand over a mouth that had swallowed sickness for too long. She stepped back and let the curtains close on the scene she no longer wanted to play. And in that bedroom, she screamed. She screamed. She screamed until Michael rushed through the door and she yelled for him to do something. Do something! Why don’t you do something?

  But it was too late.

  Emma stood up and left Michael on his knees. She was leaving him. Never returning from Richmond.

  It would never be too late again.

  More joy. More pain.

  As soon as one caught fire, the other ignited. Joy had blazed wild and care-free in his wife, but pain flickered until it flamed in the corners of a hurt heart.

  Outside their cabin, surrounded by maples and a fresh scent of ever-green, John stoked low, flickering flames before Lydia arrived. On bended knee, he leaned over the fire until it crackled and he heard the light pattering of feet on crushed leaves. He looked up into the eyes of the woman he loved. Even under the night sky, her beauty glowed against the backdrop of night.

  She dropped to her knees and laid her head against his shoulder.

  “You feeling all right?”

  She nodded.

  “It’s going to be all right, Lydia. I know it’s hard to see that now, but I promise.” Please, God. He had to keep his word. “I’m getting you out of here. I’m speaking with Dr. Kelly tomorrow.” He cupped the crown of her head and tilted her face toward him.

  She looked at him with little emotion. He searched her eyes, her lips, then smiled for the both of them.

  “Rest assured. There’s nothing to worry about.” Her face, his heart, said otherwise.

  He blew out a breath.

  “I wish I could just keep holding you. Doesn’t seem right you having to go back to that house after what happened. A wife should be with her husband.”

  “Yes,” she said quietly.

  His wife. He still liked to say the word, hear the sound of it leaving his lips. He kissed her. Once. Twice.

  “Maybe after tomorrow Dr. Kelly will let us—”

  “Let us?” Lydia’s back straightened.

  He rubbed it in long strokes. “We’re going to go just right, Lydia, and trust God to do what only He can.”

  Hounds barking in the distance startled him to his feet. “You hear that?” His hand locked around hers as she scuffled up, ready to run. They watched the bushes, the wind i
n the trees behind them, and strained to see any sign of threat until the sound faded. John breathed relief, but several minutes passed before they settled back near the fire.

  “What kind of life is this?” Lydia stared into the flames.

  John stretched his legs and leaned back on his palms, orange and red burning, crackling, playing softly around them.

  Lydia shivered in spite of it. He drew her close.

  “Don’t let it go out, John.”

  He scrambled up and jammed a branch into the heap.

  “You’ve got to stir it up,” she said. When he leaned forward, he saw it in her eyes.

  A flame building.

  In their cabin that night, Lydia reached for him.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” she said, sliding down on the quilt. He leaned in over her until he smelled lavender, breathed in peace, and surrendered to soft fingertips drumming against his back.

  “Lydia…”

  That night, like the others since her father’s death, when he made love to her, his heart filled with guilt. It seemed wrong to find pleasure in the midst of pain, but she had begged him. Had offered herself to him each night since their wedding. Said she needed him, needed to feel him close.

  She had a way with him like no other. He was amazed at how deeply he had fallen, how quickly his sharp edges broke in her softness, her love.

  The cracks of day woke him. She was already dressed, ready to leave.

  “Lady.”

  She turned to him with sad eyes.

  “What’s wrong? Something wrong?”

  “Seeing you every night is not the same as having you.”

  “I know, Lydia. Soon.”

  “It’s not enough.” She knelt beside him. “This hurts. I need more.”

  When he reached for her, she stopped him, grabbed his hand before he could hold her. “I’ve got to go.”

  “All right. Give me a minute.” He wrestled into his pants, searched for the shirt he had worn.

  “I’ve got to go.”

  “Lydia, let me walk you to the steps.”

  She shook her head and flashed a final smile.