Descendants of Hagar

by Nik Nicholson

  “I’ve never heard anyone talk about the Bible like this. I’ve never even thought about Judas’ destiny. Nobody ever talks about that.”

  “You know Judas hung himself?” I look at Coley, feeling a tear trail down my face; I hope the pulled curtains and darkness hide it. Not trusting nothing, I wipe my eyes.

  “I didn’t know that. Where are you reading all this?”

  “The Bible.”

  “I’ve never read that.”

  “You ever read the whole Bible?”

  “No,” she say, like she ashamed.

  Maybe to console her, I say, “I don’t know nobody other than my great grandmother that has.”

  “You are really smart,” she say, in a way that sound like she surprised, or that she was expecting me to be dumb. “Folks told me you read a lot, but you don’t speak like you do.”

  “You always speak without thinking.” I am too tired to be kind, or welcoming.

  “I’m sorry.” It sound like she crying.

  “Don’t be sorry, just pay attention. Stop acting like you better than everybody else, or you came here to save us. We don’t feel like we lost, or that we need to be saved. You see how they acted when they found out you was replacing Prudence.

  “Then again, I guess it ain’t all yo fault. Seem like you come from a place where niggas sit around making decisions for other niggas, and thinking they know what’s best for us all.”

  “It sounds strange when you say it, like it isn’t the truth. Especially since I know the truth. I don’t know what to do with my own life, and here I was thinking I could tell someone else what to do with their life.”

  I feel ‘a lay down beside me, feel ‘a weight pull us down together in the middle of the bed, and I don’t fight.

  “You know I came here to get away from my mama and daddy, Mama mostly. They always had this dream for me, of who I would be. I was going to marry a light-skinned man who could take care of me and some children. Now I’m just 25, but I’m an old maid.

  “Mama takes every opportunity she gets to tear me down, to remind me of my misfortune. Every day I woke up under her roof, she pointed out that my sisters were all married, and my brother has his own family. Then she’d ask, what will I do with myself?”

  Scooting ‘a face under my arm, and making ‘aself a place in my mind, she makes my skin feel too heavy for my bones. Prying in my pain she press with ‘a own.

  “I did everything I could to come home with a husband. Did my work and this young man’s work all through college. He married another woman, a blue blood.

  “Then I met another man, a better man. I thought I chose him with a woman’s eyes and a woman’s heart. I even left DC after I graduated, and instead of going home I followed him on to Atlanta. I thought, this is the man I’m going to marry. I couldn’t imagine someone who said he loved me could be lying.

  “Then one day, there was this big banquet. I had been planning what I was going to wear. I had been saving money so I could get my hair done, and be pretty so he’d be honored to be my escort.

  “You know, I couldn’t ask Mama or Daddy for money because a woman shouldn’t follow a man. Daddy would of said he needed to pay my way, and Mama would have accused me of sleeping with him.

  “Me living down there in Atlanta by myself already worried them. Every letter I received from them they wanted to know when I’d be home, when I’d be getting married, and if I was seeing anyone.

  “Every letter I sent back in response to theirs was a disappointment. I’d told them I was going to Clark for my masters. I did graduate from the masters program, but that wasn’t the reason I was there. He was the reason I was there.

  “Anyway, the banquet came. We were all residing on campus. Students had their dorms and staff had their living quarters. I asked him what time should I expect him to be downstairs for me. He told me I’d have to meet him at the banquet because he was at a host house, and would have to bring all the people with him to come get me.

  “I felt slighted that he was escorting me but would not come to get me. At the same time, I felt honored he was escorting me, and by some turn I’d have the honor of hosting visiting guests. I didn’t want to inconvenience anybody, so I didn’t make any noise. I thought it would all be worth it, when I could say I’m Mrs. Dr. Brendon Holcomb.”

  “He was a doctor?” I ask thinking bout what she saying.

  “Yes, he was a doctor of psychology, and he was my professor. When the A.K.A’s denied my request to enter their sorority, cause I was too dark, he was the one who held and consoled me as I cried. He had written one of my recommendations.

  “Then he started taking me out to dinner all the time. He started walking me home every evening after class. He’d spend hours talking to me, and telling me about his dreams. He even helped me get in Clark’s program where I could teach part time, and work on my masters. The teaching paid for school.

  “For the first time, someone wanted to know about me, and he asked me about my career and dreams. He was the first man supportive of me having a career and goals, outside of just being a wife or a mother. He was the first man whoever asked me who I was, or what I wanted out of life.

  “Everyone else had already decided who I was, or they were trying to force me to be who they wanted me to be. All the other men I met, were weighing me against these standards. How would I look on their arms? How much money my father earned? Who my father was? Could my father get them a job? Where would we live after school?

  “Even my own folks, were putting pressure on me to live this certain way. I tried to do what was asked of me, but sometimes I didn’t make it, and failing wasn’t enough. I had to hear about it from Mama day in and day out.

  “She didn’t ever say, ‘Coletta, you are beautiful, or smart.’ She is still always telling me how I don’t add up. How she wishes I was taller, or that my hair was straighter and longer. How I should eat to be slimmer and stay out of the sun because I’m already too dark. When it’s not that, it’s how to stand; ‘Hold your stomach in, keep your chin up, straighten your back and pull your shoulders back.’ She even tells me who to befriend. She is just like them, I went right from trying to fit in for Mama’s sake, to trying to fit in because I wanted to make her proud.

  “Neither of my sisters went to college, my youngest one didn’t even finish high school, but they both married well. Mama didn’t even tell me when my youngest sister, Minerva, was pregnant. Even to this day, she won’t admit Minerva got pregnant out of wedlock, she says the baby came early.

  “Being in Zion, this is the first time I’ve ever had people think I was smart. This is the first time people actually treated me like I was anything. Then when that woman hit me at the fair, some of them were staring at me like I deserved it. Some of them even yelled at me while I was crying.

  “Then you just left me laying there, and when I got up, the men, they wouldn’t even look me in the eyes. Here I was coming to this small town thinking I could help, but the people are telling me I don’t fit in, again.

  “I’m trying to help, but everybody is saying, I could have gotten them killed by my behavior. How can the world be so different and then the same. How is it I don’t have a place anywhere. Mama said I wouldn’t have a good life because I’m too dark, head strong, and I talk too much. Then the people here say I’m going to get them killed by being here.”

  “Ain’t just cause you here. It’s cause you don’t follow the rules,” I say soft, but it sound hard against ‘a hurt.

  “Now that I think about it, and I have been thinking about it, I realize I brought all the things with me I was trying to leave behind. I carry all those things Mama has been putting in me for years, wherever I go. I left New York, DC and Atlanta to get somewhere else, and to be someone else, maybe. You can’t get out of where you’ve been if you’re carrying the place inside you.”

  “I sometimes think about leaving this place behind, too.”

  “Where would you go?”

  I h
ear ‘a smiling, and it lightens my load to hear ‘a smile. “New York, Chicago, E. St. Louis, and sometimes I think about Atlanta cause it’s so close. Just a couple days ride north by wagon from here. Then again, if I leave, I want to get out of Georgia.

  Folks who done left always talk about Chicago and New York like they a different world. Even the work they say different. You in buildings. I hear ain’t really no trees or fields to work. I cain’t even imagine that.”

  “I think you’d like New York. I think you would be happy there, because you aren’t corrupted by the other stuff. The fact that you can be out here in these woods and not go crazy is something to talk about.”

  “Iain in the woods.” I laugh a little. “You ain seen the woods. You should let me take you hunting sometimes.”

  “Hunt what?” she ask, like the idea is so farfetched she cain’t even wrap ‘a mind around it.

  “Deer.”

  “What would we do if we found a deer?”

  “Shoot and kill it.”

  “We would shoot it?” she ask loud in disbelief.

  I roll over stretching and smiling, and feeling all the time Iain been moving much as I should. She move back, then snuggle in closer to me, when I raise my arms. I don’t know what make me do it, but I pull ‘a close and put my head on ‘a hair. Hold ‘a frame close to mine.

  “You own a gun, Linny?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Wouldn’t be out here in ‘these woods,’ as you say, by myself under no other circumstances. I got a few different rifles.” I roll away from her, and she holds on to me going with each of my movements like we joined at the hip.

  I’m reaching under the bed, feeling for it, then I pull my rifle from under the bed, where I keep it in arms reach. “This the main one I use, but I got other ones.” I’m pointing the barrel at the roof. Then I toss it up a little a few times, so I can get a handle on it where I want.

  She sits up, leaving me cold to run ‘a hands along the metal.

  Showing Coley my gun feels different from when me and my brothers are talking bout our guns. It’s like guns are tools we’re comparing. We talk about mastering our guns; how one has a better aim, while another is easier to handle. I know every part of all my guns. But for some reason, when Coley runs ‘a hands along the barrel, it feels like I’m seeing this gun for the first time.

  “You ever shot anything?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then what did you do with what you killed?”

  “Eat it, woman. Yo daddy ain never took you hunting?” I smile, feeling myself, and finding the strength to get up. “I guess not.” I think about who she is, and how she is. My daddy ain never took my sisters hunting neither. They was right there at home when we was leaving all of them times. He ain take me cause he wanted to or nothing. He just didn’t want to leave me with his wife, my mama. “Whatever happen to that man you followed to Atlanta?”

  “Oh, I didn’t tell you the end of the story. I forgot where I left off.”

  I remind ‘a, “He said he couldn’t come get you, and you didn’t put up no fuss.”

  “Yeah, well, he said he couldn’t come and get me, and to meet him at the banquet. When I got there, I saw him, and he was so handsome. I went and stood behind him, because he was surrounded by what looked like a lot of important people.

  “When he noticed me he turned around and started introducing me to everyone. There I was, you know, bowing and nodding to everyone. Linny, I felt so important that he was introducing me, I was just smiling from ear to ear. For a moment, I knew this was the reason I was on the road with him, and he was the reason I’d taken the job teaching at the local school.

  “For a moment, I finally felt like I’d made a good decision and things were going to work out. I was so proud that he was my man. I thought about how proud I would be when I finally introduced him to my father. I was just about to loop my arm in his, when he said, “Coletta Graham, this is Mrs. Dr. Brendon Holcomb, my wife.” Then he looped her gloved arm in his.

  “Oh Coley,” I say, pulling ‘a closer.

  “I felt so stupid. There I was chasing this married man and he never mentioned he had a wife.”

  “What did you say after he introduced you two?”

  “Nothing. I just excused myself and started back out to my quarters. And you know who came after me, his wife. She was so beautiful and nice. I couldn’t even hate her, as much as I wanted to.”

  “What did she have to say?”

  “Nothing really, now that I think about it. She probably knew what he had done. She said she’d heard so many good things about me, that she was looking forward to us meeting. She said she admired her husband’s dedication to his profession, and how he takes such a personal interest in his best students. It’s one of the things she loves about him. Then she said she met him when she was in school, too.”

  “How old was he?”

  “Thirty-five. They had children and everything. They lived in Philadelphia, where he was from. He travelled for work and lecturing. I travelled with him. Felt like his wife on the road. Dreamed that one day, I’d be married to him, and we would be going back and forth across the country. His wife doesn’t work. He doesn’t like his wife to work, she said. That’s what makes me think she knew then, as I’m thinking about it.”

  “They always do,” I say acting like I know his wife’s type. I’m surprised to hear that Coley wanted to keep working after she got married.

  “I was his wife on the road.”

  “How so?”

  “I washed his clothes, ironed, cleaned and cooked for him. I made sure he stayed organized for his lectures and classes. We worked so well together. I started to think we were such a good team. That’s what I always wanted when I thought about marriage. I didn’t want to be in the dark about what was going on around me, or at home somewhere like how it is with my mama and daddy.

  “I mean, don’t get me wrong, Daddy is good to Mama. She doesn’t want for anything, but him. Daddy is always gone on some speaking engagement. When he’s home he’s working late. There is this whole world Daddy is in, Mama isn’t part of. Seems like my father is always growing, going somewhere, meeting new people and learning something. While all Mama knows is New York.

  “I want to travel, too. I don’t want my life to stop because I’m married. I want to at least be a part of my husband’s successes. Especially since it seems, society won’t allow me to have my own.

  “Mama seems so bitter about all she had to give up for Daddy. Still, for some reason she tells me to find a husband like Daddy. So I can give up my dreams and be unhappy, too.”

  “Well,” I say, at a loss for words and searching for something, to comfort ‘a, but I don’t know what will. Finally, the words come, “At least you didn’t let him get the best of you.” I’m rubbing ‘a shoulder, and rocking away ‘a sorrow.

  She scoots into me until there is no way for air to pass between us.

  I’m glad she’s here, so I hold ‘a closer, thankful for this moment. I stroke ‘a face and hair.

  Then I hear ‘a moaning low, sniffing loud and realize she crying.

  I’m still, silent.

  Her body starts to shake, and I realize she upset. The crying get loud, if it what’n for my body against hers smothering the sound, feel like she be screaming. I don’t know how long she crying when she finally start huffing and calm down.

  After a while, I’m thinking she sleep when she stir and say, “You know, he had the nerve to ask me if I wanted to stay on the road with him.” She kinda laughs like she cain’t even believe it now. Then she say, “He never wore a wedding ring, until the night he introduced me to his wife.”

  Sitting up, she looks around the room like she looking for something and wrapping ‘a arms around herself she says, “He did get the best of me. I gave myself to him. I did everything I thought a wife would have done.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  BEAUTIFUL

  “Anybody, ever tell you that you remind
them of a,” Coley stop ‘aself and look out at the sunset.

  I don’t press ‘a, and sometimes between me and Coley, be like how it use to be tween me and Miemay. We don’t press the words, we be waiting for them to find the best route to come.

  It’s after supper, we out on the porch looking out at the sun setting. Tonight Coley doing some needle work, Ella done taught ‘a. Tonight she ain’t doing no complaining, bout how I expect ‘a to do too much work. Fact is, she don’t complain much at all no more. Days been going and coming without a word bout what tomorrow gone bring.

  I got a lantern on the edge of the bench I’m gone light when it get too dark. I’m reading, The Souls of Black Folks, a book Coley done gave me by W.E.B. Du Bois. She wont me to know who he is, so we can talk about his ideas. So I’m reading slower, thinking bout every word he wrote. Been reading this book for almost a week now. I read about an hour or so a day. Now that Miemay ain round to read to, reading seem wasteful, especially with all I got to get done in a day.

  “Sometimes, I just feel like I’m in the house with a man,” Coley go on, pressing the needle through the fabric and making a huge show of pulling it out. “I don’t feel like I’m living with another woman. I use to try and figure out what it is you’re doing, what you are. I mean you cook, but the way you carry yourself is different.

  “At first I thought you were so beautiful, sure of yourself and just regal. I still think all that, but it’s different. Like, I feel safe with you. I don’t feel like you’re competing with me, or trying to hurt me, the way it is with most women. Even among sisters sometimes it can be downright ugly, with our rivalries.”

  I hold the book open, reading about Du Bois losing his son and the way he views death. I think about the idea that because his son died, he will never have to experience the veil. I think about the veil, the wearing of different masks, and having to be what people expect or want you to be to survive.