Conjure Women

by Afia Atakora

  When we get there the double doors are slight-ways open, like someone just went through them, and it makes me so nervous I stop and shy like a wary dog that’s sniffed up trouble on ahead of itself. I nearly whine in fear from down in the thick of my throat. My girl Rue beckons me forward. What can she be thinkin’? What could be so urgent? I have a bone-deep feeling that this might be my very worst fear come real, that they finally turnt her against me, that she’s the one that’s gon’ drag me back there, put me in that jail, that hole in the ground. She’s gon’ turn the key for them.

  “Please hurry, Mama.” So I do.

  Little Miss Varina is sat up by the pew looking anxious in a dress too flimsy for propriety, and I don’t have to go all the way up to her to see it. Her big round pregnant belly.

  “No.”

  “But, Mama.”

  “I said no.”

  I turn right around and drag my daughter after me saying no no no.

  Varina’s hefted herself to her feet and she’s yelling stop but I don’t have to listen. Not as if she can chase me down in that state. Let them kill me later, but I’m leaving with my girl right now.

  “Mama, she need you,” Rue says, chasing after me as I clatter through the grass and around the trees, wheeling so fast I almost can’t remember which way home is. “She ain’t got a husband now. She can’t have that baby.”

  I grab Rue by the hair and drag her after me the same way Marse Charles done to me so many times. No no no.

  “We will not. I won’t and you won’t. That’s death you talkin’ about. Killin’ a white woman’s baby for her.”

  I smack at her back. Stupid soft-hearted darling. Push her further into the woods ’til we’re far from there.

  “But she need our help,” Rue is saying and stumbling. She wants to turn back. After how far we come, she’s still trying to turn back.

  “I’ll kill you myself first.”

  She stops. She looks at me and knows I’m speaking the truth. Rue don’t argue after that.

  * * *

  —

  I’m dreaming pure mad and I know it. I burnt up a leaf meant to give me sweet-nothing sleep but breathed too deep it seems, came up on the other side of silence, where the nightmares gallop. In this dream I am the headless chickens and I am the fox snapping their necks. That’s all wrong. That weren’t how it happened. There’s a tap tap tap that I wake to and my girl Rue’s in my arms, thank the Lord, sleeping undisturbed. She ain’t forgive me for leaving Varina, and I don’t care if she never do.

  “Who there?”

  I hear the tap tap tap again and I know who it is right off. It’s Ol’ Joel and his goddamn cane. The one Marse Charles give him. The one he think as good as Moses’s own staff. He’s rapping it at my door, impatient.

  I open the door to him, not caring I’m in my nightclothes, and the old filthy man has a long, slow look from my bare feet on up, before he finally gets to the reason he’s woke me up while the moon is still shining.

  “It’s the new ’un,” he says.

  And I say, “Which?” fearing it’s one of them sisters.

  “Jonah,” he say and I bristle at it. Surprised he’s even bothered to get the boy’s name.

  I throw on a shawl against the cold night air and Ol’ Joel looks disappointed at the loss of my pricked-up chest.

  “He hurt?”

  “Bleedin’ bad.”

  I grab the healing things, ones good for when there’s no forewarning what the danger might be: yarrow and oak bark and comfrey root come to hand. I have one tallow candle left to light, and I can see Ol’ Joel looking at it with envy as I draw it out and set the wick afire. The shadows writhe something sinister. I all of a sudden want to stop and kiss my girl, but there’s no time for that. She doesn’t stir even as I draw the light from the room. Outside, Ol’ Joel moves slow with his cane and I’m too frustrated to wait on him to lead.

  “Where’s the boy?”

  “By the creek,” he say and I run off in the direction of his crooked, pointed finger. The night’s set in too deep to see the water, which runs black as ink in the thicker parts of the wood. I follow its lapping sound awhile and I feel it the moment I’ve left the bounds of Marse Charles’s lands, though I can’t say how. Still, Jonah ain’t too far from home when I do find him and I gotta wonder who put the whisper in Ol’ Joel’s ear that this would be the place the boy would be.

  The nighttime screeching of wild hogs is a strange, awful thing, for they ain’t nighttime animals and they know it, but the poor starved creatures ain’t stupid neither. They know a feast when they see it, and this boy is the feast, doused as he is in bacon grease. Somebody’s tied him to a tree by his wrists, covered him in hog fat and offal. Them wild beasts is eating the remains of their captive cousins with feral glee and eating up Jonah along with it. He struggled I can see by the deep red gashes the rope made on his wrists, rubbed raw down to the bone. Now he’s suffered so long, he ain’t even making a sound no more. He dead?

  I swing my candle at the hogs—it’s the only weapon I’ve got—and they scream and grunt and hiss at me awhile and I worry that they’re so ravenous they’ll turn on me next but they don’t. They trudge back into the wood as my flame swings near, and they take their awful grunting with them so that finally I can hear the low whimper coming from the boy.

  “Jonah.” I speak to him to keep him hearing sense. “Jonah. Boy. Jonah.”

  He chatters his teeth and looks at me like I’m hollow, like he’s seeing through me to some other place. “Stay here now, Jonah.”

  It seems like forever ’til Ol’ Joel catch up, like he took his time. He’s brought with him two other sturdy men and I suspect the delay was in waking the overseer, in asking permission. They pick up Jonah like he’s nothing at all and I’m left to trail by his side, to hold his hand, to say his name over and over. I make them take him to the House, as it’s nearest. We go in the back hall through the servants’ quarters, and Fannie, our dead mistress’s house maid, is up, looking scared, her arms crossed over her breasts. How dare she have time for propriety?

  They lay Jonah down right on the ground on a threadbare bit of rug. There’s nowhere else left to put him. I go down with him, afraid to pull my hand out of his firm grip, the only thing about him holding on.

  “Mama?” he ask me, like to make my heart break.

  “Yes, baby,” I say. Lying comes easy. “I’m with you now.”

  I’m looking round the kitchen and in my meager basket thinking, what can I use? How can I save him? I can barely catch my breath, never mind my thoughts. The men are watching, the housemaid is watching; I can see the horror lilting off their faces as shadows in the night. That’s when I remember my candle, the single flame, all mine. Yeah, I know what needs doing to close up those wounds.

  “I’ll be needin’ somebody to hold down his arms,” I tell the room. “And someone to hold closed his mouth. Mind he don’t bite his tongue, now. Muffle him. He will scream. And we don’t need to wake no more white folks.”

  * * *

  —

  When it’s over I am weary. I walk to my cabin slow because I have to drag all my gathered sorrow along with me. I push open the door, wanting only my sleeping girl, wanting only to rest my head. But I can’t ’cause I’m not alone. I walk in and sniff the air and know that he’s been waiting on me and that he’s been waiting awhile. I always know him by his smoke, white-man smoke too thick and fine for the likes of us. It’s in my clean air, still curling.

  I ignore him. Sit on the bed by my sleeping girl, watch the breath come in and out of her easy, like he must have been doing this long while. She sleeps so deep, my baby. She don’t know how cruel real life is. My own fault. I want so bad to touch her but my hands are stained. I look at my palms in what little light the moon gives out.

  “You know you too pale to h
ide in the shadows, don’t you?” I whisper-speak.

  He chuckles out a breath of that smoke. “You take care of that boy?”

  “Jonah.”

  “Yeah, him,” he say. “Y’all fix him up?”

  “He’ll survive it. Can’t take no drink ’til it heals. Can’t pass no water. If the thirst don’t kill him, he’ll survive it.”

  “Good,” he say. “Knew you’d save him. It’s a waste but we’ll have to make a good use of him elsewise now that he’s a eunuch.”

  When he says “we” I don’t know if he means me and him, but there’s a thrill in his voice like maybe that’s what he’d intended for Jonah all along from the moment he bought him, his mind on how he’d keep his henhouse safe when he gallops off to war.

  It’s a greedy shame, but I can’t help but touch Rue’s thick dark hair. So much thicker than mine too, resilient. She’s been sticking flowers in her hair again and I pick out the petals. Fool girl. Wasteful little sweetheart.

  “Belle,” he says from behind me. I keep my eyes on my girl just a little while longer. Now, where did she get that warm, dark skin so much like her daddy’s? I gave her everything else but that’s all his doing.

  “Come along now, Belle,” he says and I know my defiance has gotta run short sometime. I kiss her, my girl. Not her face but the air above it and I’m so sure that she feels it, even through his smoke. She smiles in her sleep.

  I go outside with Marse Charles but I don’t have to go where he’s wanting to take me. He’s a fool, doesn’t even know what’s happening to his own daughter, to his own land.

  I’m always free to leave, you see, to run away in my mind. And every time Marse Charles touches me, in my head I am gone. I go and meet my man by the river. In my freedom, I make it daytime ’cause I love to see his body in that light with no fear of being seen or found out or stolen back again. We can love in the daytime, take every moment the sun has to give, pull off all our clothes, no sinful shucking up of dresses here, Lord no, we can know each other like man and wife do, stretched out beneath the trees. And I can touch every inch of my man, claim him, even the sweat behind his kneecaps is mine, the small seashell curve of his ear or the field of his back, timber brown and rippling with muscle but here in my mind, and here only, he is unblemished, unscarred, unhurt. I can howl at the thrill of loving him and him me, and when we’re done we can wash each other clean in the river, safe with the feeling that the rocks under our toes are as steady as the shore.

  “Belle,” he say and I flinch away because my man doesn’t never call me that, not here, not anywhere.

  “Shh,” I say to him. I press my finger on his lips. The water moves around my waist and his arms snake up around my neck. I can feel the slow, steady lacing of his fingers against my spine, slipping against the wet. North is the way the river flows here and it could sweep us away if I let it.

  “I love you, Belle,” he say.

  And I say, “Hush, hush,” because in my mind I’m only May. And my man’s hands break free of my neck and different hands appear.

  Marse Charles’s voice breaks into my mind, says, “Do what I tol’ you now, Belle,” and he grabs roughly onto my face, his fingers dig deep into my cheekbones like as if they wish to rip them out. And he has me again, there in the moonlight and the worst of it, the very worst of it is, beneath all of it is the stench of his white fingers that smell so hotly of bacon grease. Even my springtime river can’t wash that stink away.

  * * *

  —

  Marse Charles goes his way and I go mine.

  In the bed my girl is safe, hasn’t even rolled over. I love her so, love how dark she is like her daddy. I lay down beside her hardly rippling her sleep. I shouldn’t have had her, but I did. Kept her hid no matter how big she grew in my belly, and when it was time for her to come on out I stole away to a clearing in the woods and birthed her all by my lonesome.

  I tell that tale all the time, about how I brung my own baby out into the world alone. But I ain’t never tell it true. For if my Rue-baby had been born into this cruel life half-black, half–Marse Charles’s child, I would have dashed her head in on the rocks myself.

  “Rue-baby,” I say to my sweet dozing child. Almost a woman grown. “Rue. You listenin’?”

  Sleepy and slow her voice comes out like it had far to travel.

  “Yes, Mama?” she say.

  EXODUS

  “It’s almost time,” Sarah said.

  Over the top of her pregnant belly, she stared blearily as Rue looked her over.

  “Oh, we got a while yet.”

  In the front room of Sarah’s cabin Rue settled in, Bean right beside her. She looked around regretfully at the empty house. Jonah had took up his things and left, chasing prosperity up north, and there were empty places on the walls where a man’s belongings used to hang. His hat. His axe. The painted walls had not faded even, left outlines of what wasn’t there.

  She sat herself down at the table where she saw there were leaves spread in orderly lines like they were marching in. She recognized their various patterns.

  “What’s all this?”

  “I got ’em for Mama,” Bean said.

  Rue looked closer. She saw what Bean had gathered, leaves and stems of various uses, heaped together by type and color and shape, things he’d seen her bring to Sarah over the months. He’d gone and got them himself.

  “Let me see you.” She pulled him into her lap and he didn’t squirm but let her look him over, his hands down to his legs. She had a fear that he’d troubled into some poison while he foraged. He didn’t know what to avoid. But as Rue looked at the uneven crag of his skin she saw that there was not a scratch on him.

  “How’d you do all that?”

  He shrugged, a warm easy weight in her arms.

  “I watch you,” he said.

  What else did he know? What else had he seen but every little thing they’d all done up to now, every lie and hid truth? Every sickness and every worship. Bean with his big, smart watchful eyes.

  He let himself be cuddled closer and Rue rubbed her face in the thread of his hair. An oiled-leather brown, so much like Bruh Abel’s. Why hadn’t she seen it? She’d never bothered to look past his eyes.

  “And she helped me some,” Bean admitted, like he wasn’t really wanting to share the credit. “Auntie V. She nice.”

  “You friendly with her, ain’t you?”

  “Sure. I like her plenty. She look like Mama.”

  Rue squeezed him in her arms like to say sorry with her squeezing. It was folly to think that she was the only one that had ever had any secrets.

  Bean told her of the woman who’d let him call her “Auntie V,” how she’d been kind to him and spoke to him and kept him safe from the white demons riding through, and as he told it Rue settled it all in her mind, muddled together a bittersweet solution but a solution all the same.

  “Yo’ mama gon’ be alright,” she said to Bean.

  “How you know?”

  “ ’Cause I’m gon’ stay here. I’m gon’ watch for you.”

  “Miss Rue? Where am I goin’?” he had the sense to ask.

  * * *

  —

  Rue told Bean a story to remember her by. It was what Miss May Belle would have done, she reckoned.

  This is a story, she said, of how Bruh Rabbit done fooled God. He went up to the sky, straight up to God, and said, God, I’mma bring you one hundred slaves and all you need give me to do it is one kernel of corn. God laughed. Said, you can’t make one hundred slaves out of a kernel, but he gave the seed to Bruh Rabbit anyway just to see what would happen.

  Well, Bruh Rabbit took that seed and he planted it and it did grow up into a mighty cornstalk, and when it had grown tall he picked the ear and traveled on to the next town over. There Bruh Rabbit begged a room, told the innkeeper
, this here corn is special. This is God’s corn. Don’t let no harm come to it. But Bruh Rabbit was clever. In the middle of the night he hopped out to where he’d left the corn and he plucked every kernel from it and, unseen, took himself back to bed.

  Come the morning he pretended like he didn’t know nothin’ ’bout it. Screamed to the townspeople, some chicken must’ve ate God’s corn. You best replace it or you’ll be sorry. Afeared of God’s wrath the townsfolk gave to him the chicken they thought must have done the eating.

  Now he took the chicken on to the next town. Told the folks there, this here is God’s chicken. Don’t let no harm come to it. But in the night he crept to it and killed that chicken also. And when morning come he hollered at the people, said, that’s God chicken. You best replace it. Just then some workers passed by carting after them dead bodies fresh from the war. So Bruh Rabbit took himself the littlest amongst them as payment and went on to the next town.

  There he dressed up the body like a child and he moved him and spoke for him and told the folks there, this here’s God’s child. Don’t let no harm come to him. But come mornin’ Bruh Rabbit cried at what he’d found. Somebody done killed God’s child. Now the townsfolk were aggrieved and didn’t know what all they could do but to replace the child one hundredfold with their finest, strongest men of good stock.

  Bruh Rabbit marched those men to heaven, right up to God’s veranda, and proclaimed, here I have done it. From one corn kernel to one hundred slaves.

  And God did have to admit that Bruh Rabbit was the most cunning of all creatures.

  WARTIME

  Varina sucked her thumb. She hadn’t done it in years, but there she was, sixteen, her body worming with pain, and she put her thumb in her mouth because it was the only thing she had at hand to keep herself from screaming. She sucked hard at it ’til it was red and sore, the nail down to the quick, the skin puckered and wrinkled and raw. When she put it in her mouth she tasted only the acrid lye-white bubbles that she had held in her hands when she’d prepared the flush of soapy water to do what needed doing. To clean out her baby, root and stem.