Agnes hardly recognized the Meredith they described.
While James and Samantha split Meredith’s story in two, her body was dumped in the pit with Jonah on top of her. On account of the oozing, Walker had the pile set on fire. Contractions hit the moment the flames roared. At the same time, Ella’s body came bobbing to the surface. I was born headfirst in the bottom of the river. Tempe, my sister, popped out of Agnes’s belly just one minute before me. To hear her tell it, she’s the one that broke the curse and I’m just the one who broke the curse’s sister. She never lets me forget it.
2:01 p.m.
Hush.
Tempe’s whisper, hot like the whistle of a tea kettle, sends chills up the back of my neck. She’s always trying to boss me. I tuck the yellow newspaper article, Philadelphia North, November 28, 1850, into the middle of the book. I put it in front of Tempe and put Edward’s bandaged hands in between mine. “It’s gonna be alright, baby.” The lie springs to my lips before I can stop it.
The door clicks. A rush of warm air. The soft thump of the door, humming, and the smell of lilacs lift the stale air. “I’m going to need to check vitals,” a nurse announces to the room. A chart slaps against her hip. There are two of them. Accosting one patient after the other, they slip behind patient screens. Their shadows lift, turn, tug. Moans and grunts accompany orchestrated movements. The snap of rubber gloves. The stench of alcohol, urine; the slosh of a bucket. They make their way to Edward’s bed. I glance at Tempe.
Told you so.
“We just need to check on Mr. Freeman,” one says. Staring at the chart, she nods her head at Edward.
“Just be a moment,” the other says. She’s already got one hand clutched around my arm, pulling on me and the other reaching for my book. She’s so close I can read the name, Bernadette, on her tag.
“I’ll get it,” I say.
We grab for it at the same time. My hand on one end, hers on the other. Years slip from the pages. 1855, 1860, 1865, 1880, 1901: scatter like june bugs. The Emancipation slides onto the floor followed by Missing Girl; Reward for Runaway Slave; Lost: Woman Missing, Answers to Mama; Found: Baby, Six Months Old, and No Coloreds Allowed. Damned fool. She lets go of the book. I clutch it tight but that don’t stop it from shaking none. It’s warm and throbbing like to jump right out of my arms. My arms get to shaking and my legs too. Tempe’s rolling her eyes, shaking her head at me from the corner. Spiteful words gurgle in my throat. Toe stomping, speckled heifer is pushing its way pass my tongue. Bernadette holds the clippings clumped together so that Lost is on one end, Found on the other. She gives them to me gently, and ushers me away from the bed.
“How long they gonna keep him?” the younger nurse says.
She lifts and prods.
Bernadette peels one of Edward’s eyelids back, stares, writes. Peels the next. “Why, till he gets better, of course.”
“Expect that’s possible?”
The look the older one gives her could stop a heart. She puts her head down, scribbles notes.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if Mr. Freeman got up in a few days ready to shake all this off and put the past behind him.”
“I would,” the young nurse whispers.
“Excuse us.” Bernadette pulls a curtain attached to a metal frame around the bed. The contraption rattles and clinks into place. As soon as the starched, thin piece of cloth is in place, she starts talking. “What ever made you say that?” Her body casts shadows across the screen. Her hands are on her hips. She leans forward, bends almost double. “I’ve told you a thousand times: don’t talk like that in front of them.”
“I didn’t mean nothing by it. I been hearing ’bout this case all—”
“Patient. Out there, it’s a case. In here, he’s a patient.”
“I been hearing about this all day. I’m surprised he’s still alive. Soon as I heard it on the radio I just knew he’d be here and that I’d be one of the last people to see him alive. I just knew it. I said, Maddy, you gonna be the last face that ol’ colored boy see.”
“Will you hush?”
The hiss of words is replaced by the whoosh of ripping gauze as they remove and replace strips of fabric with new ones. Through the curtain, they roll and unroll, measure, snip, and tuck.
“I left soon as I could. Mama was all: ‘Where you going so early?’ And I said, ‘Mama, I’m going to work, they need me.’ I couldn’t get out the door without her fussing and packing supper in case I had to work through the night. Can’t be fooling around with no bus or trolley today. And wasn’t I right? Wasn’t off my porch step when people came running up the street asking me if I heard the news and in the same breath saying stay indoors. They was gonna go round up the coloreds so there wouldn’t be no trouble till it was all over. That sounded like trouble to me so I said, ‘Don’t you do that. Don’t you go riling them folks up. It’ll all blow over.’ And they said, ‘Damned right.’ Just like that. Folks standing round waiting on the Broad Line or the Vine Express like it didn’t matter what time they showed up. Mother Matthews would have me scrubbing chamber pots for a month, two if I was that late. I walked clear here.” Her hands are moving at the same time her mouth is.
“I’ve been here since first thing this morning. Buses have been tied up ever since it happened.”
“You walk her up?”
“Oh, heavens no, Maddy, Claudine did that. Seemed like she was hoping to stay around. I don’t blame her. I wouldn’t want to be walking out there right now if I was her.”
“All she has to say is ‘I’m a nurse’ and they’ll let her right through.”
“Who will?”
“The police. They all around the hospital. So is the Klan and everyone else. Tell me you can’t hear people chanting, ‘Throw him down, throw him down!’ I swear it’s like they right outside the window knowing exactly where he is. I feel like they’re watching me right now. Who do you think is keeping them from coming right in here, dragging him from this bed and tossing him out the window?”
“Well, it’ll all be over soon.”
“How do you figure? The police can’t figure out if he was pulled or did the pulling. And just what was he doing operating the trolley anyhow? Is he working for the strikers or the rails? Ought to be ashamed. Ramming into a heap of—”
“—Wasn’t a heap. Shop wasn’t even open yet. It couldn’t have been more than a couple of people in there.”
“That’s not bad enough?”
“A few is less than a whole heap. Ones we getting are from after the accident.”
“A certain amount of violence is to be expected after events like this,” Maddy says. She puts her hands on her hips, shakes her head.
“Don’t you sound just like that man from the radio?”
“Mama loves when I do that. Says I got it just right. I said it to the officer by the door earlier. He didn’t smile or nothing.”
“Of course not, he’s been there all day. I’m sure he can’t wait until it’s all over. Did he say how long he’ll be out there?”
“Wait, let me do it like he says.” She tilts her head, puts a hand up to an imaginary cap. “Till it’s all over, ma’am.”
“Then that won’t be much longer now.”
“They’ll move on once he’s gone.”
“Don’t see why folks stick around. Even if he did do it, he won’t be able to tell them nothing about it.”
“When I came in the police were calling on the coloreds to go home peacefully. I could hear it before I even got here. “Just go home and you won’t get hurt.” They didn’t listen, though. Some of them started singing and praying and chanting. Then people and water came gushing down the street. I just stopped. Right there. When it turned to a steady stream of pink, I come on through. Seen a whole heap of them—no, a few—police had arrested a few. Seem to think they must be in cahoots or something. I hope one of the
m confesses soon. We don’t have that much room to take many more.”
“I don’t think he did it,” Bernadette says.
“I don’t see why not. He was in it, wasn’t he?”
“That’s what they say.”
“A whole lot of folks say that.”
“I heard they’re already questioning somebody else.”
Maddy sucks her teeth.
“A union boy from up north sent down to get the strikers worked up.”
“Don’t need much riling up. They been at it since they got fired yesterday. Been boiling over before that, if you ask me.”
They tuck the covers tight around Edward.
“Don’t much matter now, does it?” Bernadette asks.
I don’t realize until the curtain starts billowing that I’ve been holding my breath ever since they started talking. My chest hurts. My mouth is dry. The curtain flails and rustles. It slaps against one’s back, creeps against the other’s legs.
“Oh, my!” Their mumbles grow louder as wind presses the cloth against them.
Tempe. She’s standing right next to me, red-faced, huffing like an old freight train. Hot air streams from her mouth, blowing the curtain, rattling and shaking the thin railing. I didn’t know she could do that. Edward. I know she can hear me, so I just mouth the word. She stops blowing. The curtain stops moving. By the time the nurses, flustered, can pull it back, I’m standing below the window. Tempe done blown it shut. Even with it closed I can hear faint noises outside. A horn wailing. People chanting. Anger rising. With their backs to Edward, the nurses straighten their clothes, fix their hair, gather the charts.
“All finished, Mrs. Freeman,” Bernadette says. She plasters a smile on her face. I ain’t never seen two people in such a rush to get from a place.
“Tempe?” She’s faint. I can just about see through her. Seems indecent being able to see sunlight streaming clear through her head. I don’t turn away, though. She’s huffing like she can’t catch her breath. “You need something?”
Hurry up. There ain’t that much time.
The pages flip through the years. Tempe ain’t never had too much patience.
Chapter 11
March 11, 1855
Tempe pokes out her bottom lip, letting it droop while staring down at the bare wood floor as if she’s lost something important but can’t remember what she’s lost.
“Like this, Mama?” she asks. She slowly raises her eyes. Her lips part innocently.
“Not quite, sugar.” Mama shakes her head so even the shells in her hair clatter with exasperation. “Let me see you walk.”
Tempe stomps across the floor with long, wide steps. She swooshes her imaginary layered skirts as her arms swing up, then down, then up in unison. It takes Mama a while to recognize the airs and when she does, she holds her hand to her chest and laughs with her mouth wide open. Mama has the most beautiful laugh in the world.
“You shouldn’t poke fun at the Missus,” I say. “She’s sickly.”
“It’s not my fault. That’s how she walks.” Tempe scrunches her face up like she’s trying to hold her laughter in her chest, but it bubbles out before she can stop it. She parades around our cooking/sleeping/visiting/sewing room. Her bare feet slap against the wood floor. She pretends to inspect and poke pots and pans, boxes and cases. “What’s this? What do you call that?”
“She’s just curious. You stop that. She don’t mean no harm,” Mama chides.
“Okay, how about this one?” Just like that, the Missus is gone. Tempe smooths her thick shift, two old dresses sewn together, and stands with her head up high. She unbinds her plaits, letting her hair fall around her ears in thick, chocolate curls. Licking her lips she raises her eyes level with Mama’s before cocking her head to the side. Before Mama can stop her, she’s sashaying across the room, long legs and hips slowly swaying with each step.
“Where’d you learn to walk that way?” Mama asks.
“From you. It’s how you walk when you think no one’s watching.”
“Don’t walk that way, people will stare.”
“I don’t walk that way, Mama, I walk like I got good sense,” I say. Mama smiles, nods without looking at me.
“So?” Tempe puckers her lips in the nasty way the hired hands taught her.
Mama stares at Tempe’s feet, slightly dusted as if they never touched the ground for long. I know she’s looking at her golden brown calves and up to her thick waist. Mama’s been fooling herself if she thought that scratchy yard frock hid Tempe’s long arms and slender fingers. Maybe she ain’t notice it till now. Eleven years old and Tempe’s filling out. And if she’s been around them hired hands long enough to pick up their ways, it’s been long enough for them to recognize she ain’t gonna be no little gal for long. Her body might be that of a woman, but it will be her eyes, wine colored in the light, or those lips, full and sculptured, that will ruin us all.
Tempe looks at the floor while Mama stares. She shifts her weight from one foot to the other then rocks back and forth while idly tugging at strings on her dress, fidgeting. At least she’s got the good sense to look shy.
“Okay, how about this?” Tempe hunches her back as if she’s carrying the Missus’s packages, weighed down with gifts for this person or that but never for anyone else really. Her body looks heavy. Her walk is slow and clumsy and a bit unsure. Mama watches her walk the length of the cabin.
“Perfect, you look just perfect,” Mama says.
“I can do it too, Mama. I can look ugly.”
“Of course you can, Sister,” Tempe says, “you don’t have to try near as hard.”
Mama grabs her bony arms and shakes her. Tempe’s little head rattles and bobs like to fall right off. “Don’t you ever say nothing like that again,” Mama hisses. “Them words sound ugly coming out of your mouth. I ain’t raisin’ nobody to be mean to nobody else just because. Nary one of y’all are ugly on the outside and I won’t let you be ugly on the inside neither.”
What if Mama kills her? My sister will be buried around back with the bunny we tried to save last winter and the frogs from before that. Will Mama find the critters when she digs the little hole to dump Tempe in? Will she split her open like James say they used to do? With Tempe gone, will I have to do her chores? “She didn’t mean it, Mama. She says stuff like that all the time and she don’t mean none of it.”
Mama pinches Tempe’s arm. Tempe whimpers.
“There’s plenty enough people to be nasty to my girls. I won’t have one of you being mean to the other.”
“Mama, Master’s all the time saying how ugly she is—”
“—Don’t you bring nothing that man says into this house.”
“Master says it’s his house—”
“Mama said don’t go repeating anything Master said.” I put my hands on my hips.
“Take your hands off your hips, you ain’t grown,” Mama says.
“Yeah, you ain’t grown. Mama, Sister’s got her fists balled up like she’s gonna hit me again.”
“Tempe, you lying! I ain’t never hit you—”
“—Have never,” Tempe says.
“See, she’s lying!”
“Spring, Tempe, why don’t both of you go out back and fetch something for supper?”
“Cuz ain’t nothing out there,” Tempe says.
“There’s greens and radishes and onions and potatoes,” I say. Mama’s garden is almost better than Walker’s.
“Ain’t no ham, no thick pork chops, no plump roast.” Tempe runs down the list from memory.
“Just pick something we do have,” Mama says in her don’t push me voice.
Tempe ain’t but two steps behind me when we run out the door. She pushes past me when we get out on the small, rickety porch, leaving me to trail behind. I run round back and start pulling beans and potatoes and sp
routs. My peach crate’s almost full before I notice Tempe hasn’t put a thing in hers.
“Mama’s gonna get you if you don’t start filling that crate.”
“Why Agnes always get so mad anyway?” Tempe whispers.
Running around calling Mama by her given name. Least she’s got sense enough to lower her voice. I keep picking.
“She’s almost as bad as overseer,” Tempe continues.
“How you even know? You ain’t supposed to be out in the fields.”
“Overseer ain’t tied to the fields.”
“Where you go that he go?”
“Sometimes I see him when I’m running errands to the house or out by the barn. I see most everybody on this place.”
“Well, I’ve seen him too.”
“Know what else I seen?”
“What, Tempe?”
She twirls and dances, tiptoeing her way through the rows of Mama’s garden.
“Mama’s gonna get you,” I yell. But I know Mama won’t. Tempe can dance up and down these rows without stepping on anything she don’t want to. I put down my crate, pick hers up and start tossing in leaves and clumps.
“Meet me by the river, I’ll tell you then.”
“But Mama said—”
She’s already gone.
She’s naked as a bluebird when I catch up.
You’ll die. The warning catches in my throat. How many times has Mama said to stay away from the river? Tempe slips in. I wait for her to come up. I watch the sun shining on the river skin. Leaves float on the surface. What if she dies? What will I tell Mama? Tempe jumped right in the river and it swallowed her up, just like you said it would. I tried to help. I look at my dress. It’s my favorite. A few splashes of water won’t hurt it none. Will she float up like a fish or get tangled in the weeds? Who will cut her out? Mama? James? I bet I’d have to do it. I look for something to cut the reeds. My hands will have to do. Lord, please let her rise to the top right here on the bank. Then I won’t have to go in after her.
“Tempe!” I yell.
Remembered Page 11