Remembered

by Yvonne Battle-Felton

  “We all believe it, Master,” James interrupts.

  Samantha and Rose stand close to the preacher. Fiddling with tools, the nearby hands watch.

  “You gonna lay hands on us all, sir? So we all get saved?” Samantha asks.

  The preacher stares down at his hand and at Tempe fastened to it. He drops her. Mama scoops her up, walks away. The preacher looks at me. “You know that little gal is going to Hell and if you don’t watch it you’ll go right along with her,” he says.

  I run to catch up with Mama and them.

  “Mama, is Tempe really going to Hell?” I ask that night. It’s so hot we’re all sleeping out back right in the summer grass.

  “For what, angel?”

  “For not believing we damned.”

  “Don’t you go mistaking anything that preacher says for the truth,” Mama says.

  “Will I go, then? Since I’m cursed?”

  “What kind of curse you got?”

  “Don’t know. Why weren’t there no babies born here after me?”

  Mama don’t answer.

  Chapter 13

  September 23, 1862

  It’s early. The day hasn’t even started and we’re already preparing supper. It’s like this every Dehaunting. The whole plantation is up hours before dawn preparing for the evening’s celebration. It’s the one day Walker allows us to do nothing at all. If only Mama would allow the same. Just like they been doing every year since we been born, Samantha and Rose have probably been up all night baking pies and cakes. James is off readying the new slaves, though there ain’t but two of them and they been here for years. The three of us sit on the porch gathered around two baskets: one brimming with green beans, the other with a smattering of tips. If Tempe did her share, we’d be finished before now. It seems like we’ve been snapping beans for days.

  “Tempe, you and Spring keep the little ones out of trouble,” Mama says.

  Like this year would be any different than the year before. Seems like Tempe and me do an awful lot of work for a day celebrating us being born and lifting the curse. Please Lord, don’t let Tempe start complaining.

  “What you think gonna happen to us when Walker dies?” Tempe asks instead of shucking.

  “Hush, don’t talk like that.”

  Mama don’t like talking about the dead.

  “He’s bound to die one day,” Tempe says anyway. “It ain’t natural for nobody to live forever. Even white folks face their maker.” Tempe crosses her arms.

  “You think Walker Senior’s in Heaven serving the Lord, Mama?” I ask.

  I picture angels with fluffy wings and a smiling God surrounded by shiny faces filling goblets and emptying chamber pots and scrubbing those golden floors and polishing those iron gates. Angels dripping rivers of sweat with their sweat-soaked angel wings: perspiring for the Lord. This time, instead of picturing them white, I picture black faces staring up at God. When my eyes blur from not blinking I see a God with a face as brown as mine staring back.

  Mama looks down. “It ain’t likely.” She wipes her hands on a scrap of newspaper.

  It leaves streaks of black, like words, on her palms. The paper was worn before we got it. Between chores, the hired hands give scraps to me and Tempe. Presents with pretty squiggles from all over the world. News they been saving or thinking on, traveling with. Most of them can’t read neither but the stories they tell! Get them filled up on some of Mama’s good supper and they get to “reading.” This here say so and so did such and such, one will start up and get to saying who done what. That ain’t the whole truth. Let me tell you what really happened, another will say. That’s my favorite part. I could listen for hours. We not supposed to but me and Tempe find reasons to be around the men. Mama don’t seem to trust them but since Samantha’s getting on in age, we bring supper, wait for jugs and jars, wash ’em and carry ’em back to the house. Mama can’t find cause to complain in that. Of course, she still do.

  “Don’t trust them papers any more than I trust them hands,” she says. She rips one in half and throws it to the floor. “Lies and liars.”

  Tempe rescues what she can. What she can’t save lays scattered like a rug beneath Mama. Mama slides her bare feet along smudged pages. I wonder if she has the words Freedom and Emancipation rubbed into her soles. I know better than to check.

  “What if you wrong, Mama?” Tempe asks for the hundredth time. “What if freedom is coming this time?”

  “According to them papers,” I say, “freedom comes every few years and then it don’t. Don’t see how this time is any different than the last.” I sound just like Mama.

  Even if I can’t read her lips, the look in Tempe’s eyes hushes me.

  “When the families get here, go off and take care of the kids,” Mama says.

  Seem like Mama don’t want to be around them children any more than I do. The celebration always seems to make her sad. I pinch the ends of each long, green bean, one at a time: plink, plink, plunk into the slowly filling tub. Just last week me and Tempe had been young enough to play Gotcha; a few days ago we were too old to roughhouse like that and now we’re too young to listen to grown folks’ talk. We grown older and younger in the same week.

  “I don’t mind, Mama,” I say. A trail of heat rises from the middle of my chest to the top of my head. Tempe’s stare can take the hot out of fire. I concentrate on snapping beans and the soft plunk each one makes as it glides slowly to the pile.

  “I suppose that means you don’t mind either, do you, Tempe?”

  Plink, plink, plop; plink, plink, plop; head, feet, spine; head, feet, spine; Tempe snips the head off of each thin string bean, two at a time like each one has my name on it. “No, ma’am, I don’t mind. Just seems like you could use a hand around here. Dehaunting Day always seems to make you sad. Don’t you wanna remember the day me and Sister was born?”

  Even though James told us don’t never bring it up, I know Tempe’s about to ask.

  “Two little slave babies. Ain’t we the best thing that ever happened to you?” she asks.

  The look on Mama’s face scares me for just a second. Her forehead wrinkles, her eyes darken. She’s Agnes. Young and hurt and angry. Agnes stares at us from behind Mama’s eyes. She don’t come out often. Only when Mama’s real scared or mad or when we talk about her mama, the babies in the backyard, or the list of things Samantha and James told us not to talk about. Me and Tempe both run to her. We wrap her in our arms, pet her hair, shush her crying. We rock and wait. There’s nothing else we can do.

  The smell of neckbones and simmering beans fills the air about the same time as the families arrive. Every Dehaunting Day slaves from as far as Sampson’s place travel to Walker’s for the festivities. It’s like the whole world’s celebrating me and Tempe. Soon as they drop off their passes at the house and get counted, women in colorful dresses made of cloth, sacks, hand-me-downs, and scraps of other garments; men in pressed shirts, dungarees, and boots if they have them; and children with scrubbed faces arrive laden with offerings of meats, vegetables, drink, sweets, and news. This is the last of the large gatherings. Will Watson come? I wonder.

  Today, women rush out back to the cooking pot with meat in need of a few more minutes over the fire, collards almost done, and biscuits that are near ready. Jars and jugs of tea are placed on chips of ice, a gift from Walker, to chill before supper.

  “It never fails,” Too-Wide John remarks after being told where to put this, where to prop that, and then sent, with a kiss on the forehead, to the small porch to help the men set up the crates for the food. “This time every year Glenda Mae gets up first thing and you know what she does?”

  “What’s she do, John?” Samuel asks.

  “She starts cooking!”

  “Noo!” A deep chorus of male voices grumble in practiced disbelief.

  “I ain’t lying. She cooks. In bet
ween boiling and stirring and skinning, she scrubs them kids and shuts ’em up in the shack and when I come home with a fat possum for dinner you know what she says?”

  “I don’t hear no crates scraping,” Ms. Glenda Mae calls from inside.

  “I ain’t lying. On the one day I get to sleep late, she gets me up before the sun is good and set in the sky and she says go get some more meat for supper. Like that, like it’s easy. Like I can just walk down the road a piece with a sack and say excuse me, Mr. Possum, would you mind jumping into this here sack? Celebration or not, you know Sampson don’t allow no slave to go that far without no pass anyhow and I swear those possums know just how far I can go cuz more than one leaped right cross the road and just sat and sort of looked at me: daring me to cross that road and scoop him up.”

  The loud clanging of pots and clinking of pans does little to stifle the men’s laughter.

  “Well, I fixed this here possum.” John pauses, looking into the eyes of each member of his audience: the men lining up crates before covering them with cloth to make a long family table and the children barely off the porch about to light off to play in the woods. He points to the meat still steaming in the serving tin. “This possum ran right across the road in front of Old Johnson’s buggy. Without so much as a warning, Johnson’s boy veered a bit to the right, clipped the ol’ possum, straightened up the reins, tipped his head in my direction and off he rode, horses, buggy, and all. I scooped the fat possum up and here he is.”

  The men applaud John’s hunting skills. I laugh along with the children. The women moan. Tempe watches in silence.

  “When I come home with this fat possum, you know what she says?”

  “You got them crates ready?” Glenda Mae asks.

  “That ain’t what she says,” John whispers loud enough for the ladies inside to hear. “She says, ‘Hurry up and get cleaned up.’ Now I ask you,” John pauses to pull a splintered crate into place next to a lopsided box: “Is that a fine thank-you?”

  “I think I can do you one better,” Carter says with a laugh. “My woman gets up Sunday mornings and she bangs and clangs empty pots loud enough to wake the dead. When I’m up you know what she says?”

  “What?”

  “Did I wake you?”

  “Empty?” a man asks.

  “Empty,” Carter confirms with a slow nod and a slow smile. “I know they’re empty cuz she gets me to drag each one round the side and pump ’em full of spring water. Then she dumps whole children—with their clothes still on—in the pots. She scrubs and scrubs till they’re all wrinkled. Then she sews fasteners and darns socks, she starches long underwear and presses sacks. While this is going on, bread’s rising and pies are cooling on the sill. When it’s all done you know what she says?”

  “What?” one of the children asks.

  “Hurry up and sit down so the Lord don’t catch us working. The Lord didn’t see me pulling them tubs round the back and emptying them and filling them up again?”

  “The Lord don’t see plenty if you ask me,” Tempe says.

  “You children go run and play,” Mama calls from the doorway.

  Quickly, we gather the seven children and lead them across the yard to the edge of the garden. Most of them are Sampson’s, some are from closer, some farther. We only have a few hours before sunset: before they all have to be back and counted. The sun is too bright. It’s too hot for running games but running games keep little hands clean.

  “What makes you the boss?” Franklin asks. He’s about as tall and thick as Old Oak, the oldest tree on Walker land. That don’t stop Tempe.

  “You on my place, you bide by my rules.”

  “Last I checked this place and all y’all belong to Walker,” Franklin says. He spreads his lips in what he thinks is a smile.

  “Brother’s right there,” Buddy says between spits. He’s taken to chewing on sweetgrass to make his breath sweet—just in case. He leans close to Tempe. “No cause to play children’s games when you and me can go round yonder and play something”—he spits and leans in closer—“more becoming. Ain’t that right, Sister.”

  What’s Watson been telling him? “I ain’t your sister,” I say. “Only Tempe can call me that.”

  “What would I want to lay with you for when I can lay with Franklin here?” Tempe asks. “He’s the smart one between the two of you. How many brothers and sisters y’all have now?”

  “Four,” Franklin answers. “Our mama has the widest birthing hips on Master’s land. Pa says all Master has to do is say, ‘Dessa, I need another pair of hands,’ and Mama obliges.”

  “She sounds right fertile,” Tempe says. She twists her lips and wiggles her hips.

  “Ever since that old witch died, seem like everybody fertile, ’cept your mama,” Buddy says.

  Tempe balls up her fists.

  “According to Mama,” Franklin says, “your mama’s mama made it so wouldn’t no children grow anywhere around here.”

  “You a damned fool,” I say. “If that was true, Tempe and me wouldn’t be standing here, would we?”

  “Maybe you one of them ghost babies too,” Buddy says.

  I’m not sure which is the bigger fool: Buddy or his brother.

  “I guess you still saving yourself for your Master,” Franklin says. “Ain’t he gonna get you with child this year?”

  Franklin. He’s the bigger fool.

  “You be careful,” his brother says. “She’ll put something on you that you won’t be able to get off.”

  “You want to call me something?” Tempe asks. She steps closer to Franklin.

  He moves back. “Nah, we all know you and your sister witches. Just like your mama.”

  Tempe springs. She wraps her legs around his chest and her arms around his neck.

  “I knew you were my kind of gal,” Franklin laughs. His laugh turns to coughing, then to heaving.

  “She killing him!” someone screams.

  “Franklin, leave that little gal alone!” his father yells from around front.

  “But, Pa—” Buddy says.

  “Don’t make me …” The shuffling of crates finishes the sentence for him.

  Tempe turns Franklin loose. Watson squeezes into the space between them. I’m not sure if he’s protecting Tempe or Franklin.

  “They don’t mean nothing by it,” he says. “You alright?”

  That voice. I get to licking my lips imagining his salty skin on my tongue, picturing his hands along my back, his fingers tracing the curve of my neck. His lips, soft against mine. With his skilled hands and sharp mind, he’s on Walker land more often than not. He belongs to the Kirks. Some nights, he belongs to me. If he sees half the money he makes from being hired out, he should be able to buy me in no time. His smooth hands rub Tempe’s back. He leans his head so close to hers that his lips graze her ear.

  “She’ll be fine if you quit breathing on her,” I say. My throat is tight. The words squeeze up and push out my mouth.

  “You should take you a woman,” Franklin says.

  “Got one,” Watson answers.

  My heart stops. I’m licking my lips again.

  “What’s the matter with you? You got something?” Tempe asks.

  Buddy, Franklin, and even Watson laugh.

  “What you think about this talk about freedom coming?” I ask everybody except for Watson. Laugh at me? It’ll be a long time before he gets to lie in the grass with me again.

  Something like hate flashes across Watson’s face. “I don’t reckon I believe it until it gets here.”

  “Pa says if it comes down to a fight, he’s ready to join the soldiers to set us all free,” Buddy whispers.

  “Ma don’t want him to do it. She says he’ll end up dead if he runs off,” Franklin says.

  “I’d rather be dead any day,” Watson says.

 
If I had seen it, the light in his eyes, I would have been ready.

  Only the porch is base. It has to be. Anyone fool enough to bound up the creaking wooden step, hop one-legged down the sagging porch, run around the shaky dinner table made up of splintering crates, and risk toppling tin plates and wooden bowls while yelling “Sanctuary” and skirting around a ring full of women who had spent hours baking, dusting, cleaning, and boiling, and now only wanted a minute to relax without someone underfoot deserves to be free from being tagged. Fair is fair.

  “You know the rules,” Tempe announces, “no hiding in the water.”

  “No hiding near the water,” I add.

  “No getting dirty,” Tempe says.

  “No getting anyone else dirty.”

  “No loud yelling.”

  “No roughhousing.”

  “What can we do?” Watson, always grinning, asks.

  “Boy, with all those teeth in your mouth at one time, how do you have room for questions?” Tempe teases.

  Watson flinches.

  “Tempe’s going to count to a hundred. You all run and hide. We’ll find you,” I say.

  “What if you don’t find us before supper?” Little Ivy asks.

  “You won’t eat,” Tempe answers.

  “We’ll find you and if not, I won’t eat until we do.” I smooth the sprinkling of tears off Ivy’s cheek.

  “And if you reach Sanctuary,” Tempe pauses, winding her arms in wide flourishing circles while I point to the porch, “you win.”

  “Has anyone ever reached Sanctuary?” Watson asks.

  Tempe and I think it over. “Nope.”

  I close my eyes and hold a finger up as Tempe counts. “One … two … three …”

  The heavy padding of careless feet gives the little ones away. One hides in a nearby tree. One scampers to the edge of the wood, turns, and burrows beneath the canopy. Two hide in tall grass on the side of the house. One heavy-footed one, probably Franklin, stomps behind the house. Another one hides underneath a tin washtub. One shifts one foot to the other. There’s always a runner.