“It won’t never happen again. This, I promise you,” Amos said to her seven days after he failed her.
Later, much later, she showed her broom-husband her commitment by muddying her knees beside his. However, she would remain skeptical. Skepticism was the only thing that she could truly claim as hers. She took it with her to the barn the day Amos sent her there with a message.
“This ain’t pie; this peace,” she said by way of greeting to Isaiah as she balanced the wildberry confection in one hand; the pie was covered by a piece of cloth so white it glowed. In the other hand, she held the pale baby she named Solomon for her own good reasons. She carried the apprehension atop her head, balancing it like they did in the old days.
Solomon was fussy. He threatened to topple everything by pulling at her dress, right where the milk had made it damp. She hated that he had that sort of power over her body, his cries like a spell making her breasts respond by leaking drops of her serum-self out for his nourishment. She nearly dropped him, but Isaiah caught him by the bottom and took him from Essie’s loose grasp. Solomon looked at Isaiah with big, flat eyes, blue as birdsong, set at the edge of a face that seemed nearly skinless. And yet, in the natural curl in the baby’s sun-colored tresses, Isaiah found something familiar enough.
“You hungry, huh?” Isaiah said to the quieting baby, who touched his nose as he looked at it, transfixed, before he slid his tiny hand down to Isaiah’s lips and tugged on the bottom one. “We eat together then, I reckon.” Isaiah looked at Essie. “How you?”
“Here in this body. You know how it be,” she said, frowning first before gradually allowing the corners of her mouth to curl into a smile.
“Surely,” Isaiah said, looking at her, then back at Solomon, whose nose he rubbed with his own.
“How old is he now?”
“Almost two.”
“And ain’t walking yet?”
She shrugged.
“You wanna come inside? Sit for a spell?”
“Kindly,” Essie said as she followed him into the barn.
She was always surprised at how clean Isaiah was given how close he lay to animals. He smelled like juniper at the height of May, glistening in pitch blackness. She was there when Samuel first brought him the water. Too young herself, but still knowing a shining when she saw one; it was almost if the water had become silver, catching every light in the pouring, rainbows in drop formation, dripping from the concerns of Isaiah’s mouth while he attempted to take in too much at once. Ain’t that a shame—for someone to have been wasting colors like that, no matter what their age? Still, hovering over them was something unseen because it was unseeable, but its vibration could be felt. That was why her hands trembled then and why her hands trembled still whenever these two were around.
Inside, Samuel had his arms raised. His back was facing Essie, Isaiah, and Solomon as they entered. Essie couldn’t tell if he was paying tribute to creation, holding court with degenerate beasts, or merely stretching out of himself. Sometimes, the space inside the body could get to be cramped and it was necessary to extend the limbs to give the spirit more room or, maybe, an opening to fly from. He wore no shirt, so every bit of sweat on his skin was visible, racing from top to bottom. His flesh evinced no natural blemishes, but the moisture highlighted the ones marked there by cowards. She hated to admit to herself that she found beauty in the way those scars snaked across the broadness of his back with delicate curves.
“You got room for pie?” she said to Samuel’s behind, which was raised up like heaven.
He came down hard but turned slowly. He had no grin on his face, but one suddenly appeared after he looked at Isaiah and Isaiah nodded. Essie could tell then it was manufactured, but she revealed her teeth in a wide smile in return anyway, didn’t even try to hide the space of the missing one.
She had known Isaiah longer than she did Samuel. She appreciated his gentle nature and how—when Paul holed them up for what seemed like days, in that rotten old shack they called The Fucking Place—Isaiah held her hand first. He tried, awkwardly, to put his limp self into her in-between that in no ways welcomed it, but they pretended that they were full-scale rocking anyway. Hurt hard when somebody make you fuck your friend, they both thought later.
Paul set James about the business of watching them, and sometimes, James would pull out his thing, leaving, for anyone to see, the puddle that Isaiah faked. Afterward, pulling up their clothes as though they had actually done something, she and Isaiah shared squinted eyes, quiet giggles, a song where their harmonies blended and echoed, and the first everything-hotcake she ever made, which they gobbled up together sitting side by side. But it was still doughy on the inside, so it gave them both cramps—and squatting among rocks and trees to share as well.
Amos didn’t have Isaiah’s decency, but that was no special mark against him because neither did most men. Most men followed their impulses without considering where they might lead, perhaps in spite of considering where they might lead. It was hard to blame a turd for smelling the way it did. Best to just make the most of it and let it fertilize the soil so something could grow. There was never any guarantee, however, that there would be anything worth harvesting.
Out of all those unprivate moments in the dank of it, under James’s steady gaze, Essie and Isaiah created a friendship—that was it. Displeased, Paul lashed Isaiah three times and sent him hollering back to the barn. It wasn’t even five minutes after Essie had fastened her dress to the neck that Paul had James line up a group of nine men. Essie looked at them as intently as Paul did. Did he mean to give each of them a turn in succession? Would she be left so numb that afterward, her walk back to her shack would have to be done with legs far apart and clutching the agony at the pit of her stomach?
Paul surprised her. He chose one: the one who looked at her in her face and didn’t look away or dissect her by wondering the shape of her breasts or what contours might be hidden behind her clothing. It was Amos who was told to come forward and when he did, he took Essie’s hand and rubbed it against his cheek.
For months, Essie was astonished by Amos. She didn’t realize she could feel such tenderness toward a man. She didn’t know that body union could feel like something interesting and not just labored. She thought the tingling that shocked her body was only possible through the use of her fingers. When Amos held her tightly after it all, adding his spasms to hers, she allowed herself to go limp in his arms.
But those months hadn’t put her in the way Paul imagined it might. Rather than have James form another line, Paul interfered himself.
Being forced to do their own work only made toubab doubly vicious, made them feel unsteady and revealed them as . . . regular, which was another way of saying it killed them. Therefore, they wanted everything else to be dead, too.
Essie felt like that now: dead, but somehow, walking—playing, smiling, cooking, picking, clapping, shouting, singing, and, in the nighttime, lying down—just like a living person, so all were fooled. Or maybe none were because the dead recognized one another, in scent if not in sight. She wondered then what Isaiah might see, if the reason they were no longer friend-friends wasn’t because Amos occupied all her time and kept her fastened to the clearing, but because the living and the dead could never mix without some grave omen coming to pass.
“I brought a peace,” Essie said to Samuel, holding up the cloth-wrapped pie.
Samuel closed his eyes and smelled the air.
“Hope it ain’t raw in the middle,” Isaiah said with a laugh, holding Solomon close to his chest and rocking him.
Essie cut her eyes and kissed her remaining teeth before sticking her arm out and handing Samuel the pie.
Isaiah pointed. “You can sit over on that there stool if you feel like it. You want the baby back?”
Essie signaled her indifference by flipping her hand in the air. She turned knowingly to the side and plopped dow
n on the stool. Isaiah sat on the ground in front of her.
“So what Amos want?” Samuel said while looking down at the baby in Isaiah’s lap.
Essie smirked because she appreciated the way Samuel called the truth forth from its hiding places. She smoothed her dress and swiveled her behind firmly on the stool. “Peace, he say.”
“And what you say?” Samuel shot back, looking her dead in the face, but with not a hint of animus.
“Well, y’all already know y’all got two different ideas of peace.”
“Don’t everybody?” Samuel asked, looking at Isaiah.
Isaiah continued rocking the baby.
“I reckon,” Essie said. “We can talk about that there over the pie. Ain’t that what Mag always say toubab like to do—talk over they meals instead of eat?”
The vibration came from shared laughter. Even the baby cooed and giggled, which was what silenced Essie suddenly, pulled her out of herself, and caused her to seek the pretend shelter of the fence once more.
“Pie,” Isaiah said aloud to himself as though thinking of how the word sounded. His rich voice brought Essie back with memory.
“What kind of pie you make?” Isaiah asked as he jiggled Solomon’s arms to make him smile.
“You know that bush over by the river, the one by the hump-log, about two skips behind, where Sarah caught that black snake and scared Puah halfway out her mind?”
“Yes! I need me some blackberries,” Isaiah said.
“That and some other red ones back there in them woods. Funny how they taste tart apart and sweet together.” Essie looked around. “You got something to cut it with?” she asked, and Samuel walked over to the barn wall to get one of the tools hanging on it.
“I know you better take it to the well and wash it first,” Isaiah said.
“I know it! What you think I am?” Samuel shot back, marching out of the barn with the heat of a lie burning over his head.
Essie and Isaiah both smiled, and then the smiles left their mouths as they both looked at the baby. The quiet lingered between them, interrupted occasionally by Solomon blowing through his lips. Isaiah bounced him on his leg.
Essie tilted her head and looked at Isaiah. How he had grown from the boy whose mouth wasn’t yet big enough to hold a bounty of rainbows. She was going to ask him if he still remembered the smell. In The Fucking Place, the mildew and moss had grown thick, such that it brought with it a smell that not even rolling around in the soil as pretense could cover up. To her, she wanted to say, it smelled like eyes watching. She knew that didn’t make any sense but thought that if anyone could understand, it would be Isaiah.
The smell, or the way the morning sun shot through the decaying planks of wood, lighting up dust and giving horseflies paths to freedom. The light that offered no comfort but only illuminated a damn shame and made the air too thick to breathe. The aggravation might have been tolerable, to some degree, if not for James standing right there between light and shadow with his britches open just enough to point his weapon at them. They pretended not to see.
She wanted to know: Did it all still clutter Isaiah’s days like it did hers, both the kindness and the humiliation, each liable to show up in full form at any time—whether plucking in that confounding cotton field or after having found the perfect log on which to sit in the clearing? Sometimes, it got mixed in with Amos’s morning messages; hovering right next to the Jesus talk was the image of James’s grin. Maggie said the way to get rid of anyone from the recesses of the mind was to never speak their name again, not even think it. Which is why James seemed to avoid Maggie wherever she showed up. But how not to think a name when the mind was already so hard to control?
Sleep was the best place to hide because dreamlessness at least provided shelter. Tucked away in the darkness, no one could see, and therefore everyone was safe. Isaiah should at least recognize that place in her because she recognized it in him. Wasn’t that made clear when they squatted together, aching and sweating, in those bushes next to rock and below tree?
Was the barn a better place? How better? And if it was, indeed, love that laid itself down over everything so that there could be beauty even in torment, where possibly could Isaiah have gotten the courage to do it and only it, knowing what Paul wished to use Isaiah’s body for? It was dangerous to embrace anything but the Lord like that. Everything else could only ever be fleeting. And who wants to lose a foot, or their soul, chasing behind the wagon dragging your love deeper into the wilderness?
In that place where they pretended, what had they found? That Fucking Place where they lay in the mustiness of other bodies, some who made it out and others who didn’t, who could be buried right there beneath them or, instead, who could be hovering just above them, watching, too, and also giggling at their charade, understanding in their haint-state what they couldn’t before: however we are is however we are.
The dancing shadows were a clue. Essie might have mentioned this to Isaiah before, but she had forgotten now that her heart was filled with the blood of Jesus, who had but intervened too late and had only half promised to do so should the menace arise again. Amos said don’t worry, he would be an example. Essie wondered why since she had already been made one.
And now here Essie was, in a dusty barn, sitting right in front of decency as it held on to its enemy. Bounced it in its lap and smiled as it cooed. So she was right: she and Isaiah were no longer friend-friends. Given enough time, betrayal—no matter how tiny—makes its way up the steps and sits on the throne as though it had always belonged there. Maybe it did and it was actually surprise that had no place.
Samuel returned from the well, wet and laughing.
“You fall in, fool?” Isaiah asked.
“Nah. James and them was at the well so I went to the river. Puah was down there. She splash me with her silly self.”
“Oh,” Isaiah said. He and Samuel exchanged glances.
“Well, here,” Samuel said, extending the hay knife. “Who gon’ cut it?”
“You got the knife,” Essie said.
The knife was damp and glistening. For a moment, it crossed her mind that the barn had all manner of sharp object. There were axes and pitchforks, but also the blunt edge of a hoe or shovel that, with great force behind it, could also be useful. She looked around the barn, ignoring Isaiah, Samuel, Solomon, the animals, the insects, the smell, but not the various-shaped objects that hung on the walls or leaned against them. Why hadn’t the men gathered these things, placed them in a pile at the center of a circle, where they could choose the tool to which they were most accustomed? But it had to be all of them. At once. Because bullets were quick and would take some down. The guns couldn’t take out every one of them, however, and in that was the chance.
It would never be everyone, though. Other than suffering, spite was the only other thing they all shared. She had heard the story once from Sister Sarah when Sarah was mumbling it and thought Essie wasn’t listening because Essie made it seem, for her own interests, like she wasn’t listening. All it took was one to run back to Massa and tell tales of the plot to leave. It wasn’t like any of them wanted to do any harm, though they would be well within their rights to do so if they did; sold-off loved ones alone made that righteous. They just wanted to be somewhere free and free of.
Samuel cut three pieces. He handed the first piece to Essie, who took it into her palms. He handed another to Isaiah before he sat down holding the last piece.
“The baby can eat this?” Isaiah asked Essie, who shrugged her shoulders, then nodded.
Isaiah broke off a small piece, mashed it between two of his fingers, and then held those fingers near Solomon’s mouth. Solomon sucked the bits from Isaiah’s fingers. The baby scrunched his face and chewed. Some of it spilled out of his mouth and Isaiah pushed it back in. When he was done chewing, Solomon opened his mouth again. Samuel and Isaiah laughed.
“You ever imagine that? Two mens raising they own baby?” Essie, leaning forward, whispered.
Isaiah laughed nervously. “I seen two or more womens do it plenty. Only thing stopping mens is mens.”
“That the only thing stopping them?” Samuel asked Isaiah.
Isaiah didn’t respond. The baby tugged at him and he broke off another small piece of pie and fed it to him. Then he took a small bite of the pie himself. Isaiah smiled at Essie and nodded his head.
Samuel looked at Isaiah but was talking to Essie. “So peace. You say Amos want peace? From what?”
Essie sighed, rubbed her face, and tucked a stray braid behind her ear. “He say the punishments been getting worser. He think it have something to do with y’all not doing what you should be.”
But what should they be doing? Essie thought. The shape of them was already illuminated and cast in the sky, one a water carrier, the other the water. And why should that ever be a source of pain? Scarce though it was, she was here out of duty, out of loyalty to a man who bargained for her but overestimated the integrity of the dealmaker.
“But he say he keep away from me?” Essie asked Amos then.
“It don’t work like that, honey child,” Amos said softly. “Toubab never so plain. Is ritual that protect you whether his mouth say it or not. They rituals is what they respect. We gon’ do it their way. We jump. We take care of his seed. We preach his gospel. And you be safe. I swear it.”
This is what Essie’s silence said, but Amos failed to hear: Oh! But didn’t he break his ritual to Missy Ruth to do what he did to me? Which gospel say, “Do the most terrible thing?” And here, this Solomon, is the evidence! You a fool, Amos. But, mercy, a fool with his heart intact.
The Prophets Page 5