The breeze felt good and she opened her legs a little wider. Maybe if she did that, other people could see the cord—she would rather think it that than a trail—and know that she was actually alive and not just some haint half existing in a spot she was chained to against her will, not being able to move on because unfinished business would never have even the slightest hope of resolution. She was here by mercy and maybe even by choice because the mercy was so reviving that she felt she owed so much to it. On her knees, then. On her knees, but only for a moment.
Still bent, she looked up to the North Star and thought maybe Timothy was looking at that same one. He was very much like his father, but he was also his mother’s sole prize. She kept all of his letters in the top drawer of a small chest beside her bed. He wrote to her often to tell her that while he still thought Thomas Jefferson had a point, maybe there was another way to think of niggers, whom he called “Negroes”; that walking on two feet meant that they weren’t the animals Ruth was certain they were, or maybe not as certain as she believed.
“My son. My special child,” she wrote to him by lamplight, straining her eyes. “You are silly. All that book learning and you kept your childlike nature after all.”
She knew that Northern ways were slippery and could slither their way through any boundary given enough will. If the North had anything, it was that: will. Loud was what Northerners were, and hypocrites. The South was a constant reminder of their roots, these U-nited States that were neither united nor stately, but were some loose configuration of tepid and petrified men trying to remake the world in their own faded image. This wasn’t a framework for liberty; this was the same tyranny of Europe, only naked and devoid of baubles.
What Northerners lacked in charm, they more than made up for in speeches: heartbreaking and endless speeches that made men raise their pitchforks and torches and march to the edge of nothing-yet with yelling mouths and tearstained faces to declare, before all of creation, that they were ready to die so that a dream they would never be a part of should live.
That was why she told Paul that Timothy should remain in Mississippi, that any education he needed could be done here because they had enough wealth to bring to bear whatever was missing from the place where the waters gather. That’s what the Natives called out, she was told, as they were mowed down and moved farther into the wild. They called on gods that held the waters together to unbind them and let them drown everything that crawled uninvited onto these lands.
And it rained. Heavy. Hard. For so many weeks that the story doesn’t even mention when it ended, so Ruth had to assume it was on the day that she first remembered seeing sun. But all that did was make the soil rich and earthworms wiggle to the surface, only to be consumed by birds, which made them fat, lazy, and easy to catch—which, in turn, made nourishment abundant for the soldiers who drove the rainmakers and their gods west. They must not have known that one of God’s most elegant acts was giving His people the strength to part waters and hurry through.
But Paul convinced her to send her only begotten son to the ravages of the winter lands and she knew he could only come back but changed. The baby who made it. The child who survived. The young man of many talents who was enough his mother to have the wisdom his father lacked, but was enough his father to understand his duty. Timothy assured her that all that he would bring back with him was knowledge and, maybe, a good wife, God willing. And she wanted so badly to believe him, but there was a quiver in his lip and he patted his forehead too much with the kerchief on a day that wasn’t that hot. Not enough of his mother in him; too much of his father.
Ruth got up from her prayerful position, descended the stairs, and walked out onto the land. The weeds beneath her feet felt cool and the dew made the ground a bit slippery, but she didn’t lose her step. She stood there in the middle and let the stars look at her for once, take her in, be in awe of her, whether she deserved it or not, before using her own hidden power to join them. The wind pushed against her nightgown and that was the only sound, though the night made its own noise: the insects, the animals, and sometimes, the hushed moans that the niggers thought might have been the makings of love, but she knew her husband to be the architect, so it was merely business. These sounds converged and, yes, perhaps even scratched out a melody. But it was all too plain to her ear to be a symphony, even with the thunder of her heartbeat added to the mix.
Her green-green eyes were glazed over with memory so she wasn’t sure if what she saw before her was now or then, but there was a light in the distance, shining downward, from where she couldn’t discern. In the light, there was the silhouette of a man, tall and straight, perhaps with a rifle cast over his shoulder, but unlikely a soldier. There was little need for soldiers now that the land had been captured and the savages that resided in this space before were tamed and would soon be erased by means she was unafraid to articulate. For the rules were different under acts of war. Though women were not permitted to fight in the official declarations of such, official was key for two reasons. First, some women disguised themselves as men, took on the exact visage and manner of men, from the short hair to the aggressive gait, to do what they believed was the patriotic thing. She knew of one such woman who was hanged when discovered, not for the fighting—for she heard that she had fought even better than the men—but for the deception, which they claimed was in more than just her disguise; it was in the way she lived even in times of peace, rejecting “she” for “he,” an affront to Christ.
Second, women endured a more lasting, thus a more brutal combat in merely trying to survive men. Whether men had seen battle or not, each of them, to one degree or another, came home from wherever it is men go to be with themselves or to do the things they would never admit to out loud, with the same intent to inflict whatever harms they endured from the world onto the women and children closest to them. Relation didn’t matter. Mother, wife, sister, and daughter were all equally targeted for the same rage. Father, husband, brother, and son all had the same blank disregard in their eyes—there, behind the glistening fury, was the thing that shook them so thoroughly that they felt the need to destroy anything and anyone who they believed could see it: nothing.
Whenever and wherever nothing encounters something, conflict is inevitable. She wondered if the figure in the light carrying the rifle was, then, coming to start a war with her. She took a step back. She blinked and the figure and the light were gone. Only unyielding blackness was there now and, strangely, it comforted her.
She took slow steps around the perimeter of the Big House until she reached the back and stood in front of her garden. The smells overwhelmed her. Not just heal-all, but also coneflowers and gardenias. She bent down to inhale. She closed her eyes and asked herself why not a bedroom right here, in the middle of the garden, under a tent, of course, but yes, in the springtime this was the place she should lay her head every night. Summer might be too grueling, but spring.
She thought maybe wake Maggie and Essie. She wanted them to smell the garden as it was supposed to be smelled, too. And wouldn’t they want to be awakened? Surely after backbreaking work in the cotton field and in the kitchen, they would appreciate being in the presence of glory, even if for a short time. Ruth touched her throat. Her head rolled back. She leaned against the fence surrounding her garden. She felt faint—or, at least, she wanted to feel faint because that’s what sometimes made her feel like a special woman and separated her from a Maggie or an Essie. A tear dripped from the edge of her eye. She had never before felt so generous. Never before felt it in a way so sustaining. To have wanted to invite Maggie and Essie meant her heart was big no matter what else it was also capable of. How odd to have finally come to that realization now. It must have been the flowers.
She crept through the garden. Her bare feet cracked twigs and frightened crickets into the air. She wondered how she looked there, in the dark. With no light anywhere, could she yet be seen? Did her nightgown, silky
white, take on some of the ebon of the night to make it seem to glow in some violet fashion? She looked at her hands and remembered that there was a time when the beginnings of calluses were just about to come into bloom on a surface that should only ever be delicate. But then the man with the rifle flung over his shoulder came walking, even paced, right up out of the horizon to take her away from toil. He had come all the way to South Carolina to get her on the word that was whispered on the wind and carried across on wagons states away. And all he had were the whispers without a guarantee to be found anyplace. But the message itself was too compelling to ignore: a man was offering up his only daughter, fire-headed and alabaster, at the first edge of womanhood, unspoiled. That last one she had to wonder about. How was that word defined? Did untoward paternal hands count even if they were fought against as regularly as evening prayer? And what of a mother’s silence? If the hands bruised one thigh, surely hush bruised the other. Children who had to contemplate such things were already denied what was theirs by right.
But there was Paul, rifle on his back pointing toward the sky. Younger then, but still much older than she was. He was possessed of a strong jaw and piercing eyes. She would gladly take her chances for whatever it was her father was willing to receive as payment.
The soil was moist and she took a bit of it and placed it on her tongue, a note of sweetness in her mouth before she chewed and swallowed. This was a part of her. She was a part of this. She lay down on the ground and let herself be hidden between flower stalks. This was, to her, a gentle act and she wondered if she should allow herself to fall asleep right there, where she felt she belonged more than anywhere else.
That was when it caught her by surprise. Out of the corner of her eye, there was a warm light that seemed to blush its way into existence. Quietly, as though not wanting to disturb or take up too much space, but simply to exist without fear of being extinguished, to share its glow with other things to bring out the golden in them, to make eyes drowsy, hearts soft, and private areas wet with the need to be intimate without malice or retaliation. This light—and perhaps it was unfair to call it that because it didn’t cause her to wince—emanated from that space beyond the fence, through the weeds, over another fence, in the breach that was the barn.
She pointed at it, called attention to it with her finger, like she was showing someone, though no one except whoever it was that hid in the heavens could see her. She wanted to call out to it, beckon it to come closer, but her throat closed, which let the light’s beauty remain undisturbed. She raised herself up, her back stained with the fertile soil so that from the rear, she looked like she might emerge as her own kind of flower. She let herself out of the gate, not wanting to say goodbye to the carnations because she knew, innately, that they adored her company. She promised herself that she would give them the gift of water at the first sign of sun, and she would do it herself, with her own hands, even when she didn’t have to, which would be a signpost for her sincerity, an offering of sorts.
It wasn’t far, the barn from the Big House, but she felt it, still, a journey. More of a descent, actually, like when one travels from a mountaintop down to the deepest cavern, going from closer to the sun to a place where the sun can’t even be discerned. It was a sojourn that made Ruth feel heavier, that if she remained there where people were bent and racked with pain some of which wasn’t even visible, she somehow took on the burden, too, simply by spending a long enough time in proximity to them. This raised a terror in her heart, but it didn’t dissuade her from embarking.
There was something a tad sweet in the aching and Ruth felt it in her feet. They went from moist soil, to dry, hard ground, and just as she reached the edge of the barn’s gate, she stopped. The weeds at the border tickled her ankles and she stooped to pluck a dandelion that had gone to seed. She blew on it and it scattered in a dozen different directions, gently, first up, and then a slow decline until, like sleepy bugs, they met the ground and snuggled in. It was thicker there, by the barn, everything was: the air, the ground, even the darkness—except for that one point of warm glow tucked safely inside, hoarded, held.
Ruth gathered herself up and under the wooden fence, not quite on all fours, not that she would have objected, but she ducked beneath and felt a shiver as she made it to the other side of the fence in the upright position. It wasn’t exactly as if she had traversed worlds, but the quality of the existence in this nocturnal place shifted. In addition to the soundlessness, the night moved. However briefly, it seemed to flutter, to ripple as a stone thrown upon pond would do to water—a quick circular pulse that she had to blink to believe. Just as fast, it was gone, leaving her to doubt her own perception.
I am here were the first words that came to Ruth’s mind, but where here was, was still a mystery. It was the barn, obviously, but standing there looking at it, it somehow seemed like more. She felt small next to it, as if it could open up its doors and swallow her whole and she would be nothing more to it than a tender morsel. She wondered if that was what happened here at night: that some nigger magic made it so that all things came to life, that everything was given a fist to shake, a heart to beat, and a mouth to speak—and, in the dark, they could play out the forbidden things that light couldn’t bear. Niggers could see in the dark, you know. They, who sprouted out of it, direct offspring, wearing it on their faces without shame. How could they not be ashamed, not even in daylight? This was the reason they had to be whipped sometimes. Not out of malice or sadism, though both of those had their piece. But to remind them of the disgrace they wore like garments and how no pride should come from it.
The ground was softer here. She realized too late why. The horse shit caked her heel and she hopped on one leg until she reached a patch of dewy grass and rubbed her foot on it until the smear was gone. It, too, was living and seemed to laugh as she scraped it from her, danced on the pointy edges of grass before sliding down, playful as a child, into the soil, and gallivanting off to some place too dark to see.
Ruth then came upon the barn doors—the lips—which were ajar like an impatient lover or a distasteful hunger, and the glowing was in there. All she saw was the small radiance that had contained itself and also become part of the inner landscape. As she inched closer, she saw that dim shadows had also made themselves a part of the quiet festival hidden in plain sight. She touched the door, expecting it to have the moisture of bated breath upon it, but while it was warm, it was also dry.
She cracked it a bit more and was disappointed. The light wasn’t some otherworldly splendor waiting to bestow its grace upon her. No. The light emanated from a simple lamp, which was set between the two barn niggers whom Paul had been hoping to stud with no results; she couldn’t remember their names.
They seemed to be arguing about something, but they spoke in such low tones that it sounded to her like chanting. It was only the animated way in which the eyes widened and then narrowed, how their hands clung to part of their chest and then shot outward to accuse that she was able to discern the disagreement.
She almost felt herself an intruder in a space that could only ever be hers to begin with. That was offensive to her, but with consideration, she pushed open one of the doors. The creak startled all three of them and the light somehow lost its golden arc. She stepped into the hay and ignored the prickling against her soles.
“What is this?” Ruth whispered. She was talking about the place. She looked around at the jumping shadows and thought she might have heard a drumbeat coming from inside the space, in the general direction of where the two niggers had just sat up, turned toward her direction, but refused to look her in the face.
“Evening, Missy Ruth,” one of them said, hands folded in front of him, head bowed. “You all right, ma’am? You need us to fetch something for you?”
They misunderstood her. She saw their chests, streaked with fear, heaving in unison. But they also glistened, which she understood as a beckoning. Men rarely spoke the tru
th, so it was crucial to read their signs. Since these niggers knew better than to let her see their eyes—downward gaze, downward!—she had the good sense to discern intention from their bodies. Never mind that her own eyes had already grazed them, held them down, dissected them, and consumed them. She had her own imagination, which she didn’t consider because she had for so long always been at the whims of someone else’s. She gave in to their misunderstanding.
“This is a barn, or something else?” she asked them, this time a bit louder.
Their silence was, to her, a delight. She wondered how she looked to them standing there, her dirty nightgown and copper hair, her skin able to shift so much more with the light than theirs and so she could take on the characteristics of every time of day or night—crystal in the day, pale blue at night. And in the in-between—at sunset, at dawn, in the twilight hour—that was the beauty she loved most of all. She moved in closer, almost like a dance, adding her shadow to the shifting ones. The light, too, seemed to fear her, flickered, dimmed.
“You. What is your name?” she asked, looking down at them.
“Isaiah, ma’am,” he said. “And this here is Samuel.”
“I don’t remember asking you for his name.” She pointed at Samuel but looked at Isaiah. “And I take it that he can speak for himself. Can he? Can he speak for himself? You do his speaking, too?”
The Prophets Page 13