She was lucky. Most of the adults were at church or in their cabins asleep, or in some corner hiding from a sun that seemed to be plotting against them. Some of the older children were there, left behind to watch the younger ones, and they, too, watched Puah with something between contempt and longing. They scowled, yes. But their hands were also loose, not gripped into fists, which meant that she had a moment to do what she came to do before they remembered who they were.
She held her dress up, just above her ankles, and walked up to the closest shack, which, as Maggie said, had a patch of comfrey right at its base. It was beautiful, too. Deep green stalks and leaves accented with flowers that looked like tiny purple bells. The kids on the porch stopped playing their little game and jumped down near her.
“Beatrice, there’s a nigger over here! Is niggers supposed to be over here?” the tiniest one said. His face was dirty and he kept pushing his long blond bangs away from his face.
“No they ain’t!” Beatrice said. She was older, maybe fourteen, and the boy favored her, so Puah thought she might be his older sister.
“I beg your pardon, Missy and Massa.” Puah kept her head down as she spoke. “Massa Paul send me over here to collect some of that there flower. Missy Ruth is having one of her belly spells and they need it to settle her discomfort.”
Beatrice looked at Puah from head to toe, then toe to head. “And who you be?”
“Puah, ma’am.”
“What kinda name that is?”
“I don’t know, Missy. Massa Paul give it to me.”
“Don’t let her take our flowers!” the little boy shouted. “They’s our’n!”
“Hush now, Michael. She ain’t taking nothing.” Beatrice’s eyes narrowed.
Puah wanted to grab her own dress up the middle, ball up her fist, and punch Beatrice dead in the center of her face. She took a step back with her right leg and then caught herself.
“Yes, Missy. I leave you be. I let Massa Paul know you say no. Thank you kindly, ma’am.”
Puah turned to walk away.
“Wait!” Beatrice shouted.
Puah turned toward her. “Yes’m?”
Beatrice sighed. She looked down at Michael and then over to the patch of comfrey. “Go on and get what you need. And be quick about it!”
Puah bowed, which pinpricked her inner self, and ran over to the patch. Carefully, she plucked stems full of blooms and added them to her elephant-ear pouch. She stood up and then headed for the field’s edge.
“Hey! Maybe you can teach me how to make a carry-pouch like that one you got,” Beatrice called at Puah’s back.
Puah turned and nodded. “Yes’m.” That was what her mouth said. But the stiffness of her back, the squareness of her shoulders, the tight grip of her jaw, and the rhythm of her step all said in unison: Never!
Then she dashed into the field.
* * *
—
“Why you hate men, Sarah?” Be Auntie walked up next to her with a slight, tender smile bending her lips. Her eyes said that it was a legitimate question and not Be Auntie being Be Auntie, trying to give known enemies the same consideration as proven friends.
Sarah looked at her briefly, then returned her gaze to the direction Puah would be returning from. “I don’t hate men. I hate y’all making me have to consider them.” She turned her neck a little to look at Maggie and Essie out of the corner of her eye. “And if’n I did hate them, I reckon I be well within my right.” Her gaze returned to direction of the morning sun. Her face was alive with light in the way only darkness could catch it and do with it what it would. She placed a hand delicately upon a cocked hip. “And I don’t love men, either. More like neitherway with them. They just—there, like a tree or a sky, until they natures do what it do. I don’t bother with them.” She sighed. “Only reason I here is ’cause Maggie call for me. And maybe ’cause The Two of Them . . . maybe they not men-men. Least one of them ain’t. Might be something else altogether.”
“Like Massa Timothy?” Essie said from inside.
“Ooh, girl!” Sarah laughed.
Be Auntie shrugged her shoulders.
“Hunk them shoulders if you wanna. You gon’ learn,” Sarah shot back.
“You forget your people,” Be Auntie said before she turned to walk away.
“You talking ’bout me or you?” Sarah let fly.
“One thing to feel your own pain. Right another thing to feel somebody else’s,” Maggie said aloud, only looking at Samuel and Isaiah. “And selflessly. Not because you feel like they your’n—like a child or a chosen lover. But just because they breathing. I seen a hare once not leave the side of another one caught in a snare. That thing hopped around like it was in the same kind of pain as the trapped one. If a animal can do that and we can’t? Well, what that say ’bout what they are and what we are? Like we might’ve gotten the names mixed up, ain’t it?”
“I choosy with who pain I feel,” Sarah said. “Some people pain is eternal. Some people worship they pain. Don’t know who they are without it. Hold on to it like they gon’ die if they let it go. I reckon some people want their pain to end, true. But most? It’s the thing that make they heart work. And they want you to feel it beat.”
“How ’bout these two here?” Maggie asked.
Sarah glanced at Isaiah and Samuel. Her brows furrowed. “Nah. They ain’t deserve what they got.” She let out a breath and shook her head. “But I ain’t do it to them. I was the only one I see who outright refuse to get up in that rickety-ass wagon. So, I ain’t carrying that burden, no. I got my own weight.”
“You ain’t get in that wagon and you ain’t do nothing to help neither. Some of that weight your’n to bear whether you heave it or not,” Essie said.
“So you claim.”
“What is, is what is.”
“Essie, I seen you up in that wagon. Holding that baby of your’n, too. Your eyes was closed, but mine won’t. I risk a whipping standing there on them weeds, but I ain’t go. What you risk, honey? You tell me that.”
“How you can fix your mouth to say that to me, Sarah, I don’t even know.”
Sarah exhaled. “You right. I ain’t wanna be led to this, which is why I ain’t wanna come in the first place.”
“Yes, enough of this fussing. The air foul enough,” Be Auntie added.
“I say let me be loose!” Sarah said.
“You be what you need to be, but be careful, too.” Maggie looked at Sarah. “Remember, the chopping up starts before they have the ax in they hand. They begin with the eyes. You know what I mean?”
Sarah was going to say yes, but she caught the sight of Puah the minute she made it out of the field. She walked past the Big House and then sped up when she got nearer to the barn. Sarah smiled and nodded her head.
“You quick, girl,” she said as Puah approached.
Puah returned the smile and entered the barn. Sarah followed her inside. Puah handed the soft green pouch to Maggie.
“You made this for carry?” Maggie asked Puah.
“Yes’m.”
“Ooh wee! This fine. Fine indeed!” Maggie held up the pouch and eyed it. “You got everything?”
“Yes, ma’am. All we need now is that stuff you said. The marrow.”
“Heh! Yarrow, honey chile. Come on over here with me. Let me show you what I mean.”
Maggie led Puah toward the back of the barn. They stopped for a moment near Samuel and Isaiah. Puah saw that they were still breathing and even heard Samuel moan slightly, and then she and Maggie continued.
Maggie brought her past the horse pens far to the corner of the barn. There, in the darkest spot, yarrow bloomed bright red.
“I ain’t never seen no flower bloom in the dark,” Puah said.
“Not many can. Specially not this one. But look-a-there. Go on. Pick it. Then hand it to me.
”
* * *
—
“Bring me that rooster. No worries. I cook it tonight for the toubab.”
They formed a broken circle around Isaiah and Samuel. Each one of them wore a different face, a solitary sin: Maggie: solemnity; Essie: sorrow; Be Auntie: elation; Puah: dreaming; Sarah: indifference. Maggie noticed it and hoped none of it would keep walls up where there should be windows.
“We leave room for you to enter,” Maggie said.
“Because we call on you,” Be Auntie said.
“To give us memory of how to lay hands,” Essie said.
“And to ease and restore and protect,” Sarah said.
And then they looked to Puah.
“You remember?” Sarah asked.
“. . . and to love in the dark places that nobody sees,” Puah said finally.
“Great ones, we come to see the waters sing!” Maggie nodded and sat down next to Samuel and Isaiah. She whispered to them.
“This not gon’ be easy at first, you understand? There’s something you also gotta do. It seem unfair, but there something you gotta give in exchange. The ancestors, they be a little fickle sometimes. Demanding. Or better, we do it wrong, misunderstand what they ask, and get mighty upset at the result. But one thing we know for true is that you gotta yell loud enough for them to hear you. Because, you see, we don’t have the drums no more and your voice gotta carry. Not just across the distance, back to over there from where we was took. Your shout gotta pierce the barrier. It gotta get through the thick divide between us here in the light and them there in the dark. For this, you gone need each other. The strong one and the seeing one. The hard one and the mellow one. The laughing one and the crying one. The double night. The good two. The guardians at the gate.”
Maggie never understood all of the words she spoke. She knew they came from sometime else and she let them come through her because that was the only way the circle would be potent. She stood up. Her eyes rolled back in her head. She bent and grabbed the rooster by its feet and moved it in a circular motion. She broke its neck and spilled its blood. Puah gasped, but Sarah touched her shoulder.
“Shh. Stay inside the circle,” Sarah whispered to Puah.
Each of the women dipped her left hand into the pail where Maggie had mixed just the right amount of everything collected so that the water had become a loose paste the color of swamp. In unison, they held their wet hands up to the sky and then, as gently as each of them knew how, they placed their hands on the leaking trail of scars on Samuel and Isaiah’s backs.
Isaiah let out a cry so piercing that it made Samuel flinch. Maggie saw it even with her eyes looking elsewhere.
“Yes. Call on them. Call them in her name,” she said softly.
Samuel whimpered and squeezed his eyes shut. Sarah dipped her hand into the pail again and rubbed his back, following the trail of cruelty etched there by fools. She pressed ever so slightly and a blister popped. Its juice ran down Samuel’s side and he finally let out the sound he had held back with all of his might.
“This ain’t your disgrace,” Maggie assured him. “This belong to someone else.”
Their backs were shiny now, thick with the swamp paste, and it stung like it was supposed to. The women laid down the dress strips on their wounds. It hurt to move, so Samuel and Isaiah lay there calling for mercy in the name, but not yet receiving it. Isaiah placed his hand on Samuel’s, who wanted to move his but couldn’t. The circle understood that as their time.
The hands were laid upon them again, and in unison they called her by her name. It was then that the clouds began to form, interrupting the sun while it was in the middle of a crime. After a moment, the mossy air announced the storm that was on its way. And little by little, the droplets formed and came down first with care upon the parched earth.
“They’re here,” Maggie said softly and all the women turned to see.
Inside the barn, the dust swirled; Essie saw it. It came up from the ground as though it were alive. And it had form and grace. She knew then that what she saw wasn’t just some random breeze troubling the dirt. It was them, showing themselves in a way she could understand and not be frightened by, but she didn’t think she would be scared of their true form either, which is what she longed for.
“Rejoice,” Maggie said. “For we have reason.”
And all the women jerked their shoulders and laughed.
* * *
—
Puah looked out to the darkening sky. “What time is it?”
“What difference do it make? We close our eyes and then we open them. And here we are. Still here,” Sarah said.
“But the toubab be back soon,” Puah said wearily.
“Don’t worry ’bout them. They expect us to be here. How else these boys finna get back to work if not for our hands?” Maggie said to her.
Puah held herself a little closer. She touched her lips as though a thought had come to her only to be lost again. The sides of her head had become hot and impatience was crawling up her back. She stood up and went to the door. She held her hand out to touch the rain. She rubbed her wet hand on her face and came back to the circle.
“What now?” she asked.
“Now, we wait,” Maggie replied.
The women all fell silent as Sarah sucked her teeth, got up, walked over to the entrance, and pressed her back against the barn door frame. The rain was easing. It never got to be the storm she had hoped it would be. She didn’t know why, but she needed to see lightning streak across the heavens. She needed to feel thunder rumble her to the gut. Give her a rhythm to undo her hair and replait it by. But no, none of that came for her. Not even a cool mist.
Be Auntie rose and walked toward Sarah until she was shoulder to shoulder with her. She looked out into the dusk. How golden it was, momentarily, before it turned itself inside out to show its lovely bruises, mauve blending into a blush. She would allow herself to regard it as beauty, even in such a grotesque place, even when her own had been abused. No, nothing could be ugly ever again. Not a sky, not a stream, not even two silky people lying on the ground in need of healing.
Maggie stood and joined them. She could unhook herself from the need to believe beauty might have a place that wasn’t subject to anyone’s unwanted hands and sour breath. Wasn’t no way this place was going to keep thinking she was its prime fool. Not at all. Not as long as she had fists. And even if they took those, the stubs.
Essie looked toward the three women standing at the doorway. She didn’t understand why she wasn’t already dead. Maggie had told Essie that she came from the line of those who built the great angles, but Essie’s angle came first, time not being straight. Living, as she was, in the crest of her creases, turned upside down for her own pleasure no matter who dared it without being beckoned, but even then, the truth of it pointing toward the brightest star in the sky. For all the men, women, and others who had used her as their shitting pot, she should have been broke down, should have already surrendered to the worms. And maybe she was a little bit broke down, but in hidden places like the edge of her elbows and in between her toes, where memory slipped in and wouldn’t be loosed, not even after a mud ritual. No, the images pressed themselves in, and every so often, when she bent in the field or when she had to kick an attacker in the groin, they would sing out: Here we are, darling! Let us fellowship.
Puah got up and then sat down next to Essie. She wondered, too, how she still had breath, how she hadn’t yet been ripped up, with so many toubab around needing nary a reason—and she knew they had plenty. The cow was always useful for something. Milk, if not labor. Labor, if not meat. Meat, if not milk. Rape. But this wasn’t the time to ponder such things. She knew Maggie would tell her that she had to give the circle its time.
The women, one by one, turned and came to sit back down. They were a semicircle, all facing one another. In the distance, th
under finally let itself roll. Sarah lifted her head and inhaled as though searching for something in the air that she almost found, but didn’t. She lowered her chin. Maggie touched her shoulder. They looked at each other.
“I know, chile. We all know.”
Be Auntie and Puah shook their heads. Essie held her hand against her neck. Maggie looked at her.
“Sang a little, Essie,” she said, attempting to bring the women back from the breach.
Essie nodded. Sitting in the old style, she straightened up her back and gripped her knees. She began to rock back and forth. She closed her eyes and tilted her head to the side. And when her lips parted, all the women, chins high, eyes wide, mouths breathless, clutched themselves in preparation.
Romans
We do not wish to mislead you into thinking you are all of royal blood.
You are not.
Yet, do not imagine that royal blood is of any significant import.
It is not.
Often, it is the most impure, arriving at its creation through vanity and more than a little cruelty.
You are of the common folk. By common we mean dancing, singing, weaving, speaking: the ones who could have held their heads high but chose to hold their hands high instead. For they knew that all the universe wanted was their reverence, not their pride.
Pride is what leads people onto ships, across seas, into forbidden lands. It is what allows them to desecrate forbidden bodies and stamp them with the names of reckless gods. Pride is at once haunted and unbothered by the disgrace it has built from turning people into nothing.
Common.
Ordinary.
Fine and ordinary.
The weaver no less vital than the king.
We do not mean to give you the impression of an untroubled period in which cruelty was unthinkable. That is, unfortunately, not what nature is. Nature is rugged simply—with not a single favored One to be found anywhere. But we are here to draw the distinction between this place and that one.
The Prophets Page 17