Hex Life

by Rachel Deering

  * * *

  “Those pots from upstairs need chucking out back, Our Nig.” While Shea’s father was the field grunt (he called himself that, though Shea wasn’t completely sure what it meant) and her mother was the grunt that did the mending and laundry, Shea was the house grunt. She did whatever the Petersons told her to do: the dishes, the windows, even emptying their piss pots, because lord forbid they be expected to trudge out to the outhouse like Shea and her family at night. Somehow, they often reminded her, this wasn’t slavery—that had ended over forty years before. No, this was sharecropping.

  “I did those already.” Shea scrubbed the stairs with the brush, making sure to reach the corners. They would check.

  “Momma said you have to do those windows today, too.” Sara’s leg hung off the edge of the couch, bouncing up and down. It looked comfortable. Sara and her brothers and sisters loved summer break. Shea hated it and she didn’t even go to school.

  Shea stood up, looked at the girl. “The windows?”

  “Yes.” The white girl looked really pretty when she smiled.

  Shea sighed. She hated hated hated doing the windows. There were just too many of them and they were too tall. It wasn’t safe. “I did those the day before yesterday.”

  The Mrs.’ voice rang throughout the parlor, just as she appeared behind Shea. “Well, do them again. And, Our Nig, make sure they’re perfect. I never get enough afternoon light.” Somehow the family never remembered her name. Her parents had given her a name but it must have been too hard to remember.

  “Okay… Yes ma’am.” Shea quickly remembered her manners and set about doing the stairs, one hard wooden step at a time. Mrs. relished the way the house looked when it was clean, and prided herself on it, but no one ever came to see it. They never had visitors and sometimes, as big as it was, Shea thought the woman must be the loneliest person in the world. Sara and her sisters and brothers went to school when it wasn’t summer and Mr. was always gone somewhere on “business.” But Mrs. was there fretting about windows that no one ever looked through. Shea almost pitied her.

  “Almost” being the word she’d say if she could summon enough care in the world about the woman, or anyone that lived on that farm except her mother and father. No, something akin to “never” would be closer to the day when Shea would feel anything for anyone in that house.

  She finished the stairs, having now scrubbed each and every inch of each and every one, by her estimation, close to a hundred times in her short eleven years, and went into the basement to get the short ladder.

  She started on the top floor, in the bedrooms, finishing with the large balcony window above the stairs. Shea was scared of being high up, she never felt safe with her feet off the ground. This window was above the opening to the staircase and if she lost her balance, she wouldn’t survive the twenty-three-stair fall to the bottom—since her mother had taught her to count to one hundred, she counted those steps every single time her knees touched them.

  When Shea was on the ladder, the bucket of water balanced on the top, she didn’t look down. She focused on the job, one pane at a time. Just as she’d finished up the first row, she heard whispering behind her. She could not make out what was being said, but it sounded close. She listened harder, trying to hear the words. It felt like it was all around her, nearby, but so far from her somehow. She risked looking about, seeing a shadow just beyond one of the rooms. She returned quickly to her job, wanting to be done as soon as possible. Just as she reached the last row of windowpanes, the ladder shook beneath her and she lost her balance, tumbling backward.

  As she fell, seemingly in slow motion, Shea saw Sara and her youngest brother, John, watching her. Shea banged her shoulder on the railing, and landed at the top of the stairs, hanging on so that she wouldn’t fall any farther. She looked to the kids, knowing instantly what they had done. Sara stood behind John, smiling again. She was always smiling, appearing innocent, blond and dangerous.

  Suddenly Mrs. appeared over her and Shea had never been so happy to see the woman in her life. She stared at her kids; she knew, too. “Go to your rooms. Now.”

  She bent down to help Shea to her feet. Her shoulder hurt so much that it was hard to move. Mrs. stared at the bucket of water which only held air now, its contents spilled everywhere. “Just take the ladder back, Our Nig.” Her voice was soft and sympathetic.

  Shea rushed to get the ladder, cringing at the ache in her shoulder when she lifted it. On her way down the stairs, Mrs. called out to her children: “Sara, John, clean this mess up.”

  Shea descended into the darkness of the basement, hurting in places she didn’t know she had. It had been nice, she supposed, for Mrs. to make the two clean up the messes they had made. As the door closed behind her, the darkness inside was thick, darker than she remembered. She reached the dirt floor at the bottom and rubbed her foot out in front of her so she wouldn’t tumble. If that happened again, she swore to herself she wouldn’t get up. She’d just lie there until she died painlessly.

  To the right, she heard whispering again. She figured the kids had followed her down to get back at her because they were forced to clean up their own mess. Shea moved away from them as best she could, keeping her arms outstretched so that she didn’t bump into anything. It had never been so dark down here. Finally, she reached the wall and followed it, feeling the cool stone as she moved. A stale breath flooded her face.

  “Sara?” she whispered, but the girl didn’t say anything, mocking her. A gust of musty air blew over her face, the smell rotten and foul. “Stop it, John. Sara. I still have a lot of work to do.” She was slightly afraid of the dark but didn’t want them to know it. They would use it against her.

  From above, she heard the pair chasing each other, John screaming out his sister’s name. She raised her eyes to stare at the ceiling, but only a dim light shone through the beams. The floor shook with the vibrations of their movement, and dust fluttered down toward her. Shea stopped, frozen. The breath continued; soft, steady, stale.

  She scrambled toward the deeper dark at the back of the basement and set the ladder in its place. They would chastise her if it wasn’t in its proper spot. As she turned to leave, the wall shuddered. It rippled, dark and thick, as if a small, muddy pond were stuck in the middle of the plastered wall. Shea remembered the bright lights and the banging from the night before. Was it the haint? It shimmered, the surface of the wall deeper and darker than it should have been. Shea watched, walked closer. She was afraid, but curious. Perhaps the fall had clouded her senses, but she was less scared of whatever was happening than she had been while falling off the ladder.

  Leaning closer, Shea saw it. There in the middle of the plastered pond, something wiggled out of the wall. At first, it looked like a small brown worm. She imagined it attached to a pole held by her father, who loved to fish. As it reached the surface, a second appeared beside it, and then a third and fourth. The four long, thin, caterpillar-like things shot out of the wall, and she realized they were attached to a hand. A second set of four fingers appeared, reaching for Shea. She was unable to move, didn’t feel in control of her legs, her arms, her body. A moment later two large, black elbows emerged from within the wall, the body still unseen. Something stirred in the bowels of the house and the wall rumbled.

  As she watched, frozen in place, the figure climbed out of the plaster like a spider from its hole. It crouched on the wall, seemingly floating, head tilted, staring at her. It was a Negro woman. She wore a long dress and a green turban. Blood streamed down the side of her face, just under the rag covering her hair. Something was wrong with her ear. Despite the woman trying to hide it under the turban, Shea could see that it was missing. The woman had been there for a long time, the girl knew. Dead. Perhaps buried in a shallow grave behind the thick plastered wall, unloved and certainly unwanted by the current owners.

  The woman stood up, her body impossibly horizontal, defying gravity as she walked down the wall. She wobbled on unsteady feet,
as if she hadn’t used them in a long time. When she reached the dirt floor, she placed one foot, then the other down, her neck cocked to the side, staring at Shea. The dead woman moved toward Shea, limping as if her legs hurt somehow. She reached out, her thick fingers bloody and raw.

  Shea watched, her emotions trying to get the best of her, but she pushed them away. Her mother had told her once never to let whites see her cry. White folks did not care about her feelings, they did not want to even know she had them, so Shea had learned to live without emotion, like her mother and her mother’s mother. Like white folks expected.

  But this was no white woman. She was Negro. She was dead. She was haint.

  “Do you see me?” The woman’s voice was unsteady like her legs.

  Shea nodded, her head jittering weirdly on the seized muscles of her neck, still not in complete control of her body, not trusting herself to move.

  “They lie. They always lie.”

  In that moment, Mrs. walked right through her as if she didn’t see the dead woman at all. “What are you doing? I’ve been calling you.”

  “I…” Shea didn’t know what to say. “I think I hit my head when I fell… I think I… just woke up here, on the floor.”

  * * *

  That night the men came for her father. They rode up on horses that were taller than Shea, and probably better fed, too. The man in front paused and looked toward the Myrtle House. Shea did not know if the man was scouting the house, looking for Mr., or delaying for fear of the haint. When it appeared to him that neither of the two seemed to be there, he slid off his horse and walked up to her father.

  “Charles. I understand that you haven’t signed your contract to stay on here for another few years.”

  “That’s business I will take up with Mr. Peterson.”

  The man looked back to his posse and grinned, so they laughed. “Business. You know a few years ago you wouldn’t have even known the word.”

  “I suppose, then, it’s good we live in the times we do… sir.” Her father spit the title as if it had soured in his mouth. He wasn’t backing down and that made Shea proud.

  The man didn’t like her father’s haughtiness. “When your bossman gets home, we’ll get this settled. You’re lucky you belong to him.”

  “I belong to no one.”

  The man mounted his horse, glanced again at the quiet house, and rode away.

  The haint did not stir.

  * * *

  Mrs. hitched up the team, or rather had Shea’s father do it, and took her children into town. Said she was tired of being in that house, alone with no one to talk to. Shea accompanied them, mainly because Mrs. liked to show off all the things that Shea and most of the people in town could never have. Each of her five children sat upright in their best clothing, while Shea lounged in the back of the carriage. Shea’s best clothes were pretty much the same as her worst clothes, so none of it made no nevermind to her. She’d once had better clothes—her mother had made them for her—but she only wore them on Sundays or special special occasions, and she had outgrown them now. And even then, those occasions didn’t include watching white kids buy themselves things like it was Christmas.

  Pulling into St. Francisville was always a spectacle. Shea didn’t like it because it stank and there was horse waste on the ground. The people in the streets stared at them like they were themselves the ghosts of Myrtle House. Mrs. parked the buggy and helped the youngest of the children off. Shea climbed down on her own, distinctly aware of the eyes that were watching them. The others noticed but relished it. They welcomed any outside attention, instead of rightly fearing it, as it was by Negros. On the street, people stepped aside, giving the group a wide berth. The Petersons may have been too proud to leave Myrtle House, but the haint had managed to make them outcasts in the community. Even their money was not enough to override the stigma of a haint, and that somehow comforted Shea.

  The oldest son, Robert, waved at a school girl his age on the street, and she raised her hand to reply before her father stopped her, covering her hand with his own. To his credit, Robert didn’t seem to care. The group entered the dry goods store where Mrs. ordered some rice, beans, and lengths of fabric for new dresses that Shea’s mother would make for the girls. As each of the kids picked out candy, a man in a dark suit approached them, looking all too similar to Mr. Peterson. Shea stopped; he was the man from the night before.

  Mrs. faced him. “Mr. Davis. You’re looking well.”

  The man smirked. “I think it’s admirable that you can still show your face in town, after everything.”

  “Since my husband’s property helps keep this town afloat, I should hope so.” Her children stood quietly beside her.

  “Your husband can’t run that plantation and he can’t control that nigger of his who’s riling up the workers. Do you know how many of ’em are talking of going North? He’s even trying to unite the white and black sharecroppers.”

  “Mr. Davis, I don’t think…”

  “We have to keep them here. The crops will die if they leave. Tell your husband to sell me his land. I’ll pay him a good price for it and I can keep the niggers in line.”

  “Mr. Davis, this is business I suggest you talk through with my husband.”

  The man walked closer to Mrs. “I hear that ghost of yours has been causing trouble. Do you know how she died? She was snooping around listening to stuff she shouldn’t, so they cut off her ear. To get revenge she poisoned the entire family with a birthday cake. That’s what they will do if you let them get out of control. So they hanged her and threw her in the Mississippi. And that’s what we do to niggers who get out of place here.”

  For the first time this seemed to make Mrs. uncomfortable, though she never lost the smile she had passed down to her daughter Sara. “My husband will be back this evening, Mr. Davis. Please bring the matter up with him.”

  “Good. Tonight it is.”

  * * *

  When they arrived home, Shea realized her father was afraid. Although he didn’t say it, she knew he was the Negro the man had been complaining about at the dry goods store. He told Shea and her mother that the Beckman family had been attacked, their home burned to the ground. The Beckmans were black sharecroppers who worked for Davis and had planned to leave the South for Chicago, hoping for a fresh start. Seeing her father frightened like this scared Shea, too.

  When a horse appeared in the distance, her father stood up, his chair making the most awful noise sliding across the porch. Her mother opened her mouth to speak, but her father held his hand in the air, stopping her. “Go into the house.”

  “No. I’m staying with you.”

  He grabbed her, held her face close. “Listen, you have a better chance getting away with Shea if you sneak out back. It will give you time… and give me time to figure out what they want.”

  “What they want? You know what they want. They warned you last time. They’re not gonna let any of us leave this farm unless we’re dead. Then they’ll use us as a warning for everyone else.” She grabbed him, they hugged. “I will not die as a free woman running from these men.” She walked into the house, grabbed the rifle off the mantel, and came back out. “I won’t leave you.”

  Shea didn’t know what to do. She stared from her father to her mother, and then toward the Myrtle House. It was quiet. The white men only came when it was quiet, when she was quiet. Shea and her family always slept best when the haint was upset. White people did not like ghosts, Shea reasoned, because they were not controllable. They didn’t like Negro women ghosts because they were angry.

  The group of men rode up to the house, and stopped. Shea was shocked to see that Mr. Peterson was with them, but not surprised to see the man who’d been at the dry goods store.

  Mr. Peterson called out to her father. “Charles?”

  Her father turned to look at her mother. They both lifted their guns.

  Mr. Peterson jumped from his horse and walked closer to the porch. Not too close, Shea
noticed, but close enough that she could see his eyes. She realized that he was scared, too.

  “Charles?”

  “What do you want, Mr. Peterson?”

  A few of the men giggled, high up on their horses.

  “Just to talk.”

  “Is that right, Mr. Peterson? Last time these men were here, they threatened me and my family. They also shot Harry Beckman in the back today. I don’t want none of that kinda talking.” Her father sounded afraid, but convincing.

  Mr. Peterson looked shocked, like he hadn’t known about Harry Beckman. He turned to look at the white men on their horses and then he stared at the ground for a moment. “They just want you to sign an agreement to stay on here and work the land. It’ll keep anyone from getting hurt.”

  “That agreement ain’t no good and you know it. For ten years it’ll put me and my family in slavery, plain as the nose on your face. You’ll rent us these shabby houses for a ridiculous amount, rent us the land that we work on every day, rent us the equipment to work the land, and you’ll give us a per cent of the profits that equal out to us owing you by the end of every year. Then when we can’t pay up, you’ll threaten to have us arrested if we don’t sign for another ten years.”

  Mr. Davis, from the store, slid down from his horse and walked over to her father. “You ungrateful bastard. We give you everything and that’s how you repay us?”

  “I’ll give you a better contract.” Mr. Peterson was trying to calm things down.

  “No!” Davis yelled. “If you give this nigger anything more, the others will find out.” He drew his gun, and her father took aim at the man’s heart. The widest point, he had taught her.

  Beside Shea, her mother pointed her own gun at the men on horses. “Go into the house, girl. Lock the door.”

  Shea wanted to protest, but her mother’s warning voice had been the most dangerous thing she’d heard that night.

  Mr. Davis held his gun steady. “It won’t matter if I burn it down around her, will it?”