A Mercy

by Toni Morrison

  Mistress and Lina quarreled with the blacksmith about whether she should be forced to eat or drink, but he ruled, insisting she have nothing. Riveted by that hot knife and blood medicine, they deferred. Fanning and vinegar-soaked boils only. At the close of the third day, Sorrow’s fever broke and she begged for water. The smithy held her head as she sipped from a dried squash gourd. Raising her eyes, she saw Twin seated in the branches above the hammock, smiling. Soon Sorrow said she was hungry. Bit by bit, under the smithy’s care and Florens’ nursing, the boils shriveled, the welts disappeared and her strength returned. Now their judgment was clear: the blacksmith was a savior. Lina, however, became truly ugly in her efforts to keep Florens away from the patient and the healer, muttering that she had seen this sickness before when she was a child, and that it would spread like mold to them all. But she lost the battle with Florens. By the time Sorrow recovered, Florens was struck down with another sickness much longer lasting and far more lethal.

  It was while lying in the meadow at the forest’s edge, listening to Twin tell a favorite story, the one about a school of fish girls with pearls for eyes and green-black locks of seaweed hair racing one another, riding the backs of a fleet of whales, that Sorrow first saw the smithy and Florens coiled around each other. Twin had just gotten to the part where seabirds, excited by the foam trailing the fleet like shooting stars, were joining the race, when Sorrow put a finger to her lips and pointed with another. Twin stopped speaking and looked. The blacksmith and Florens were rocking and, unlike female farm animals in heat, she was not standing quietly under the weight and thrust of the male. What Sorrow saw yonder in the grass under a hickory tree was not the silent submission to the slow goings behind a pile of wood or a hurried one in a church pew that Sorrow knew. This here female stretched, kicked her heels and whipped her head left, right, to, fro. It was a dancing. Florens rolled and twisted from her back to his. He hoisted her up against the hickory; she bent her head into his shoulder. A dancing. Horizontal one minute, another minute vertical.

  Sorrow watched until it was over; until, stumbling like tired old people, they dressed themselves. It all ended when the blacksmith grabbed Florens’ hair, yanked her head back to put his mouth on hers. Then they went off in different directions. It amazed her to see that. In all of the goings she knew, no one had ever kissed her mouth. Ever.

  It was natural, once Sir was buried and Mistress fell ill, to send for the blacksmith. And he came. Alone. He gazed for a while at the great, new house before dismounting. Then he glanced at Sorrow’s belly, then her eyes before handing her the reins. He turned to Lina.

  “Lead me to her,” he said.

  Sorrow rushed back from tying the horse as fast as her weight let her and the three of them entered the house. He paused and, noticing the smell, looked into the pot of stewed mugwort and other bits of Lina’s brew.

  “How long has she been abed?”

  “Five days,” answered Lina.

  He grunted and entered Mistress’ bedroom. Lina and Sorrow watched him from the door as he sat on his haunches beside the sickbed.

  “Thank you for coming,” whispered Mistress. “Will you make me drink my own blood? I’m afraid there is none left. None that isn’t polluted.”

  He smiled and stroked her face.

  “Am I dying?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “No. The sickness is dead. Not you.”

  Mistress closed her eyes. When she opened them they were glassy and she blotted them with the back of a bandaged hand. She thanked him again and again, then told Lina to prepare him something to eat. When he left the room, Lina followed. Sorrow, too, but not before turning back for a last look. That was when she saw Mistress toss off the bedsheet and go down on her knees. Sorrow watched as she used her teeth to loosen the wrappings on her hands, then press her palms together. Glancing around the room she was usually forbidden to enter, Sorrow noticed the clumps of hair stuck in the pillow’s damp; noticed too how helpless-looking were the soles of Mistress’ pale feet, protruding from the hem of her nightdress. On her knees, her head bowed, she seemed completely alone in the world. Sorrow understood that servants, however many, would not make a difference. Somehow their care and devotion did not matter to her. So Mistress had no one—no one at all. Except the One she was whispering to: “Thank you my Lord for the saving grace you have shown me.”

  Sorrow tiptoed away, out into the yard where pine-scented air erased the odor of the sickroom. Somewhere a woodpecker tapped. When hares bounded into the radish patch Sorrow thought to chase them but, exhausted by her weight, decided not to. Instead she sat down on the grass in the shade of the house, stroking the movements in her protruding stomach. Above her through the kitchen window she could hear the clatter of a knife, the shift of a cup or plate as the blacksmith ate. She knew Lina was there too, but she did not speak until the sound of a chair scraping announced that the smithy stood. Then Lina asked the questions Mistress had not.

  “Where is she? Is she all right?”

  “Certainly.”

  “When will she return? Who will bring her back?”

  A silence too long for Lina.

  “It is four days now. You can’t keep her against her will.”

  “Why would I?”

  “Then? Tell me!”

  “When it suits her she will come.”

  Silence.

  “You will stay the night?”

  “Part of it. Much obliged for the meal.”

  With that he left. Passing by Sorrow, he answered her smile with another and strode up the rise to the new house. Slowly he stroked the ironwork, a curve here, a join there, tested the gilt for flakes. Then he went to Sir’s grave and stood hatless before it. After a while he went inside the empty house and shut its door behind him.

  He did not wait for sunrise. Sleepless and uncomfortable, Sorrow stood in the doorway and watched him ride off in pre-dawn darkness as serenely cheerful as a colt. It was soon clear, however, that Lina remained in despair. The questions plaguing her lodged in her eyes: What was really happening to Florens? Was she coming back? Was the blacksmith truthful? For all his kindness and healing powers, Sorrow wondered if she had been wrong about him and Lina right all along. Suffused with the deep insight mothers-to-be claim, Sorrow doubted it. He had saved her life with vinegar and her own blood; had known right away Mistress’ state and what solvent to prescribe to lessen the scarring. Lina was simply wary of anyone who came between herself and Florens. Between tending Mistress’ new requirements and scanning the path for Florens, Lina had little time or inclination for anything else. Sorrow herself, unable to bend down, lift anything weighty or even walk a hundred yards without heavy breathing, was equally to blame for what was happening to the farm. Goats wandered from village yards and tore up both newly planted gardens. Layers of insects floated in the water barrel no one had remembered to cover. Damp laundry left too long in the basket began to mold and neither of them returned to the river to wash it again. Everything was in disarray. The weather was warming, and as a result of the canceled visit of a neighbor’s bull, no cow foaled. Acres and acres needed turning; milk became clabber in the pan. A fox pawed the hen yard whenever she liked and rats ate the eggs. Mistress would not recover soon enough to catch the heap the farm was falling into. And without her pet, Lina, the silent workhorse, seemed to have lost interest in everything, including feeding herself. Ten days’ neglect and collapse was everywhere. So it was in the afternoon silence of a cool day in May, on an untended farm recently swathed in smallpox, that Sorrow’s water broke, unleashing her panic. Mistress was not well enough to help her, and remembering the yawn, she did not trust Lina. Forbidden to enter the village, she had no choice. Twin was absent, strangely silent or hostile when Sorrow tried to discuss what to do, where to go. With a frail hope that Will and Scully would be stationed as usual on their fishing raft, she took a knife and a blanket to the riverbank the moment the first pain hit. She stayed there, alone, screeching when she had to,
sleeping in between, until the next brute tear of body and breath. Hours, minutes, days—Sorrow could not tell how much time passed before the men heard her moans and poled their raft to the river’s edge. They both understood Sorrow’s plight as quickly as they would any creature about to foal. Clumsy a bit, their purpose confined to the survival of the newborn, they set to work. Kneeling in water as Sorrow pushed, they pulled, eased and turned the tiny form stuck between her legs. Blood and more swirled down to the river attracting young cod. When the baby, a girl, whimpered, Scully knifed the cord, then handed her to the mother who rinsed her, dabbing her mouth, ears and unfocused eyes. The men congratulated themselves and offered to carry mother and child back to the farmhouse. Sorrow, repeating “thank you” with every breath, declined. She wanted to rest and would make her own way. Willard slapped Scully on the back of his head, laughing.

  “Right fine midwife, I’d say.”

  “No question,” answered Scully as they waded back to their raft.

  Following the expulsion of afterbirth, Sorrow wrapped her infant in the blanket and dozed off and on for hours. At some point before sunset she roused to a cry and squeezed her breasts until one delivered. Although all her life she had been saved by men—Captain, the sawyers’ sons, Sir and now Will and Scully—she was convinced that this time she had done something, something important, by herself. Twin’s absence was hardly noticed as she concentrated on her daughter. Instantly, she knew what to name her. Knew also what to name herself.

  Two days came and went. Lina hid her disgust with Sorrow and her anxiety about Florens under a mask of calm. Mistress said nothing about the baby, but sent for a Bible and forbade anyone to enter the new house. At one point, Sorrow, prompted by the legitimacy of her new status as a mother, was bold enough to remark to her Mistress, “It was good that the blacksmith came to help when you were dying.” Mistress stared at her.

  “Ninny,” she answered. “God alone cures. No man has such power.”

  There had always been tangled strings among them. Now they were cut. Each woman embargoed herself; spun her own web of thoughts unavailable to anyone else. It was as though, with or without Florens, they were falling away from one another.

  Twin was gone, traceless and unmissed by the only person who knew her. Sorrow’s wandering stopped too. Now she attended routine duties, organizing them around her infant’s needs, impervious to the complaints of others. She had looked into her daughter’s eyes; saw in them the gray glisten of a winter sea while a ship sailed by-the-lee. “I am your mother,” she said. “My name is Complete.”

  My journey to you is hard and long and the hurt of it is gone as soon as I see the yard, the forge, the little cabin where you are. I lose the fear that I may never again in this world know the sight of your welcoming smile or taste the sugar of your shoulder as you take me in your arms. The smell of fire and ash trembles me but it is the glee in your eyes that kicks my heart over. You are asking me how and how long and laughing at my clothes and the scratches everyplace. But when I answer your why, you frown. We settle, you do, and I agree because there is no other way. You will ride at once to Mistress but alone. I am to wait here you say. I cannot join you because it is faster without me. And there is another reason, you say. You turn your head. My eyes follow where you look.

  This happens twice before. The first time it is me peering around my mother’s dress hoping for her hand that is only for her little boy. The second time it is a pointing screaming little girl hiding behind her mother and clinging to her skirts. Both times are full of danger and I am expel. Now I am seeing a little boy come in holding a corn-husk doll. He is younger than everybody I know. You reach out your forefinger toward him and he takes hold of it. You say this is why I cannot travel with you. The child you call Malaik is not to be left alone. He is a foundling. His father is leaning over the reins and the horse is continuing until it stops and eats grass in the lane. People from the village come, learn he is dead and find the boy sitting quietly in the cart. No one knows who is the dead man and nothing in his belongings can tell. You accept him until a future when a townsman or magistrate places him, which may be never because although the dead man’s skin is rosy the boy’s is not. So maybe he is not a son at all. My mouth goes dry as I wonder if you want him to be yours.

  I worry as the boy steps closer to you. How you offer and he owns your forefinger. As if he is your future. Not me. I am not liking how his eyes go when you send him to play in the yard. But then you bathe my journey from my face and arms and give me stew. It needs salt. The pieces of rabbit are thick and tender. My hunger is sharp but my happiness is more. I cannot eat much. We talk of many things and I don’t say what I am thinking. That I will stay. That when you return from healing Mistress whether she is live or no I am here with you always. Never never without you. Here I am not the one to throw out. No one steals my warmth and shoes because I am small. No one handles my backside. No one whinnies like sheep or goat because I drop in fear and weakness. No one screams at the sight of me. No one watches my body for how it is unseemly. With you my body is pleasure is safe is belonging. I can never not have you have me.

  I am calm when you leave although you do not touch me close. Or put your mouth to mine. You saddle up and ask me to water the bean shoots and collect the eggs. I go there but the hens make nothing so I know a minha mãe is coming soon. The boy Malaik is near. He sleeps behind the door to where you do. I am calm, quiet, knowing you are very soon here again. I take off Sir’s boots and lie on your cot trying to catch the fire smell of you. Slices of starlight cut through the shutters. A minha mãe leans at the door holding her little boy’s hand, my shoes in her pocket. As always she is trying to tell me something. I tell her to go and when she fades I hear a small creaking. In the dark I know he is there. Eyes big, wondering and cold. I rise and come to him and ask what. What Malaik, what. He is silent but the hate in his eyes is loud. He wants my leaving. This cannot happen. I feel the clutch inside. This expel can never happen again.

  I dream a dream that dreams back at me. I am on my knees in soft grass with white clover breaking through. There is a sweet smell and I lean close to get it. But the perfume goes away. I notice I am at the edge of a lake. The blue of it is more than sky, more than any blue I know. More than Lina’s beads or the heads of chicory. I am loving it so, I can’t stop. I want to put my face deep there. I want to. What is making me hesitate, making me not get the beautiful blue of what I want? I make me go nearer, lean over, clutching the grass for balance. Grass that is glossy, long and wet. Right away I take fright when I see my face is not there. Where my face should be is nothing. I put a finger in and watch the water circle. I put my mouth close enough to drink or kiss but I am not even a shadow there. Where is it hiding? Why is it? Soon Daughter Jane is kneeling next to me. She too looks in the water. Oh, Precious, don’t fret, she is saying, you will find it. Where I ask, where is my face, but she is no more beside me. When I wake a minha mãe is standing by your cot and this time her baby boy is Malaik. He is holding her hand. She is moving her lips at me but she is holding Malaik’s hand in her own. I hide my head in your blanket.

  I know you will come but morning does and you do not. All day. Malaik and me wait. He stays as far from me as he can. I am inside, sometimes in the garden but never in the lane where he is. I am making me quiet but I am loose inside not knowing how to be. Horses move in someone’s pasture beyond. The colts are tippy-toe and never still. Never still. I watch until it is too black to see. No dream comes that night. Neither does a minha mãe. I lie where you sleep. Along with the sound of blowing wind there is the thump of my heart. It is louder than the wind. The fire smell of you is leaving the pallet. Where does it go I wonder. The wind dies down. My heartbeat joins the sound of mice feet.

  In the morning the boy is not here but I prepare porridge for us two. Again he is standing in the lane holding tight the corn-husk doll and looking toward where you ride away. Sudden looking at him I am remembering the dog’s profile r
ising from Widow Ealing’s kettle. Then I cannot read its full meaning. Now I know how. I am guarding. Otherwise I am missing all understanding of how to protect myself. First I notice Sir’s boots are gone. I look all around, stepping through the cabin, the forge, in cinder and in pain of my tender feet. Bits of metal score and bite them. I look and see the curl of a garden snake edging toward the threshold. I watch its slow crawl until it is dead in the sunlight. I touch your anvil. It is cool and scraped smooth but it sings the heat it lives for. I never find Sir’s boots. Carefully, on my toes I go back into the cabin and wait.

  The boy quits the lane. He comes in but will neither eat nor talk. We stare at each other across the table. He does not blink. Nor me. I know he steals Sir’s boots that belong to me. His fingers cling the doll. I think that must be where his power is. I take it away and place it on a shelf too high for him to reach. He screams screams. Tears falling. On bleeding feet I run outside to keep from hearing. He is not stopping. Is not. A cart goes by. The couple in it glance but do not greet or pause. Finally the boy is silent and I go back in. The doll is not on the shelf. It is abandon in a corner like a precious child no person wants. Or no. Maybe the doll is sitting there hiding. Hiding from me. Afraid. Which? Which is the true reading? Porridge drips from the table. The stool is on its side. Seeing me the boy returns to screaming and that is when I clutch him. I am trying to stop him not hurt him. That is why I pull his arm. To make him stop. Stop it. And yes I do hear the shoulder crack but the sound is small, no more than the crack a wing of roast grouse makes when you tear it, warm and tender, from its breast. He screams screams then faints. A little blood comes from his mouth hitting the table corner. Only a little. He drops into fainting just as I hear you shout. I don’t hear your horse only your shout and know I am lost because your shout is not my name. Not me. Him. Malaik you shout. Malaik.