The rose bush. If only she could trade places with it.
Well, she had Heavenly powers, didn’t she? If she were sufficiently willing, could her soul not ride the angel’s wings into this bush—or into a tree—permanently?
Bind with it, leave her body behind.
Perhaps that was the solution: to commit a type of suicide, to pour her soul into a form so simplistic that, once there, she would not comprehend Christ’s malice toward her. She would be blissfully ignorant.
She grunted and wiped her eyes. Enough of these fanciful dreams.
A more practical activity would be to create her own little rose box, just like Momma’s. She plucked a flower with each hand, thorns pricking her palms.
“These will do nicely,” she said.
And at that moment, the roses transformed.
Or rather, her perception of them changed. The roses did not appear to change shape as much as they felt differently in her hands. Not thorny anymore, but hairy.
Hairy?
Rounder. Skin-like, as if her palms were gliding over a man’s buttocks. His shoulders.
His face. She felt Thorne’s beard threading through her fingers, scraggly tufts of whiskers like long brush bristles. They may not have had sex very much or often, but she had been with Thorne long enough to recognize the texture of his face.
And yet she still stood alone in the darkening pine grove behind the kitchen building, still in front of the rose bush, still holding a rose by its stem in each hand, still hearing the scratch-call of insects and seeing the flash of fireflies in the woods.
She moaned, rocking forward on the balls of her feet, as her husband’s invisible hands caressed her breasts, pausing to squeeze her nipples. Thorne’s fingertips traced down over her navel, lower, barely touching her skin—teasing her—and yet he was definitely touching her despite her clothing. His fingers paused on her vagina, and then inserted.
She tasted her husband’s mouth. He caressed her as he’d never done before, his penis now touching and rubbing closer to where she wanted it to go. When he entered her, the tension rapidly rose within. Crested. And just as the shudders began, traveling down her legs and up into her stomach, she saw.
Just an eyeblink of vision. The inside of the basement chapel.
Her orgasm continued involuntarily, going on even as she begged it to stop, because she knew that it wasn’t her sensations she was experiencing. The angel’s wings had escaped their mental cage.
And were inside of Mariann Redger.
Thorne’s invisible hands continued to roam her, his penis still thrusting. She fell to the ground, writhing, trying to push him off of her even though she couldn’t touch him.
“Please stop. Oh God, please stop.”
His hands caressed her cheeks, and she swiped at them, scratching her face with rose thorns.
Christ had multiplied the offense of the bridal veil a thousandfold. She might be Thorne’s wife, but she could never have him, never, not like this. And Christ, she knew, relished how He now used her stolen celestial powers against her, showing how Thorne, the Agent, betrayed her. Each thrust of Thorne’s penis was a stab at her soul, raping her all over again, just as He, Christ, had done so through Reverend Forney.
Never any forgiveness to be had from Heaven. Never was, never would be. And never any freedom from the curse to hope for. What was the point of living? She rolled into a ball on the ground, gasping and wheezing.
The worthlessness of her life, now discovered, burned within her like an angry fire. She could even smell the smoke as her mind heated with pain and consumed her. When she’d killed Reverend Forney, this heat had departed through her palms to attack him, but now it stayed bottled-up, destroying her instead.
She was dying, and she wanted to die.
But what if this hadn’t happened? What if the wings had never escaped to discover this horrible truth? She might then have been able to survive.
Jonah’s bonfire, the slaves—they’d shown her how to deal with this.
Yes.
They’d commanded a portion of their memories to leave them as water. She could take this a step further, transforming her own memories and ejecting them permanently.
And as the flaming memory of these past few minutes transformed into invisible liquid, Alice reflected that she was accomplishing this so skillfully that it was as if she’d done it before. The mental water, as it ejected invisibly from her eyes, nose, mouth, and ears, gushed out from riverbeds already entrenched within her mind, as if they had been previously shaped by an identical flash flood.
The water of memory arced upward as a geyser that painted the sky, and then rained down upon the Norwick property. She sensed that water then flow through the woods, the droplets seeking each other out, draining into a pool of her memory that already existed there. Collecting into a single vessel.
But this didn’t make sense, so her tired, empty mind set it aside for now while night descended over all of her senses, physical and spiritual. And she slept.
✽ ✽ ✽
The chill and light of dawn awoke her. Alice’s arm hurt from where she’d lain on it, and the ground had all the comfort of a cold floor. Rolling over to blink at the gray morning sky, she found herself in front of the rose bush. She still held the two roses she had plucked the night before. Staring at them in wonder and worry, she remembered nothing past the moment of touching them.
And now …
“Oh my word.”
The roses were black and withered, as if they had been planted in a desert.
She remembered Momma again, the day of Poppa’s funeral, standing in their drawing room at the Wharton plantation. Fanning her fingers over her indoor “garden of beauty,” Momma had incinerated them one at a time with her mind.
Alice looked past her hands to the rose bush.
But why do you keep it inside, Momma? Alice had once asked about the rose garden. And the answer: Because that’s where true beauty lies.
The rose bush, every limb and leaf and petal: blackened and scorched.
“No, no. Please no.”
Chapter 16
Abead of sweat trickled down Eliza Tefera’s brow, merged with another drop at the bridge of her nose, and then fell over her lips, which pressed together in concentration. The Tefera cabin was unnaturally warm, but Eliza had refused Alice’s offer to open the window shutters completely.
Alice sat on a short stool, facing Eliza in her rocker. She was fascinated by her former slave’s hands, which moved like dancers as they stitched together two swaths of red cloth around a hand-sized piece of wood. Indeed the wood had been carved into the shape of a hand, but she wasn’t going to clutter up their argument with irrelevant questions such as, What are you making?
Eliza’s stomach, distended with pregnancy, tensed as another contraction gripped her.
What’s it feel like to be in labor? Alice wondered, and wished for what must have been the millionth time that she had birthed a child by now.
“I’se thankful for your thoughtfulness,” Eliza said, grunting through the contraction, eyes never leaving her work. “But no. I don’t need no granny midwife. Those in town learned all dey knows from me.”
“Then they had a good teacher. And you should allow one of your well-taught pupils to assist you.”
“You an’ Miz Mariann’ll be aplenty. I’ll tells you what to do, and come next day—” Eliza grunted as pain gripped her, “I’ll let you hold my baby.”
Still, Eliza wouldn’t put down or even look away from whatever the hell it was she was making. Alice’s frustration thickened.
“There’s a British doctor in town—”
“No, I said.”
“He occasionally makes house calls here. Eliza, he has opium. He has forceps. They’re these tools he uses to pull the baby out—”
“Tools?” Eliza finally met her gaze. “Only tools we need be strong hands and the good will of the spirit world.”
Sighing, Alice looked away
and grit her teeth. She had no idea negroes could be so stubborn. She would have never permitted this kind of obstinacy during slavery. Eliza should have realized how difficult this was for her. Words of concern and compassion ill fit into Alice’s mouth. But she had a history with the Teferas and still remembered the day Eliza had helped her by cleansing Pierce Norwick’s bedroom of the disruptive energies of his passing. Encouraging the woman to use common sense during her impending childbirth was the least she could do.
The dark fingers continued to stitch the red cloth, periodically threading completely across the face of the object in a way that rankled Alice’s sensibilities as a seamstress.
“Eliza, what on earth are you making? You should be conserving your strength.”
She answered without looking up from her work. “A hand.”
“I can see that it’s shaped like a hand, but what for?”
Eliza finally looked up at her, and then back down. She was hurrying now, as if she had to complete it before the baby arrived.
“The missus ever wonder why I ain’t had no chillen?”
She hesitated, and then answered frankly: “Yes.”
“Well, I’se ain’t got no idea ’cept Jonah be old, and—” She shrugged. “Maybe I gots the same problem with birthin’ that the missus does.”
Not unless you’ve also been cursed by Christ, Alice thought but said aloud, “I doubt it.”
“I still ain’t takin’ no chances,” Eliza said, and held up the object for her to see. Stitchwork covered the thing, seeming to mimic a blend of script-like symbols and the lines upon someone’s palm. “It’s a mojo. For focusing my will. I’m gon’ send all my bad energies into dem bottle trees.”
She pointed at the blue bottles sprouting twigs that were aligned on the table under the windows.
Alice swallowed. “That’s a charm?”
She accepted the explanation unquestioningly. She’d experienced enough of the so-called “Knowing” to know that such things were possible. But as she glanced at the specially positioned quilts upon the walls and at the “bottle trees,” she decided she wouldn’t permit Eliza to put her faith solely in magic.
“At least come into the Big House to have the baby. We have better beds.”
Shaking her head, the cook resumed her stitching. “Miz Mariann already said for me to come into her house.”
“Mariann?”
Alice felt a flash of anger. Obie’s wife had been usurping her authority—what was left of it—ever since the marriage a week ago: directing the servants around, offering unsolicited comments to Thorne about everything from business to housekeeping, and generally acting as if she were the plantation mistress.
“And what makes you think that the Redger house is a better environment in which to give birth? Obie has been bedridden there all week. Your baby could catch whatever he has.”
Eliza looked up from her sewing long enough to fix her with a worried look. Alice knew she was exaggerating but held steady.
The expression broke into a sad smile. “Don’t fret none, missus. I said no to her, too.”
Exasperated, Alice began to leave.
“Givin’ birth in my home is best. It’s been prepared.”
Out on the chicken-pecked grounds, she paced. The brilliant blue sky and pleasant smell of evaporating dew belied the fact that Jesus Christ lurked in every shadow and negative turn of events—perhaps even Eliza’s stubbornness—for the sole purpose of increasing her misery. President Johnson’s impeachment trial, now underway in the U.S. Senate, was another such event that was clearly the design of God’s Son. How it related back to her, though, she had yet to ascertain.
She stopped in her tracks, blinking. Would Eliza’s refusal to accept help result in the woman’s death, thus serving Christ’s purposes by taking away one of Alice’s two friends? If yes, then Christ was influencing the woman’s actions. Or was Eliza a willing participant in these events for the same purpose—a self-sacrificing member of the conspiracy?
She hummed thoughtfully as she resumed her pacing. She tried and failed to fit this together with the other, continuing signs of Christ’s designs. For example, that Thorne had not initiated any worship services in the basement chapel nor appointed a church minister. Of course, she knew from witnessing the Klan initiation that the chapel was primarily a meeting den for that particular agency of the Kingdom of Heaven, but she thought it strange that Christ did not demand the tribute of worship from it.
Another sign of the conspiracy: Thorne’s continuing to wear the crucifix necklace that had come from Reverends Forney and Dawson. Oh, how it vexed and frightened her! And he apparently knew this, as he missed no opportunity to display it upon his chest. His eyes seemed to gleam cruelly when he sometimes attracted her attention for the sole purpose, it seemed, of torturing her with the sight of it. Why, once she even witnessed him praying, loudly, over his breakfast, one eye cracked to see her pained expression while she spied from the doorway.
She dwelt on these things as the day wore on. Periodically, she checked on Eliza to find her still in her rocker, stroking her stomach and singing. Eliza finally finished the mojo charm, and it never left her side. Jonah, however, could not stay with her because Thorne still expected someone to cook his meals, groom his horse, and clean his living quarters. Alice knew better than to argue with her husband, so she helped Jonah complete his chores as quickly as possible. They finally got some peace late that afternoon when Thorne holed himself up in his study with his liquor cabinet.
As evening approached, Eliza left her rocker more frequently to pace the cabin or to squat as a contraction gripped her. When she reported uncomfortable pressure in her pelvis, Jonah heated several gallons of well water in the kitchen, and then poured her a hot bath in the hip tub that Alice readily loaned from the house. Shucking modesty along with her clothes, Eliza held onto her husband and Alice as she climbed in, and then exhaled a contented sigh.
She took satisfaction in the fact that during all this, Mariann was nowhere to be found. “She must be too busy taking care of Obie,” Alice said when the question came up, and silently wished it would stay that way. Perhaps I might even get to deliver the baby, she thought dreamily.
The idea filled her with excitement and anticipation, the same way she’d felt as a girl when looking forward to her first solo horse ride. What would Momma say if she could see her now, taking on this kind of responsibility? She might have approved.
They lifted Eliza out of the tub when the contractions started coming hard and fast.
As she stood, Eliza dropped the mojo into the water. “Oh Lordy! Get that!”
Alice cringed at the invocation—Oh Lordy!—and then struggled to hold Eliza as her legs buckled. It was as if the mere loss of contact with the charm robbed the woman of strength. Ignoring the object, Jonah lifted his wife with strong arms and carried her to the bed. He drew a quilt over her shivering body. Unthinkingly, Alice fished the mojo from the water and started to hand it to them.
The cabin snapped into swirling blackness.
She was falling, her soul bound up in the angel’s wings and being sucked down a black funnel cloud.
It threaded through the mojo as if the charm were the eye of a needle. And when she passed through it, the funnel changed directions and spat her into one of the blue bottles under the windows.
Trapped.
But she barely had time to register her new surroundings before she felt the angel’s wings give a tremendous flap, knocking over the bottle. It tumbled off the table to break on the floor. The Teferas screamed as a silent explosion of blue light illuminated the cabin.
Alice opened her eyes, finding herself back in her body. She was still standing, and the mojo lay at her feet.
The Teferas stared at her. “Missus?”
She couldn’t speak or move. The room crashed into darkness again, this time the sick emptiness of a faint.
✽ ✽ ✽
When Alice came to, she was seated in Eliza’
s rocker. The quilt that had decorated the wall now covered her.
And tired. Too tired to move.
“I can see it. I can see it!”
Mariann Redger’s voice. What was that bitch doing here?
She saw her out of the corner of her eye. Mariann was kneeling in front of Eliza, her hands between Eliza’s legs. Eliza, naked from the waist down and streaming with sweat, was squatting on the floor.
Alice tried to rise from the rocker, but the quilt upon her felt as heavy as a horse. She couldn’t even move her toes.
“I can almost see its whole head!” Mariann said and maneuvered to more squarely block Alice’s view.
Eliza shook the mojo once overhead, said something guttural, and then reached down with her free hand. A smile spread over her face as she touched the crowning head.
Alice was fascinated and repulsed at the same time, fascinated because she had never before witnessed a birth, having avoided situations that reminded her so directly of her own infertility. She was repulsed for precisely the same reasons. (That had never stopped her, though, from interrogating midwives about the mechanics of childbirth, intensely curious.) Yet she would have given anything, done anything, to switch places with Mariann now. If she could only get up!
She watched helplessly as the woman—and Christ by causing this somehow—robbed her of the greatest moment of her life. A minute later, Mariann lifted the baby boy to the crying and smiling parents, a scarlet umbilical cord trailing behind it.
The baby gasped in pain and anger at the shock of being born. Alice felt that her own pain was greater.
Chapter 17
Alice stepped into animal-smelly darkness and out of the afternoon sun. Her eyes adjusted to the light, and she saw Jonah brushing Thorne’s gray horse. A saddle imprinted with “C.S.A.” hung on the railing. In the adjacent stalls stood Obie Redger’s horse and the mule that pulled the cart.
Cursed by Christ Page 18
