The Revisioners

by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

  “He can’t get in mine. I’m more powerful than he is,” she said real fast but it was too fast.

  MEANWHILE WE CONTINUED TO PREPARE. THERE WERE the weekly meetings that turned daily, and every time you saw a Revisioner, whether they were plaiting a baby’s hair or stirring porridge, carting stalks of cane to be ground, their mind should have been on the fast and safe departure of the few who were chosen to lead the way. Not only that, there was the carriage that Fred needed to prepare for our journey, the firearms to steal, the meal bags to pack, the other horses whose shoes needed to be damaged so no one could follow us straight away. There was the tripling down of duties so that nobody noticed the four of us had gone until we were long past where the dogs could smell us.

  Three days before we were set to leave, Jupiter knocked on the door. “It’s time.”

  “Later,” Daddy said. “Everything set for later.”

  “You ain’t heard? Things changed,” Jupiter said. “Tom’s brother’s here. They gon’ be drinking all night long. Won’t know who gone where how.”

  I saw Daddy thinking on it like he wanted to resist but he couldn’t object to the facts.

  “If you coming, now’s the time. Safest time. Think about your daughter.” Jupiter nodded at me.

  And Daddy stood and closed the door. I didn’t know what he was thinking but that night just when I was on the verge of sleep, I heard him from the porch singing out in a sweet voice,

  By the grace of God I’ll meet you,

  By the grace of God I’ll meet you,

  By the grace of God I’ll meet you,

  On Canaan’s happy shore.

  Then he lifted me and carried me outside, into the carriage where Mama and Jupiter were waiting. I turned around and stared at Wildwood long as I could. It was already dark, but I knew it by heart and I counted out goodbyes to each cabin frame, clutching my mama’s fingers beside me.

  “Ain’t nothing here for us now,” Mama whispered.

  I nodded. I didn’t mention Miss Sally, knew Mama wouldn’t like it, and my heart was so tender it would break under the weight of leaving her. I firmed it up instead with anger.

  “I hate it here. I hate everybody on this here place. Missus, especially.”

  Mama paused for a minute before she answered me. Her eyes were closed and I thought she might be issuing her own private prayer. “I done told you about hate,” she said. “What do we believe in?” she asked.

  “God,” I said back without needing to think. “Our own immortal souls. The ancestor spirit,” I added.

  “And what happens to the ancestor spirit when it dies?”

  “It comes back into my children, their children, their children’s children.”

  She paused again, let me consider what I’d said. “You ever think about what it will come back to?” she asked.

  “No, ma’am,” I said back.

  “Well, you think about it, because it’s up to you. The ancestors come back with whatever heart they left behind. If it’s a hateful one, they come back hating. Whoever they hated come right back with them, in one form or another.”

  I didn’t know what she was talking about. It was late, and all I wanted was my old mat on the floor, my mama on one side of me and my daddy on the other.

  “It’s not possible to do anything but hate certain people,” Jupiter said, and he lifted the whip to hurry the mule. The pigeon was sleeping in his lap.

  I found myself agreeing with him for once but I was too tired to speak on it.

  “It’s possible,” Mama said back. “You just think about how much they must be rotting deep down inside. And you remember, what you can’t love, you see again. It’s not just this life either.”

  Ava

  2017

  THE DAY AFTER GRANDMA CALLS ME A THIEF, THERE IS nowhere to go but to my mother’s.

  I start talking as soon as she opens the door. I tell her about Grandma, about her comments, how they’ve been ramping up, and about last night, how she accused me of taking something she had given me. It had meant so much to me that she had given it to me, and then she took it all back.

  “I can’t be in the house with her anymore,” I say. “I’m going out of my mind, truly, but then I wonder if I’m being selfish. She’s obviously going through something, dementia or Alzheimer’s, hell I don’t know what. But it’s not just that. The things she says, Mama. Terrible things. Sometimes it takes me a while to figure out how terrible they are. And the tone. I know she’s my grandmother but I didn’t grow up with her. Sometimes I look at her, and I just see a white lady treating me like a—”

  “I believe it,” my mother says.

  “You saw it the first time you came over, and I didn’t listen.” I shake my head. “What’s wrong with me that I didn’t? What was blinding me? And then I exposed King to it.”

  We are still standing in the entryway. I can hear the kettle signal the water is ready for the tea and she motions for me to follow her to the kitchen. I watch her pour a cup, then fish around her cabinet for a saucer. She hands both to me, and I take a sip.

  “Don’t blame yourself,” she says. “That’s what they want you to do, turn all their hate inward so the focus is off their bad behavior. Remember too, I’m older than you are. When I met Martha, she was in her prime. I loved your daddy so much, and more than anything, I wanted her to accept me. She pretended to, but she never did, not fully. When she introduced me to people, she’d say I was your daddy’s wife, never her daughter-in-law. She’d ask me to take pictures of her, her husband, and your daddy like I wasn’t a part of the family. And maybe I wasn’t.” My mother shakes her head. “Maybe I wasn’t. And like you say, it was the way she talked to me. She grew up with black folks waiting on her hand and foot. She could have fought harder to get that dynamic out of her system, but she didn’t. She preferred to pretend it wasn’t there. I’m not saying she didn’t get better. She did; I think having you as a grandchild was the best thing that could have happened to her. It changed the culture of that family, no doubt, but under the surface, the old ways were still brewing.”

  “And now it’s coming out,” I say.

  “And now it’s coming out,” she says.

  Having someone agree with me calms me down. I start to remember how the old woman fell onto my shoulder that morning, and my guilt rises.

  “Maybe I’m exaggerating,” I say. “She’s my grandmother and she’s sick. Maybe I’m taking it all too personal. She’s losing her mind, and she’s done so much for me; maybe now is the time to stay and pay her back.”

  “Stop that.” The words jut out so sharp I expect there to be a pop on my hand the way there used to be in childhood if I answered back What instead of Yes, ma’am, if I had the nerve to talk to my mother like she was my little friend.

  “When you were a little girl, you wanted your daddy so bad. Every night, you’d ask me if he was coming back. I knew one day something like this would trip you up. You would always ask me why that side didn’t invite you to their functions. You would always fantasize about what was going on between those walls. It makes sense that you needed to see for yourself.”

  “It’s too bad what happened to Martha,” she goes on. “I hate that she’s sick, trust me I do. But everything you got”—she pokes me in the chest—“you earned it, girl.” She taps me with each word. “She didn’t give you a thing another grandmother wouldn’t have given you ten times as much of. You gave her respect, that’s all you owed her, but your peace, you deserve that, and you can’t let nobody take it away from you.”

  I stick around my mother’s house for another hour after that. She has errands to run, but it is hard going back to Martha’s, nearly impossible. When I do go, I walk in to the sound of her talking. I can hear the end of her conversation with Binh. She is complimenting him on the wheat bread he bought from the farmer’s market. It tastes better than Whole Foods’. She doesn’t know why it took her so long to figure that out. I can tell that she’s in her right mind. Accus
ing me of stealing was my limit though, and I don’t have a month in me. I’m not ready to buy my own place, but I’ll stay with my mother in the meantime. Now I just need to tell Martha.

  I sit down next to her and she lights up at my face. This is the woman I know, the woman I had adored. She’s eating yogurt and granola, a tiny portion of it, and with each bite she closes her eyes as if to stretch the flavor.

  “You know, I only wanted to get on my feet,” I start, “to help you as long as I could, but it’s been three months now.” I pause.

  Her face slackens.

  “Three months is a long time to be in somebody else’s space.” It’s taking everything in me to keep going. “I’m grown,” I go on. “King and I are a family, and we need to start this next chapter on our own.”

  She doesn’t look at me while I’m talking, and when I’m done, she pushes the bowl away.

  “You’re abandoning me?” she asks, but she doesn’t say it in a dramatic way. She might as well have asked me if I wanted the rest of the yogurt.

  “No, I’m not abandoning you,” I say.

  “I’m just kidding,” she says back, and her face lights up again, too fast though, maybe too fast. “I’m just kidding,” she repeats. “I understand. You’re young, you have King, you don’t want to be bogged down with some old biddy. I understand better than anybody,” she goes on. “I left home when I was seventeen, was married at twenty. My mother would call me the Lone Wolf. You must have gotten that from me. When are you headed out?”

  “I don’t know exactly,” I say. I hear my voice deepening. “Actually I’m thinking about tonight.” I hold my head up when I say it.

  “You won’t have time to find a place that soon.”

  “No, but I’ll stay with my mother while I’m looking.”

  Her face darkens again then, but she is still sounding upbeat, trying to. “Yes, that makes sense with all the work you’ve been doing together.” Each word is like a tiptoe, a ballerina’s sequence of jumps. “King will stay at the school,” she continues. “It’s not that far of a drive. You can get anywhere within the city of New Orleans in fifteen minutes, that’s what people don’t realize.” And then she lets out a cold sliver of a laugh.

  “I guess I’ll be getting on then,” she says. And she stands up unassisted. I start to help to see her off, but she seems fine and I sit back down.

  I PACK. FIRST KING’S ROOM, THEN MINE, AND IN A COUPLE of hours, I’ve made headway. Like I said, there isn’t much, clothes and rugs and my great-great-great-grandmother’s picture. I look at it now and it appears that she’s smiling; it appears, without me trying too hard to decipher what I want to see, that she’s proud. There’s the lamp that Martha bought from Nordstrom to replace the one that she chipped, and it’s beautiful, eerily similar, but I think I’ll leave it here. As if to express her discontent, I hear a sniffle behind me.

  “The Dufrene girls,” she starts.

  “Now, Martha, that’s enough.”

  “Not just to the white boys,” she goes on, and I turn. She has entered the room and opened the top drawer of my dresser, rooting through it, not even looking at me while she speaks.

  “There were black ones too, who would look, glance in my direction. They barely had the gall to smile but I made them know what my intentions were. I did. And one night, I convinced one to come over. I gave him the night of his life. One he’ll always remember.” She’s still rummaging through the drawers. I’m not sure what she’s looking for but I’ve never heard this new version of her story and I can’t help but pay close attention.

  “But I’m afraid,” she goes on. “I’m afraid it might not have been enough. My brothers took after my father’s side. They always wanted to hear Great-Granddaddy’s stories. The cotton, the dances, the parties Great-Great-Grandmother would throw for the slaves at Wildwood. It didn’t sicken my brothers the way it did me, and when I saw what they did to that boy, well, I begged them to turn themselves in, but I was the baby of the family. The youngest girl. The prettiest girl in the entire county.”

  Now she’s at the drawer where I keep my money. She’s opened it, removed a wad of folded $100 bills. I step toward her and try to wrestle them from her hand, but it’s too late. She straightens a few out, then rips them into shreds.

  I reach for the rest of the pile in the drawer and she blocks me with one hand, holding on to the dresser with the other. She is still in her nightgown, pale blue with lace at the fringes, and it sways in the scuffle. Her hand on the dresser is red from her tight grip. Her other hand is slapping me, but I hold it back and reach for the remaining bills. She gives up fighting and starts screaming.

  “That’s not yours. You didn’t earn it. I paid you that money to stay with me. I didn’t give you that money to leave. Don’t touch me,” she yells. “Don’t you touch me,” and she holds down the button on her monitor.

  I hear the operator answer.

  “Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”

  She pauses just for a second, and I rip the monitor from her hand. She’s too taken aback to fight me.

  “It’s my grandmother,” I say. “She needs help. She’s having some sort of mental break, and she needs help.”

  She seems to deflate when I say those words. All the effort she had exerted in the last few minutes has worn her out and she places her hand on the dresser to hold herself upright.

  While the operator asks me questions, Martha watches me with a curious expression, her head cocked to one side. When I hang up, she slumps onto the floor, but I don’t go to lift her. I walk downstairs and wait.

  I hear the ambulance approach, and as soon as the paramedics ring the bell, I open the door and let them in. When they’ve found her, I take my suitcase to the car first, then King’s, then the decorations and appliances I’ve carried. The picture is last. I carry it with me the way I used to carry King when he was a baby. I don’t need to look at Josephine’s face to know what she’s feeling, what she’s thinking even: Don’t look back. The whole while I walk, Martha’s still screaming.

  “You’re never going to get away from me, you’re never going to make it out there in the world. You’re never going to make it, leaving me.”

  They have carried her out onto the stretcher now.

  “You’re never going to be nothing.” I can hear her until I open the car door, then close it. I’m tempted to look back at the sirens, even at her, but I fix my gaze forward.

  Josephine

  1924

  THE NEXT MORNING I SET TO BAKING MY BEST BREAD. IT is not the ordinary loaf. I drop walnuts in the batter, a pinch of cinnamon too. I slice ginger and sprinkle it in; I’ve seen a loaf of it straight from the oven make a grown man cry.

  When it has risen, I wrap it in cloth and walk next door. I can hear noise from inside, and I almost don’t raise my fist. It is clear Charlotte has company, but my nerves have been grinding on me all morning, and I can’t sit with them alone another minute.

  She opens the door and her face falls. She thought it was somebody else, or she isn’t in a position to entertain me, I can’t make out which, but she does not want me there. And I didn’t want to come. I am angry, knowing what I now know about her, apprehensive too, standing there, but there isn’t much I wouldn’t do to secure peace; there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do to protect my son. I extend my arm.

  “Made you some bread,” I say. “It was my turn.” I giggle the way I’ve heard her do. It is my first time and it doesn’t come out quite right. I can hear that it is more like a pig’s grunt than anything.

  Anyway.

  “It will go mighty nice with any jam you’ve got stored.”

  “Oh, that’s so kind of you.” Her smile is back and I’m glad I tarried. She takes the bread from me. “I’m in the middle of something though,” she says.

  “Oh? I didn’t mean to interrupt. I just wanted to talk to you.” I pause. “It’s important actually.” I hear the voices rising behind her.

  “Oh? Oh,�
�� she says. “Look, I know there’s something going on between you and Vern with that godawful tree. I hated that tree anyway.” She waves her hand. “Between you and me I’m glad it’s gone.” She is wearing lipstick. Blush too. And her hair is pulled back in a bun. She is a beautiful woman. All this time I didn’t know it. “Either way I think it should stay between the men, don’t you?”

  I don’t know what to say. It is not a hard question, but the way she has asked it, the way she stands with her shoulders back—and she has big breasts, enormous ones. Mine have never been so large, not even when I was carrying children, and I don’t know how I missed that on her—makes me falter.

  “I was thinking maybe we could work something out though, Miss Charlotte,” I say. “Of course it’s often wise to let business matters stay where they belong but this time because we have a relationship, because it’s such a sensitive issue to both sides, I thought maybe we could clear it out on this end.”

  “I’d rather not discuss it now either way,” she says, and the door starts to swing in my direction.

  I put my foot between it and the slot.

  “My son is under a lot of pressure is the thing and I know if we just got together and talked the way we used to, we could smooth this out for both our guys. Ease the weight on their shoulders a bit,” I go on.

  There is a shriek from behind her, and she looks back.

  “Okay, let’s talk about it another time. I’ve really got to get back to them.”

  The door edges forward, this time almost to my face.

  “Okay, maybe later today?” I ask, my foot out farther to block the door from closing.

  “Maybe,” she says, and a woman walks up behind her.

  “You okay out here, Charlotte? You need help with something?” She walks closer.