The Water Dancer (Oprah's Book Club)

by Ta-Nehisi Coates

  “That boy May was mourned in death more than he was loved in life,” said Conway. He was sitting by the fire with his hands extended to warm them. “The lies come like gospel to these folk. Why, I tell you, they used to talk about that boy like he was the fall of nature. Now they telling us he was Christ risen.”

  “It’s a homecoming,” said Kat. “Suppose they should detail each of his sinnings?”

  “Would be a start,” said Sophia. “When I go, don’t want no lies spoken over my body. Tell them—start to end—what I was.”

  “Way it go for us folk,” said Kat, “don’t nobody say nothing, ’cept ‘Get to digging.’ ”

  “Whatever it takes,” said Sophia. “Just no lying. No gossamer. I came here rough, lived as such, and will die the same. Ain’t much more needing to be said.”

  “Ain’t about Maynard,” said Conway. “It’s about them who is putting him to rest, about excusing themselves after a man they kicked around got himself drowned in the Goose. I tell you, it got even me. I used to riddle that boy something silly. I never got to see him as a man. Way I’m hearing it, Maynard ain’t much change. And if that is so, I bet they full of guilt and need to share.”

  “Y’all niggers just as dumb as they say,” said Thena. She was standing near the bonfire, looking directly into the flame. “Y’all think this about Maynard?”

  No one replied and now Thena looked up and scanned her audience. The truth is everyone was afraid of her. But the silence that now emerged from this fear only agitated her more.

  “Land, niggers! Land! This here land right here! They flattering that man Howell,” she said. She paused again and looked around. I was close enough to see the shadow of the bonfire dancing off her face and the wintery clouds of her breath. “It’s his bequest they after. Land, niggers! Land and us! This whole thing is a game and the winner get to take hold of this place, get to take hold of us.”

  We already understood. But this was our farewell too, perhaps the last time we would gather in community. And none wished to ruin the moment by loudly trumpeting this fact. But Thena, owing to her particular injuries and disposition, could not smile, could not lose herself in jest and reminiscence. So she shook her head and sucked her teeth, then pulled her long white shawl around her and stomped away.

  Everyone sat there, eyes now downcast, stunned back into the reality Thena had put upon them. I waited a few minutes and then walked down to the far end of the Street, until I reached the farthest cabin, the one set off from the others, the one where Thena once stood with her broom, running off children, where I had appeared all those years ago, sensing that this woman, in particular, would understand the betrayal I felt. And now I saw her standing before her old cabin, lost in her own particular thoughts. I walked over and stood close enough so that she knew that I was there. She looked over at me for a few seconds, and I saw that her face had now softened, then she turned back to the cabin.

  I stood with her for a moment and then walked back up, leaving her to her thoughts. When I returned, the conversation had turned back to stories, now reaching into a deep past, as much myth as memory.

  “Ain’t no such thing,” said Georgie.

  “I say it is,” said Kat.

  “And I say it ain’t,” said Georgie. “If any coloreds had ever walked down to the Goose and vanished, I tell you I’d know it.”

  Now Kat spotted me, and said, “You know it, Hi. It was your grandmother, was your Santi Bess.”

  I shook my head and said, “Never met her. You know about as much as I do.”

  Georgie shook his head, and waved his hands at Kat and said, “Leave that boy out of it. He don’t know nothing. I am telling you, if some slave woman walked off this here Lockless and took fifty-odd of us with her, I would know. I’m tired of hearing of this. Every year it’s the same.”

  “Was before your time,” said Kat. “My auntie Elma was about these parts back then. Say she lost her first husband when he walked down with Santi Bess into the Goose. Said he went back home.”

  “Every year,” Georgie said shaking his head. “Every damn year it’s the same with y’all. But I’m telling you—I’m the one who’d know, not none of y’all.”

  I felt everything go quiet just then. It was true. At every gathering there was this dispute about my mother’s mother, Santi Bess, and her fate. The myth held that she had executed the largest escape of tasking folk—forty-eight souls—ever recorded in the annals of Elm County. And it was not simply that they had escaped but where they’d been said to escape to—Africa. It was said that Santi had simply led them down to the river Goose, walked in, and reemerged on the other side of the sea.

  It was preposterous. That was what I had always thought, what I had to think, because Santi’s story came to me in a mix of rumor and whisper. And this faulty narration was fractured even more by the fact that so many of her generation, and the one following, had been sold off, so that by my time, not a single person left in Elm County had seen Santi Bess for themselves.

  My thoughts were with Georgie—I doubted she even existed. But it was not Georgie’s assault on Santi Bess that made everyone quiet, it was his certitude—“I know,” he had said.

  Kat walked over until she stood directly in front of Georgie. She smiled and said, “And how’s that, Georgie? How would you know?”

  I looked hard at Georgie Parks. The sun had set long ago, but the light of the bonfire showed his whole face, frozen in discomfort.

  Now Amber sidled up beside him. “Yeah, Georgie,” she said. “How you know?”

  Georgie glanced around. All eyes were fixed on him. “Don’t none of y’all worry,” he said. “I. Know.”

  There was a rumble of nervous laughter. And then the conversation switched back to Maynard and more news from all the far-flung places that our people now called home. It was late now, but the spirit was such that none wanted to part. And I am not sure how it happened, or when, because I was not watching for it, my mind was still on Thena, but by the time I caught wind it was all already in motion. I heard the beat but paid it no mind, until a few began to gather on the farther end of the bonfire, and looking over there I saw that one of the tobacco men, Amechi, had pulled a chair out from out of the quarters and a wash-pan and sticks and with this he was tapping out a beat, something up and happy, and then two then three tasking folk began clapping and slapping their knees, and then I saw Pete, the gardener, walk over with a banjo, and then strum the strings, and then it felt like it all happened at once, spoons, sticks, jaw-harps, the dance was upon us, had bloomed seemingly of its own accord, and there was now a circle just off from the fire, and there was a girl with her hand on the end of her skirt swaying her hips to the beat, and what I now saw was an earthen jar on the girl’s head, and looking down to her face, I saw that the girl was Sophia.

  I looked up into the starry cloudless night, and judging by the half-moon’s journey across the sky, I knew that it was somewhere close to midnight. The fire roared high, beating back the December chill, and before I knew it, everyone was in the Street dancing. I slowly backed away until I had a view of everything. There were dozens of us down there. It was an entire nation in movement. Some of us paired off, others in small semicircles, others alone. I looked over toward the quarters and saw Thena seated on the steps of one of the cabins, nodding to the beat.

  I watched Sophia, a flurry of limbs, but all under control, and the jar seemingly fused to her head, never moving, and when one of the men got too close, I watched her pull him in and whisper something, which must have been rude, for the man stopped there and simply walked away. And then she looked and saw me watching her, and at that she smiled and walked toward me, and as she did, she angled her head so that the jar slid, and reaching up with her right hand, she caught the jar by the neck. Now standing in front of me, she sipped from the jar and then passed it to me. I drew it to my lips and recoiled at it
s taste, for I had assumed it to be water. She laughed and said, “Too much for you, huh?”

  Still holding the ale, I looked at her and drew it to my lips again, keeping eye contact, and drank, and drank, and drank, and then handed the empty jar back to her. I did not know what made me do such a thing, at least not then I did not, but I knew well what it meant, even if I tried to deny it to myself. She knew too. And cutting her eyes, she put the jar down, jogged over to the far end of the table, disappearing among the shadows, then came back with a full demijohn, and handed it to me.

  “Let’s walk,” she said.

  “All right,” I said. “Where we going?”

  “You tell me,” she said.

  And so we did walk, and let the sound of the music die behind us as we moved up from the Street, until we were back near the lawn, and the main house of Lockless. There was a small gazebo off to the side, below which was the ice-house. We sat with the demijohn of ale, passing it back and forth silently, until our heads were swimming in it.

  “So, yeah,” she said, breaking the silence. “Thena.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Wasn’t no lie, though, was it?”

  “Nope.”

  “You know what happened to her?”

  “You mean to make her this way? I do. But I feel like it’s her story to tell.”

  “But she told you, huh?” she said. “She always been soft with you.”

  “Thena ain’t soft with nobody, Sophia. Even before whatever happened happened, I suspect she was never soft on any of her folk.”

  “Huh,” she said. “And what about you?”

  “Hmm?”

  “You hard on your folks too?”

  “Most generally am,” I said. “But of course, depend on the folk.”

  Then I took another drink from the demijohn, and passed it to her, and she was looking at me now, not smiling, just studying me. It was clear to me that I had gone into the Goose one way and come out the other. I wondered how I had endured all those rides to Nathaniel’s seated next to her, wondered if I had somehow been blinded. She was such a lovely girl, and I wanted to be with her in a way that I would never want anyone again, in a way that age and experience rob you of, which is to say I wanted all of her, from her coffee skin to her brown eyes, from her soft mouth to her long arms, from her low voice to her wicked laugh. I wanted it all. And I was not thinking of all the terror that came with that, the terror that had swallowed her life. All I was thinking about was the light dancing in me, dancing to some music I hoped only she would hear.

  “Huh,” she said. Then looked away. She took another drink and set the ale at her feet, and looked up to the starry sky, and when her eyes moved away, I felt jealous of the heavens themselves. And with that feeling, a range of thoughts came to me. I thought of Corrine and Hawkins, and how these well could be my last days at Lockless—gone not to Natchez, but gone all the same. I thought of Georgie and all that he might know. I felt Sophia’s hand slipping its way through my arm, until our arms were locked. She sighed, her head on my shoulder, and we sat there watching the stars over Virginia.

  7

  HOLIDAY PASSED AND WE said our final goodbyes, more final than any on this earth, and then the New Year, and with it, our diminished numbers. Corrine was still in the habit of her daily visits and murmured intimations of my fate, and I knew then, given the sway she held with my father, that it would not be long before these intimations became real. My days at Lockless were numbered.

  My father had taken note of the restored highboy. And so it came down from Roscoe that my task would now be the resurrection of furniture pieces from ages past. I read documents from my father’s study that detailed the precise date each piece was fashioned or purchased, some stretching all the way back to the progenitor, so that these pieces came to represent a story of my ancestry. An ancestry that would end with me, a slave, sold away from this land, unable to save it or the people who’d built it and burnished it and made it thrive, who would be broken apart and scattered to the wind, but still in chains. The old thoughts of Oregon thickened as I read. I could not save Lockless, but another scheme was growing hotter in me. Should I be divided from Lockless, perhaps I might be divided on my own terms. And that led me back to thoughts of Georgie Parks and precisely what he might know.

  It was just a notion in my mind, when I walked out that early Friday to complete my ritual drive of Sophia to Nathaniel’s place. I walked over to the stables, and hitched two horses to the pleasure-wagon. It was still dark, but I had done this so often before, and was so used to working before dawn, that I was able to perform the necessary exercise blind. I had just finished the hitching when I looked up and saw her.

  “Morning,” Sophia said.

  “Morning,” I said.

  She was fully dressed in her outfit—bonnet, crinoline skirt, long coat. I wondered at what hour she had risen to make it all work. And watching her delicately move, with the aid of my hand, into the chaise, it occurred to me that Sophia’s ability to take on the trappings of a lady wasn’t an accident. It had been her life’s work to dress Helen Walker, Nathaniel’s late wife, to move through the difficult ritual of creams and nail polishings, of corsets and bodices. She knew this ritual better than Helen knew it herself.

  Halfway through our ride, I looked over and saw Sophia looking out at the frozen trees, lost in her own thoughts, as was her tendency.

  “What you think?” she asked. I had been in her company long enough to be familiar with this habit of beginning conversations in her head and then continuing them out loud.

  “I think so,” I said. Now she faced me and a look of incredulity came over her face.

  “You got no idea what I’m talking about, do you?” she said.

  “I do not,” I said.

  She laughed to herself and said, “So you was just gonna let me talk as though you knew?”

  “Why not?” I said. “Figure I’d catch on soon enough.”

  “And what if it was something you ain’t wanna hear?”

  “Well, seeing as how I won’t know till I hear it, guess that’s a risk I’m taking. Besides, you already in it. Can’t back out now.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” she said, nodding. “I guess so. But it’s personal, Hi, you see? Goes back to the times before I come to Lockless.”

  “Back to them Carolinas,” I said.

  “Yep. Good ol’ Carolina.” Sophia said this softly, blowing out each word.

  “You was a maid to Nathaniel’s wife back then, right?” I asked.

  “Wasn’t just any old maid,” she said. “Me and Helen, we were friends. At least we was friends, once. I loved her, you know. I think I can say that—I loved her, and when I think of Helen, I think only of the best times.”

  She was wistful as she said this, and I felt I understood how it happened for girls like her, how it began for them as children, when they played together with their one-day mistresses, caring nothing for color, and were told to love them, as they would love any other playmate. They grow together, and as the play hours decline, the ritual changes. They are both weaned on the religion of society, of slavery, which holds that for no particularly good reason one of them will live in the palace, while the other will be condemned to the dungeon. It is a cruel thing to do to children, to raise them as though they are siblings, and then set them against each other so that one shall be a queen and the other shall be a footstool.

  “Our games used to carry us off,” Sophia said. “We used to make ourselves up as the grand ladies would in their big dresses. We would play together in the fields back in Carolina. Once I fell and rolled right into some briars. I must have yelled to the devil and back. But she was right there for me. She gathered me up and got me back to the home-place. I am powerfully remembered to her, Hi, and when I see the briars now, I don’t think of the pain, for I am thinking only of her.”


  She said this looking straight at the road.

  “I am telling you that we were us before we were him,” she said. “We were something to each other, and that is now smoke. The man she loved wanted me. It was not for any love of me, Hiram. I was jewelry to him. I knew it. And then my Helen died, died bearing his child, and I cannot tell you the pain and guiltiness that came over me.”

  She stopped there and we rode along and all that was heard was horse and wheels crunching against the frozen road. I had the feeling that this was coming to some terrible revelation.

  “Do you know, I still see her in dreams,” she said.

  “I ain’t surprised,” I said. “I still see Maynard, though I confess my recollections don’t have half the magic of your own.”

  “Ain’t no magic, though,” she said. “Sometimes, Hi, sometimes…it is my feeling that she got away and left me with…”

  Now she turned to me, breaking her gaze into the woods.

  “He’ll never let me loose till I’m used up, you see? Then he’ll send me out of Elm somewhere, and take up another colored girl for his fancy. We really ain’t nothing but jewelry to them. I always known this, I think. But I am getting older, Hi, and knowing something is a far measure from truly seeing it.”

  “Takes some time,” I said.

  She was quiet again and for a few moments there was nothing but the gentle clopping of the horse along the road.

  “You ever wonder about the rest of your life?” she said. “You ever wonder about young’uns? About any life that might be out there waiting for you?”

  “Lately,” I said, “I wonder about everything.”

  “I think of young’uns all the time,” she said. “I think of what it must mean to bring someone, a little girl perhaps, into all of this. And I know it’s coming, someday. That it ain’t even up to me. It’s coming, Hiram, and I will watch as my daughter is taken in, as I was taken in, and…I am trying to tell you that this all has me wondering about something else, about another life, past the Goose, maybe past them mountains, past…”