She wanted to be held, as she had been as a girl, beneath the lattice church steps in a blackberry patch, where a thrill had coursed through her small body, carrying with it the promise of something else: something richly delicious and satisfying, like bowls and bowls of chocolate tapioca, or soft, ripe melon eaten with abandon, its sweet, sweet juices dripping down her chin. She wanted someone to soothe her with soft sweet words and make her feel . . .
Precious. Dear. She stared for a moment at her callused hands, her belly, round and sagging from too many babies and too little attention to herself. Her eyes came to rest again on the reflection of her face, worried, beleaguered by the strain of being giver, caretaker, provider—too many things, and to too many others. She had never been tended to, had never received the promise, made beneath the church steps, of sweetness and life.
She sank heavily onto the piano seat. An early evening breeze, slight but insistent, stirred the branches of the oak tree outside the dining room window. She thought she felt it around her ankles. In the living room, the fire chuckled softly in the fireplace. It made her think of the wood-burning stove in the old church near the creek where she had been baptized. Her fingers found the ivory keys. They picked out a tune.
Take me to the wa-a-ter . . .
Absently, she began to hum the second line:
Take me to the wa-a-ter . . .
Tears came to her eyes, startling her. Why in heaven’s name was she crying? And with so much work to do! She meant to jump to her feet and resume her chores; but her body would not obey her mind’s command. A lump formed in her throat. She swallowed with difficulty. Without rising, she clutched the dust cloth and began polishing, scrubbing the shining wood, her teeth clenched, her knuckles nearly white. Youth and innocence had toyed with her, hinting at a glimmering kingdom come, and saddling her instead with a sorrow and bitterness so intense that she could taste it. Tears began to trickle down her cheeks. “Do you play?” he asked.
She jumped up from the piano seat and turned to face him. He was standing in the shadow of the doorway that led to the living room. Hastily, she wiped the tears from her eyes, but it was too late. Boyish elation turned to concern as he saw that she was crying.
“Sugar? Is something wrong?” He moved a step toward her, and the sloping, horselike planes of his face caught the light from the lamp across the room. In them, she saw tenderness, caring. It was almost as if, she thought for a second, he felt the pain and disappointment that she felt but could not explain; but in truth, even if she could explain, he could never understand.
None but the ri-ighteous . . .
Baptized in privileged, patriarchal whiteness, he did not know the bitter gall of toiling thanklessly, each moment fighting for one’s very survival and that of others. He did not know the sting of discovering the loss of one’s innocence, unjoyously, and long after it has passed, finding all your expectations disappointed, the promise unfulfilled. He did not know the heavy burden of needing, the futile wanting of things unreachable and unknown. He did not know that he had called her Sugar. The planes seemed to soften before her eyes. She sniffed, rubbed her nose with the back of her hand, a gesture he found puerile and endearing. “Not really,” she replied, in answer to both of his questions. It moved her that he thought of her that way: sweetly. He did not even know that he had called her Sugar.
HENDERSON, NORTH CAROLINA
DECEMBER, 1931
Today she came bearing her usual large purse, filled with he could not imagine what, and a child of perhaps six years, the small head resting on her shoulder, wrapped in a woolen scarf. Plump arms and legs seemed to stick out in all directions, awkward and restless from the nearly two-mile walk that brought her mother to the house on Chestnut Street each Monday morning. Watching her from the window of his parlor, he shook his head in disbelief. It was a pleasant morning, warm for December. Still, he worried about her predawn treks to work, and had offered more than once to drive her.
He rose from his chair in the parlor and hurried out to meet her. Jessie, she announced as he took the child in his arms, was under the weather. He looked at her questioningly and was startled when the child’s forehead, burning with fever, brushed his neck. She had had no choice but to bring the feverish Jessie with her to work. She hoped that he did not mind if Jessie slept quietly upstairs this week while she went about her chores. “She a good chile. She won’t give no trouble.”
“Of course not,” he said. “But shouldn’t she see a doctor?”
“Oh, naw,” she replied with a wave of her hand. “It’s just a touch of the fever. She gits that sometimes.”
Supposing that she knew about these things, he carried the child inside and placed her gently across the bed in the upstairs room with the balcony. The child stirred and muttered incoherently. Watching her remove Jessie’s coat and calm the fretting child, he was moved, as he often was, by the efficiency and grace of her capable hands. Feeling awkward and unhelpful, he asked if there was something he could do.
“Why, yes,” she replied, glancing upward to smile at him. “You can bring up some ice water and a couple of glasses.” He nodded obediently and started toward the door. “And some aspirin,” she added. “I’m almost out.”
“What does your husband do?” He rocked slightly in the old, creaking rocker, trying to appear indifferent to her response, as if making polite and obligatory conversation. In truth he was concerned. Jewell was wary. Jessie had been asleep in the room with the balcony for most of the day. His casual what does your husband do had really been a worried is there enough money to see a doctor? She did not care to discuss with her employer any aspect of her life other than her employment. But she appreciated his concern. She smiled at him from her seat on the porch swing and did not answer immediately. She had come to regard him with genuine affection in the months since he had found her crying and called her Sugar.
“Jessie will be jes fine,” she said, glancing away from her mending to give him a knowing and reassuring look, “and she don’t need no doctor.” He responded with a brief sheepish grin. They returned to the comfortable silence that had replaced his earlier attempts at conversation. He rocked. She mended. They listened to the crickets.
Jessie tossed restlessly in her borrowed bed.
Night had fallen, and moonlight spilled through the knotted limbs of the oak tree outside the window, casting shadows like long, dark fingers across the bed in the upstairs room and Jessie’s ravaged face. Jessie? he had asked her. Not Jessica? She had looked at him in surprise. She had never noted before the care that white folks took to give their children lengthy, pretentious names, only to shorten them later in the interest of brevity and practicality. Always Joseph, William, or Patricia Ann. Never Joe, Billy, or Pattie Mae. Jessica, she realized, had never occurred to her. No, she had answered him. Just Jessie. He inclined his angular head and parted his lips in that way that she had come to recognize as inquiring. Jessie, she explained, was named after my husband’s mama, who had died, she was convinced, of exhaustion; overworked, used up, and begging, if not for love, for sympathy at least. This child, she thought now as she rocked her precious Jessie, she would rescue from that fate. Somehow.
A light sweat had broken out on the child’s forehead. Her condition seemed to have worsened since yesterday when, running a slight fever and too sick to go to Sunday evening worship, Jessie had vomited just before bedtime, and fallen into a fitful sleep, interrupted by periods of wakeful restlessness and confusion. She reached again, as she had done at six-hour intervals yesterday and today, for the bottle of aspirin that stood on the night table and, breaking the small white tablet in half, she parted the weary child’s lips gently with her finger and deposited the half-tablet on her tongue. The child recovered from her grogginess long enough to accept, almost desperately, a glass of water; then another. Finally, Jessie fell back in her mother’s arms, exhausted and relieved.
It broke her heart to see her child so tortured. Perhaps, she thought as she plac
ed the child in the center of the bed, she should take Jessie to a doctor after all. Tomorrow, she resolved as she turned off the light and settled into the large overstuffed armchair to sleep. Tomorrow morning she would take Jessie to the doctor.
The red-gold sun nudged her, gently, out of a restive, uncomfortable sleep. Her neck ached. Her Jessie lay peaceful and content in the center of the bed. Happy that the child seemed rested and not wishing to wake her, she stood and tiptoed to the door, closed it softly behind her, and hurried down the stairway to begin the morning’s chores. The child looked better, but still, she couldn’t be too safe, she thought as she recalled Jessie’s fretful state on the evening before.
When he came down for breakfast, his face was lined with the concern that was causing her, slowly and with near-reluctance, to see him: past the blue-green veins that drew a cobweb pattern beneath his transparent skin; past his peculiarities of speech and manner, the myriad eccentricities of whiteness and privilege. And a kinship, at once unfathomable and inevitable, born of kindness, familiarity, and shared humanity, was coming to be. As she studied him, a look of open curiosity on her face, a blood vessel jumped at his temple. It made him appear, in some way, vulnerable, accessible. Slowly, she extended her hand, nearly rising to her toes to touch, gently, the paper-thin, delicate white skin of his temple. For an instant, neither of them moved, her fingertips warm and dry on his moist skin. His hand clasped her outstretched hand, his fingers thin and strong, his grasp firm. She loved this man, she realized without surprise. She wriggled her fingers. The brilliance of her smile startled him, as it always did, and he realized that she could not disengage her hand.
Embarrassed, he released her fingers and watched her turn and move toward the stairs. “Me and Jessie are goin’ to the doctor,” she announced without turning or breaking her stride. “Would you take us, after breakfast?”
A moment passed before he realized she had spoken. He was noticing her purposeful stride, the determined wiggle of her hips when she walked, the proficiency with which she always went about her tasks, the unconscious passion and, yes, sensuality, that pervaded everything she did. Her words penetrated this reverie, taking several moments for their meaning to register. His throat was dry. He went to the sink and filled a glass of water, swallowing it in several great gulps. Yes, he whispered, as her footsteps traversed the floor above. Yes, he repeated, although she could not hear his pledge. I will do for Jessie whatever you need me to do, becauseshe is yours and therefore mine. The enormity and certainty of this realization filled him with hope and dread, and he reached again for the spigot.
An awful scream, tormented and hoarse, emanated from the upstairs room. The drinking glass shattered in the sink. His heart raced as he hurried up the stairs and down the hallway, then tore in two as he flung open the door to find his domestic and the object of his newfound devotion doubled over on her knees, vigorously and desperately rocking the lifeless Jessie in her arms.
chapter 10
INEZ, NORTH CAROLINA
FEBRUARY, 1932
For the Lord hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, and a wife of youth, when thou wast refused, saith thy God.
—Isaiah 54:6
Her clients rarely came before dusk, and were even more rarely hesitant or apologetic. Hers was the port of last resort, she often chuckled to herself, a final, desperate hope when human effort proved ineffective and nothing else had worked. So this woman, clad in the modest attire of a domestic, and appearing at lunch time, captured the interest of the sorceress long before she approached the clapboard house surrounded by rye. She had seen, with her spirit’s eye, the woman leaving the great Gothic house and slamming the door behind, pondering and vacillating as she walked. The nervous apprehension, the tortuous guilt, recalled another young woman, in another time years before.
This woman was plump, with worried red-rimmed eyes and a dimple in one cheek; a girl with good manners, from a spartan Christian home. Oh, the trivial dilemmas of the moral, the unholy longings of the holierthan-all. The sorceress had known this girl, as she knew most of her clients, and the nature of her dilemma, without asking. But it was such an entertainment to watch the upright squirm on their respectable rear ends at the home of a witch as they whispered confessions of desire, consummated at last. They never meant to, you see. These were not the kind of girls who were prepared for these encounters, much less for their consequences.
So she had allowed the plump brown woman to sit down at her table and explain, beginning in a tentative near-whisper that seemed to gain vehemence as her story rushed to a pinnacle and spilled onto the little table in all its garish wickedness. He had been white, this woman’s paramour, and apparently a man of some social stature. A caring man, the sorceress sensed, for the girl softened as she spoke of him. Her manner became unaffected, natural, and she answered the sorceress’ questions with an unexpected candor.
The woman recounted the story of the tender coupling that had brought her, ultimately, to this place. Her brown eyes pleaded for understanding, as her hands clasped her rotund belly, an unselfconscious gesture, and her eyes filled with tears as she spoke of her Jessie—her dear sweet six-year-old treasure; and of the gentle comfort of his cheek against her tear-dampened cheek, his hands resting on her weary hips.
She had not rested, she recalled, since the day of her loss. Friends had kept a vigil, offering food and bible verses and feeble words of comfort, mumbled uneasily but sincerely.
The Lawd knows how much, jes how much, we can bear.
He works in mysterious ways.
We’ll understand it better by and by.
Some sat with her through the night, her grief so weighty, the pain so obstinate, a great mountainous grief here, in her chest, that would not be moved, too stubborn even to allow the tears to fall. Finally, when the last of the sympathies had been expressed, and her Jessie was alone in a cold, dark cavern six feet below the ground, she went to the house with the upstairs room, and sat there for days, staring at nothing in particular, her loss too great for words. As night began to fall, he would stand helpless outside the door, his hands at his sides, his mouth open, saying things, she was vaguely aware. There was nothing you could do. You do know that. Don’t you. Oh, Dear. Don’t do this. You do have to grieve, you know. Let yourself.Please. I can’t bear to see you . . .
Some days he held her. She could not recall when this had begun. She had become aware, all at once, that he was holding her, as she expected him to; that he had held her before, had done this, perhaps, for some time. He rocked her gently, reacquainting her paralyzed mind with other times; cherished times of her youth, of tender looks and kindness. Slowly, something inside her had begun to open, like wood lily petals in the noonday sun; like floodgates opening slowly on rusted hinges. He rocked her, until something broke loose and rushed out of her; something soft and warm and flowing as she had always imagined milk and honey flowing.
Their tears flowed freely that night in the upstairs room, his cheek next to hers, his sinewy hands strong, reassuring, holding her firmly as she flowed and flowed beneath him, their bodies, their souls a river, a rhythm flowing into morning and evening and again into night; that great mountain of grief molten like lava, and flowing out of her each night. Jessie, her baby, becoming an angel of light in the memory that he was giving back to her each day in the house on Chestnut Street; her chores, his routine domestic needs forgotten, these moments in the upstairs room bringing her back her Jessie and the promise of blackberry passion, the secret of unbridled joy heretofore unknown to her, but disclosed in all of its unfolding mystery there in the upstairs room where she had lost her child.
And suddenly she knew in the unkempt room of the sorceress that she wanted this baby, wanted badly and at the cost of propriety this tawny child of auburn locks and easy smile and dewy eyes. She clasped her belly. She wanted this child. The brown woman’s eyes fell upon the yellow woman and the proffered unmarked bottle of death on the table before he
r. Suddenly, the spirit of this woman and of death in this room became unbearable to her, and without another word she stood and left the room, closing the door resolutely behind her.
SANDY CREEK, VANCE COUNTY, NORTH CAROLINA
MARCH, 1932
The frost melted and springtime came, bringing with it the hope of warmth, life, and gaiety. And as she went about her chores at the small home she shared with her husband, and at the house on Chestnut Street, performing for both men such services as she felt bound by duty or love to perform, Jewell frequently dropped a basket of dirty linen to rush to the door and spot a hummingbird before it sneaked into a tree hole; or allowed a flatiron to overheat as she rushed to capture two lungsful of cool, rain-drenched air; and a smile of peace and satisfaction would spread across her round face.
It was on such a cool and rain-drenched morning that Eugene first noticed the life that had swelled within his wife. She stood barefoot on her toes in the yard, her round chin raised and her eyes closed, leaning forward slightly. She seemed oblivious to the heavy raindrops splashing red mud around her ankles. For weeks now, he had been sure that Jewell was going mad. And of late, he had noted the dwindling of his usually ample supply of blackberry wine. He had never actually seen her pilfer it, or smelled it on her breath. But this exuberance, this newfound love of life, was raising new suspicions of his wife.
She had always hummed as she worked, her scrub brush moving across the wooden floor to the cadence of soon-ah-will-be-done-ah-with-the-troubles-of-this-world. Now she sang aloud, sometimes even whistled or leaned a broom against a wall so she could dance a brief jig alone. He felt, at times like this, that she was unreachable, filled with a life force that undermined his tenuous hold on her, and he resented this.
Yet he loved her, in his way. Today, he watched her leaning into the rain and thought of Easter picnics when she had been a girl, cheerful and eager. He was moved with affection for and fear of that girl. Later, Jewell sat silent and unsmiling in a straw-bottomed chair, her dress draped primly over her wide-open knees, towel-drying her woolly hair before the open, pot-bellied stove. Her hands worked deftly and expertly in quick, jerky motions of the towel. He felt compelled to, and so he asked her:
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