Sapphire's Grave

by Hilda Gurley Highgate

  “Do you have a lover?”

  Her hands stopped in midmotion for a moment, then resumed their task as she eyed him from beneath the mass of wildly tangled hair. “Do you,” she asked, her knowing eyes reminding him of late-night returns to their bed bearing the scent of whiskey and strange women encountered in juke joints and bordellos; silent women, and never mentioned; strangers meeting needs he could not articulate to his wife. He looked away.

  “I have many lovers,” she answered superfluously, still gazing at him with the knowledge of ages and he thought of the rain kissing her face, the wind running its fingers through her woolly hair; her toes embracing red mud and the look of rapture upon her face as she danced with or without the broom; and he wondered what other lovers his wife had found to replace what they had lost, the dying embers of a passion he had promised and failed, he knew, to deliver, in the face of her righteousness and domesticity and what he presumed to be her contempt toward him and his manifold shortcomings. She laughed, a pleasant, mocking laugh that made him smile with guilt and slink out the back door, her laughter following him into town and haunting him there, relentless and cruel.

  HENDERSON, NORTH CAROLINA

  APRIL, 1932

  She amused him with colored folk mythology of men who could heal and women who could fly. He taught her to make liverwurst and call it pâté, feeding it to him on water biscuits from behind the rocking chair where he sat speaking passionately of the world war; interrupting his frequent discursions by passing glasses of champagne in front of his nose and spilling it playfully down his chest, his soft stomach. He laughed the first time it was blackberry wine that stained his white starched shirt; pâté and blackberry wine on her tongue as she hovered over him, one plump brown leg slung over each arm of his rocking chair. He began, over time, to feel a merging with her, even as he wondered when this fellowship would end, and she would leave him to return to her own mysterious world, the one she inhabited with family and friends beyond his Gothic door.

  She would someday be lost to him, he knew. This kinship would not, could not last. He loved her profoundly and with desperation, fearful that each sun-filled day with his Sugar would be the last. Each Monday morning he waited anxiously in bed for her to arrive, climb the stairs, and wake him before she made breakfast. Often he caught her as she turned to leave the room, and held her ferociously, breathing deeply the aroma of coconut oil or Dixie Peach®, and holding it deeply, lovingly in his lungs, willing it to enter his veins and fill his heart so that she, some part of her, would always be there with him, even after she was gone. He wanted to savor her, preserve the taste of liverwurst and blackberry wine; feel forever the tremor of her voice as she sang spirituals in his ear until he slept, peaceful and content, only to awaken on Saturday morning and find her gone—to that other world that she inhabited and of which he could never be a part.

  He asked her of her aspirations. He wanted to imagine in his dotage what she might be doing, and with whom. He wanted a glimpse of the future he felt certain he could not share; needed to know she would be happy and at peace with herself in some industry that gratified her, for he felt certain that this wonder of innocence and discernment was both capable and anointed. He felt certain, as he watched her listen to the moonlight or commune with the magpies, that indeed she would someday fly. It was only a matter of time.

  “I think,” she told him cautiously and with an embarrassed smile as they lay on their backs in the yard, “I think that if I had my rathers, I would study the clouds.” She lowered her lashes and blushed profusely but rushed on. “I would study the clouds, and showers and hurricanes. I would study the mercy and anger of God.” She ventured a peek at him from the corners of her eyes. “I know that sounds silly.”

  “But of course it doesn’t,” he told her gently. “There are people who do that, you know. They are called meteorologists.”

  She grinned at him suspiciously and giggled. “No there ain’t.”

  “Yes there are. Meteorologists.”

  “Me-de-or-ol-o-gist.” She repeated the word twice, and tilted her head thoughtfully, meditatively to one side, her expression sober, then grim. “Well. I don’t reckon a colored girl like me—well. You know. They wouldn’t let me . . .” Her voice trailed off, and for a moment her eyes lost their usual gleam. His heart broke for her, and for the loss of human potential that she represented. “But it’s okay,” she finally said slowly and evenly, as if to comfort him, or to convince herself that indeed it was okay. “I’ll be a me-de-or-ol-o-gist in my heart.” She smiled brightly and stood, smoothing her skirt. “And I’ll start dinner,” she tossed over her shoulder as she started toward the house.

  “You really don’t have to,” he reminded her, as he often did.

  But she wanted to. She wanted to make him pot roast with turnips and candied carrots. She wanted to serve him iced tea and sundaes because he had taught her to love and forgive herself, and to appreciate her surroundings. She was not sure how, or what was the relationship between these two lessons, but he had done this: made her recognize her worth and see the beauty of the earth. She had needed him. She no longer did. She desired him the way one desires watermelon and fly swatters in summer. He made her existence nicer. She wished him happiness and comfort. She wished to give him these things, even at her own cost.

  So when he began to make oblique references to the swelling of her ankles and the occasional morning dyspepsia that drove her to chew mint leaves and drink honeyed vinegar, she needed only to know that he wanted this, that it made him feel pleasure and pride. She knew without basis for this knowledge that this was the outcome of their doing, and she hoped that he would understand this too; but he never asked. As The Day approached he often propped her feet on his lap and leaned over her to massage her belly with olive oil. One night he found the scent of cloves beneath her belly, and paused to investigate this with his tongue.

  But the baby came, that night and half the next morning, bringing with her gifts to her father that indebted him forever to her mother: a heightened anticipation of life; a decreased sense of his own mortality; and a shared purpose—their precious baby girl.

  The sun did not shine that day, but hid behind a thick and barren cloud, upstaged, the new-again mother was sure, by the light of her new gift of love; for this child’s pale narrow face confirmed her mother’s knowledge that she had been conceived of love and not of duty. A veil of yellow downy hairs dusted the tiny precious crown. She called the child Amber because she had upstaged the sun. But he called her Clovey, his sweet clove, with a sprinkle of cinnamon embellishing her small round nose, and a sensuous nutmeg mouth so like her mother’s. He owed them both. He would never let them go.

  SANDY CREEK, NORTH CAROLINA

  NOVEMBER, 1932

  In the darkness of evening, Eugene watched her as she struggled out of the car. Their children ran barefoot to meet her and to help her unload the squash and bread pudding and yeast rolls she had brought from that house. She handed each child a covered dish or pan and graced each braided head with a kiss. She would keep the children nearby her all evening, he knew, feeding and fussing over them, helping them with homework and the urgencies that childhood imposed upon a mother. She would carefully avoid his eyes until she had put the children to bed with a hug and another kiss. And all the while the baby would sleep soundly, to wake again during the night, giving her the much-needed excuse to leave him alone in their bed while she nursed the weeping child.

  He watched her now, as he had every day for over a month, leaning into the gleaming car and carefully removing a bundle of blankets. His hatred toward her boiled. He had assumed that she was his alone to love; indeed, that her dusky skin, thick thighs, and wiry hair were unlovable by anyone other than himself. This child, a foreign thing to him and unlike himself and his wife in more ways than he could ignore, was a mockery and a humiliation to him, as was the gleaming car and the jaunty step with which she approached the house, smiling at the children, stopping on
the step to rest the bundle on her knee for a second, and sigh. She looked past him into the house for a moment and he had a fleeting understanding of the enormous will that supported her love for her two families; two lives so carefully and separately maintained, until this child who had failed to darken in the passing weeks; two husbands dutifully attended to. And he had not credited his wife with such indomitability of spirit, had never understood her capacity to love. And even though he knew in his heart that he had failed her in some way, he had assumed that she would endure this in silence, as had his mother, and her mother and, he was sure, her mother and hers.

  But he had been fooled. As she brushed past him into their house, he imagined her thighs wrapped around a thick white torso and a bitter taste filled his mouth. White man’s whore, he hissed. She seemed to freeze, but for only a second, and he was not certain that she had heard. But she looked directly at him that night, for the first time in over a month, as she served him his pigs’ feet from a pot, and her eyes narrowed fiercely before they moved again toward the children.

  “White man’s whore?” she muttered later that night as they prepared for bed. “White man’s whore?” she repeated, her voice rising, then falling as she glanced toward the children’s room. “As opposed to being what? A cullud man’s whore? What good that ever done a cullud woman.” It was a statement, not a question. They faced each other half-dressed, half-crazed with hate. “You dishonored me when you made me your wife. You near ’bout killed me. Made me think I was nothin’ but your slave. You promised to love me,” she accused, “and when you couldn’t love me, you let me think it was my fault, when all the time you knowed you had nothin’ to give me.” Her voice caught in her throat. Her anger seemed to subside as she regarded him, appraised him, he realized with horror. “You miserable, miserable excuse for a man,” she said without malice. “You had nothing to give.” Shaking her head in genuine pity and disgust, she turned away from him and he knew, as he had thought before, that she loathed him. He understood, for the first time, the nature of his failing, and his loss.

  He recalled again the girl she had been when he first became aware of her on a Sunday, the Lord’s day, she dimpled and vivacious, not yet ten, he, dapper in a hand-me-down suit, holding the door open as she drew near the church, dusting her shabby but carefully polished shoes without breaking her stride as she hurried up the steps, a feat he admired and made mental note to emulate. She had smiled at him, an uncertain smile, genuine and spontaneous. And Eugene’s ten-year-old heart had blushed at the tentative beauty of this ordinary brown girl. He had perceived, in a moment of poignancy that was to prove rare, a near-hopeless wish for his approval, to which he imagined she did not feel entitled. She had passed through the church door and slinked shame-faced down the side aisle before he recovered from this comprehension and allowed the door to close, but she turned as she settled into her seat in the deacons’ row next to her father, and glanced at him once more. Hopefully? he wondered. He had never been quite sure.

  But in that moment at the church door he had seen his mama and his grandmas and his aunts. He had recognized, he believed, in the smile of a girl not yet ten, their hopeful and hopeless look of expectation and defeat, their eyebrows arched as they made quilts and corn pudding, small gifts of love and devotion offered silently and accepted without gratitude by fathers and grandpas and uncles who had offered nothing in return.

  He would come to accept, without acknowledging, this love-greed, and to expect it from his wife. And indeed, Eugene had often looked up to find her staring at him expectantly; and he had begun to look away from her, to shrink from her dark and deadened eyes, from the defeat that had become her life with him, appalled at himself.

  The furtive glances and silent waiting for thank-yous, for some sign of love or appreciation—when had they ceased? When had his wife stopped begging for his love? She was humming now, tunelessly; unaware, it seemed, and indifferent to his presence. Her mouth curved up in a small self-possessed smile as she climbed into bed, turning her broad back to him, conclusive and dismissive. He hated her, helplessly and diminutively, and derived no satisfaction from his hatred: It was not the contemptuous hate that he had always felt toward women, even those that he loved; it was the sullen, resentful hate of a child powerless to avenge himself against his father, a man against his God. Silently, he turned off the light and, careful not to brush against his wife, lay down to sleep.

  On summer days when she was a child, her father had held Jewell high upon his wide, bony shoulders, his hands the color and consistency of cured tobacco leaves. The tobacco fields seemed, back then, to stretch an eternity in all directions. Their land, he had said; or at least, rightfully theirs. For years his father’s family, and his fathers’ fathers’ families, had worked these fields sun-up to sundown with nary a dime for their labor. By the time she was born, he received a dollar a day for picking and wrapping tobacco, and for hanging it to dry. He seethed as the four coins were placed in his palm, knowing that he and his had earned for their masters the value of this land many times over, unable to throw the meager change at the smug faces of the white trash who “oversaw” these fields and demand what was due him for centuries of labor. Even then, her fat legs dangling over his shoulders, she understood his pride in the land.

  And as she grew older she came to understand that this vast field that was theirs was really not, that the dignity in her father’s broad shoulders was a dignity born of hard work and an abiding faith in the realness of his birthright: He and his had labored tirelessly and honestly, and these fields, as far as the eye could see, would always belong to him, and he to them.

  Pay no mind to what they say, he had often told her as he lifted her from his shoulders to rest her on his hip. Know who you are, and whose you are, and what is rightly yours. His eyes would become glossy for a moment as they gazed at the fields. Then he would smile his dimpled smile, the color of tobacco, and tickle her ribs. And Jewell would understand the truth of pride and self-love, and a worth not measured, much less granted, by others.

  It was not until she was married, tired, and depleted that she would forget this—her father’s legacy to her.

  She developed an affinity for dimpled smiles the color of cured tobacco; and large hardworking hands that brushed her calves and tickled her ribs. She had a near-lover when she was almost ten; an awkward and surreptitious encounter beneath the church steps with a skinny yellow boy of fourteen, bashful and adorable, whose shoulders and hands and feet had outgrown him. A stranger to the ardor of a fourteen-year-old boy, she had stood on her toes to kiss his cheek, catching him by pleasant surprise. His eyes surveyed her comely calves and burgeoning breasts and, beside himself, he had pulled her beneath the steps to further explore this, his newfound atlas of the feminine geography. There, he held her tightly until her heart raced and she felt that it would burst at the pleasure of him, the strength of his arms—the arms of a man much like her father—the taste of his sweat, the warm softness of his mouth. The sobering memory of gravely delivered lessons on the lust of the flesh bade her to stop as something urged her to surrender and explore this somethingness, compelling and forbidden. Breathless, she pushed him away with a force that landed him on his rump. He stared wild-eyed and bewildered as his unwitting teacher turned and rushed away.

  It was years before she reminded herself of their adventure beneath the steps—years during which he had courted the pastor’s daughter up those very steps and down the off-center aisle to the makeshift altar in modesty and yellowing lace; years during which she had learned: The thing that had happened beneath the steps was unspeakable and unthinkable, a cause for shame and secrecy. She kept her head lowered throughout the drawn-out ceremony and did not attempt to catch the bouquet. Throughout her own courtships and until her own wedding night, she dared not try to recapture the thing reserved to euphemism and restraint. And then she was married and maternal, and the thing had not yet reappeared, leaving her wondering and hopeful and disappointed
, a field unripened, harvested before its time.

  By the time he told her she was beautiful, she had known this for years. Hers was not the embellished, assertive beauty of moving picture stars, or even the delicate, enchanting loveliness of her mother and sisters. Hers was an earthy, elemental beauty that had caught her father’s heart and held it captive—she, not her saccharine sisters, was his favorite, his matrilineal and kindred spirit, familiar and ancient and beautiful.

  Daddy’s brown baby, he had called her, even when her legs became long and voluptuous, and when young men came to call. Daddy’s brown baby, in those silent moments as they walked through the fields, their arms loaded with wide green leaves, sweat beading their brows and soaking the bandannas they wore around their heads. Daddy’s brown baby, as he shook his head in mock pity at her pathetic pile of tobacco leaves—Daddy could pick tobacco like three men—and smiled his infectious smile. And she would grin like the small child he could make her become with the smile and embrace of his words.

  So she had learned, by the time she reached sixteen, to accept praise with quiet confidence, and with none of the hunger that Eugene had come to expect, had thought he had detected, for only a moment, in a shy girl nearly ten. A bridled passion lay behind her clear-eyed, direct stare, unsubtle and unabashed, and she acknowledged his compliments with a nod. She did not say thank you, only nodded slightly and lowered her lashes, but not in modesty. In thought, perhaps? Thinking, he understood, was something she did often, deeply, and well. She knew that she was beautiful and, he suspected, her thoughts were beautiful, too. Talk to me, he begged her, and smiled. She smiled, too, and talked to him, staring out across the tobacco fields, twirling a dandelion stem absently as she spoke, and ideas seemed to flow from her like water from the rock of Meribah, like prophecy in an unknown tongue: the insight of ages spoken in the cadence of a country girl of scant education and humble circumstance, in the simple speech and unaffected manner of a Negro girl unaware of her own genius. She spoke of the earth and its gifts, the accessibility and communality of nature, the prevailing concept of personal property as synthetic and, possibly, wrong. The earth was owned, she reasoned, only by those willing to be owned by it. Doesn’t that make sense, she queried, casting at him a sidelong glance. The ’bacca fields are ours, she continued without waiting for his response. They belong to us, all of us who have worked and sweat and bled in them.