Sapphire's Grave

by Hilda Gurley Highgate

  The people saw this. They had assumed that the Reverend honored these women in his wife. They had not understood the tenuousness of his love for Clovey, or his delicate rivalry with her. They did not know that he feared her knowing eyes, feared his own transparence before those eyes.

  Clovey understood his fear, although she could not tell him so.

  Just as she could not stop the inspiration that was born in her when she heard the simple, lilting speech of her mother, or other mothers weeping as they prayed; when she smelled potato pies baking; saw white sheets hanging from a clothesline, or young girls in choral lines in the vestibules of churches. Things stirred in her. She needed to interpret, to create. For this she had been ordained before her birth.

  Her gifts were burdens to her. They woke her at night and sent her stumbling to the bathroom, a thing in her that threatened to be born. She sought to experience more fully the God she had caught glimpses of in her own work—not the patriarchal God of her husband’s dogma, but the nurturing, all-embracing God he had failed to discern in the scriptures; the mother God she felt inside herself. And the man who wished to be her god could only watch her with chagrin. He began to criticize her work, tacitly at first—

  “Honey, some people don’t understand your art.”

  “Some people do.”

  And he would glare at her before descending the stairs of their exalted house. She would often find him, hours later, still brooding in his study.

  Then he began to berate her.

  “You know, people are getting tired of you doing nothing but women.”

  “I do other stuff.”

  “No. You don’t. You do nothing. Just women.”

  “I do nature and God and—”

  “And that dead white man.”

  Her lip trembled. “He was my father.”

  “He was a white man. ’S what he was.” He waited. She did not respond. “And you think he’s God.”

  Months passed. Their bed became a battleground, in which he engaged in a unilateral war against her. And Clovey submitted to his gratuitous assaults for as long as she could keep silent.

  “Aldridge, that hurts.”

  “You ain’t hurtin’.”

  “Aldridge . . . that hurts.” And she tried with all her might to push him away. But he ignored her pleas, and her tears. She bit her lip and dug her fingernails into his back until he collapsed on top of her, breathing heavily, his breath like that of the wood-burning stove at Aunt Suzanne’s house, like fumes from the hell into which she had descended—not the infernal pit of writhing reptiles, but the hell of understanding. She had been here before, when she was a small child. She was back.

  Sobbing, Clovey pushed again at Aldridge.

  He rolled away from her like a stone.

  She stood and stumbled toward the bathroom. Across the dark corridor that separated them, Aldridge was speaking. Sickened and hurt, Clovey was not aware that she was hearing.

  She painted a confusion of red labyrinthine tissue, its walls curved like the petals of a massive rose in bloom; and sodden velvet vulvae the color of pain. oh and you think that white man loved your mama? you got no idea what love is snaked its way through a tiny opening in the subtle folds, and slithered through the tiny corridors. you got no idea who god is (i am god) A bolt of steel, solid and black, forced its way through a narrow corridor of red hot ferrous, the walls glowing. Sparks flew. love you i don’t love you? what you think this is

  Later, these paintings would be hailed as the foretelling of a yet unborn and feminine consciousness, distinctively black in complexion. Colored women would bite their lips but would not speak.

  Aldridge did not attend the exhibit.

  No one asked.

  To have left her would have confirmed what they all no doubt believed.

  Aldridge set up a narrow cot and began to sleep in his study.

  The urge to consume red clay moved Clovey to the fields of North Carolina, from which she had come.

  Little had changed since her last visit. Tobacco still waited for harvesting in June. Potted geraniums still graced the windows of the house on Chestnut Street—her mother’s house now. And although he had been deceased for some time, her father’s love still made her feel particular, as her mother’s understanding spoke to her of the mother god who waited for reaffirmation in Clovey. She spent idle days outside the house in Henderson, drinking the sun, attentive to the buzzing of bees.

  Jewell had been licensed as a midwife. She counseled Clovey to rest, to avoid confrontation and to eat no salted pork. And she lay beside Clovey in the bed in the upstairs room, holding her as she had been held, rocking her as she had rocked Jessie; humming the tune that her own mother had known, when upon a raining night in a never-slumbering city, Vyda Rose had begun to hum—a tune she could not recall learning, or associate with a person or place or experience.

  But Clovey seemed to recognize it, and succumbed to peaceful sleep. Time passed. And still, her mother hummed, murmuring, rocking Clovey uneasily.

  She did not ask of Aldridge.

  But she told Clovey to go home.

  “Your adversary has surrendered,” Jewell said. She paused to smooth back the copper hair, and to squeeze reassuringly Clovey’s hand. “Your moment of glory awaits you,” she said. “Go home.”

  chapter 14

  HENDERSON, NORTH CAROLINA

  JUNE, 1965

  Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.

  —Ecclesiastes 12:7

  They whispered of her in ladies’ bathrooms, in the clammy cold basements of Methodist churches. They dared not pronounce her name aloud, even those who knew it. She had been, they knew, appropriately ashamed, or at least discreet. So they spared her, to the extent they could, the humiliation of open scandal. Jewell had not, after all, been a whorehouse wench.

  And he—the white man—had treated her well. She lay for two days in a fine polished casket, in the parlor of the house that he had left her. In her own name. And in her own name she lay sedately; the name unknown to many. Ashamed of this, they sneaked glances at her name as they fanned themselves with programs printed on heavy paper. 1902–1965. She had lived among them for more than sixty-two years. And they had denied her name.

  But what else could they have done?

  The husband had been dead for years. And the children had moved. To Philadelphia. And New York. Away from the shame. Even the youngest one—especially the youngest one, they had whispered—the one who was his, had moved away.

  But they had come. The dark-skinned girls had become sturdy women, serious, settled, their manner as firm as their broad buttocks, their husbands solemn. They had made arrangements, as was expected of them, efficiently, prudently, nodding approval of the body, the yellow gown and strand of pearls, ordering the removal of the heavy powder from the face. Respectable women.

  The boys had become silent men, their heads bowed, their hats in their hands, respectful if not respected.

  And the youngest one had arrived on the day of the service. After the plans had been made, the work done. Smiling. Cordial. Pregnant, her black dress a tent draping the protruding belly that preceded her into the parlor of the house on Chestnut Street. She spoke softly, a catch in her voice occasionally as she dabbed with a tissue at the corners of her eyes. Proper, she spoke, like white folks, as did the husband of thunderous voice who was a preacher. Hmph! they snorted. And his wife in a dress above her knees! They stared at her, their brows knit, their lips turned down at the corners.

  But Clovey was not unnerved. Her gaze was steadfast upon the tithes box at the New Bull Swamp. It was nothing in particular. But she stared at it as they stared at her. And she did not, would not apologize. She crossed her thin legs clad in sheer black leggings, and she looked them full in the face for a long, defiant moment.

  Secretly, men dreamed of her. As her husband spoke, passion in his thunderous voice, they parted the proper black-clad
legs. She looked at them in surprise. Their wives touched them, discreetly. They were brought back to reality. But they knew that she knew—had known in that moment between her legs and reality—that she was to them what her mother had been: black, but less so by association with her father; desirable because she belonged to the white man they supposed to be their oppressor. They would not have been surprised, they mused, if Clovey had married a white man—too good for their boys, as her grandmother had been for them.

  They had forgotten their long-ago rejection of Jewell.

  But they remembered the whispers of their wives. The touching, discreet, when her path crossed theirs. Evenin’, Miz Fanny. Or Mo’nin’, Miz Rose Lee.

  Mo’nin’, their wives had replied, and smiled falsely, thinking that they recalled her name, but not certain; grateful for her never lingering, but hurrying on, crossing the street, her basket full of geraniums that spilled over the sides, or cornmeal and flour, en route to the house on Chestnut Street, where it was said that they lived together in sin. It was said. It was not seen. Until the day that Clovey had been born, and the sun had hidden it’s face in shame. And they had completely forgotten her name.

  They burned the body after. Blue flames leapt and murmured. And Jewell’s ashes were placed in an urn. The youngest—the one who was his—had insisted upon this. Miraculously, the sisters had relented. The black-clad Clovey sealed the urn and placed it in a safe deposit box in Henderson. As if the ashes were precious stones. People shook their heads. She sho’ got white folks’ ways.

  But they lusted for her still, those men rejected and of dream-filled eyes. They lusted for Jewell despite her passing—the woman who was of them, and they of her. Mother. Sister. Would-be lover. But never truly theirs. She belonged, they supposed, to their master. They did not know that she belonged, had always belonged, to herself.

  The ashes rested, nameless in their urn.

  To the women, this was just as well. They had neither needed nor desired her.

  But the spirits that had lived within her returned to the places from which they had come. They did not rest. They returned to come again.

  BULL SWAMP CREEK, WARREN COUNTY, NORTH CAROLINA

  AUGUST, 1965

  And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose.

  —Matthew 27:52

  The pains had begun at the scattering of ashes—weeks later, when Clovey had resolved to set her mother’s ashes free. Drive me to the bridge over Bull Swamp Creek, she had said, because it had seemed as good a place as any. Aldridge had worried about her health, her far-advanced pregnancy. But she had insisted upon the trip, and Aldridge, not wishing to upset her, had set out on the nine-hour return drive South, dutifully, though not without reservations.

  He had stopped the white Lincoln at the edge of the bridge, and stood with her to whisper a prayer.

  And there at the bridge over Bull Swamp Creek, her swollen fingers still wrapped around the empty, downturned urn, Clovey folded herself in pain.

  The tearing at her womb had begun without warning. It stopped just as suddenly.

  And a dark child was born without labor as the ashes sailed away in a flurry.

  Clovey looked down at the thin black face, the sharp black eyes wide open beneath a cap of dark satin hair, and she knew that this was no ordinary child; knew that in the blood and the spirit and the person of this child lived all of the ancestors; and the child’s own spirit, rising, on great black wings bearing without shame the scarlet past. Clovey stroked reverently the small velvet face, the skin soft like down against her knuckles. When she asked for a name, her heart whispered Rae’ven. She whispered this in Aldridge’s ear.

  Rae’ven, she whispered, our mothers returned in spirit.

  And Aldridge agreed, though he did not understand: Surrender, Clovey had sought to call her, conjuring images of the letting go, the spreading of beveled wings in surrender. Freedom, she had meant to convey, the shame and the secrets that remained of the ancestors made incarnate, set free. Triumph, she had meant to say, the bearers of those secrets releasing shame, releasing bridled anger and tears, unburdening at river banks to dance beneath feathered wings spread like a canopy over the diaspora.

  Back home, they dressed the baby in celebratory red, and debuted Rae’ven at church.

  But some looked warily upon the chiseled dark face, so unlike her mother’s. Lifting the thin blanket to peer at the tiny visage, some shrank back, discerning in spirit a warrior woman; and three small, angry girls who could not cry, at a grave near the edge of a wood.

  Some knew of, but could not name, the woman said to have been buried there.

  Rae’ven, Clovey whispered, when they asked the baby’s name, and kissed the top of the bonneted head.

  But those not ashamed to recall their mother’s name; those who knew her whispered, Sapphire.

  epilogue

  NEW YORK, NEW YORK

  JUNE, 1995

  She preached vindication, redemption. she danced as if possessed across daises. Her feet bare, her head thrown back, she sang with the voice of rapture. She spoke in another tongue. When she parted her ceremonial robes, women rediscovered themselves beneath, neither angry nor mournful, but beautiful, graceful, human.

  She preached freedom, salvation from the god of Judgment, the god of Propriety. When she opened her long and obscuring white robes, women discovered the distortions of their pasts. They saw their grandmothers’ silences explained, their characters recast. They heard their foremothers’ stories retold with compassion and love.

  Time magazine called her Fresh. New. The face of the future of ministry. But Rae’ven smiled knowingly, her teeth bright white against blue-black skin. She was the past, and she was not ashamed.

  Tall and arresting, proud and defiant, she paced the pulpit as though it were a runway, arms spread wide, head held high, with the grace of her forebears advancing a gospel infused with self-love. Lesbian, they called her. Heretic. Shedding the mantle of silence. Baring her soul. Honoring her mothers. Kneeling to mourn at the grave of Sapphire, extending her hands, letting the mourning go.

  Her sisters-only colloquiums drew millions from worldwide. The doors closed in the faces of her critics. Cameras flashed.

  Regal wraps and the skins of animals came to life on her slender frame, something primitive, elemental in her wearing of them. Jewels dangled from her forearms, her ankles—topaz, ruby, emerald—her eyes onyx, her skin blue flame like sapphire. The paparazzi loved her. In New York and Chicago, in Atlanta and L.A., they asked her to pause and to posture, her head wrapped in the colors of the earth, or piled high with serpentine braids. Flamboyant. Ostentatious, the faultfinders said. When she parted the robes of ignominy and shame, they looked away. Shameless, they said, drawn in spite of their discomfort. Scan’lous.

  But Rae’ven laughed, as wanton women laugh. I am my mother’s daughter, she proclaimed, and the daughter of her mother; sister of all sisters. People drew back, nervously. Fearfully, they moved away.

  She spoke in mysteries: Relinquish the gods constructed by others, fashionedof fallible things. Rapt audiences stood mute in contemplation, their mouths open, their eyes wide, not a sound in the mammoth hall but the voice of the messenger. Ushers left their posts, drawing nearer to hear the soft and commanding voice. Serve God only. Love is the only true power.

  Newsweek named her THE MOST CHARISMATIC MINISTER IN AMERICA. But Rae’ven shook her head. She was not a “minister.” She was the past, releasing the present.

  The presbyters sought to revoke her license. She had none. The establishment disparaged her. She would not be silenced:

  Lift your heads. Wipe your tears. Do not appease those who would see you craven and remorseful. Do not bow in humility before their gods.

  When she opened again the long and obscuring white robes, the graves were opened. The departed arose.

  From Maine to Texas, women discovered the dead in their mothers’ pasts, in the shame and the silence an
d rejection of themselves, their judgments of each other. They woke up to find bones and teeth and hair in bed with them, the stench of an open grave polluting their nostrils, unacknowledged pain and guilt eating at their entrails, boiling their blood to a pressure unbearable. Ghosts and secrets with their chains and dust mimicked silently their every motion, every step. And they had not known that they were there.

  In Miami, Seattle, they finally understood who they were and what they had done and why. And throughout the diaspora, they loved and forgave themselves. In Spain and Haiti and Brazil, they loved and forgave Sapphire.

  In Charleston, the dying embers of a woman’s rage evaporated her tears, and she sighed with relief.

  And Sapphire, satisfied that they understood, began the slow journey back to her grave. Perhaps, she thought, she could begin the process of finally dying. Perhaps the shame would die with her. The sting of death was anticipated from Sierra Leone to Warren County to Paterson. The waiting grave prepared to share its victory.

  God and Self were exhumed to make space for Sapphire—celebrated at last, no apologies offered.

  once

  we understood

  it was neither the Lord’s doing

  nor our own

  now

  we have worn the scarlet garment

  far too long

  danced the dance

  as the daughters of Herodias

  and as unnamed sinners

  who cry at the master’s feet

  we have emptied our basins

  to sin no more

  but we are the daughters of Hagar

  who shameless knew

  it was neither the doing of Sara’s God

  nor her own

  and she wore the scarlet garment