by Cynthia Bond
THE ENTIRE congregation stood in white at the southern shore of Marion Lake. The sound of Verde Rankin bludgeoning the hymn “His Eye Is on the Sparrow” filled the air. Ephram Jennings stood, the fourth in line, behind Chauncy’s drunken uncle, Mandy Petty’s seven-month-old son and a woman from Nacogdoches. Ephram was to be the last and final baptism of the day.
The choir blended in at the chorus, “I sing because I’m happy! I sing because I’m free!” One or two angels’ voices rising above the pool of wispy notes of old women and the booming off-key singers cramming every note into God’s beleaguered ear. Verde was only one. Moss Percy’s wife, Clara, was another. Women for whom tone-deaf and well-meaning family members had mistaken volume for talent and praised them thusly, and so both Verde and Clara sang even louder, each trying to top the other.
Ephram did not look at them. He kept his eyes on his bare feet, stoic and silent. A hangnail on his left baby toe was red and swollen. He wondered what the muck at the bottom of the lake would do to it.
When Celia had first suggested, over pork chops, grits and scrambled eggs, that Ephram be reborn through baptism, he had said no. But she had nagged so, every day another drop, until, to spare himself years of erosion he had complied.
He was to be the slow-cooked pork roast of the evening. The rest were only yams and corn and okra. Chauncy’s uncle was the Tabasco sauce.
Ephram could not help but think of Ruby. She entered him like a taste at the back of his throat—the memory of his mama’s peach cobbler. Now, Ruby would be only a yellowed recipe to be hidden away, slipped into his shirt pocket. He would unfold her on the way to work or when he was sitting on his bed alone.
A few pines clung to the banks of the lake, dipping their branches into the murky green. Reeds rose and clustered as the sun dipped and painted the world a twilight blue. Ephram took in the whole of life around him, the hush of the forest, the slant of the sun hiding behind the pines. It was as if a banquet lay before him, but it became sawdust in his mouth.
The Pastor entered the water and walked until it rose to his thighs. He spoke in a rich, low tone, stumbling only here and there. Chauncy’s uncle, all in white, was the first.
“B-Brothers and Sisters, Matthew chapter twenty-eight, verses nineteen to twenty, say: ‘G-g-go ye therefore, and teach all nations, b-b-aptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: T-t-t-teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo with you always, even unto the end of the world.’ Amen.”
Then he took the man and dunked him backwards in the water. The man came up sputtering and coughing, his hand high in the air, followed by general hallelujahs, and made his way to the shore.
Ephram straightened the baptismal robe he wore over a white cotton T-shirt and shorts. He felt naked each time the wind blew the light fabric against his body. Ephram imagined the discomfort of rising from the water in soaked garments, all but transparent, as he walked back to the shore. He noted that the congregation was always a bit richer with husbands and grandfathers when an attractive church sister was set for baptism.
The third acolyte inspired such attention. Her white gown was flowing as some of the gentlemen from the congregation crowded closer. Her hair was newly pressed. Ephram imagined, knowing the workings of woman’s hair, a good three hours’ worth. She seemed to have felt it was a worthwhile sacrifice in the face of eternal salvation.
Celia stood proudly at the forefront of the congregation. Her Church Mother sash satin white with glittered letters. Her shining Page Boy wig, and crisp white jacket and suit with tiny false pearls along the collar. Ephram could see that she had never been happier in her life.
Ephram felt something like steel in his belly as his turn approached, a firm anger churning, for to do this thing, to take the walk to Marion Lake Celia had bade him take, Ephram had had to leave pieces of himself along the open road. Celia, plump and grinning since he arrived home, seemed to have collected them in her apron.
Verde was about to start another hymn when K.O.’s wife, Evelyn, had the eternal mercy to push out in front. She began, “Oh Happy Day …”
The choir gently echoed, “Oh Happy Day …”
Next the preacher sprinkled lake water over the baby and recited,
“Mark chapter one, verses four and five: ‘John d-d-did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the b-b-baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. And there went out unt-t-t-o him all the land of Judea, and they of Jerusalem, and were all baptized of him in the river of Jordan, confessing their sins.’ ”
“Oh Happy Day …” Evelyn’s voice sailed through the air, “When Jesus washed …”
Softly behind her, “Oh when he washed …”
“He washed my sins away …”
A familiar gush washed through Ephram. He had stood on these banks his entire life, his papa’s voice thundering across the water, his real mama standing to his left, her hand gentle upon his shoulder, so close her perfume, sweet and lemony, seemed to settle on his clothes. He had fallen to his knees and the hands of the congregation had stretched around him when his mama had died. He had passed into the void and felt something holding on to him, holding him tight.
“When Jesus washed …”
“Oh when he washed …”
“He washed my sins away.”
“Oh Happy Day! Oh Happy Day!”
The church sisters, their aroma of Royal Crown hair oil and baby powder, were all he had known. The pride in their smiles. Pride, he knew, that only Black women can have in pointing out a good Black man. Their arms that had held him in esteem for decades.
He had sat in the pews, seasoned with the salt of sweat and tears for forty-five years. But that was not Ruby. It held no wildness, no talking hair and whisper kisses. No magic bolting through the world. But it did not cut him. It did not blind him with pain.
The woman from Nacogdoches stepped onto the shore and fell onto the thin sleeve of sand. She began jerking and speaking in tongues and the whole of the congregation rushed to her, placing their hands upon her body. Ephram passed the time looking at the moving lake. Her salvation could take more than a little while.
Then, Ephram knew that soon it would be his turn to step into the waiting water.
RUBY LAY with her back flat on the ground, the pines stretching high above her. She could still remember, still feel the slick on her body. She could still hear their chanting. Then, her cheek against the forest floor, Ruby realized it was singing. Someone was singing. “Oh Happy Day …” Sailing wisps of cotton. “Oh Happy Day …” The song gliding through tender, new saplings. There was a rumble of hope somewhere in the world. Not here. Here, she had led other children to the pit fire. Here, she had pointed out Otha to the Reverend with a glance and they had caught the woman and done the unthinkable. She had let Mr. Green take the cord from her own neck. She had watched in silence as her friend was murdered. She had allowed all of her spirit children to be taken. Taken and swallowed into the oblivion of the Dyboù.
Her own child had also been taken because Ruby had never fought. Not once, not the whole time she was at Miss Barbara’s.
Ruby knew all that she had done. All that she had allowed. She had blood under her nails, up to her elbow.
The song danced above her bowed head. Her tears dampening the ground beneath her. She understood then there was another reason she had never run. The Reverend Jennings. He had not swallowed her down as he had her children. Instead he had braided their spirits one to the other, then threaded them through her body. Each step she took away pulled the Dyboù closer.
Then in the distance hundreds of branches quivered. Ruby felt him moving towards her as if he had been called. She tried to rise but in seconds he fell on her like a block of timber. Ruby felt the flash of his teeth, the gutted rub of his breath above her. The heft of his shadow pressing her dress, her hair close to the ground. Her scalp twisted, throbbing. The pine needles flew and swirled around her. Clouds of dust
whipping in her eyes. She felt as if a lit match had been thrown under her. A sickly fire warmed her pelvis. Then, in spite of everything he had done, her body moved with him.
She slapped at her face and pulled her black hair. Her breath pushed, forced out of her lungs in hot frenzied blasts. She shifted her legs to allow.
He entered her completely. Sliding, filling. Then everywhere, under her fingernails, through her tear ducts, her eardrums and open mouth, like swallowing a hurricane. They joined, merged. Ruby saw the shrunken raisin of the world through his eyes. The surety that all men were lined in tar and pitch. They were not different. They breathed as one. Rising and falling. She too hated. Hated like a jackknife slashing the canvas of the world. Hated the men who had taken her. Hated the fire. Hated the hands. Hated the clink of every damned quarter. Hated Peter Green and Miss Barbara and in the great swirl of it all—hated her own sinew and bones. It was the hate that joined them.
It had ruled her. Even her children had not been bigger than this hate. Ruby knew then that she had never nursed her children with hope. She had nursed them with fear and death. She had nursed them with evil as truth. She taught them not to rise, not to fly, but to crouch, to hide. She had fed each the poison of self-hate and they had grown weak because of it. Weak enough to be taken.
The Dyboù’s voice growled through her as she pushed her hips into the crackling air. She felt herself build, build, rising. Bitch. My little whore. Little cunt.
Ruby became that.
Ruby’s back scraped on the earth as he moved within her. She felt the sorrow of the soil beneath her. The grieving roots of a dogwood tree holding her. The sweet bay magnolia soothing the wind with its fragrance. The ticks of the crows pausing in the branches and what was left of the sun leaning to warm her twisted face. Ruby felt the red clay pulse around her.
A chain saw screeched through her like at Grueber’s mill. Still, she knew she was not alone. A red oak stood proudly beside a thistle blossom. And the pines, the pines towered above her. They were older than her and everyone she had known, older than the Dyboù.
The Reverend growled, buckling the thin skin of her shins, her thighs. Then Ruby remembered. She saw the lampshade and heard the squeaking bed at Miss Barbara’s and remembered she could hide in the chinaberry tree while the world was thundering overhead. As she had so many times as a child, she sat under the umbrella shade, the berries green and hard enough to roll between her fingers. She felt a soft weight upon her shoulder and Maggie was by her side. Sharp as razors, sweet as taffy. Her arms held Ruby close, “You listen to me. Listen now and don’t you forget. Ain’t nothing you ain’t a part of. You want to know about that sky, then you feel it swimming in your chest. You want to know about them life tall pines, then feel they bark on your skin. Ain’t nothing you ain’t and can’t be a part of. You already got honeysuckle in your breath. Already got them roses on your lips.”
The Dyboù yanked her back to the forest, lifted her inches above the soil, the clearing rumbling, the trees bending. A branch cracked and sailed through the clearing. So Ruby prayed. The spark of life that was still in Ruby answered. A firefly was flickering. It landed upon her finger … like a flare it took hold. Next, it fanned to her wrists and arms. The circle of her waist ignited, along with her long legs and toes. It leapt to her shoulders, set the edges of her hair aflame and poured from her open mouth.
Ruby began to fight. She called on the roots for help. The water winding under the earth and into Marion Lake. Ruby prayed to the dome of life around her. She felt the invincible black walnut growing wild. The might of the golden oak. The lavender foxglove sprinkled near Rupert Shankle’s hen house. The spark inside of her flared. It began to smoke, then burn, then rise.
Ruby started kicking, arms flying against the gray nothing of the Dyboù. He faltered for a moment so Ruby scrambled back. He roared through her, but she somehow, pushed herself up to standing and screamed into the thick air with all of her might.
“I ain’t yours! I ain’t your whore! I ain’t your nothing!”
She began to push out, with her hands. Her feet stomping hard on the ground. He held on, held on, until Ruby felt the tug, the anchor of the rope that bound them.
She looked at him, the fire of spirit burning through her eyes. She felt the tether weaken.
“I’m not meant for using! I never was! Never was! I ain’t never never going to be used again!”
She felt the rope burn to cinder. He paused, then flew out of her. He seemed to shake, then fall away, swirling into the shadow of the forest until he became too small for Ruby to see. She sat in this new silence. Felt a new freedom in her bones.
Then she remembered Ephram. Not at all like Maggie. Not sweetness and golden bluster. Maggie who would have fought armies for her, if only they had shown their faces. Maggie, so grand that she painted the sky with stories of catfish and heaven. Ruby had loved her for all of that, more than her life.
Ephram was different. He did not fight the world, he moved through it. He watched life marching before him and watched the beauty and the foolishness. Then he stepped, gently into the noisy, pounding fray. He had found his way to her door. He had tended her. He had stood right alongside her, not in front with his dukes up. Perhaps that is why Ruby learned that she could protect herself. Say “no” herself. Cast out the Dyboù herself.
Ruby then remembered the periwinkle ringing the earth brown of Ephram’s eyes. His walk, as smooth and easy as Marion Lake. She then thought of his smile, and the way the corners of his mouth curved to accept it. She thought of his heart and the way he had loved her. Seen her. Helped her see her own worth. Her own treasure. She had never been his whore. She never would be. Not if they did not see each other for a thousand years. She would always be loved.
Ruby knew then that a lie could only control a person if they believed it. That all of the work the Reverend, Miss Barbara—all of them had done. All of the spells they had cast. All of it had been to convince her of a lie.
The song she heard was louder, it lifted high above the horizon. Ruby looked up and listened. It was coming from Marion Lake.
EPHRAM STOOD at the shore. The woman from Nacogdoches had finally, at long last, finished and stepped out of the water. The men seemed dismayed as Supra Rankin quickly ran up to her with a towel.
Ephram paused and took in the lake in the dimming light. The Pastor was kindly waiting, yet with a smug look of victory tugging at his lips. K.O.’s wife had not stopped singing “Oh Happy Day” for fear Verde might cut in. Ephram was glad. She did the song justice. So much so that frogs began their nightly serenade early. The crickets joined in along with a bold mockingbird. Ephram took a breath, lifted his foot when he felt the push on his back. He turned around. It was Celia. Not content to allow him to walk unescorted into his new life, she had walked past the congregation to the shore and given him a little nudge.
Ephram stood still as a pine. He did not turn his head either way. So she pushed him again. Harder this time. So Ephram spun around and grabbed her hand.
The singing stopped.
He looked firmly into her shocked eyes and said simply, not raising his voice, but loud enough for every person on the banks to hear, “Celia, you best stop.”
Then he let go of her hand.
She stood there, a rush of anger flashing.
Ephram turned from Celia and walked into the water towards the Pastor. It was cool against his legs, then his pelvis and waist. The Pastor put out his hands as Ephram walked right past him, slipped off the gown and began swimming towards the middle of the lake. His legs powerful, his arms dipping into the dark green water and lifting back again. He filled his lungs with air as he swam across the lake.
Then his heart filled with the thought of Ruby as he swam, the amber of her skin and the frothing black waterfall of her hair. Suddenly he wanted to pull out all of his Mama’s old recipes and cook them for her. Smothered chicken and okra, corn bread and pecan pie. He did not know what would happen. For now
, it just felt good to swim under the white of the moon. He would figure out the rest when he reached the other side.
RUBY STOOD in the forest. The song seemed to enter her. Night had almost arrived. Ruby watched the stars dotting the sky far to the east. The west still held on to twilight.
She did not know which way to walk. She did not know where to go. She wished she had told her children so many things. She wished she had told them that it was their birthright to rise. That nothing could hold them. That anything the Dyboù said was a lie. She wished she had told them to fight—
Then she knew. Before she could teach anything, she had to know it herself.
Night had almost arrived. Ruby watched the moon rising and saw a crow making lazy eights high above her.
SHE LOOKED up high and saw that the top of the pine had turned black with shining wings for leaves. There were hundreds of crows perched on the narrow branches.
Another landed, closer than the others, upon a new pine cone peeking from the needles. The weight of the crow loosed a mist of green dander that dusted from the tree. It lightly rained upon Ruby’s face.
Ruby wiped her cheeks, and another cloud floated down, sticking to her hair. It felt like a baptism, washing away the day, the weeks and the years of crazy.
A silence settled over the crows and Ruby saw them, wings fluttering, dancing above her. That is when the first of her children peered behind the great outstretched black and tumbled down into her lap. Then the next. Then Tanny, climbing down, laughing. The crows had had them all the time, keeping them until it was safe. The Spirit had lied. Her children all came, like baby spiders on silk strings. Ruby called them to her.
They gathered close under the pines, the wind playing with her hair. She smelled the honeysuckle and the dry dust of pine needles.
Then Ruby stood and walked, all of her children around her giggling, running ahead, swinging from the low branches. Ruby walked all the way to Bell land, into her door, and looked about the place. She lit the lantern. Then two, then five, until the place was golden and warm. She noticed that a bit of dust had blown into the kitchen so she picked up her broom and began to sweep. Next she would wash the curtains. The bedding could use boiling as well.
