“It’s about time,” she say to me. “Put it on the counter and go wash your hands out back.”
I love the way Jeremy play piano.
He looks like a stray cat sitting over there all spit-cleaned and skinny. He’s playing a slow and easy melody, erasing the stains of this place. Even though Cynthia hired him to play for the house, I think he only plays for me.
He’s real good with his fingers.
Cynthia told him she gon’ cut ’em off if she catch him touching my hand again when I pass him by to serve drinks. So I don’t go near him this time. Instead, I pass Bobby Lee and another man sitting at the side table near the mouth of the hallway. It’s the first time I’ve seen Bobby Lee this close without his hat pulled all the way down and his arms crossed high on his chest.
Down the hall, in the back room, the washbasin is filled with already-dirty water but it’s cleaner than me so I rinse my hands in it. I can still hear Cynthia yelling, “It’s too damn hot to screw!” and, “Percy, move over. It’s already hot as hell in here. I don’t need you breathing on me, too.”
But Jeremy’s music stirs. It covers the squeal of her voice with the smoothest song I ever heard. It’s the only slow song he know.
I bury my face in a cool towel, pat it slowly, then pinch my cheeks sore to remind myself not to smile too happy if Jeremy look at me ’cause Cynthia might see.
He don’t never look at no other girls. The only reason he’s here at all is the debts he got to pay off, even some he owe Cynthia. She told him he needed to stop selling his family heirlooms and get another job. It’s why she gave him one. It’s like she thinks she’s part responsible for him. Knew Jeremy’s daddy before he passed. His daddy sold her this brothel even though she a woman. Almost impossible to repay the favor.
When I get back in the saloon, Cynthia’s standing across the room squirming in her low-cut dress, picking at her lace stockings. She cracks her toe knuckles when she takes her feet out of her heels.
I take a pitcher of water from near the front door and pour two short glasses full while I watch Sam through the window. He’s out front talking to some plantation owners. Been out there since before I left. I don’t know why Cynthia ain’t called him in yet ’cause whatever news he getting cain’t be good and he should be working. Ray joined ’em a second ago and already he riled up, pacing, and threatening to hurt somebody.
“Bring me some water,” Cynthia tell me, keeping her eye on them outside.
I meant to bring her the water directly but I caught Jeremy smiling at me. It makes me flush.
I pick up the pitcher and pour water on the wrong side of the glass, drench my dress, splash the floor.
“I can damn well do it myself,” Cynthia say, getting out her chair, coming for her pitcher. Sam and Ray come back through the door.
“Who you out there talkin to?” Cynthia say to Sam.
“Authorities,” Sam say. “Found the body of a plantation owner over in Alabama. Don’t know who did it. Got the rest of ’em scared.”
My stomach lurches.
“Goddamn niggers, that’s who!” Ray say. “And . . .”
“I didn’t ask you, Ray,” Cynthia say.
“Then you tell her, Sam. Tell her what some nigger did.”
Jeremy’s melody starts to fade from my hearing, and the sound of my own heart is loud as a drum at my ear.
Sam goes behind the bar, leaving Ray standing next to me and everybody else waiting for Sam’s answer. Even Jeremy stops playing.
My hands tremble and I hug the pitcher to my chest to stop ’em. Without a word, Sam picks up a wet glass and dries it.
“The whole household was killed,” Ray say. “The nigger stud, too. Three bodies, all . . .”
My hearing goes.
He spits as he talks. His words become noiseless sprays on my hands—soapsuds of colorless spit bubbles piled into tiny dome clusters there. They stretch and thin and turn from pink to yellow, then pop in rhythm, one after the other, leaving tiny white circles on my brown skin.
“No one knows who did it,” Sam say, bringing the noise back. “Anything more is gossip.”
“Ain’t gossip,” Ray say. “It’s the truth. Somebody dark was seen running from the scene.”
“Could’ve been a shadow,” Sam say. “Everybody looks dark at night.”
“Not as dark as the nigger who did it. I’d bet on it. Bounty hunters followed his tracks for miles. Damn near to this place.”
“Wasn’t nowhere near here,” Sam say. “Happened ten miles from Faunsdale. That’s still seventy or more miles from here. Could’ve gone anywhere.”
I hold my breath, feel sweat on my face. Jeremy begins his piano again. His low notes like a funeral hymn inside me.
“So it was a him,” Cynthia say.
“At least six-one, six-two, six-three foot tall,” Ray say, stretching his arms up high like I did the night I ran with the coat above my head. “That’s what the witnesses said. Broad shoulders. But I heard some of their females get big as seven foot in Alabama.”
Ray reaches for the water pitcher in my hand and tugs at it. His quick movements almost send me out my damp skin. I want to let go of it but I cain’t. My hands done taken root in it. Our eyes meet. Dead center. His brown eyes are cold blue. He say, “Where you say you from?”
“None of your damn business, is where,” Cynthia say. “Five feet nothin, she is.”
“She black. Maybe she know who done it.”
“Give that fool the pitcher, Naomi, after you pour me the water I asked for twenty minutes ago.”
“I’m puttin my hat in it,” Ray say. “Me and my cousins. We gon’ find who done it, get the reward.”
I unstick my fingers from the pitcher and pour a glass for Cynthia and take a deep breath before I give it to her, feel my racing heartbeats slow—just a little.
19 / APRIL 1863
Tallassee, Alabama
IT’S BEEN SIX months since he got Josey.
Six months since he tore her apart.
Was six hours that day that didn’t nobody come to stop him. Nobody heard nothing. Saw nothing. Nobody but me.
It was in those hours, those too many times, too many ways, that Josey had to surrender. Had to believe everything George was telling her. Had to swallow his words about herself. Her body. He said she was an animal. A dog. Not worthy of human decency. So when she disconnected from her mind and watched all those things happen to her own self, what was real was his voice speaking the truth about her, breaking her mind ’til she believed everything he said. And because she could believe it, she survived.
And now, her revenge is mine.
A kind of self-defense, I’d call it. A third kind. The first kind would be plain self-defense. That’s what Cynthia once called it. “Justified,” she said. “You ain’t responsible for killing somebody if they trying to kill you first.”
Self-defense is what Cynthia almost had to do about those men who came to hurt me in her garden. It’s what I had to do the night I killed Massa.
But I won’t let Josey be a murderer.
I’ll do it.
And I don’t need to be excused by the law: self-defense. ’Cause George don’t need to be in the act for what I got for him. He’s still alive and some danger is always with you. Its suddenness can arise at any time, you just don’t know when. So I call it “defending self,” a second kind of self-defense, a switch of words, a switch of position, where the victim takes control and beats the asshole to it. I need to make sure George never comes back; that I make him stop for good. I don’t need the law to allow it. I don’t need “justified.” ’Cause it don’t matter anyway. I already told you the truth. What I’m after is the third kind.
Satisfaction.
So for six months, I been visiting the spot in the woods where the dead walk hoping to find a soul to help me, to teach me what I need to know to touch the living. But I been unlucky. This evening was no different.
Now, the dark and early morni
ng is sending a sliver of moon over me, following me into Josey’s and Charles’s quarters where it stops at the window. A thin curtain is tacked on it like a used napkin. It rolls from left to right. Wind trapped behind it is fighting its way out. A ripple flaps the edge away, finally letting go.
Charles sits on the floor, sleeping in the corner, wearing the day clothes he been in since yesterday. His arms and legs are crossed, his neck is hooked over, his back is against the wall. The whites of his eyes is showing through the slits, and every once in a while he’ll swat his hand in front of his face and mumble. He chokes hisself awake on his slobber, then wipes it from his chin.
A sheet still hangs from the ceiling to the floor, separating Charles’s part of the room from Josey’s. I go behind it to where Josey’s rolling in her bed covers, sleeping good. I wonder when the memories of that cursed day will stop haunting her dreams the way I suspect they never did for Momma. I imagine Josey keeps reliving it the way I do these flashes. The way Momma must have done before she went silent.
So I talk to Josey. Sometimes I think she hears me. Sometimes not. Maybe my words are just another thought, another voice in her head. I cain’t be sure if it was me who talked her into getting washed up and dressed yesterday.
From first glance, or the second, there ain’t much on Josey that would be a sign that anything happened. Except for the scars on her knees and elbows. She’s even walking right again. But young folks can be that way. The worse thing could happen one day and the next be like any other. But, I know.
If nothing else, the proof of the horror is still in her eyes, even when she blinks, they don’t move, still frozen from fear. Blues fixed in place like a doll’s, painted on and empty, looking nowhere and somewhere or any place you make it look. “Chrissie Ann,” Josey woulda said to her doll baby before six months ago. “See them fields and flowers. Them sparrows.”
But she wouldn’t say that now. Ain’t seen her doll babies since it happened.
Charles been too busy to see her as she is. He’s been sharpening his tools, putting together metal pieces, getting ready to show his work and be somebody’s hired hand. He been running hisself ragged making plans for freedom, to start hisself a new life with Josey. You can pass for white, he told her. Got more chances, he said. None like I got.
And this broke her heart.
We work together, he told her. You buy supplies where I cain’t. Say I work for you. White peoples . . . they can be your peoples, too. Tears streamed down her face as he told her.
She whispered, “I’m negro, too.”
Charles was knocked out asleep on the floor from dreaming the future before Josey even finished the dishes last night.
A cricket is chirping in this room somewhere. I don’t know where, but it’s already on my nerves, creaking and calling for company. Before I finish my thought, Josey sits straight up in bed and startles me, hollering, “Frogs!”
The panic in her voice shakes my soul. Charles rip the sheet down. I’m already beside her. Won’t leave her. Won’t ever leave her. Her eyes are wide open now, still screaming from her bed mat. “Frogs!”
She crab-walks herself back against the wall, kicking and swiping at her bed sheets. “Get away from me!”
Charles swishes his hands around her mat, turns it over, reaches under it but don’t come back with no nothin. “They on me, Daddy! The frogs is on me!”
Charles lunges for the floor lamp near the window, feels for the wick, lights it, shines it on her covers. “Where the frogs, Josey! Where? I don’t see nothin.”
He kneels next to her, holding his lamp, pressing his hands in her sheets, back and forth. “I don’t feel nothin, Josey.”
“They on me, Daddy!”
“Nothin’s here, Josey! Ain’t nothin . . .” The lamp swings its light on Josey’s legs. Deep gouges and cuts are all over ’em, gleaming with wet new blood. The wounds are still trickling. “What is this, Josey?” Charles say. “How you get these?”
“Get ’em off me, Daddy,” Josey say, tired. “Get these frogs off.”
“Josey?” he say, shaking his head, confused. “Josey, these ain’t no thorn bush.”
“Get ’em off me, Daddy. Please!”
“Who done this to you, Josey?” He grabs her arms, “Josey, who done this! You fell down? You done it?”
“The boy,” she cry.
“What boy, Josey? Some boy come in here?” Charles rushes the window, pushes the curtain out. “He come through here, Josey? Somebody come through here?”
He holds hisself out the window hole trying to see as far as he can. She hugs her knees to her chest, crying. He comes back to comfort her, falls next to her. “Josey, what you mean, a boy? Was it your dream? Is that where the boy was?”
Charles don’t know what to do, like I didn’t. Like I don’t. He looks too scared to touch her. Her cuts. Finally he say, calm, “It’s all right,” and pulls her to him.
CHARLES NEVER WENT back to sleep last night. He been sitting wide-eyed and quiet on the floor where the sun rose on him. In the center of the room, sunlight seeps through the wood plank walls, striping his face and the dirt-brown floor with white. Specks of dust float into the light like clear bits of lemon in a glass pitcher of sweet tea. He’s been replaying last night in his thoughts. What it means for a slave to be sick in the mind. If that’s what this is. If that’s what he’s been trying not to see in her strange silences.
There’s a hundred reasons for a person to sit quiet and alone, he’s been telling hisself. A broken mind ain’t the only one. But now, these night terrors have come. The way they’ve come for other slaves he’s seen broken in time. He knows what could happen if Slavedriver Nelson finds out. He remembers Sister Kate was killed after she confessed her bad memories and said they stick in her head. Said these things that stick pull off the skin inside, and show her the bad over and over again ’til she ache so bad she cain’t see. She couldn’t scrub it away like she did them floors so she blamed her hands and cut ’em in the kitchen where she thought nobody could see. The stick wouldn’t rub off in a ball and get caught in the wind like it did for them slaves who pretended to forget. And she couldn’t. And like them horses that broke their legs, them sheep that laid down too long, or milk left out of the shade, she cost too much to make better and wasn’t worth nothing so she got ended quick.
But Josey was fine, he told hisself. A hundred reasons, he told hisself.
Last night’s cricket is stamped dead in the corner of the room now. Its wispy gray stick legs are flat out. It didn’t have a chance in the shuffle.
Charles gets up when he hears Josey stirring. He puts on food, his good face, and sets the table. When he sees Josey come through the curtain wearing a strained smile, he rejoices a little, quick to take it in as only joy. She’s all right. He was wrong. He has hope again. And even more, today, they’ll be free. Slaves from three plantations are meeting on this property. Even four months ago it wouldn’t have been so ’cause all this was just a story.
Even Missus Graham never came to say if the rumor was true. Other plantations have. Some said it was true. Some, a lie. But here, Missus Graham never said nothin, ain’t broke routine. Even when the letters started coming frequent last December, nothin. Nobody could read ’em but her.
And when Slavedriver Nelson never came back on horse or foot, everybody got suspicious that maybe we was free, but we decided it was safer to stay unsure than be a runaway.
So the ones of us in the field waited for somebody like Nelson to take his place and when none came, Seth took on the role hisself even though he was a slave, too. He ran a tight ship. One of decency and respect. He wanted to keep order for Missus Graham. Keep everybody fed and housed and working for the Graham plantation ’til there was an answer from somewhere, or at least ’til we got through winter.
Finally, we got that answer—a preacher from Montgomery County. He was a slave like us ’til January just gone. We are free, he said. The clay that was the Emancipation Proclam
ation had hardened and dried and was signed by the president of the United States hisself. The president has power over all us, he said, slave and free. So we could go and be sure. Many have. Don’t know where they’re going, though. They’ve passed through here over the months claiming north, and saying come with us, but we’ve said no, we’ll stay.
But this preacher know what he’s talking about. He got papers he can read and men with him to testify to the same. So finally, the go meeting has come. It’s at noon. Everybody’s gon’ announce their intentions—where they gon’ go and what they gon’ do. We leaving, too.
“Come on now, Josey, put your birthday clothes on,” Charles say, pulling his suspenders over his button-down shirt.
“Yes, Daddy,” Josey say but keeps sitting at the table like she’s done since the end of breakfast, stone-faced and staring straight ahead. She ain’t touched her food. Ain’t brought her hands up from under the table to take even a crumb to her lips. Sweat is beading on both sides of her forehead like it’s hot. I go near her and listen to her breathe in pants. It ain’t her vapors.
“I cain’t believe it’s official,” Charles say, chuckling. “Four months we been free. I guess it’s true what they say: the journey to freedom starts when you first believe it.”
Josey’s breathing quickens. A grunt. Another.
“April’s good as any day to start,” he say, chuckling. “But not good as God, though. He good, ain’t He?”
Charles got one foot halfway in his sock, hopping away from the wall, and almost falls over laughing . . . at hisself, and this good news. The first time he heard the rumor of the president’s order from Jacob and Jacob Jr. was when he got home at dusk on the day after the meeting, after what happened to Josey, those months ago. And that day, he had nobody to share his joy with ’cause Josey was already in bed when Charles came in shouting about it.
Josey didn’t move from her mat. She didn’t want her daddy to see her, didn’t want him to know her shame, didn’t want to explain to him what George did. So she closed her eyes and pretended to sleep. Rolled over when Charles came through her curtain. She moved just enough for him to see she was alive. So when he whispered that he was home and asked if she heard the good news, she didn’t answer. Didn’t say much the next day, either, or the next. “You all right? You sick?” Charles asked her. A week later he decided that not everybody take good news the same way cause that conclusion was easier than the other. And when he noticed her strange bruises, her eye, and her limp when she walked, he decided that maybe she’d hit her head. “Clumsy,” she said before he could ask her about ’em.
Grace Page 13
