I’m grounded now.
“I thought you wanted to help me. Help us.” He walks away from me this time, back to Mr. Shepard’s door.
“Thought you wanted to help us get out of here,” he say. “Together.”
“But I cain’t do that,” I say.
“I was gonna win the money back,” he say. “Go to Boston, Mimi . . . take vows.” He turns to me, “I’ve never asked a woman to be my bride.”
I don’t know what to say. He leans back against the wall, hanging his head. Won’t look at me now. Instead, he turns to that wall, beats his forehead against it once, twice, rests it there, his arms fall to his sides, then he twists around forward, looks up at the ceiling. I grab his hand through his fingers. He’s crying.
“I never wanted to do anything to hurt you, Mimi. I would’ve forgave you for it. I would’ve. Now you have to forgive me for asking.”
I wipe my own tears. “I wouldn’t even know what to do.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry about it now. There’s nothing wrong with staying around this brothel all our lives and not getting married.”
“You cain’t sell more of your family things?”
“It’s gone, Mimi. Everything! I bet it all for us. Guess I was wrong about you being my lucky charm.” He throws my hand and walks away.
“Jeremy?”
My future leaving me.
“Jeremy!”
He’s about to turn the corner into the saloon.
“Tell me what to do!” I say.
“What?” he say, sniffing his tears and coming back.
“Tell me how to do it.”
I swear he’s floating back down this hall to me, keeping his eyes on me like he loves me. Like we don’t belong to this place, these women, this time. He takes my hand and kisses the back of it. “I guess it would be like tasting sweets,” he say. “Like what I do for you all the time, but different.”
I watch the floor.
“It don’t matter anyway, Mimi, I won’t ask you to do it.”
“You want this money?” I say. “Just one more hand and you can win it all back?” I walk him back up the hall with me to the saloon.
“What are you doing, Mimi?”
I reach over Sam’s bar and pour me a shot of whiskey and finish it like a drunk would, feeling it warming my cheeks. “You said you want this money?”
I start back to the gambling parlor and he reaches for my hand trying to stop me but I shake him loose, walk down the hallway alone. The walk feels longer this time.
I don’t go through Mr. Shepard’s door right away. I wait. Then open it. Let it close behind me. Locked.
It looks different in here during the day.
Empty with only Mr. Shepard here.
The chalk lines that were drawn on the floor last night from a game of craps look like a child’s game in this light. The solid wood tables that were beaten by men’s fists only hours ago look feeble and small and only fit for light reading. This room’s a library. And I’m its newest fixture.
I stand on the wrong side of this door with my belly quivering, waiting for Mr. Shepard to greet me. He’s counting his money, slipping bills through his pinchers. He folds a wad of dollars and slides it through a silver clasp and into his pocket.
I shift in the doorway, hope he see me move.
He don’t.
He lops a deck of cards in his bag, his dice, then fastens it closed. I clear my throat. “Uh-hum,” I say softly. Louder, “Uh-hum?”
“Didn’t know y’all served breakfast,” he say, and stacks his chips in piles on his table, then sits down. “You here for my order?”
“N—naw, suh, Mr. Shepard.”
I try to think about Jeremy, the secret wedding we gon’ have when he win, what I’m gon’ wear when we promise. But just as I think it, the thoughts get ripped away, blurred and in pieces. I say, “S—somethin else I can do for you, suh?”
He sits back in his chair, puts his feet up. “It’s a damn shame, really. Most men take at least a day, a week before they send their girlfriends, their wives, their sisters. But you . . . almost immediately. He did send you, didn’t he?”
I don’t say nothing.
“Twenty years and I’ve seen hundreds of gals like you. Chasing a chance for some man they think loves ’em. A sad occasion. I’ll do you the favor of some advice. Leave him while you still got a soul.”
I don’t want to look at him.
I wipe my sweaty hands down the sides of my dress, whisper, “Can I do something for you, suh?”
“Speak up!”
I try to remember me and Jeremy, why I’m here . . . the way we love each other. How this can help us leave here and start a new life.
He say, “What makes you think I’d ever touch your kind?”
“I . . . I could take good care of you, Mr. Shepard. I’m experienced.” I lean my back against the door, raise one hand above my head, put one foot flat against the door, pucker my lips.
He watches me. Finally, he gets up and comes to me. “Charlie,” he say. “Call me Charlie.”
“Yes’sa, Charlie, suh.”
“Tell me what you’d do exactly,” he say.
I lower my voice so it’s sexy and raspy like Cynthia’s when she charming. I say, “I’ll make you happy.”
“Then talk dirty to me,” he say.
“Dirty, suh?”
“You do know how to talk dirty? With that voice you just made and all.”
I fidget a little, lower my arm and foot, wipe my hands on my dress again, put ’em back on the door in place.
“Tell me what makes you special?” he say.
“I’ve only been with one man, suh. I . . . I ain’t had no children so I’m still tight.”
He puts his hand gently behind my head. I shiver as he kisses my cheek softly. Only Jeremy’s kissed me there. That way.
He slaps it. Grabs my face around my cheeks, squeezing too hard. “Tell me you’d fuck me,” he say.
I hesitate.
“Say it!”
“I . . . I’d fuck you, suh.”
“Say, ‘I want to fuck you.’”
“I—I want to . . .”
“Say, ‘I like it rough.’ You do that?”
“Y—yes, suh.”
“Don’t say, ‘suh.’”
“Yes, Mr. Shepard.”
“Charlie!” he say.
“Yes, Charlie.”
“I got a big dick, too. You like that? Split you open?”
“Yes, suh . . . Charlie.”
“You can make me hot? Make me come.”
“I . . .”
He turns me around, pushes my face into the door. “Tell me you’d suck my cock.”
“I’ll tell you anything.”
“Tell me!”
“I’ll suck it.”
“Spill my seed where I want to? Your mouth?”
I nod, my cheekbone grinding on the door.
“Your boyfriend want a chance that bad? Give up his tightness for me?” He clutches my ass, presses his face on the side of mine. I flatten to the door as he breathes in my ear, telling me things I don’t want to hear. Telling me about me. About Jeremy. Nasty things I won’t tell nobody.
He unlocks it, pushes me out the door, tells me to go.
I stand outside his door alone.
The morning light is stale now. Withered away. And I’m nasty.
My skin feels spitted all over, hocked and loogied, brushed on and stanking.
Jeremy’s waiting for me.
I cain’t go to him like this. Cain’t let him feel me sticky and smell me this way. I smell of the breath of dead things. This hallway, an empty tunnel of bones.
“Naomi?” Jeremy say.
Don’t come near me.
“Naomi?”
He holds me now. When my face hits his chest, the bitter taste of whiskey livens in my mouth. Jeremy kisses my neck but won’t touch my sinful lips.
“I love you,” he says, holding me tig
hter. “I love you so much.”
He lets me cry there in his chest, rubs my back. “I love you, too,” I say.
“I don’t even care about the money,” he says. “Whatever he gave you will never be enough. I don’t even want it.”
I don’t want to talk.
He squeezes me. “How much was it?” he say.
I hug him back. Hard as I can.
He say, “It don’t matter. I’m just so sorry, Mimi. I promise to God that I’ll win back double. Triple. And we’ll leave tonight. Get married like we meant to.”
“Nothing,” I say.
“What was that, doll?”
There’s doll again.
I say, “He didn’t give me nothing.”
He throws his arms off me. “Bastard didn’t pay you!” He turns away from me, headed to the parlor door.
I stop him. “He didn’t want me. I tried but he didn’t want me.”
“How hard did you try?”
I cain’t answer.
“I’m sorry,” he say. “I love you so much, Mimi. We’ll find another way.”
28 / MAY 1864
Tallassee, Alabama
WE’RE ALL BORN empty.
Got a empty place inside us that needs to be filled and refilled by something real. And if you believe as I believe, it’s the seat of God. Love. God is love. But for these needy bodies, almost anything will do.
We start that way. Needy. Babies crying for food and drink and warmth. And as we get older, we fill our empty with anything promising wholeness, or peace from it—friends, alcohol, sex, money. But the only thing that quenches for a long spell—forever if we want—is love.
The love we choose.
And renewed love is as beautiful as new, I think. Like finding sweet things in old linted pockets, brushed off and licked new. Syrupy sweet, they are. The way they were first made to be.
I imagine when Mr. and Mrs. Graham were young they were filled with love. And the first time he saw her, he got a big lump in his throat while she ignored him completely.
I imagine his humor, his kindness, and the kiss he snuck on the day of a church picnic, made her give herself to him. That they exchanged letters that made her blush and she showed ’em to her friends.
I imagine he’d always find ways to skip fishing to see her, to hold hands with her, to waste time daydreaming ’cause nothing else mattered.
I imagine they laid on the grass near some stream when it was in full spring bloom and they shared wild dreams and the names they’d give their children.
I imagine they loved each other deeply, with every bit of themselves, they did.
But now, another woman lies in Annie’s bed.
ANNIE WAS JUST finishing her wartime party, a fundraiser for something-rather, when I came this afternoon and found Kathy upstairs in Annie’s bed. Richard, who had slipped away from the party, was waiting across the room from her, and Doctor had his head on Kathy’s fully covered chest. “Cough,” he said.
When she did, he raised his ear off her chest and put two fingers at the side of her neck, said, “Missus Graham is gracious to allow you to utilize her bed. Her room.”
“Yes,” Kathy told Doctor. “My cousins have always been very kind.”
Doctor rearranged his fingers on Kathy’s neck like playing a small piano there, feeling for something. “Cough,” he said again. “Sounds to me like Annie has her priorities in order now. Before today, I would’ve told Richard that he’d be right to divorce her. For her madness. Likely brought on by her barren condition. Especially after she’s brought ill to the Graham home in the manner she has. Roll to your left side.”
“Well, it’s good to be home,” Richard said and turned around into Kathy’s gaze.
“Is it good?” Kathy said.
“It was the right decision,” Doctor said. “It won’t be long until the danger reaches Tallassee and this property. Annie shouldn’t have to go it alone.”
“It’s dangerous everywhere,” Kathy said.
“Union armies burned whole cities in Virginia,” Doctor said. “Murdered innocent civilians. Lincoln is a war criminal, is what. Marauding and looting.”
“Is that us or them?” Kathy said.
“Beg pardon?” Doctor said.
“I heard our own Home Guards are doing their fair share against the innocent. Harassing folks. Richard? How many times were we stopped at gunpoint on the road here?”
“Forgive Katherine,” Richard said. “She’s confused. Our Home Guards have important jobs to do. Protect my property—all civilian property—intercept stragglers, deserters, folks avoiding conscription . . . cowards.”
“Is that what we look like to everybody?” Kathy said. “Cowards?”
“Disqualified,” Richard said. “No one here’s avoided service. It’s been my misfortune. And every town needs a doctor on hand.”
Doctor laid his head on Kathy’s belly.
“See, she’s simple,” Richard said. “She believes everything is cut and dry.”
“War is . . . complicated,” Doctor said to Katherine, nodding with a look of sorry, as if he were explaining a dead pet to a child.
“I heard about what happened in Texas,” Kathy said. “Sixty-five sleeping Confederates executed by other Confederates. You can’t trust anybody.”
“They were avoiding service,” Richard said. “Escaping to Mexico.”
“Deserters,” Doctor said.
“Brothers deserving a fair trial,” Kathy said.
“And I imagine they’ll be plenty more,” Doctor said. “Our army will be working long after we win this war to punish criminals. Our Home Guards and other military men will have to become bounty hunters. Have you heard the numbers, Richard?”
“Thousands,” Richard said.
“No, tens of thousands of deserters,” Doctor said. “Good thing there’s no statute of limitations on cowards.”
“Or murderers,” Kathy said. “But that’s not y’all. Y’all are good men. Richard, for coming home to be here with Annie. And you, Doctor, for ushering human life into the world.”
“Unconventional,” Doctor said. “It’s what I do. Most folks believe the act of delivering babies is a woman’s job.”
“Unconventional, Doctor?” Kathy said.
“It means I can perform a job that most men won’t,” he said. “It’s really no different than handling any other animal.”
Richard laughed. “The biggest difference is that the other animals don’t talk.”
“Then it’s our good fortune you’ve chosen the profession,” Kathy said.
“She has an aversion to negroes,” Richard said.
“The thought of one touching my baby . . .”
“It’s understandable,” Doctor said. “You’d be in your most vulnerable moments. A good white woman wouldn’t necessarily want strange negroes helping to bring her baby into the world. My wife would have chosen the same, bless her departed soul.”
He touched the other side of Kathy’s neck, her back, and her ankles through her clothes while he talked to Richard. Told him that this was the End Times. It’s what the Bible describes as the end of the world, marked by war and suffering. Doctor said he was ready to survive it. Made his home a blockhouse against enemies and weapons. Added rosebushes out front, said, “The bushes make good bullet stoppers. Most people think gunfights happen between the tits and naval. They don’t. They happen twelve inches off the ground.”
Doctor told Richard he should do the same to his house for Annie and Ms. Katherine in case the devil wins this war.
“They won’t win,” Richard said.
“Adequate preparation is the key to civilization,” Doctor said. “Crops and fields could be destroyed in the battle, then the food shortages come. Anarchy. It doesn’t take long for people to turn into animals. Nine days of hunger could turn any good woman into a prostitute. Gold and sugar will be the only good currency. I’ve got both.
“Cough again,” Doctor said.
He
gently squeezed along the tops of Kathy’s arms and down to her wrists. He pinched her fingertips, then her knuckles. Skipped back up her arms to her elbows and shoulders, tapped them there. “Roll to your right side.”
Her thick auburn hair fell beside her and blanketed his hand, its reddish tones shimmered there. Even the doctor paused to notice. As he pulled his hand away, he rubbed her strands together as if sifting through grains of sand. Kathy caught him doing it before he moved on. “Please, roll flat on your back,” he said.
Even though Kathy’s not old, the loose skin under her chin sagged back as she laid on her back, leaving only a crease between her chin and neck and together it looked like a tree trunk. Strange-looking to me but not to Doctor. He was looking at her cleavage in the low cut of her sundress.
“Pretty dress,” he said.
Richard said, “Folks around here don’t usually wear clothes like that. All the fashion in Mississippi.”
“Doctor?” Kathy said, pinching her cleavage to a bulge. “You reckon these are enough to please him? My baby, I mean. They’re like blueberries, don’t you think? Small and . . . a mouthful maybe. A teensy bit to suck on. What do you think, Doctor?”
He glanced past her chest like he hadn’t already saw, and he stuttered, “They—they’re plenty full enough . . . can please any baby.”
“They’re pleasing?” Kathy said.
“Sufficient . . . I meant. God created all mothers to feed their children. I don’t think you’ll have a worry.”
He felt over her swollen belly from the outside of her dress, and just as he did, Kathy lifted her dress above her baby. “Will this be easier, Doctor?”
The doctor froze and stared at her nakedness.
“Katherine!” Richard said, and came near the bed. But when he saw the fullness of her veiny, white belly, he was struck and gagged and turned his head. “Put your dress down!”
“If he’s gonna be my doctor,” Kathy said, “he can’t be afraid to touch me. You’re not afraid to touch me, are you, Doctor?”
“Of course not,” Doctor said, taking in a swallow of air. “Just like any other animal.”
She reached up for Doctor’s hand and pressed it into her naked belly. From over his shoulder, Richard said, “Don’t go telling the doctor how to do his job, Katherine. I’m sorry, Doctor. They do things differently in Mississippi.”
Grace Page 19
