The Arms of God: A Novel

by Lynne Hinton

Now the angel, of course, did not reveal all things to Nellie. She was not told, for instance, what had already passed. And that they were all free to go as they wanted, not needing the light and tender voice of a little girl sitting on a milking stool soothing the throat of an old white woman. Nellie never saw the icy death lurking in the frigid winds that wrapped around the mountains facing the end of a river. The angel did not show her the poisonous fangs of the brown water moccasin that swam just below the surface of muddy water. There was no glimpse of the wild dogs or the nimble bobcats that fought for the caves and ate flesh.

  There was just enough to convince the child and the other slaves that the angel was truly on their side. And that required little or no evidence since each of them hungered for any news that God had not deserted them. So it wasn’t until much later when the bearded man from the North came riding up with the news everyone else had heard that she learned of the cold mountain deaths of hundreds of South Carolina slaves and first began to doubt the angel’s blessedness.

  After the arrival of the bearded man who spoke of freedom, she and her parents moved to North Carolina where they were sharecroppers, a new way of describing the old slavery. And she continued to sing though not for any Big Missus. Nellie Star became very popular in the riverbank gatherings and the little cabin churches that flourished along the now broken South. And the young gentle-voiced girl grew into a tall straight-back woman with a voice that saved souls and melted hearts.

  One such heart was that of a skinny young man who brought her candies and told her stories of Africa. He was wiry with soft eyes and a smile that sneaked from his eyes down across his lips. He was smart, could read, and knew about things that Nellie Star had never dreamed of. He told her about the war and the split in white people’s minds. He knew about the North and places black people could work and make decent money, own their own homes. He wrote poetry that she turned into songs; and together they were the music for tenant farmers and Jesus-loving poor folks.

  She had little need of the angel during those few years, so she quit listening. Besides, she had always felt a certain burden for having such a gifted responsibility; and she was glad not to need it anymore. Now she trusted in the foreverness of love and believed in the promises of a brilliant young man who dropped chocolates in her lap.

  She married Robert Blackwell on a sunny day when the wedding music was just loud enough to cover up the whispers of a loose-lipped angel talking of death. And eighteen months later she did not see the glint of a silver blade in the hand of an angry drunk man as it ripped apart the flesh that clothed her lover’s heart. She did not hear the pounding of her name in his brain that soon quieted to a footstep. She did not see, did not hear, did not understand until it was too late.

  When the rumbling of the angel finally woke her, she left her baby girl sleeping and raced to the place she had seen in a dream. But by the time she arrived Robert was dead and the pounding had ceased.

  She did not curse the angel this time, however. She even continued to sing, though a bit of her magic was gone. No, Nellie Star did not splinter and break until she felt the tightening around her neck and discovered that God gives out nothing for free.

  John Smith Broadnax was too old for picking cotton; but he wasn’t too old to defend the home he built and paid for. So when the two white men rode up and shook the dirt off their boots onto his porch and went in without knocking, he grabbed his shotgun with the reflexes of a boy and fought them both with the strength of a man years younger than himself.

  The white men were surprised by his agility but welcomed the struggle and found that they enjoyed whipping and hanging an old man who reminded them of their youth and emphasized their power.

  Virginia died stretching toward her husband, kicked and gun-whipped in the head without a thought as they pulled her husband to the nearest tree. She too spoke Nellie’s name, but it did not speed the flight of an unsure angel.

  Nellie was folding laundry, watching Ruth dance, arms outstretched in a sliver of late afternoon sun. She was even humming a song for dancing when she felt the heavy brush of smoldering wings.

  Nellie walked first, then ran, praying to the belligerent angel. Begging her not to tease. Speaking to her like a dutiful child speaks to a parent. Begging forgiveness for not believing. She talked to the angel like a friend, calling her names of affection and promising her things like faithfulness and adoration. But when she got to the tree and saw the dream was too late, she cut down her father, washed the fatal wounds of her mother, cursed the angel to hell, and never sang again.

  Olivia was stunned by the silence and the grievous glance that peeled from behind the old woman’s eyes. Her choice not to sing had nothing to do with time or age or even forgotten melodies. It took only one look at her and she knew Nellie Star did not sing because something or someone stole away her song.

  The little girl did not wait for an answer. Even at her young age, Olivia had learned enough about the lives of old people that she understood there were some things she did not need to hear.

  She walked out the door, returning to her play with Tree, and simply left her oldest neighbor standing at the window, a truth too heavy to speak.

  I’ve got a question

  guess I’ll ask the ground

  is everything lost always found?

  School started late the year Tree found out about her parents. The rains were delayed, the days long and hot; and because of that, the tobacco fields couldn’t be harvested until deep into the month of August. Since both communities, white and black, were dependent upon the crop for their livelihood and dependent upon children for help, the school year began and ended at the discretion of farmers and the whim of southern seasons.

  Glorietta Pope was the one who wrote and passed the note during math lessons to Tree, a note that everyone read and waited for the little girl’s reaction. She sent it from the rear of the classroom all the way to the front seat where Tree was sitting. Mrs. Little had left the room to see about getting someone to help her open the windows while the class was supposed to be working on their multiplication tables.

  Tree was on the eights when the small torn and folded piece of paper was slipped beneath her elbow by Terrance Walker, the new boy in school who sat behind her. The note was on the bottom of a homework sheet, the sentence written in large black letters penned by the hand of a ten-year-old: “Your mama killed your daddy.”

  Tree folded up the note and stuck it in the side pocket of her new pair of pants as the teacher walked into the room with the janitor, Mr. Glass. The little girl didn’t even glance around to see who had sent it. She turned the page of her math book and moved onto her column of nines.

  When the day at school was over, she spoke to no one, not even her brother. Instead, she headed straight for home. Olivia was already there waiting to discuss her teacher’s means of discipline and a boy who had started fourth grade at the age of fifteen. But before she could begin to tell her stories or ask her best friend questions about her class, Tree walked up the steps of the porch and into the house, put down her books, and turned around and walked out, heading in the direction of town.

  “Hey, Tree, wait!” Olivia had jumped up and was following her. “Where you going?”

  The little girl never answered. And the two of them walked in silence past the empty field where the church had burned, out beyond the row of houses on the main road, the drugstore and the tobacco market, and down the curve to the house where Ruth worked as a cook and a maid.

  She went to the kitchen in the back and knocked on the door. Olivia followed closely.

  Ruth heard the knock and was soon standing at the door.

  “Lord, child, you walk by yourselves all this way?” She glanced up the road to see if there was anyone else with them.

  Olivia smiled. “Hey, Miss Ruth.”

  “Hello, baby. You have a good day at school?”

  Olivia nodded.

  Ruth stood at the top of the porch. The girls were perc
hed on a middle step, one behind the other.

  “What’s the matter, sweet girl?” She shut the door and walked down to her daughter.

  “You kill Daddy?”

  Olivia slipped down a step, one foot falling over the other. The question made her dizzy.

  “What, child?” Ruth steadied herself against the banister after making sure her neighbor was okay.

  “I asked you if you killed my daddy?” Tree moved closer to Ruth.

  “Where did you hear that?” her mother asked, her voice having turned soft and wobbly.

  “Doesn’t matter where I heard it. Is is true?” The little girl suddenly sounded old to her mother, old and troubled, like a woman in need of help.

  Ruth paused, opened the door, and went inside. After a few minutes she came out with three glasses on a silver tray. Olivia took one look at the grand display of refreshment and thought it was the most handsome thing she had ever seen. She took one of the glasses from her neighbor and drank down a big swallow of lemonade.

  Ruth balanced the tray on the edge of the banister and took one of the glasses herself. She held it out to her daughter. Tree did not reach for it. She did not budge. She waited for her mother to respond.

  The older woman set the tray on a step and pulled a dark blue handkerchief from her apron and wiped her face. She was tired, Olivia could tell; and the woman stuck the rag in her pocket, sat down, and slid over to make room for her daughter to sit beside her.

  Olivia sat on the ground next to them. She was anxious to hear Ruth’s reply and she wondered how Tree had kept such a question to herself for the entire walk from Smoketown. She wondered how her friend had managed to wrap up and hold her pain.

  Ruth took a long swallow and then set the glass on the tray. She peered around the house to see up the street, thinking about her employer and how much time she should take to tell her daughter her story. Tree sat with her gaze focused directly on her mother. Her chest rose and fell with each hard breath.

  “The first time I went dancing with your daddy, he said my eyes were strong and carried a light breeze in them that made him think of the ocean.”

  The little girl had heard that her parents met at a softball game, introduced to each other by a cousin they shared. She didn’t know that it was the slow dance at the Little River Delight juke-joint that blistered them, heart by heart.

  “There were royal blue lanterns hung about the place, torn and dusty; and the smoke wrapped around us like a wall. The music was thick and dreamy and somehow it dragged us into each other while drawing us into itself.” Ruth grew quiet remembering how their bodies pushed and pulled against the weight of the song until finally they relaxed and fell into the arms and neck, the chest and hips of the other.

  He leaned into her with the sound that named him. “Tick, tick, tick.” He whispered in her ear the clicking voice of tongue against roof and felt her grow and melt into him. And from dance to table talk, from dusk to morning, from juke-joint to riverbank they lost themselves completely.

  “I fell in love with him,” Ruth said to her daughter. “With his dreams.” She glanced at her side and noticed that Tree had softened a bit. She handed her the other glass and Tree took it.

  “I fell in love with the sound of his tongue and the way he could sing.”

  Olivia smiled.

  “I think he fell in love with my innocence, the way I wanted to believe everything he said.”

  Ruth paused thinking how they were the carriages for each other and long in coming; so that when they married they did so without any hesitations nor did they entertain doubts since they both believed so strongly in the vigor of that first dance.

  They lived in the silent house with Miss Nellie since they had no other home. And though the old woman was never rude, Ruth knew that her mother did not trust the man her daughter loved. There was too much hunger, she had told Ruth, in the way he dreamed and planned. Too much desperation for the slow ways of the world. Too much intensity for a black man.

  Ruth understood now that Nellie knew that hunger in the spirit never goes away. That it may be slighted or cooled or may take another form. But it is never completely filled so that she was not surprised when a hole tore between them.

  “I did the same work I do now. I cleaned the houses of mill workers.” Ruth thought about how hard it was to find work in those days and how she walked three miles to the village and cleaned from eight until six, then she walked back home and cleaned her own. She made almost two dollars a week, which was good steady pay. And now with the new thought of love keeping her company, she walked a little lighter and was not dampened by the long hours.

  “Your daddy, Ticker,” she said his name as if Tree might not recognize it, “was a necklace of dreams strung together by my determination to love him.” Ruth leaned against the door.

  “His first dream was to own his own farm. Build a house for his wife and family and sell crops in the same line as white farmers. He figured that he would be the envy of all the sharecroppers because the land he worked would be his own; him, the only boss.”

  Ruth, in the beginning, had loved the idea and understood when he told her he could not work while he was dreaming because there were too many things to do. She understood how hard it was trying to find just the right piece of land. And she explained to Nellie how much negotiation it took for a black man to get a fair price. She did not mind when Ticker dipped in the savings or took her check to spend time at the pool hall because she understood that this was where the best deals were made.

  “Then it wasn’t long before Ticker quit dreaming of farming and talked about moving north. He filled my mind with thoughts of long red dresses and nights of big bands and felt hats.”

  She took another swallow of lemonade, recalling how she had never thought of moving and was a little unsure of leaving her home; but how she became just as excited as he when he told her stories of railroad cars and buses that took them downtown. So that when he danced with her and clicked his tongue in her ear, she did not pause before she emptied the money jar and gave it to him so that he could try to win a poker game for tickets.

  “That was the first time he hit me,” she said to the two girls. “And at the time, I thought he had the right, that it was just a part of the price for dreaming.”

  Tree dipped the glass to her lips, wondering how close she had come in the imaging of her father.

  “The next time it was panning for gold in California; and it took fourteen dollars to buy the right equipment. I packed my bags this time and waited for a signal; but that time he hit me with his belt buckle.” She reached up and touched a small scar that was right above her left eye. “I stopped the bleeding in my forehead, quietly put away my things, and did not think again of gold.”

  The two girls listened as the woman talked about how her marriage became a cycle of dream and violence, how she believed his apologies with the same enthusiasm that she believed his ideas, how little by little her mother’s silence grew thin.

  Ruth set her glass down on the tray, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She set both hands beside her, steadying herself as she laid out the family history to her daughter. She was nothing but truth. She told the story exactly as she remembered it, exactly as it unfolded along the edge of Smoketown.

  “When I became pregnant with your brother, Ticker got a job. He worked loading bales of cotton; and for a few months I thought things were better, that the way we lived together, the beatings he gave, had been broken by the dream of our new baby. But when he quit his job and drove to West Virginia with that shine in his eyes, I knew it was not the shine of our baby.”

  Tree rested her head against the railing, listening, her breathing slowed.

  “This time, however, he made bigger plans and moved me and Mama to the house we live in now. Only then we had to share it with another woman and three children. It was dirty, like you never seen before.” She peered down the road at a group of white children walking to their homes. “B
ut he told us it was only for a little while and left us to go back to West Virginia with a friend.”

  Ruth paused, remembering how he missed the birth of his son but returned with gifts, sweet wine, and the promise that he would come again for them. He told stories of fast promotions and how well he was liked so that when Ruth questioned the plan and complained of rats he was angered by her mistrust.

  “He blamed Mama when I asked him how long we had to live where we were and he hit her across the face.” She turned to her daughter, making sure she was still able to hear what was being told, making sure that she should keep going, that she shouldn’t just finish and set the story down.

  Tree had dropped her eyes away from her mother.

  “I should have done something then,” she said, nodding her head. “I should have stopped things right then.” She made a humming sound deep in her throat.

  Olivia slid her finger across the top of her glass. The rim was smooth and edged in gold.

  Ruth continued. “Your grandmother and I cleaned and rebuilt and planted and painted and we didn’t mind at all when the other woman and her three children moved away. It felt like a home again; and we were all happy.” She stopped and smiled. “And then he came back, and this time without no dream.”

  Ruth hesitated and then decided not to tell her daughter how for five years she and Nellie protected E. Saul and struggled with the dreamless man, how she learned to hold her breath without drowning while he forced himself upon her and stole away her hope. She recalled but chose not to explain how she was able to close herself off to the blows across her body and make herself the wall that locked away her mother and her son and pretended it did not hurt to stand so still.

  And since she thought her daughter was too young and did not need to know everything she did not tell her that Ticker took the company of other women. Drunks and addicts mostly, that he even brought some of them to their home, took them in their own bed.

  “The women in the neighborhood, they were good to me those years,” she said to her daughter. “They brought me ice packs and poultices.” Ruth paused again, remembering the way she was cared for, the way the women came around, easy and unrequested, how they mothered her through the bad times. She remembered how they never interfered or offered her a place to stay until she was six months pregnant and bleeding from her eyes.