Wait and see. Ella lets the girl drag her from the water. Though she can’t read her face, Ella half expects Agnes to slap her. Her movements are quick, she already has Ella propped up as she drags her across the dirt. Her hands are gentler this time, which is good since she doesn’t seem ready to let go anytime soon. But she’s in the way. If it comes to it, she’ll have to knock her in the head with something. Can’t take her in a fair fight. Not with them strong arms. She’s the fastest girl at the schoolhouse and could even take some of the boys, but Ella can’t outrun those long, muscled legs. Least not with her side burning up. If she can get to that shotgun she can scare her off, maybe. With the girl holding tight, she won’t get far. Maybe if she talks to her, explains that she hasn’t come for her mama or her papa, that all Ella wants is to go home, she’ll just let her go. Let go, let go, Ella thinks. She closes her eyes. The girl’s smooth hands are still stuck fast to Ella’s shoulders. If she lets go, Ella won’t have to hurt her. They’re moving farther and farther away from where she left the shotgun. The trees here look like the ones before it; the fields, even if the girl calls them by different names, look the same, the stories about who did what where sound like one long eulogy. Nothing good has come from this place. Why would this girl be any different? She’ll have to kill her, later. Until then, Ella marks the way tree by tree.
Going around it will take hours. Instead, they cross the river at the shallow. On the other side, the grass beneath her feet is springy. Even for this time of year, the clumps cushion and soothe Agnes’s cracked feet. Soon as they get home she’ll rub them in sweet balm. Might even use some on the gal. Her skin is bruised from head to foot. What could she have done to deserve that? Nothing. Agnes would bet that busted shotgun on it. Mama Skins said she’d brought it on herself. Papa Jonah didn’t say much of nothing ’cept, Be gentle. Be quick, Mama Skins had said. It was the closest thing to them arguing that Agnes had witnessed. Sure, there had been slamming pots, stomping feet, and if he was real mad, an untouched plate. Mama Skins wasn’t no stranger to anger either. Summer squash when she knew it backed him up, tea leaves instead of tobacco, and if she was real mad, silence. But Papa and Mama didn’t argue before today. Even if the words were curt and whispered, things were different. It was all because of this gal.
Agnes knew enough to know there was something they weren’t letting on about. Good thing Meredith and Mantha didn’t feel the same. Soon as he could get clear of the house, Little James had told Agnes everything the two said. She still didn’t believe it. This gal was gonna make life a whole heap better for everybody on the farm? Lessin grown folks sprung out from her belly ready to pick, plow, and do all that needed doing on this place, Agnes didn’t see how. She can’t help but smile. Little James’s liable to tell her anything to get her to run off with him. The bottom of her feet start to tingle.
“This poison,” she says. Ella stops moving.
“No sense standing still. It’s all around here. Right there.” She points to white-tipped bushes. “There, there, and right there where you standing? It’s all up in there. Squeeze some of that juice from them leaves between your legs and any man who touch you will go crazy with itching and scratching.” She breaks off a fat leaf and snaps it in half. “Rub some on you, see for yourself.”
Ella takes the leaf. She watches the clear, sticky goo drip out. “Just a drop now,” Agnes coaxes. “I heard you done met my James.”
Ella’s fingers tingle. She rubs the liquid between her legs. Fire. She’s sure she’s on fire. Burning from the inside out. Sweat pours down her forehead, under her arms, down her legs.
“It’ll cool down. Just takes getting used to. Think about something else. Take your mind off of it. It just takes a bit of time for it to work.” She smiles, hums. “Now you won’t have no baby, least not by my James. Stop fidgeting!” She taps her foot, kicks up soft tufts of dirt. “Just a little while longer.” She watches the clouds scoot across the sky. “You thinking ’bout something else? Good. Don’t think nothing about no itching, no burning. Don’t scratch it! It’ll take your skin clear off. Then what? Just let it be. I like to die the first time Mama Skins put it on me. Had to be five, six. I scratched and scratched. Still got the marks. Now, I hardly notice it at all. Just used to it. You didn’t use too much, did you? It’ll kill you. First it dries out your mouth.”
Ella tries to swallow.
“Then your heart get to boom, boom, boomin’ and your eyes get to going every which way, and everything inside, well, it ain’t in there no more.”
Ella sways.
“Next thing you know, you dead. Just like that.” She claps her hands together. “Mama Skins got something she can give you in case you took too much. Just be sure to stay away from James.”
Ella’s stomach clenches. If she wasn’t about to die, she’d kill Agnes.
It is nearly dark by the time she finally pushes Ella through the slight frame of the small cabin she shares with Mama Skins and Papa Jonah. Inside it is dark and cool. Any cracks or holes had been patched with gum to keep the rain out. The floors are swept and smell of fresh lemon rind. In the center of the room a steel pot glows. From the corner, Mama Skins unfolds herself and stands. Standing, she is smaller than she looks. She is head to head with Agnes. Her arms are thin and bare, smooth except for pockmarks. Her legs are hidden beneath layers of a frock made of patches of fabric, fur, and animal hides. Dark patches scatter her forehead and cheeks. Wrinkles frame her mouth. Her thick gray hair is plaited and adorned with tiny pebbles and shells. Strung into necklaces that hang loose and woven into a belt wound around her slim waist, shells and stones clank together as she walks. She jingles over to the girls and even though Ella pulls away, she gathers them both in her strong arms. Her eyes glisten.
“Rest,” Mama Skins commands.
Although she’s shaking her head no, Ella falls asleep standing.
I can run. Knock down this spicy-smelling, sing-song-talking, shell-clacking old woman, straight out the rickety door, back the way we come. Find my way to the poison patch back to the river, cross it, follow the path to the big willow, get the shotgun, go through the field and go where? Back to the barn? The river. I can follow the river. Sooner or later it’s gotta cross the ocean. From there I’ll make my way home. Ella lies on a thick blanket on the floor, pretending to be asleep. What she wouldn’t give to be in her own bed, piled high with old mattresses or curled up in a homemade quilt lying on her own wooden floor.
“I thought you were planning to sleep clear through the day,” Mama Skins says.
Ella opens her eyes and glances up at the woman’s mouth then concentrates on her fingers instead. Legs crossed at the ankles, she’s sitting next to Ella, elbows resting on the thin pallet, fingers deftly sewing swatches of cloth. Her slim fingers glide across the fabric, stretching then binding with precision. She stitches without looking down. Mama would be envious.
“My teeth?” she asks. “Knocked out long ago.” She runs her tongue along her gums. “When I was young I had a lot of mouth. They thought knocking out my teeth would make me keep it closed. It worked. But not how they expected.” Her laugh is like piano scales, practiced, beautiful.
Ella tries to sit up. Her back, arms, and legs are sore. Her skin is covered in large black-and-blue bruises and red welts. What will Mama say? Tears slide down her face.
“You ain’t as broke up as you think you is,” Mama Skins says. “I had to rub some of them herbs to get you blistered up. The worse you look, the longer they’ll leave you be.” She tucks the soft covering, a blanket of animal hides stitched together, tight around Ella. “Agnes told me she gave you some of that goo. She ought not to give you that. I don’t suspect it was enough to stop no baby coming. No need in making it any worse than it’s gonna be.” She moves closer, leans forward. “It’s done now. Just need to wait for it to wear off. Before you know it, you’ll be having babies. Sooner you start, sooner you be fin
ished.”
Ella can’t feel her legs. If they were shaking like the rest of her body, she’d know it. Her teeth rattle, her head throbs, her whole body is in motion, except for her legs. No telling what they’re doing. She pictures them already gone.
Mama Skins marks the cloth with a needle. “Settle yourself down. It could be a lot worse. Just one, two, three babies at the most. Thanks to the curse, you’ll get to keep them.” She holds the piece up. “It’s for you,” she nods at Ella, “a dress of your very own.” She lays the garment on the end of the bed. “These yours, too.” She holds up a set of grinning teeth. “Jonah’s been working them since you came. Whittled a year’s worth of wax. Now you be all pretty. Try ’em.” She pries open Ella’s mouth, slides the grin in place. “There.” She leans back, admires her work, squints. “They’ll take some getting used to.”
Ella presses her swollen tongue along the waxen grooves. The teeth, some large, others small, crowd her mouth. They force her jaw to shift, her cheeks to spread.
“See, I knew you’d be smiling before long,” Mama Skins says. “Walker likes pretty little smiling faces around here. You’ll be just fine.”
I want to go home! The words bounce around in Ella’s head, rattle in her heart.
Laden with cream, eggs, and cornmeal, Agnes tiptoes into the cabin. “This is from the Missus,” she says. “For her.” She nods her head toward Ella.
Mama Skins stares at a spot above Ella’s head. “It’s the Missus’s way of saying sorry,” she says.
Agnes puts the cream, eggs, and cornmeal next to jars of pickled carrots, glasses of blueberry jam and stacks of peppermint soap. For supper, Mama Skins makes carrot mash with roasted blueberries. She leaves the cream to curdle. Ella doesn’t so much as taste the sweet carrots or nibble the crunchy berries.
Agnes watches Mama Skins and Papa Jonah fuss over the gal at supper. They try to coax her to eat like she’s a stubborn cow. She thinks she’s too good for us, Agnes thinks. She reaches over to pluck a morsel from her plate, but the look Mama Skins gives her forces her to change her mind. Fine, I’ll wait, she thinks. She finishes her own supper and clears the plates. Mama Skins tells her to leave the gal’s plate so she can eat it later. Fine, one less plate to clean. Agnes does the washing-up and puts out the fire.
Later, because there is nowhere left to sleep, Agnes pulls her bedroll next to Ella’s. Ella has been scrubbed and rubbed with so many ointments and herbs, leaves, and berries that she smells like one of Missus’s sachets. Her sweet scent tickles Agnes’s nose. Her breathing is shallow and fast, like deep water. Agnes tries to match it. Her head is light. Her body is weightless. She floats above Ella to the top of the cabin. Her fingers, wisps of gray smoke, peel back the thin layers of the roof. There are no stars in the sky, there is no moon. Freedom. If Little James come tonight talking about “run away with me” she just might listen. “You awake?” Agnes is close enough to touch her. She listens to the young girl’s labored breathing. She’s been crying, again. “Ain’t really no haints here,” she says. “No magic, hoodoo, nothing to be afraid of.” Walker, Missus, overseer. “Nothing that ain’t living.” Ella’s breathing turns to light snores. “I know you ain’t sleeping.” Agnes pokes her in the ribs. “Know what else I know?” She pauses, swallows, whispers close to Ella’s ear. “I don’t care what my mama says, when you run off, I’m leaving with you.”
Chapter 8
Agnes pulls clusters of carrots from the earth in angry clumps. The girl’s hardly been here a week and they’re already rushing her out the door. There’s no way that gal’s making life on Walker’s better for anybody. She’s been here nearly seven days and hasn’t lifted a finger to help. She hasn’t cleaned the cabin, picked one carrot, plucked one berry. Has she helped in the fields? Not one bit. She’s too weak to be out in the sun. Nobody rushed her then. Why’s Mama Skins so bent on rushing her to do this now? Glaring at Mama Skins’s back does nothing to stop the woman from washing Ella. Mama Skins pulls, prods, dresses, oils, all the while cooing, “Won’t last longer than it has to. Don’t you look pretty? Ain’t no use in crying, be over soon enough.”
Thick-braided hair, skin rich like firewood, voice soothing like a summer bird. She looks like the same Mama Skins but the woman readying a shaking bit of a gal for plundering ain’t her mama. When Mama Skins is satisfied that she’s ready, she pulls Ella toward the door.
“I might as well take her myself,” Agnes says.
Before Mama Skins can respond, Agnes is up. She wiggles between the woman and the girl, then pushes, pulls Ella out the door, through the wood, toward the river. Ella fights her. She digs her heels into the ground, her nails into Agnes’s arms. Agnes drags her. They slip, stumble, fall. Each time they fall Ella picks up something to hit Agnes with. A handful of rocks, a thick branch. She isn’t going to let Walker anywhere near her, doesn’t matter what that crazy old coot or her crazy daughter says.
“I said I’d take you to the barn and I’m taking you to the barn. But first, we gonna get you some of that goo. Can’t do nothing about him touching on you today but put enough up in there and he won’t be bothering with you no more anytime soon.” Agnes leads her to the sweet-smelling patch of poison. “Myrtle done got it in Walker’s head that maybe ain’t nothing wrong with you. That ain’t nothing wrong with James that ‘a little time in the well’ won’t cure. As if soon as he got out she wouldn’t be fussing over him.”
Ella’s feet dig into the ground. Planted, her body goes rigid. She opens her mouth but instead of words, she speaks in guttural growls and wheezes. She spits. Drops of red and yellow sprinkle the ground in front of Agnes’s feet.
“What’s the matter with you?” Her words are like a hiss. “I told you,” Agnes says, “Little James don’t want no parts of you. Only reason he done what he done was he had to. If it wasn’t for James, Walker and them would be laying up with you way before now. Just like you to think he’d choose you.” Agnes scoops a handful of flowers, plucks the leaves off, squeezes the stems and drinks from the stalk. “When he was in you, you know what he was thinking ’bout? Me. He told me so. Now Myrtle trying to mess it all up. Got Walker thinking my James is lying. Can you believe that? Walker got to beating on him. Beat him so bad even Myrtle got to saying maybe she was wrong. James say hearing Myrtle say that almost made it worth it. But Walker act like he ain’t hear her, though. Said he gonna find out for his damned self. If ain’t nothing wrong with you, there ain’t nothing wrong with James. And if ain’t nothing wrong with James, soon as he heals up, Walker’s gonna sell him. You ain’t gotta like him but he helped you. Now you gonna help him.”
She watches as Ella’s lips twitch, her eyes squint. The hairs on Agnes’s arms stand up. She’s got something on her mind. Agnes steps away, turns her back to the girl. She listens as Ella moves closer. Her feet barely make a noise in the soft grass. Her breath is hot on Agnes’s neck. She cocks her head to the side, tosses the words over her shoulder: “Maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll go in and tell Walker there ain’t nothing wrong with you. What do you think will happen then? James will be sent down south. What about you? As soon as he knows there ain’t nothing wrong with you he’ll be on you like bark on a stick. First it will be Walker, then Old Walker, overseer, who else? They’ll get to bedding you all the time. Well, guess that’s up to you too. But you right, you don’t have to help James.”
Ignoring the burn, the girls slather the grainy mixture anywhere they think Walker might touch.
Five minutes after Agnes pushes her in the barn, Walker, still cursing, storms out. Agnes creeps from her hiding place and rushes to find Ella. Blood trickles down the side of her mouth.
“Seems like you tainted just like the rest of us,” she says. Agnes slips down to the floor next to Ella. Puts her head in her lap. Smooths her hair. They sit until their hearts stop racing, until swallowing no longer hurts, until breathing steadies. “Soon as James can walk without
that limp, we leaving. Walker ain’t gonna sell him over this but if it ain’t this, it’ll be something else. Ain’t gonna wait to find out what that something else is. Don’t see why you can’t come too.”
“Why can’t she come?” James asks for the third time. “Because she don’t do nothing for herself. She would slow us down.”
It’s early in the morning, before the sun is up. Agnes and James lie side by side, her head touching his, in the tall grass.
“Ain’t nothing wrong with her legs,” she says, “she’ll be plenty help when we get to town. We can all work. Besides, she can read.”
“How do you know? She can’t even talk.”
“She can talk, just ain’t got nothing to say.”
“She’s got plenty to say from what I hear.”
“Not when she’s awake.”
“What if one night she gets to talking about us running away? Then what?”
“Even if she do, at least my mama ain’t gonna tell nobody about it.”
“Myrtle doesn’t mean any harm.”
“Well, my mama wouldn’t do what Myrtle done.”
“Are we going to sit here arguing about old women or are you going to hold me a spell before I have to get back? You know how Missus is if I’m late.”
Agnes nestles in his arms, breathes in his scent of furniture polish, lilac water, and ash soap. “She still coming,” she says.
“I know.”
Later, when Agnes tells her, Mama Skins says nothing. She has already heard the rumors: that gal ain’t no savior. She murmurs, gestures, grunts, but the yelling Agnes expects doesn’t come. The silence is worse. Agnes can feel Mama Skins watching her as she lays Ella down, washes and clothes her. The woman’s stare bores holes in her back as Agnes tidies the small cabin, taking care not to get in her mother’s way. She’ll tell her about the leaving when Mama Skins is ready to listen. Until then, the women move in silence with Agnes mending, scrubbing, dusting, polishing, and touching every tin cup, wooden plank, worn hide, or frayed cloth as if she was saying goodbye and Mama Skins watching her doing it. Keeping secrets don’t come easy. Agnes moves outside on the step to settle next to Papa Jonah; she feels the woman’s eyes even then.
Remembered Page 6
