Ella resumes walking toward the river. What does one more set of hands have to do with her?
“A free black hand. Someone to help with the hauling and clearing. Somebody who knows following that river is a sure enough way to get caught or killed or both.”
Ella stops walking.
Agnes talks over bathing. A few minutes later they set off for the fields. “Remember, all we got to do is be nice to him,” Agnes says. “Not too nice. Let me see you smile. Oh Lord, no. Don’t do that no more. Like to scare him for days. Just let me do the talking and the smiling for both of us.”
It takes longer than Ella expects to get Bird, the hired hand working his way up north, to trust her. He spends most days not looking at her. Not looking into her lost brown eyes, not thinking about her broken spirit, her long legs. He’s been warned by the locals in town not to trust a soul on this place. But James and Agnes seem alright enough. They don’t look haunted. He feels bad about not accepting any of their food or drink, feels rude not to. But even if he hadn’t been warned “not to put so much as a crumb in his mouth lest he be tied to the place forever,” he won’t take the little bit they have. He eats supper with them. Clears and hauls side by side with them. At the end of each day he goes home to the boardinghouse he shares with ten other laborers, tumbles into bed and gets up before dawn to haul, lift, and not look at that little bit of gal wasting away.
It takes ten days for the overseer to stop watching her, whip ready, waiting for her to walk too fast, haul too slow, carry too little. Agnes had told her how much to lift, how far to haul, how fast to move to satisfy him. Too fast got everyone else in trouble. Too slow meant the lash. It only takes once. One crack of tight wound leather heavy on her small back sends her crumpled to the ground. The other slaves, including Agnes, keep working like the whoosh hasn’t sliced through the air and her skin and her scream and flesh haven’t torn from her body. But Bird drops his load of broken branches and stumps. He walks quickly, stepping around bent backs, over tangled roots to get there before the second lash.
“I’ll teach her how to untangle them roots without messing with the crop,” he says. He’s already scooping Ella up with one hand, picking up her hoe in the other. His body is a short wall between the overseer and Ella. Before the overseer can answer, Bird is leading her off, talking about berries and branches. He spends the next seven days teaching Ella to uproot bushes without killing the roots. He spends his nights thinking of ways to get her free.
“Bird’s sweet on you,” Agnes whispers on the eighth night.
The girls lay on the edge of the riverbank. Despite the cold, they sleep here most nights “to be closer to the fields,” Agnes had told her mother. Mama Skins fussing about it didn’t stop Jonah and James from building the girls a small cabin near a copse of trees. Long as the girls took their supper at the house, Jonah didn’t “see a dang thing wrong with it.” He lined the roof with hides and furs, stuffed a fresh mattress with feathers and hides.
“He’s been asking Little James about you. ‘Tell me ’bout that gal,’” Agnes whispers in her best Bird voice. “You know that’s as good as him asking if youse taken. James got to talking ’bout what a shame it is you been stolen from your people and if you could get up north, anywhere up north, it would be a miracle. He ain’t say nothing else about it. Few days later, Bird come saying he didn’t see why a gal like you should stay here. He said he thought he could buy you free.”
Ella’s heart gets to beating out her chest.
“Why, James liked to die. Ain’t no way Bird can afford to buy us all. No, James tells him, Walker wouldn’t sell you to nobody, least of all not to no black man who was just gonna set you free.”
Ella’s throat closes.
“James left it at that. Today, Bird come up with a plan. Walker ain’t got to set her free. Just need papers that say she free.”
Ella’s stomach goes one way, her head the other. She waits. “Bird’s gonna buy passes soon’s as he saves enough. Got a friend to write them and everything. Just a little while longer. We’ll be free before you know it.”
A few weeks later, Samantha, Myrtle, and Mama Skins gather at the river over the soapy undergarments and work-stained dungarees of the field slaves. The monthly washing is one of the few times the friends can talk openly. Mama Skins stirs a large boiling pot of clothes as the other two women dip them in the river and wring them out. When they finish they will call Agnes and Ella to hang them on makeshift lines made up of vines and rope.
“What you know about Bird?” Mama Skins asks.
“Not much,” Samantha says, “hardworking. Don’t talk much ’cept to Little James, Agnes, and that gal.” Her thin fingers pinch each drop of water from the worn fabric between her palms. After inspecting and wringing them again, she puts the breeches on the pile before scooping another from her woven river basket where they cool.
“I think he sweet on her,” Mama Skins says. “Could be he come and steal her away.”
“That mess up all your planning, though, wouldn’t it?” Myrtle asks. “All that working to save Agnes go soon as that girl go.” She grins. “Isn’t that what you want? Save your gal?” It’s in her voice, her eyes, the set of her mouth, the way she holds her head. Even if Mama Skins didn’t know her like she does, she’d recognize Myrtle’s jealous ways.
“What you talking ’bout, Myrtle? Turns out, when that gal go, she gonna take my Agnes right on away from here. And if Agnes go, Little James gonna follow right on behind her.” Mama Skins lets the words hang in the air with the soap bubbles.
“But if she goes, who’s gonna be here for you? Who you gonna have left?” Samantha asks.
“Me and Jonah and of course you and Myrtle and James and Little, no, not Little James. You practically raised that boy, ain’t you? Had your heart set on him and that gal from up the road getting together?” Mama Skins shakes her head. “Well, soon’s they hit freedom, first thing he and Agnes probably do, I imagine, is get married.” Hot soapy bubbles splatter Mama Skins’s skin. She doesn’t seem to take notice. She hums and stirs and waits.
Myrtle thrusts a work shirt underwater. She holds it under like it’s fighting back. “Be back, need to get something up the house.” She’s already moving before the two can respond.
“Oh, Meredith,” Samantha says. “Why’d you say that? You know how Myrtle gets herself worked up.”
It’s got nothing to do with Agnes and nothing to do with that bit of a gal either, Myrtle thinks as she trudges down the path. If it weren’t for Meredith convincing them all to take that stuff, none of this would be happening. Her girls wouldn’t have been sold off for being barren, her brothers wouldn’t have been sold south to pick cotton, her friends, most of them gone now, wouldn’t have buried baby after baby after baby. She stares straight ahead. She won’t look at the heads poking up through the ground, blooming like spring flowers. Why should Meredith get what she wants? How many women come to her to keep their masters out of their beds at night? How many had she given a little bit of this to? How many times had that little bit turned into a whole heap of that? When they were all shriveled up inside and Walker started buying babies, wasn’t the pact to kill them? Won’t be no more slaves after us, the women swore on it. When Walker brought a little baby, they all hugged on it, loved on it, and in the morning, one of them would love it to death. Love it to freedom. How many was it?
They’d taken turns. She had Jebediah with the bright-green eyes, Every with fingers long like vines, Shy with the pink lips. She can still see their faces, their eyes big with shock, the questions in their eyes. She told them stories, all of them, of who they were and who she was and where they came from and where they was going, all so they could make their way home. When Agnes come, Meredith said the baby didn’t need killing. Said Walker was convinced the place was haunted and one miracle baby wouldn’t hurt nothing. Walker brought two more. They died the same day. Was
n’t even Meredith’s turn. “Babies sometimes die,” she said, like that was that. No more babies come until that gal. Shoulda been Myrtle’s turn. That gal didn’t need killing neither. Myrtle would have loved on her, been her mama. But Meredith fixed it so she’d go down to the cabins.
No more. Just a whisper in the Missus’s ear, a question: What do you think that laborer talks to the field hands about? That’s all it would take to get Missus’s imagination to running. Before long she’d conjure up worse than Myrtle could say and that hand would be on his way north, alone, and that little gal would be up the house, scrubbing and cooking and mending. She’d teach her who to look out for, how to make the days pass like lightning, how to stop hearing the whispers of the dead.
Voices drift through the woods.
“How we gonna put three people on one pass?” Little James. If he’d been born after Meredith come, there wouldn’t be no Little James today.
“Can’t. This pass says I got one slave, one. I told you I was coming for the gal. Now it’s all mixed up,” another man says.
“But my woman and me, we’re planning on leaving together.”
“Ain’t trying to stop you, just can’t do it on this pass.”
From behind a tree, Myrtle watches the silence settle like smoke between the two men.
“Whole lot easier for two to get free when one’s already free,” the man finally says. “You can come back for one, both of them, or all four of ’em.”
“Four?” James asks.
“They both with child, ain’t they?”
Could they be? Meredith hadn’t given Agnes anything to dry her up and she sure didn’t give that gal any, although she told Agnes she would. There was no doubt Meredith had given Agnes something to keep Walker off of her for all these years. Agnes might have slipped some to that gal, but babies? Meredith sure hadn’t counted on this. Two of them? After all this time? James’s hemming and hawing could get them all left.
“Seems like you would have mentioned she was with child before now. Unless you didn’t know. But, I can’t be toting no pregnant gal. What happens if we get found out? She ain’t gonna be able to run. Get us both caught. Either you go or no. I ain’t gonna make up your mind for you.”
“I am,” Myrtle says. “Ain’t I been a mama to you most your life?” Even though she’s stepped in front of the tree, both men jump like they’ve seen a ghost. Bird looks like he wants to run one way, James the other. “You gotta leave here while you got the chance,” she continues. “Come back for Agnes when you get yourself set up. Get you a job, a place for the baby, her. I’ll take care of her and the other gal and her young’un too.”
“What about my pa? He’ll die without me,” James says.
“You so full of yourself,” Myrtle laughs. “He’ll be sorry you ain’t gone sooner. You think he want you to be a slave your whole natural life? Your mama wouldn’t want that neither.”
James shifts from foot to foot. Bird shifts from foot to foot. “It ain’t like you leaving us. You being free is like us all being free, one step at a time,” she says. She wraps him in her arms, holds him tight like she held all them before him.
Loving him to freedom. She lets go.
“I’ll be back for y’all,” James promises. “Tell them for me. Hear?”
Myrtle nods, takes a breath and almost skips to the far field. She hasn’t been there on purpose in years. She sits among the graves, chattering and laughing and singing. She’s still singing when the overseer finds her the next morning, singing and chattering about babies and graves. Walker drives her five towns over. He comes back the next morning with twin calves.
Agnes knows James is coming back for her. She feels it. Walker rallies a search party to save James from Bird “the slave-charming-abolitionist-thief.” Damned Bird done tricked James into leaving. Soon as he can break free, James will be home. Agnes waits. Days pass, then weeks. Blueberries peek then burst through. It’s planting season. Just like James to make the most of things. He’s probably got himself a job, saving up to buy her. Hope he make enough to buy the gal too. If not, they’ll come back for her before long. Might have a room somewhere but more likely James done built a little something somewhere near the water, he likes the water. Agnes bundles clothes, shells, things she can’t stand to leave behind, wraps them in skins and buries them. She’d fold her mama and papa up too if she could. The hole is shallow. Buried in Mama Skins’s patch with the babies so they can keep an eye on it till it’s time. Won’t take a minute to scoop it up. James will be in a hurry.
Since Bird run off, Ella’s been waiting. Instead of counting days, she focuses on voices. Mama’s singing geography lessons: “The Monongahela through and through, river flows from me to you.” Papa’s, “Oh how it glitters, oh how it shines, when dirt turns to soot, look out for the mines.” Pastor’s, “The Heavenly star, that shines clear and bright, leads straight to God’s North, keep freedom in sight.” But the voice she hears most often is Hazel, a runaway slave she’d made a shawl for: “Stay clear the shallow, stay clear the wide, cross at the rapids, where dogs fear to stride.”
She’ll need to be ready for when he comes back. Most likely Bird will know the way, least to Philadelphia. She can do the rest. Mornings she hauls and plans and waits, no Bird. Weeks pass. She’s hungry all the time. When she’s not throwing up yellow bile, she’s eating dirt, bark, starch, carrots. Her arms are lean, her legs strong, her belly round. Agnes’s is too. Must be all that good eating. Deer, possum, raccoon. Agnes can catch anything. Agitated, Ella is waiting on Bird when it’s time for planting. When grass and flowers sprout. When bushes and trees bloom. July brings hot sun and bursting blueberries ripe from the bush. They stain her fingers, her arms, her legs, her patience.
Mama Skins has been waiting too. Ever since Walker sold Myrtle off, the air has become thick. It stinks all over. Most days, she can hardly breathe. Fresh rain does nothing to wash the smell of rot from the dirt, the trees, her skin. Even if Agnes and that gal can’t smell it, Samantha, Old James, and Jonah do. They don’t talk about it, don’t need to. It hangs between Samantha and her like a pair of soiled undergarments at the river washing. Between Old James’s words on the few times he brings news from the house. In that space between her and Jonah where she used to put her head on his chest at night. It’s only a matter of time before Walker gets to selling other folk. She will never see Agnes again. Never hold her grandbaby. The baby will grow up a slave, just like Agnes, just like her. If she ain’t never gonna see her again no how, Agnes may as well be free. She won’t get far without that gal’s book smarts. But two little gals won’t get far weighed down with babies.
If she slips a handful of ground herbs into Agnes’s stew, the baby won’t be born at all. Mama Skins has been up since sunrise gathering and grinding herbs from her medicine garden. Some for Agnes, some for the gal. The carrots are slow cooking with rabbit and onions. In a small iron pot, the bitter herbs simmer. As it cooks, Mama Skins makes up memory bundles for both babies. She whispers stories into shells for safekeeping and to guide the babies home when they pass. She wraps the shells in fabric, a pocket from Agnes’s dress, a torn ribbon she’d been holding on to since the gal came. She wraps these small treats in stolen scraps of newspaper, tufts of fur, hides. She rocks the bundles in her arms, kisses them. She has supper on the table. For the girls, two black gourds; for her and Jonah, two brown.
The sun set hours ago. The day’s been so long the moon doesn’t even bother to come out. The sky is pitch black. Not one shining star. The stew has been heated twice. The herbs have steeped too long in their own juices. Picking season. As the summer air cools the few borrowed bodies Walker can afford make their way back to the shacks to live side by side with the few slaves left. After hours of waiting, slippery with sweat, the girls and Jonah plop on the porch.
“Y’all gonna wash before supper?” Mama Skins asks. No one stirs.
; Just as well. They’ll have to wash all over again once the blood starts flowing. “Supper’s on the table,” Mama Skins says. She paces inside the cabin. Comes back to the door, waits.
“Meredith,” Jonah says, “I ain’t got no intention of getting up no more tonight. If that supper want me to eat it, it’s gonna have to come right here for me to do it.”
“I’ll get it, Mama.”
From the sound of her voice, don’t sound like she could get up if she wanted to. “I’ll get it.” Mama Skins squints, fingers each gourd for nicks and grooves. She can’t see the colors but knows each by heart. Satisfied, she balances one in each hand, elbows pressing the other two, one each to either side of her body. “Huhn,” she says, delivering Jonah’s, then Agnes’s, then the gal’s. She stands in the doorway, the black bowl cool between her fingertips. “I been thinking. Won’t be too long before Walker get to selling again,” she says. Sips deeply. “We gotta make sure you two is gone before he do.”
There are four soft thuds: Agnes’s sleeping head against the wood step as untouched stew slides to the porch and the brown bowl falls from her fingers. Papa Jonah’s seizing body on the ground as poison ripples through his veins, turning his stomach against him. Mama Skins’s insides pouring from every orifice of her quickly bloating body. Ella’s feet running through the soft grass.
The overseer finds them the next morning. Agnes, still sleeping, on the porch. Her parents, one slumped over, one standing stock straight, both dead. Samantha and Big James come for her. They lead Agnes to her little cabin. Hush her screaming. They tell stories of Meredith before Agnes, before she became Mama Skins. Stories of a wild-eyed slave girl smarter than a soul for miles. So smart she got her learning from the good doctor. Learned her everything he knew. Meredith with a voice so strong she could sing the skin off a coon. The Meredith they remembered laughed and sang. The Meredith they remembered didn’t kill babies.
Remembered Page 10
