The piano man rubbed a dancer’s arm tenderly as she adjusted her threadbare robe over her corset and chemise. This one was called Ida. Esther watched it happen, feeling the man’s heart thunder in his chest as his mind filled with images of both Ida and Jessup, with him. Esther was the tar shadows, watching it all.
“Wiggle for me! Shimmy and shine, girl.”
“Don’t!” Ida pulled away and took a long drag of smoke.
“Girls who smoke don’t have class, sweetie pie.”
“Haven’t you heard, mister piano man? No one does.”
The piano man plucked the cigarette from her lips and took a drag himself. “What you want wiggle to tonight?”
“Nothing the Barghest wants to hear,” slender Fannie broke in.
“Shit, try me, woman. I got his balls, Fannie. Without me, he’s just a two-bit barker without a pony to show for it.”
Ida glanced up at Fannie and then across at Winnifred, who nodded. Ida whispered into the piano man’s ear and nibbled on it a bit. He wilted at the knees.
Esther wiped her free hand across her pinafore and strained to hear more, but the burning eyes of Jessup, watching over the other girls, brought her to cowering. She felt Jessup everywhere at once in the alley. Esther did not like feeling watched. Especially not here in Babylon. Not by Jessup’s burning brown eyes protecting the other girls from the piano man. Esther went back to the wooden sidewalk out front for her evangelizing.
There Danuel strode by with Ernest, hot-mouthed and horny already. Their sons swaggered behind, giggling. Poor boys. When the war would come, and it would, their brains would break and they would live out their days begging for scraps, while lesser men than they could’ve been would get rich watching them suffer. Danuel’s son would be due for a lobotomy in forty years’ time.
Esther reached out to the boys. “Repent,” she whispered. The sweaty, crumpled tarot cards fell to the ground, and her knees hit it too, before another word could pass from her lips. Those boys were like corn on the stalk. Ready to be plucked and shucked and mashed and cooked and popped. Her hands trembled at the thought: Repent. Repent. For the kingdom is nigh. The end—sooner.
When the Napoleonville schools would be forced to integrate, the Bramble Patch would slowly die, drained of people, and fade to a historical marker on the side of the road. The Bramble Patch would become undead. Most of the land would be overgrown and turned into a twisted, jumbled forest—the sign would be a marquee for ghost stories. There would be no more stories about Doctor’s nephew stumbling around blind drunk on Saturday night and leading choir Sunday morning. Jessup’s breast, barely concealed under gold velvet, would no longer fill the whispers around the cracker barrels in Marion Chapman’s store. Marion’s store would be shuttered when the Kresge would come, and Marion would die when he hung himself in the cellar storeroom.
Esther trembled, knowing that history was coming like a stampede, and that when it had trampled over the Bramble Patch, only headstones would remain. Headstones and perhaps the Barghest. He seemed to be timeless, collapsing the very idea that all things must crumble into the sea, wither, and die. He would gray slowly, drinking blood like wine.
“Shit,” said the Barghest. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”
Blood dripped from his bloated jowls onto his newly starched shirt.
“Shit. Listen to that music,” said the Barghest to the pile of black limbs on the pewter plate. Arms and legs like blackberries juicing blood—black skin crushed into crimson.
“Listen to that music,” said the Barghest. But the ears on the plate were deaf now. “Piano man’s playing slow. Too slow. There’s gotta be bump and cake walk and grizzly bear. How else they gonna wanna make love?” The Barghest set down his hunk of thigh meat and listened.
Beneath the tiny patterings of a phalanx of mice galloping across the floors, the piano man was playing soft, rolling the melodies of an operetta off of his fingers and into the air. The Barghest could smell the first cigars of the night being lit, as the men who came for the girlie show were starting to settle into their seats. He knew a few would doff their bowlers and dust them off. They would clap hands and laugh a little together and start ordering drinks from Sam. And soon he would have to go down and introduce the girlie show and tell his girls which laps to sit on and which to ignore. Despite having eaten a few of his customers, the Barghest had a very loyal crowd. A couple of men, Ernest and Danuel, had been ushered into manhood in this house and had brought their sons after them when the time came.
But if the piano man wouldn’t play hot music, then how would the men want to drink and watch the girls dance? And if they did not watch the girls dance, then how would they want to burn through their money for a night of pleasure? And if they did not want a night of pleasure, how would they come back again and again, week after week? And who, then, would satiate his hunger?
He remembered his Sunday School teacher, Miss Alice, giving the word of the Lord. “A certain stevedore is walking through Jerusalem in the Promised Land. He sees this old brick theater in the city. He hasn’t eaten in days, for he was a poor man, poorer than any of us will be. So the stevedore, he licks the side of the theater. Earth—red earth—fills his mouth. And when he ate that brick dust, he felt his muscles grow a little. Curious, he ate more brick dust. His arms got thicker. He ate more. His stomach grew stronger. He ate more. His legs never grew tired. He ate even more. But then, his skull got thick and his mind got slow and his heart got hard. Soon he ate so much brick dust that he was a brick-man. Brick-man can’t move. Brick-man can’t breathe. Brick-man is dead. What’s the lesson, my children?”
And all the children thought and thought. And then a little girl named Faith said, “Anything that gives you power has power over you.”
“Amen and amen,” said Miss Alice.
Now, at fifty, the Barghest knew what Miss Alice had meant. She meant the piano man and his music. He grabbed his kerchief and wiped the blood from his mouth.
In a moment or two, he would go down and introduce his girlie show. He would have Ida and Alma flirt specially with the doctor and his nephew. They came every other Saturday, but a lot of sickness had ravaged the town of late. The doctor needed a break. The piano man could be murdered after tonight’s show, while everyone was too drunk or too sexed up to notice. Then the Barghest could put the best parts of him in the icebox. Tomorrow, he would find a new piano man.
Untitled
After the piano man’s forearms were eaten, Esther began seeing a girl in her dreams, in the golden reflections of brass kettles, in rain puddles splashed up by mules, in the grease stains on Marion Chapman’s apron, in the kick of heat in her mouth when eating pickled peppers, on the bully stick Officer Dean carried when he made his patrol. But mostly, Esther saw the little tar girl when she looked at the Duncan Farm and saw her father and brothers and cousins and friends and nephews and uncles out picking grapes and peaches. This sort of thing was why people thought Esther was touched in the head—gaping at the peach orchard and grape vines like that for hours instead of doing anything else.
Out there, her little tar girl was in full focus. All unseen in the haze of heat, she black as tar, naked and bathing. The sweet smell of black soap scrubbing the body into strands of flesh and mud, and palm ash streaks darting along the belly, which bore a scar—from when her belly was slit open to save her son, priced at her entire life. She died bleeding out while her husband, more than twice her age, congratulated himself on having a son. She was thirteen or maybe fifteen; the grave marker wasn’t so sure. Younger than Esther, anyway. She stood in the rows, verdigris under the shade, naked and bathing, unaware of the hands working around her—mostly because dead people, in Esther’s estimation, did little and nothing to notice the mechanizations of the living. The little tar girl just bathed. Scrubbing black soap across her scar until it burst raw with her own blood, but she never seemed to notice. Sometimes, while the rivu
lets rolled down toward the folds in her hips, she would start singing an old song, singing: “I know it! ’Deed I know it, Sister. I know it! Dese bones g’wine rise again.”
But mostly her naked ghost would stalk the minute and quiet parts of Esther’s day, making as little noise as possible, showing up in the smallest moments. Barely a ghost. More of a whisper, a murmur.
Murmurs shattered parlor windows on the white side of Napoleonville in the home of Paul and Susan Dougherty. The newly installed Tiffany glass was found strewn about the floor in shards, for the rumor had busted in with such force it shook up the house. The story was that the Minister and Mrs. Jonah Kincaid had hired a Negress to watch their children. Not just any Negress, either. When Susan asked her cook about the new girl, the cook said tsk and shame enough to make Susan worry. The Negroes said the girl was touched and stood around staring at the Duncan property every day like a cow whose leg don’t work.
Mrs. Kincaid, who rarely kept darkies around, had encountered the girl Esther when her mother delivered some brocade robes, hand-stitched the old and quaint way, for Founder’s Day pageant costumes. She noted her slight demeanor and pleasant smile. She examined the small finger bones, the pops they made as Esther lovingly traced the leaden outline of Christ in the window. Plain enough to not invite temptation. Quiet enough to prepare the small ones for a life of charity.
“Do you like the window?” Mrs. Kincaid asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Esther had replied. She immediately became aware of the fluttering heartbeat of the moth in the corner. Esther had never even been to the white side of Napoleonville, let alone talked to a white woman before.
“What do you like about it?”
“The colors of the sash.” A regal purple and blue, fluttering splendor of the resurrection all splayed out—unlike all she had seen, frayed woolen cloak of poor craftsman, which she knew Christ to be. “You got colors like that in New Jerusalem?”
“Our Second Coming window is the third to the left from you.” But Esther had not meant the windows. “Does your daughter like children, girl?”
Ma Lyons suppressed a sigh. “Well enough, ma’am. Esther always a help with her cousins and brothers and sisters. Now her little niecey, too, these days.”
Esther could see the little tar girl on the corner across from the church, naked and bathing and humming in front of the schoolyard for white children. The white children all played around, dancing and jumping rope. A boy shot a marble that rolled to her feet; she kept scrubbing her skin away, turned and waved to Esther. Through the purple prism of Christ, Esther recognized that kind smile of youth, open-mouthed and hungry, ready to rip the children’s innards out. The heartbeats of moths were silenced as the little tar girl, now scrubbed clean and soaked in her own blood, walked across the playground with soap in hand looking as though she meant to clean the children playing unaware. And that was when another woman, tall and broad-shouldered and also black as tar and naked, but carrying a basket atop her head, followed the girl, swaying her hips to the hum of the song: “I know it! ’Deed I know it, Sister. I know it! Dese bones g’wine rise again.”
Esther’s silent smilings struck Mrs. Kincaid as contemplative, a trait she found to be rare among Negroes. That there was the end of it as far as Mrs. Kincaid was concerned.
Esther hummed the tune: “I know it! ’Deed I know it, Sister. I know it! Dese bones g’wine rise again.”
The Funeral
Out by the Negro cemetery, the matriarch of the Bramble Patch sat on her porch, regarding the town from her seat. Before Time itself, ’Livia Marvell had been sitting there. She was older than mountains, the folk said. She watched the trees grow from seedlings into forests; she held the stories of this place in her blood. But this summer was laden with memories like fog filling her lungs. Her daughter, Mizzy, stood behind her, braiding the white crown of kinks and coils. Snowy tendrils floated into Mizzy’s hand.
“You’re shedding, Mama,” she said.
’Livia didn’t answer. She clasped her bony hand onto her daughter’s wrist. “I ever tell you ’bout when I was in that tintype?”
Mizzy nodded.
It was during that bloody war—Mr. T. Duncan’s brother, Mr. S. Duncan, and his nephews and cousins were fighting for the Union. That April, that day, that moment was etched into ’Livia’s sinking suspicions of the world, almost creating them from scratch. The grand house as it once was, sun-baked with auburn wallpaper and Persian rugs. The bunting, tied up pretty. Every moment stuck in her mind as a reminder of the ruins of mankind. What if Judgment Day was near?
’Livia looked up at Mizzy and told her to lean in close. ’Livia’s whispers burned into Mizzy’s ear; susurrus fear sent shivers through her. Later, at Ida’s funeral, she’d tell the church ladies about it. Most of what her mother said sounded like lunacy at this point, and the church ladies knew it. The rambling of an addled mind, nothing more.
’Livia said: “I saw a white man talk to that one nigga, the one with the whorehouse. ’Cept the white man wasn’t any white man. He was the devil. I swear, the devil. I saw him as I see you now. Saw him just like he was, the devil. And that boy asked him for all the splendor of Solomon in his life and to have the time to accrue it. To stay young and beautiful as long as it takes him to be a rich and wise man. And everyone knows: the Barghest hasn’t aged since. It’s been forty years and he ain’t aged more than ten. I swear it. I swear he and the devil have a thing going.”
Mizzy laughed.
“It’s funny, see? Funny,” Mizzy told the ladies at the funeral. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.” But in her chest she felt a pain radiate from under her ribs.
It takes many hands to make a funeral. Someone to clean the body and bear the palls across the plain wooden box. Someone to talk to the white folks in charge; that was the hardest part. Someone to call the kin up from the worlds beyond. Someone to feed the people. M’Dear and Silas and their boy, David—that’s who wrought the chthonic work of death in the Bramble Patch.
“They found Ida’s body cause they heard a scream,” M’Dear said as she pitched the remainder of the powdered sugar atop her lemon cake. “A scream so loud, it shook the whole street loose.” Lemon cakes cost too much, but under such circumstances, it only seemed fitting to make a few.
“I just can’t—this doesn’t happen in the Bramble Patch,” remarked Honey, one of M’Dear’s two helpers, as she raked the fiftieth apple with her paring knife. Apple crumble was cheap as anything. It was the least she could do.
M’Dear sucked her teeth. “’Course it happens here. It happens everywhere.”
“Who screamed?”
“One of the other girls from the show. Winnie, I think? They say she saw it first.”
“Heaven! I just—and Winnie’s such a sweet little—I just don’t believe it all.”
“Believe it. Believe it. Pastor says he saw it when they—”
“Pastor? Pastor saw it? What’d he—”
“Hush up and let me talk. Anyway, he tells me the body looked gray as dawn.”
“Here in Bramble Patch…suppose what the white folks’ll say?”
“I don’t know. Sheriff Dean’s already looked her over and left.”
Honey stared down at the bucket of apples at her feet. “Where’s Nell? Ain’t she supposed to help with these—Damn. I just can’t believe—Ida have family?”
“Miss Matilda’s a cousin. Ida’s parents died a few years back. Then again, I’m only going on what I heard, but I know she doesn’t have any other family near here.”
“Suppose it’s better that way then. It sours a soul to hear this. Here in Bramble Patch…”
“I got the lemon cakes done. I’m going to start on the potato salad. Gimme a hand?”
Honey would not be distracted from the whereabouts of the other assistant, whom she suspected of malingering. “Where is Nell?”
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“Stop being antsy. Nell’s probably at the church, setting up for the funeral. Can you help me with these potatoes?”
“Ida doesn’t have folks but we’re making all this food?”
“Honey…”
“I’m just saying.”
“What are you just saying?”
“Didn’t have family. Killed herself.”
“Hush up and peel these potatoes.”
Honey stood silent for a breath or two. “Who’s gonna come to the funeral of a whore anyway?”
“I wager there’ll be more than’ll be at yours.”
Honey snorted. “More than yours, still.” She grabbed a small knife and dug out the curved eye from the potato in her hand. “Why, though? Why’d she—”
“I really don’t know. Winnie said she might have fell in love with a john or such. Not sure. Sours a soul to think what drove her to it.”
M’Dear rubbed her knuckles against the table. Of all her funerals, this one was filling her with the most dread. Her old bones seemed brittle and dry, falling into the despair of years. How many funerals had she and Silas managed? How many mornings were born in bright hope only to be drenched in mourning and condolences? How many cups of coffee and how many lemon cakes and how many apple crumbles had she made for the bereft? How many women in town had she paid from her own purse? Women like Honey—thrice a mother, twice a grandmother, and once a widow. And Honey, who still buzzed with the nerves of a giddy girl—how many times now had even she done this?
This was not about Ida’s body. M’Dear had grown accustomed to every kind of body in all manner of death, violent or not. But the face—the twisted smile, left over from Ida’s last thoughts—she sewed it shut, and yet the glee of rest remained on the corpse’s lips, as if the simple act of remaining alive was a sham and true delight was in death. That night, when M’Dear went to bed, telling Silas about her day at the funeral parlor, she found herself asking what manner of man the Barghest must be if this little girl was smiling in death. Now that memory nipped at her heart in a frozen place.
These Bones Page 2
