“Just a paper.”
“Just a—just a paper? What you think, mm? You think I’m coming home midday for a piece of paper if it’s not the most important piece of paper in our lives?”
Nell kisses him on the cheek. She can’t read it, but she can feel joy vibrate from his skin into her bones. The osteons of her bones are filling with anticipation.
“Mr. Duncan says he going to ask me to do deliveries for him now and he just co-signed a loan for a truck. For us. We got—” He brings his voice down to the volume only ants, bees, and Nell can hear. “We got a Ford, Nell.”
More quickly than she notices, Nell is in his arms, gracing him with kiss after kiss. Giant, timber-twisting laughter escapes out of her mouth, nose, ears, and eyes. Giant as thunder on the oxbow lake. Her mind snaps into focus, if for only a moment, like she’s been popped in the mouth. Her whole body is smacked too. She doesn’t let August see, though.
“I’m going to Marion’s real quick to buy us some sugar so you can make the cinnamon cake, girl.”
“Shit, August.”
“And could you make your smothered cabbage?”
“What about our mule?”
“What about her?”
“What are we going to do with her with a truck now?”
“Truck’s better than a mule.”
“The roads turn to mud soon as someone sweats. Tillie ain’t a truck, but she won’t get stuck in the mud.”
August kisses her with chapped lips, and she’s a little too aware of how poor the two of them are. “Ha! Nell, you always worry, mm, about every little thing ’fore it needs worrying.” He takes off down the road.
Nell knows that August won’t bring back sugar. He’ll bring liquor from Tempess’s juke joint ’cross the river. She sighs and tries to return to the unearthly plane but instead settles into the ache near her heart where the excitement of the truck rests.
The Wedding
1929
Odessa was raisin brown when she born and grew darker sewing at Ma Lyons’s side. She was stained with blackberry juice, ash, and bruises. And since her brother had died, she worked three times as hard at sewing. She watched Bit read in the corner and jealousy twisted her mouth. How could anyone have wanted to give her a benefactor after all that had happened? It made Odessa’s nose start to rot from the inside out. Four years Marion and Bessie raised her nephew without knowledge of his daddy, and this daughter of a whore, she got to read the day away in a corner.
Odessa fingered the silk and lace bodice in her hands. She imagined her future husband coming to her own wedding, smelling like smoked meat and beer. “Ma, we’re making a dress for that white girl’s wedding. You think she would make my dress if we gave her enough money?”
Ma Lyons inspected the bodice work from over Odessa’s shoulder. “You got a lot of nerve for someone who is taking her money. I like the beading work you did.”
There was an ugly ball of strings that Odessa had to pull, each holding a weight at the end. She tugged each string, attempting to unravel her world. That she was taking money from the man who murdered her brother, from the family who hired her sister, that she would take the money and hide deeply into the woods with the chipmunks and bury it until it grew into a money tree. She went stargazing at night when she buried her money. She was in love with Orion, clung to his belt with a fist made of ice and until her hand melted into the dawn. He’d leave her during moonset; she would tug on the string and unravel the world. Under him, she was bold and bright like doll’s daisies along the riparian field.
Odessa heard her sister come in heavy. She heard the heaviness in her voice and feet as she threw her arms around Ma. Esther’s heaviness pressed them all to the corners of the room. Ma had already confessed to Odessa that she wished Esther would marry and leave.
“Missus Eugenia don’t want me to come back after the wedding.” Her voice was tears.
Ma could have said a story to make her feel better like she had when everyone was little. But instead she asked why.
“Mr. JJ and Croswell’s leaving for school. And Penelope’s gonna be married now. And she don’t think she need me.”
Well of course not, said Odessa. She had worked for them for near fifteen years now. All the kids were grown now. JJ and Croswell on their way to college in a few weeks. Penelope was marrying the man who murdered their brother. And Samuel kept placing his ink-stained hands on her hips, leaving bits of himself on Esther’s dress.
Ma said it soured a soul. Levees broke in Esther. Levees break, Ma said. No, no, no, said Esther. And even Bit looked up from her book to listen to Esther. “They don’t know.”
Odessa watched Ma go to the stove to make some coffee. It was her way of letting Odessa know she could not handle Esther no more. Esther for her part began to shrink into the fabric of her dress until it grew larger than her.
“I know it’s hard, Esther. You’ll find another job. Or maybe it’s time think about marrying. Maybe go stay with Aunt Phyllis for a while. She knows some men.”
Esther looked at Bit in the corner. “What you reading?”
Bit lifted her chin from her chest. “Miss Boot assigned me some Shakespeare.”
Esther laughed the way a hummingbird flies. “Full fathom five thy father lies. Of his bones are coral made.”
Odessa tried to suss out what that would mean. But Esther leaned her head against Bit’s shoulder and started to drift into her words. Odessa grabbed a swatch of river-blue silk and converted it to ribbons.
The Isle Is Full of Noises
1930
It was raining. In the pattern of a tommy gun, of a war drum, of all the ghosts and bones Tempess knew were hiding in the river. She looked at her lover, Miss Phoebe. Then she looked at her daughter, Selene, her Moon-child.
“Rains come and go,” Tempess heard the voice of her grandmother say. Another body under the water. Another ghost in her juke joint. She turned to her cousin, Rhea, and Tata Duende. He held his little girl Snow-baby up to his chest, cradling her gently, whispering to her.
Rhea nodded to her child. “Daddy’s right, honey girl!” She’d learned to etch out Kriol from the years of picking at it, the way a child picks at cold radishes on the dinner plate. Tata Duende’s words were thick with Belizean vegetation, vines and branches curling through the gaps between his molars.
Tempess furrowed her brow. “Put Snow-baby down, Tata,” she said. “Don’t scare her.”
The river began to knock at their door.
It was raining. At the edge of the Bramble Patch, folks were gathering sandbags and hay bales, hoping the rains would come then go.
“Sours a soul,” said old Danuel as he looked at the river grown pregnant with ill omens. He sprinted down Mercer Street the only way an old man can. His body and spirit got soggy as he tried to make it home.
Staring at the empty stage of his girlie show, the Barghest was in a bowler hat and a velvet suit, listening to the water as she grew more impatient. He heard a creak from upstairs and jumped. No, it couldn’t be. No one else was here today. Not with the waters rising and not when he had such an important customer coming. The drumming of rain grew louder.
It took Tempess a moment to realize that everybody was staring her down.
“Girl, did you hear me?” asked Rhea. Truth be no one could really hear as the rain galloped across the tin roof. Tempess shook her head. “Tell Snow-baby what the Bramble folk used to say about us when we were little.”
Tempess’s eyes darted to her little cousin. She was trembling in her father’s arms, though she was bigger than him these days. Tempess forced a little laugh out of her lungs. “Them folks across the river used to say we were marsh-willow black. Wild black. The kind of black you can’t ever touch.”
Snow-baby’s eyes just grew bigger.
Tempess said, “I don’t like the way the river looks.”
; The river, she did look angry.
“Phoebe and I are going to shutter the place ’fore it comes. You know where the boat’s moored. Get Moon-child up to the Bramble, would you?”
Selene turned briskly to face her mother.
“Tempess,” Phoebe said, “it’s just a storm.”
But Tempess bit her lip and just said, “Rhea?” Like chopping the waves upon the prow.
Bertha’s kin knew the water. The mind can say it’s just a storm, but the blood knows it ain’t true.
“Tata,” Rhea said, “get the dinghy.”
Tempess grabbed Selene’s arm as she walked towards the door. “Moon-child, you Bertha’s folk, you know the water; you don’t need nothing but your body.” She hugged her child and went back up to the juke joint. And that was all.
Nothing scared the Barghest, nothing started his heart. He was near eighty years old and had shed his own skin so often that he was barely anchored to his mortal body anymore. No, only the type of folks who were attached could be scared. That wasn’t him. Still, the creak upstairs left him breathless. He was alone. He knew. He had checked. His mind landed on the pain rolling through his stomach. The creak came again. Then the knock at the door.
“You’re drenched,” said the Barghest as he opened the door.
Reverend Kincaid spat out rainwater onto the whiskey-warped floors. His galoshes spattered the weather across the Barghest’s feet. His lips and nailbeds were nearly blue with cold.
“It’s been a while, huh?” said the Barghest as he offered a seat to the Reverend.
“Aren’t you tired of hearing you own voice yet?” snapped the Reverend. His throat began to close as angry tears neared the rims of his eyes.
“I’m not the one who’s got a program on the radio. I’m just a part in your story, Reverend. I just…wanted you to have everything you ever wanted. Is that really so bad?”
The Reverend looked up. “I didn’t want it.”
The Barghest laughed. “Yes, you did. Every bit of it. Especially her. You woulda killed for that one. And you got it on the cheap. Me? I’m just a salesman, Reverend, same as you. You sell heaven, and I sell what people really want. And you got life out of it. Ol’ Bertha used to say, ‘life gotta repay life.’ Did you know her?”
“Can’t say I know many Negroes in town.”
“Only the one, right?”
Steel could meet a jugular, you know. Reverend to pimp, the need for blood swelled as the waters rose. A quick blade could flay open the blood vessels; there could be whiskey and rain and hemoglobin soaking the floors. But there was no fight left in the Reverend. Only arteries hardened by dogma and pride. The Barghest smacked his lips as saliva filled his mouth. This feast was richer still than all the white and black bones he could ever have eaten. He enjoyed the taste of skin and decadent fat and loved to suck the marrow dry. But a man’s battered soul was sweeter yet.
There were sunflowers along the bank that sloped down to the pebble-freckled shore at Tempess’s place. Everyone would forget that part, but in high summer, the sunflowers reached up to heaven and praised the sky. And now the rain and wind flattened them into mud. “They’re meant to hold back the world,” Bertha had said. “Whatever white men and Bramble folk think of us, the sunflowers will be a hedge of protection.” They stopped working when the Lyons boy’s body washed ashore. Now they were gone.
Rhea stripped down to nothing, her rich dark body bare, and soon Moon-child, creamy and new, was also naked. Tata and Snow-baby kept their clothes. Once the oxbow lake pooled, it was only a matter of time before she, the river, took them over.
Tata climbed into the dinghy, his legs nearly busting through the rotted wood. “Wish we had built a new one before the waters came,” Rhea said.
“We always promised that we would,” said Selene.
Rhea clutched Snow-baby in one hand. “You gotta help your momma kick most of the way, okay?”
Moon-child went to the prow and drug the boat into the water. She turned moss green and shivering in the water up to her waist. Suddenly everything shifted, the oxbow lake pooled up and overflowed. The river came running.
She opened up like a split-lipped corn snake swallowing a dead rat, sending Rhea further down into the utmost chasms of water.
She kicked back and kicked back against death, holding her child, her little Snow-baby, feeling the wiggling heartthumps within her chest. She could not hold on. Snow-baby slid away and into the water below. Rhea braced her daughter into her knee and then with the little strength she had into the dinghy with her father as it slumped into the river. The water was ashy gray and sick. Poisonous and kicking back. Snow-baby clawed into Tata and screamed over the roar of the current. Moon-child clung to the prow and flipped in the current. Rhea’s fingers dug into the rotting wood of the stern; the lumber caved under the weight of her hands. The boat bucked and then reared up. The boat flipped. Down went Tata and Snow-baby into the fathoms. Selene’s body smacked waves. The waters crashed into Rhea’s ears.
The fact was, as far as the Reverend could tell, the Barghest was right. He had gotten everything he had ever wanted. His daughter was married to the man she wanted. Samuel was long gone. That Black witch was out of his home and on her way to the institution. The little girl with his smile was out of town and no one had known her truth. And best of all, he’d had so many nights under wool blankets in an upstairs room with the redbone woman named Jess. The memory of her soft hands resting upon his chest, and the way her voice never wavered from a quiet hum, and how sometimes she curiously balked at his touch as if she understood that this was a beautiful game they played: he kept all of these moments in a dark corner. They were delicate, like stained glass in the church window; he had shored up all of it with lead and gold, and all the while he kept the faint hint of jasmine perfume in his memory. And as he handed over the money for the last time, a faint smile drifted on his
lips.
The creak upstairs came again, and the Reverend jumped. “I thought you said we were alone.”
The Barghest laughed. “All of us got ghosts, Reverend. Even me.”
All these years of Bramble folk thinking this white man could hurt them. But the Barghest was an old bulldog with teeth to a point, and he knew how and where and when to bite. The Reverend wasn’t the first white man to pay the Barghest. Hell, he wasn’t even the only Kincaid who had. Nothing about the Reverend was all that special, the Barghest noted. He also smiled. This was it. All of the years of sulfur and soot and sex and sweat, and finally he could eat as much as he wanted anywhere he liked.
The two smiled as if they were friends. The Reverend shook hands with the pimp for what he hoped was the last time. Neither of them knew that the river had given birth, and the sandbags and hay bales were failing.
Selene later told her husband that “the water swallowed the world.” And the river did take what she had; some things are inevitable. Phoebe and Tempess disappeared beneath the waves. The river took Snow-baby down to the riverbed. The river takes nothing but what was hers first.
By the time Rhea found air again, she couldn’t see the boat or her family. But her tired eyes saw the land, and she made it up to the edge of the river, knowing the water was coming up higher and higher. She got up and ran naked to a swath of higher ground in the Bramble Patch.
The white man there was as familiar to her as any could be. He was weathered, drenched in rain and doubt, bow-legged and heavy in his eyes. Fire was in his feet. His shadow lengthened without the sun.
Rhea caved into a house of flora, a bush beaten with rain, and watched him leave the back alley of the Barghest’s place. She was naked and ashamed in his presence.
But then something happened when the other two whites appeared. She knew the man and the woman, too. He was the monster of Napoleonville who had bloodied the Lyons boy, and she, his new bride and daughter of the Reverend. She could make out their f
aces even as the water rose; she felt it creeping up her heels and wanting to drag her down into the river.
The Reverend looked up to see his Penny and her husband sloshing through the mud towards him. He held his hands outstretched towards them. The sting of her slap that followed startled him. He stumbled to the mud. As he stood up to return the blow, his towering son-in-law stood between them.
“What in God’s name is wrong with you, girl!” he roared.
“Reverend Kincaid. Frequent fornicator and Negro-loving son of a bitch!” she yelled. Her eyes glowed with hatred.
“You will not speak to me like that. I’m still your father, young lady!”
“Shut up, old man!” Penny raised her hands to her hair and tugged tight. “You couldn’t even keep your suspenders on while half the town’s looking for you. You nearly killed my brother over these whores!”
“I’m not here for that! I have business.”
“In Mercy City?” asked Penny.
The Reverend’s heart stopped at the primal growl in his daughter’s voice. The rain beat down on the remnants of his memories in this spot, behind the Barghest’s place. He thought of when the stars dimmed overhead and he looked up into Jessup’s window and saw her slip into a robe and then turn off her kerosene lamp. How he would walk home and practice his Sunday sermon over and over on the way up the hill to the white side of Napoleonville. How feverishly delicious it all was. And in this moment, as the world began to flood, the memories brought the hint of a smile to his face. As his smile faded, a blackness filled his daughter’s eyes.
For a breath or two, Rhea did not look at the three white folks arguing. She watched the water, hoping it wouldn’t reach her before these white folks left, hoping her family would appear from the waves, hoping the river would spare some part of the past. And she kept looking at the water until she heard what sounded like a fish being gutted barbels to caudal.
These Bones Page 10
