Wash (14 page)

She wishes she had looked more closely at every bit of her world when she was growing up so she could give more of it to Wash but it had been wrapped so close around her, she had no idea she would ever be without it. The women had started teaching her but they did not have time to finish, so she knows the shape and feel of ceremony but not how to recreate it all by herself. She tried to show Wash the rituals she remembered but they felt hollow and small out on that island with no drumming or dancing except what the two of them did. It was when she tried to show him these patterns that she felt most alone.

It was harder to call God up on her own than it had been with everybody moving together at home, so Mena was in a way relieved to come over to the big Thompson place, with all these new people sitting in a circle around the fire on Saturday night. People talking, telling stories and making music, letting the music swell amongst them like a live thing and then having to move.

She waits a few weeks before deciding to let Wash go to the fire. The night is soft and even a little cool. As they draw close to that glowing warmth, the near side of the circle falls quiet. The dancing stops. A fierce woman named Agnes leans into the gathering, brandishing her worn Bible and complaining about what she calls carrying on with the devil.

“You all had best watch out for carrying on like this and acting all niggerish when what we need is the Lord.”

Sissy turns from her slow circle stomp and stares the woman down.

“That’s not the devil, that’s God. I’m not putting up with this mess all day and most nights and give up on God moving in me too.”

Mena’s heart blooms open and she feels a loosening in the middle of her chest. As she draws a suddenly deeper breath, she knows this place might be worse than the island in plenty of ways but it will be better in others. She looks over and sees Wash standing just within the rim of firelight, watching the music start up again. Paymore’s long fingers slap the smooth side of a cut off piece of hollow log and Core makes drumming sounds with his hands, alternating between the side of his cheek and his open mouth. The sounds the men make start to move through the women and the girls, like the music is trapped inside them and dancing its way out.

Wash looks and looks. He doesn’t realize his mouth is hanging a little bit open until his lips have gone dry. Mena sneaks peeks at him and she can see him saying to himself, this is it. This is what she’s been trying to tell me.

Wash looks over at her and she nods as if to say, see? And he nods to say yes he does see, with his eyes shining.

Wash

We landed at Thompson’s just as the man was coming up in me and those girls circled so close I couldn’t hardly see straight. I wasn’t used to so many folks at one time. Not right there with me, living and breathing. I’d stick round as long as I could stand it, then I’d slip away to the barn or the woods, saying I had work to do. But trying to keep my mind on my task was like trying to hold my hand on something hot and all I wanted was to run towards those girls.

I remember feeling that connection rising in me, liked to turn me inside out. A little like running with the island ponies, grabbing some mane and swinging up, feeling their muscles moving under my legs wrapped round so tight, with their backs rising and falling in waves, all of us pouring through the salty flats, kicking water everywhere. This new feeling was like that but bigger and more in the middle of me.

I’d play chase with the girls and wrestle with the boys and all of it made me feel funny inside. I’d be running after one girl, panting with laughing, and I’m grabbing her skinny arm she’s flailing behind her. I’m pulling her to me and when I’m pulling, I’m feeling that feeling. I want to pull and pull but there’s nowhere closer to pull her. She’s already up against me and then I guess I’m squeezing her too tight till her screaming giggling turns to more like screaming. And she’s twisting and yanking her wrist out of my grip, drawing it to her chest and rubbing it while she backs away. Looking at me like she’s scared of me. The rest of the girls fan out, leaving us boys with nothing to do but jump on each other.

One time, I was standing there looking at the ground, still puzzling over a girl pulling away from me, and that’s right when Friday jumped on me from behind. My head snapped back so hard I heard my teeth slam together. I had an eyeful of clouds and I was stumbling forward trying not to fall. He was the biggest of the boys before I got there and his arm was hooked hard round my neck.

I don’t know what led me to it, but he was on my back and I felt his face real close over my shoulder, so I curled in a running somersault, trying to land him on his head while I ducked and rolled out of the way. Worked like I thought it might. There I was, bouncing back to standing, and there was Friday, laying spreadeagle on the ground, just blinking.

I stepped round to where I could look in his eyes and asked him was he all right. When I put my hand out to help him up, I felt the rest of everybody thinking something new about me. All I’m thinking is how I just got lucky, but something stopped me from saying it. Something in me liked all those new folks looking up to me.

That was the beginning, I guess. Then it kept happening like that wherever I went. At the very first, it felt good. I spent my whole life to fifteen without nobody round, then there’s folks swarming me like bees. Sizing me up. Either trying to take me down a notch or else trying to get next to me. And I wasn’t doing nothing to make it happen except being myself. Felt like a nice surprise back then. I wasn’t looking for it or asking for it neither. It just came, like to visit me, and it turned my head for a long while.

Then I got greedy. Started trying to make it happen instead of letting it happen. Wasn’t till later when I started trying to stop it from happening. Tried to take it apart. Let all those scared and broken parts show so folks would quit heaping their hopes on me.

But way back when I was first chasing those girls and wrestling those boys at Thompson’s place, back then it was still easy. So smooth it made me feel like all roads led to me.

One Sunday after we’d been there awhile, I was fixing the rope swing on the sideways branch of the old sycamore down in the bottom for the little ones like Sissy told me to. And then there was Minerva, sneaking between me and the speckled trunk of that tree, looking at me, all full of I don’t know what. She was leaning back against that trunk and watching me. Reaching out every now and then to tickle my sides while I had my arms up, trying to set that ladder.

I’m telling her wait but she won’t and she’s laughing. She’s almost as dark as me. Her eyes shine bright in her smooth face and they tip up at their outside corners, making her look like she’s carrying a secret. She’s tall for a girl but bony. Skinny still with her raggedy dress tight under her arms.

Something inside me wants to move in on Minerva, press her against that trunk and hold her tight between me and the stillness of that tree. Feels like somebody new moving inside me, trying to make himself at home. But I don’t know what to do with him yet so I’m just standing there, like I’m caught in a trance. I can’t move. Not even my hands. I’m still holding that ladder.

But Minerva didn’t know what she was hunting. She just wanted to put her front up in my front and then turn and run so she did. I chased her but she was fast and she wanted to get away. Before I’m even close to catching her, we’re running up into the edges of Sissy’s fire circle in the quarters, out of breath and laughing.

Sissy took one look at me tearing after Minerva like that and sent me after some dove eggs. Told me she needed em to stretch some soup she was fixing. I saw a couple of the women cutting their eyes at each other and leaning close when I left but I didn’t think too much about why till later.

So there I go, loping round the corner of the barn to the far shed where she told me to climb quiet as a mouse up that ladder to sneak her some eggs from where that dove was nesting inside the eaves. I lift the hanging door at the top of the ladder and it’s just big enough for me to stick my whole top half inside.

I’m feeling round on the ledge along the back wall with my hand, hunting for the nest like she told me to, and my eyes are getting used to the inside being darker than the outside. Quiet as I am, I hear it straight away but I have no idea what it is. I’m hearing something moving before I’m seeing anything and I get goosebumps.

Then I start to see through the dim and it’s Rufus and Cleo all wrapped up in each other down on the floor. Rufus is the biggest saltwater man on the place and then some. He’s the blacksmith with his own forge and Cleo runs the hospital those Thompsons built to keep us on the job. Everybody stays kinda scared of em both, but here they are, all wrapped up in each other on a blanket they laid on the straw.

And here I am, looking right at em. They don’t see me yet but I see them. I’m standing there, half in and half out, leaning my hips against the ledge with the swinging door resting on the back of my shoulders. I’m feeling round in the shadows for the prickly straw curve of the nest and those smooth warm eggs. Trying to pick em up real careful and slip em in this pouch hanging from round my neck without dropping em, and remembering to leave one like Sissy told me.

But really all I’m doing is watching Rufus and Cleo moving into each other so smooth and slidy slow, like that big king snake I found in the grain one time. She’s laying on her back, facing up under him, and he’s laying on his belly, facing down over her. I can see her hands running up and down his back, slow and smooth like breathing, and I can see him moving into her and into her, like he’s going somewhere important. Her legs wrap round his hips and her calves shine where they press flat against him from how tight she’s holding on. All I can do is look and watch and see, saying to myself, oh.

Just then Rufus sets one hand in the straw to lift up a little so he can lay more alongside Cleo. And then I see all of her, laying full out in the straw, and she’s running her own hands up and down her own self, like she’s her own candy. He bends his head down and puts his mouth on her. Sucking like a baby, with his leg snaking over her, and she’s arching back like she’s stretching.

And that’s when she sees me. She’s looking at me and looking at me and I can’t move. I’m thinking she’s going to jump up yelling but she don’t. I had one egg put in my pouch but I’m still holding the second one in my hand. So much going on, I know if I move a muscle, I’m going to drop that egg, but I can’t stay there. I don’t know what to do so I just watch her watch me watching her.

Then she taps his shoulder, smiling a little and saying look here. Cat got somebody’s tongue. I can see the muscles in Rufus’s back working when he turns his head to look over his shoulder. He locks in on me and I feel twice as still as I was before.

My mind is yelling move, run, go, now. But my body won’t budge. I’m thinking, this is just how that chipmunk feels once he’s caught in the cat’s eye. He knows he needs to run, but he don’t. Like he can’t tear his eyes off that cat’s face, and you can see his heart beating hard right there behind his little front leg. There I am, holding on to the ledge with one hand and holding the egg in the other, with that swinging door resting on my back, and I can’t move to save my life. I can’t even turn my head away or drop my eyes.

I can’t stop from staring at her laying in the straw even though I know I’m gonna get my behind torn up worse than it has ever been. I’m looking and looking like I’m seeing it all for the first time and I am. I mean I seen naked before but not like this. Running my eyes over her feels like an itch being scratched and my insides flip over.

She nestles back under him and I’m thinking I’m in some trouble now. Then I catch on they’re more tickled than mad and he’s probably not going to skin me alive when he sees me next. I slip that second egg in my pouch real careful and light so it won’t crack against the first. Reach with my other hand to lift the swinging door so I can get myself out of that shed without falling. Grab the sides of the ladder with both hands before I take my foot off that high rung. I hear Rufus and Cleo talking low and laughing soft. My knees just about stop shaking by the time I make it to the ground and I feel so big inside I don’t know how to make room for all of me inside myself.

When I get back to that fire circle, those women sitting round shelling peas and fixing supper take one look at my face and they bust out laughing and falling on each other, all of em shaking from giggling.

Sissy’s voice cuts clear as a knife through all that carrying on, saying what happened to you boy? You look like you seen a ghost. You think you might make it?

All I can say is yes ma’am, I think I might make it and no ma’am, I did not see no ghost. And then that one littlest old lady says now come on y’all, leave him alone. And I’m looking over at her, saying without saying, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Good thing was, Rufus wasn’t too mad about it and neither was Cleo. All she did whenever she saw me was smile a little to herself and shake her head. And Rufus started acting like we was family, even more than he did before.

Soon as I saw him, I knew he came from the same world my mamma had. I could tell by how much he looked like me. He saw it too and he stayed good to me from the first. Even before that day in the shed but especially afterwards. He never made a fuss but he’d nod as he was headed out. Tip his head towards where he was going. That was his way of saying come on and help me take care of some business.

He had his own forge and after watching me awhile, he picked me to work under him. Stepped onto that Thompson porch to ask for me. Told those boys he’d make sure I learned to do right. Told me he had a hunch I might be just the one.