Grace (10 page)

A new couple shuffles a two-step above us.

“After a while,” she say. “When Sam came to work for me, 'bout four years in, I changed some things around. Didn't need to be there all the time. I could be at peace down here. Think.” She smiles, lowers her eyes, like she's embarrassed she telling me this. So I smile back at her to let her know it's all right.

She say, “I imagine some whore before me, before I owned it, snuck down here and did this, too. Watched. Maybe she waited for her prince
to come rescue her.” She points to a door behind us. It's wonky and broken like the floorboards above us. I can see clear through the crooked pieces of the door to the porch steps outside. “Right through there is the front porch. I reckon she made it out that way.”

“You think she found her prince?” I say.

“She ain't here, is she?”

Cynthia hugs her knees to her chest and watches the dancers do another pass above us.

“Why didn't you leave?” I say.

Her legs drop from the bench. “You dumb or something? This is mine. I ain't never leaving. Maybe you ought to be the one going. I been taking care of your ass too long.”

“I'm sorry,” I say. “I didn't mean to . . .”

She act like I'm not here now.

I really am sorry.

Sorry I said it. Sorry I made her remember we ain't little girls. Sorry we ain't in a secret club and we ain't innocent.

“Ain't nobody comin for me,” she say, and draws her knees up again. “Don't need nobody to, neither.”

I don't say nothing else. I wait and watch her relax to the swirl above us where red curtains and dim lights paint the room. I could fall asleep right here.

The brothel door at the top of the steps swings open into the room and behind us new feet stomp up the porch steps. But by the time we turn around to see, the shoes have disappeared. They appear again in the doorway. New customers.

Cynthia leans forward in her seat to see who it is—“Mayor of Otalika,” she say. “How old you think he is?”

“Sixty.”

“He's forty-five. One of those whose face ages in dog years. But I reckon with all the drinking he's done, he's pickled himself to live another forty.

“And him right there coming in and can't find a seat . . .”

“I see him. But there's at least ten empty chairs up there. A seat's a seat.”

“For you and me, maybe. Difference is a serial asshole will walk in any party and look for the one person he hasn't shat on yet. Anybody else would look for friends.”

Before the mayor finds a seat, one of the girls is on him. He don't fight her off. Meets her instead with his hand on her thigh.

“And him there,” she say, pointing to the corner of the room where a husky old man, dressed rich, laughs hearty. “Our new house dealer. Charlie Shepard. He been working up at the McCullen's for years. They fell out. Probably 'cause of a woman. As long as it wasn't stealing, I don't care. He starts here tonight.

“Everybody calls him Mr. Shepard, even his wife. That's her next to him. Soledad.”

She's pretty and brown but not black like me. She got red yarn braided in her long hair. Maybe she half Cherokee.

I met her my first week here. I was pushing my broom by her opened door after she'd flown into a fit, and was slanging ceramics through her door hole. They shattered against the wall.

She was yelling in something Percy called Spanish. When she saw me, she grabbed my arm. Tears and sweat had drenched her face and hair. Her cheeks, chin, and mouth were hanging loose from anguish. So loose that it was like there was a whole other face underneath hers, and this one was a mask glued on. Her hot tears were steaming it away. If I pinched and pulled her bottom lashes, the whole thing would slough off.

She held me and shook me, not trying to hurt me, but for balance—drunk—then yelled up the hall, “These games get old, I quit, Cynthia! I quit you. I quit these men! I'm never coming back!”

Then she said to me, “You're just her toy, you know that? She
will
get sick of you. And when she does, you come and see me. Hummingbird Lane.”

“She used to work for me,” Cynthia say, but I already remember. Though Soledad seems delicate now, dainty and feeble but put together
smooth like the ceramics she smashed before she left. She smiles shyly at Mr. Shepard.

“He bought her a house,” Cynthia say. “Gave her things she could never earn for herself. And now she's religious, too. You'd be surprised how many women find God for money. Mr. Shepard had the most. He did me a favor.”

I fly across the room when gunshots pop over the music, put my back against the broke door. But Cynthia ain't moved. “That's just Ray and Henry's stupid asses. Cain't hit shit. Always shooting and fucking up my ceilings. You can come on back over.

“Bounty hunters,” she say. “Hunt their own selves if it meant a payday. But they gon' pay for that one . . . like the last ones. Look at 'em . . . damn fools.” They're pulling at one of the girls nearby, rubbing themselves on her like it's dancing. “The only one with any sense is the one sitting. Bobby Lee. All of 'em cousins, though.”

He's slumped over his table, drunk or tired, his face hidden. His blue shirt is rolled up past his forearms where thick copper hairs look brushed.

“He lost his wife and firstborn, just a month ole,” Cynthia say. “Both of 'em on the same night. Bandits. He been looking for 'em ever since. Folks say he scratched his own eye out trying to stop the tears. He only comes here to drink and to not be by hisself. Good-looking, ain't he? Hell, I'd give it to him for free.”

The girl that Ray and Henry was pulling sits on Bobby Lee's lap. He nudges her off him but Ray and Henry grab her. Bobby Lee shoves 'em all away and they tumble to the floor, jump up ready to fight. Bobby Lee ignores 'em both, walks past 'em and brings the girl with him, toward us.

“Get back!” Cynthia say. We step back into a dark patch.

Bobby Lee stops at the bar just above us. Girl's gone. She's already working another table.

From here, I can only see from Bobby Lee's ankles to his knees so I take a step forward and see under his nose. Even from here he's
good-looking. He fumbles in his pockets for change. Sam say, “What can I get cha?”

A nickel falls, hits the floor, bounces, flips, flutters, then lays flat, teetering on the end of a plank right above me. Bobby Lee bends to pick it up.

I don't move.

I swear he's looking me dead in my eyes.

Cynthia pulls me all the way back, next to her. We hold our breaths, then I whisper under the music, “I thought they cain't see us.”

“They cain't.”

When Bobby Lee stands again, I can see the whole flat of his face. He gulps his shot of whiskey, spreads his lips to stop the burning, says to Sam, “Tell Cynthia she got rats.”

13
/ 1860

Tallassee, Alabama

J
OSEY MOVES SLOWLY
into the newness of the woods. This is the furthest she's been from the slaves' quarters since five years ago when Charles found her 'sleep on the dark ground, glowing white under the moon. Underneath her feet, once-green brush has turned to a dead gray like no rain's been here. Except for this next step: soupy mud splashes under the soles of her bare feet while the smell of mildew and rot steams from the ground. Josey looks around lost, lifts her damp foot and turns it over where peaks of mud have splotched and mixed with something sticky and binding, eggy and brown. She scrapes it with a stick and leaps back on a small patch of grass, an island in the muck. She wipes her feet there.

Ada Mae has been trailing behind Josey, looking nervous, carrying her rolling hoop. “We shouldn't have come out this far,” she say. “I've never been out here.”

“You said you wanted to practice with that hoop where nobody could see, didn't you? The place I found was just up here.”

“I don't want to no more.”

“You scared?”

“I don't feel so good, is all.”

“There's a good bush right over there.”

“You ain't scared?” Ada Mae say, her eyes widening.

“No. Yes,” Josey say. “Maybe more.”

A glint of white catches Josey's eye in the distance—a house between the trees. “I just want to see what's out there.”

“Then take my hoop,” Ada Mae say. “Practice with it and I'll catch up.”

The house sits on the edge of the woods with its paint peeling and its porch worn by too many steps. Josey holds her arm up blocking the sun when she steps out of the tree line. Sunlight catches her blue eyes and forces her head down. The warmth rolls over her shoulders, then goes cold like a blanket yanked away. My gut is telling me that Josey should turn around 'cause I feel the dark of this place. No birds are singing. No green's growing. And now that the sun's passed, everything looks hollow and drowned.

Josey stops.

I reach for her. Hesitate 'cause I cain't touch her.

Something darts between us, startles us both—a man with the sun behind him so all we can see is a shadow—eyeless, mouthless—a paper cutout in the sky. We look at him where the eyes should be.

When the sun passes, flaring nostrils meet us. She's a woman. Old and hard-breathing, taking a mouthful of air through her nose, trembling her top lip when she breathe out.

The curly man-hairs on her neck are there like they've always been—like they were almost nine years ago—moist like they sweat-glued on. She starts circling Josey, hunched over and slow. Her long dress sways, the back of it is butt-lifted higher than the front. She goes 'round Josey and Josey don't move.

She holds her breath, hoping the woman will pass, but it's too late to play dead.

The woman leans into Josey to get a better look. A faint blue circle traces the colored part of her eyes where dried tears chalk the creases in the wrinkles packed underneath her bottom lashes.

She churns her lips, moving something in her mouth—a bit of old food on her tongue—a small yellowish ball like a piece of nut. Her quick blow sends it flying to the ground.

Josey's cheeks redden.

“Well, well, well,” the witch say. “After all this time. There you is.” Her jowls quiver and her lips clinch together.

“You . . . you work on the Graham plantation, ma'am?”

“I should cut you to pieces,” Witch say.

I swear to God, she touch Josey, I'll learn this moment how to kill a woman.

Josey watches her circle and disappear behind her. “Forgive me, ma'am, I don't believe we know each other.”

“No, no. You don't know Miss Sissy, do ya'?” She stops behind Josey. “I know you.”

“Ma'am?”

“You almost made it, didn't cha, darkie? You thought you was one of them, didn't cha, coon? But you just like the rest of us.”

Sissy moves herself in front of Josey, staring with dead eyes. “I never thought I'd see the day. Nine years I been waitin for you.”

“Me?”

“Look at cha,” Sissy say. “I've seen some get through. Yes, suh. Seen some like you make it pass. And you pretty good. I admit that. But you had to have it all, didn't cha?”

“I don't know what you mean?”

“I was up there in the big house, too. Servin high society. Eatin good, dressin good, like a good house negro should. Then you came. A nigga tryin to be a white. Tryin to get for free the place and respect that a lifetime could never get me. But I seen't ya, didn't I? Your skin golden all year long, your curls . . . the way they fall. Just one drop. One drop, law say. One drop of our blood can ruin any God-created man, poison so strong that maybe we don't even know our own power. It's what got white folks scared. But one thang's for sure . . . when I saw you
poisoned in her arms, I knew who you were. Takes one to know one.” She flicks Josey's hair and grins.

Sissy's aged much faster than she shoulda. Another fifty pounds have reworked her into a different woman. But she's still in there. Twelve years since the day we first met. Twelve years since the night Annie Graham was given my baby; the same night Bobby Lee left my dead body and his cousins for the road.

He had been pushing forward in the dark for over an hour, following a light a long way off. Bobby Lee's fear was opening his senses, widening his sight, helping him to see in the dark. To smell sharply. He could smell a fox that had been that way hours before. His dry mouth tasted the sour of leaves that split as he passed.

I could hear what he heard. Hear him talking in his own head. Felt his doubt and the tricks his mind was playing. He was hearing shuffles behind him that he didn't make, started seeing mysteries in the dark.

It wasn't long before something
was
following us. At first I thought his cousins, maybe, keeping him honest, but it was something else—a living thing tasting birth in the air, smelling it on him. Cain't be sure. We had to find somebody quick, somewhere to take my baby. But there wasn't no place but that hell.

The jagged parts of wild trees and bushes tore into his thighs, scratched his neck, dug in his eyes. He twisted 'em away and threw their broken pieces to the ground. Bugs were sticking inside his clothes, tangling in the material and in his chest hair. They bit at his arms, his ankles, his face for food, but he kept my baby in a world her own, floating her on a cloud inside his coat, sacrificing his own body for hers—not a scratch, not a bite, not a cry.

The light was finally getting close.

He pressed her against himself and thought about the lie he was gon' tell when he got there—this is my baby. And the parts that weren't a lie—my wife is dead. But he was gon' keep hisself one
secret, though. Like how Ray never let him see his wife and baby after they got kilt that night. How he fought Ray and Henry to get through the door where broken chairs and dishes littered the floor and blood pooled but his cousins wouldn't let him through.

Bobby Lee settled it in his mind to never forgive Ray for not letting him in the door to see his family, dead, and now he can't accept the empty place in his remembering where he never saw 'em newly deceased. He only saw 'em blue and strange-looking in their caskets.

He put in the place of their death memory his own imaginings, a lie, pretending they ain't really gone. Instead, he remember how his wife fought off the ones that tried to kill his baby and that she ran away, hiding in the woods with his child until her new husband, a hero, a man who woulda never let this happen, saved 'em both.

So that night with Josey, Bobby Lee got it in his mind to be that man he never was. Be that hero and save my child.

The light from the distance covered us. We were five steps to the porch when he stopped to take a deep breath and a sudden tug at his coat startled him. An old slave woman was peering at him.

She told Bobby Lee, “The plantation mistress is barren. She'll have the baby.”

Just then, Josey started crying. Bobby Lee bounced her calm. His last chance to be the daddy. And when he looked back for the woman again, she was gone.

He knocked on the front door with his knees bent two inches low, trying to make hisself seem small and pitiful. Knocked again and hugged my baby close, half-wishing nobody never come.

When the door opened, a young white woman stood behind it. Her small voice said, “Good evening, sir. May I help you?” Her thick dark hair hung to her waist, half pin-curled from earlier in the day and the moonlight made her skin blue. Another young woman, a negro girl, cowered behind her, watching Bobby Lee's tall frame go from bent-kneed to hunched-back, smaller. When the light caught his scarred eye,
the negro girl pushed the door closed and said. “I'll have you know, suh, the man of the house is here.”

“Please, ma'am,” Bobby Lee said. “I don't mean no harm. I have here this baby that needs tending to.”

It was Josephine's broken cries that finally sent Annie out to her without caution. Annie searched Bobby Lee and found Josey under his coat. She peeled his coat away from Josephine's face and we watched my baby yawn.

The cool air made her cry again.

“Quickly,” Annie said. “Come in. Please.”

“I don't like this, Miss Annie,” the negro girl said, trotting close behind.

“Sissy, please . . . fetch a few clean blankets.” Annie tugged the coat from Bobby Lee's arms.

When Sissy came back, Annie snatched the blankets and wrapped my baby in 'em. She bounced Josey in her arms, twirled her around. “Please. Sit down, sir.”

“I don't have much time, ma'am,” he said to Annie. “Are you the plantation mistress?”

“I am.”

“My wife,” he told Annie. “She . . . she didn't make it through the birth.”

“Dear Lord, Mr. . . .”

“Smith,” he said. “Bobby Lee Smith, ma'am.”

Annie gazed at my baby, sorry for her. “Mr. Smith. I'm so sorry.”

“We been traveling a full day, ma'am.”

“Sissy, fetch the wet nurse,” Annie said sharply. Sissy mumbled on her way back through the kitchen and out the back while Annie put her pinky finger in my baby's mouth.

“Ma'am . . . Missus Graham?” Bobby Lee said. “I know I'm just a stranger to you and I appreciate your kindness but I got to be honest with you. . . . I heard you might take this child.”

“Mr. Smith?”

“I ain't got no place else to go,” he said. “She's healthy, far as I can tell. But I cain't do it on my own and . . .”

“Don't you have family?”

“No, ma'am. None to speak of, ma'am. My wife. She was all I had. And now . . .”

Annie held up her hand to stop him talking.

She paced with my baby. Her happiness at a chance to be a momma was guarded by her fear. She carried Josey near the warm fire, looked into Josey's eyes and it's like she fell in love. She said, “I don't have no money to give you, sir. Don't have anything of value, no place for you to stay. Nothing.”

“And there's nothin I want from you, Missus Graham. Just your kindness. For you to say yes.” He sat down slowly in her big armchair, scooted to the edge of it, his knee jumping. He held it still with both hands. “I don't want to push you none, Missus Graham. But I'm afraid that if you don't spare me this, this baby won't make it another night.”

“I will!” Annie said.

“You will?” It was the first time I saw Bobby Lee smile—all his straight yellow teeth flashing between his thin lips. Josey cried as if for joy, too.

“Thank you,” he said. “Thank God for you.”

Sissy came out the kitchen with a full-bosomed slave. “Miss Annie, she here.” The nurse hurried to my baby and scooped her from Annie's arms, quieted her with her breast.

“Cain't no good come from this, Miss Annie. You cain't help God. You cain't just
give
a baby. If God wanted you to have a baby, He'd give you one. Look at me . . . he didn't give me one befo' Paul pass. Ain't nothin wrong wit not havin' one.”

“God's giving me one now, Sissy.” Annie shook Bobby Lee's hand like they made a deal, said, “I'm sorry for your loss, Mr. Smith. Sincerely, I am. But I think God sent you to me.”

“No, ma'am,” he said. “God's blessing me. You're giving me and this baby a special gift.”

Annie sat down on the sofa next to the wet nurse and touched Josey's forehead, swept her wispy blonde hairs aside, watched her suckle. She said quietly, “Mr. Smith? What do you call her?”

Bobby Lee washed his hand around his head, smiled. “I didn't want to name her 'til I knew she was gon' make it.”

“Josephine,” Sissy said, bitterly. “I woulda named mine Josephine.”

“That's a beautiful name, Sissy. Yes, we'll call you Josephine.”

“H
OW YOU THINK
your daddy got you, huh, Miss Josephine? You weren't always his. You used to be white.” Sissy paces around Josey, clinching her teeth, rabid.

“It's 'cause a you I'm here!” she say. “I'm the one Annie blame. I'm the one she told, ‘Don't come back,' like I was a stranger. All my years she lied. Said I wasn't like the others. That I was her friend. That I was like her. Just born unlucky. So where's my reward?”

Tears smear down Sissy's cheeks. Her grunts of emotion almost cover the crunch of coming footsteps from somewhere behind us, not near enough to see.

The front door of Sissy's house swings open. “Mama!” a boy's voice calls—the black boy who belongs to nobody—Wayward. “Mama!” he say again.

The footsteps from the woods stop behind Josey. Ada Mae. She grabs Josey arm, and tells her to run.

“Come back here!” Sissy yells. “I know who you are. You owe me!”