Nowhere Is a Place (34 page)
Why she want me?
The answers always fell short of what they needed, which was a scaffold of assuredness sturdy enough to bear their egos. Esther replied, “I love you, ain’t that enough?”
They said it was, but it wasn’t and they didn’t know why. So the men beat her for loving them.
They beat the goodness and the sweetness out of her. They beat her into the streets, into back alleys, down into the dirt, into the gutter, onto her knees, her back, and then they climbed on top and emptied their miseries inside her.
Esther.
The voice was unmistakable, but Coraline had to be sure, so she said, “What you say, gal?” And Doll repeated herself in the same whiskey-and-cigarette scarred voice.
Coraline rounded the table, caught Doll by the collar of her dress, and dragged her out the house and down the road to the old woman called Sadie, who had herbs and potions that would deal with a tramp soul like Esther.
“Uh-hmmm,” Sadie grunted as she used her thumb and forefinger to stretch Doll’s eyelids open. After peering in the right eye and then the left, Sadie rocked back on her heels and nodded with confidence.
“Yeah, she in there all right.” Sadie shook her head pitifully. “Sorry for this, but it make sense now, all that hollering she done when she come into this world.”
Coraline nodded her head in agreement and then folded her arms around her swollen belly and began to sway.
“Sit down, Coraline, before you fall over,” Sadie warned. “You remember how she die?”
“Who?”
“That old whore.”
Coraline eased herself into a nearby chair, dropped her head into her hands, and forced her mind to look back. “I think she was stabbed to death.”
“So she died by the blade? You sure? You gotta be sure now.”
Coraline pounded her fists against her temples. “Yeah, someone cut her throat.” Her eyes swung to her daughter’s complacent expression and back to Sadie’s well-lined face. “You gonna be able to pull that whore outta my child?”
Sadie chewed on her ragged bottom lip. “Every tramp soul is different. Some stronger than others.” She glanced at Doll who was looking up at the ceiling, her eyes intent on something. Sadie slowly followed her line of vision, but there was nothing to see but wooden planks and cobwebs. She brought her palms together in a resounding clap.
Both Doll and Coraline jumped at the sound.
“Look at me, child,” Sadie gently demanded. She leaned over and brought her nose within millimeters of Doll’s, caught her roughly by the chin, and said, “Esther, Esther, we gonna get you outta this child and send you straight to hell where you belong!”
Doll held the old woman’s gaze, skinned back her lips, and spat, “And I’ma take you with me, witch!”
Coraline shrieked and Sadie lurched back.
“Ooh, Esther,” Sadie sneered as she walked a wide circle around Doll. “When I’m through with you, you gonna be sorry you were ever born!” And then to Coraline, “You go along home now let me do what I need to do.”
The old woman moved to the door and pulled it open. A sheath of daylight sliced across the floor and the multicolored glass canisters and jugs shelved along the back wall.
“Come back for her in the morning.”
Coraline scrambled out the door.
* * *
When Coraline returned the next day, Sadie handed her a sealed jar filled with murky water.
“Esther in here?” Coraline asked, holding the jar at arm’s length.
“Her spirit,” Sadie said.
“Well, what am I supposed to do with it?”
“Dig a hole as deep as you can, pour the water in it, and then cover it up.”
Coraline eyed the jar for a minute and then looked over at Doll who was sitting at the table, nibbling on a biscuit.
“She look well enough,” Coraline said to Sadie, and then cocked her head and addressed Doll: “How you feelin’?”
Doll glanced up from her biscuit. Her lips were covered in crumbs. “Fine, ma’am,” she responded in her five-year-old voice.
“Come on now, you can take that biscuit to go.”
Doll jumped out the chair and moved across the floor toward her mother. Coraline’s eyebrows arched with concern—Doll’s legs were crisscrossed with bright red switch marks.
“Y-you beat her?”
Sadie narrowed her eyes and grabbed hold of her slim hipbones. “I ain’t beat
her
—I beat the whore inside her.”
Doll moved to her mother’s side and took her hand. Mother and daughter’s fingers entwined and a familiarity surged through Coraline’s veins.
“Remember now,” Sadie warned, “that hole gotta be deep. Dig all the way to China if you have to.”
* * *
Dearest, you cannot bury a soul! Souls are light, darkness, and air. Coraline found this out the hard way, when five years after she buried the jar and thought that she had rid her daughter and the world of Esther and malice, Esther reappeared, stronger and more spiteful than ever.
Coraline had spent most of the day in the yard, boiling, scrubbing, and hanging sheets. Doll helped some, but she was clumsy and easily distracted. Three separate times she’d lost her grip on a freshly washed sheet, and all of the hard work went sloshing down to the dusty ground.
Coraline sucked her teeth in anger. “Girl, you causing me double work!” She sent Doll off with a vicious wave of her hand. “Take your brother with you.”
“I’m sorry, Mama.”
“That you are,” Coraline hissed as she crumpled the sheet into a ball and dropped it back into the pot of hot, soapy water.
Hours later, Coraline entered the house in search of salve to apply to her chafed red hands. Her mood was low, but soared when she heard the joyous laughter of her children seeping from her bedroom. A favorite hiding place for brother and sister was beneath Coraline’s double-sized bed.
Her sore hands forgotten, a mischievous smile lit on Coraline’s lips when she tiptoed into the room, raised one corner of the mattress, and peered down through the jungle of coiled bedsprings.
“Gotcha!”
But she was the one who got a surprise.
Doll’s bloomers were down at her ankles and the hem of her dress was gathered around her neck. Conner, her five-year-old brother, had an index and middle finger inside of Doll’s pussy.
The same two fingers he slipped into his mouth at night and sucked until dawn. The two fingers he stroked Coraline’s cheek with and used to spoon up and eat cake batter.
Coraline went deaf and dumb with rage. She would have preferred blindness—death even—to block out the vision before her.
When Conner saw the shocked and angry look on his mother’s face, he withdrew his fingers and they came out slick with Doll’s nectar.
Coraline snapped, toppling the mattress and the bed onto its side, then pounced on Doll and wrapped her hands around the child’s throat.
Conner ran from the house and into the road, where he stood frantically waving his arms and shrieking, “Help! Help!”
A neighbor, who had been sitting on his porch rolling tobacco, stood up and called to the boy, “What’s wrong?”
“My mama is killing my sister!” Conner screamed back before sticking his fingers in his mouth.
Yes,
those
two fingers.
Chapter Four
Sadie was dead, and it was the best for everyone really, because her particular type of magic would have been useless in that situation.
So, Coraline took Doll to the reverend.
“You can have her,” Coraline said, and shoved Doll roughly toward him. “Ain’t no good in her, only Esther, and she’s all bad.”
The reverend’s eyes swung wildly between Coraline and her sobbing daughter.
“Sister Coraline, I can’t—”
Coraline backed away. “Nah, nah, Reverend, you gotta take her or I’ma kill her for sure,” she warned as she raised her right palm to the sky. “I swear to God, I will kill this child and then the blood ain’t gonna just be on my hands, your hands gonna be red too.”
August Hilson gently took hold of Doll’s arm and she flinched in pain. That’s when he noticed the black and blue bruises.
“My Lord,” he whispered in horror, “did you beat this child?”
Coraline was already walking away. She turned her head slightly and slung, “No, Reverend. I didn’t beat Doll; I beat the whore inside of her.”
* * *
August led Doll into the house and guided her to the sofa. “Sit here,” he said, and then disappeared into the kitchen.
His wife Ann was standing over the sink, stuffing seasoned rice into the belly of a raw chicken. “Who was that at the door?” she queried without turning around to look at him.
“Ann.”
The seriousness in her husband’s voice was heartstopping. Ann slowly turned to face him. August was gray.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
In the living room, Doll could hear August’s hushed explanation, which was followed by Ann’s shrill “She did
what?”
In a moment, Ann was at Doll’s side, cradling her against her bosom.
“My sweet, sweet Jesus,” she murmured. “What kind of mother would do this to her own flesh and blood?”
August shook his head in dismay. “Caroline is hot now. Maybe in a day or two—”
Ann’s head snapped up. “In a day or two
what?
Don’t tell me you’re thinking about sending this poor child back to that woman?”
August was thinking exactly that.
“Oh, I won’t have it, August. Next time might be the last time for this little girl. Doll is staying right here with us.”
* * *
August and Ann had a child of their own named Vesta. A six-year-old with a lisp and tender ways. At the dinner table that night, Vesta shoveled forkfuls of steamed rice and baked chicken into her mouth, all the while keeping her eyes glued to Doll.
After dinner, Ann dressed Doll in one of her halfslips. “You’ll wear this until I can find you a decent nightgown,” Ann said, before tucking the girl into bed alongside Vesta.
She read them a story, and planted soft kisses on each of their foreheads. The “I love you” Ann shared before closing the bedroom door was big enough for both girls.
In the darkness Vesta whispered, “I been praying for a sister.”
Doll’s hand moved across the empty space between them, found Vesta’s hand, and squeezed it. “Me too,” she said.
* * *
Doll slipped into the Hilson family as easily as a lost puzzle piece they didn’t know was missing.
“See, I told you,” Ann commented to August one day as she sat darning socks, “that Coraline was the crazy one. Doll’s been nothing but a joy.” She smiled to herself, knotted the stitch, and then used her teeth to sever the thread. “She’s just the sweetest thing.”
August, who was seated across the room sucking on his pipe and reading the newspaper, nodded in agreement.
A few years later, Ann’s words—
She’s just the sweetest
thing
—would float back to August as he slid inside of Doll and exploded into a million points of light.
End of Excerpt
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Gathering of Waters
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Following her best-selling, award-winning novel
Glorious
, McFadden produces a fantastical historical novel featuring the spirit of Emmett Till.
The New York Times
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Gathering of Waters
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The Washington Post
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Gathering of Waters
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"McFadden works a kind of miracle—not only do [her characters] retain their appealing humanity; their story eclipses the bonds of history to offer continuous surprises . . . Beautiful and evocative,
Gathering of Waters
brings three generations to life . . . The real power of the narrative lies in the richness and complexity of the characters. While they inhabit these pages they live, and they do so gloriously and messily and magically, so that we are at last sorry to see them go, and we sit with those small moments we had with them and worry over them, enchanted, until they become something like our own memories, dimmed by time, but alive with the ghosts of the past, and burning with spirits."—Jesmyn Ward,
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"McFadden combines events of Biblical proportions—from flooding to resurrection—with history to create a cautionary, redemptive tale that spans the early twentieth century to the start of Hurricane Katrina. She compellingly invites readers to consider the distinctions between 'truth or fantasy' . . . In McFadden's boldly spun yarn, consequences extend across time and place. This is an arresting historical portrait of Southern life with reimagined outcomes, suggesting that hope in the enduring power of memory can offer healing where justice does not suffice."—
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"The rich text is shaped by the African American storytelling tradition and layered with significant American histories. Recalling the woven spirituality of Toni Morrison's
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