Читать книгу The Revisioners - Margaret Wilkerson Sexton - Страница 13

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1924

THERE WAS NO QUESTION I WOULD CHOOSE THE HAMPSHIRE—he was already seven hundred pounds, fat off sweet potatoes, milk, beets, and turnips. This last week though I’d cleaned him out with corn because it wasn’t every day your only son got married. There would have to be enough pork to feed the parish.

At Wildwood, babies weren’t swaddled in white and dipped in water as soon as their color came in, and a man and his woman didn’t jump over a broom with their mother’s blessing. Once, an aunt who wasn’t really my mother’s sister fell hard for a man across the swamps. Tom, who didn’t like to be called Master, said yes, of course, and they slept in the same cabin that night. Besides that, no attention was paid, and though we settled Resurrection in the West Alexander Parish of Southeast Louisiana over thirty years ago, I still wake up every morning in disbelief. My gratitude is not close to wringing itself out, and out of thanksgiving, I make sure to do everything Tom, who made sure we called him by his first name, wouldn’t have done. I bore and raised three children but only one of them is with me now, a son, and for him to choose a bride. Don’t get me started.

And the Hampshire is the richest swine. My husband and I started out as sharecroppers on the edge of a bluff that toed the line between Mr. Dennis’s farm and the Mississippi River marshes. At first we didn’t fare much better here than Wildwood. We’d wake every morning before the sun rose to ride the mule to work on a dirt road straight along the water’s edge. But Mr. Dennis was a gambling man, a man who swallowed whiskey straight, and it was only so long before what he had was ours, three hundred acres of cotton, corn, cane, hogs, and cattle. His workers became our workers but we didn’t think of them that way. We divided the acres into tracts and parceled them out. We became a community together: we built a church, inside that a school, then a gristmill, a cane mill, a cotton gin that ground corn too. And if we had shingles, everybody had shingles; the same went for our milk cows, and fields to garden. Now that I’m old, my people’s hands are my hands. I say that to say things have changed, and it won’t fall on me to aim the rifle right between the pig’s eyes; to hang it, slit its throat, wash it, skin it, gut it clean. I have someone to do that for me now but I’ll still make the decision, point to the black boar with the white belt around the middle, because it has to be the finest.

The door swings open, and I know it is Jericho. With his long stride he runs the way other folk walk, the way I have started to hobble, hunchbacked, but I steady myself to receive him in my arms. He is a red boy, just like his daddy, and just like my husband, and his head, hair cut tight to his scalp, reaches my waist.

“You smell like outside,” I say, examining his dusty blue overalls. There’s a hole in the knee I would have to patch up that evening.

“I’ve been playing, Grandma.”

“Hmph. Well, it’s a bath for you tonight.”

He doesn’t say a word.

“You know what I mean, don’t you?”

He still doesn’t speak. Then, “What if I don’t want them to marry?”

I tap him more than slap him, right on his shoulder.

“Lord, deliver me. We’re grateful for Eliza,” I say like I’m reciting my morning psalm. “She’s kind to you, she knows her letters, she could probably learn you some better than that teacher we pay. She’ll take good care of Major and you too.”

He pauses, sits down, takes off his wide-brimmed hat, and taps his fingers against the hickory table. I can smell the lilies in a jar in the center. I get up on instinct and I pour him some cool lemonade. I still find new mercy in the fact this house belongs to me; that the pine boards overlap to keep the rodents out; the windows swing all the way open. There’s three bedrooms, one so large I can fit two beds side by side; I have an icebox instead of ceramic barrels, and I won’t ever run out of sacks of flour or my shelves of preserved raspberries and canned tomatoes, not if I live for ten more years, which I won’t. I watch Jericho drinking like his lips are a miracle to behold. Surely my own children drank lemonade. Surely they ran in and called for me over any other, but I don’t remember it. I don’t.

“Will she take care of me?” he sets his glass down. “I ain’t her child. Pretty soon she’ll start having her own and I’ll start smelling like fried skunk.”

“What do you know about fried skunk?” I shake my head but I understand his meaning.

“It’s from one of your stories,” he says, “the one about you escaping, when you were hiding in the swamps.”

“Nah, we didn’t eat no skunks; rabbit, coons, squirrels, possum stew with sweet potatoes, but no skunks, young man. Anyway, that’s enough of that,” I say because it is one thing to dip into the past but to be hauled up and tossed back in it, don’t get me started. Otherwise I don’t know what to tell him. “You been praying like I taught you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Add your worry to the list. I can tell you this: I asked for your daddy to find someone who would love him and love you and who would replace me when I’m gone.”

“Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what? The only thing you can count on is the cycle of life. Anyway, she came in and I believe it’s God’s doing.”

“How do you know though?”

I pause. “I don’t. But I will say that I had a dream the night before he brought her home and there was a woman wearing yellow in it, walking through a tunnel waving, and when Eliza walked in, didn’t she have a daffodil in her hair?”

“I don’t remember.”

“She did. So cheer up. Go in the back and get clean; I’ve got to make these cakes; if you listen, I’ll fill one of them with that blueberry jam you like.”

He heeds, but I can tell when my words don’t take root. Either way, I head out to the garden with its tomatoes, greens and okra, the banks of beets, sweet potatoes and cabbage, and rows of crowder peas, woven through the corn. The yard chickens scatter throughout for seeds and insects. I pass the smokehouse, the well, then the pen, fenced in with zigzag rails. The best hog looks at me with begging eyes, but I point my gnarled finger at him anyway.

WE PILE AS MANY INTO THE CHURCH AS WE CAN FIT and still the doorway is jammed with witnesses. I sit in the first row of course. Jericho walks in next, his maple-wood skin shining in his dark blue suit, his head held high, till he slinks in right beside me. Next is a little girl whose father works the fields, reaching into a basket and sprinkling gardenias at her feet.

The organist presses down on the pedals, and we stand. Eliza might as well tiptoe into the church from the back. Her yellow skin is powdered smooth, and there’s a crown of daffodils woven into her curly bun. I could pick her up with one hand she seems so light, and she sails more than steps down the aisle. The crowd isn’t faking when they ooh and aah. They probably haven’t seen a bride so lovely, probably won’t again. I glance over at her side of the church. Jericho saw them headed in and said without meaning to, “Mama, those folks sho is dignified.” I know they are. Her mother, Cyrile, is a schoolteacher at West Alexander Colored Convent School, one of the first schools for blacks in the parish. She sits next to her son, Eliza’s brother Louis. People tell me he is hotheaded, and I can sense it, that his pale skin is quick to redden, and he fidgets, picking at his fingers even as his sister’s and Major’s hands join. Still his suit is hemmed so fine you can scarcely see the edge of his socks. I don’t like to compare people. It is like slamming God for making petunias and roses, but it doesn’t escape me I was born a slave. I can read some, and I made sure Major finished the fourth grade. But he works the farm now, and Eliza’s family lives at the intersection of General and Christie Roads. They come from the likes of the Doucets and the Chevaliers. And they have been free for as long as they care to remember.

I remind myself I had a dress made for this event, a pastel yellow silk crepe one with a drop waist and a bowtie at the neck, from a store so fancy I had to pay a white woman to make the purchase. I am a heavy woman—even now, the seams of this gown are straining against my sides—but I know I look good. Once I overheard a younger man say as I was leaving the sick and shut-in ministry prayer meeting, “That Josephine could be my mama but she lookin more like a sister.”

Now Jericho’s old preschool teacher stands and walks toward the pulpit, clears her throat, passes a look to the organist. The music starts, and the teacher is unsteady when she joins in,

Three gates in the east

Three gates in the west

Three gates in the north

Three gates in the south

That makes twelve gates to the city Hallelujah

But it doesn’t take long before the song rises from her gut.

Oh, what a beautiful city

And I might as well be standing up there with her, patting my hand at my side:

There’s twelve gates to the city Hallelujah

Walk right in, you’re welcome to the city

Step right up welcome to the city

Walk right through those gates to the city

There are twelve gates to the city Hallelujah

When the applause settles, the preacher rises from his chair on the pulpit, walks toward us, his voice bellowing even at the start:

“How many people in a marriage, members?”

“Two,” we’re quick to shout.

“What’s that?” And he cups his ear like he can’t hear us. “Say what?” he asks again. “Three, including Mama? No, no, four? Including brother and sister who still at home? No, not that either, members, it’s just the two of you. And God, and let him be the sounding board, let him be the sole advisor. You tell Janie and Paul a secret about your woman and you go home and lay your head on your pillow and you sleep it away like a bad dream, but Janie still thinking about it, and every time your woman walking by, Paul envisioning your private pain and he breathing in it its own spark of life. No, member. Noooo,” and he allows that word to linger so it escapes halfway between a sigh and a moan. “Nooo. And who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies. And virtue’s not something you can buy, is it? You either have it through the spirit of the Lord being implanted in you from birth or you spend your whole life searching. And Major,” he turns to my son wiping the sweat from his forehead, “Major, I think you got it, I think you might be one of the lucky souls on this Earth who found it.” He is nearly singing now, and he lifts his feet one by one into the air and pumps in slow heavy motion down the steps until he reaches the couple. “I think you got it, and when you got it, best to hold on to it with all your miiight.” And that last sentiment is so nearly a song that an ordinarily quiet woman who sang soprano in the choir with me starts clapping her hands and stomping her feet, shouting, “Yes,” slow at first, then faster and faster still. The preacher mingles his own words with her shouts, then he nods at the organist, and with everyone joining, even the children, belts out:

Let Jesus lead you

All the way

All the way from

Earth to Heaven

Let Jesus lead you, all the way

I stand too. I can hear my own voice, heavy but sweet, shining above the rest, and I’m keeping time with my feet, balancing on each alternately, and swinging my body when I can manage, singing all the while. Members behind me raise their rattles and tambourines and clamor down the aisle.

He’s a mighty good leader

All the way

All the way from

Earth to Heaven

Let Jesus lead you all the way

And some are down on their knees between the pews, their heads swaying to the front, then back again, and others are stomping in a circle around the pulpit, their words spewing out in tongues amid the chorus.

Let Him lead you

All down the highway

Let Him lead you

Just like He lead my mother

Lead my father

Let Him lead you

We all quiet down after a spell. Even before the dancing, it was hotter inside the church than outside it, and we sit and we fan the sweat glistening on our brows. I lift the cloth of my dress off my sticky skin. The preacher leans into Major and clears his throat. He asks him to make a vow to love Eliza until death does them part. The few times there was a wedding at neighboring plantations, the preacher would make the bride and groom promise devotion until distance, or white folks, intervened; it was different in other ways too. The groom wore patched pants, and sometimes Kentucky jeans. Major, though, is wearing his daddy’s old suit. With the white gloves and tall beaver, he could pass for my late husband. Same burnt orange skin, same tight red curls, same coal-black eyes, and I have to look away.

Now it is time to jump the broom, backward while the preacher holds it a foot off the floor. Eliza scales it, but Major’s foot hitches, and we all know what that means. The crowd laughs: “She’s the boss, now.” “Better lend her those pants now, boy.” Hearing those sentiments, as I walk back down the aisle, I try not to wince.

I can smell the food from the lip of the church, the sizzling fried pork and creamy custard pies, the greens, potato salad and yams, the spices I added to the meat and rice for boudin. I walk over to the grandest table and not too long after I sit, Jericho carries me a plate. I take a bite. Generally, I am hard on myself; my food in particular never seems to come out as good as my mama’s, but today it seems like she was leaning over my back shaking the salt for me, and instead of the Lord, I silently thank her. People approach as I eat. Sharecroppers from my own field; grown men and women I delivered and set in their new mothers’ arms; teachers who’d taught Major, and some work with Eliza now; Link, who reunited former slaves after the war. For the longest time, I’d push her to find my mama, and she traveled all over the state of Louisiana, in churches and white folk agencies too, but to no avail.

She sits down with her plate touching mine. She is wearing a simple skirt and blouse, a bucket hat. I compliment her on it all. She has a strong gap between her teeth; she is as long as I am wide, but our skin is the same dark brown, and when our arms touch, they could be of the same body. The sun is setting, and the heat is thin enough for wind to pass through. People have pulled out banjos, fiddles and drums for dancing, the Buzzard Lope and the Cakewalk. Link and I watch them for a long time, not needing to say a word to read each other’s thoughts.

“I had a dream about Henry last night.”

“Oh?” I look up. It is like the sweetness of the day brought out Link’s secret pain.

“He was standing right beside me; we were sipping lemonade on my own porch. But my heart was heavy. I don’t think he’s coming back.”

I shake my head, no. What is there to say? “Whether he does or not it’s best to assume the worst, be ready for that outcome,” I say.

She nods. She understands, but it is her son.

“You think Eliza’s mama cared for that carrying-on from the preacher?” Link asks.

I can tell she’s trying to get her mind in a good place, to allow herself to enjoy this day.

“I could see her people in the front row,” she goes on, “holding their mouths like they were drinking lemonade that wasn’t cut with enough sugar.”

“Whether they abide it or not, no way I would close a marriage ceremony without it.”

“I know that, but do they? People like that more into silent prayer.”

“Silent what?”

And Link lifts her shoulders and shifts her chest out and starts moving her lips but no sound comes out, and we are steady laughing. Eliza’s people walk by and I shut up on the spot, straighten up my face. It is no use though. They seem to sense they interrupted something.

“Was an awful nice ceremony,” I say with a smile.

“Very nice, exceeded my expectations,” the mother, Cyrile, says, her face still scrunched up like her breakfast didn’t agree with her. “And the food, we have to get going but I can smell you really know your way around a kitchen.” She must mean it as a compliment, but the way her mouth is set, she could be saying, Sister, you know you stewed those beans in an outhouse.

“You sure are missing out, Mama.” Louis is halfway through his plate, even standing up. There is a speck of barbecue sauce right under his chin, and I have an urge to wipe it off same way I’d do Major, but I hold my hand back. Anyway his mama does it for me.

“Well, we ought to be going now,” she snaps at him when he’s done, and he gulps a cup of sweet lemonade. His hair is slick and soft and he leans over and kisses my cheek, rubbing his belly as he walks away.

“She leaving miiighty early,” Link says.

“They do got to get all the way back north.”

“Still, her daughter’s wedding. I’d be the last one standing.”

“I don’t pretend to understand the ways of those people.”

I take another sip of tea; everybody else is having more than that, strawberry water with cane sugar and whiskey, and you’ll see the effects come an hour. The quietest men will swoop taken women off their feet; the softest women will raise their voices in their sisters’ faces, and I wonder all of a sudden about Jericho; he is with the children dancing to old Sally Walker, almost indistinct from the others, but I can see his eyes. Behind them, he is elsewhere.

My own child and his new wife are greeting people, making their rounds.

“They make quite the pair,” Link says.

“Who?” I ask.

“Who you think? The bride and groom. And she couldn’t look any prettier.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“Happy too. That’s the thing. Sometimes you see these people jump the broom and they can barely look each other in the eye. They just doing it cause they got a child need minding or mama who thinks it’s time to take up the family way. But not them. Seem like this was an idea all their own.”

“All their own indeed,” I say, and we laugh the way people laugh when either one of them could have spoken, their minds are so connected. It is a hearty laugh, from deep down somewhere, but it is light too because she knew the joke already.

They do look happy. It is hard to watch them period, but especially without Isaiah beside me. Most days I can pretend he is out on the farm; he spent most of his waking hours there and I didn’t begrudge him that. Those early years were the cotton ones. Working on the halves, Isaiah would fill a sack with fiber he pulled from the dried bolls, then carry the sack to the wagon, weigh it, dump it out clean, and some days he’d report picking over five hundred pounds. It didn’t matter though, not when it was time to settle up, and Mr. Dennis’s mouth would run in circles about the cost of seeds, tools, jackets, fertilizer; my husband couldn’t write enough to record, and even if he could, no white man would have read it; more times than not, we’d come out with fifty cents for the month. “This little bitty money,” he’d toss it at the table, but I’d stretch it, baby. I’d sell eggs and mend seams, and he’d fix clocks and guns, and we’d stretch it, and inside our house, we didn’t talk about Mr. Dennis. We didn’t think about him either. Because of that it is the nights that are merciless, the nights and occasions like these—

“You any keener on her?” Link asks.

I look at Link. We came here together after the war. Different plantations, but both motherless, we’d walk the turn row to town together. People say I have started to favor her, or her me, not just in the way we laugh with our heads back and our shoulders shaking, or because we say in our scratched-up voices all right instead of hello when someone greets us. No, our noses have plumped, our eyes have narrowed, the skin on our necks is slack, and more than once I’ve had to inform a young person we weren’t born sisters. I say that to say it is not possible to lie to her.

I shake my head.

“Time has a way of working that stuff out. And babies.”

“Lord willing,” I say. Though a part of me is afraid of their new family, on behalf of Jericho, sure, but also for me. I hadn’t foreseen living so long. Most people I talk to are half my age; Link got the sugar and lost three toes on her left foot, my son and his bride haven’t made it to my table yet, and though the pig was masterful, I have a taste in the back of my tongue like soot. When they finally reach me, it feels like the only way to purge that metallic flavor is to speak.

Before I can even say Congratulations, I start.

“Eliza, can I take you aside for a moment?”

She follows me to a part of the yard where the music isn’t swallowing our words whole.

“It was a beautiful ceremony,” she says. “And the food, I haven’t tried it, but everybody is complimenting us. I told them it was all—”

“Jericho James has just as much a right to Major as you do,” I cut in. “He’s his son.”

“I know that,” she talks in that squeak she uses and for the first time I want to lay her across my knee the way I would my own daughters. They aren’t with me—one followed her husband north and the other one followed hope in the same direction, but I’d take my own hand to them both if they hadn’t learned by now that there are times when it’s safe to let your voice ring out in this world.

My words are stuck in my throat. I didn’t expect her to mold to my touch.

“Well, if you know that, then you know he’s gotta start sleeping there like it’s his home. It was improper at first; boy needed a mama after his own run off, and I had to see to his meals, teach him how to use the bathroom, clean after himself, but now he’s older and I’m not going to be here forever.”

“I know that.”

“Oh. You know that, huh? Well, see to it that he sleeps with you beginning tonight then. First night will set the tone for the rest of your marriage. He’ll think of you a certain way if you let him know at the jump he’s one of you.”

“He is. Me letting him know that won’t be an act or a show, just the truth. Listen, Miss Josephine, I made a vow up there in front of that preacher and all of you to wed myself with Major, and I didn’t just mean Major, I meant Jericho James, and you.”

“Well, good then.” I nod. It wasn’t too often I caught myself speechless. I credit it to the fact that the girl knows her letters, not makeshift from the slave master’s daughter who wasn’t but nine years old herself, but from an actual teacher, who had been trained by a white woman. I was proud of that when Major first told me, but the more time went on it began to unsteady me. I had thought of the world a certain way, but a different picture of it had been painted and there were countries I hadn’t even known existed.

“All right then,” I repeat. “It was a mighty fine ceremony.” And I walk off adjusting my hat. I slip on the way back to my seat and more than a few young men reach for my arm, but I steady myself; even if they hadn’t been there, I would have been all right.

ON OUR WAY HOME, WE GLIMPSE THE NEW WHITE NEIGHBORS out front. They don’t live but a rock’s throw from me, the only property in my line of sight that I don’t own. The small farm used to be the overseer’s, and I can’t glance at it without wanting to spit. Now these new people grow a few crops: corn, and I’ve noticed them picking peas and bedding sweet potatoes. They moved in a few months back, just finished closing in their chickens with hog wire, but I haven’t ventured to say five words to them. Today, despite my misgivings, I feel like nothing can touch me.

“All right,” I nod, and tip my hat. A young couple, no kids yet. The man has always been the one to speak; I catch him some mornings selling fish from an ice chest. The girl just drags behind him like a dog enduring a bad foot. As we talk, guests from the wedding ride by on the winding gravel. Oaks flank the lane, which is just wide enough for one mule at a time. I know the full names of everybody who passes. They wave at me, then shoot one quick glance at the neighbors and speed off.

“We didn’t want to interrupt. We heard the noise out front. Sounds like you had a party.” This from the man of course.

“My son got married.”

“Married, huh? Well, congratulations. Who’s the lucky girl?”

I nod behind me though I know they can’t see that far back. “Gal in the white.”

“Well, I’ll be. We didn’t formally meet, but my name is Vern; this is my wife, Charlotte.”

“How do you do?”

They reach their hands out, but I know better than to take them. Most of their kind live closer to town and for that very reason, we try to stay put. Link’s nephew is the one to stuff mattresses and weave baskets; Isaiah’s cousins sell charcoal and animal traps; we run our own syrup mills, break our own horses, carve our own tables, cut our own hair, and aside from selling cotton or trading in the store, our paths and white people’s do not converge.

“Well, it’s been a long day,” I say. “I’ll be heading back in.”

“Of course, of course. We’ll be seeing you around then. Say, my wife could use some company during the day. I notice you’re home—”

I turn back to him. I would have been more surprised if Jesus had turned up at the front door and asked me for a cup of sugar. Not but one hundred feet apart in residence but this white man has his well and I have mine. Yes, our clotheslines only hang a few feet apart, but as soon as my items dry, I fold them into my drawer. It’s the white folks whose underthings swing in the night breeze.

“Listen, I got children and grandchildren who need me. Clients too.” I don’t deliver as many babies as I had in my youth, but some mothers still call. “I cook three meals and take in some laundry.” I raise my hands. I’m more than a little surprised at how my words have streamed out like they’d been waiting for him. “I’m still wondering when the Lord is going to add more hours to the day, but until he hears me . . .” I trail off. They laugh at the joke about God, and I close the door and click the bolt behind me.

I DON’T NORMALLY LOCK UP. IN FACT YOU CAN FIND ME rocking on my porch most nights until the wind cuts through my shawl. The Klan isn’t deep here like they used to be in Link’s sister’s side of town. Not only that, I’m still marveling at the change: down the hill, the houses were so close to the marsh mosquitos ate us for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert; either that, or we closed the windows and suffocated in the heat. Here the night air feels like God close up, whispering his secrets, and I’m liable to stare at the butter beans and mustard greens my husband laid the groundwork for like it’s the seventh day.

Today is different though. Aside from the wedding, which was of course a joyous occasion, it seems like those neighbors got something sticky about themselves they were trying to pass off, press inside me, and I need more of a barrier than normal. I collapse on my bed before I even take off my shoes. I don’t know how long I am out, but when I hear the knock it’s clear it’s been sounding for some time. I jerk up, reach for my kerosene lamp and light it. Like I said, there isn’t any Klan, not yet, but Link talked about them like they were supernatural, an army of ghosts riding around with bullets peppered through them. Not only that, there was burning and looting, lynching too. Link’s kin had to stay by me for two weeks last winter after those devils shot a man for standing in front of a white woman at the general store. The memory of it sits low in my mind today, and for that reason I look through the hole my son drilled through the door before I answer. Oh. It is only Jericho.

I open up fast, set a pot of milk on the wood stove to boil; there are always roasted peanuts and he grabs a handful and tosses them back.

He sits down at the table. I had heard Eliza tell Link that today was the best day of her life. She would never forget it, but Jericho looks like he won’t forget it either, only for opposite reasons.

“What is it? You look like somebody been hainted.” The fireplace is out but I reignite it, add a couple pieces of lumber to the pit.

He shakes his head but he doesn’t say a word.

“What is it? I thought you was sleeping over by them tonight.”

He shakes his head again.

I stand all of a sudden, and the pine floor seems to bend with my weight. The sadness is too much for me to bear. I only met his mama a few times, but I’d been shocked when she up and left a three-month-old in my arms. A baby who had gotten used to the breast, and I had to drip milk from my cows onto his tongue with a medicine dropper. I shudder each time I remember the nights: he’d rumble awake at the sound of my breath shifting and it would start up again, that interminable wail that I’d take to my grave. My life had not been easy by any account, and I was surprised to realize, old as I was, finished as I thought I was, that that wail would be the hardest thing I’d endure.

I reach for my coat. “Where is she? I told her it was your house. I told her if she couldn’t abide that, we wouldn’t abide her. In so many words, I told her that.” I can hear myself huffing. I have always been a little too quick to anger; anybody who knows me knows you never have to wonder what I am thinking, but that trait looks different on me now. I don’t have to see a reflection to know it can read as sad. I can’t always keep my footing these days.

“She told me I could stay there, Mama,” he says, reaching for my hand.

It takes a while for his words to hold; I had become so worked up.

“What do you mean?” I ask. “Then why are you here?”

“I wanted to be here, Mama. I didn’t want to be anywhere else.”

“Oh,” I sit down. The milk is bubbling, but I’d get it in a second. “Oh,” I repeat. “Well, I suppose that’s okay,” I say. Him staying is more than okay. “I got some pig lips I set aside for us this morning,” I say.

He nods. “I didn’t have much of an appetite earlier.”

“That’s understandable.”

THOUGH HE IS TWELVE WE STILL SLEEP IN THE SAME room, and when I am done with the dishes, I lie down on the bed opposite him. I close my eyes, a drift away from that other world, unrecognizable faces and names already pulsing inside my mind, when he pats my arm.

“Mama?”

“Yes, son?”

“Can you tell me the story again?”

“It’s too late,” I say. I don’t remember what I just gave up but it was sweet, I know that, as sweet as anything I can dredge up from my own, real life.

“Please,” he whispers.

I prop up on one arm. Maybe I spoil him.

“He’s a black man in this world,” Major has scolded me. “You got him used to sweetness when life gon’ be tart.”

“Somebody’s got to do it,” I always shout back. “Doesn’t make it any more tart because you have known sweetness. If anything, the sweetness levels it out for you.” That’s what I’d say, but I have no way of knowing.

Of course Major isn’t only protecting Jericho. He resents me. I didn’t tell my own children stories, didn’t have the time to, and if I had the time, I certainly didn’t have the breath. I was still a child crafting jump ropes from vines when I was ripped off that plantation, and it took me past adulthood to see straight again, to be inside my body when I was hauling the plow, hammering nails on the fences, planting the cotton, cutting the onions, thickening the roux, marching through the streets with the stink from white people’s dirty clothes wafting off my head, balancing water from the wells, washing and boiling the clothes. I used lye to make soap and wheat bran for starch. I’d hang skirts and short pants on plum bushes. Then I’d heat the iron on the stove, cover it with beeswax, clear it, wet the garments, and run that iron back and forth. At least once a month, a bell would ring for me and I’d carry my sassafras and castor oil to a screaming woman’s house to thin the time between her contractions. I soaked beans and braided hair and sewed dresses for my children, but I didn’t bother to tell them I loved them.

“Okay,” I say now. “What story should it be?”

“The one where you died and came back to life.”

I nod. That is his favorite, and as far as memories go, it is harmless.

“You not sick of that one?” I ask, buying time.

He shakes his head.

“All right then.”

I clear my throat and lean my head against the pillow. It is hard looking back. As close as I have to be to dying it is easier to look forward than to look back.

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