Authors: Natashia Deon
Conyers, Georgia, 1847
T
HE MUSK OF
burning wax is seeping through Cynthia's bedroom door. I knock.
No answer.
I press my ear against the cool door. Cain't hear nothin.
My hair tumbles over my shoulder. It smells of Jeremy. Makes me smile.
I knock again, ease the door open. “Cynthia? You call me?”
Flames atop two candles sway above their silver holders. The holders are pushed back on the vanity, painting soot on the mirror.
Fancy plates that Cynthia usually keeps under her bed wrapped in a velvet cloth, is out. One of the plates is on the floor, half-pushed under the vanity, mounded with gray chicken bones, thin as thistles. Rib bones are branched off a greasy spine. A leg bone's still got the white crunchy gristle on the end.
I take a step in.
An empty bottle of wine lays tipped over next to the bed. And next to it is the rest of that chickenâbones piled on a book beside a knocked-over, empty wine glass.
Her naked white toes wiggle off the end of the bed while the rest of her is crumpled on the trunk I sleep on. She got one arm against the wall, propped straight up in the air like she's waiting to be called on. Her head is sunk in her shoulders, her body is draped in a man's undershirt pushed up above her stretched-out belly. I pick up the glass near her foot and put it on the vanity next to another bottle of wine. My hip bumps her chair, knocks her hanging dress to the floor. When I reach down to pick it up, her eyes shoot open. “What the hell you doing walking in on me?” she say. She pushes herself up but falls back, pointing a bread roll at me like it's gon' hold me in place.
“You called me?” I say.
She washes her hand over her face, says, “I called you a long time ago. Where were you?”
“I knocked but you was 'sleep.”
She strains her swollen eyes open, bends over her lap with her elbows on her knees.
“I was shootin marbles,” I say.
“I can tell you lying. The way your voice just rose.”
She stretches both arms above her head, cracks her back. She sticks her finger in her ear and wiggles it around, snorts at the same time. “Next time you see me not waking, you come see if I'm dead before you go and wait over there with my wine.”
“Yes'm.”
I take the half-full bottle of wine from the vanity and pour her a glass before she even asks and watch the dark-purple color slide in. I give it to her, sit back at the vanity, and work at pushing the cork back in.
“Just so you know,” she say, “I wasn't sleep. I was praying. I don't never sleep. You remember that.”
“Yes'm,” I say. The cork is stuck sideways.
She finishes her wine like a shot of whiskey. She say, “You think my momma's in hell?”
My cork pops.
“If there is one, I reckon she is,” she say.
She reaches her empty glass out to me to refill it. I say, “I thought you don't believe in heaven or hell?”
“I said
if.
And I don't. Come on, have a drink with me.”
“No, that's all right.”
“So you don't drink, neither?”
I don't answer.
She raises her glass. “A toastâto all you bitches that don't drink and think your shit don't stank.” She chugs a big swallow of wine, continues with a loud burp, laughing now. “You know what special day it is today? Go'n and guess.”
“Your birthday?”
“Guess again.”
“Johnny's?”
“Know what Yom Kippur is?”
“No, ma'am.”
“A religious holiday,” she say. “Thas today, started at sundown.” She raises her glass again, sips.
“I thought you weren't saved. Didn't believe in Jesus.”
She laughs. “Christians ain't the only ones that got religion. I'm a pure country Jew. And this is
my
Day of Atonement.”
“I thought you was white?”
“I am. Wrong kind of white for these parts.”
“And you said you didn't believe in nothin?”
“I can give God one day . . . most of it, anyway.” She drinks again, leaves a gulp at the bottom. “I'm s'posed to be looking at things I coulda done better this year. Repenting and asking God for forgivenessâsaying things like, âI'm sorry I slapped my child, I won't do it again,' and apologize to people I wronged.” Her breath catches, “If you think I wronged you, sorry.”
“You gon' give up whoring?” I say.
“I'm talking about the shit I done wrong. What I do for them out there, I do right,” she laughs. “God understands a girl's gotta make a living. Thas my job, my business. Ain't nobody gon' give a woman work
unless it's doing dishes and I don't do dishes. I sure as hell ain't getting married, neither. I'm doing me and my girls a favor. A chance to earn a living for ourselves.” Her foot knocks the chicken bones off her plate and onto a book she got on the floor. She reaches down and picks it up, wipes the bone grease off. “What I hope is for God to forgive me for my wrongs,” she say. “Write my name in his Book of Life. Everybody's fate is sealed tomorrow.”
“What about me?”
“What about you? You ain't Jewish.”
She fans open her book. It looks like a diary inside. She thumbs through its handwritten pages without reading it. Closes it.
I say, “So what you s'posed to do on this Yom Kippur?”
“If there was a temple around, I'd go to it and pray all day like my father did when I was young. As it is, I'm a woman. So
this
is my temple. And after the shit I done this year I got a lot of making up to do.”
She puts her diary down, rests her head back on the wall. “Already fucked up, though,” she say. “I shoulda been fasting since sundownâno food, no drink, nothin. But you best believe I'm gon' finish off this bottle of wine unless God hisself tell me I cain't.”
The glass in her hand slips through her fingers, spills on my trunk, the wine gathers in its creases, near her book. She yanks her book away and leaves everything else.
I rush to clean up the wine, wipe it with the edge of my dressâthe only thing I got but she don't move except to plop her thigh over the last part I got to clean. It stains her own leg purple. She looks at her spilled glass. “Well, goddamnâa sign. I'm done. Can't spend much time in contemplation if I'm loaded.”
I take my dress to the basin, soak it in the little bit of water left over at the bottom, scrub my dress between my hands. I dip it in the basin again, but all the water's used up.
Cynthia don't apologize to me, like she don't care, even though it's her fault my dress is ruined. “Is there something you called me for?” I say, and throw my hand on my hip.
She lays back against the wall closing her eyes. “You think I'm gon' be saved, Naomi? In the end, I mean?”
I want her to get up off my sleeping trunk.
I say, “Ain't for me to decide.”
“Why I even ask you?” she say like she's mad at me now. “What do you know, exactly? Nothing.” She gets off my trunk with her book, plops down in the chair in front of me. “Why don't you go over there somewhere, make yourself busy. Better yet,” she say holding her hand up, “if this is temple today, gimme some scripture.”
I don't want to read to her but I go to my trunk anyway and pull my Bible from under my blanket.
“Old Testament,” she say.
“Why you worried about damnation now, anyway?” I say, and sit on my trunk.
She leans into her mirror, wipes the sleep from her eye, pinches her cheeks to bring back color. “You believe in the sixth sense?” she say. “Reading the past, the future, and all?”
“Only God knows the future.”
“Well, when I was seven years old, He told me mine. Told me I'd die before thirty-five. Come October, I'll have my curtain call. Maybe I'll slip into a well and break my neck or get some disease that eat me away.”
“Cain't nobody know when they die,” I say. “Or how.”
“I can and I do. Now, read me something.”
I open my Bible. “âThe Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want . . .'” I can feel her watching me. Maybe she seen me talking to Jeremy. Maybe she know I been talking to Albert about south. The worry makes me lose my place reading. I start again. “âThe Lord is my Shepherd. I . . . I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.'”
“I grew up around yer kind,” she say. “My daddy bought and sold peoples like you all the time. Charleston, South Carolina. Charles Towne. Big office on King Street. When the trade dried up he sold whatever he could. Didn't want to go back to New York with nothing.” She lights a cigarette. “Go on, read.”
“âHe leadeth me beside . . .'”
“âStill waters,'” she say, finishing my verse and staring into her mirror. “My momma wrote hymns and ran Sunday school. She never could get over what Daddy done.”
“Sunday school? I still don't understand how you ain't Christian.”
“Y'all ain't the only ones that go to Sunday school and got scripture, neither. We had it first.” She puts white powder all over her face.
“There used to be a whore that worked here,” she say. “Always reciting the Bible like it made her better than everyone else, even her customers. But there was only one holy of hers these dogs were interested in.”
She blots color on her cheeks, changes her mind and wipes it all off. She draws in her eyebrows straight and plain.
“Is there many of y'all 'round here, now? Not-Christians, I mean.”
“Used to be plenty of us in Charleston. Mostly from Europe. A beautiful continent it is. You even heard of Europe?”
I shake my head.
“You even been outside Georgia?”
“Alabama,” I whisper.
“You runned all the way from Alabama!” She leans back laughing. “You must got some kind of spirit on you, girl. Ran all the way from Alabama and ain't been nowhere.”
I put my head down in my book, pretend to read so she shut up asking me questions. She reaches over from her chair, flips my Bible closed, got a sly look about her. “I bet you ain't never been wit a man?”
I don't say nothin.
Her voice fills with excitement. “Not even a kiss?”
I try to reopen my Bible. Cain't. She falls back in her chair laughing. “I knew it! Soon as I saw you. Shit girl, you ain't done nothin.”
I get my Bible open again, put my finger on my verse, follow under the words, look busy, and watch her out the corner of my eye. She grabs her silver cigarette holder, shakes one out, and lights it. “Been with my first when I was ten. Paid a debt for my daddy.”
“I'm sorry.”
“Hell, he had lots of debts, sold everything. Before then, I was like you, didn't know nothing about nothing. Didn't know a dick end from a fork end.”
“I'm sorry.”
“What's wrong with you? Who the hell are you to be feeling sorry for me? Why don't you go back to reading.”
Sometimes, I think me and Cynthia is friendly, but most times, not. She likes to remind me of who I am in the world. I read, “âHe res . . . restoreth my soul.'”
“I killed him, you know. My daddy. One slice across the neck and he was dead, just like that. Ain't nothing like taking a man's life.”
She stares up at the ceiling, folds her hands on her chest. “Nobody ever suspected his little blonde baby girl done it.” She laughs. “Shit, I feel better already, confessing. It's good to get some thangs off your chest. Don't you get no ideas, neither. Nobody would believe you no way.”
The law believes us sometimes.
They must.
I have to tell myself every day that they believed Hazel when they came looking for Massa and she had to lie about what I done.
Memories of that day flash in my mind like they real againâblood around my fist, the toughness of his skin when I pushed that poker through.
My hands start shaking and I hold them together on my lap.
“My momma kept this here diary,” Cynthia say, flicking her book. “Probably talking about her nothing life. I ain't read it though, ain't going to, neither. She don't deserve for me to hear her explanation why.” She tosses the book at the mirror. “She was dead by the time I killed Daddy. I guess that mean she didn't mind I did it. It wasn't like she tried to stop him when she was alive, anyway. You reckon they both in hell?”
“I don't know,” I whisper, trying to keep myself from crying about Momma. Hazel was so strong in everything she did and Momma was so strong when she saved us, but I'm so weak.
She say, “I wonder if my momma ever asked God to forgive her for what she done to me? What she let happen? I woulda chopped him up and thrown him in the river if somebody did to my baby what he done to me. Instead, she took her own life.” She flicks a glowing orange clump from her cigarette. “If I saw her again, I'd tell her, âFuck you for killing yourself and leaving me.'”
I say, “Not every woman got the same strong.”
“What'd you say?”
“Your momma had the strong to give birth to you, to raise you, to put the strength inside you to do something she never could. Maybe she couldn't be your strong. In the end, you saved yourself.” My eyes brim with tears, regretting my weakness.
Cynthia brushes her hair in silence, starts her makeup againâplain white. She finishes with something shiny and clear on her lipsâno color nowhere today.
My tears tip over and run down my cheeks.
“Why you crying?” she say.
I wipe my cheeks.
I try to stop thinking about what I done, hang my head low over my Bible but she keep staring.
“You done a little dirty of your own, didn't cha? Where? In Alabama?”
I close my eyes, let new tears slide out.
“I knew it! My sixth sense never lie. What you do?”