Authors: Natashia Deon
Tallassee, Alabama
B
EFORE DAWN
, I went looking for some body.
But bodies were mostly moving around this property in pairs, readying to work in the mill and seed the fieldsâtomatoes and beetsâtoo soon for melons.
Some negroes were planning in secretâsowing turnips in the cow pen, burying silver spoons. While others were 'sleep or rousing, except for slaves like Charles and Josey who don't sleep much. Those are at home, defeated and afraid. But I ain't afraid. Not of the dark, not of taken-back freedom, and not of George.
I thought he'd come home last night. The pang of his arrival rose up in me a desperation. And fear. But it wasn't fear of him. But because I don't know how to kill him yet. How to touch the living with no hands.
I'm not ready.
That makes me afraid.
So I was looking for some body this morning.
Somebody to practice on. A weak vessel. A small animal. A fly. But I found Annie first.
The squeaking of her porch swing in the 5:00 a.m. darkness was like slow groaning breaths. Her rocking back and forth called me to her.
And she was alone. Her hands were warming around her cup of tea and her thick blanket was wrapped around her shoulders, swallowing her whole body like a soft turtle shell. Except her legs dangled outside it.
I
NEVER TRIED
to step in nobody before.
It didn't seem right to. Evil even. Possession. But I don't mean to stay. I just need her for a while. 'Til George gets what he deserve.
I stood beside her as she rocked. Watched her, considered how I might do it. Then changed my mind at first. But remembering Josey strangled on the ground made me do what I did next: I stood in front of Annie as she rocked back, waited for her to rock forward again and I simply fell back onto her and waited to melt away inside.
But the pain came instant.
Like grabbing the handle of a hot pan, not knowing it was hot, then two seconds later dropping it 'cause your palm's on fire.
I fell away. I don't know what that was.
I was simmering after, but I was mostly fine. So I stood beside Annie again . . . for Josey. If I could be inside Annie for two seconds, I could stay longer if I tried harder, if I made up my mind to.
When Annie stopped rocking is when I did it.
She crossed her legs under her blanket and sat there, still as dead, and stared out into the nothingness ahead of her, so I braced myself.
It should have been such a small thing, like a toe to a body. But it wasn't. Or it was exactly. Like breaking a pinky toe on the corner of furnishingsâa sudden, raging, tear-bringing pain, that takes your whole body to the ground. I fell inside her. I wouldn't let go this time.
But every time she moved, it was like something was stepping on that broke toe, breaking it again. She coughedâa new break. She swallowedâa new break. She reached her arms out to set her cup down and tears warmed my eyes.
And this heat! Her body on mine is like a boiling wet towel placed all around me. Lesser, when Annie stops moving, but wrenching still.
I try not to move.
Don't want Annie to move.
And when she does, I try to keep pace with her, move when she move. Move
like
she move. No rubbing against one another.
And now, through this heat there's a peace. I can feel Annie's skin as if it were mine. We rock on her porch swing together, in tandem, me and Annie, my form inside hers, the cold air sharp on her cheeks. But I'm still hot. Simmering.
I can hear her thoughts.
She's trying to clear her mind of the strangers in her bed. A new couple. One of 'em, her husband. She's lost now between her memories of him and the haunting sway of the skeleton-bare trees a ways off. “Empty,” is the word her mind repeats. Her husband Richard's word. The word to describe their mantle. It comes to her first as an utteranceâ“Empty.” Then a questionâ“Empty?” Then finally, a revelationâ“Yes,” she nods. “Empty.” Even the sky's empty, she thinks. The only cloud in it is sliding out of sight.
I make Annie pick up her cup of tea, in pace with me now, and put two fingers into the loop of its cool thin handle. The heat inside her is rising on me like a coming rash. No, hotter. Like standing too close to a fire and not moving away. Skin tightening and fluid pooling to blisters. I feel heavy inside Annie. Weighty, from the swelling, the living of someone else's life. But I won't let pain be my excuse to give up. Josey didn't.
I need answers and George needs what's coming to him.
Annie pulls her blanket tight around her shoulders and brings her cup to her mouth. Mint vapors rush through her nose, washing it clean, clearing the way for the mint to come in, and the light scent of paprika or something like burnt chili powder. It's the burning of metal and flesh and gunpowder. The war is tracing the wind, its cannons and drum lines not far off.
Tallassee's already sent its able men. Who's left are women, the old, the crippled, and the good excuses. Somebody had to stay behind. Protect our town and the mill they made an armory. Tallassee Falls Manufacturing Company first made cloth, now makes bullets. It's the
Confederacy's now. So we get to wait for the war with carbine rifles. We're all waiting for what's next.
I make Annie swirl her finger in her warm tea water. Taste it. “What's happened to us?” she say to herself. “Isn't your marriage worth fighting for? Is it worth more than this land?”
Annie remembers the good years. The good things about Richard. The way he made her laugh. Her mind drifts to the day he asked her to marry him on a bended knee in the mud. See, Annie married Richard for love and not money. A fact that didn't matter 'til years later when she saw how he mistreated both. And her plan was to keep her family property in her name but when Richard had his stroke and lost all esteem, he needed something to believe in. More than that, he needed something to ground him here to this place when she felt him drifting away. She needed to build him back into the man he was before the stroke.
She never doubted that Richard would always care for her and for Josey and for the children they never had. And now, her hurt about it is sudden. He's been gone for fourteen years, and for the last four years of those, she had resolved in herself that an ending is what she wanted.
It's over,
are powerful words, she thought. She's decided now that she won't be the one to say it. Speaking it is the same as killing a thing; can't pretend there ain't a dead body in the room after it's done. So Annie don't want to hear Richard's words out loud or on paper.
“If I can be a better wife this time,” she tells herself, “he'll love me again. If I can show him that I'd sacrifice for him, be true to our vows, he will.” Annie decides that she'll let Richard see her being good to that woman he brung home. Let him see his harsh words turn to loving kindness.
Annie needs time. Time to prove herself. Don't want to give him a chance to sit her down and say ending words. So she's gon' keep her distance 'til she's sure she's convinced him to start again. She'll volunteer at the mill. Stay out of the house all day or invite folks home. Busy is what she'll be even if it means parties in wartime. Her neighbors would still be pleased to call her friend. “Yes,” she tells herself, “I am his wife.”
Her thoughts make me sorry for her. Sorry that somebody's listening.
The porch door slams shut behind us. “You all right, Missus Graham?” Bessie say, leaving the warmth of inside. She pulls her sweater snug around her chest. “Can I get you somethin?”
“Thank you, Bessie. This tea is fine.”
“Cold by now,” Bessie say.
“It's fine,” Annie say.
“I'll be nearby if you need me.”
When I step out of Annie, searing pain makes my back bow. I fall to the ground limp. I cain't move now. A cool mist like aloe settles over me, rewarding me for leaving Annie alone.
But I have to do it again.
Get stronger.
I follow Bessie through the screen door and inside the house. I stay close as she strolls through Richard's study where last night he left a green-shaded lamp on his desk burning oil. It's fizzled out now. Red and brown leather books are lined side by side on his shelves and some are too high for Richard to reach without a ladder. White pages are spread open on his desk and black words, like smashed ants, are scattered on the page.
Bessie straightens a stack of books on the side table and picks up an empty teacup with a dried brown drip of tea down its side.
I follow Bessie down the hall, watch her pick up a puff of lint from the floor. She kneels and dusts the spot with her sleeve, stops sudden and looks over her shoulder at me. My breath catches. I flush with heat and don't know why. She's gone to the kitchen, now. I go there, too.
She sets Richard's cup into a sink full of already drawn water to let it soak, wipes her hands along the sides of her dress. A black kettle toots on the stovetop and smoke comes out of its hole. She lifts the kettle off the fire before humming a church song, returning to the sink. She swishes Richard's cup in the water. I move toward her. She say, “What you here to do?”
I look around the room, then back at her.
“What you here to do?” she say again, louder, and this time looking me right in my eyes. “Why you here?”
“You talking to me?” I say.
“Ain't nobody else here but us.”
It's like the hairs on the back of my neck rise, my eyes widen, my nostrils round, my whole face gasps for the air it don't need. Years of nobody listening and she the first to speak to me.
“What you intend to do?” she say to me. I can hardly move, trembling.
“Haunt this place?” she say. “Haunt me? 'Cause I ain't gon' let you do that.”
“Hâhow you see me?”
“You ain't getting inside me,” she say, then lifts and slams Richard's cup in the water. Splashing. The cup breaks.
“Nobody sees me,” I say.
“You ain't getting inside me!” she say again. “You understand?”
“Yesâyes'm,” I say.
She gathers the three broken pieces of Richard's cup from the water, cursing under her breath as she do.
I say, “How you see me?”
“Look what you made me do,” she say. “You a troublemaker!”
“I'm sorry.”
“How I'm s'posed to fix this?” She's crying now.
“Mayâmaybe Charles could fix it. He fix most things . . .”
“I know Char's,” she say, huffing over the water. “You don't need to tell me about Char's. Don't tell me nothin about him. Don't need to talk to me!”
She wipes her tears with the underside of her forearm. “I cain't do nothin right.”
She lays the broken pieces on the counter and I'm sorry about it. Sorry what Richard might do to punish her. I'll help her. Go to her to help her, but she pretend she don't see me now. I reach out with the hope to touch her like Annie but a searing pain shoots through me.
“How you see me?” I say.
“Feel you more'n see you. Feel you angry.”
She takes a wet cloth and calmly rubs the drip of tea from the outside of the broken piece of cup.
“It's not meant for you to be inside people. It'll kill you more than dead you keep trying. You keep doing what you do, you won't even be a mist. You people always trying.”
“There's others here?” I say, and take a step toward her.
She takes a deep breath, “Why you botherin me?”
“Can
you
help me? Show me how to touch the living?”
“Y'all are all the same. Always finding me. Trying to hurt me with your questions.”
“I don't want to hurt you.”
“Don't you?” she say. “Want to hurt someone, though.”
She don't know me. How can she know that?
“Forgive,” she say. “There's the answer to your question. If you ever plan to go home, you got to forgive.”
“This is home.”
“For now. But one day it ain't gon' be, that's the truth. You'll be back here like the others. Asking how to keep away that hellfire you feel when you try to live somebody else's life. Somebody else's body. You're all selfish!”
“You don't know nothin about me. Answering questions you ain't been asked. I ain't here for me.”
“The girl you follow, she'll die one day, too. Everything that lives do. Then what reason will you have to be here? What you gon' do then?”
“She's my daughter! I won't ever leave her.”
“That's what you think now. It's not true. One day you will leave her, by your choice. It's what you're supposed to do. At some point, every mother has to let her child go.”
I don't want to talk to her no more.
“You got to forgive. If you want to help her. If you want to be stronger. Whoever it is, you've got to let it go . . .”
“You don't even know what that man did to her! I ain't giving him shit except what he deserve.”
“Don't matter. 'Cause don't nobody deserve forgiveness. Nobody. Not even you.”
“What you know?”
“It's a gift. Not for him. Forgiveness is a gift for you. For the girl you follow.”
Richard calls from the top of the stairs, “Bessie! Bring a cup of tea to my study. I'll be there momentarily.”
“Yes'sa,” Bessie say and hurries to get a new cup down from the cupboard. She takes a small pouch, smaller than the inside of her palm, and packs it with fragrant leaves. She drops it into his cup and pours hot water over it.
“Revenge ain't for you to do,” she say. “What's done is done. Ain't no justice. Only grace. You gotta decide if you want to help her.”
“Of course I want to help her.”
“Then leave her be.” Richard's footsteps come down the stairs and Bessie leaves me standing in the kitchen, alone.