Authors: Natashia Deon
Josey's belly tightens and the head comes. Sissy gives it a gentle twist to one side and the curve of its shoulders seep out. With speed, the whole body, too. “We got a boy!” Sissy yells over his stuttering cries.
She cuts the chord, joyful, and crawls to Josey with him tucked under her chest. “You gotta wake up, Josey. We got a boy to take care of.”
Josey grunts but her eyes don't open. The sides of her belly lurch instead, and a new bulge rises from between her collapsed kneesânot the gray mass of afterbirth, but something bluish and striped with strawberry colored hair.
“Sweet Jesus!” Sissy cry and lays the boy down. No sooner than she do, the next baby's delivering itself right into Sissy's waiting arms. Silent.
“Come on, baby,” she say, flipping it over on her forearm and patting the back. “Come on!”
Nothing.
Finally, a sputter. A cry. Might as well have been the voice of God.
“It's a girl!” Sissy cried.
And this girl, this boy, Josey would name in freedom. So the last name she chose for them was not Graham who'd owned her. Owned Sissy. It was Freeman.
Conyers, Georgia, 1847
I
WAS TIRED WHEN
I left Soledad's near midnight last night. Spent two hours resting three times, was sick once, and had to talk myself out of saying fuck it to everything, and letting myself die in the cold. And now, the smoldering embers of Albert's blown-out fire are glowing in his furnace, waiting to be resurrected, warming me still. It'll be sunrise soon.
I lay across this bench alone, in the dark, and in the soot of his workshop. A pop from the furnace starts the fire to life again, tinting the air orange and yellow, and casting the black shadows of Albert's tools against the wall. They throb and change shape in flickers.
I snuggle down into Albert's burnt-smelling clothes and shift his big leather gloves that I made a pillow under my head. I roll onto my back and stare at the beams on the ceiling, all four of 'em are mostly black from layers of up-floating smoke that stuck.
My hands slide to my nothing belly. I do it because I should have started my monthly cycle ten days ago. And almost thirty days before then. But it ain't come. I tell myself that it don't mean pregnant because strain and pressure in life can stop any peace. Any normal. And I've had some. And anyway, I don't feel no different 'cept this sour stomach. Sick
every morning, though. And we was careful. Jeremy pulled hisself out of me before he finished every time. And if something was growing inside my body, I think I'd know. I'll bleed. Cycles come late all the time. I could just be sick and dizzy and weak for no reason. My breasts could be tender for no . . .
“If you gon' stay in here,” Albert say from the doorway, “I'm gon' have to let Cynthia know.”
I sit up. Nod. Saltiness fills my mouth, directly. I spit.
“I think I'm pregnant,” I say. I'll be sure soon. And I'll have to provide for it. Make sure we got a place to sleep.
“Even more reason to tell her,” he say.
“Jeremy's the father,” I say, wanting to get everything out in the open.
“I brought some eggs,” he say.
“I'm not hungry.”
Albert sits on the stool nearer the furnace, breaks the eggs into his pan, and they sizzle over the fire. The slimy clear whites look like snotânasty!âfrom a big sneezeâsick!âand he's about to eat it. I throw up red broth menudo.
“I'm sorry,” I say. Albert gets his shovel, throws dirt over it, then scoops it all together and tosses it out the doorway. “Thank you.”
He sits back down and flips the eggs over without a word, can hardly hear him breathe. I lay back down and look his way but not at him. I don't want to talk about last night.
I shift his gloves under my cheek, then roll on my back. He dumps the cooked eggs on his plate. The yellow pieces are charred brown. He say, “Now that you're empty, maybe you've changed your mind about being hungry,” and holds his plate out to me.
He's right. I take it.
“Fork?” he say.
“A big spoon be better,” I say.
I finish before he starts his and I rest back on the bench, rub my belly. “Jeremy'll be a good father,” I say. “We almost made it out of
here. He just needed another good hand, is all. Could've had our new life right now.”
I think about the way me and Jeremy gon' love each other when this baby come. When he see what we got. “If I could've helped him more, he'd have got that hand.”
“Is that what you believe?” Albert say.
“You just don't know about the world and how it goes 'round. Every family needs money.”
“The greatest wealth is time and health. Love.”
“And family,” I say.
“You can always have family,” he say. “You live in health long enough . . .”
“And I got one. When Jeremy gets back, we're gonna be family. You'll see.”
He takes my plate. “You're welcome to stay here for as long as you need,” he say. “'Til the baby comes and only if Cynthia will allow it.”
“I have other places I can go.”
He slides my plate in a bucket of sudsy water under his seat and say, “I'll make sure you have food, water, that you'll stay warm.”
“And what do you expect me to do for it?”
He runs a wet rag over the plate, takes it out and rinses it in a second bucket.
“Don't take me for a fool,” I say. “No man gives something without expecting something else in return.”
“Then you've got me mistaken for somebody elseâmaybe your baby's father.”
I don't want to stay here.
Albert sets the wet plate near his furnace to dry, takes his plate of food and moves hisself to the small stool against the wallâjust big enough for one butt cheek. I don't care. I don't need him to do nothing for me. I just need to stay somewhere 'til Jeremy see what he done wrong and come back for me.
I get another egg from Albert's basket, crack it over his hot pan and watch it bubble. He say, “You need to stand back from that fire. Could flash.”
My egg's already done.
I put it on my plate and take a bite before I sit where I was. “Why didn't you leave?” I say, making conversation. “When the Freedom Fighter came to take us to Mexico, how come you didn't go with 'em? You said before it was 'cause of me.”
“I didn't say I stayed because of you. I said you saved our lives. Your indecision. It wasn't the first time I didn't leave,” he say.
“You were leaving before?”
“That first night I found you was one time.” He piles some eggs on his spoon. “I planned to join the Railroad north that night.”
“I thought you said you was going south?”
“South. North. But only twice a year the Railroad comes this far south from Virginia. Only once I found them guides to be organized and timely. They stop here for my canteens, things I'd give 'em to trade.”
“Why didn't you go then? On that day you found me?”
“Unorganized. A dozen negroes were in their party and their guides couldn't decide who was in charge. Get everybody killed. All their signals were right, though. Their whistle first. Then the secondâa strange sound like no night bird you've ever heard. Then the three flickers of light from the forest's edge. But that's where their good planning ended. On my way back I almost stepped right on you.”
He gets up to clean his plate. Takes my plate when he passes.
“Thank you,” I say. For good measure, I get up and go over to him, hug his neck, let him feel me real close.
“I already said you could stay,” he say.
Tears start coming out my eyes for no reason I know, except sorry.
Sorry for all this.
Sorry for having this baby inside me. Sorry Jeremy left. Sorry I'm desperate.
He say, “I reckon the best thing for both of us is to not say nothing else. I'll talk to Cynthia. And if she won't have you, I can't.”
Conyers, Georgia, 1847
I
F IT WERE
up to Cynthia, I'd have been gone three months ago when Albert told her I was here, and
pregnant
was my excuse. “So long as I don't have to see her wretched ass nowhere on this property,” was Cynthia's compromise after she finished with her hell no's and that bitch this 'n' thats.
So most days I stay out back in the garden behind Albert's workshop. I can stretch my legs back there and run in place to keep myself well. It's what Cynthia prescribed. Not to me. But I heard her tell it to her hand, Sarah, before Cynthia sent her off: “I don't care what that doctor say. You gon' regret the two days of labor if you don't get strong now.”
I walk far.
Four and five miles each way, zigzagging across Cynthia's backfields and back roads like a mule plowing, getting stronger by the day, my belly bigger. I stopped trying to suck it in after Albert caught me standing sideways in the glass looking at myself and taking in deep breaths to make sure it weren't just gas.
It weren't.
A
LBERT
'
S BEEN HEATING
his black metal rods to an orange glow so he can reshape 'em into something new. Beautiful things. His hammers have tapered his metal into delicate flowers and leafs and scalloped coat hooks, turned skinny metal pieces into the thick feet of end tables, and spread fat pieces into thin fishtails and scoops of spoons. He's twisted metal staffs into the braided hair of banisters, and punched holes to join two pieces together . . . and split 'em apart. His anvil is the iron table where he bangs out the story of lifeâthat with vision and fire, we can all be something different. And this is what he gives to Cynthia to sell so we can keep our place here. I sew and hem dresses. Men's trousers and shirts. It ain't much but it's something.
Negroes on horseback pass through here a few times a month to water their steeds so Albert built a metal trough for 'em. It's prettier and more watertight than the one Cynthia got but she don't want to pay him for a new one.
Summer's been a bouquet of green fields and cherry blossoms. The last buds of the season showered me in pink. The scent of Jeremy was in 'em. It reminded me of long days along the stream and our secret nights of quiet hallelujahs.
I imagine him coming home to me. That he'd pick me up and without a word, kiss meâlong and open-mouthed. That when he saw our baby boy looking just like us, he'd love us both.
But it's no time for remembering.
Not now.
Now, I got to keep Albert alive.
T
HERE WAS SCREAMING
when it happened.
So much screaming.
I took off running in the direction of Albert's scream. He flew out his shop door with his hands on his head, his hair on fire, and his shirt and neck was smoking. He threw hisself in the trough and flailed in the water like it was deep and he couldn't swim.
He lifted out the water, took deep breaths, dunked back in again. I scooped water on the parts of him that he was trying to drown.
“I cain't see!” he screamed, throwing his hands at me.
“You got to calm down!” I said. “I cain't help you like this.”
He hummed and jumped up and down, dumped his head in the trough again and again. I got next to him, scooped more water over him, saw the edges of his shirt burned down his back, his neck. A burning ember must have got him, a flash of fire. The new lotion he was gifted, a trigger. The top of his head and face was bleeding, his skin was peeling away in gray sheets.
I ripped my dress to try to put it on his burns but he grabbed my hand before I could touch him. With his voice quivering, he said, “You touch me with that cloth and it'll melt in my skin.”
I backed away from him. Didn't know what to do but give him room.
He bent over the trough clinching his jaws together while the smoke piped off of him smelling of burnt meat. I reached into the trough and got a hand scoop of water, threw it on him, but by the time the cooling wet reached him, it was only sprinkles.
“Just let it be!” he hollered, desperate. Dunked his head completely, baptized.
I can only sit with him now 'cause water don't heal.
It only stops the worsening and gives us time to think about what went wrong.
For the last three hours since he ran out on fire, I haven't done nothin. I guided him back into this shop and went and got Cynthia. Thank God she was home and would come tend to him. But ain't much she can do but wait with me 'cause right now he's like lava, she said. His skin is red underneath with blackened skin on top. He's cracking and recracking, shivering on his bench slouched over. Blood and sweat drips from his face, skipping like a picnic fly from his chin to his shoulders. He squeezes the neck of the whiskey bottle in his hand.
Blisters on his face and neck are swollen, red, and weepy, and little white bumps have broke out on his nose and under his swollen shut
eyes. Patches have spread on the sides of his face where his brown skin was and is gone now. Cream-colored splotches have risen there, too.
“Albert?” Cynthia whispers. “Let me see you.” She barely touches him and he grunts.
His eyebrows are gone. A slimy film has smeared in their place. The ridge of his top lip is rippled black and dry. Cynthia say, “I think you look better like this,” but Albert don't laugh. Neither do I.
“I brought you something,” she say but he grunts, no. “I know you don't like my medicine but it's the best thing for you right now. One time won't get you hooked.”
He grunts louder, shakes his head, bringing hisself terrible pain.
“Have it your way,” she say.
She raises white sheets around him like a tent and tells him, “It'll keep the soot in the air from blowing in your wounds.”
She wrenches the bottle of whiskey from his hand, turns her back to him and pours something else in itâa syrupâand shakes it up. “Drink some whiskey,” she say and tilts the bottle to his lips while keeping the flow of it away from his burnt top lip. The double heavy syrup is already separating from the liquor and it snakes though the neck of the bottle and into his mouth.
After a few minutes, he stops shivering.
We wait for him to sleep before she asks me to help wash him. Real gentle. Tapping him with warm water. Took us both a hour to do everything. But she the only one who could help us now.
“Don't burst the blisters,” Cynthia say, getting up to leave. “Don't use healing oils. And don't move him 'til tomorrow. But tomorrow he's gon' need to walk. Just back and forth to the end of the shop. Outside, if he can stand the light. You'll have to hold him up by his unburnt partsâhis forearm . . .” I start crying when I look at him again. He's hurting and I cain't do this. I cain't take care of nobody.
Cynthia looks at me softly and waits for my tears to finish and when they don't she say, “The stuff I gave him is gon' make him wrong in the head so when he wake up, he might want to fight you. You need to
protect yourself and the baby, so give him more of that drink the second you hear him waking.”
I wipe my tears, nod.
“And it's fine to double the amount of syrup if you need to. It'll keep his face numb, stop him from cracking the blisters and skin. He don't need an infection.”
She gives me the vial of her syrup and stops at the door before she go. That soft look again but she say, “This don't make us friends.”