Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History (48 page)

Then she flew off again. She didn’t see the world around her. She didn’t look where she was going. She’d closed her eyes, and the tears flowing from them dried almost instantly in the rush of wind against her face.

Art by Kasey Gifford

1905
Charlotte, North Carolina

“Shhh.”

Booker’s eyes are two wet, white marbles in the black black dark of my small room, illuminated only by the candle in the corner forming a halo around itself. The pointer finger pressed to his lips warns me to swallow the startled yelp he senses erupting. I was not expecting him tonight. Hoping, longing even, for his company and the way he carries my name in his mouth, long and drawn out like he is singing his favorite hymn, but Friday isn’t his day to come visit.

How did he get in?

I search his face for the half-smile, half-smirk that has somehow managed its way into the sweet side of my heart, but it is absent. Only the wild-eyed, frantic look I and every Negro for fifty miles have come to take as a warning sign to run, to hide, to become invisible, is present on his tight face. The look that says it is time to try to blend yourself into the dark trees, the stained walls of your house, squeeze yourself into a dark corner of nothingness.

I am quiet, panic seizing my heart like a rough hand on a cow’s udder. My eyes grow, became as large and white as his, match his alarm. I ask him without speaking, the danger that is on the other side of these walls.

“Lay back down,” he whispers, silently running across the hard floor to the lone candle. He is curiously light-footed and impossibly fast for his frame, standing nearly as tall as my doorway. By the time my back reaches the dingy sheet he is back and the candle is out, the North Carolina night cloaking the house in an even blacker darkness. This time, I cannot see his eyes. I only feel his heavy lightness, always like a pillow stuffed with drapery, sink in beside me on my small bed. The thin mattress just barely fits us both.

“Hold on to me, and don’t let go until I say it’s OK, you hear me?” His voice is low. Grave, but calm. I know better than to question him right now.

My skinny arm reaches around him, his dark body firm and angled from chopping wood most of his nineteen years, and I squeeze my eyes shut so tight it hurts.

That’s when it comes.

The rumbling, gathering sound of live thunder on the ground, like a thousand stampeding horses all running towards you. Then, the loud, crushing boom of lives being shattered around me, the screeching of glass as it bursts into pieces, the swallowing of wood by angry, forced flames.

I cannot breathe.

My grip around Booker tightens so much that I am sure I am forcing the life from his lungs, but I won’t let go. He told me not to, and I won’t. I suppress the screams welling inside, try to focus on the steady inhale, exhale of his sweat-soaked chest, the musky, salty pine smell dripping from his collar mixing with the tears rushing from my eyes. I try to close my ears, shut out the wailing coming through the walls.

Terror smells like burnt wood and charred grass. Like hate.

The boom is so loud, so immediate, I am sure I have taken my last breath. This is It. I will die here with Booker, holding tightly to him as the men in white robes, so full of disdain and hate for me and anyone who looks like me, finally carry out their threats.

A moment passes, the blink of an eye, and I am not dead. I press my chest, damp with Booker’s sweat or maybe my own, make sure my heartbeat is there. A second later I recognize a voice I’ve known my whole life, pleading for mercy through loud sobs. The sound comes from next door, from Miss Grace’s house.

“Oh please Lord, not Miss Grace!” Booker’s big salty hand is on my mouth then, stifling my cries, holding me tighter to still the violent shaking my body has taken to.

Miss Grace. A loving, smiling old woman as sweet as the peach pies she makes and sells each week. She’s lived in that house my whole life.

“Shhh!” He warns again, this time force trembling in his whisper.

The guttural screams of life being snatched from a person isn’t a sound I should be familiar with. No sixteen-year-old girl should know what it sounds like to be engulfed in flames while sitting at the dinner table with your family.

But I do.

That sound took my parents away. I’ve seen with my two eyes what they do to Negroes, can
never
un-see that. And two years later, the white robes are here again. I say a small prayer, ask God and my parents to welcome my spirit in peace. I pray for my niece, baby Elizabeth; I cry for my sister, Essie, for my brother, Jacob. Pray that they are safe, even if I am not. Try to be grateful that I’ve made it to sixteen; I know too many girls my age who didn’t.

“Be thankful for the sunrise, child. Plenty don’t get to see today.” Miss Grace’s high, wavering voice is in my head, her favorite saying both calming and upsetting now. I want to go to her, to be brave enough to open the door and see to it that she’s safe, but fear has a hold on me that won’t let go, almost as tight as Booker’s arm pressing my back.

And then, almost without motion, I am free and he is sitting straight up in the bed, eyes bearing on the door so intently, it seems if I touch him he’d feel like stone and yet fall to ashes. I can see the whole of him now, the terrifying bright outside allowing my eyes to let in the damp room around me; the small reading table Jacob built me when we all lived in the other house, the fan-backed chair given to me by the man my father worked for before he died. I expect to see fear on his face, the wild-eyed look that spread to mine when he woke me, but there is none.

He is angry.

Not in the loud, bustling way that sometimes happens when the boys play field ball, but a sort of focused, searing fury, aimed at the door, the windows, and anyone who might dare come near them.

I open my mouth, but the shock from seeing my jovial, toothy-grinned Booker so serious and stone-jawed has taken all my breath.

Another boom follows the first, this time definitely at,
on
the door to my small home. I shriek, sobs raking my body, and try to fling myself from this corner, this trap of a bed. I have to get to my family, to Essie. Booker’s arm stops me, catches me in the fiercest, most painful grip I’ve ever felt, and I flail my body about, expect his sweaty fingers to slip, lose their grasp on my small wrist. But they don’t. Like shackles on sore brown ankles, they hold me hostage firmly in his reach.

The most alarming thing, even more so than the boom that quaked the house, is Booker’s reaction.

He doesn’t have one. Booker doesn’t even blink.

That dark, stormy stare is steadfast, still on the door. The door that is… still there. Amazingly, impossibly still intact. My eyes flash from Booker to the door, and back again, and it occurs to me that there is something happening here that my mind cannot conceive just yet. Something bigger than Booker and myself, bigger than this little wood-planked shotgun house and bigger than the blaze outside that seems to have surrounded us, to have destroyed everything in its wake but this one-room home and me, and… Booker. And whatever this bigger thing is, it seems to have taken over him, or maybe only his eyes, unblinking and focused on one thing: the unmoving, unyielding door.

I am still now, daring not to move, awestruck at this witnessing of this Bigness, and even as I tremble down to my toes, I am calm. Swaths of air likened to a fan sway back and forth in front of my face just so, flooding cool into my very bones.

The smell of Burnt awakens me when daylight wafts in, shedding a gray light on the charred walls, telling the night’s secrets. I jump from the creaking bed, Booker nowhere in sight. On a normal night’s visit, this would not be cause for alarm; Booker prefers the cover of midnight to aid the three mile trip back to the small house he shares with his father and three brothers.

Today is different. I have no recollection of falling asleep or what happened after the coolness flooded my body. I cover my nightclothes, pull on a blue dress I made from the extra fabric I collect as a seamstress for Mrs. Mary Davidson.

The rickety door, so sturdy and solid last night, groans open with a light pull of the doorknob. Outside, a war has taken place, and from the look of things, we did not win. The air is stagnant, stale and thick with dark smoke. People are gathered, distraught faces huddled in groups looking at one house or another, taking stock of the damage. Two houses completely gone – charred remnants of a full life, windows vacant like hollow eyes. Mr. Henry and Ms. Josephine’s house, identical to the one Essie and I live in and every other house on this street, is only a shell, frame and foundation standing wearily. Ms. Josephine’s head is pressed to her husband’s chest, tears falling. Seeing these faces, I remember what urged me from bed this morning, the terror from last night suddenly hits me, and I run frantically down the street, call out for Essie.

Essie is long. Five foot nine and lanky, skinny like me and our mama. I know her gait anywhere. From a crowd several yards away, I see her head break away, turn towards the sound of my voice. My younger sister runs like her upper half is playing catch-up with her legs – I’ve teased her about so it many times – and I’ve never been so happy to see that ridiculous stride. She barrels toward me, and I her, across debris and ash and wood chippings, around a large wooden plank that has been removed from Ms. Josephine and Mr. Henry’s house, and we crash into each other, become a mess of tears and limbs and fabric. I hold her like she is the last thing I’ll ever hold, and relief, so much relief washes over me to feel her hot cheek pressed on my face, her heartbeat racing in her chest like it’s trying to escape.

“Miss Grace,” she says over and over, her voice is broken, my heart heavy with the sadness of this day.

I kiss her dirty face, streaked with tears, trekked with a day’s worth of dirt. “It’s OK,” I whisper, “she’s with Mr. Harvey now.”

Miss Grace’s husband, Mr. George Harvey, died a few years ago due to old age and, I have an inkling, whiskey. Everyone misses his lined face, his laugh that bellowed for blocks. There was no having a bad day around him. No matter the situation, even when he was sad, he’d offer a smile. With Miss Grace gone too, the world is less bright.

“Where is Jacob?” I ask her when she calms.

My brother, twenty-one and married now, has a home a few houses away with his wife, Sarah, and their baby, Elizabeth. He named her after our mother, said it was the most beautiful name he could think of.

“Down the road there.” Essie points far down the rough dirt road and I see Jacob walking slowly towards us. Beside him, Sarah holds Elizabeth against herself protectively in her white bundle. The day, despite the gray, is hot, smoldering. The air smothers thoughts, slows everyone down to a weary pace. Slung across Jacob’s thin shoulder is a gray sack, heavy against his back. He holds it tight at the mouth with his right hand, elbow up and facing me.

I forget the heat and run to him like I ran to Essie, hug him just as tight. He holds me with his free arm. “I tried to come for you, Charlotte. I swear. There were just so many of them.” His eyes are sad brown probes staring into me, pleading for forgiveness. “A man told us it was coming. Told us to get our valuables and run.” He rubs his forehead with the rough pads of his long fingers like he’s trying to erase the memory.

“I’m fine, I’m here.” I hug him tighter to let him know I mean it. “What man was it?”

“I’on know. Just a man.”

“You didn’t see him?” I ask, bunching my eyebrows at his answer.

“Naw. Just heard a tap on the window, real quiet tap, then a man telling us the Klan was coming, and to get out now. I grabbed the books and the baby stuff and we got out. Hid in the field real low behind the houses. Next thing, whole gang of white robes trampling through.”

I know. I know deep in myself when he says this, that it was Booker. Remembering the Cool, the breeze that wasn’t really a breeze, those intense eyes, the calm I felt in the face of impending death, and I know.

Booker came to be my friend like most stray dogs come to be your pet. You notice them one day, and you’re not quite sure if they’ve always been around and you’ve not been paying attention, or if they’ve just shown up. He with his grin so wide it spread through his whole face, and the prettiest teeth I’d ever seen on a man.

I was walking home from tending to a dress for Mrs. Davidson and he was there, on the other side of the narrow road, tall as the sun is bright, dressed like a city boy, with long shiny shoes and a leather satchel. A thick book rested in his large hands, which by all appearances had him completely engrossed. I tried not to stare as I passed, pulled my sewing bag closer to me, and kept on my way, leaving the tall man with the handsome face to his books. He didn’t even look up.

Working on several dresses for guests of a wedding Mrs. Davidson was coordinating meant me working each day that week; missed school and twelve-hour days. He was there each day, sitting with long legs stretched out in front of him, standing with a wide-brimmed hat, or leaning under a far off tree bending to lend shade. Each time, with a book in his hand. It was a Wednesday when our mutual silence was broken. He was there in his usual spot, shielding his face from the sun, a small book this time, squinting at me with curious eyes.