The slaves snicker amongst themselves.
“I hear he ailing, ain’t got much breath left in his body.”
“Massa knows that, figurin’ he gonna get hold of the land the husband drop dead and leave behind.”
“He ain’t got no kin?”
“Son died of the malaria some time back.”
“Really?”
“Oh yeah. Down in Florida.”
“So he ain’t got no kin to leave it to. It just gonna go to his wife, and so that mean it just gonna go to Massa.”
“He a slick old dog.”
April wobbles down the steps, her mother trying desperately to snatch corn bread from her pudgy hands.
“You getting crumbs all over your dress. You just had breakfast, for God’s sake, April!”
“Ah, leave her be, Verna. This here is her day.” Henry beams as he climbs into the wagon. “Sara, Jenny,” he calls, and two women appear from their watching places behind the shed.
They pop out quickly, exchanging guilty glances before approaching, heads bent, eyes sweeping the floor.
“All y’all hands clean?” Henry asks.
They look at their nutmeg-colored palms. “Yassir.”
“C’mon on, then, and help me hoist Miss April up in this here wagon.”
Sara and Jenny exchange looks. They are only twelve and fourteen and reed thin.
“You sure do look pretty, Miss April,” Sara says, and takes her place to the right of April. “Sure
’
nuff,” Jenny agrees, and takes her place to the left.
“All y’all ready?” Henry calls down from the wagon.
“Ready,” Sara and Jenny answer uncertainly.
“Ready, baby?” Henry whispers down into his daughter’s moonlike face.
April’s mouth is still working at the corn bread, and so she just nods her head.
Henry grabs hold of April’s arms, and all of the watching faces suck in their breath as Jenny and Sara move to a crouching position and wait for the go-ahead.
“Heave!” Henry yells, and Jenny and Sara straighten their legs, bringing the tops of their shoulders deep beneath April’s armpits, pushing themselves up until they are on their tiptoes. Their hands try to find anchor somewhere on April, but it’s futile—their fingers slide off the silk of the dress.
“Ho!” Henry yells, and pulls with all of his might, which is not much. April rises less than an inch off the ground.
It goes on like that for at least twenty minutes. It goes on like that until Jenny drops down and Sara’s eyes are tearing up from the pain that’s ripping through her back.
Henry snatches his hat off in frustration, slapping it against his thigh as he bawls, “Dammit, dammit, dammit!”
“Can I have another piece of corn bread, Daddy?” April asks, more concerned about her stomach than getting to her wedding on time.
“Sure, baby,” Henry answers absentmindedly as he looks desperately around for some other means of getting her up into the wagon.
“No, you cannot!” Verna yells. “Next time you eat, you’ll be a married woman!”
Jenny hides a chuckle in the palm of her hand, and even Sara’s tearful face registers some amusement.
“Buena, Joe!” Henry calls out. “Y’all gonna have to help me hoist April up into this here wagon.”
Verna’s face ices over and then shatters. “Have you taken leave of all of your senses?”
“What?” Henry’s face is a mess of befuddlement.
Verna looks at the approaching men and takes a step closer to her husband, dropping her voice an octave and hissing, “I will not have no nigger men handling my daughter.”
Henry looks at his wife, his daughter, and the men standing a respectful distance away awaiting further instructions.
“Well, how else we gonna get her up in this wagon?” Henry’s voice is full of defeat. He tugs at his hair, then balls his right hand into a fist and shakes it in his wife’s face. “How else, Verna?”
Verna folds her arms across her breasts and huffs. “You just find some other sort of way,” she says, moving off to the shade of a peach tree.
Suddenly, Henry turns and grabs hold of the reins. “Hiya!” he yells.
“What the hell?” Verna’s jaw drops as she watches the wagon start to move off. “What are you doing, Henry?” she screams.
“Where’s Papa going?” April asks as she waves at the swirling dust the wagon wheels have kicked up.
“To hell, I hope,” Verna mumbles beneath her breath.
“Where?”
“Hennnnnnnnnrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry!” Verna cups her hands around her mouth and screams as she rushes out into the clearing.
“Is he coming back, Mama?”
“Shut up,” Verna says, and storms toward the house and straight to the bottle of brandy.
* * *
An hour later, Henry was pulling back onto the property, the minister sitting alongside him, Bible pressed against his chest, face stiff, and lips pinched so tightly that they appeared bone white.
Three other wagons followed, filled with wedding guests who did practically nothing to hide their irritation.
The groom came on horseback, his old tired face long and void of expression.
“We gonna have the wedding right here,” Henry said as he climbed down from the wagon.
Verna approached. She tried to give her best and brightest smile, but it came across crooked and uneven from the three glasses of brandy she’d consumed. “Welcome, welcome,” she slurred.
“Please go in, into the parlor. Let’s get out from under this wicked sun,” she said. “Mary, get these fine people something cool to drink.”
The guests murmured and moved toward the house.
“Well, this is all good and fine, Henry, but they ain’t gonna live here now, are they?” Verna seethed between clenched teeth as she linked her arm with Henry’s and followed the guests toward the house. “Either way, she gotta get in that damn wagon.”
“Yeah, well, by then she’ll be her husband’s problem.” Henry coughed. “Where is she anyway?”
“Knee deep in buttermilk, I suppose.”
Albuquerque, New Mexico
When we get back to the hotel I begin to feel bad about how I acted at breakfast, so while Sherry in the bathroom I pick up the book, read the words again. My lips begin to tremble and before I know it, I’m laughing so hard I think I’m going to wet myself.
I throw the book down on the bed and hold my sides to keep them from splitting. Sherry come out of the bathroom, her face confused. Then, not confused, she start laughing too and say, Oh, you think that was funny?
Sure ’nuff you got some ’magination, I say, and wipe at the tears.
___________________
Grin is all Buena Vista can do when he sees his wife wobbling along, belly low and blooming larger with every day. Grin is all he can do, because this baby won’t be sold away like the others he’d watched over even before their mothers pushed them out and into the world.
This here baby, he thinks, will call him Papa and stretch small fingers out to him. This one, he’ll walk and talk and run and play with.
“Won’t be long now,” Mary says when she catches him staring and smiling.
“I hope not.” Buena Vista laughs.
They have at least a dozen names: Perry, Vance . . . “I heard once that my father’s name was Mingo,” he tells her.
Lou smiles. “That’s an Indian name.”
“Sure
’
nuff?” Buena Vista muses on this information. “So’s I got some Indian in me too, then?”
“Seems so.”
Buena strokes her hair. “If it’s a boy, we can call him Mingo, or maybe Yona after your pappy.”
“Maybe,” Lou says sadly, and looks out across the fields.
___________________
“You go on outside and wait!” Nellie shouts at him as she rushes past him with the tin bowl filled with steaming water. “This ain’t no place for a man to be.”
Buena looks down at his hands again and then at the feet that just won’t listen. He wants to leave, but Lou’s moaning and wailing keep him welded to the spot as the women move furiously around him.
Lanterns burning everywhere, the smell of the oil making him nauseated, and Lou, screaming now, and the men pushing open the door, beckoning him, “C’mon now, Buena, let them take care of it.”
Buena ignores them.
“Get him outta here!” Mary bellows when she turns to wring out a blood-soaked rag and catches sight of him standing and staring.
The door slams shut and Lou’s screams become muted.
An hour, two, five, and Buena remains.
“Gave us a hell of a time,” Nellie says, eyes weary, head rag askew. “You been here all this time?” In the darkness she almost bumps into him.
“Yes.” Buena’s voice is even.
Nellie considers him. “On your feet, all this time?”
“Yes,” Buena responds, looking over her shoulder.
“Humph,” she says, and pats him on his back as she moves past him. “Go on in, they waiting.”
Buena hesitates and his eyes find Nellie’s in the darkness.
She can feel his apprehension, even though the murky shadows mask his expression. “It’s yours, don’t you worry none,” she says, and reaches to lay a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Go on, now. Don’t you keep them girls of yours waiting.”
Buena’s feet listen now, but it seems to take him ages to get to the doorway. He slowly pushes the door open and sees Mary, slumped over and snoring in the chair beside the bed he built for Lou.
And there is his wife, propped up and smiling down into a bundle of squirming limbs.
Their eyes meet and Lou brings up her hand and weakly beckons him with her fingers. He moves as if on a cloud and is suddenly at her side, looking down into the most beautiful face he has ever seen in his life.
His heart galloped inside of his chest and then exploded and flooded his being with an emotion he’d never experienced. His legs threatened to buckle and he was suddenly lightheaded—everything in him seemed to be coming undone.
“This is what it’s all about, isn’t it, Lou?” he choked out beneath the flood of tears as he reached for his newborn daughter.
“Yes, yes,” Lou said, weeping with him.
Buena took the tiny baby and pressed her face against his cheek. He had thought he knew love. He thought that Lou was all the love he’d ever wanted, and then when he finally got her he thought that she would be all the love he would ever need.
But right then . . . he knew right then that this wasn’t the case at all. There was room left for more, so much more.
He cradled his daughter in his arms and realized that as full of love as he thought he was, this little one suddenly let it be known that he had been missing out and, clutching her to him like he did, something in him told him he could never be without it again.
“We gonna take your name back, Lou,” he croaked. “We gonna take your name back and give it to her.”
Lou nodded in agreement.
Buena looked into the baby’s face and whispered, “Your name is Nayeli.”
Amarillo, Texas
We pulled out of New Mexico at noon, hit Amarillo, Texas ’round five. Sherry say, We’ll stop for some gas. You hungry, Dumpling?
No, I say, and am surprised.
Sherry laugh, point to my stomach, and say, Them pancakes still laying on your gut; you better watch it.
I look down, poke my belly with my finger, then use that same finger and point at her stomach and say, You better start doing the same.
Sherry kind of blushes. Just bloated, I guess, she say, and pull at her T-shirt.
I guess, I say.
I’m going to go to the bathroom. You need to go?
Nah, I’ll just sit here and watch the attendant pump the gas.
As soon as she come back, the phone start to ring, she look at it, toss it back down, and start the ignition.
Madeline? I ask.
Who else?
Ain’t you gonna answer it? Something could be wrong.
Other than her being crazy?
We laugh together, and it sound like sweet music, like instruments meant to be played together. She hear it too, and she look surprised.
Let me answer it, I say when the ringing start up again.
Go ahead, but I don’t want to talk to her.
I pick up, say hello, hear Madeline screeching on the other end. I can’t get a word in, try over and over again, my head beginning to hurt. Finally, I push the phone back to Sherry, and she shake her head at it and whisper, I told you I didn’t want to talk to her.
But I don’t move the phone. I keep it in her face until she take it.
Sherry take a breath and say, Hello. Fine. Yes. No. And then her voice tightens and her face kind of turns to stone. I did not, she starts, and grabs hold of her hair and tugs real hard. I just look. No I didn’t, she sings in that voice that reminds me of when she was small and still ate meat.
She twirls her index finger by her temple and then pretends to strangle herself. Her eyes roll up into her head and her tongue dangles out of the corner of her mouth, then she say real loud, Okay, Madeline, bye!
What she accusing you of this time? I ask.
She said that I knew all along that I was going to take this cross-country trip and had I given her notice, she could have sent her husband and the kids on the plane and she could have come along too—to bond.
Bond?
Yes.
Is that what we’re doing? I laugh.
Sherry laughs too.
Route 40
Sherry say we got to make up some time, should have been on the road straight after breakfast instead of right at lunchtime. So we pick up some food and eat in the car while she do eighty down the highway.
She handle this SUV like a man, I think. Sherry a driver like her daddy. Madeline can’t do more than fifteen minutes before she start complaining about the people on the road, the way her legs feel, how tired she is, just everything!
The more I think about it, the better I feel about Madeline not coming. She would have just whined and complained the whole time and Sherry might have killed her.