The Loom (37 page)

Why did that Colored have part of Caroline’s blanket? Was she…? He wouldn’t allow his mind to go there. He knew he hadn’t made the same mistake as Timothy. He went for the whitest skin, the greenest eyes. She wasn’t… She couldn’t be. He was suffocating, gasping for breath. No! But she cared too much for them, knew their ways too well. Had he fallen for a…He tried to rise but everything went black.

There was smoke. Lots of it. Lydia could smell it coming in from under the door, quickly clouding the room gray.

She had to get out fast.

A rock crashed against the glass. Lydia startled. She ran to the window and pried it open. Annie paced among dozens of panicked slaves and wedding guests.

“Miss Caroline! You all right?” She waited for her nod. “Listen, you gotta get out now!”

“I smell the smoke.”

“No, ma’am, it’s bad. The whole thing could burn down any minute. We see the flames coming through the windows and the front door from here. You gotta get out fast. It’s moving quickly.”

“Is everyone else out?” Lizzy. Andrew.

“Yes.”

“Miss Caroline, you hear me?” Annie yelled. “You gotta get out now. Jump. It’s not so far down.”

Lydia wept as she stood in front of the open window. Frightened for her baby, for her life, she stood waiting.

“Miss Caroline!”

But this was it. The moment she had waited for had come. She was not Caroline. The truth had surfaced. She was Lydia. She was the same woman who had survived before. And in that second, when the breeze brushed against her face and she slid out onto the sill, she knew she would make it again.

Lydia jumped.

How she so easily left it all behind, leapt from a house that she had dreamed of all her life, left the world she had so desperately wanted, she didn’t know until she was falling, flying through the air, freeing herself from the weight of it. Sometimes you had to lose life to find it.

Tangled in yards of satin, Lydia felt Annie’s hands helping her to her feet.

“I ain’t seen Master Whitfield.” Annie looked from the window to Lydia, her eyes wide and worried.

“Annie.” Lydia shook her head.

“What? Ma’am, is he still in there? Is he still in the house?”

“Annie, I’m so sorry,” she sobbed.

“It’s all right. It’s my duty, not yours.”

Annie sprinted toward the blazing house. Lydia chased after her.

“Annie! Annieee!”

At the base of the steps, Lydia caught her by the hem of her skirt. Annie tripped, falling forward.

Lydia blew out relief, her fingers still gripped around the coarse wool. “I got you.”

The moment she said it, Annie broke free. She bolted up the stairs and burst through the glowing door. A laid-down life fading in the flames.

A blue-eyed Black.

Ruth knew as well as all her community, it wasn’t uncommon for a Colored to have light eyes like Lydia. But to match it with dark skin, now that was something different. That was something different entirely.

At the loom, Ruth’s hands rested, not on the wooden posts, the beams, nor the side panels, nor the spun silk she would soon weave into fine cloth, but on her face.

She had seen the reflection of her chocolate skin many times in the ripple of the river, inside the dim silver of spoons she polished when she was a girl, and once in her mistress’s looking glass. Many times she had admired her complexion, smooth as the pudding she craved at Christmas.

Even now it still felt velvety, her fingertips slipping only into shallow smile lines, which she was happy to have. All she had endured and she still had joy.

“What does this look like?” she asked Odessa and Abram. She knew they were awake, though at times they feigned otherwise late at night. Folks were so silly. Very little was hidden from blinded eyes. She saw more now than she ever did with sight.

“What’s that, Ruth?” Abram asked. Ruth could hear him rising, shifting into a more comfortable position.

“My eyes. What do they look like? I know they’re blue, but what do they look like in my face?” She laughed at the question.

She knew good and well what she looked like from the screams, the panting, the gasps, the shattering of glass, the stumbling, the fumbling of feet, the mere disturbance of children and parents alike. Still, she couldn’t imagine.

“They’re just blue, Ruth. That’s all. If you like blue, you’re fine.”

She laughed. He chuckled.

Her friend rose from the place where she sat quilting and walked to her. She placed her withered hands over hers.

“What do you say, Dessa?”

She didn’t answer for a while, just stood rubbing her hands over Ruth’s. Finally, she cleared her throat. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, Dessa.” Ruth pushed her hands away. “Don’t start that, hear? I know you’re sorry, but there ain’t no reason for it. I don’t know how many times I’ve got to tell you. Stop all that.” She could hear the whimpering that streaked her nerves. “I’m fine. I just wanted to know what you see.”

Odessa returned her fingers to her face and smiled. Yes. Ruth could feel her smiling down. “Pretty, Ruthie. Pretty.”

Still? She had been beautiful, had been told by many just that. And that beauty had kept Master Tim’s hands on her at all hours.

She lost count of the nights, the afternoons, the mornings he came to her. But she had had enough. Had stolen the knife of her enemy from the back pocket of the trousers crumpled next to his drowsy body one night. When his eyes shut, she hid it under the washbasin until the day at the shed, led there by Odessa’s cries. A cry, looked like life would have it, she was cursed to hear every day for the rest of her life.

She wanted to see her eyes for herself, but she was fine settling for the view of her friends. She wasn’t one to fret about injustice, the things that kept many of her people bound in anger. What she couldn’t change she left alone and sought peace in other pleasures. The loom was her love. When she touched it, handled it, the tension she carried was released, but tonight she sought a different pleasure.

“When’s the last time you been outside?” Ruth clasped her hands. “Lydia’s wedding?” But they had not ventured outdoors even then. “Both of you. I’m talking to both of you. Come on, get up!”

She stood up, shifting the bench back with the force of her thighs. “Come on now. We’re going out.”

“But you can’t see.”

“But I can feel. When’s the last time you felt some air on your face, Dessa? Seen the world outside of this here place?”

“Long time. Ain’t had the strength to, not after…” A whimper. “How long it been, Abram?”

“Can’t go back that far.”

“Well, this is it. Tonight we’re going out.”

“How we getting out there?” Abram asked. “Can’t walk worth nothing. Legs so weak…”

“One step at a time. Come on, Dessa, help me up.”

Odessa placed her hand on Ruth’s shoulder, but she slipped forward and fell into the loom. Ruth could feel the frame of it shake, she could feel her lover toppling, the heavy weight of it falling forward. She tried to catch it, hold the side panels up, but she couldn’t balance the load. She heard Odessa scream, the loom tumbling on top of her, knocking her to the floor.

Abram was at her side fast, quick for a sick, old man.

“Ruth! Ruth, are you all right?”

“Abram!” Asking her foolish questions! “I’m trapped. I can’t move from under it.”

“I’m going to get you out. Hold tight.”

To her surprise, she wasn’t panicking, just uncomfortable. At least she could move her arms. If he could just get his wife to be quiet, she would be all right. Odessa couldn’t even speak for the wailing coming out of her mouth.

“I need to get help.”

“No you don’t. You ain’t leaving me here like this. You just said you could barely walk. I might be dead by the time you get back here.”

“Dessa’s with you.”

She didn’t say a word. Didn’t have to.

“All right, I won’t leave you, but I don’t know what to do.”

“You don’t know what to do? Get this thing off me!”

“I don’t think I can.”

“Try, Abram. Try.”

Ruth could feel Abram pushing, prodding, straining, until he let out a big breath over his panting. “I don’t know, Ruth. Without help…I need help.”

He was quiet. Anxiety was building now, masking her ability to detect, discern. “What are you doing? Abram?”

“Asking for help. Look, Ruth, I need to do this a different way.” He scooted behind her, knelt near her head.

Sliding his arms under hers, he pulled her to him. The loom wobbled forward. Ruth could hear it coming down before it hit, crashing against her skull.

She could hear the gasps, the cries, the uttered reverence of the Lord’s name.

“Is she dead?” Odessa asked.

From the pain deep inside her head, she wished she were. It seared like lightning behind her eyes. But when she opened them, she blinked. A fuzzy figure behind the wood moved toward her.

“Abram…Odessa?”

“You’re all right. Thank God.”

Ruth blinked again and again, every shadow becoming light, every fog clearing. She swung at the wood over her, scrambled under its weight, energized, renewed, strengthened by what was happening to her from the inside out. The couple pulled her legs from under, and she wiggled free.

“Abram. Odessa.” She said each name slowly, slowly, taking in the vision of the faces that were becoming more and more clear. She pulled herself up and sat at her friends’ side. It was strange seeing them. Though they had been together for more than twenty years, she had last seen them as young folk. Abram’s thick hair was now gone, but his gift, his strength, was back.

“I can see.”

“What? What did you say?”

“I can see.” Ruth nodded at the gray-haired woman. “I can see you.” She reached out and touched the face of her friend. She saw, as she had often felt, the toil of the years. She saw the pain for the first time and wept. “You can see?” Odessa’s hand gripped hers. Her eyes widened just like the eyes Ruth remembered. “You can see, Ruthie?”

But she couldn’t answer. She nodded. For the first time in twenty years, it was her nodding and crying, staring into the dry, steady eyes of a woman who smiled. Odessa smiled until she laughed, light and sweet.

“She can see, Abram. She can see!”

Abram sat with his head in his hands, his shoulders sunken. He looked up with red-stained eyes.

“It couldn’t be.”

“I can see you, Abram.” Ruth grabbed his wrist. “I can see the hands that healed me.” She touched the scar on the inside of his palm.“One more,” he whispered. “He gave me one more.”

Ruth didn’t know what he meant, but it didn’t matter. She was seeing for herself. She shook her head. It was too much. The blessing. This wave of grace.

“I was blind…,” Ruth said, but the rest of the words caught in her throat.