Chapter 12

August 17, 1857

“Why do we have to go, Mama?” Tempe asks. She sits cross-legged on the floor, stuck between Mama’s legs. She squirms and yelps like Mama’s killing her while she gets her hair plaited. A preacher’s coming. Walker’s taken to going to church and having preachers, reverends, and ministers for Sunday supper but this is the first one I will ever see. Walker sent down new dresses for the women and dungarees and shirts for the men.

We all got hats and headscarves and new shoes. He called for all the slaves, even them from the house, to worship.

“We’re going to hear the word,” I say. Mama done my hair earlier. I stand on the porch, careful not to lean on the new rail Mama built and careful not to dirty my new dress or sweat out my puffs.

“The preacher is going to talk to us about God,” Mama says. She twists and pulls Tempe’s thick hair. Tempe jumps. “Sit still.”

“We already talked about God. What can he tell us that you don’t know?”

“What’s God look like?” I ask.

“Us,” Mama says.

I picture God, his brown face and eyes lit up like stars. He’s long-legged and tall, taller than any man I’ve ever seen, with arms as long as trees stretched wide enough to hold me, Mama, and Tempe too. He’s standing there smiling, with a smile so bright it’s like looking into the sun and he’s waiting, just waiting. “Does God’s Mama make him sit still while she pulls and yanks on his hair too?”

“Tempe!” Mama yells. She laughs. “Ask God yourself.”

“I ask God a lot of things but he don’t never answer,” Tempe says.

It’s hot. Including the hired hands, there are only fifteen or so of us here, but it’s boiling. The preacher wants to hold the service in the barn. Even though it’s warm as could be outside, he got the door shut and the shutters closed.

“Y’all ought to be thankful to Master Walker for allowing me to spread the Lord’s Good Word to you lowly heathens,” the preacher says. His face is pink and shiny. Even worse, he’s a whisperer. We have to lean in close to hear him.

“What’d he say?” someone asks.

“He said we ought to be thankful to the Lord for heathens,” someone else answers.

Darned hired hands mock everything. The way Tempe milks a cow, the way I walk, and now this. And on Sunday!

“That ain’t what he said at all,” one of them says. “He said we should be thankful heathens.”

“I said—”

“Well, why’s he yelling? Lord got him all enraptured already?”

“Praise Lord! Hallelujah!” Rose gets to singing.

“Amen, amen,” someone says, “that was a right good sermon.” The hands turn to go.

“We ain’t finished!” The preacher’s pink face goes red. “I’ll say when it’s time to go!” He fans himself with one of them wicker fans Rose uses to cool the Missus. “Now the Lord in his infinite wisdom has seen to it to give you all to Master Walker for his care. The burden of responsibility is lifted and all you have to do now is serve your Master on Earth and serve your Master in Heaven and—”

“What he say?”

“Repeat after me,” the preacher says. He wipes his face. “Y’all are heathens sent to pay for the sins of your father.”

“Y’all heathens sent to pay for the sins of your father,” the hands repeat.

“No! Say I’m a heathen damned to—”

“What he say?”

“He’s damned! He’s damned!”

“Oh Lord Jesus, save us, save us, Lord! He’s damned!”

“I’m not damned, you all are damned!”

Don’t seem to be nothing he can do. Them hands hightail it out of there like the barn’s on fire. Door not even shut good and I can hear them laughing out there in the cool air. It’s just Mama, James, Rose, Samantha, Tempe, and me left.

“You sent here to save us?” James asks.

The preacher looks relieved. He taps on his Bible and straightens the brim on his hat. “I am here to save you, with the word!” His voice bellows. I jump. “That’s right, heathen,” his eyes burn into mine. “God knows you evil. He gave you the mark of the devil.”

I look at Mama. If he’s right, I ain’t the only one cursed.

“It’s your skin, your skin!” he yells. He waves his Bible frantically. “The mark of the curse is the black of your skin. God made you in the devil’s image.”

“Have you seen God?” Tempe asks. She steps closer. “Everyone knows what God looks like.” The preacher waves her back with his hand. “He looks like me and like Master Walker and—”

“You and Master Walker don’t look nothing alike. How your God look like you and him both?”

He paces the length of his imaginary pulpit. “It isn’t my God and your God. There’s only one God. God has seen fit to yoke your people with the chains of slavery and it’s your job to uphold those chains until God sets you free.”

“Freedom? God’s going to set us free? Hallelujah!” James says. Tears stream down his face.

“When you die,” the preacher raises his voice, “you will shake off the chains of slavery and serve your new Master in Heaven.”

“According to that book you got there, I’m called to hold the chains up and you called to lay them on?” James asks.

“That’s one way to look at it,” the preacher says. His head bobs up and down. “Escaping your obligation to the Lord is a sin. If you were to cast off your chains without God or Master Walker setting you free, you’d go straight to Hell and live a life of eternal damnation.”

“What’s Hell like exactly?” Mama asks.

“It’s fiery hot with no cool water to drink or cool grass for shade. Nonstop work. The devil’s work is never done from sunup to sundown. Nonstop pain too; whipping and harsh words. The burden is never lifted. And if your family isn’t there with you, but then, you wouldn’t want your family there with you, would you? Well, if they aren’t then it’s you all alone with no one to love you. Can you imagine? Being separated from your loved ones for eternity?”

Samantha, Rose, Mama, and James look at each other.

Preacher must feel it. Anger. Blood rushes in my ears.

“How about a song?” the preacher suggests. He starts to hum a fidgety tune as he edges closer to the barn door.

Samantha picks up the tune and adds a melody. I still don’t know the words but the rest of us join in.

“Amen, amen,” the preacher murmurs as he ushers us out.

“I don’t believe in your old made-up book,” Tempe whispers on the way out.

The preacher grabs her by the shoulder and lifts her off the floor.

“She don’t mean that,” Mama says.

Tempe reaches out her hand to Mama. Mama don’t move. “What you mean, child?” the preacher asks.

“I don’t believe no God would make one group to be better than another and expect them not to do nothing about it.”

“You are an ignorant little thing, aren’t you? Your Mama believe it, don’t you, gal?”

“Yes sir, I believe there are words in that book that I never will understand.”

“And you believe youse all put on this Earth to serve white people, don’t you?” Preacher asks.

“We all believe it, Master,” James interrupts.

Samantha and Rose stand close to the preacher. Fiddling with tools, the nearby hands watch.

“You gonna lay hands on us all, sir? So we all get saved?” Samantha asks.

The preacher stares down at his hand and at Tempe fastened to it. He drops her. Mama scoops her up, walks away. The preacher looks at me. “You know that little gal is going to Hell and if you don’t watch it you’ll go right along with her,” he says.

I run to catch up with Mama and them.

“Mama, is Tempe really going to Hell?” I ask that night. It’s so hot we’re all sleeping out back right in the summer grass.

“For what, angel?”

“For not believing we damned.”

“Don’t you go mistaking anything that preacher says for the truth,” Mama says.

“Will I go, then? Since I’m cursed?”

“What kind of curse you got?”

“Don’t know. Why weren’t there no babies born here after me?”

Mama don’t answer.