Chapter 10

It feels like days. The sky turns from black to pitch black and black again. Ella runs from tree to tree feeling for landmarks. Is this the tree she had sat under with Agnes? Is that? Thin, thorny branches, thick sap-filled cones, dry-rotting tree limbs; in the dark, it all looks, smells, and feels the same. Ella runs through the night. She tumbles through woods and gets tangled up in briars and weeds. She hears dogs and runs left. Footsteps and runs right. Even with the bright light of the moon, the only thing she can see is that she’s lost.

The rain has stopped but the air is still thick with it. Her feet sink into the mud, slip and slide on leaves and rocks. If only that whistling would stop, Ella could clear her mind enough to figure out where she is. But it’s closer—the whistling. It echoes her breathing, a raspy hiss that rattles. She tries to outrun it. It gets closer, louder. She collapses in a mound of leaves and sticks. Her lungs burn. Out of breath and panting, she picks herself up and lumbers on. Her body is soaked in sweat. She knows the dogs will pick up her scent soon if they haven’t already. Her own smell of fear and sweat burn her nostrils.

Papa had come for her. Just like she knew he would, he had found her. But she is still here. Why had he left without her? No matter what Agnes, Mr. Jonah, Mr. James, and them thought, Ella didn’t believe that witch hadn’t planned it from the start. How was I to know? Mama Skins had said. And them just standing there like they believed it or like they couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe after all these years the woman they trusted to run the plantation, to decide on the planting and the harvesting of the land and the people, couldn’t do nothing to save one little slave girl. Why couldn’t they see? If she’d wanted Ella saved, she would have been saved.

Wasn’t that basket of food proof they were paying Skins to keep Ella a slave? They all sat there eating up them lies and that food. Ella’s stomach grumbles. When nobody was looking, she had been picking at crumbs, pinching the crusts of bread. But not today. She refuses to sneak even a scrap of that you done good for keeping a slave basket. She’d rather die. She’d only been sneaking food to be ready. Just in case Agnes kept her word. How could she, though? With her mother bent on keeping her around, Agnes couldn’t get her own self free let alone help Ella. The look in the old woman’s eyes when she asked if it was true she and Agnes were planning to run away was enough. Ella’s silent “no” didn’t even feel like a lie. Not then, not when the old woman said, “Good, cuz I don’t plan on losing this baby,” and not now.

Fresh dung clings to Ella’s foot. It’s been miles; she might even be in Pennsylvania by now. Her legs ache, the soles of her feet sting. It would be nice if Agnes could have come with her. But she’s probably still huddled over her mother whispering, “It’ll be alright,” as if her life had been the one galloping down the road. As if it wasn’t her fault Papa left. Them whispering and poor-Mama-Skins-ing drove Ella to slip out of the cabin, down the mud path, through the woods, and finally to start running. Poor Mama Skins? What has she lost? Some magic she ain’t never had? With everybody crowded around the old woman like she was a broke-up doll, no one seemed to notice her go. Ella had never wanted to hurt anybody as much as she wanted to hurt Mama Skins. With all of them standing guard, she couldn’t get close enough and she had no intentions of staying one more night even if it meant waiting to kill her in her sleep. Please, Lord, she prays, strike that crazy old devil woman dead right now.

She pictures Agnes bent over as the old lady’s body goes rigid. Mr. Jonah and the Jameses will probably carry her to the pit. Walker will say a few words, slice her open to make sure she’s dead. Toss her in. Agnes and James can run off. Will she leave her pa like that? Alone? Please Lord, maybe don’t kill her, just let her get hurt up real bad. If you’re going to kill anybody, let it be Walker, the old one too.

Just a little while longer and she’ll be able to soak in a long bath of salts. She’ll even suffer her grandmother’s cure of castor oil, lemon, and onion stock. She just has to make it home.

There are no stars.

Her lungs fill with the heavy musk of animal. She’s close to a farm or field and if she keeps low and creeps through the tall grass, she might find a quiet place to rest for the night.

Before long Ella reaches a barn. She slips through a low opening, scraping a thigh on a splintered beam. Her feet give way underneath hay and feed. She crawls across the dirty barn floor to huddle behind a stack of hay. She’ll just rest her eyes and be gone before morning.

She wakes to mooing and shaking. Her whole body rattles back and forth. The strong hands gripping her arms feel like one of her brothers trying to wake her for lessons. Home! Finally. Rapturous joy, sweet like molasses, fills her throat. Sleep crusts her eyes, gluing her lashes together. She reaches out to touch the heavenly face in front of hers. If only he’d stop shaking her.

“Gal, gal! Hush all that noise!” he whispers.

What’s James doing in her bedroom? Mooing cows, sharp hay, dirty floor. She wipes the sleep from her eyes. Walker’s. All that walking, running, and sliding, all that praying.

“Better get you back, been hours since you left the cabin. Agnes been worrying all night. Ain’t you hear her call?” He pulls her up, shakes his head. “Thought for sure you’d be gone by now. I tol’ Agnes, I says, ‘Agnes, you just watch, that gal done took off after her pa and left you and me both.’ And Agnes says, ‘No, she wouldn’t leave without me.’ And I got to thinking, would you? I would. If my pa come, if my pa was free and if he come for me and somebody kept me from him.” James stops, watches her face.

For a second, Ella reaches out to him. Her hand hangs in the air. It’s still James. No matter what Agnes said, he raped her. He’s no better than that old woman. He’ll still get what’s coming to him. She prays she isn’t there to see it. She clasps her hands together, nods her head, mouths the word yes.

Finally, someone understands her. If only she didn’t hate him. It’s a momentary joy. Tears clog her throat.

“Agnes won’t believe it. Ain’t no way Mama Skins ain’t know your folks was here. Samantha told Agnes to tell her they was coming day before last. She tell you?”

Ella wishes she was like her pa. No matter how good or bad the news, her pa’s face won’t give nothing away. No expression at all. His body either. He stands more often than not, feet firm on the ground, back straight. It’s all in his hands. Ella and her brothers got good at recognizing the signs. He reacted to news in three ways: a hand under his chin, on a belt loop, or fingering a holster. She’s more like her mother. Her eyes, mouth, the lines on her forehead; her face reflects everything she feels. Her stomach curdles at bad news, her heart stops beating. Now, heart breaking, she crumples to the floor.

James kneels beside her. “I told her to tell you. Her mama said she’d take care of everything. Don’t blame Agnes for believing her. We gonna come up with a plan to get Agnes, me, and you gone. We can part ways after that if you want to. You can’t get your way off here by yourself and we can’t get around out there without you. Way I see it, that makes us family.”

Ella’s body shakes. She doesn’t trust James any more than she trusts Agnes but unless she can find another way, she’ll have to make do.

Agnes spoons a thick stew of mashed carrots and rabbit into a gourd. “Frown your face up all you like,” she tells Ella, “ain’t nothing wrong with the way it smells.”

The smell of roasted meat mingling with the aroma of carrots and spices fills the cabin. Ella goes outside. Even sitting on the lone step of the porch, it’s overpowering. Eating her food don’t make us friends. Agnes sets a bowl on the porch. Ella takes turns staring at it, the sky, the trees, the scatter of slave cabins of people she’s never met, and back to the bowl. Ella slips a fingertip into it. The warmth feels good. Ignoring the muck underneath her growing fingernails, she sucks stew off her finger. Mama would kill her.

“We got spoons,” Agnes says. She plops one down on the porch.

Jonah must have made it. The careful grooves, smooth wedge and thick handle feel like him. Patient and biding. Like the porch. Hardly more than enough room for two people to stand side by side, Ella can picture Jonah whittling it out of some rotted tree trunks, discarded planks, throwaway pieces. Ignoring the spoon, she picks the bowl up between both hands. The warmth of the gourd, the steam of the stew. She puts it to her lips and sips. Her stomach growls. And sips. Her stomach lurches. And sips. It is her first meal in weeks. She wipes her mouth on the back of her hand.

Agnes squeezes in beside Ella. The night air cools. Agnes shivers. She eats slowly, humming between spoonfuls, as if each one is better than the last. Ella gets up, leaving the empty bowl behind. She walks round the back to the garden. Sits on a patch of packed earth. Watches the clean sheets billowing on the washing line. Dancing like ghosts.

“That’s where Mama Skins’s babies buried,” Agnes says.

Ella half expected Agnes to follow, still she jumps at the sound of her voice.

“You can sit there, they don’t mind.”

She won’t give her the satisfaction of thinking she’s spooked. No such thing as ghosts. And if there were, first thing they’d do is get far from here. Only thing haunted is her and her mama.

“Don’t you think that ’bout my mama,” Agnes says. “She ain’t want to kill them babies!” Agnes leans against the wash line.

Ella closes her eyes, pictures Mama Skins wringing baby necks.

“Used to have to birth it first. She’d clean it, dress it real warm, love on it and by night, she’d smother it. Not in its sleep. While it was awake, so she could talk to it, tell it she loved it and how killing it was the most merciful thing she could do in this world. By the next morning she’d be back at Doc’s birthing babies for the farmers’ wives, merchants, anyone who could afford it. Was a time Mama Skins was sent for at all hours of the night. First one too. Before they even called the doctor, they’d send for Mama. He’d taught her ’bout how mixing this with that could save this one, soothe that one, still another one. For long she was doctoring, just about. Then Doc up and died. You know how folks are. Ungrateful gossips. They got to saying she killed him. My mama. As if she’d do that. Walker put a stop to all that talk. Stopped hiring her out too. She been doctoring here since.”

A sprinkle of poison in his tea, some of them itchy flowers on a roll, a rusted nail? Ella wonders how the old woman killed him.

“I wish I could take her with me when we go.”

Though she hasn’t moved, Agnes is too close. Her voice stings Ella’s skin like bees. Her words scatter from her mouth, buzz across the sky, attack. Ella scrambles to get up, to get away from Agnes, her foolish words and her pretend ways.

“You right,” Agnes calls to her back, “she’s too frail. The trip alone could kill her.”

That night Ella curls up like a cat, half on, half off the porch. In her head she recites her favorite prayers, practices hymns, lists names, birthdates, and faces so she does not forget. She tries counting the days she’s been here, forty-seven, but that makes her cry. So she counts the days until she goes home. One. Before long, she is asleep. Tomorrow she will follow the river’s bends clear off Walker land. She will find a path and stay clear of it like the runaway slaves used to talk about during testimony. She will pack enough food for seven days. No meat, meat attracts dogs someone had said. She will bundle breads, carrots, and blueberries while Agnes is in the fields and Papa Jonah runs around trying to keep the farm alive and Mama Skins runs around killing it. She will find a church and they will help her find her way home.

Mama Skins stands at the cabin door listening to the girl’s dream planning. Inside, Agnes lies alone on her pallet watching her mother’s silhouette.

Ella wakes to the cold early morning air. The sun is not up. Just as well, she thinks, she has to get ready. Her eyes aren’t open a full minute when she feels someone squatting too close next to her.

“Master wants you down to the fields to help with the clearing,” Mama Skins says.

Slaving. She hasn’t planned to be here this long. Forced to bend and break for the man who kidnapped her. Not able to speak up and if she could, what would she say? You know you wrong?

“Ain’t gonna be no more nothing less you earn your keep. You gonna have to take your hand to something just like the rest of us. No sense sulking ’bout it. Sooner you get started, sooner you get done.”

“Leave her be, Mama. I’ll help her,” Agnes says.

Ella follows Agnes to the river. Agnes points out markings along the way, she has a story for each one. That’s where so and so broke his neck, that’s where so and so got bit by a snake. Not one good thing happened on the whole place. Now’s as good a time as any to get going. No food. She’ll have to live off the water, maybe catch fish or something. She ain’t been eating much anyway. The morning’s near as dark as night. Once she gets to the river, she’ll run. The fresh smell fills her nostrils. Not far now. A few steps more and she can hear it. Her heart beats in time with the rush of low and high tide meeting, swirling.

Agnes stops a few steps ahead. She clasps Ella’s hands tight like a schoolgirl on the playground. “James got a plan,” she says. Her words come out in bursts. “Been waiting to tell you till it gets set but now’s as good a time as any. Walker hired a hand!” She throws Ella’s hands in the air. “Coming here!” She twirls in a circle, her arms outstretched.

Ella resumes walking toward the river. What does one more set of hands have to do with her?

“A free black hand. Someone to help with the hauling and clearing. Somebody who knows following that river is a sure enough way to get caught or killed or both.”

Ella stops walking.

Agnes talks over bathing. A few minutes later they set off for the fields. “Remember, all we got to do is be nice to him,” Agnes says. “Not too nice. Let me see you smile. Oh Lord, no. Don’t do that no more. Like to scare him for days. Just let me do the talking and the smiling for both of us.”

It takes longer than Ella expects to get Bird, the hired hand working his way up north, to trust her. He spends most days not looking at her. Not looking into her lost brown eyes, not thinking about her broken spirit, her long legs. He’s been warned by the locals in town not to trust a soul on this place. But James and Agnes seem alright enough. They don’t look haunted. He feels bad about not accepting any of their food or drink, feels rude not to. But even if he hadn’t been warned “not to put so much as a crumb in his mouth lest he be tied to the place forever,” he won’t take the little bit they have. He eats supper with them. Clears and hauls side by side with them. At the end of each day he goes home to the boardinghouse he shares with ten other laborers, tumbles into bed and gets up before dawn to haul, lift, and not look at that little bit of gal wasting away.

It takes ten days for the overseer to stop watching her, whip ready, waiting for her to walk too fast, haul too slow, carry too little. Agnes had told her how much to lift, how far to haul, how fast to move to satisfy him. Too fast got everyone else in trouble. Too slow meant the lash. It only takes once. One crack of tight wound leather heavy on her small back sends her crumpled to the ground. The other slaves, including Agnes, keep working like the whoosh hasn’t sliced through the air and her skin and her scream and flesh haven’t torn from her body. But Bird drops his load of broken branches and stumps. He walks quickly, stepping around bent backs, over tangled roots to get there before the second lash.

“I’ll teach her how to untangle them roots without messing with the crop,” he says. He’s already scooping Ella up with one hand, picking up her hoe in the other. His body is a short wall between the overseer and Ella. Before the overseer can answer, Bird is leading her off, talking about berries and branches. He spends the next seven days teaching Ella to uproot bushes without killing the roots. He spends his nights thinking of ways to get her free.

“Bird’s sweet on you,” Agnes whispers on the eighth night.

The girls lay on the edge of the riverbank. Despite the cold, they sleep here most nights “to be closer to the fields,” Agnes had told her mother. Mama Skins fussing about it didn’t stop Jonah and James from building the girls a small cabin near a copse of trees. Long as the girls took their supper at the house, Jonah didn’t “see a dang thing wrong with it.” He lined the roof with hides and furs, stuffed a fresh mattress with feathers and hides.

“He’s been asking Little James about you. ‘Tell me ’bout that gal,’” Agnes whispers in her best Bird voice. “You know that’s as good as him asking if youse taken. James got to talking ’bout what a shame it is you been stolen from your people and if you could get up north, anywhere up north, it would be a miracle. He ain’t say nothing else about it. Few days later, Bird come saying he didn’t see why a gal like you should stay here. He said he thought he could buy you free.”

Ella’s heart gets to beating out her chest.

“Why, James liked to die. Ain’t no way Bird can afford to buy us all. No, James tells him, Walker wouldn’t sell you to nobody, least of all not to no black man who was just gonna set you free.”

Ella’s throat closes.

“James left it at that. Today, Bird come up with a plan. Walker ain’t got to set her free. Just need papers that say she free.”

Ella’s stomach goes one way, her head the other. She waits. “Bird’s gonna buy passes soon’s as he saves enough. Got a friend to write them and everything. Just a little while longer. We’ll be free before you know it.”

A few weeks later, Samantha, Myrtle, and Mama Skins gather at the river over the soapy undergarments and work-stained dungarees of the field slaves. The monthly washing is one of the few times the friends can talk openly. Mama Skins stirs a large boiling pot of clothes as the other two women dip them in the river and wring them out. When they finish they will call Agnes and Ella to hang them on makeshift lines made up of vines and rope.

“What you know about Bird?” Mama Skins asks.

“Not much,” Samantha says, “hardworking. Don’t talk much ’cept to Little James, Agnes, and that gal.” Her thin fingers pinch each drop of water from the worn fabric between her palms. After inspecting and wringing them again, she puts the breeches on the pile before scooping another from her woven river basket where they cool.

“I think he sweet on her,” Mama Skins says. “Could be he come and steal her away.”

“That mess up all your planning, though, wouldn’t it?” Myrtle asks. “All that working to save Agnes go soon as that girl go.” She grins. “Isn’t that what you want? Save your gal?” It’s in her voice, her eyes, the set of her mouth, the way she holds her head. Even if Mama Skins didn’t know her like she does, she’d recognize Myrtle’s jealous ways.

“What you talking ’bout, Myrtle? Turns out, when that gal go, she gonna take my Agnes right on away from here. And if Agnes go, Little James gonna follow right on behind her.” Mama Skins lets the words hang in the air with the soap bubbles.

“But if she goes, who’s gonna be here for you? Who you gonna have left?” Samantha asks.

“Me and Jonah and of course you and Myrtle and James and Little, no, not Little James. You practically raised that boy, ain’t you? Had your heart set on him and that gal from up the road getting together?” Mama Skins shakes her head. “Well, soon’s they hit freedom, first thing he and Agnes probably do, I imagine, is get married.” Hot soapy bubbles splatter Mama Skins’s skin. She doesn’t seem to take notice. She hums and stirs and waits.

Myrtle thrusts a work shirt underwater. She holds it under like it’s fighting back. “Be back, need to get something up the house.” She’s already moving before the two can respond.

“Oh, Meredith,” Samantha says. “Why’d you say that? You know how Myrtle gets herself worked up.”

It’s got nothing to do with Agnes and nothing to do with that bit of a gal either, Myrtle thinks as she trudges down the path. If it weren’t for Meredith convincing them all to take that stuff, none of this would be happening. Her girls wouldn’t have been sold off for being barren, her brothers wouldn’t have been sold south to pick cotton, her friends, most of them gone now, wouldn’t have buried baby after baby after baby. She stares straight ahead. She won’t look at the heads poking up through the ground, blooming like spring flowers. Why should Meredith get what she wants? How many women come to her to keep their masters out of their beds at night? How many had she given a little bit of this to? How many times had that little bit turned into a whole heap of that? When they were all shriveled up inside and Walker started buying babies, wasn’t the pact to kill them? Won’t be no more slaves after us, the women swore on it. When Walker brought a little baby, they all hugged on it, loved on it, and in the morning, one of them would love it to death. Love it to freedom. How many was it?

They’d taken turns. She had Jebediah with the bright-green eyes, Every with fingers long like vines, Shy with the pink lips. She can still see their faces, their eyes big with shock, the questions in their eyes. She told them stories, all of them, of who they were and who she was and where they came from and where they was going, all so they could make their way home. When Agnes come, Meredith said the baby didn’t need killing. Said Walker was convinced the place was haunted and one miracle baby wouldn’t hurt nothing. Walker brought two more. They died the same day. Wasn’t even Meredith’s turn. “Babies sometimes die,” she said, like that was that. No more babies come until that gal. Shoulda been Myrtle’s turn. That gal didn’t need killing neither. Myrtle would have loved on her, been her mama. But Meredith fixed it so she’d go down to the cabins.

No more. Just a whisper in the Missus’s ear, a question: What do you think that laborer talks to the field hands about? That’s all it would take to get Missus’s imagination to running. Before long she’d conjure up worse than Myrtle could say and that hand would be on his way north, alone, and that little gal would be up the house, scrubbing and cooking and mending. She’d teach her who to look out for, how to make the days pass like lightning, how to stop hearing the whispers of the dead.

Voices drift through the woods.

“How we gonna put three people on one pass?” Little James. If he’d been born after Meredith come, there wouldn’t be no Little James today.

“Can’t. This pass says I got one slave, one. I told you I was coming for the gal. Now it’s all mixed up,” another man says.

“But my woman and me, we’re planning on leaving together.”

“Ain’t trying to stop you, just can’t do it on this pass.”

From behind a tree, Myrtle watches the silence settle like smoke between the two men.

“Whole lot easier for two to get free when one’s already free,” the man finally says. “You can come back for one, both of them, or all four of ’em.”

“Four?” James asks.

“They both with child, ain’t they?”

Could they be? Meredith hadn’t given Agnes anything to dry her up and she sure didn’t give that gal any, although she told Agnes she would. There was no doubt Meredith had given Agnes something to keep Walker off of her for all these years. Agnes might have slipped some to that gal, but babies? Meredith sure hadn’t counted on this. Two of them? After all this time? James’s hemming and hawing could get them all left.

“Seems like you would have mentioned she was with child before now. Unless you didn’t know. But, I can’t be toting no pregnant gal. What happens if we get found out? She ain’t gonna be able to run. Get us both caught. Either you go or no. I ain’t gonna make up your mind for you.”

“I am,” Myrtle says. “Ain’t I been a mama to you most your life?” Even though she’s stepped in front of the tree, both men jump like they’ve seen a ghost. Bird looks like he wants to run one way, James the other. “You gotta leave here while you got the chance,” she continues. “Come back for Agnes when you get yourself set up. Get you a job, a place for the baby, her. I’ll take care of her and the other gal and her young’un too.”

“What about my pa? He’ll die without me,” James says.

“You so full of yourself,” Myrtle laughs. “He’ll be sorry you ain’t gone sooner. You think he want you to be a slave your whole natural life? Your mama wouldn’t want that neither.”

James shifts from foot to foot. Bird shifts from foot to foot. “It ain’t like you leaving us. You being free is like us all being free, one step at a time,” she says. She wraps him in her arms, holds him tight like she held all them before him.

Loving him to freedom. She lets go.

“I’ll be back for y’all,” James promises. “Tell them for me. Hear?”

Myrtle nods, takes a breath and almost skips to the far field. She hasn’t been there on purpose in years. She sits among the graves, chattering and laughing and singing. She’s still singing when the overseer finds her the next morning, singing and chattering about babies and graves. Walker drives her five towns over. He comes back the next morning with twin calves.

Agnes knows James is coming back for her. She feels it. Walker rallies a search party to save James from Bird “the slave-charming-abolitionist-thief.” Damned Bird done tricked James into leaving. Soon as he can break free, James will be home. Agnes waits. Days pass, then weeks. Blueberries peek then burst through. It’s planting season. Just like James to make the most of things. He’s probably got himself a job, saving up to buy her. Hope he make enough to buy the gal too. If not, they’ll come back for her before long. Might have a room somewhere but more likely James done built a little something somewhere near the water, he likes the water. Agnes bundles clothes, shells, things she can’t stand to leave behind, wraps them in skins and buries them. She’d fold her mama and papa up too if she could. The hole is shallow. Buried in Mama Skins’s patch with the babies so they can keep an eye on it till it’s time. Won’t take a minute to scoop it up. James will be in a hurry.

Since Bird run off, Ella’s been waiting. Instead of counting days, she focuses on voices. Mama’s singing geography lessons: “The Monongahela through and through, river flows from me to you.” Papa’s, “Oh how it glitters, oh how it shines, when dirt turns to soot, look out for the mines.” Pastor’s, “The Heavenly star, that shines clear and bright, leads straight to God’s North, keep freedom in sight.” But the voice she hears most often is Hazel, a runaway slave she’d made a shawl for: “Stay clear the shallow, stay clear the wide, cross at the rapids, where dogs fear to stride.”

She’ll need to be ready for when he comes back. Most likely Bird will know the way, least to Philadelphia. She can do the rest. Mornings she hauls and plans and waits, no Bird. Weeks pass. She’s hungry all the time. When she’s not throwing up yellow bile, she’s eating dirt, bark, starch, carrots. Her arms are lean, her legs strong, her belly round. Agnes’s is too. Must be all that good eating. Deer, possum, raccoon. Agnes can catch anything. Agitated, Ella is waiting on Bird when it’s time for planting. When grass and flowers sprout. When bushes and trees bloom. July brings hot sun and bursting blueberries ripe from the bush. They stain her fingers, her arms, her legs, her patience.

Mama Skins has been waiting too. Ever since Walker sold Myrtle off, the air has become thick. It stinks all over. Most days, she can hardly breathe. Fresh rain does nothing to wash the smell of rot from the dirt, the trees, her skin. Even if Agnes and that gal can’t smell it, Samantha, Old James, and Jonah do. They don’t talk about it, don’t need to. It hangs between Samantha and her like a pair of soiled undergarments at the river washing. Between Old James’s words on the few times he brings news from the house. In that space between her and Jonah where she used to put her head on his chest at night. It’s only a matter of time before Walker gets to selling other folk. She will never see Agnes again. Never hold her grandbaby. The baby will grow up a slave, just like Agnes, just like her. If she ain’t never gonna see her again no how, Agnes may as well be free. She won’t get far without that gal’s book smarts. But two little gals won’t get far weighed down with babies.

If she slips a handful of ground herbs into Agnes’s stew, the baby won’t be born at all. Mama Skins has been up since sunrise gathering and grinding herbs from her medicine garden. Some for Agnes, some for the gal. The carrots are slow cooking with rabbit and onions. In a small iron pot, the bitter herbs simmer. As it cooks, Mama Skins makes up memory bundles for both babies. She whispers stories into shells for safekeeping and to guide the babies home when they pass. She wraps the shells in fabric, a pocket from Agnes’s dress, a torn ribbon she’d been holding on to since the gal came. She wraps these small treats in stolen scraps of newspaper, tufts of fur, hides. She rocks the bundles in her arms, kisses them. She has supper on the table. For the girls, two black gourds; for her and Jonah, two brown.

The sun set hours ago. The day’s been so long the moon doesn’t even bother to come out. The sky is pitch black. Not one shining star. The stew has been heated twice. The herbs have steeped too long in their own juices. Picking season. As the summer air cools the few borrowed bodies Walker can afford make their way back to the shacks to live side by side with the few slaves left. After hours of waiting, slippery with sweat, the girls and Jonah plop on the porch.

“Y’all gonna wash before supper?” Mama Skins asks. No one stirs.

Just as well. They’ll have to wash all over again once the blood starts flowing. “Supper’s on the table,” Mama Skins says. She paces inside the cabin. Comes back to the door, waits.

“Meredith,” Jonah says, “I ain’t got no intention of getting up no more tonight. If that supper want me to eat it, it’s gonna have to come right here for me to do it.”

“I’ll get it, Mama.”

From the sound of her voice, don’t sound like she could get up if she wanted to. “I’ll get it.” Mama Skins squints, fingers each gourd for nicks and grooves. She can’t see the colors but knows each by heart. Satisfied, she balances one in each hand, elbows pressing the other two, one each to either side of her body. “Huhn,” she says, delivering Jonah’s, then Agnes’s, then the gal’s. She stands in the doorway, the black bowl cool between her fingertips. “I been thinking. Won’t be too long before Walker get to selling again,” she says. Sips deeply. “We gotta make sure you two is gone before he do.”

There are four soft thuds: Agnes’s sleeping head against the wood step as untouched stew slides to the porch and the brown bowl falls from her fingers. Papa Jonah’s seizing body on the ground as poison ripples through his veins, turning his stomach against him. Mama Skins’s insides pouring from every orifice of her quickly bloating body. Ella’s feet running through the soft grass.

The overseer finds them the next morning. Agnes, still sleeping, on the porch. Her parents, one slumped over, one standing stock straight, both dead. Samantha and Big James come for her. They lead Agnes to her little cabin. Hush her screaming. They tell stories of Meredith before Agnes, before she became Mama Skins. Stories of a wild-eyed slave girl smarter than a soul for miles. So smart she got her learning from the good doctor. Learned her everything he knew. Meredith with a voice so strong she could sing the skin off a coon. The Meredith they remembered laughed and sang. The Meredith they remembered didn’t kill babies.

Agnes hardly recognized the Meredith they described.

While James and Samantha split Meredith’s story in two, her body was dumped in the pit with Jonah on top of her. On account of the oozing, Walker had the pile set on fire. Contractions hit the moment the flames roared. At the same time, Ella’s body came bobbing to the surface. I was born headfirst in the bottom of the river. Tempe, my sister, popped out of Agnes’s belly just one minute before me. To hear her tell it, she’s the one that broke the curse and I’m just the one who broke the curse’s sister. She never lets me forget it.

2:01 p.m.

Hush.

Tempe’s whisper, hot like the whistle of a tea kettle, sends chills up the back of my neck. She’s always trying to boss me. I tuck the yellow newspaper article, Philadelphia North, November 28, 1850, into the middle of the book. I put it in front of Tempe and put Edward’s bandaged hands in between mine. “It’s gonna be alright, baby.” The lie springs to my lips before I can stop it.

The door clicks. A rush of warm air. The soft thump of the door, humming, and the smell of lilacs lift the stale air. “I’m going to need to check vitals,” a nurse announces to the room. A chart slaps against her hip. There are two of them. Accosting one patient after the other, they slip behind patient screens. Their shadows lift, turn, tug. Moans and grunts accompany orchestrated movements. The snap of rubber gloves. The stench of alcohol, urine; the slosh of a bucket. They make their way to Edward’s bed. I glance at Tempe.

Told you so.

“We just need to check on Mr. Freeman,” one says. Staring at the chart, she nods her head at Edward.

“Just be a moment,” the other says. She’s already got one hand clutched around my arm, pulling on me and the other reaching for my book. She’s so close I can read the name, Bernadette, on her tag.

“I’ll get it,” I say.

We grab for it at the same time. My hand on one end, hers on the other. Years slip from the pages. 1855, 1860, 1865, 1880, 1901: scatter like june bugs. The Emancipation slides onto the floor followed by Missing Girl; Reward for Runaway Slave; Lost: Woman Missing, Answers to Mama; Found: Baby, Six Months Old, and No Coloreds Allowed. Damned fool. She lets go of the book. I clutch it tight but that don’t stop it from shaking none. It’s warm and throbbing like to jump right out of my arms. My arms get to shaking and my legs too. Tempe’s rolling her eyes, shaking her head at me from the corner. Spiteful words gurgle in my throat. Toe stomping, speckled heifer is pushing its way pass my tongue. Bernadette holds the clippings clumped together so that Lost is on one end, Found on the other. She gives them to me gently, and ushers me away from the bed.

“How long they gonna keep him?” the younger nurse says.

She lifts and prods.

Bernadette peels one of Edward’s eyelids back, stares, writes. Peels the next. “Why, till he gets better, of course.”

“Expect that’s possible?”

The look the older one gives her could stop a heart. She puts her head down, scribbles notes.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if Mr. Freeman got up in a few days ready to shake all this off and put the past behind him.”

“I would,” the young nurse whispers.

“Excuse us.” Bernadette pulls a curtain attached to a metal frame around the bed. The contraption rattles and clinks into place. As soon as the starched, thin piece of cloth is in place, she starts talking. “What ever made you say that?” Her body casts shadows across the screen. Her hands are on her hips. She leans forward, bends almost double. “I’ve told you a thousand times: don’t talk like that in front of them.”

“I didn’t mean nothing by it. I been hearing ’bout this case all—”

“Patient. Out there, it’s a case. In here, he’s a patient.”

“I been hearing about this all day. I’m surprised he’s still alive. Soon as I heard it on the radio I just knew he’d be here and that I’d be one of the last people to see him alive. I just knew it. I said, Maddy, you gonna be the last face that ol’ colored boy see.”

“Will you hush?”

The hiss of words is replaced by the whoosh of ripping gauze as they remove and replace strips of fabric with new ones. Through the curtain, they roll and unroll, measure, snip, and tuck.

“I left soon as I could. Mama was all: ‘Where you going so early?’ And I said, ‘Mama, I’m going to work, they need me.’ I couldn’t get out the door without her fussing and packing supper in case I had to work through the night. Can’t be fooling around with no bus or trolley today. And wasn’t I right? Wasn’t off my porch step when people came running up the street asking me if I heard the news and in the same breath saying stay indoors. They was gonna go round up the coloreds so there wouldn’t be no trouble till it was all over. That sounded like trouble to me so I said, ‘Don’t you do that. Don’t you go riling them folks up. It’ll all blow over.’ And they said, ‘Damned right.’ Just like that. Folks standing round waiting on the Broad Line or the Vine Express like it didn’t matter what time they showed up. Mother Matthews would have me scrubbing chamber pots for a month, two if I was that late. I walked clear here.” Her hands are moving at the same time her mouth is.

“I’ve been here since first thing this morning. Buses have been tied up ever since it happened.”

“You walk her up?”

“Oh, heavens no, Maddy, Claudine did that. Seemed like she was hoping to stay around. I don’t blame her. I wouldn’t want to be walking out there right now if I was her.”

“All she has to say is ‘I’m a nurse’ and they’ll let her right through.”

“Who will?”

“The police. They all around the hospital. So is the Klan and everyone else. Tell me you can’t hear people chanting, ‘Throw him down, throw him down!’ I swear it’s like they right outside the window knowing exactly where he is. I feel like they’re watching me right now. Who do you think is keeping them from coming right in here, dragging him from this bed and tossing him out the window?”

“Well, it’ll all be over soon.”

“How do you figure? The police can’t figure out if he was pulled or did the pulling. And just what was he doing operating the trolley anyhow? Is he working for the strikers or the rails? Ought to be ashamed. Ramming into a heap of—”

“—Wasn’t a heap. Shop wasn’t even open yet. It couldn’t have been more than a couple of people in there.”

“That’s not bad enough?”

“A few is less than a whole heap. Ones we getting are from after the accident.”

“A certain amount of violence is to be expected after events like this,” Maddy says. She puts her hands on her hips, shakes her head.

“Don’t you sound just like that man from the radio?”

“Mama loves when I do that. Says I got it just right. I said it to the officer by the door earlier. He didn’t smile or nothing.”

“Of course not, he’s been there all day. I’m sure he can’t wait until it’s all over. Did he say how long he’ll be out there?”

“Wait, let me do it like he says.” She tilts her head, puts a hand up to an imaginary cap. “Till it’s all over, ma’am.”

“Then that won’t be much longer now.”

“They’ll move on once he’s gone.”

“Don’t see why folks stick around. Even if he did do it, he won’t be able to tell them nothing about it.”

“When I came in the police were calling on the coloreds to go home peacefully. I could hear it before I even got here. “Just go home and you won’t get hurt.” They didn’t listen, though. Some of them started singing and praying and chanting. Then people and water came gushing down the street. I just stopped. Right there. When it turned to a steady stream of pink, I come on through. Seen a whole heap of them—no, a few—police had arrested a few. Seem to think they must be in cahoots or something. I hope one of them confesses soon. We don’t have that much room to take many more.”

“I don’t think he did it,” Bernadette says.

“I don’t see why not. He was in it, wasn’t he?”

“That’s what they say.”

“A whole lot of folks say that.”

“I heard they’re already questioning somebody else.”

Maddy sucks her teeth.

“A union boy from up north sent down to get the strikers worked up.”

“Don’t need much riling up. They been at it since they got fired yesterday. Been boiling over before that, if you ask me.”

They tuck the covers tight around Edward.

“Don’t much matter now, does it?” Bernadette asks.

I don’t realize until the curtain starts billowing that I’ve been holding my breath ever since they started talking. My chest hurts. My mouth is dry. The curtain flails and rustles. It slaps against one’s back, creeps against the other’s legs.

“Oh, my!” Their mumbles grow louder as wind presses the cloth against them.

Tempe. She’s standing right next to me, red-faced, huffing like an old freight train. Hot air streams from her mouth, blowing the curtain, rattling and shaking the thin railing. I didn’t know she could do that. Edward. I know she can hear me, so I just mouth the word. She stops blowing. The curtain stops moving. By the time the nurses, flustered, can pull it back, I’m standing below the window. Tempe done blown it shut. Even with it closed I can hear faint noises outside. A horn wailing. People chanting. Anger rising. With their backs to Edward, the nurses straighten their clothes, fix their hair, gather the charts.

“All finished, Mrs. Freeman,” Bernadette says. She plasters a smile on her face. I ain’t never seen two people in such a rush to get from a place.

“Tempe?” She’s faint. I can just about see through her. Seems indecent being able to see sunlight streaming clear through her head. I don’t turn away, though. She’s huffing like she can’t catch her breath. “You need something?”

Hurry up. There ain’t that much time.

The pages flip through the years. Tempe ain’t never had too much patience.