Chapter Two

Cora came to a halt, panting, her shoulders heaving with each breath. One hand shading her eyes, she squinted into the distance until Fannie’s house came into view. She took in the gray, weathered boards of the dilapidated two-room shack and how the sun beat down on its corrugated tin roof beneath the cloudless blue sky. The metal had rusted. In the sections where it had been replaced, it produced an overlay of new tin grafted on old in odd patches, making the house look as forlorn as she felt.

The Knowing reawakened in the recesses of her mind. It stretched and unfurled to burrow its way to the forefront of her thoughts, bringing with it again the awareness of what was to come. Her feet remained rooted in place as her spirit battled, clamoring between obedience to the Knowing, her will, and her want to perform her healer’s calling. Another scream rang out from the house, and she succumbed, accepting both the curse and the blessing of the Knowing.

She straightened to her full height, drew in several deep breaths, and shook off the premonitions. Striding forward, she pushed through the sagging screen door and into the house itself, where she was immediately overwhelmed by the stench that saturated the air and assaulted her nostrils.

Beneath the shack’s roof, the sun’s heat formed the single room into an oven. It broiled the raw, pungent smell of Fannie’s sweat, mingling together the stink of blood, mucous, urine, and feces that lay in a pool between her raised legs. Fannie lay thrashing on the bed.

“I ain’t backing away from this,” Cora whispered, crossing to the pump adjacent to the sink to wash her hands. Dropping her bag on the room’s only table, she joined the family at the laboring woman’s bedside.

Cora added the strength of her hands to those of Fannie’s mother and sisters as they tried to restrain her on the bed. The woman screamed again as her back arched with the onset of another pain, bending her like a bow drawn tight. The other women looked across her body at Cora, shaking their heads, loss swimming in the unshed tears pooling in their eyes. Each waited for the death that lingered in the rank air around them, counting it a blessing.

Cora, who stood just under six feet in height, commanded the area around them. Sweat poured from her forehead, dripping from her chin. Sliding her hands up Fannie’s arms, she took her by the shoulders and shook her before pushing her down onto the mattress.

“I be sorry, Fannie. I knows you hurting, gal, but you got to stop fighting me,” Cora urged, speaking through clenched teeth. The muscles in her upper arm bulged and flexed as she grabbed Fannie across her back, rolling her to her side and pulling her to the edge of the bed. “Get that sheet out from under her,” she panted.

The women grabbed the soiled sheet and yanked it swiftly from beneath Fannie’s hips, then allowed Cora to roll her back onto the bare mattress. Once Fannie was on her back again, Cora used her strong hands to knead the round mass of her abdomen. It hardened with another contraction, and Fannie’s heels dug into the mattress. She threw her head back, howling.

Cora traced her fingers over the taut skin of the woman’s abdomen, staring at the outline of the baby’s body seen clearly against the skin of her stomach, the head visible beneath her breast. She inhaled sharply. Lord, help us. I know you got a plan. She breathed out a prayer: Give this child strength.

She hesitated, the Knowing solidifying and manifesting itself in a warning within her to let both mother and child die that negated her plea. Cora continued stubbornly with her prayer. You done seen this before we did. Show me the way, please, and thank you. She sighed, seeking direction and solace, ignoring the strife between the Knowing and her Christian faith. Behind her, she heard a snort of derision coming from Fannie’s mother.

Fannie’s eyes rolled wildly, tracking from Cora to her mother and sisters, then finally fixing on her sister, Beulah. A pitiful whimper escalated in volume to become a shriek of despair as her head whipped back and forth.

“We gon’ die.” She wailed into the silent wall of the women’s collective anguish, waiting for someone to refute her words. Her mother, Corinn, and her sister, Ruth Anne, lowered their heads and averted their eyes as she wept helplessly.

Beulah dipped a rag into the bowl of cool water on the nightstand beside the bed. After wringing it out, she wiped it across her sister’s forehead and cooed soothingly. Her mouth worked in intercessory prayer, her heart twisting as she witnessed her sister’s pain.

“Hush, Fannie, and be still. Ain’t nobody gon’ let you die.” She murmured the words softly, her mouth close enough to whisper into her sister’s ear. Her hands traced a path as she wiped her sister’s brow, her head turned to avoid the judgment in the eyes of her mother and sister. Beulah squeezed Fannie’s hand and continued pouring their hopes between them into the shell of her sister’s ear. “He coming, Fannie. The one we done heard the Lord promise.”

Fannie smiled weakly and squeezed her sister’s hand in return before another pain arched her back, eliciting a long moan. Cora raised her chin and motioned the other women into place.

“Beulah, you, and Corinn hold her shoulders down. Don’t let up,” she ordered the women. “Ruth Anne holds her by the ankles. This gon’ be hard.”

With one hand pressed firmly against Fannie’s stomach and the other thrusting upward through the hot, moist walls of her sex, she continued to push her hand upward, ignoring Fannie’s cries and her own pain as another contraction squeezed Fannie’s womb, feeling the tightening on her arm and wrist.

Panting, she waited until it passed and pushed upward until she felt the tiny feet of the infant. Opening her fingers, she grasped her hand tightly around them and yanked, putting all her strength behind it.

“PUSH!” she screamed at Fannie.

She felt the baby sliding forward as Fannie fought to rise on her elbows, her chin against her chest as she pushed down, the ripping pain tearing at her. Cora saw the genitals and grabbed the baby with both hands, turning him to ease his shoulders out, then pulled again until he lay in her waiting hands, facedown.

Fannie fell backward onto the bed and wished for death. The room had gone quiet, as though everyone had taken a breath they could not release. She waited to hear her child’s cry fill the void.

Cora stood still, the silent infant lying facedown in her cold hands. Even from the back, she could see the effect of being forced and snatched from his mother’s womb in the severely warped shape of his head.

His skin was pale gray, showing no hint of blood flow. She turned him quickly, then gasped at the sight of his nose squashed into his face, his bulging eyes, and his wide, silent mouth.

Her Knowing radiated outward, probing at the darkness emanating from the infant in waves as he struggled for his first breath, his body twisting with the effort. Cora felt the tendrils of the Knowing like snakes writhing beneath her skin, protesting the darkness as it judged the balance of the infant’s spirit. Her eyes darkened, her body swaying unsteadily.

Corinn raised her arms in front of her, bent at the elbow, her index fingers crossed in front of her chest, forming the symbol of protection against evil as she recoiled at the sight of the horror in Cora’s hands.

“Jesus, something wrong with him,” Ruth Anne hissed, her arms and fingers crossed in imitation of her mother, taking a step backward. Beulah’s eyes remained riveted on the child.

Cora trembled, feeling the slight weight of him resting in her palm. The Knowing thundered in her mind, loud and insistent, urging her to place her large hand over the infant’s face, denying him the breath of life. Beulah, Ruth Anne, and Corinn stared, their mouths flapping without sound, horrified at the spectacle before them.

“What’s wrong?! Give him to me.” Fannie’s words floated weakly to where Cora stood, breaking through the spell of the Knowing. Cora paused, then hesitated, her duty as a healer and the duty the Knowing thrust upon her grinding in conflict against each other. Fannie attempted to sit up, grimacing in pain, her arms reaching out for the fragile body of her son. Cora steeled herself as the Knowing asserted itself again, bending her to fulfill its demand.

The baby’s eyelids slowly slid open, staring at her, unflinching and peering soul deep. The agitation of the Knowing grew, asserting itself beyond her spiritual gifts as darkness spread upward from the child through her arms, intensifying into a solid block around her heart. She felt the urgency of the Knowing ricocheting around her brain, demanding that she “do it” as she remained paralyzed in the newborn’s gaze.

The smell of copper rose into the air as hot blood rushed from Fannie, soiling the mattress further and startling Cora—who blinked twice—freeing herself from her trance. She looked down at the baby, and the ramrod steel determination from the Knowing dissolved as the baby stared, unblinking. In his eyes, a separate and distinct darkness swirled in the depths of the obsidian orbs, obscuring the whites. His tiny chest began to rise slowly, his lungs laboring for air.

Cora stared, mesmerized, locked in the grip of his gaze. The words that would end him dissipated. Her body deflated. The Knowing went silent. The strength of her inner light melted and dimmed, withering under the child’s darkness.

Hastily, she pushed the baby into Fannie’s arms and turned, moving quickly to her bag, her large, heavy shoes making prints in the dust of the earthen floor. She rummaged, hands shaking as she searched for the herbs to pack Fannie’s womb and stop the bleeding before she lost her, trying not to think of the baby’s death as a blessing missed. On the bed, Fannie clutched the child to her chest. Glimpsing them from the corner of her eye, Cora could see him wriggling and knew he still lived.

Returning to the bed, Cora pressed against Fannie’s abdomen until the placenta slid forward. Gathering it, she twisted it in a clean cloth, set it aside to be buried in the yard later, then packed a poultice of red raspberries into Fannie’s womb. Finally, she tied a thick wad of white cloth rags between her legs. The herbs would control the bleeding.

As she worked, she felt regret niggling against her mind. Feeling opportunity sliding away, Cora cleared her throat, courage seeping back into her veins—the Knowing strengthening her for the moment—and began speaking aloud.

“Fannie, he ain’t right, child. I got the Knowing, and I can feels it. He pure dark. Ain’t no light in him.” She stopped, waiting for the words to sink in, seeing the other women retreating farther. “You knows I got the sight, was born with a veil, and I sees how much dark in this one.” The tension in the air threatened to suffocate her as her head reeled, struggling to inhale. The Knowing throbbed again, pulsing and insistent. Unlike before his birth, she saw her mistake. The darkness in the child was palatable, stronger than anything she had felt before, and now she had allowed it into the world.

“Give him to me and let me send him back before it be too late,” Cora demanded, holding out her arms. Her head swiveled around, trying to catch the eyes of the women surrounding her, hoping they would raise their bowed heads and provide some support.

“You a witch!” Corinn screamed, pointing at Cora. At the sound of her mother’s anguished cry, Ruth Anne’s head jerked up as if snapped by an invisible string. “And you is a Jezebel spirit!” she yelled, her finger pointing at Fannie. “And he a whore son. Demon spawn before the Lord!”

Corinn’s jaw unhinged, dropping open, her throat choking on silent words of outrage as her youngest daughter’s disgrace solidified into a lump of humiliation. Her eyes shone with a venomous hatred as she stepped forward, her gaze scanning across Beulah, Fannie, Cora, and back to Ruth Anne, whose reddened face remained twisted and contorted in fury. In her head, she already heard the whispers of the townspeople wafting around her, reaching out to envelop her in shame.

“So, they was speaking truth about you and that man, and that there the proof in your arms,” Corinn shouted, her voice escalating to a scream, bouncing off the walls and obliterating the baby’s weak cries. She crossed herself hastily, her eyes searching the ceiling as if she could penetrate it and see the Lord in his heavens looking down on her with divine forgiveness.

Beulah whirled, screeching as she separated herself from her mother and sister, her teeth bared in a snarl as she faced them. “Don’t you dare judge her or him.” She advanced toward her sister, hands raised, stopping only when their mother inserted her body between them. “You ain’t the Lord in heaven. He the one say who live and who don’t and ain’t none of you fit to judge, so you shut your mouth right now.”

Corinn bumped them apart, using the girth of her chest and hips—leaving them to glare at each other—filling the small space with the sound of their angry breaths. She placed her arm around Ruth Anne’s shoulder and sniffed indignantly in Beulah’s direction, putting distance between them.

On the bed, Fannie clutched the baby’s tiny body closer to her chest, scrunching down into the bloody mattress, shielding him with her own body, protecting him from the harshness of their words. She stared down into his distorted features—all too big, overpowering his face, his skin turning purple with the continued effort to breathe.

Clutching him tighter within the crook of her arm, she leaned her head down until her mouth covered his nose and mouth, then exhaled into him, watching his chest rise. She ran her fingers lovingly over the wrinkled crevices of his skull, down his cheek, and across his tiny body, and then repeated the process.

She allowed her hand to continue downward, stroking his shriveled legs and wondering if they would ever support his weight or if she would see him walk or run. Gazing into his eyes, she willed him to live, infusing him with her spirit, whispering and praying for the Lord to remember his promise that her baby was special and mightier than any of the darkness Cora prophesied or what anyone else thought they saw. She ignored the swirling she saw stirring in the depths of his eyes.

Looking down at her son and closing her eyes, she let her sister’s hateful words slide away. Tears flowed down her cheeks, anointing his head and body. She vowed to make her son better and fix whatever was broken in him.

“He be all right. I make him be all right. The Lord done told me when he saved me.” Her words, a ragged whisper, silenced the room, stunning her mother and sisters. “He the living proof of my redemption, and ain’t nobody never gon’ hurt him.”

She curled her body protectively around her baby, a grunt of pain pushing through her lips. She glared at Cora, who still stood beside the bed, holding her arms out again expectantly. Her fingers and palm continuously rounded her baby’s crown, smoothing the dented skull before stroking her fingers on either side of his nose, shaping it, and then moving to start again.

“Don’t you come near him,” she hissed at Cora, her breath blowing the soft, thick curls on his head.

“Least let me clean him off,” Cora urged, the Knowing surging again, making her frantic and filling her with desperate plans. When I go to clean him, he just gon’ stop breathing. It be the Lord’s will. All us could see how he was fighting for air.

She reasoned it would be a blessing, the spirits sparing him from the crippled life his deformed legs promised him. The Knowing clouded her thoughts, assuring her Fannie would understand and be glad he was dead.

“You ain’t touching him again,” Fannie hissed, annihilating her plans. “Beulah gon’ stay and clean him up. She the onliest one I can trust.” Fannie gripped the infant tighter, shaking her head violently as though reading Cora’s intent. “The rest of you get on out my house, and don’t you never come back. You just gone and get. My husband make sure you get paid for coming, Miss Cora, but you can get out too.”

The Knowing flooded Cora’s mind with images of her yanking the child from Fannie’s arms and dashing his head against the floor. Her mouth rounded in horror, the vision so real she could hear the thud of the baby’s skull against the earth and feel his blood splashing against her skin. She recoiled, feeling her legs straining to move forward. She couldn’t do it. She looked at the child, helpless in his mother’s arms, and shook her head in defeat.

Cora turned away, her shoulders hunched, her face a closed mask hiding her frustration. The baby’s breathing had eased, becoming regular and even. Fannie’s mouth continued to move silently in prayer.

Corinn and Ruth Anne joined together, their faces drawn tightly in scandalized offense. Their malice toward Fannie and her child pulsed outward, forming a wall between them.

“We should have knowed when you brought that witch up in here what was gon’ happen,” Corinn spat in the dirt in front of her. “A demon cain’t bring forth nothing but another demon,” she intoned loudly.

“We gon’ leave you to the Lord,” she called back over her shoulder as she and Ruth Anne turned to leave. Beulah stood sentinel between them, shielding Fannie and the child.

Cora felt the Knowing retreat in the face of her refusal. Sighing in resignation, she watched as the women shuffled toward the door, glaring over their shoulders at her and Fannie. Gathering her things, she stuffed them back into her bag and left. No one seemed to notice.

Cora’s long legs ate up the distance, striding through the wild grass surrounding her. Her leather bag bumped against her knees as she walked, the familiarity of the tall stalks tickling against her senses, giving her small comfort. She relished the connection between herself and the earth as her bare toes dug into the ground, the sandy dirt coming up in little puffs between her toes as she walked, her shoes draped over her bag. She looked down at her broad, wide feet, her lips pursed in disgust.

She had two pairs of shoes, one for Sunday and the everyday pair of men’s work brogans that she wore when it was wet and muddy—or she had a distance to travel, like today. She let her thoughts wander to the tin tub Joe would fill with heated water and have waiting for her tired feet. A small smile curved the corners of her mouth at his thoughtfulness. He would add lemon juice and baking soda to the water and let it soak away the tough skin. Then he would massage her feet with castor oil, making them smooth before they went to bed.

Thinking about her big feet was easier than contemplating the sense of failure weighing her down as she walked, oblivious to her surroundings and trusting her body to find its way back home on its own. The snakes of raw power the Knowing sent had quieted, no longer contorting beneath her skin, and she felt a flicker of her healing light rekindle.

She chewed her lower lip as she replayed the birth in her mind, looking for any opportunity she might have missed, a time when she could have obeyed the Knowing without hesitation. When she held the baby in the palm of her hand, she thought she could have wrapped the umbilical cord around his neck and used her hand to choke off any air he could draw in. No one would have seen her. Or she could have let his slippery, writhing body drop to the floor. The different scenarios flashed back and forth through her mind, each one a boulder threatening to bury her. She had felt the darkness in him, and yet she had wavered.

Standing under the glaring heat of the sun, the Knowing flooded her vision with images of Fannie, taking her back to the child’s creation, the same visions that plagued her dreams. She saw how the healing she had performed nine months ago had unwittingly shifted the balance of the light and the dark in the world.

She witnessed his parents in the backwoods in a small clearing, lying spent in each other’s arms. His name was Nathaniel, and Cora could sense Fannie’s feelings spreading outward. Couldn’t nobody love her like he did. When he touched her skin, the hard callouses of his hand tickling as he stroked made her feel like a real woman. With him, she was beautiful, not worn out from having babies one after another, cleaning, scrubbing, cooking, and taking in laundry. Before him, she’d felt as washed out as the endless work clothes she scrubbed.

Cora heard Nate begging Fannie to leave James Henry and run away with him. She sensed both his misery and how desperately Fannie wanted to go, leave it all, and be free to live on the tenderness of his kisses and the warmth of his hands caressing her thighs.

She felt Fannie’s immense regret when her desires slammed into the solid reality of leaving her boys behind. Her hands stroked Nate’s shoulders, and she followed the trail of her fingertips with little kisses and nips of her teeth against his skin as she talked, using the soft tone of lovers.

I just needs to wait until they a little older. Then I can leaves. Her breath caught deep in her throat. James Henry cain’t take care of his own self. Ain’t no way I can leaves them boys to him and my mama.

Cora winced as each word pierced Nathaniel’s soul, his anger rising, leaking darkness that peeled away his love. His body hardened against Fannie, swelling with fury as she spoke. Cora watched as Fannie turned her head at an angle to face him, seeing his eyes transform into a vortex of anger and hatred, growing with every word of her rejection. They became larger and darker, with a black mist swirling within their depths.

She saw Nathaniel raising himself, then scooting backward on his knees, staring down at Fannie, his fisted hand lifting, then coming down to smash her face. Cora flinched, feeling each blow in her own body, hearing the crack of bone as his fist came down repeatedly. Fannie grunted and screamed, throwing her arms across her face, attempting to protect herself from the blows raining down on her as she thrashed beneath him.

She heard Fannie praying aloud, her petitions for mercy tangling in the boughs of the trees overhead. Cora felt Fannie’s legs being stretched wide as her hands batted at him, ineffective as flies against a window screen. Nate grasped her wrists together, holding them above her head, his knees holding her legs apart as he fumbled with his manhood, pushing it against her. She pleaded helplessly, her mouth a litany of begging, her eyes reflections of terror, her body bucking wildly.

Then the raw, searing pain came as tissue ripped and tore while Nathaniel pounded her body, claiming it for himself. His free hand wrapped around her throat, choking off her screams as he squeezed harder with each thrust until the last of his rage poured out of him, his seed flowing into her.

Cora squeezed her thighs together where she stood, her hands reflexively covering her womanhood. Nathaniel’s darkness permeated her being, and she felt herself cringing away from it. It was the aura she’d felt in the infant today when she held him.

Mi had always taught her there wasn’t a person born that didn’t have both dark and light and a spark of the Knowing. The balance moved and shifted, depending on their choices and paths in life. Then there was that rare person Mi had warned her about, whose darkness smothered his light. There was no balance in people like Nathaniel. And now his seed had produced an heir, someone even darker than he had been.

The boy was the aberration the Knowing repeatedly showed her in her dreams. The baby planted in Fannie’s womb that was not meant to be. Cora felt her body tremble, the shaking starting in her legs and flowing upward through her arms and into her hands. Her hands twitched uncontrollably, her eyes blinking open and shut rapidly. She felt like she was breaking apart, shattering into pieces that would fly into the wind and scatter into the universe.

The Knowing pierced sharply in her mind, a stabbing pain that forced her to reach up and grab her head, holding it as the deluge of memories continued.

The sour sweat of desperation wafted off them in waves when they arrived at Cora’s door, Fannie’s bloodied body drooping in James Henry’s arms. Beulah wept. She and James Henry told her that Doc Adams had refused to treat her. Cora had snorted. Of course, he wouldn’t. He had never been able to stand up beneath the threat of town gossip and the weight of the mothers’ board of the church.

Town folks said Beulah, her sisters Fannie and Ruth Anne, their mother Corinn, and that whole Cooper clan were crazy as rabid coons. They walked the roads between town and their backwoods shacks, Bibles clutched to chests, heads covered, mouths working in prayer, convinced of their own holy righteousness.

Now, heathen, witch, and sinner that she was in their eyes, she was all they had. She saw again Fannie’s battered and bruised body sprawled unconscious on her son’s bed, the stink of Nathaniel’s seed wafting up from her torn and mutilated body. She saw how the darkness had hovered over her skin, and deep purple bruises circled her neck. She felt the pause in her spirit again, feeling Fannie’s life hanging by a precarious thread balanced on the edge of death. She had finally yielded, bending beneath Beulah’s wailing pleas and the sadness that pulled down James Henry’s features.

Cora’s thoughts continued to chase themselves like wild squirrels, back and forth from branch to branch, until she was mentally exhausted. Shaking herself free from her reverie, she looked around, not knowing how long she had stood in the middle of the woodland grass, her arms hanging at her side, her features slack, the Knowing and the light embedded deep inside her body. Coming to herself, she squared her shoulders, straightened her back, and continued her walk toward home. She had the Knowing, but she also had free will. She had decided, and an abomination had anchored itself in flesh.

She would wait and watch. Only time would fully judge the weight of her actions. The Knowing had foretold that he should not be allowed to remain in the world, and she had rebelled against it, losing her opportunity to restore balance. She prayed that she would be given a chance to bring balance again. And if it meant taking his life force, she would yield. The Knowing would lead her in its own time, and she would trust that she would do what was right.