CHAPTER 8

It rained Monday night into Tuesday morning, settling the dust and leaving small puddles of muddy water scattered across the roads. David offered to drop TL off, but he refused, wanting to walk instead and, again, reaquaint himself with the place. He’d traveled from Ms. Swinton’s to his parents’ countless times, of course, even last week, but this was different. There was something he was looking for, something he’d obviously missed a few days ago. Sure, He’d glanced around, but he hadn’t studied the place. Not really. Now, he wanted to understand how and why things had changed. He wanted to examine even the small, seemingly insignificant shifts in landscape in search of … something. Uncle Jesse Lee had told him to look for the signs, and, for whatever reason, he considered that they might be lingering somewhere amidst the countryside he once knew so well.

From Ms. Swinton’s, he walked the old access lane, which turned into Fish Lake Road, and veered left at the cluster of plum trees. As a child, he would’ve taken the shortcut through the Williams place, if it was dry, and stolen peaches from Miss Polly’s prize orchard. She would get after him with a broom or a hoe handle, if she caught him, and he would have to pick the rest of the orchard for free. That was worse than a whoppin’, since the orchard spread across more than five acres. But he took his chances. Usually she didn’t catch him.

It was far too muddy for the shortcut today, so TL took the road, unaware of the hawk perched in a huge pine, watching him. Along the way, he sampled newly ripened blackberries. Vines spiraled up and across the old, rusty, barbed-wire fence he and Willie James had erected years ago. “My God,” he declared as the sweet, purple juice drizzled from the corners of his mouth. Blackberry cobbler was the only thing he couldn’t live without—besides chitlins—and Grandma made the best around. She’d have him pick a fresh quart, and when he returned, she’d let him roll out the dough with the rolling pin. “Roll it thin, boy! You don’t want no thick, gooey crust.” After a few disasters, TL mastered the art. Making blackberry cobblers on Saturday evenings became a ritual he looked forward to.

Momma tried to make cobblers, but hers never came out right. Either they were too soupy, too sweet, or the crust wasn’t flaky. Not like Grandma’s. But she kept trying because she never liked failing. The family appreciated her efforts, but she always knew she’d fallen short. The last time TL brought her a small bucket of blackberries, she sneered, “Take ’em over to yo’ grandma. Her cookin’ is better’n mine, ain’t it?” TL gasped. He recognized the trap. If he’d said yes, she’d have been offended; if he’d said no, she would’ve called him a liar. So he hung his head and walked away.

He didn’t have a bucket now, so he ate the berries he picked. With Grandma gone, so was his hope for a cobbler. He reached for more, and suddenly yelped, “Oh shit!” A black moccasin turned its head to face him. It was coiled around a vine like Christmas tree tinsel. TL used to run at the mere mention of snakes, but this time he didn’t. It didn’t move, either. They stared at each other, waiting to see who’d give in first. Neither of them intended to lose. For a moment, TL thought the snake might speak. Its mouth trembled like a person preparing to say a difficult thing, then it closed slowly as if the snake had changed its mind. After an eternity, TL eased back and took a deep breath. The snake relaxed. This was the first time he considered that maybe snakes are afraid of humans, too. Perhaps we’re just as poisonous.

But why hadn’t he run? What was different about today? He didn’t know, but, as he sauntered home, he sensed that something in the world had shifted.

Knock, knock.

“Whatchu knockin’ for, boy?” Momma hollered from somewhere in the house. “What fool knocks on his own door?”

TL entered and met her in the kitchen. “How’d you know it was me?”

“Who else could it be in the middle of the day, like there ain’t nothin’ else to do?” She blinked repeatedly. TL felt small. “But long as you here, you may as well make yo’self useful and come help me fold these clothes.”

Momma led the way into her bedroom. This was strange, too, TL thought. He’d definitely seen it before, of course, but he’d never dwelt in it. None of the children had. And certainly none had been invited into it.

TL took the towels, piled upon her bed, and left Momma the undergarments. At least he knew how to fold those the way she preferred. All the corners had to meet, and the tags had to be discreetly tucked away. Momma was known to refold every towel in the closet if someone folded them badly. Or not to her taste, which was the same thing. She was meticulous like that. Always cleaned the kitchen floor on her hands and knees because she said a mop was a poor substitute for human strength. “It barely scratches the surface,” she’d say. “It don’t scrub to the core the way I like.” TL discovered she was right. When he moved in with George and mopped the kitchen floor for the first time, he was disappointed. It just didn’t look clean. There was no shine, no sparkle, no smooth slick luster. George said it was fine, but TL knew better. After scrubbing it by hand, he stood, completely exhausted, and saw, finally, what Momma had always seen. There really was a difference. And he liked it. He couldn’t believe she’d scrubbed the kitchen floor all those years. And he’d walked on it, seconds later, without a care.

“I see you remembered somethin’ I taught you,” she burbled. “Never would’ve guessed you got anythin’ from me, huh?”

“I learned lots of things from you.”

“Well, good. ’Cause I’m still yo’ momma. I raised you. Can’t no other woman say that.” She smirked. “You might not like me, but I did good by you. By all o’ y’all. Specially wit’ what I had to carry.”

“I don’t dislike you, Momma.”

“You did once. I ain’t mad ’bout it.” She placed Daddy’s underwear in the top drawer of the dresser, then put panties and bras in the second drawer. “I didn’t like you, either.”

“Why not? I was always a good kid.”

“That’s true, but you wasn’t mine. Not at first. And I had to act like you was.” She paused. “Put half those towels in the main linen closet, and the other half on Willie James’s bed. I’ll put ’em away later.”

TL obeyed and returned, folding T-shirts and socks.

“It’s bad to mistreat a child, I know, but it happens sometimes. You don’t never mean for it to, but sometimes it do.”

Is this an apology?

She shrugged. “I did the best I could. Can’t ask nobody for more than that.”

“Guess not.”

Humming snippets of church hymns, she proceeded to hang Daddy’s work shirts in the closet. After pairing and balling the last set of white tube socks, TL asked, “What really happened to Sister, Momma?”

She never flinched. It seemed as though she hadn’t heard him, so he began to repeat himself, but she interrupted. “That ain’t for you to know.”

He frowned. “Why not? She was my sister. Why can’t I know?”

“Because I don’t owe you anything. I don’t owe anybody anything, and I don’t have to do nothin’ I don’t want to. Not anymore.” She smiled. “And I don’t want to talk to you ’bout … that child.”

She took the socks and T-shirts and put them away. TL watched in awe and confusion.

“You think you’ll be as good as Ms. Swinton was? Or as good as people say she was.”

“Momma! You can’t do that! You can’t just ignore my question.”

“I didn’t ignore your question. I answered you. There was nothin’ else to say.” She moved toward the door.

“I wanna know what happened to Sister!”

“First of all, don’t you ever holler at me long as you live. Do you understand me?”

TL huffed.

“I said, do you understand me, boy!”

“Yes.”

She waited.

TL didn’t want to say it, but he had no choice. “Yes … ma’am.”

She exited with him following.

“This isn’t right, Momma. It isn’t right.”

Turning suddenly, she flung her arms in the air. “Right? You wanna talk ’bout right? Shit! Most things in the world ain’t right. I ain’t had nothin’ right.”

“This is different. We’re talking about your own daughter! How can you be so … so … callous?”

Her index finger quivered at the tip of TL’s nose. “You don’t know nothin’ ’bout me, boy!”

He pushed her finger away, and she slapped his hand so hard it burned. TL stared in disbelief.

“Now get out—’til you remember who you talkin’ to!”

His eyes watered. She stomped toward the rear bedroom. Several seconds passed before TL regained composure. He wasn’t crying because of pain; he was crying because of shame. Why had she hit me? Don’t I have a right to know?

He exited through the back door and walked around outside, passing the grave and Momma’s immaculate vegetable garden. Many things had begun to scorch, but okra, tomatoes, and peas were still making. TL was amazed at how straight the rows were. Well, of course they were straight. Momma wouldn’t have had it any other way.

The sting in his hand began to dissipate. She’d slapped him before—when his mouth had gotten the best of him—but he was grown now. This was not supposed to have happened.

Moving from the garden to the nearby pasture, he watched cows graze while field mice played. Willie James bobbed on the tractor in the distance, cutting the first round of summer hay. When he saw TL, he waved enthusiastically. TL lifted his right hand but didn’t smile.

That’s when he realized he’d missed something in the exchange with Momma. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he felt it. There was something he should’ve said or done when Momma slapped his hand, but, as usual, he’d acquiesced. It was time for a new response, he determined. Momma needed to know he wasn’t the same little boy she’d raised, and how would she know if he didn’t tell her?

TL reentered the house. “Momma?”

“Yes?” she called from somewhere in the rear.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t’ve yelled.”

She emerged in the kitchen, her usual vibrant self. “Very good. It took you long enough.”

“I still need to talk to you.”

“Well, go ahead.” She smiled kindly as if nothing had occurred.

“I’m not trying to accuse you of anything, but—”

“Sure you are! That’s why you here. Not here in Swamp Creek, but here in my face. You think I … did somethin’ bad. Well, what you don’t know would make another world, son. And, anyway, I ain’t talkin’ ’bout it wit’ you. I done already told you that.”

“I won’t go away, Momma. Not this time.”

She cackled. “My, my. Well. You finally got some balls, young man.”

Her crass language didn’t deter TL. “I just wanna know what happened to Sister. I don’t see why that’s such a difficult question.”

She nodded agreeably. “Come wit’ me. I wanna show you somethin’.”

He followed her into Sister’s old bedroom.

“You big and bad now, right? Then it’s time you learned some things.”

Momma knelt and reached beneath the bed, dragging out something heavy. “Sit down,” she said.

TL sat on the edge of the bed. Momma grunted and pulled forth an ancient-looking wooden trunk. She hesitated a moment, as if second-guessing herself, then proceeded. “I ain’t looked in this old thing in years.”

“What is it?”

With both hands, she brushed the top as dust rose like dirty clouds.

“You say you lookin’ for answers, so I’m ’bout to give you some. Maybe then you’ll understand at least a few things.”

The cover groaned as she lifted it. At first, TL couldn’t tell what all the stuff was, but then he covered his mouth and shrieked, “Oh my God! Are those slave shackles?”

Momma cackled. “Yessir, Mr. Know-It-All. Those are slave shackles. My great-granddaddy’s slave shackles.”

They were thick and heavy and rusted. A small linked chain connected two braceletlike rings. TL handled them delicately. Momma went on to tell him what she knew: Her great-grandfather had been a belligerent nigga—that’s the phrase she used—on a southern Arkansas plantation. She didn’t know exactly where. He’d tried to escape several times, but usually never made it past Tennessee. The fourth time he tried, his master bound him in shackles.

“But not just any shackles,” she said. “Custom-made shackles. Look on the inside of the rings.”

TL looked but didn’t see anything.

“Look again, boy!”

When he studied the cuffs closer, he saw the letters EP. “Are those his initials?”

“Hell naw! Those are his master’s initials. His first name was Ed or Edward or Eddie and his last name was Prescott, I believe. He put his own initials on the chains so people would know who my granddaddy belonged to. His own name didn’t mean nothin’, at least not to his master.”

TL shook his head.

“Ain’t that some shit? You take away a man’s freedom, lock him up in chains, and put yo’ own initials on his shackles?”

“That’s insane.”

“He still ran away. Probably made him run harder.”

After the sixth or seventh try, Momma said, he made it to Ohio and stayed for years. When emancipation came, he returned, carrying the shackles over his shoulder. His aim was to get back to Arkansas and find his people. He was forty or fifty by then, and he’d never married, promising himself that slavery would never claim any of his seeds. He’d left behind both parents and seven siblings. He was the oldest.

“I’m glad he made it back!”

“Yep. Folks said he walked up one day, sharp as a tack. They didn’t know who he was at first, but then his momma recognized him and went to hollerin’ and carryin’ on and that’s when everybody else figured out who he was. They’d heard ’bout him all their lives. He was kinda like a hero to the people, and when he come back, they took it as a sign that good times were to come. His daddy had died a few years before, and the news liked to killed him. That’s what Granddaddy said. His auntie, my great-grandfather’s sister, told him the story. She was ’bout thirty when he come back.”

“How did you get the chains?”

“Well, before he died, my great-granddaddy gave ’em to my granddaddy. He made him promise to keep ’em in the family and tell the story so we couldn’t ever be slaves again. When Grandpa died, he gave ’em to my momma, yo’ grandma, and she passed ’em on to me.”

“Why haven’t you ever told me this before?”

“’Cause you was too busy runnin’ in behind some other woman. You didn’t care ’bout nothin’ I had.”

“Oh, Momma.”

“But since you back, and done took up studyin’ black folks, I thought you might wanna know.”

TL felt selfish. And dumb. “What was Great-granddaddy’s name?”

“I don’t know, but they called him Midnight.”

“Midnight? Why? Was he dark?”

“Not at all. ’Bout as light as he could be. Coulda passed for white, they said.”

“What!”

“Granddaddy said they called him Midnight so he’d never forget he was black. At least on the inside.” Momma closed her eyes and smiled as though seeing him in her mind. She looked at TL again. “They say he could run like lightnin’, too. ’Course you can’t believe everythin’ you hear, but Granddaddy said he was really fast.”

“I bet.” TL hadn’t released the shackles. “Why was he so light? Was he the master’s son?”

Momma shook her head. “No. The mistress’s.”

“Get outta here!”

“Yep. That happened, too, you know.”

TL nodded.

“They said she was in love wit’ a big black African Master Prescott brung straight from Africa. Didn’t speak a word o’ English. She went to his cabin at night like white men went to black women. Guess he couldn’t do nothin’ but what she said. Master Prescott couldn’t say much. He went to the slave cabins at night, too. Most times he didn’t even know she was gone. Least that’s how the story goes.

“Anyway, when she got pregnant, everybody knowed whose it was, but they didn’t say nothin’. The day she delivered, she brung the child to the African and asked, ‘You want him?’ Folks said the man cried and nodded and took the child and raised him. His wife, who was a African, too, accepted the baby and treated him like her own. That story helped me when the same thing happened to me. Well, sorta the same thing.”

TL opened his mouth to speak, then pressed his lips together tightly.

“Granddaddy’s granddaddy told him all this.”

Momma gently pried the shackles from TL’s hands.

“First time he run away, he was sixteen. They caught him and brung him back and beat him like a dog. But they didn’t break his spirit. He kept runnin’ away ’til they put these on him permanently.” Her eyes moistened. “When he finally made it and come back, he told folks he kept the chains to prove that nothin’ can ever hold you down unless you let it. He scratched his own initial on the outside of both rings.” She showed TL the thin outline of the massive, crooked “M”s on each bracelet.

“That’s an amazing story.”

“It ain’t no story, boy. It’s the truth.” She returned the chains to the trunk and rose. “There’s other stuff in there, too, if you wanna go through it. I gotta get these menfolk some lunch ready.”

Momma exited and left TL with the open chest. The shackles rested on an old, worn, multicolored quilt, which Momma had obviously inherited from someone. TL lifted it and gasped at what he found beneath.

“Momma! This is someone’s emancipation papers! Where’d you get this stuff?”

She hollered from the kitchen, “No one else wanted it! Granddaddy made me promise to keep it. Said maybe one day somebody in the family might start appreciatin’ they history.”

TL read the document aloud: ‘Let it be known that, on this fifth day of the month of August in the year of our Lord 1857, Katie Prescott is, and forever shall be, free.’

“This is incredible. I can’t believe you have it.”

“Yeah. You just never know people, do you?”

“Obviously not,” TL murmured.

Minutes later, Momma returned, standing in the doorway.

“Who was Katie?”

“Midnight’s momma, the one who raised him.”

“I thought she was African?”

“She was. They changed her name. Like they changed everybody else’s. I don’t know if she accepted it or not. I guess she answered to it though.”

“How did she get her freedom?”

Momma’s face went blank. “Midnight bought it. He wanted to buy the whole family, but Prescott wouldn’t sell ’em. Said Midnight didn’t have enough money. Only had enough to buy one, so he bought the woman who raised him. She was so sick she could hardly move, Granddaddy said, but Midnight bought her anyway. He wanted her to feel freedom before she died, and she did.”

“When did she die?”

Momma chuckled sadly. “The next day.”

“He paid all that money for one day of freedom?”

Momma hollered, “Boy, you ain’t got no sense! Don’t you know one day o’ freedom is worth all the money in the world?”

Having not thought of it that way, TL paused, then offered, “But seems like he woulda bought one of the others since they could’ve enjoyed it longer.”

“Granddaddy said he said they could work hard and buy they own freedom, but his momma needed help, so that’s what he did. He carried her out, just past the plantation fence where she’d never been before, and sat her down. Said she cried all day and talked ’bout Africa.”

“Do you know what tribe she was from?”

“Nope, but she taught Midnight some African words. He taught my granddaddy a few. She and Midnight’s daddy was from the same people. I know that much. Granddaddy said they would talk African when nobody else was ’round.”

“I can’t believe you haven’t told me any of this before.”

“Well, like I said, you didn’t want anything from me. Not back then. You just wanted to get away from here, and, when you did, I wasn’t sure you’d ever come back. But now that you have, and maybe to stay, I thought some o’ this old stuff might mean somethin’ to you.” She nodded. “Momma used to say that sometime what you lookin’ for is right under yo’ own nose. Now you know how true that is.”

TL folded the delicate, yellowed paper and returned it to the trunk.

Down the hallway, Momma shouted, “You still think I killed my own daughter?”

What could TL say?

Her footsteps faded as she mumbled something inaudible. TL didn’t know what to think. Only thing he knew for sure was that Momma wasn’t the woman he thought she was.