Balm in Gilead
Maggie held a pail of river water. She knew the well water would be too sweet. The river would have a bit of salt in it, and any healing comes first through hurt before it makes it to peace. That was a terrible thing, she knew. Yet there was nothing truer. She knew it was why so many people saw no point, didn’t have the resolve to make it through, and got stuck. A sucking mud. The sinking kind. There were a lot of people there. Knee-deep. Some submerged. Some clawing their way to solid ground. How few would make it.
The water would sting when they, she and the women, washed Isaiah and Samuel. But there was no way around it. Opened up as they were, anything even delicate would feel raw. And what wasn’t bleeding was blistered, mercy, which meant that every touch would be a trial. She was impressed that they had made it back to the barn on their own, smashed into each other like warm hands, gentle but firm, quiet as a prayer, and just as plodding.
Maggie called for them: Essie, Sarah, Puah, and Be Auntie. There were supposed to be seven, but five was the next best thing. North, South, East, West, and Center, all represented, but there would be no one to balance the over and the under, to safeguard the light and the dark, to beat the drums for the call to the beyond as they did their work. Maggie couldn’t risk calling anyone else in; they would be a hindrance. Maybe not maliciously, but because of their ignorance, which she didn’t have the time or will to correct. Inviting Be Auntie was already pushing it. Be had already planted a willful betrayal and seemed to take pleasure in knowing where it was buried. But she also knew things happening in Empty that not even Maggie knew. Knowledge was a strength even when it hurt. So Be Auntie’s talents were necessary.
Maggie waited at the entrance of the barn as her word traveled around Empty via a beautiful little girl she wished wasn’t so beautiful. Hair too aglow. Eyes too bright. Skin too shimmery. Laugh too dainty. Teeth too pearly. It was only a matter of time. See? That was why she didn’t like children. Their very existence foretold. They were walking warnings of the impending devastation. They were the you before you knew misery would be your portion. She was dreading having to be a witness yet again, a healer yet again. Damn it all!
She turned and looked inside the barn. Her eyes followed the trail of red droplets right to the soles of Samuel and Isaiah’s feet. She shook her head. She didn’t climb on that wagon, but she was among the crowd. Her pitiful gaze doing nothing except making them feel more ashamed probably. But it was all she could offer at the time. Now she would make another offering to compensate for the disgrace.
Be Auntie came first. Maggie could tell by her step that she came more out of curiosity, just plain nosiness, that seeing The Two of Them like this would give her a tale to carry back to Amos. She walked with a quick step, hands tense, back hunched, body leaning to the left, neck craning, face protruding, mouth slightly parted, eyes wide like she wanted to see.
“You call me, Maggie?”
“Yes’m. Gon’ need you.”
“Them two?” Be Auntie said, pointing inside the barn.
“Don’t point. But mm hm. Yes’m.”
“I don’t know if Amos . . .”
“Fuck Amos!” Maggie said slightly louder than she intended. She raised her face a bit and looked Be Auntie in the eye. “Ain’t that what you doing.” She inhaled. “Smells like it and smells don’t lie. So please don’t come to me with his consideration when you giving him enough of your’n. He part to blame for this. And if you love him like your blushing tell me, if making a plum fool of Essie ain’t enough to bring you to your senses, you could at least do something to clean the mess you contributing to with your severed tongue and bended knees.”
Be Auntie bowed her head and nodded.
Essie arrived next, moving a bit quickly in her approach. Puah soon followed. Sarah took her time, hesitated before she got to the gate. And once she seemed to talk her herself into moving past it, she walked slowly, like she held a grudge against her own feet and everything they touched.
Maggie greeted each of them at the barn door. She raised a hand, palm forward, and looked at each woman, individually, acknowledged them with a nod and a smile. She folded her hands behind her back.
“I thank you womens for making your way here to this place where we are called to remember and bring forth something out of the dark.” She took a breath. “We all suffer; ain’t no doubting that. But surely we can have some say over how long and what shape it take. Am I lying?”
All of the women shook their heads.
“Now, I know usually this is for us. This ain’t for nobody else’s eyes but ours. No ears are supposed to hear this and goodness knows that what leaves our mouths is for the benefit of the circle only.”
“How it’s supposed to be,” Sarah said.
“Yes’m.” Be Auntie nodded.
Essie didn’t know what to do with her hands. Puah stretched her neck to peer inside the barn.
“I tell y’all this because it the way we have to begin. Don’t matter if you know it already. A long line of womens before us did this work. Used to be men too, until they forgot who they was. Something about men make them turn they back. Don’t ask me what. Wanting nature to bend to they will, I reckon. And there was others, too, but they been split from us. Cast out and forced to be the body and not the spirit. I know because Cora Ma’Dear told me and she never did lie, not even when truth was the death of her.” She paused and looked at the ground before looking out to the field and seeing her grandmother standing there with a light in her mouth. She waved. “But I think we can all come to agreeance that The Two of Them might rightly fit for our blessing.”
“Yes ma’am!” Puah said so fast that it spilled from her lips like water.
“Well,” Be Auntie said, looking sorrowfully at Puah, her top lip pursed in judgment. “You’re young yet and don’t know all of how this works. None of the cost. Don’t be so quick to nod for what might come back on you.”
“I deal with that when I have to deal with it.” Puah forgot herself when she said this. She nearly shouted at Be Auntie, curbed, in the nick of time, only by the knowledge that she would have to return to the shack they shared that evening, and that Auntie’s militia of boys, who maybe didn’t even know they were her militia, might be extra unleashed on her this time. She squeezed the venom out of her tone and returned to delicate voice. “But right now—Miss Maggie, can we help him?”
Maggie looked at her with a raised eyebrow, which was then joined by a tiny smile, nearly completing the circle of her face. “We can help them.”
Then she put her head down. She held her arms out. “Let me be true this day,” she whispered. “Let the blood guide me.” She raised her face and her eyes rolled back in her head. She stumbled a bit, which caused all the women to instantly reach out for her.
“No!” she said to them, shooing away their assistance as she regained her footing. “Ground liable to be shaky on all journeys.” Then, “We ready now. Come.”
The women walked into the barn, moving from fierce sun into tepid shade. Their shadows moved ahead of them before fading, revealing the two groaning bodies on the ground before them. Oh, how fine! How proud even their broken bodies were slumped and no longer clutching each other in the dirt. Puah was breathless. Essie looked away. Be Auntie sighed. Sarah stepped backward, away from the circle and leaned on the barn door frame. Maggie stepped forward and leaned in to get a better look. Two wings of a blackbird, just like she thought. Closer: Isaiah had allowed the tears to come. They rolled out of his eyes fresh and found a place in the ground beneath his face. Oh, yes. The Two of Them fell flat on their faces once they knew that they were out of the sight of judging eyes, and Maggie was certain that was because Samuel would have it no other way. It was also Samuel’s way not to cry. He held it up inside that massive chest of his, which was probably its own underground pond by now.
“Essie, I need you to rip this here to pieces.” Maggie unwrapped an old white dress from around her waist. “It ain’t gotta be even, just so’s I can use it for bandages.”
Essie took the dress. “Mag, this gotta be your finest . . .”
“Go on.”
Essie got down on her knees and began to tear it into strips. She tried to look at Isaiah. She wanted to make sure her friend, no longer friend-friend, was still breathing.
“I can’t even look at them. If I look, it feels like it done to me,” she said.
“That’s blood memory. You ain’t lost yet, thank you,” Maggie said to her. “Don’t let the dress touch the ground. Gotta keep it clean. Don’t wanna cause infection. Puah, I need you to go into the bush and get me four things. We need five, but four you have to do on your own. I help you with the last.”
Puah was crouched over Samuel, who didn’t wish to be seen. Yes, he tried to flatten himself, but to no avail because Puah’s wide eyes saw all, even the things he wanted to hide. The soft things that resided under the layers of rock that were once flesh, but he had to make it something harder in order to exist. She reached her hand. She wanted to bring him the one thing she had to bring: a small bit of comfort, to repay him for his gentle smile, and for being able to see her in a land of creatures that turned their heads, yes, but only to look the other way.
“The marks they put on him,” Puah whispered, nearly touching Samuel’s back, which was laced with new lacerations, or perhaps old ones that had been reopened. “How we gon’ heal this?”
“First,” Maggie said sternly, turning quickly toward Puah, “we don’t speak ill over what we trying to fix! That’s number one. Hush, chile, and listen: Go get me these four things.”
“Why me? I gotta see to Samuel . . .”
“Gal! What I tell you? Hear me now!” Holding up one finger, Maggie spoke: “Listen closely to me. And it gotta be done in this peculiar way. Go behind the Big House to Missy Ruth’s garden. Get to the north side of it, closest to the barn. Pull seven stalks of lavender. You also gon’ find some strands of red hair there. Bring those, too.”
Maggie straightened her back. “Then you gon’ walk east—walk, don’t run. That’s very important. You know that big willow tree in front? Take a handful of weeping leaves from it.”
“You ain’t gon’ need no handful,” Be Auntie interrupted.
“Better too much than too little,” Maggie shot back. She turned back to Puah. “West. Not too far from the river edge, I need as many huckleberries as you can carry. From the plant twined near the dead tree. Know the one?”
“Yes’m.”
“South will be trouble. You gon’ have to go to that other edge of the field, where the overseers and catchers rest. But I need that comfrey right at the edge of they shacks. Make sure your dress don’t touch the ground, you hear me? Long as it don’t, they won’t touch you. Hold it up to your knees. Don’t let it touch the ground.”
“You can’t hesitate, neither,” Sarah added. “Snatch it up and go.”
“When you get back, I lead you to the yarrow. Then we begin.”
“Maybe they need a little something extra, for protection?” Puah asked Maggie.
“What you think the yarrow’s for? When you get back.”
Puah nodded. She got up. She felt like she should bow, so she did. Then she turned and left.
Maggie giggled. “So nervous when they new.”
“She knew to bow, though. And ain’t nobody told her to do that. Which means her insides are working. You was right for choosing her,” Essie said.
“She choose me. Glowing the way she do, I’d be faulty to walk past her and not notice.”
Maggie walked over to the boys. She got down on the ground and folded her legs in the way she was told the first women did it. She ignored the pain in her hip in favor of theirs. That couldn’t become habit. Too many women lost that way, she thought. But this one last time was okay.
She looked around the barn. They had kept it so neat for what it was. There was no dung, even now, littering the place. Flies crowded around, yes, but there wasn’t anyplace on Empty where that wasn’t true. The horses were clean. The ground was swept and the hay was stacked in rectangles, except for the pile they must have been ready to work on before they were snatched up. And the smell wasn’t so bad once you got used to it.
“I heard it was Ruth what got them beat. Said they looked at her with not a bit of shame. And you know that ain’t nothing but a lie,” Essie said.
“Devil’s tongue,” Sarah said.
“I ain’t think you believe in their words, Sarah. You got a heart change?” Be Auntie asked.
“I don’t believe they words, but it don’t mean they words don’t tell you something ’bout them.”
“I don’t see why Missy Ruth would cause trouble here. What for? She too busy chasing the tongue-face ones.”
“Tongue-face?” Sarah asked.
“Ones that can’t keep they tongue in they mouth when she walk past. Act like they don’t even care that it could get cut off if they caught. Seem like the danger make them wanna do it more!”
“Mm!” Maggie jerked her head.
Wouldn’t that be nice, though? Be Auntie thought. To have hair as straight and red as Ruth’s, or blond, or any color other than deep black. To be her kind of skinny: flat on both sides. To wear pretty gowns and frilly bonnets, and bat not-brown eyes at all kinds of men who would gladly fall all over themselves to see what that put-on blinking might mean. Toubab women moved through the world gracefully. They pointed with soft hands that never knew any kind of labor that they couldn’t somehow escape because every man fancied them dainty and delicate.
No. There wouldn’t be any way Be Auntie could ever be that, no matter how much flour she threw at her own face, looking a plum fool or a haint, one. But she had decided on other means. She would do everything that was inside of her will to do to convince men that she was special, too. The only way to persuade any man of something like that was to agree to be the rug he wiped his shitty feet on. The key to every man’s lock was going along with the untrue assessment of himself as worthy.
“What Missy Ruth want with sodomites?” Be Auntie asked.
“Don’t use they words on them boys. You want the ancestors to heed or not?” Maggie scolded.
“I don’t think she do,” Essie said.
“How you know what I want?” Be Auntie asked.
“’Cause it’s plain, Be Auntie. All your wants plain. To everybody. To me.”
Sarah laughed. “See how quickly mens’ needs have us at each other? Hold, I say.”
“We talking ’bout a woman right now, though,” Essie held.
“And what she did to mens, ain’t it? How ’bout what she do to us?” Sarah looked at Essie finally.
“You know what I mean,” Essie replied.
“Quit that noise! We can talk those big things later. Now we gotta be together. One hand,” Maggie demanded.
There was silence except for the breathing of The Two of Them and the small weeping of Isaiah.
“What you want me to do with these strips, Mag?” Essie asked.
“Hold them ’til Puah get back. Sarah—come and sit by me. I need your steadiness.”
Sarah shirked. She scratched her scalp. She twirled the end of a cornrow. She looked out on the plantation and turned up her lips. “Gon’ stand right chere ’til Puah get back. Right. Chere.”
Puah weaved a mess of big, green elephant-ear leaves into a pouch. She wondered how Maggie knew that strands of red hair would drape the lavender like a spider’s web, marking the precise stalks that had to be pulled. She knew whose hair it was, but why was it there? She didn’t have the sense to burn it so that birds wouldn’t get at it? Fool.
She didn’t like being so close to the Big House. Being that close meant that she was in its clutches in a way that was more tangible than pulling cotton in the adjacent field. Here, toubab were at their most merciless. Home did that to them: made them defensive, hostile, and scared of any dark thing that moved. They were afraid that all that they had accumulated and stored inside the hearth would be snatched away and returned to the unrestful spirits they belonged to.
The house itself was built on top of bones. She could hear them rattling every once in a while because the shacks, too, were essentially tombstones for the land’s First People, often unengraved. Somehow she knew they meant her no harm but also that she might, like anyone else, get caught between the warring parties and die for being trapped in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Puah walked to the front of the house. She took the handful of willow leaves with Ruth watching her from a chair on the porch, holding a bouquet. Ruth smiled at her briefly, which startled Puah. Then Ruth stood suddenly, dropping some of the flowers. Puah thought she raised Ruth’s ire. But Ruth looked toward the barn before sitting down in the chair again. She bent forward to pick up the stray petals and placed them in her lap. For a moment, Puah thought she detected something in Ruth. Regret? Nah. Regret was a high thing, out of reach for most. And there Ruth was: bending, stooping, sitting her behind down. Puah thought that perhaps what made Ruth what she was had something to do with her own beaches—where the tides sung her name gently—being snatched away upon tilting her own head the wrong way. Still, it couldn’t be entirely the same. Ruth’s place had to have had the common sun-bleached sands. And surely the daylight shined forever.
Maybe it was true that the barn was safer despite its proximity to the Big House. It might be better for Samuel and Isaiah if they didn’t insist upon being themselves. The individual always has to give something up for the group. Puah knew what women gave up, time after time, except for maybe Sarah, who created her own difficulties standing in her own spot. So it wouldn’t be completely unreasonable for Samuel and Isaiah to give something up, too, sacrifice whatever force locked them in embrace to appease voracious godlings that saw everything but knew less.
Puah walked slowly to avoid Ruth’s suspicion and headed west toward the river. She made her way down. The water rush soothed her. She stared at it for a moment before turning toward the brush. The huckleberries were right where Maggie said they would be, fat and juicy.
Now, Puah had to head south, past the Big House that she didn’t want to be near again, toward the cotton field and beyond it. She went behind the house this time lest she inspire Ruth’s curiosity. When she reached the edge of the field, she stopped, overwhelmed by the vastness before her, which she had never allowed herself to take in. That was reflex. She knew to never be too open because anything was liable to fly in. And once inside, well . . .
The expanse terrified her. She nearly choked on her breath. She watched birds dive in and out of the blinding sea before her and she wondered how she did it, day after day, back arched and knees bent, bowing against windless skies. And now, all she had to do was walk across it and into the dangerous land just beyond it for a peculiar plant that grew in an inconvenient place.
With grace, she moved. She never before realized how vulnerable being in the field made her. A span of puffy white heads and there she was: black flesh, easy to spot, easy to target, easy to strike. If this wasn’t for Samuel, she wouldn’t have answered the call. Everybody had their scars, so that was no special reason. But his eyes teased welcome and she couldn’t bear them shut forever. Nor could she endure the slit of Maggie’s disappointment. So she went.
Shoulders deep in it. Only she and her people knew that cotton had a smell. Not pungent or insulting, but something remotely sweet like a whispered song. But how something so soft could wreck the fingers she knew all too well.
She came to the southern end where the field gave way to high weeds. Surrounded now by pale green and dry yellow, she felt less conspicuous, but still exposed. This wasn’t a place she came to very often. Sometimes, she picked over here, but it was mostly the older people who did their work—not their work because it wasn’t voluntary and it wasn’t on their behalf—this close to the overseers’ shacks because they were old enough to recognize the futility of running and how could they anyway on feet already walked down to the nubs?
How many shacks here? About a dozen, maybe a few more, each as ramshackle as her people’s, if a bit larger. Some of them sat leaning, like they were built by unsteady hands. In any event, they formed a crooked line that led off to goodness knows where. Perhaps a forgotten sea or a forest that held captive the flying remains of the ones defeated in order to have a plantation in the first place.
She stepped out of the weeds and onto the dusty ground, worn by the trampling of dozens of feet, which created a kind of border between the plantation and the shacks. That was where they felt it, she thought. Separate from their deeds. Parted from the effects of their own havoc, which they refused to admit was their own doing, so it would, in some future time, long after she was dead she was certain, also be their undoing.
She was lucky. Most of the adults were at church or in their cabins asleep, or in some corner hiding from a sun that seemed to be plotting against them. Some of the older children were there, left behind to watch the younger ones, and they, too, watched Puah with something between contempt and longing. They scowled, yes. But their hands were also loose, not gripped into fists, which meant that she had a moment to do what she came to do before they remembered who they were.
She held her dress up, just above her ankles, and walked up to the closest shack, which, as Maggie said, had a patch of comfrey right at its base. It was beautiful, too. Deep green stalks and leaves accented with flowers that looked like tiny purple bells. The kids on the porch stopped playing their little game and jumped down near her.
“Beatrice, there’s a nigger over here! Is niggers supposed to be over here?” the tiniest one said. His face was dirty and he kept pushing his long blond bangs away from his face.
“No they ain’t!” Beatrice said. She was older, maybe fourteen, and the boy favored her, so Puah thought she might be his older sister.
“I beg your pardon, Missy and Massa.” Puah kept her head down as she spoke. “Massa Paul send me over here to collect some of that there flower. Missy Ruth is having one of her belly spells and they need it to settle her discomfort.”
Beatrice looked at Puah from head to toe, then toe to head. “And who you be?”
“Puah, ma’am.”
“What kinda name that is?”
“I don’t know, Missy. Massa Paul give it to me.”
“Don’t let her take our flowers!” the little boy shouted. “They’s our’n!”
“Hush now, Michael. She ain’t taking nothing.” Beatrice’s eyes narrowed.
Puah wanted to grab her own dress up the middle, ball up her fist, and punch Beatrice dead in the center of her face. She took a step back with her right leg and then caught herself.
“Yes, Missy. I leave you be. I let Massa Paul know you say no. Thank you kindly, ma’am.”
Puah turned to walk away.
“Wait!” Beatrice shouted.
Puah turned toward her. “Yes’m?”
Beatrice sighed. She looked down at Michael and then over to the patch of comfrey. “Go on and get what you need. And be quick about it!”
Puah bowed, which pinpricked her inner self, and ran over to the patch. Carefully, she plucked stems full of blooms and added them to her elephant-ear pouch. She stood up and then headed for the field’s edge.
“Hey! Maybe you can teach me how to make a carry-pouch like that one you got,” Beatrice called at Puah’s back.
Puah turned and nodded. “Yes’m.” That was what her mouth said. But the stiffness of her back, the squareness of her shoulders, the tight grip of her jaw, and the rhythm of her step all said in unison: Never!
Then she dashed into the field.
“Why you hate men, Sarah?” Be Auntie walked up next to her with a slight, tender smile bending her lips. Her eyes said that it was a legitimate question and not Be Auntie being Be Auntie, trying to give known enemies the same consideration as proven friends.
Sarah looked at her briefly, then returned her gaze to the direction Puah would be returning from. “I don’t hate men. I hate y’all making me have to consider them.” She turned her neck a little to look at Maggie and Essie out of the corner of her eye. “And if’n I did hate them, I reckon I be well within my right.” Her gaze returned to direction of the morning sun. Her face was alive with light in the way only darkness could catch it and do with it what it would. She placed a hand delicately upon a cocked hip. “And I don’t love men, either. More like neitherway with them. They just—there, like a tree or a sky, until they natures do what it do. I don’t bother with them.” She sighed. “Only reason I here is ’cause Maggie call for me. And maybe ’cause The Two of Them . . . maybe they not men-men. Least one of them ain’t. Might be something else altogether.”
“Like Massa Timothy?” Essie said from inside.
“Ooh, girl!” Sarah laughed.
Be Auntie shrugged her shoulders.
“Hunk them shoulders if you wanna. You gon’ learn,” Sarah shot back.
“You forget your people,” Be Auntie said before she turned to walk away.
“You talking ’bout me or you?” Sarah let fly.
“One thing to feel your own pain. Right another thing to feel somebody else’s,” Maggie said aloud, only looking at Samuel and Isaiah. “And selflessly. Not because you feel like they your’n—like a child or a chosen lover. But just because they breathing. I seen a hare once not leave the side of another one caught in a snare. That thing hopped around like it was in the same kind of pain as the trapped one. If a animal can do that and we can’t? Well, what that say ’bout what they are and what we are? Like we might’ve gotten the names mixed up, ain’t it?”
“I choosy with who pain I feel,” Sarah said. “Some people pain is eternal. Some people worship they pain. Don’t know who they are without it. Hold on to it like they gon’ die if they let it go. I reckon some people want their pain to end, true. But most? It’s the thing that make they heart work. And they want you to feel it beat.”
“How ’bout these two here?” Maggie asked.
Sarah glanced at Isaiah and Samuel. Her brows furrowed. “Nah. They ain’t deserve what they got.” She let out a breath and shook her head. “But I ain’t do it to them. I was the only one I see who outright refuse to get up in that rickety-ass wagon. So, I ain’t carrying that burden, no. I got my own weight.”
“You ain’t get in that wagon and you ain’t do nothing to help neither. Some of that weight your’n to bear whether you heave it or not,” Essie said.
“So you claim.”
“What is, is what is.”
“Essie, I seen you up in that wagon. Holding that baby of your’n, too. Your eyes was closed, but mine won’t. I risk a whipping standing there on them weeds, but I ain’t go. What you risk, honey? You tell me that.”
“How you can fix your mouth to say that to me, Sarah, I don’t even know.”
Sarah exhaled. “You right. I ain’t wanna be led to this, which is why I ain’t wanna come in the first place.”
“Yes, enough of this fussing. The air foul enough,” Be Auntie added.
“I say let me be loose!” Sarah said.
“You be what you need to be, but be careful, too.” Maggie looked at Sarah. “Remember, the chopping up starts before they have the ax in they hand. They begin with the eyes. You know what I mean?”
Sarah was going to say yes, but she caught the sight of Puah the minute she made it out of the field. She walked past the Big House and then sped up when she got nearer to the barn. Sarah smiled and nodded her head.
“You quick, girl,” she said as Puah approached.
Puah returned the smile and entered the barn. Sarah followed her inside. Puah handed the soft green pouch to Maggie.
“You made this for carry?” Maggie asked Puah.
“Yes’m.”
“Ooh wee! This fine. Fine indeed!” Maggie held up the pouch and eyed it. “You got everything?”
“Yes, ma’am. All we need now is that stuff you said. The marrow.”
“Heh! Yarrow, honey chile. Come on over here with me. Let me show you what I mean.”
Maggie led Puah toward the back of the barn. They stopped for a moment near Samuel and Isaiah. Puah saw that they were still breathing and even heard Samuel moan slightly, and then she and Maggie continued.
Maggie brought her past the horse pens far to the corner of the barn. There, in the darkest spot, yarrow bloomed bright red.
“I ain’t never seen no flower bloom in the dark,” Puah said.
“Not many can. Specially not this one. But look-a-there. Go on. Pick it. Then hand it to me.”
“Bring me that rooster. No worries. I cook it tonight for the toubab.”
They formed a broken circle around Isaiah and Samuel. Each one of them wore a different face, a solitary sin: Maggie: solemnity; Essie: sorrow; Be Auntie: elation; Puah: dreaming; Sarah: indifference. Maggie noticed it and hoped none of it would keep walls up where there should be windows.
“We leave room for you to enter,” Maggie said.
“Because we call on you,” Be Auntie said.
“To give us memory of how to lay hands,” Essie said.
“And to ease and restore and protect,” Sarah said.
And then they looked to Puah.
“You remember?” Sarah asked.
“. . . and to love in the dark places that nobody sees,” Puah said finally.
“Great ones, we come to see the waters sing!” Maggie nodded and sat down next to Samuel and Isaiah. She whispered to them.
“This not gon’ be easy at first, you understand? There’s something you also gotta do. It seem unfair, but there something you gotta give in exchange. The ancestors, they be a little fickle sometimes. Demanding. Or better, we do it wrong, misunderstand what they ask, and get mighty upset at the result. But one thing we know for true is that you gotta yell loud enough for them to hear you. Because, you see, we don’t have the drums no more and your voice gotta carry. Not just across the distance, back to over there from where we was took. Your shout gotta pierce the barrier. It gotta get through the thick divide between us here in the light and them there in the dark. For this, you gone need each other. The strong one and the seeing one. The hard one and the mellow one. The laughing one and the crying one. The double night. The good two. The guardians at the gate.”
Maggie never understood all of the words she spoke. She knew they came from sometime else and she let them come through her because that was the only way the circle would be potent. She stood up. Her eyes rolled back in her head. She bent and grabbed the rooster by its feet and moved it in a circular motion. She broke its neck and spilled its blood. Puah gasped, but Sarah touched her shoulder.
“Shh. Stay inside the circle,” Sarah whispered to Puah.
Each of the women dipped her left hand into the pail where Maggie had mixed just the right amount of everything collected so that the water had become a loose paste the color of swamp. In unison, they held their wet hands up to the sky and then, as gently as each of them knew how, they placed their hands on the leaking trail of scars on Samuel and Isaiah’s backs.
Isaiah let out a cry so piercing that it made Samuel flinch. Maggie saw it even with her eyes looking elsewhere.
“Yes. Call on them. Call them in her name,” she said softly.
Samuel whimpered and squeezed his eyes shut. Sarah dipped her hand into the pail again and rubbed his back, following the trail of cruelty etched there by fools. She pressed ever so slightly and a blister popped. Its juice ran down Samuel’s side and he finally let out the sound he had held back with all of his might.
“This ain’t your disgrace,” Maggie assured him. “This belong to someone else.”
Their backs were shiny now, thick with the swamp paste, and it stung like it was supposed to. The women laid down the dress strips on their wounds. It hurt to move, so Samuel and Isaiah lay there calling for mercy in the name, but not yet receiving it. Isaiah placed his hand on Samuel’s, who wanted to move his but couldn’t. The circle understood that as their time.
The hands were laid upon them again, and in unison they called her by her name. It was then that the clouds began to form, interrupting the sun while it was in the middle of a crime. After a moment, the mossy air announced the storm that was on its way. And little by little, the droplets formed and came down first with care upon the parched earth.
“They’re here,” Maggie said softly and all the women turned to see.
Inside the barn, the dust swirled; Essie saw it. It came up from the ground as though it were alive. And it had form and grace. She knew then that what she saw wasn’t just some random breeze troubling the dirt. It was them, showing themselves in a way she could understand and not be frightened by, but she didn’t think she would be scared of their true form either, which is what she longed for.
“Rejoice,” Maggie said. “For we have reason.”
And all the women jerked their shoulders and laughed.
Puah looked out to the darkening sky. “What time is it?”
“What difference do it make? We close our eyes and then we open them. And here we are. Still here,” Sarah said.
“But the toubab be back soon,” Puah said wearily.
“Don’t worry ’bout them. They expect us to be here. How else these boys finna get back to work if not for our hands?” Maggie said to her.
Puah held herself a little closer. She touched her lips as though a thought had come to her only to be lost again. The sides of her head had become hot and impatience was crawling up her back. She stood up and went to the door. She held her hand out to touch the rain. She rubbed her wet hand on her face and came back to the circle.
“What now?” she asked.
“Now, we wait,” Maggie replied.
The women all fell silent as Sarah sucked her teeth, got up, walked over to the entrance, and pressed her back against the barn door frame. The rain was easing. It never got to be the storm she had hoped it would be. She didn’t know why, but she needed to see lightning streak across the heavens. She needed to feel thunder rumble her to the gut. Give her a rhythm to undo her hair and replait it by. But no, none of that came for her. Not even a cool mist.
Be Auntie rose and walked toward Sarah until she was shoulder to shoulder with her. She looked out into the dusk. How golden it was, momentarily, before it turned itself inside out to show its lovely bruises, mauve blending into a blush. She would allow herself to regard it as beauty, even in such a grotesque place, even when her own had been abused. No, nothing could be ugly ever again. Not a sky, not a stream, not even two silky people lying on the ground in need of healing.
Maggie stood and joined them. She could unhook herself from the need to believe beauty might have a place that wasn’t subject to anyone’s unwanted hands and sour breath. Wasn’t no way this place was going to keep thinking she was its prime fool. Not at all. Not as long as she had fists. And even if they took those, the stubs.
Essie looked toward the three women standing at the doorway. She didn’t understand why she wasn’t already dead. Maggie had told Essie that she came from the line of those who built the great angles, but Essie’s angle came first, time not being straight. Living, as she was, in the crest of her creases, turned upside down for her own pleasure no matter who dared it without being beckoned, but even then, the truth of it pointing toward the brightest star in the sky. For all the men, women, and others who had used her as their shitting pot, she should have been broke down, should have already surrendered to the worms. And maybe she was a little bit broke down, but in hidden places like the edge of her elbows and in between her toes, where memory slipped in and wouldn’t be loosed, not even after a mud ritual. No, the images pressed themselves in, and every so often, when she bent in the field or when she had to kick an attacker in the groin, they would sing out: Here we are, darling! Let us fellowship.
Puah got up and then sat down next to Essie. She wondered, too, how she still had breath, how she hadn’t yet been ripped up, with so many toubab around needing nary a reason—and she knew they had plenty. The cow was always useful for something. Milk, if not labor. Labor, if not meat. Meat, if not milk. Rape. But this wasn’t the time to ponder such things. She knew Maggie would tell her that she had to give the circle its time.
The women, one by one, turned and came to sit back down. They were a semicircle, all facing one another. In the distance, thunder finally let itself roll. Sarah lifted her head and inhaled as though searching for something in the air that she almost found, but didn’t. She lowered her chin. Maggie touched her shoulder. They looked at each other.
“I know, chile. We all know.”
Be Auntie and Puah shook their heads. Essie held her hand against her neck. Maggie looked at her.
“Sang a little, Essie,” she said, attempting to bring the women back from the breach.
Essie nodded. Sitting in the old style, she straightened up her back and gripped her knees. She began to rock back and forth. She closed her eyes and tilted her head to the side. And when her lips parted, all the women, chins high, eyes wide, mouths breathless, clutched themselves in preparation.