Sleep, little baby, don’t say a word. Mama? Mama, why did you up and leave like that, and why won’t you come back for me? Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird. “Wake up, daughter. God’s grace done saved you this day. So you gotta open your eyes and give the Creator some thanks.” If that mockingbird don’t sing. “Nigger, I told you I was gonna have a piece of you one way or another.” Mama’s gonna buy you a diamond ring . . . ring . . . ring.
I tried to sit up, but my body was screaming out with pain so bad, I just lay there, moaning as I tried to figure out where I was. I squinted, moving my eyes around the room, and not a single thing looked familiar. Everything was cast in shadows. No real light was coming in because there were shades on the windows. All I could make out was the flickering light of a candle across the room. The smell was thick with eucalyptus and peppermint, and some other deep, earthy smells I didn’t recognize.
“Granny,” I uttered. My voice felt ragged and raw. “Granny?”
“Shh,” a voice said. “Drink this.”
A small hand held a cup to my lips. I tried to make out the face, but my eyes were swollen and blurry with tears. I reached up and touched my face and winced. It felt painful. Like it had been skinned up or something. I tried to move, but my stomach and my sides felt bruised and battered. I tried to swallow, but my mouth was raw and sore. My body was a bundle of pain the size of Saturday’s wash that I carried from the creek up to Miss Peggy’s house. I tried to move my lips away from the cup, but the hand was stubborn.
“Drink,” the voice said again, urging the cup toward my lips. “Drink and you will feel better. Don’t you want to feel better?”
Thinking that maybe I was dreaming, I decided just to drink. Almost immediately, I felt a warm calm making its way from the tippy-tippy points of my toes all the way to the farthest end of the longest strand of hair on my head.
My body floated. “Am I dreaming?” I managed to ask, although my tongue felt huge.
“Yes. If that thought soothes you, then yes, you are dreaming, daughter.”
I think I smiled. I also wondered if the voice calling me daughter was my mother, but I remembered she left me a long time ago. She probably wouldn’t even recognize me now. I felt like tearing up over that fact, but the sleepiness overtook me, and I slept.
* * *
“Opal, wake up. Wake up,” a strong, masculine voice said. A voice I instantly recognized.
“Jimmy Earl,” I said, straining to open my eyes. But they refused to budge. I groaned. Things had to be bad. He didn’t call me Bean.
“Yeah, it’s me. Open your eyes,” he said. He sounded so upset. In that moment, I couldn’t understand why he wanted me to wake up so bad. I wondered if maybe I’d fallen asleep and burnt something on the stove. I’d done that once before, and Granny nearly tore my butt off.
“Jimmy Earl,” I said again, still not able to open my eyes. My eyes flickered. They felt heavy, like somebody had put weights on them.
“What did you give her?” I heard him ask in an even angrier voice. “She can’t even focus.”
“I made her a tea with some things you wouldn’t understand, young man,” the woman said. Her voice sounded like music. Even though she was speaking tough words to Jimmy Earl, she still sounded almost like she was singing the words instead of speaking them.
“Try me,” he said. “I’m going to medical school to be a pharmacist. There’s nothing you could give her that I don’t already understand isn’t safe. Opal needs real medicine.”
I tried to sit up, but the pain in my head was so strong, I just couldn’t. I let out a huge groan. I tried to wipe my eyes so at least I could see, but touching them hurt so bad I groaned even louder.
“Hold on, daughter,” the woman said. “Let me wipe your eyes with this warm rag, and you’ll be able to open them easier.”
Before I could say something back to the now familiar female voice, I felt something so soothing and so healing to my eyes that I let out a sigh. I didn’t want her to stop rubbing them in that gentle circular motion. In fact, I wanted her to wipe my entire face, arms, and legs with the wonderfully warm cloth, but she abruptly stopped.
“There. Open your eyes,” she said.
In small little steps, I opened my eyes. Halfway at first, just to test whether the pain I’d felt in them was really gone, and it was. I opened them wide . . . well, as wide as I could open swollen eyes. I blinked a few times and then saw Jimmy Earl and a smooth-faced Black woman with long white plaits standing over me. Jimmy Earl’s face was red and angry.
“Did I burn the food?” I asked.
“What? What food? What is she talking about?” he asked the lady with the pretty white hair.
“She’s confused. Her head took a powerful blow. She’s got a knot on it the size of a turkey egg, and whoever she ran into beat her from top to bottom. She fought him, but he was too strong. Bless her.”
“What y’all talking about?” I asked, trying again to sit up. I felt stiffness in every joint. Not the pain I’d felt the first time I woke up. Just the kind of achiness you feel after you’ve worked a long, hard day. The way I sometimes felt when I helped Mr. Tote with the garden out back of Miss Peggy’s house.
“Opal, who did this to you?” Jimmy Earl growled.
“Not a question you want answered,” the woman said.
Jimmy Earl growled again. “Yes, it is. Do you know?”
“It’s not for me to know,” she replied.
“Opal, who did this?” he asked again.
“Give her time to breathe. Daughter, this is Miss Lovenia. This young man is going to help you sit. I hurt my arm a few days ago, so I’m not strong enough to do it myself. Do you mind if he helps you sit up?” the woman asked.
“No ma’am,” I said. Jimmy Earl seemed to hesitate for a moment, but then he put his arms around my shoulder and back and helped me sit up in the bed, as the old woman adjusted the fluffy pillows underneath my back. I felt dizzy, like I was about to fall off the bed onto the floor. I sank back down into the bed and closed my eyes until I felt the movement stop. Then I opened my eyes again.
“How did she get here?” I heard Jimmy Earl ask.
“My sons that flagged you down when you came back this way brought her here. They was out walking when they saw Opal get outta your truck and figured you would come back this way.”
“I don’t remember seeing them out walking,” Jimmy Earl said, his voice sounding suspicious.
“My boys did not hurt Opal,” she said.
“I never said—”
She cut him off. “You didn’t have to say the words. The person that hurt her is not Colored. There is not a Colored man in Parsons, Georgia, who would have done this child like this. My boys found her after it was over. I wish they could have been there to stop it from ever happening.”
“I never should have let her walk home,” he said. “Bean, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“I’m okay,” I said.
“No, you’re not,” he said and put his hand on mine.
“Best you be getting over to her grandmother’s place. Let her know the girl is okay, but with that injured head and those bruised ribs, she is going to need to stay put for a day or two,” Miss Lovenia said.
“No,” I said, trying to sit up again, but the dizziness was too much. “Granny will worry. I gotta go. Jimmy Earl, help me get up.”
“You got a hard head, daughter, but you’re hurt. Whoever got at you hurt you in more ways than you could know right now. You stay put till the morrow, or the morrow after that,” she said. “Your granny can come here if she likes.”
“I need to know who did this to you, Opal. Who did this?” Jimmy Earl asked again.
“This what?” I said. By that time I knew something had happened to me, but I couldn’t quite wrap my brain around what. I remembered getting out of Jimmy Earl’s truck. I remembered walking down the road past Miss Lovenia’s house. I remembered . . . I remembered . . . nothing, really. Fragments of things. White hands grabbing at me, pushing me down into a ditch. The sound of my dress tearing. Loud cursing. A loud thud. Then, darkness until I woke up in Miss Lovenia Manu’s house.
“Miss Lovenia,” I said, looking at her. Why, she had to be nearly a hundred years old, and she didn’t look no older than my granny, who was in her sixties. “Miss Lovenia, what happened to me?”
She patted my hand. “The devil tried to hurt you. My boys, Mars and Ares, saved you. That’s all you ever need to know. This world we living in is ’bout ready to explode and send us all into little bitty unrecognizable pieces. The best thing we can all do is to move past moments like this. This ain’t the time to get sideways in our thinking.”
Jimmy Earl looked like he might burst into flames, he was so angry.
“The best thing Opal can do is tell me who did this so I can find the monster and kill him,” he said, clenching and unclenching his fists. I tried to smile at him to let him know I was okay, but it hurt too much. I couldn’t believe Jimmy Earl was carrying on that much about me when just a little while ago he all but threw me outta his truck.
“Too late for you to fix things now,” Miss Lovenia said as she pulled up a chair beside my bed and sat down. “Won’t change her hurting if’n you did haul off and kill somebody. And do you really want the answers to your questions, Mr. Jimmy Earl Ketchums? Answers that might make you have to choose to bring the clouds or bring the blue sky? You can’t do both.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Clouds and blue sky,” he spat. “I don’t care about all of your hocus-pocus. I just want to know who hurt my friend. That’s it.”
“Oh, she’s your friend,” Miss Lovenia said with a smile. “Friend? All right then. You need to go tell your friend’s granny that she is with me and she is okay. All right, friend?”
I looked from Miss Lovenia to Jimmy Earl. I tried to make my mind tell me what happened. What could I have done to make somebody hate me like that? I felt the tears pushing at my eyes again. I couldn’t stop myself. I started blubbering.
“Jimmy Earl, go get Granny. Please,” I begged.
“Bean, we have to figure out who did this. I—”
“No. I just want my granny.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll go get Birdie. But then you’re talking. She’ll make you talk.” He stomped his way out of the room, leaving me alone with Miss Lovenia.
“Miss Lovenia, I—”
“Daughter, when I was born, I had a caul around my face. Do you know what that means?” she asked. I watched her as she lit a corncob pipe and pulled on it several times before releasing smoke into the air. I loved the smell of a pipe. Jimmy Earl’s granddaddy used to smoke a pipe, and when he did, the whole house smelled sweet and spicy.
“No ma’am,” I said.
“It means I was born with the eye to see things in ways others can’t. Just like my great-great-grandmother, Ona, who was a slave on the Parsons plantation, and my father, who was also a slave on the very same plantation.”
“Who did this to me?”
“That will come to you in time,” she said. “I see things, chile. Good things, bad things, in-between things. Sometimes I share what I see. Other times, I let people see in God’s own time. I believe that is what you must do.”
“But don’t I need to know? How do I keep from getting hurt again if I don’t know?”
Miss Lovenia reached over and stroked my hair. “Evil will find us if it is our time to fight with it. You can’t run from your demons. Either you stand up to them, or they eat you up and spit you out.”
“But I . . . I . . .”
“Shh,” she said, continuing to stroke my head. “The battle you must fight comes later. So don’t worry today about what tomorrow will surely bring.”
“But I don’t know what that means,” I said. She was making my head feel like it was going to blow up into little bitty pieces. Everything about this day was a jumbled-up mess in my mind. I couldn’t remember who beat me, and I was worried to death that somehow what happened to me was going to start all sorts of trouble for the people I loved. I wished she would stop talking around in circles and just say what it was she was hinting at but not really saying.
“Daughter, we are living in the last days. Your Jimmy Earl Ketchums is about to have to decide if he is on the side of good or evil. The battle spoken about in Revelation is about to begin. Nothing else will matter,” she said. “The blood is about to rain down and cover us all.”
I tried to twist my body so I could see her better, but the light in the room left her hidden in shadows. She was like a ghost in her white clothes. I was getting scared. I wanted my granny to come and get me. I tried to sit up again, but she reached out her hand and touched my arm. I felt a heat from her hand that didn’t seem natural. I tried to pull away, but she kept her hand right where it was.
“You can’t run from the future, daughter. Believe me, I’ve tried,” she said as the heat got warmer and warmer. “All you can do is go where it leads you. Sometimes you can change its direction some. Bend it. But you can’t break it. The future is going to happen whether we are there to see it or not. So all we . . . all anyone . . . can ever do is try to stay prepared for the battle. That’s it.”
She put the cup to my lips again. “Drink, daughter. Drink,” she said, and because I was ready to escape from Miss Lovenia and all of her confusing words, I did drink. Almost immediately I started to feel warmth come over my entire body . . . a warmth similar to Miss Lovenia’s touch, except this warmth was in my insides. It almost scared me, but Miss Lovenia started rubbing my arm and I felt myself relax. I felt my eyelids flutter, and then, I slept.
* * *
What felt like seconds later, but I know must have been longer, I heard a voice call out to me. It was Granny. Even in the midst of the drowsiness, I knew my granny was there, because I could smell the rosewater perfume she always wore at night after she got done washing off. I felt so bad to make her have to come back out after she was nearly ready for bed.
“Granny! I’m here. I’m here,” I cried out in a raspy voice. Miss Lovenia removed her hand from my arm, and I watched as she rose and lit another candle that was on the table beside the bed. The light made it bright enough for me to make out my granny’s face. But she wasn’t alone. Jimmy Earl was with her.
“Who hurt you, baby?” Granny asked, sitting in the chair beside the bed, placing my hand into hers.
“I think it be best if she just rests and not worry about all that, Birdie,” Miss Lovenia said. “Some questions don’t need answering. Some questions be just like the wind. If you just be still and let God be God, everything will reveal itself in time.”
“How can we protect her if we don’t know who did this?” Jimmy Earl nearly yelled.
“She’s not yours to protect, Jimmy Earl,” Granny said in a soft voice. “Opal is my child. Me and her uncles will look after her. You should just go home.”
“But, Birdie, I—”
“Go home, Jimmy Earl. Let Miss Peggy know me and Opal won’t be coming in for a few days. And make sure you tell her exactly what I said. No more, no less. You hear me, Jimmy Earl?”
Jimmy Earl looked angrily from Miss Lovenia to Granny, but then his face softened. He walked over to me and lightly took my other hand.
“The second you remember who did this to you, Colored or white, I don’t care. You tell me who hurt you and I will take care of him one way or another.”
“That’s enough,” Granny said. “That’s enough. Right now, I need to see about Opal. Go home, Jimmy Earl.”
“I’ll stop by after work tomorrow,” he said and looked from Granny to Miss Lovenia as if to dare them to say no to that. Neither one of them said anything.
Jimmy Earl placed my hand back on the bed and walked out of the room.
“I want to go home, Granny,” I said, the tears spilling out of my eyes causing them to burn.
Granny took my hand and shook her head. “No. We gone listen to Miss Lovenia. She said you need to stay put, so stay put is what we both gonna do until you can be took home.”
“Doc Henry—” I started, but she interrupted.
“No. We gone stay put, and there ain’t no need pulling Doc Henry into this mess,” Granny said, and then she looked up at Miss Lovenia. “If that’s okay with you, Miss Lovenia.”
I was shocked. Where was all of Granny’s hoodoo talk? Where was her “We Christians don’t fool around with hoodoo people”?
“Y’all just make yourselves at home. Y’all might hear some bumping around during the night. Don’t be scared,” she said, moving toward the door. “My boys get restless during the night and they sometimes go out walking.”
“They might shouldn’t do that,” Granny said. “It ain’t safe for Colored men to go walking out here with them evil men still around and about.”
“My boys are covered. Won’t no harm come to them,” Miss Lovenia said with such certainty that I believed her words. She walked out before Granny could say something back to her.
“Does anyone in the family know what happened?” I asked. I was scared to death that the uncles might get themselves in trouble because of me. I still didn’t remember who hurt me, but I didn’t put it past them to go out and just start hunting down white folks.
“No. Nobody knows. It’s best that way till we get you home,” Granny said. “Jimmy Earl knows to keep his mouth closed.”
“What we gonna tell folks happened to me, Granny?” I asked as Granny climbed in the bed beside me.
“We ain’t gone worry none about that tonight,” she said. “You just close your eyes, say your prayers, and rest. You’ll feel better in the morning, and by then we’ll know exactly what to say.”
“Granny,” I whispered, the tears starting to fall again.
“Yes, baby?”
“Why do some white folks hate us so bad?” I asked. I couldn’t remember who did this to me . . . no face was coming to my mind . . . but I remembered white hands pushing me down, and then . . . nothing.
Granny didn’t answer me; instead, she put her arms around me and began to whisper her prayers.