III

AFTER THEY HAD WALKED SO FAR into the trees Nola couldn’t tell where they were, she detected the faint scent of fresh water.

“I can smell it,” she called out to Septeema’s back.

Septeema walked without responding, and soon they stepped from the dark of the trees onto the rocky-edged ring around the lake, whose luminous black was as inviting as a dream.

A multitude of memories hit Nola’s body like a wall of waves. El on and in the water, silver streaks of fish in buckets, the steam from a low red sun, soothing black water on her troubled brown body, healing laughter, the holiness of silence.

She was not immune. The long fingers of sorrow gently stroked her brow. She would not let the girl see her tears. She would not let that old dead thing crawl back into her body, into her opening soul. She was about to do what she had come to do, about to free herself, the girl. She would not let that thing in. She would not cry. She would not break. She would not bow down to that grasping emptiness. She would not.

A sun burned and swelled inside her head. She dropped to the softly pebbled earth and held her head in her hands. An old song her mother used to sing burst from her lips:

Oh-oh, run run mourner run

bright angels above...

She didn’t care what the girl thought now. She didn’t care if there were a hundred gods or one, if history reached no further than her fingertips, if time was unresponsive as the eternally silent lake. She didn’t care if her mama had never told her everything was going to be all right, never told her she loved her, never even saw Nola outside of her daddy’s name. She didn’t care if she went back to Chicago, into the black water or straight to hell.

I would fly away to the kingdom

bright angels above

if I just had two wings

bright angels above...

She felt that old ugly thing grab hold and dig its fingers into her soul. TVvelve years of silence, so old it lay in her body like a subterranean lake of fire. She thought she had covered it over, filled the hole with the mud of her life since Pearl.

Now she felt it rising: the burning silence, the liquid pain, the agony rising from the fissure inside, rising, gathering heat and steam, and a wild uncontrollable energy.

You gotta escape for your life

bright angels above

you just gotta escape for your life

bright angels above

oh-oh, run run mourner run

bright angels above...

Nola did not feel Septeema sit next to her and take hold of one hand, then the other. She did not see the tears she could not shed for herself wetting her daughter’s face.

Once she ended the old song, her mother’s favorite, she wailed until the sound of a cry took shape and rolled over the lake’s still waters, then flew into the air as if the sound had wings as it flew above the eavesdropping trees.

Still no tears would come. Her wail had loosened something inside her, though, something that allowed her to look into her daughter’s face and truly see her for the first time.

“Did I come all this way for you to tell me I really don’t have nobody? Not nobody in this world?” Nola asked.

Septeema took her hands from Nola’s and dried her face. She didn’t answer.

“You wait. Wait till you see what it feels like. Miss Marius and Nathan aren’t blood. There’s things, girl, running deep inside you. Deep inside. That’s what blood is, something run deep. You don’t even know about the people’s blood in you.

“Their stories are there ... all there. The love, the hate, good times and bad. My people. Your daddy’s people. They’re all in there. Inside your blood.

“Listen sometime, they’re trying to talk to you. Why do you think I’m here?”

“That’s one thing I been wondering ever since Miss Marius showed me the letter said you was coming,” Raisin said, pulling her body back a ways from Nola.

“I came because of your daddy.”

“But you said my daddy was dead.”

“Your daddy is dead.”

Nola struggled with what she wanted, needed, to tell Raisin. The white look on Raisin’s face showed her how hard the telling was going to be.

“Your daddy would’ve been a fine man. A fine one. He was kind, and had a gentleness I’ve never seen in a man since. He wasn’t nuthin like the men who can be so full of themselves that they don’t have room for anybody else inside.”

“How did he die?” Raisin asked.

“He couldn’t see a way to hold on to the light inside himself and live in this world,” Nola said, scratching her head.

Raisin’s troubled look made Nola explain.

“He would’ve had to go into the mine. Old Number 9. Would’ve had to take his light down in that hole in the ground like all the other colored men.

“Cept he said he couldn’t do it. Not for me. Not for you. Said all that was waiting for a colored man in this world was a hole somewhere, some hellhole in the ground.

“Said if he had to be buried alive, he’d do it himself. Laid his body down like them old Africans he was always talking about. Laid his body down just like them. Found a spot, dug a hole, and laid his tired body down. He remembered the words and the ways—the plants that should only be used for healing, but could also call down death. He never should’ve done it, killing yourself is against the old ways. But he was set on dying. He wanted his soul to rise and walk away from his bones.

“Ain’t nuthin but a line,” he was always saying. “Nuthin but a line holding this world back from the next.”

“Is all my people crazy?” Raisin asked in a whisper.

“Sometimes I think El got good sense. The times when I feel there’s nuthin for me in this world. Most times, though, I know he was wrong. He had something waiting in this world. He had me and you. We’re plenty to live for, right?”

Raisin didn’t answer.

“I didn’t know what he was talking about either. Thought all this love could hold him back.” Nola snorted like a tired horse.

“I tried to tell him, though. Tried to tell him like the Reverend always say, he wasn’t never gonna find peace if he crossed that line. But he didn’t listen to me. Some part of me hoped he was just talking to hear himself talk. Once he decided to raise his boots and cross that line, wasn’t nobody able to hold him back.

“After he died, I cried until my body ached. Then I got mad. Wild, crazy mad. The only thing that would soothe my anger was silence.

“Till A’Lelia. And I still get mad at him. You’ll probably feel mad sometimes, too.”

Nola stopped talking and was silent. Raisin sat with her eyes closed. Nola looked hard at Septeema’s bowed head. She couldn’t wait any longer, even if the girl might not be ready.

Nola saw the hard-edged anger in Raisin’s body. She could feel the rejection rising off Raisin’s skin. First her daddy had left her, then Nola, too.

“Before he died, he told me it would be important for me to remember some things, to call his name and say prayers for him after he was gone. I didn’t pay him no mind.”

Septeema raised her head, her face full of questions—if she was good enough, pretty enough, would they have stayed with her? It would be a while before Raisin could believe anything Nola had to say.

“But I knew his spirit wasn’t ever going to rest after he killed himself.”

Septeema put her head back down.

“He wanted special words said from the Old Ones he was always talking about. He wanted the charms he wore around his neck laid on his grave. Wanted some old songs sung, rattles shaken, a drum beaten, and dancing around the grave. You ever see a funeral like that in Pearl?”

“No. I don’t even go to the graveyard. Not for nuthin, or nobody,” Raisin said.

‘Your daddy wanted me to do these things. It would be nice if you’d do them now, with me.”

“Since he dead, he ain’t gonna know I don’t do it.”

“He’d like it if you were there.”

“But he dead, this don’t make no sense.”

“Septeema, I don’t want to scare you, but your daddy means for you to take part. Who you think got into you back on the road?”

“But how can a dead man know me, or care what I do?”

“I didn’t used to believe the dead bothered with us myself. But I know there’s things in the world, Septeema, can’t none of us explain. I know me coming here and telling you this is making you upset, but we don’t have much time.”

“What you mean?”

“That’s all I want to say now. I want you to think about what I’ve told you, then let me know your decision.”

“Decision about what? Ain’t nuthin to decide.”

“Just think about what I’ve said.”

“All right,” Raisin said, standing. “We better get back home, we got a long way to go.”

Nola looked at the girl who had comforted her a short while ago. The girl who had stroked Nola in a moment of acute distress.

You wouldn’t have known we’d even touched, Nola thought as she watched the stiffness return to Septeema’s body, as she headed back through the trees. Septeema had an unseen bundle atop her head that she unknowingly carried back to Miss Marius.