V
NOLA WOKE TO THE SOUND of scuffling in the front yard.
“Take it back!”
“Don’t haveta!”
“Thke it...”
“It’s true!”
“You a lie!”
“Ask Miss Marius. Go on, ask her. You’ll see it’s true.”
Nola urged her tired body out of bed and went to the window. Septeema and Lucille lay in the dirt below, huffing and puffing.
“I heard her tell Nathan. She didn’t never want you and neither did Miss Nola. Didn’t none of your mamas want you, why you think you’re here?”
“Neither did yours. Least mine come back!”
“Not for you. She took one look at you and knew she couldn’t take you nowhere. Miss Marius just felt sorry.”
Septeema struggled under the weight of Lucille’s great bulk. The two boys and the girl with the mark on her face stood in a broken circle around the two girls rolling in the dirt. When Septeema put her hands around Lucille’s wide neck, hope washed over their faces.
Nola opened the window.
“You two there! Stop that fighting!”
The girls continued to twist and heave with increased urgency after hearing Nola’s voice. Septeema tightened her grip on Lucille’s neck while Lucille tried to free herself and force all of her weight on Septeema in an effort to crush her. By the time Nola reached them, Septeema was fast losing strength and Lucille’s face had grown to mammoth proportions.
“Stop it right now. You two get up from there, wallowing on the ground like two hogs. Get up from there, right this minute. I know you both know better.”
She helped both of them to their feet and brushed them off.
“I was only telling her the truth. The girl act like she got worse sense now that you’re here,” Lucille said, breathless.
“What’s she saying got you mad enough to fight, Septeema?” Nola asked.
Lucille snickered and folded her arms across her heaving chest.
“She run her mouth too much, don’t know what she talking about. Just talking to be talking. Don’t none of us want to hear it,” Septeema said.
“It’s the truth.”
‘You a lie and ain’t no truth in you,” Septeema said, hot.
Lucille made a move as if to grab Septeema again, but Nola stepped between them.
“She think just because you’re here, she can act uppity. She knows I’ll wring her neck like a chicken if she keep talking crazy to me.”
“Look like you the chicken,” Septeema said.
MC, Wilhelmina, and Douglass whooped and ran out of the yard. Septeema followed them.
“Don’t nobody around here love none of you, you know. Not nobody,” Lucille called after the running, tittering four.
Septeema turned around and looked at Nola and Lucille, then she swung back and cackled, running for the trees.
“Why you like to say that?” Nola asked Lucille. “Miss Marius let you say any kind of hurting thing come into your mind to those children?”
Lucille hung her head, but didn’t say a word.
‘You’re scared, aren’t you? Scared Miss Marius don’t have enough love left for you. Well, let me tell you something, child, love ain’t like sand in a hourglass, it don’t run out. If you’re lucky, it grows and if you’re not, well, then you’ve got something to worry about.”
“I ain’t telling no lies,” Lucille said as she turned and walked quickly into the house.
Nola shook her head and was glad the thing would soon be done. She looked at what she thought would be the silhouette of four children walking down the road, but saw instead three children walking farther down the road, and a fourth, Septeema, standing stock still with her arms held out like her mother’s faded picture of Jesus on the cross.
“I knew. I always knew he’d get her first,” Nola said, running for the girl, who stood like a tree, forsaken on the road.
Ouida Barnett’s voice, singing, began to ring inside Nola’s ears.
Run run mourner run
bright angels above
oh-oh run run mourner run
bright angels above...
Beneath the singing, Ouida’s voice asked the unspoken question in Nola’s eyes.
What makes a woman forsake her child for a man?
If I had two wings
bright angels above
If I just had two wings
bright angels above...
Nola forced the sound of Ouida Barnett’s singing from her mind. As she neared Septeema the air turned electric.
She tasted salt on her tongue. She ran with her eyes closed. Panting. She saw El’s body turn. Falling. Turning around and over like the world. Then up. The body was up and moving. Out of endless black. The swirling black where dreams begin.
“Hold on, Septeema.” Nola shouted through the static.
Behind El’s body, Ouida Barnett laughed. A wild moaning laughter like a lowdown sun. Laughing. Mocking. Remembering.
“You better hold on,” Nola’s mother screamed, cackling.
The singing began again, louder.
Oh-oh, run run mourner run
bright angels above
oh-oh run run mourner run
bright angels above
I would fly away to the kingdom
if I just had two wings...
Nola could not push her mother away. She felt icy fingers on her soul. She was engulfed in a putrified cloud. The body stood. A body of dried skin over bones. Still as death. Still as Ouida Barnett’s heart. Blood was on the rocks. A chant began: Paint the body red. Paint the body red. The body shook like a rattle. A holy gourd shaking. Its feet stomped the dry red earth. White teeth shining like polished bones. Her mother’s mouth opened wide, singing:
You gotta escape for your life
bright angels above
you just gotta escape for your life
bright angels above ...
The body stopped its stomping. Turned its hollow eyes on the girl. “ISSSSSS,” it whistled. The air stopped moving. Nola couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe and her mother was laughing. She fell into a numbness. The body beat the ground with a stick. Her mother beat the ground with a stick. “ISSSSSS,” they whistled. Nola’s father stood behind her mother behind the body. Light shining from the hole inside his chest. His face was a painted mask. Black. Red. He opened his mouth to join her mother singing,
Oh-oh, run run mourner run
bright angels above
Oh-oh, run run mourner run...
The body held its bony fingers out to the girl. Her mother’s song became part of Nola now. Bone. Flesh. Blood. Her feet hit the ground to its rhythm. She was the mourner on the road. Running. Running for her life, the girl’s.
“Let her go. It’s not her fault I left and didn’t do what you wanted me to do. The blame belongs to me,” Nola shouted at El’s body, her mother and father, trying to get the girl.
“I came back, didn’t I? Can’t you see I came back? I’m gonna settle my accounts. I left all of you, but didn’t I come back? I came back to claim my child before this blood memory steals her from me, from even herself. I came back to keep my baby girl with the living, not the dead.”
They all stepped back. Into the darkness. Into the watery black.
Running till she could almost fly, Nola reached Septeema, grabbed her, stroked her wrinkled skin as if by touch she would learn who Septeema truly was. As the other children looked on, astonished, Nola held Septeema in her arms and told her over and over, till the sound of Nola’s voice turned gentle as a waterwheel as she stroked the girl’s arms down, wiped the terror from her face and rocked her gently, saying the words till they sounded like a song, “It’s all right. It’s all right. We’re gonna be all right.”