She had to arrange the table the same each day: Paul always at the head; Ruth always to his right; Timothy, when home, always to his left, and three extra settings for the occasional guests. She would stand around after she had set the table and listen to the family give, in unison, thanks to the long-haired man whose gaze always turned upward—probably because he couldn’t bear to see the havoc wreaked in his name. Or maybe he just couldn’t bother to look. Maggie only knew about this man because she let Essie talk her into going to one of Amos’s sermons one Sunday.
They held court in the woods, in the circle of trees at the southeastern edge of the cotton field. The man whose name she couldn’t speak for a reason was there with a few of his scraggly minions and she wanted to turn right around when she saw him. But Essie had begged her to stay. She seemed so proud—and something other than proud, but Maggie couldn’t tell what.
Amos stood upon a big rock that neither time nor water had worn down. But that was exactly what the clearing smelled like to her: the moist and tired things that hid beneath rocks—or, in this case, stood on top of them. There were about thirty people in the crowd then, sitting on logs or on the ground. That was before people started to believe Amos. He opened his mouth and she sucked her teeth. He wasn’t doing anything but repeating some bits and pieces she heard Paul discuss around the dinner table. She knew from experience that no good could come from folks spending so much time alone with the toubab.
She found it rather dreary. Amos did have a way of talking, though. More like singing than anything else. The rock showcased him in a new light. Sunrays came down through the leaves, giving his blackness a kind of golden hue, showering him, too, with the kind of jagged shadows that made men mysterious, which was another way of saying strong. And Essie seemed so pleased. That was what made Maggie promise Essie that she would come back and sit with her in the same shady spot Essie reserved just for them. Until it could be so no longer.
Until the day Amos’s words took a different turn, spoke of things that made Essie look down and Maggie lean back. Maggie immediately placed the meanness in them—toward The Two of Them, of all people!—and she gave Amos only a stern eye when she wanted to give more.
Uh huh, she thought, there it go!
“It’s a old thing,” she told Amos. But he didn’t listen. She didn’t wait around to hear another word come out of Amos’s mouth. She unlocked her arm from Essie’s, stood up, and marched her way back to the Big House, tall with lips curled, shadows falling down her back and light fluttering across her chest. She only looked back once and that was to let Essie see her face so she would know that it wasn’t because of her.
She stopped setting the table for a moment and turned to look at the barn from the window.
“Mm,” she said aloud.
Maggie suspected Essie knew about The Two of Them and never said a word. That was good, though, because some things should never be mentioned, didn’t have to be, not even among friends. There were many ways to hide and save one’s self from doom, and keeping tender secrets was one of them. It seemed to Maggie a suicidal act to make a precious thing plain. Perhaps that was because she couldn’t imagine a thing—not a single thing—worth exposing herself for. Whatever she might ever have loved was taken before it even arrived. That is, until she crept up and saw those boys, who had the decency to bring with them a feeling that didn’t make her want to scream.
She made her way back into the kitchen, grabbed a rag, and removed the biscuits from the oven. They had browned perfectly. She slid them into a bowl lined with a square of linen and set the bowl on the table. She held two biscuits in her hand and squeezed until the crumbs pushed through her fingers.
She looked around the room and then back at the table again. She wondered if she had the strength to flip it over because she already knew she had the rage. She placed her hand on a corner of it and gave it a little tug.
“Heavy,” she mumbled to herself.
She heard the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs. She knew it was Paul because of how deliberate each step was. He’d come in the dining room and sit at the head of the table and watch her, like her wretchedness brought him joy. He might even have the nerve to touch her or stick his tongue where it had no business being. She wished she knew a spell that could slit his throat, but alas, that would require her hands to be used and she wasn’t certain that she could take him.
“Shit.”
Essie
Though goddesses made more sense, she agreed to kneel to Amos’s secondhand god—especially if it meant more rations and a wall between her and numerous sufferings.
Maybe not a wall, exactly. More like a fence, a wooden fence, not unlike the barn’s, staked out in uncommon ground, jutting from the earth, meant to keep animals in and people out. A fence and not a wall because crafty as some childish anger was, it didn’t have the legs to climb something so tall. But it could slip through spaces between planks. It thought itself innocent like that. And sometimes, that’s what toubab reminded Essie of: children of everlasting tantrums, ripping and roaring insatiably; stomping through fields with boundless energy; finding everything curious and funny; demanding mother’s teat; falling, finally, into rest only if gently swayed.
They were too young, then, to understand treaties, much less honor them. Signing them must have been penmanship practice or flourish. Still, it was the only assurance people had. So, she knelt; with the pale baby held snug at her waist, she knelt. Sultry in a way that her tattered dress, dusty skin, and loosening braids should have never allowed her to be. The strategy told to her was a lie. Toubab men were, in fact, not discouraged by an unkempt woman. Paul Halifax simply peeled back the layers, saw past the pricked and bleeding fingers that gathered a respectable 150 pounds of cotton every day except Sunday. For him, Essie’s thick thighs and delicate wrists were a kind of currency. She knew then that they purchased everything except mercy.
“It won’t never happen again. This, I promise you,” Amos said to her seven days after he failed her.
Later, much later, she showed her broom-husband her commitment by muddying her knees beside his. However, she would remain skeptical. Skepticism was the only thing that she could truly claim as hers. She took it with her to the barn the day Amos sent her there with a message.
“This ain’t pie; this peace,” she said by way of greeting to Isaiah as she balanced the wildberry confection in one hand; the pie was covered by a piece of cloth so white it glowed. In the other hand, she held the pale baby she named Solomon for her own good reasons. She carried the apprehension atop her head, balancing it like they did in the old days.
Solomon was fussy. He threatened to topple everything by pulling at her dress, right where the milk had made it damp. She hated that he had that sort of power over her body, his cries like a spell making her breasts respond by leaking drops of her serum-self out for his nourishment. She nearly dropped him, but Isaiah caught him by the bottom and took him from Essie’s loose grasp. Solomon looked at Isaiah with big, flat eyes, blue as birdsong, set at the edge of a face that seemed nearly skinless. And yet, in the natural curl in the baby’s sun-colored tresses, Isaiah found something familiar enough.