“Good morning,” Amos would say with a smile too earnest to be honest. Maggie would nod in return as she walked by him and then cut her eyes the moment she was clear. She did, however, understand what Essie saw in him when Paul sent him in to her. It was nice to be asked rather than taken, to be held close rather than held down. Nevertheless, a snake was still a snake and its bite hurt whether it was poisonous or not.
Sometimes, when Maggie watched Amos closely—the gait of his walk, the upward tilt of his nose, how his habbage rode his back—she laughed. She knew what he was trying to do, whom he was attempting to imitate, and she knew why. She had no contempt for him but had no warmth either. He had a kind face, though sorrowful; the latter connected him to their people and this place. He was as black as virgin soil even if his loyalties seemed to lie elsewhere, where the potential for backfire was imminent.
Maggie shook her head and put her hands on her hips.
“Just plain foolish,” she said to no one.
She turned to walk back into the kitchen and saw that the sky had begun to lighten a bit and she could make out the shape of the barn among the shadows. That was where Samuel and Isaiah spent most of their time working, tending to the animals, breathing, sleeping, and other things. Those poor boys: The Two of Them. They learned, and learned early, that a whip was only as loathsome as the person wielding it. Sometimes, they made it even harder for themselves by being so damn stubborn. But never had stubbornness been so enchanting.
She didn’t take to them at first. Like all children, one was indistinguishable from the other. They blended into a mass of ignorant, pitiful bodies, and they laughed, high-pitched, without reserve, which made them too tempting to ignore. There wasn’t a single blade of grass that didn’t bend to the sorrow of this place, but these little ones behaved as if it could be openly defied. But by the time hair began to sprout around their sexes, The Two of Them had figured out (maybe not figured out as much as revealed) an ingenious way of separating themselves from the others: by being themselves. And the split exposed a feeling in her long hidden.
Even now, she couldn’t explain it, but her breasts became tender around them, like they should have, but didn’t, when she was forced to be Empty’s mare. Along with the tenderness of breast came a tenderness of heart. It wasn’t simply that they were helpful, that she never had to lift a bucket of water from the well or a log for the fire or a boulder to beat the wash when they were around. It wasn’t just that they had never asked anything of her, not even her approval. It might have been that the feeling had nothing to do with them at all, but rather with something they helped her to remember.
She saw something once. Just as the moon had gone as high as it would go, she crept over one night to bring them the food that she had hidden earlier that morning: a strip of fried quail, half an egg, a few apple slices that she mashed into a sauce, no poisons. She moved quietly from the house to the barn. She came up from the backside of the barn and intended to enter from a side door, but it was latched. She heard noises and pressed her ear up against the wall. A moan, perhaps; a gasp; the longest sigh ever. Then she peered through a crack between the boards of the wall. She could only see them because of the moonlight that shot in through the parts of the roof where the planks needed repair. Shadowy figures. From a distance, they seemed to be tussling.
She was certain she saw Samuel bite Isaiah’s shoulder in an attempt to be free from his grasp. They fumbled around the haystack, crushing misplaced saddles and frightening wayward crickets into the air. They were naked, sweaty, as twisted together as earthworms, and grunting pig songs. When they had finally come to a stop, their faces were pressed together, held there, seemingly, by their quivering tongues. Then one turned on his stomach. She hurried back to the Big House.
To ease some other pain, surely. Surely.
But what was that flitting around in her head and why had she begun to sweat so? What was she remembering?
Her journey to the barn became nighttime routine. Quietly, she peeked into it, gladly offering her soul for just a sliver of moonlight. She watched them from underneath ladders, behind stacks of hay, or through the back walls of horse pens. She had no desire to interrupt or even to discuss what she saw; simply bearing witness was treasure. For they were as frisky and playful as crows and her proximity made her feel as if she were in the dark sky, suspended upon the surface of their wings. Oh so black. Oh so high. Up there, where there was safety and glow.
But down here, they had better be careful.
She had tried to find a word for what she witnessed. There was none she could think of; at least, there was no word extraordinary enough, particularly not in the tongue she spoke now.
Why aren’t they afraid? Maggie found herself asking as she stood in the kitchen, still staring at the barn from the northern windows. She rubbed her face. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something blink into existence, shimmer, and then fade out as soon as it had arrived. It was the edge of something black. Then something swirled. With it came the stench. She could only see the outline, but it might have been someone on fire. By the time she reached for a jug of water, it was gone. A spot of dried blood on the floor right where the haint had visited was the only evidence she had that she was not imagining things.
The pounding in her chest subsided and she scratched her cheek to stop from weeping. Was it memory or prophecy? She couldn’t tell. Sometimes, there was no difference. She held on to herself regardless and put past and future things as far away as they would let her—as though that mattered. Visions had the keys to the cage and would let themselves out whenever they pleased. This condition had to be lived with. There was no other way.
The cage was unlocked when thinking about The Two of Them. And it was, then, no surprise to her that they chose each other above the other, more readily available options. It was unremarkable that they mostly didn’t pay attention to a woman, not even when forced. Not even in July, when toubab women would wait for toubab men to render themselves unconscious from spirits. These women—who went on and on about what it meant to be a lady (a term Maggie thought foolish)—got down on barn floors, pulled their dresses up over their breasts, spread their legs from one corner to the other, and writhed for the men they publicly despised.
Isaiah and Samuel weren’t moved in January either, when people sometimes huddled together for warmth. This close to a woman—whose skin and hair were dark with readiness, whose breath comforted and agitated, whose nether-scent threatened to make the insides of men shatter from longing—and neither of The Two of Them so much as twitched a pinky finger. No, those boys risked more than was necessary searching each other’s faces, again and again, for the thing that made rivers rush toward the sea. Always one smiling and always the other with his mouth angry and ajar. Reckless.
She looked out the window again at the barn and saw the sun peek its head through the eastern trees. The pork was almost done. She took a plate and wiped it with the edge of her dress and went to the dining room table.
She had set the table with unfathomable resentment. White table linen, sharp at the corners, napkin rings strangling, cutlery already its own kind of deadly. All living things smothered, even the picked-wildflower centerpiece. The dim candle lighting cast a brass shadow, making everything, even Maggie, appear appropriately solemn.