Promise, page 27
Ezra resented her parents’ insistence on keeping silence at the center of their home, acknowledging that their lives were peripheral in relationship to the village. They didn’t want to attract notice from the village, yet Ezra wondered how they could’ve ever thought that they had power in maintaining their invisibility. She resented the need in their house for an education that Ezra felt had enslaved her dear father. She’d detested those dusty books, aware that their authors were white people who assumed Negroes were mostly illiterate.
Ezra stood in the clearing, trying to make out Ruby’s shack through the thick veil of snow blowing wildly all around her. The dark reddish hair on her head was plastered to her skull. Her heavy coat was soaked, nearly pulling her to the ground. Her freezing fingers touched her pocket. She thought of Miss Irene, who’d always seemed to be her soul mother. Miss Irene had taught her how to love herself, to defend what she loved, and to go towards good and evil with a warrior’s courage.
There was evil in front of her now. She couldn’t stop thinking of Ernest’s description of the deputy knocking Miss Irene to the ground and dragging her out of her own house. Had he or Mr. Scaggs killed her? This possibility was as unbearable to Ezra as the death of her father. Ezra needed to feel that she had the power to change what her father or mother would have quietly accepted as fate. Ezra was prepared to shoot Fate between its blue eyes.
She would demand that Ruby’s father tell her where Miss Irene was and what they’d done to her. Stumbling forward through drifts of snow, Ezra pictured her father’s shrouded head and the smell of Miss Irene’s Egyptian hair oil when she’d hugged Ezra, reminding her that God would keep them safe. Ezra would take God into her own hands.
She saw low candlelight through one of the windows. Trembling, she remembered all those days she and Ruby had spent playing in this mud-packed yard. Ruby intended to float away on a large boat to a new life without looking back. She could become anyone, maybe even herself. Ezra knew Ruby would never return to Salt Point. And neither would she, not with what Ezra was prepared to do if Ruby’s father said the wrong thing. She thought of the man, with his sad eyes, and how Ruby spoke of loving him in spite of what he was.
Miss Irene had helped Ezra understand that there would always be differences between Ezra and Ruby. Sitting in Miss Irene’s kitchen, hearing stories of how she was raised in Royal, how the liberation of Black people could only be achieved by Black people and green money, and how Ruby would change, whether she wanted to or not, Ezra was filled with feelings she knew she couldn’t share with anyone, not even Cinthy. Her sister was too sensitive, too young in spite of her old eyes, too concerned with a kind of obedience that Ezra had never understood.
She heard the distant whine of hounds somewhere behind the shack. Her blood pounded in her ears as she went up the snow-covered steps.
He was there. Staggering back and forth across the filthy floor. A film of snow blew through one of the open windows. There was an overturned trunk near the little woodstove whose intense heat surprised Ezra. She’d anticipated coming into this place and finding Miss Irene tied up or worse. Instead, it was Mr. Scaggs alone. When he turned to Ezra, she saw that half his face was opened to the bone. One whole hand was stained red. Ezra could smell the sharp scent of liquor as she looked at him tottering in pain. Her anger rose in her throat. Miss Irene must have wounded him, but had he wounded her too? Ezra gripped her pocket. There were bees in her ears, smoke in her mouth.
“Lily? Is that you come to see me again?”
“Where is she? What did you do to her?”
“Can’t remember,” he said. His mouth gurgled with blood. “I think Charlie threw her into the sea.”
Ezra pulled Miss Irene’s pistol out of her pocket. Her hand was steady in spite of the tremors that ran through her body.
His metal eyes flashed as he laughed at her.
“You finally going to kill me? Shit, you did that long ago.”
“Who is Lily?”
Ruby’s father spat blood on the floor. “You know damn well who you are. You know what I am, because you gave me this pain.”
“You don’t know anything about pain,” said Ezra.
“Ruby put you up to this? She ain’t never coming back. I seen her eyes.”
“I’m not Ruby. I’m not Lily. I’m Ezra Kindred.”
“Ain’t you her friend? Is that who you are, come to put me in my grave?”
“I’m here about Miss Irene.”
“Did you help them kidnap her? It’s a crime what you done. I told that rich son-of-a-bitch I’d work to earn Ruby back. I’d be his slave. But it’s too late.”
“I’m not here about you or Ruby. I’m here for Miss Irene.”
“That bitch tried to cut my face off,” he said, dropping his hand from the deep slash along the side of his jaw. Blood dripped from his fingertips to the floor. He spoke softly. “Shoot me in my heart, Lily, so I won’t see the truth no more.
“I always thought I’d die by my daughter’s hand. I was just fine with that. I put my hands on Ruby’s dreams, put my fists through her, and Christ if she didn’t keep telling me she still loved me, until she didn’t. Ain’t that something? See, I wasn’t like my daddy or my granddaddy. All my life I been punished for not following in their fucking footsteps. Didn’t want granddaddy’s evil to pay for my life. Tried my best to take myself out of the family’s fate, but everything I tried to earn on my own fell apart. It’s easy for a man to become nothing, easier than people think. Everything I told myself I was going to be melted in my mouth before I could taste it. Couldn’t never be my own man ’cause everywhere I gone and everything I tried to do—it was all the same.”
“You watched him throw her into the sea,” said Ezra, taking a step closer. “You did nothing. Because you are nothing. Do you know what you deserve?”
“Lily, do you remember that Sunday? On the sidewalk? Sweet Jesus, that silence of yours and how you knew it would insult me. I could’ve killed you and we both knew it. They’d have thrown you atop the ashes of that other nigger, but I kept our secret. I couldn’t ever confess how much I needed you. Why did you make me remember what I was?”
Suddenly, he whipped his body around like a belt. Mr. Scaggs held a gun of his own. His other hand was a red, dripping fist.
Ezra drew back, screaming. As she covered her face, she saw that instead of firing at her, Ruby’s father had pulled the trigger of his gun inside his own mouth.
The room filled with silver dust, the odor of blood, the stink of gunpowder.
In terror, Ezra folded to the ground, shaking. She’d walked alone through this blizzard, convinced she had the power to end a white man’s life. But she hadn’t. He’d taken that power for himself. Dropping Miss Irene’s pistol to the floor, she looked down at her hands as if she’d held them above a hot flame too long. She thought of how sheltered the life she and her sister lived had been. She was fifteen. Her parents had built a home, a dream in a world that was entirely flammable. Miss Irene was likely dead, her Daddy too, and Ezra feared her Mama wouldn’t last until spring. Anger flushed her soaked clothes. Each of them had shown her so much, yet Ezra felt it was inadequate. Life wasn’t a pile of lessons folded into the heart. She felt her own spinning inside her chest. The last part of her girlhood left her, as a sweet, milky breath. She wondered if that was her soul.
Ezra crawled across the room to Ruby’s father. His mouth was a spattered hole. As she leaned over his body, she saw Ruby’s eyes, their blond lashes tipped in blood. His darkened gaze stared silently at something above her head, as if he’d finally witnessed something fair, a fate that belonged only to him. He’d done a thing by himself. Jonah Reuben Scaggs III could turn away from his past having brought himself to justice. Haunted by his life, he could go elsewhere, into his future perhaps. His dead eyes brightened with the thought of a long journey.
THREE
26
It was summer again—July.
Despite living with Ginny for the past six months, Mama and I weren’t used to her ways. Damascus bewildered us in the rare moments it was able to puncture our long hours of despair. Most of the time, I thought of Ezra’s new life, which was far from us in Royal with the Junkett family.
After Mr. Scaggs’s suicide, Mr. Caesar, Miss Irene, and Mama decided we could no longer fool ourselves into believing that Salt Point meant us no harm. They’d worried that Miss Irene’s pistol would be discovered by the deputy whenever they found Ruby’s father.
But by then, we would all be long gone. Mr. Caesar convinced Mama that we should split up, to keep Ezra safe. She’d go to Royal with their family, while Mama and I traveled to Damascus to stay with Ginny.
Every two weeks since January, Mr. Caesar had phoned my grandmother’s house to speak with Mama. He called her from different towns, just to be safe. He’d discouraged us from writing letters or leaving any possible trail for the authorities to trace. He told us that Ezra missed us, that she was growing rapidly in height and consciousness, and that she rarely complained of anything. Ernest had decided to apply for college and Miss Irene was making quilts and could barely keep up with the amount of orders she received. She was teaching Ezra how to use her own hands, to keep herself busy with thread and needle, with kneading bread and washing greens.
I couldn’t forget that evening when Ezra returned to us, assuming that Miss Irene had been killed. When she came in, shivering, she was shocked by the sight of Miss Irene standing to open her arms. Ezra ran, weeping, to the woman, nearly knocking her over as they embraced. We all wept then, as Ezra described how she’d barely been able to make it home in the storm. Then we wept harder when Ezra told us how Ruby’s father had swallowed the mercy of his own gun. Though I said nothing to anyone, I wondered if there was any meaning to the fact that we’d lost our daddy and Ruby had lost hers too.
* * *
•••
My birthday, which was in May, meant that I was now fourteen years old, the same age Mama was when the Daughters dropped her back in Damascus. I tried to imagine Mama as a young girl, walking around this place. Already, I’d spent many afternoons along the backwards river, and had watched its thaw in spring.
One sunlit day, when the ground was sweet-tempered again, Ginny drove Mama and me to Hinder Me Not so that we could place flowers on Daddy’s grave, a deep blue headstone that held his full name—Heron Theodore Kindred—as Mama had wanted. The first time I saw his name on that rock was bludgeoning.
Something in my spirit fell with a thud and wouldn’t get up. After that, I began to do most of my talking inside my head. There was no one else listening to me anyway.
By the beginning of June, Ginny ordered me to stop walking over to Hinder Me Not and sitting in the graveyard like I wasn’t flesh and blood. “You ain’t nowhere near your six-feet, little sister,” she’d said. “Don’t let me hear somebody else say they seen you over in that cemetery neither. Remember, your daddy’s bones might be there but his soul ain’t. His soul is in you and in your mama upstairs, fighting for her life. His soul is in your sister too, wherever she is.”
In spite of the warming weather that usually made me happy, my heart grieved. I couldn’t stand the sunlight for too long without feeling sick inside. The edges of my immediate memories of Salt Point had begun to curl like the family photographs I’d ripped out of our albums when Mama had ordered me to pack as many of our things as we could fit in the car.
Though it had been months since we fled Salt Point, I still had a tendency to take on the traits of a fugitive. I was fearful of speaking too much in front of anyone. I had terror-drenched nightmares of Deputy Charlie or other white men finding Ezra in Royal and harming her and the Junkett family. But to our knowledge, the authorities weren’t searching for us.
We’ll go back when it’s safe, Mama said often when we first arrived.
But that was a lie.
I’d known it even as I filled suitcases with our belongings.
My days in Damascus were occupied with unanswerable questions and memories while Mama faded upstairs in a room, her head barely leaving its dent on the pillows. Mama was sometimes so still in her bed that Ginny kept a small mirror on the nightstand to check my mother’s breathing.
So I spent as much time as I could on the porch.
When July came, the heat made the air in Damascus waver as though it were combustible. The flies dove at my face, and I flicked mosquitoes away until I was too hot to be bothered if they covered my arms and legs with bites. Around my grandmother’s porch katydids and crickets filled the air with chirping. Butterflies circled large vases of wildflowers on my grandmother’s porch. When a dragonfly hovered, I’d look up from my stupor and marvel at it, remembering how my father loved to watch them. There was a collection of assorted bottles, all blue, because Ginny liked what the bottles did in rainstorms, or when a simple breeze fluted its breath over those glass rims. These ordinary objects became an orchestra of sublime instruments that brought colors alive in my head. Inside my grandmother’s house there was no room that did not have a wall or ceiling painted some shade of blue.
Months ago, at the beginning of the new year, when I’d asked Mama why we had to go to Damascus, she spoke of her need to be put back. She couldn’t ignore the voice that called her home anymore, and she’d waited too long to have the surgery the doctor had claimed might give her more time.
I too had long given up insisting things could be done to save her life.
* * *
•••
Today was a baking day. Ginny had pie orders to fill. Inside the house, dishes clanged and clattered in her kitchen. When I offered to help, as I had done for months now, she always rolled her eyes or said hell no without looking up to see the hurt on my face. Unwelcome in my grandmother’s kitchen, I staked out my usual territory on the porch swing.
Rays of sunlight drew sweat along the edges of my hairline as I stretched my legs, pushing the swing back and forth. I focused on calculating how far I could go without banging the swing against the side rails, which would bring my grandmother outside, her cheeks flecked with flour, to complain and cuss. That distracted me from thinking about all the things we’d had to leave behind.
I couldn’t let myself remember Ezra’s last words to me before she’d climbed into the overloaded car with the Junkett family, clutching a brown hard-shelled suitcase. She was wearing Mama’s green felt coat with its velvet lining. The material no longer swallowed her inside its shape. She was exactly Mama’s size. It was too much. I could still feel her fingers cupping my face, my tears.
“If I don’t get to you before Mama should—”
“Please stay,” I cried, shaking. “Please.”
“I’m always with you.”
“Love you, sister,” I said, feeling her warm breath on my cheek.
“Don’t love your pain,” said Ezra, gripping my fingers before she pulled me into her arms. She blinked away tears and smiled like summer. “This world promises us harm, and there’s nothing you can do about it, except to have the nerve to love your life.”
* * *
•••
Damascus was vain. The entire valley surrounding Ginny’s house bragged of its beauty. The flowers did not tremble but beckoned the air to flush the wind with the sweetness. The green leaves on the trees gave delicious shade between hard patches of sunlight. In the mornings, before it grew too hot, the peonies were so lusty they made something tingle inside me when I inhaled them. I knew that I was close to my own time, when I would be changed from youth to young woman. I was following my sister and wished I could hear her voice. She appeared in the murmuring rustle of swaying branches. Seeds danced and seethed in the air. The land rolled its lush girth along the horizon at dawn. Beauty dried her mouth on everything it tasted.
But I craved Salt Point: that smell of the sea rubbing the rough air, and the way summer light swelled, leaving whorls of golden light inside long days. I thought of my father and my sister until my throat ached, my broken heart spinning like the chimes that tinkled from their hooks on Ginny’s porch.
Over the past months, Mama’s helplessness allowed me to disappear, lost in plain sight. I found myself steeping in resentment at the way so many adults seemed to tolerate pain, however high, until it became ordinary, just another clause in their acknowledgment of a world beyond one’s control. My mother’s eyes had the look of someone who was waiting for something final to happen to her.
27
Ginny lived so far out from the downtown district, it was a long walk just to go on a simple errand. For Mama’s sake, I tried to figure out how I could belong in Damascus. Back in February, Ginny had gone over to the school and told the principal I wouldn’t be attending school again until next fall. In the meantime, I was to spend some part of each day reading, which was fine by me. When I tried to thank her, my grandmother only waved me away. “Abbotts don’t do all that thankfulness shit. We prefer common sense. Anybody with sense can see you ain’t in no shape to be sitting in nobody’s classroom. You got too much grief. Only Abbotts left now is me and Jolene. Poor thing. She didn’t harm nobody. Lived sweet as she could, her and your daddy, loving each other.”
Ginny lifted her eyes up to the ceiling. “You best spend all the time you can with her. Don’t sit up there crying and carrying on in her face. Don’t make her feel your troubles if you can help it. Bring her your brightest smile if you can, little sister. Tell her what’s going on out here in the world. Jolene’s casting the net of her next life, but she’s holding back. She’s holding on for you and your sister. Tell her about the sun shining, the birds a-singing, all the blue you seen in a single hour. Tell her about the orchards and the river. Tell her about the fresh air and most of all, tell your mama you love her and that you always will. Tell her she can go on. Sing her away. Tell her it’s safe to leave you.”
