“How much you think they give us for it?” Ray say.
“Least fifty. You and Henry gon’ wrap up that mother. Get our reward for her. I’ll go see about this one.”
“Ah, naw! I’m goin wit you,” Henry say. “You trying to keep the money all to yourself. We posed to split everything. Bitch and baby.”
“Take Henry,” Ray say to Bobby Lee. “I don’t like the way you been cuddling up to that thang.”
“I don’t need him slowing me down. He mess around and make it die before we get our money.” When Bobby Lee march off, Ray grabs him, holds him still, but Bobby Lee say, “We family, Ray. You know I wouldn’t cheat you.”
Ray lets go. “Come on, Henry. Help me wrap up this whore. And Bobby Lee, you don’t ’cept less than forty-five.”
“I want forty-five, too,” Henry say.
“We cain’t all get forty-five,” Ray say. “Math don’t work that way.”
BOBBY LEE DIDN’T get back ’til nearly four hours later.
Ray and Henry were already ’sleep, crouched on the side of the road next to my body. Ray wake up, yelling, “What the hell took you so long?”
“Couldn’t find nowhere to sell that baby,” Bobby Lee say. “So I tossed it in a field. Coons and critters will have her by morning.”
“You throwed the baby out!” Ray say.
“I knew it!” Henry say. “You just trying to keep the money.”
“Show me where you left the baby then,” Ray say.
“I said it’s dead and I ain’t got the money. Check my pockets. Go’n check ’um. See, nothin.”
“Aw, y’all,” Henry say. “We shoulda let the dogs get a go.”
It was the first time a man lied for me. It was the familiar ring of lifesaving untruth. A death rattle that has followed me all my life. And it was the sound that plunged me into the flashes.
1 / FLASH, Faunsdale, Alabama, 1838
THE KNOCKIN’S ALWAYS there behind the wall in Momma’s room. I call it Momma’s music. My sister Hazel calls it Momma’s tired tune, a shrill note sucked and blown from a stiff reed.
Hazel’s the closest thing I got to a good daddy so she never beat me for misbehaving, never leaves me long, and never tries to touch me the wrong way. She keeps me safe in this world, keeps me safe from the knockin.
We sit in the back of our dark two-room shack, huddled under a blanket together. She’s trying to drown out Momma’s song with her hand cupped over my ear, fogging it up with her whispering, telling me we gon’ play a game called “Let’s see who can fall asleep the fastest.” But after ten minutes of trying, even the late of midnight cain’t shake my eyelids free so now me and Hazel gon’ play a new game. It’s called “Who can be the quietest the longest.”
We always quiet, though. We got to be so Massa don’t remember we here. Hazel say Massa might forget about her, like he did me, since I was born early and he ain’t sure I come at all. The whiskey keeps him guessing and asking every year. He come out to the yard in the falltime to hand out our yearly portions and he mumbles his question about me under his breath and to the air like he ain’t really asking. Hazel say he scratch his head, squint his eyes, rub his belly, and mumble some words about a baby from a while back, too unsure to make his words clear but hoping somebody pick up on ’em anyway and cure his memory, tell on me.
But nobody do.
My Momma’s worth protecting so everybody look at him walleyed ’til he leave the question alone.
Me and Hazel go out late at night or at dusk when Massa’s gone to town, or ain’t coming back for days. We was wrong twice. Had to run back fast. The fear made me faster than Hazel. Faster than Massa, too. It was dusk both times.
Dusk is where it’s safe.
And dusk is where the magic is. Where you can hide things in the orange-pink shade of a losing day. Even the green waters of Moss Lake get blended gone from dusk. You can stand a running leap away from its wave and not see the water. Like it’s just another part of the field.
Dusk blends me away, too.
It’s why Hazel takes me out in it, hand-holding, running me through the short patch of the woods to the flatlands where gray shadows form four feet above the ground, mouth height, and buzz. Netted clouds of gnats, they are. And we race the light through ’em and they spread when we do, then close behind us, recaptured. I spit out the slow ones.
Hazel say I get my speed from my daddy. I hate that we ain’t got the same one, though. Her daddy was the nigga before Boss. Mine was a tenant farmer that Massa tried to sell a bad piece of land to. “Before you know it,” Massa woulda told him, “you’ll have your own slaves”—the same way he promised every poor white fool renting land from him. Probably made the offer on one of his celebration nights when he would spend the money he didn’t have and invite the whole town, make Momma dress up and smile.
I tell peoples my daddy was a Indian like the ones I seen around here. Hazel keep my hair braided long down my back to prove it. We lie ’cause family’s more important than truth and ain’t no point in reminding Momma.
The knockin’s getting louder so Hazel say she gon’ whisper my favorite story in my ear. “And when the prince came, he gave her a kiss to remember him by.” Thas how she always try to finish my story.
“Ugh! Not a kiss, Hazel! Tell it right.”
Hazel’s gon’ be full-grown soon. She turned eleven her last birthday. I picked the same day for my birthday so I be just like Hazel even though she come four winters before me. Momma said when Hazel was born, she could hardly push her out on the account that Hazel was fat. But that ain’t why Massa couldn’t sell her like I first reckoned. He sell big fat babies all the time. Even the ones with big heads. Hazel say it’s ’cause money come hard for white folk, too, like it did when Massa lost most everything he had. That was the year I was born. Hazel say he sold off most of the slaves that lived here with us and said he was gon’ buy some new ones but they never come. So we got a two-room cabin on our own, separated by a wall and a door. Me and Hazel stay in this back room where cain’t nobody see us.
We sleep together on the feather-stuffed mat inside a bed box and keep a wood barrel turn upside down next to us. We use it for a table most times but if Massa seem like he gon’ come back this way, Hazel cover me with it and put our piss pot on top so he don’t get tempted to wonder.
Hazel’s smart. She know everything. Even thangs Momma don’t know.
“A’right, a’right,” Hazel say. “When the prince came. . he give her a tickle like this!” She grab my foot and rumble her fingers around. I laugh so hard my mouth git stuck open and fill up with air so cain’t no words, no sound, nothin come out and I cain’t breathe.
“Pleeeasseee! Stop, Hazel, stop.”
“Sssh!” she say and look over her shoulder toward the back wall listening for Momma’s music. It’s still playing. A soft knock. A louder one.
She pinch my big toe, tug it out like she gon’ crack it. I hate that. She whisper, “Say, ‘I smell like stinky cheese.’”
“You smell like stinky cheese,” I whisper, giggling.
“No, say, you — Naomi — smells like stinky cheese.”
I catch the sound of my laugh in my hands.
HAZEL’S MAKING SHADOWS on the wall now. I ain’t got a dog but Hazel make me one. She use both hands to put a shadow of me on the wall, too, and make the legs walk.
Hazel say she put everything she love on that wall cause it block out the bad. Thas why she mark on it for everyone thas gone. She up to five scratches now, all of ’em baby girls. Most of ’em came between us, all but one. That one come and go last summer but I don’t miss her. There ain’t enough room for a baby and ain’t enough warm when cold winds blow through.