From the front part of the brothel house, I hear Cynthia’s voice calling, “Naomi!”
“I gotta go,” I say to Jeremy.
“You cain’t go.”
But I do.
He looks in my eyes, smiles that smile. “Well, you cain’t go without this.” He unfolds his wad of money, separates out about half his winnings, gives it to me.
“I cain’t take this,” I say.
“Could be your ticket outta here,” he whispers. “Besides, we’re a good team. You and me. I can’t cheat my teammate.” He yells to the men, “Y’all ain’t gon’ wear out my good fortune. Say bye to my lucky charm.”
“Naw, no,” the old man betting against me say. “She gotta keep rolling and crap out like the rest of us.”
The dealer picks up the dice. “She say she’s done. Who’s next?”
“Dealer, you ain’t fair,” the old man say.
Jeremy pulls me up to a stand and goes with me to the door, pushes it open ahead of me. Johnny’s waiting across the yard, playing marbles with hisself.
“Naomi!” Cynthia calls again.
Jeremy comes all the way out to the porch with me.
“Thank you,” I tell him.
“So. . you think it’s wrong?” he say.
“For a negro to gamble wit whites?” I say.
“For a man like me to fancy a beautiful woman like you.”
I hide my smile with a turn down the stairs. He catches my swinging hand, stops me, and say, “I won’t tell.”
Everything inside me flutters.
The back door bursts open and Bubba comes out holding the note of a long burp. He bear hugs Jeremy, lifts him up, and carries him back through the door. Jeremy’s eyes stay on mine ’til his door closes.
I teeter on the stairs. Filled.
15 / OCTOBER 1862, Tallassee, Alabama
THE “AMERICAN” CIVIL War started a year ago, April, and I don’t know what it means to be American.
I’m not.
The war began when a Frenchman, Pierre Beauregard, a one-star general, ordered his troops to open fire on Americans with fifty cannons at Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina.
Even though folks in town proudly call Pierre “Little Napolean” nobody calls him French but me, ’cause I’m fair. They don’t call him French here ’cause he white and rich and born here. . mostly. His family was of a French colony in Louisiana, and that French family line led him there from France. He didn’t speak English ’til he was twelve.
So, I don’t know how many generations on American soil you got to live before you’re called “American,” or if English has to be your first language.
No matter, negroes may always be foreigners.
But I’m here.
And tonight, the fall of white light and gray shadow from the moon showers me as I pour myself through the slaves’ quarters — one-room shacks built in a semi-circle around a patch of dirt. I coast along a path of balding grass, trodden over and worn by cats and people. The wispy blades shift as my body brushes by.
I pass door after door. Ada Mae’s is the third one on the right. Charles’s and Josey’s is the seventh or eighth — the last one on the end.
The path continues on without me, leading from Josey’s to a hole in the woods where everybody dumps their leftover food for the critters to finish.
I pass through Josey’s door and round the corners of the main room, blowing by a sheet that hangs from the ceiling. It divides Charles’s part from Josey’s. But right now, they’re sitting together at the table eating hot stew.
Charles gets up and checks the shuttered window, makes sure it’s shut, puts a blanket around Josey, then sits back down. She brings her legs up on her stool and crosses ’em there, pulls her blanket tighter.
The dull scraping of their wooden spoons catch most of the stew left at the bottom of their bowls. The chicken bones have been slid out of the way to get to the vegetables. Charles finishes his meal and waits for Josey so he can clear the table.
She say, “That boy, Everett, made Ada Mae fall again today. Can you believe she call him sweet? Sweet!”
“Nobody knows the ways of the heart,” Charles say.
“That ain’t heart, that’s just dumb.”
“Well, boys are good at that.”
“Be better if they was good at somethin else.”
Josey slides her spoon across the bowl, back and forth while Charles reaches under his chair and sets a soft, burlap-wrapped mound of cloth on the table. It’s topped with a blue bow. Before Charles can speak, Josey swipes her gift off the table and got her fingers swishing around the bow.
The bag blossoms.
A button-down blouse, matching white stockings, and a pleated blue skirt tumbles out.
“It’s the fashion up north, I heard,” Charles say. “If you don’t like it I could. .”
The hanging sheet that separates the room billows as Josey runs through it, behind it, already undressing. She rolls her new stockins up her bug-bitten legs, then buttons her skirt, her blouse, twirls on her way back through the sheet. She poses. Her blouse is hanging lopsided off her shoulder, her stockings are sagging at her knees, and her skirt is slid down on one side.
“There,” Charles say, satisfied. “A young lady.” She holds out the bottom of her skirt and spins. “Yes, ma’am,” Charles say, his voice quivering. “A young lady.”
She hugs his neck and his chair tilts back from the love of it. “Best birthday of my life,” Josey say, picking up the gift wrapping from the floor.
“The happiest day of mine,” Charles say.
“Two years old when you come. Could hardly talk. Only in pieces. Potty trained you myself that first day. You cried the whole first week.”
“Happy tears, I bet,” Josey say. “You think it was hard for whoever had to give me away?”
Charles starts stacking their mostly empty stew bowls. “Don’t time just fly by?” he say. “Fourteen years ole. .”
“I love you, Daddy,” she say, leaving her first question alone. She takes the bowls from his hand and nears the front door where she steps out of her stockings and into Charles’s big shoes barefooted. She throws her blanket over her shoulders.
“Happy birthday,” Charles say.
By her third step outside, the cold air finds its way through Josey’s skirt and the gaps between her heels and Charles’s shoes. She lets her blanket slide further down her back and around her legs and waist. She catches it there, ties it around her hips.
She scrapes the tiny bones and smeared food from the bowls and into the hollow of the bushes where critters wait eager and hungry for their turn at it.
A snap of thistle turns her around sudden. She hooks her arm around the neck of a person — a boy — and pulls him to the ground, straddling him, pinning him, lifting her bowls above his head.
“Wait!” he yell.
It’s the boy, Wayward.
“What you doing in my yard!” Josey say.
“I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“You watching me!”
“I. . I was just. .”
“You want to hurt me?”
“I. . I’m sorry!” His voice trembles and his body is limp in surrender but she don’t get up.
“We done talking,” she say, pushing herself off him finally. “You go home and don’t you come back ne’re.” She dusts her knees and puts her blanket over herself, collects her bowls and starts back to her door. He brings hisself to his feet. Tall as she is now. His light-colored clothes against his black skin and the night sky makes his shirt look empty. It’s been months since I last seen him.
“Josey?” he say.
She pause.
“I’m here to see you. To talk to you. To say happy birthday.”
“How do you know my name?”