21 / APRIL 1863, Tallassee, Alabama
IT’S BEEN TWO weeks since negroes decided to leave without asking. They were wrong. Then last night, a man came to Annie’s without asking. He was wrong, too.
I had been chasing after his black buggy since I first heard it a quarter mile down Annie’s road. I wished to God that it was George. My hope helped make me swifter.
Falling rain was spreading around the buggy like tears, promising me it was George inside.
It bumped along the muddy road with its horses grunting and snot spilling, promising me George. And when the horses slowed in front of the Graham house, I was quivering for my satisfaction. Let me see him! I wanted to kill him.
A burst of firelight glowed from inside the carriage. Its door swung open where I was waiting, and a lamp came through the opening, then the arm of the white man. His whole body folded out. It weren’t George.
The man hopped down from the buggy steps, limped in place to keep his balance, held the lamp out in front of him, and stabbed his burgundy cane between loose stones. He threw his coat over his head and his black hair flattened in the rain. Mud sprayed on his trouser as he began his hobble to the front door, a walk like an almost-tipped-over jar, rocking to find its flat bottom again. But he couldn’t right hisself. He was a gimp. He shook his good leg on the front porch and the other he wiped down with both hands while I went inside.
Bessie was scrambling up the stairs toward Missus Graham’s bedroom. I met her at the top of the landing and could’ve swore she looked right at me. But as soon as I thought it, she walked right through me. “Missus Graham!” she said opening Annie’s door. She went in without asking, said, “Missus Graham!”
“What the hell’s wrong with you, girl?” Annie said, sitting straight up.
“It’s Mista Graham, ma’am. He here.”
Mr. Graham’s knocks returned to the door and Annie leaped out of bed like a child caught napping instead of cleaning and pulled a dress over her head, checked her face in the mirror, twice, rushed down the staircase, pinning her hair on the way. By then, Bessie was already in the main room, waiting for Annie’s signal to open the door. But instead of giving the sign right then, Annie waited.
Fourteen years she’d waited. Fourteen years ago, Mr. Graham — her then best friend — left her in the middle of the night with Scotch on his breath and unspoken words on hers. And now, his knock was at her front door again, a stranger.
He knocked harder, surer. He said, “Annie, open this door!”
Annie grabbed hold of a chair, bracing herself, but still waited.
“Annie!” he said.
She took a deep breath, nodded to Bessie. When the door opened, he came barreling in. “Next time you hear me at the door,” he told Bessie, “open it.”
“Yes’sa, Massa Graham.”
He was a beautiful man, Mr. Graham was. Like a garden statue standing there, five foot nothin. He threw his soaking-wet coat on the rack, letting its water rain on Annie’s newly polished floor. Bessie got him a towel.
He looked around the room, puffed his chest out, held his shoulders back, his legs spread in a wide stance like he weren’t a gimp and put his hands on his hips, nodded his head as if he was saying, yes, I live here. . Yes, I own this house. Everything in it’s mine.
“Get me some tea,” he said to Bessie.
“Yes’sa, Massa Graham,” Bessie said.
He took stock of the room, kicked off his shoes, and finally acknowledged his wife. “Annie.”
“Richard,” she said.
He dried hisself off, then threw the towel on the floor, stretched his back to cracking and something caught his eye on the grand mantle over the fireplace. He limped over to it, then fingered the plain porcelain figure and a matching white vase that sat in the middle of the mantle, lonely and small, even though they was a pair.
Richard moved the figurine along the shelf one way, then moved the vase the other. He stepped back to look at his new arrangement. Unsatisfied, he switched the vase and the figurine again and stared at ’em. Finally, he grabbed ’em both off the shelf and said, “No, even you can’t fix empty, Annie,” and laid them down like captured chess pieces.
“I wasn’t expecting you,” she said.
“This is my house,” he said, looking at her for the first time. “I live here.”
“Not for years,” Annie said.
“I’m not going to let you bully me out of my right, Annie. My property. My house. My place in it. I’m the head of this household,” he said, as if restarting a old argument new.
“I only meant that. . I’ve missed you,” she said.
“Psh,” he said. “You couldn’t wait for me to leave.”
“That’s not true, Richard.”
Bessie came in with his tea. He waved at her to set it down the farthest she could from Annie and he went to it, took it, told Bessie, “Take my shoes to my room.” But instead of getting ’em right away, Bessie looked to Missus Graham. Annie nodded and Richard raised his voice and his hand at Bessie. “You do what I say do,” Richard said. “I don’t need Annie’s approval.”
“Yes’sa,” Bessie said.
“Lincoln thinks he can infringe on our way of life,” Richard said. “Has taken it upon himself to take away our rights, our livelihood, kill our brothers. Remove our property. He’s freeing slaves to allow them to live among us as equals. Wants us to treat these mongrels as ‘brothers,’ too. It’s wrong. Wouldn’t you agree, Annie?”
“Is this about Lincoln?” she said.
“I intend to protect what’s mine from any challenger.”
“Do you intend to stay then?”
He sipped his tea. Then again while she watched.
“If Mr. Graham pleases,” Annie said, “make a new bed, Bessie, and see to it that he’s comfortable.”
“That we are comfortable,” Richard said.
“Yes. That we are comfortable. Clean sheets.”
That’s when he said it: “I have someone accompanying me.”
“Oh. Of course. Make a place for him, as well.”
“She’s pregnant,” Richard said. He used the word pregnant like it was some throwaway word, small talk, the same as saying, it’s night outside.
“What?” Annie said, raspy.
“With child,” he said. “She can help you to manage the property until it’s time for the baby to come.”
“And her husband?”
“Dead,” he said. He wouldn’t look at Annie.
“How long?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“How long, Richard?”
“Two or three years.”
“And you brought her here? You brought some pregnant whore to my house? Look at me and tell me, Richard. Is it yours?”
“You heard me the first two times.”
Before he finished his words, Annie swung at his face and he caught her hand, threw it down, held his gaze on her ’til she was the one who looked away.
He left her there that way, went outside and brought back that girl wrapped in three or four blankets and a hood over her head. When it slid off, she was the spittin image of Annie but a whole lot younger. He said to the girl, “This is my wife.”
“How do, ma’am?” the girl said, smiling.
Annie spit in her face but before her mouth closed, Richard’s backhand crushed Annie’s lips. “Be a lady, Annie! You’re still my wife.” Annie covered her mouth with shaking hands. “If anyone asks,” he told her. “This is your cousin, Katherine, visiting from Mississippi. Her husband, the father, is away at the war.”
Richard put his arm around the girl to help her to the stairs. He called to Bessie to fix Katherine some warm water, some dry, clean clothes, and to re-dress his bed, Annie’s bed, for Katherine. And for a long time, he sat in the chair across the room from that girl, watching her sleep. And Annie took herself into a guest bedroom where she stood ’til sunrise.