22 / FLASH, Conyers, Georgia, 1847
I WALK QUIET ALONG the path of a stream, pressing my feet softly on the spongy ground where the short grass and flooded water trace my footfalls.
Trout, brown and green and yellow, wade in place beside me, waiting for food. A few feet away, a lone fish jumps from the water and splashes down, chasing a bug or watching me. I take a step behind a tree, lean back further to keep my shadow off the surface. Upstream, Jeremy’s hiding behind that mostly bare bush, but I can see him clear as day ’cause the small spring leaves ain’t near enough cover for his blue shirt.
He signals with his hand for me to move down further, holds it up again to say stop, then points down to the water. I drop my fishing line in and my bright red salmon egg rides the running water, gliding toward him.
It disappears.
Jeremy shoots his thumb up from his fist, confusing me. What I’m supposed to do?
“Pull up on it!” he yell. “Pull up!”
The fish leaps out of the water and my pole shoots out of my hands, straight toward the waves.
“Don’t let it get away!” Jeremy say, hopping over rocks and around a tree to get to me. I dive on that pole, pound my fist on the handle, jam it in the soggy grass. Water sprays in my face. When Jeremy gets to me, he grabs my pole and yanks the fish on the other end. “You all right?” he say.
I spit out the dirty water, wipe it away from my eyes. “It’s that fish that gotta worry,” I say.
He watches the place downstream where my line pierced the water.
“You got it?” I say.
“I got it.”
He closes one eye and follows the line to where that fish should be even though it stopped moving.
It splashes!
Jeremy pulls up on our pole, the fish fights side to side. He winds the line around his elbow and hand, careful not to break it, and drags its fight to the shore. Finally, he lops it out of the water, puts his foot on its side to keep it from jumping back in. Takes the hook out. The hole where it was pierced trickles blood water.
He puts his finger through the fish’s gills and holds it out to me but I shake my head. “I don’t want it.”
“It’s your first fish,” he say and raises it to my face. I cringe.
“Don’t be scared,” he say. “You grew up on a farm.”
“Not a fish farm!”
“Come on, Mimi.”
I like when he calls me that.
“I can’t take your first fish.”
“But it’s alive,” I say.
“Not for long, it ain’t. Put some salt and pepper on this bad boy and. .”
“You cain’t eat it! You said it’s my first fish. So I say put it back in the water with its brothers and sisters.”
He hugs me with his free arm, laughing. “It’s got family now?” The fish’s neck fans in and out.
“Throw it back in!”
“What you gon’ give me if I do?”
“My appreciation,” I say.
He sets it down in the water. It only floats. Paralyzed.
“See,” he say. “It don’t even want to go.” It jerks and disappears under the blanket of dark water.
Jeremy twirls me around and into himself, and rests his body behind me. He say, “Now that we’re gonna go hungry, we’ll have to find something else to do.”
His closeness makes me nervous. “Cynthia will be back soon,” I say, quick.
“Tomorrow. First thing. I know. She told me.” He lays his head on my shoulder and kisses the side of my neck.
“Did she tell you where she was going?” I say, quicker.
He brushes his lips on my ear and whispers, “How about we stop talking about Cynthia.”
“What you want to talk about then?”
“Whatever’s on your mind. I want you to take me there.”
His words make me shy. I try to make him forget about my mind, about being so close to me. I say, “We only got bread and butter now. What else we gon’ eat wit it?”
“With,” he say. “Not ‘wit,’ with.” He turns me around to him, presses his belly on mine.
“With,” I say, my tongue stuck under my front teeth now.
I feel frozen ’cause we touching this way and ain’t nobody around to stop us.
“Can I hold your hand?” he say, and takes it without my yes.
He grabs my hand through the fingers like James used to do Hazel and walks me along the stream to where the sunlight is on our blanket. Our lunch sacks are there, too, filled with bread and no fish. He collapses on the blanket and leans back on his elbows, watching me.
I know what his watching means. How men, in their minds, take themselves on a magic carpet ride without us, imagining. That’s what Cynthia say. But I don’t know what it means. Not exactly. I’ve never laid with a man the way women like Cynthia do. Like Momma had to do. Or like Hazel would have done with James because she loved him.
I love Jeremy. But I don’t understand how laying together feels good.
Don’t understand how the screaming means good. Good enough to pay for. Good enough to lose your mind for. Good enough to spend the rest of your life submitting to because you have to or because of this good. It is a wonder of God’s hands that He would put our greatest pleasure in our tools of creation.
I would like to know that magic.
And why Cynthia values it so. And how a man, in so doing, can change the substance of a woman forever. From virgin to something else entirely. Or, is that a manmade rule? That he can lie down with as many women and wives as he wants and still get up with his value.
I want to keep my value.
I don’t want many men, I only want one. But manmade rule say I cain’t marry him, neither.
I want to keep Cynthia as we are.
This is my body.
I want to decide my own value. I don’t want a price tag no more. A slave or a woman. Valued twice. First as a woman and again as not white. I’m priceless. No matter what’s been done to my body, by me or somebody else. I want to make my own rules. . if I wanted. If I was sure.
Jeremy pats the space next to him so I can sit with him but I’m slow to go. “It don’t matter to me that you a negro,” he say. “All I see when I look at you is woman. Beauty is beauty.” When I finally sit, I hold my knees to my chest, keep him far enough away. He slides one finger along my arm.
“People will hate to see us together,” he say. “Me loving you. Our happy children.”
“Children?”
He turns my chin toward his. “Could you risk it?”
I suck in my breath. Hold it. Cain’t turn away ’cause he’s holding me there with his eyes — the tiny red threads inside the whites are tying me up.
I see for the first time the tiny brown freckles that trace his eyelids above his light lashes. A single lash is out of line, bent and longer than the rest. He say, “Can I kiss you?”
I cain’t breathe.
Before I can say no, his mouth is coming close to my face. I cross my eyes, watch his lips form a pucker — see ’em soft and funny looking, more crinkly than I expected. I cain’t help but laugh.
“What?” he say. “Why you laughing?”
“You funny.”
“You don’t want my kisses?”
I put my hand over my mouth, catching my giggles.
“All right, but these some good kisses,” he say, opening our lunch sacks.
He lays out the bread and a flask of something on the blanket. “I brought wine,” he say, moving hisself over to make more room for me.