Another girl, a woman, runs out of the woods. Real.
She say to Feral, “You get the clothes. I’ll hold this one down,” and straddles Josey now.
Josey screams, “Da—!” But the woman slaps her hand over Josey’s mouth. Her broken yellow fingernails are murky like grease-soaked paper.
“Stop moving, girl,” the woman say. “We just need warm clothes.”
“Mama!” Feral say. “I got ’em!”
Josey watches the shadow of a tree roll across the ground and touch her shoulder, her neck, all over her stomach. Her eyes widen and her body seizes, helpless from the memories of these trees that once held her prisoner.
“Come on, Mama!” Feral say, running away from our clothesline. She got Charles’s shirt and all of Josey’s clothes, except one dress. They disappear into the silence of Tallassee.
Scattering noises revive.
They’re loud like a flock of nesting birds awakened. It’s coming toward us. A space between the trees sweeps open. A gray Confederate uniform. A black man. Under one arm is a pile of her clothes. Jackson throws his bag from his back and lifts Josey over his shoulder, pushes forward to the house.
30 / FLASH, Conyers, Georgia, 1847
TWO WEEKS AND I haven’t told Jeremy that I forgive him yet ’cause when you love the way we love, been through what we been through, you ain’t got to say it. Staying is enough.
EVERY DAY SINCE that day with Mr. Shepard, I been waiting for him to come back to work. It’s almost noon and he ain’t been here today, either. I scooch back on his piano stool, slide open the cover, and fall on a key. It tings.
I press another lightly.
Ting.
I start playing the only song I know. The same song I learned from watching him play. He up to four songs now but his music never gets old. But my song don’t sound like his.
That man with the satchel came by yesterday at sunrise. A Freedom Fighter. The one Albert told me was gon’ come and escape us from here. He came a week late. When he rattled the door, I was hung over my broom sulking. The noise made me jump ’cause don’t nobody come ’round that early. Almost 8:00 a.m. And we don’t open ’til two on Mondays and Tuesdays. So when he knocked, I didn’t answer.
I started sweeping my broom toward the door instead, leaned into the crack of it to peek at him. He must have heard me ’cause he took a step back, arms held up, a leather satchel in his hand, and let me look. He was a white man, plain as any but honest-looking — not like those around here. He had a boy’s face on a man’s body, the only giveaway to his age was the thin creases in his wide forehead. His blonde hair was groomed but not too much to mistake him for not-a-hardworker. Just cut nice, is all.
His brown leather vest laid over his blue-buttoned shirt and above his trousers the round of his silver belt buckle shined.
He said, “I’m looking to hire out a blacksmith and a nurse for the day.” He went on about needing help for his young son, needing horseshoes. “Soon as possible,” he said.
His satchel had an orange stripe across the flap where Albert said it’d be and he shifted it from one hand to the other as he talked, casual-like, made sure I saw it.
He pointed to the wagon behind him where two dark negroes was already in the seats, ones I ain’t never seen around here before. Twelve or thirteen was the girl, and the boy was nine or so.
He asked if he could at least see who he was talking to so I cracked the door open and let him see a piece of me. He nodded. I remembered what Albert said, “Nobody’ll suspect us if we travel this way. Not only are we traveling in the daylight, we’re going the wrong way. Hired-out day laborers, we are. Fancy word for borrowed slaves. And by the time Cynthia realize we wasn’t coming back, we’d be long gone and too far away for her to care. Maybe she wouldn’t care, no way. She don’t own us. But that fact don’t keep some folks from acting like it.”
“You do nursing?” the satchel man asked and shifted his bag again. “Is there somebody I can talk to about hiring you out? A blackmith, too. I heard y’all had a blacksmith.”
I looked beyond the man to out near his wagon. Albert weren’t on it. He was standing out in the field across the road near his workshop. I suspect he was waiting for me to decide. He’d never push me the way my sister Hazel did that night she told me to run, and this satchel man was my chance to make her sacrifice worth something, make James’s and Momma’s killings meaningful. Make it so I belong to myself and my future.
But I already got freedom here. With Jeremy. He’s my future.
I can still smell him all around this room. On these piano keys, my fingertips. My face. His scent reminds me of how our love lingers.
Satchel Man said again, “Somebody here I can talk to?”
I didn’t answer.
Don’t need his help.
Freedom is where the heart is and I got the man who loves me. Whoever heard of running anytime beside night, anyway? And what am I supposed to make of him coming to the front door like this? Got negroes in the wagon. Reckless.
I closed the cracked-open door ’til there was just a line of light between us. I pushed my lips to the space and said, “We ain’t open.”
EVEN THOUGH THIS is the longest time me and Jeremy ever been apart, longest we been without lovemaking, I know he’ll be back for me. I shouldn’t have made him mad, said what I said. But I was mad, too, at what happened with Mr. Shepard. It stayed fresh in my mind. Dirty.
AND I WAS sorry that I couldn’t get past my condition when we tried to lay together, pretended to be like we was. Jeremy went soft and I stayed dry.
I don’t remember what I said to make him so angry, but he stormed out, dressing hisself as he went, had me running behind him telling him sorry, then good riddance.
But he’ll be back for me.
He’ll forgive me.
Nobody can love him like I can.
I’m wearing the pretty yellow dress Jeremy bought me. I’ll wear it again tomorrow and the next day, if I have to. Every day ’til he comes back here so he can see me in it and know how much I love him.
This feels like the longest two weeks ever.
For now, though, I got to finish cleaning the parlor before Cynthia wake up and start yelling at me again for spending too much time pushing the broom. “Pretending to be cleaning,” she say. It’s one of the only things she’s had to say to me. She mostly sit in her room ’til five minutes before opening.
Sometimes I catch her sitting on the edge of her bed mumbling to herself. She probably asking herself why she didn’t stop Jeremy and me before it happened. I never promised her nothing and if God don’t forgive her for the things she did wrong in her life, it’s her own fault not mine. I don’t see how she could think what Jeremy and I found has anything to do with her.
She do treat her son Johnny better now. Gave him his own room and put me in it with him.
I don’t care.
I ain’t got to hear her snore no more and I can pray in silence. I promised God that if he send me Jeremy back, I’ll start going to church even if it mean going near those hateful ladies that curse us most Sundays.
Maybe I’ll stop doing the things Jeremy and me already do and wait ’til we married.
The jingle and click of a turning key starts at the front door. It excites me ’til I remember Jeremy ain’t got no key and we don’t open for another two hours.
It’s only Albert.
He stands in the doorway, his hair is red and wild as ever. I know what he got to say about me not leaving with Satchel Man yesterday and I don’t wanna hear none of it so I don’t start no conversation.