“Of course they would be,” she say. “Keeping negro families together has its challenges, doesn’t it?”
I don’t say nothin.
“Did you hear about those murders in Faunsdale? Black people killed, in a horrible way. Their owner. Did you know them?”
“No.”
She say, “I heard Cynthia found you. You’d come from some place else. Had an infection or something. She nursed you to health. Probably just a rumor.”
I hold my spoon over my bowl. I don’t know if I should answer.
“Eat,” she say. “I’m just making conversation. Sometimes a good conversation makes a better meal. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Yes’m,” I say, even though I thought we weren’t gon’ talk about Cynthia.
Soledad smiles and stirs her stew. We both eat in silence this time. I wish I had some good conversation to say. I feel like she wants something from me but I don’t know what it is.
After another ten minutes of slow eating and noticing how Soledad’s watching me still, she takes the last two gulps of her gin. She sets her glass down in front of herself and starts picking the tortilla crumbs from the table. Finally she say, “Why are you here, Naomi?”
“Ma’am?”
“Since everything’s so perfect between you and Cynthia — she trusts you with her son, you sleep in his bed, eat at her table, she nursed you to health, saved your life — what are you doing here? I think it’s more than ‘no place to go.’”
Escape is what I want to say but don’t. I’m afraid of my words. Afraid to ask her for what I need. To help me go south to escape Cynthia, and Jeremy. . or. . maybe west to find him.
“What have you heard about me?” she say.
“Nothin.”
“Nothing?”
“Just rumors, is all,” I say.
“Rumors?”
“Yes’m.”
“Thing about rumors is they can be true. Tell me what you’ve heard and I’ll tell you what’s true.”
The back of my neck’s getting hot.
“Go on,” she say. “Everybody should get a chance to clear their name. Isn’t that fair?”
“I heard you help people,” I say.
“People?”
“Negroes. You get them south.”
“Is that what you’ve heard?” she say.
“Yes’m.”
“Then when are you planning on going?”
My gut drops.
“I could arrange for you to get there,” she say. “Over the border through Texas. Is that why you’ve come? You want to start all over again somewhere else? Leave this behind. Take you and your friend Albert.”
I run my finger through the holes of her tablecloth.
She leans forward, “Is that who told you about me?”
I want to say, help me get away from here. Take me south. West. I don’t care. I look up at her to say something and notice how her brown eyes are fixed just above mine — somewhere on my forehead.
I know that look.
I’ve seen the look of the lie before — cain’t look me in the eye. Seen it too many times. Jeremy.
“No,” I say in a hurry. “I have no reason to leave here. Albert, neither. Any negro who would is a fool.”
The expression on her face changes suddenly. “Indeed,” she say. “I’m not like my father. Freedom Fighter. Revolutionist. . a fool.” She sits back in her seat, picks up her spoon, scoops her red broth. “It took me this long to finally have something in common with him,” she say. “The way he and I feel about Cynthia.”
She picks up a tortilla, hangs her wrist from the edge of her stew bowl. “Did Cynthia tell you she kidnapped me?”
I shake my head.
“I guess she didn’t tell you everything, after all.” She drops the bread in her stew, gets up and goes to the cabinet where her colorful dolls are. She lifts one out — the girl figurine — and comes back with it. She sets it on the table next to her bowl.
“I was young,” she said. “My father was a Freedom Fighter. Rescued slaves and took them to Mexico where they had a chance to be free. He took in everybody. Even Cynthia. Cared about other people more than he did me.
“Cynthia was a teenager when he found her, covered in blood, her father dead next to her. I was only seven when she came but it was the moment my memory started. I remember her presence from the beginning. Powerful and bold, she was. Almost a decade older than I. Unlike any woman I had ever seen before or since. Beautiful in a different way.
“I wanted to be her. Did everything I could to make her my friend but she didn’t want me around. For years, she shooed me away. Then one day, when I was fourteen, my mother asked me to choose the material for a dress. My coming-of-age celebration. And a celebration it would be. I decided that I’d be more beautiful than any girl who had ever become a woman. And I was.
“The night of, I went to my celebration in Cynthia’s dress, painted my face like hers, my hairstyle, hers. And I did a dance that my father will never forget. I was Cynthia.
“By the end of the week, my father had arranged for me to marry a farmer. An old man. My father wanted him to take me away, thought he could save me but it was already too late. I was already lost to her. So on my wedding day, I begged Cynthia not to let that old man take me.
“We ran off together, Cynthia and I. Took with us everything her dead father had left. She spent every penny of it to buy that brothel and to send me to a school for girls just east of here. See, she thought she could save me, too.”
Soledad slouches lazy in her chair. “She should have never taken me.” She lifts her tired eyes to me and say, “I don’t know what she sees in you.”
I don’t say nothin.
“We was lovers. She tell you?” Her breath wafts across the table, strong as onions but smells rotten, turned sour by the liquor. It makes me sick to my stomach.
“May I have some water?” I say.
“Cynthia could never love nobody but herself, Naomi. I don’t care how perfect you say you two are. Isn’t that what you’re saying?”
I shake my head.
“She saved your life! Took you in. Cared for you with her own son. Isn’t that perfect? Funny how somebody can do one wrong thing and suddenly all of the good they’ve ever done is wiped away that minute.” She stands up and pushes her chair in, takes her glass with her to the kitchen, and pours water from a pitcher into it. When she comes back, she sets it in front of me. I drink the water, taste her gin mixed in it.
“You look feverish,” she say, and sits across from me. “Puffy around the jowls.”
I cough in my water, put my glass down.
She eases back in her chair. “I finally got away from her,” she say. “I married Mr. Shepard. He’s a good man but you don’t always know everything about a person when you marry. You want another water?”
“No, thank you, ma’am.”
“Are you saved?”
“Saved, like being a Christian, saved? Yes, ma’am.”
“What scriptures do you know?”
“The Lord is my. .”
“What does John 1:1 say?”
I can’t remember that verse.
“‘In the beginning was the Word,’” she say, “‘And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’ Romans 6:23?”
I shake my head.
She leans into me and say, “‘For the wages of sin is death.’ Death is the punishment for sin, Naomi. You can’t be saved if you don’t know the Word.” She kneels to the floor and sweeps the fallen pieces of tortilla into her hand, starts praying from there. She stops and looks up at me, and say, “I don’t think I have a bed for you tonight, after all. Since you already have a place with Cynthia in your own bed, I think you should stay there.”
I slide the blanket from my shoulders. “Yes’m,” and get up for the door. When I get there, I turn around to thank her for the food but she’s already got eyes on me.