My Monticello(42)

We leaned in over the wooden floor, a tessellation of flat, smooth diamonds.

Ms. Edith made her way to each of us, pushing back a chair here, a small table there. We took a bit of fruit to our palms, a cluster of delicate flowers, balanced by tiny clinging roots. Wild violets, go on. She placed a pinch of leaves and flowers in her mouth, chewing.

We were Mama Yahya with the baby in her arms, and Imani, who wore fresh braids and a long giftshop T-shirt, belted like a dress. We were Lakshmi and her cohort: Mahreen, Kayla, and Jia. We were the Flores women, Sam and Marta, along with Marta’s elfin thirteen-year-old daughter, Yamileth.

We were silver Carol and rose-gold LaToya.

We were me.

I held tart sweetness on my tongue, saving the rest in my palm for MaViolet, who still lay in that bed a room away from us.

Ms. Edith stood near the window, narrowing her eyes on the sodden oval beds in the yard. Larkspur, calendula, lenten rose. She looked us up and down. You ladies know we’ve got to be careful, she said. And Imani—who stood beside her mother—clutched her stuffed woolly mammoth. The six-year-old was confused, we hoped, though the rest of us knew just what Ms. Edith meant. Real careful, Ms. Edith went on, even now, especially now. Matter-fact, we ought to be careful any time, all the time.

I rocked deeper into my velvet seat, as if that owl-eyed woman were channeling Momma’s old admonitions. It’s been like this for women and girls, on and on, all the way back to creation, Ms. Edith said.

The rest of us uh-huhed or nodded, even me—a general cry of assent. We looked at each other, then out the windows where rain cast dripping shadows. The Yahya baby stretched along his mother’s lap, extending tiny grasping hands.

When he began to fuss, Mama Yahya rocked her legs to soothe him, a movement that generally escalated to her standing and jiggling and singing, except this time Imani, whose face suddenly beamed with sisterly pride, abandoned her soft beast on a table and reached for her baby brother instead. Once she held him in her arms, cradling his head, he hiccupped. His cries subsided for a while.

We’ve got to look out for one another, Ms. Edith said in her throaty voice.

LaToya changed the cross of her ankles. Wouldn’t that be something.

Ms. Edith went on to petition us to use good sense, to protect ourselves and each other from the men we’d surely see whenever we went back, or from men who might end up at this house. She said we had to be careful even of the boys and men already on the mountain, our fathers and brothers. Our friends and lovers. If we stayed here long enough, Ms. Edith warned, there could be, and probably would be, moments of coercion, force even. This wasn’t a time to get hurt or pregnant, if we could help it. She said this like she knew we might not be able to help it, and I wondered, had some trusted person hurt Ms. Edith along the way. At the word “pregnant,” I bit the inside of my lip; a bubble rose in my throat.

Across the room, LaToya called out, Amen! like a brazen convert. And Lakshmi, who was already standing, rubbed her clump of flowers so brusquely the petals came apart.

The baby began to cry again, and Imani rocked urgently, humming a made-up song to a familiar tune. In patchwork English, Mama Yahya shared tips on how to handle our periods, a thing that I, unfortunately, no longer had to worry about. Look out for yourselves and each other, Ms. Edith concluded, and everyone drew in. Like we could. Like we would, even me. I pulled my knees up, rocking, swallowing my confession whole.



* * *



We’d been two weeks in the house when I woke to the sound of wheezing. It was nighttime, still deep dark, and Knox was dead asleep. I bolted upright, having heard or sensed that labored sound. Before I woke fully, I’d stumbled through the cabinet room—chair backs and the multiplying feet of furniture—to make it to MaViolet’s boxed-in bed. My hands found her hands and I braced against the reedy whistle of her trying to capture air. I reached through the darkness for her inhaler—not sure how much, if any, medication remained. I’d kept it on her nightstand in a futile attempt to ward off its necessity. Now I shook it and brought it to MaViolet’s mouth.

She worked at it for a moment then swatted it away.

When I was a kid, MaViolet had suffered an attack once when we could not find her inhaler. I’d run next door to our neighbor’s for help, and soon enough red and white lights pulsed on our front windows. Other neighbors wandered into our front linked yards to try to see. The EMTs rolled MaViolet into the back of the ambulance and told Momma to follow. We scrambled for keys and jumped into Momma’s beat-up Corolla, but I was gripped by dread. All I could think was, What if we break down? What if the ambulance loses us on the drive to the hospital? What if we never see MaViolet alive again? I worried if we weren’t right there to beg the doctors to try, they might be careless with MaViolet’s precious body. They might misjudge her endless worth.

In bed, MaViolet wrestled with her sheets, her mouth gulping at nothing. This is when I lose her, I thought.

I called out for help.

I shoved a pillow under her, rolling her onto one side.

Before I realized what I was doing, I’d crawled up into that high bed too. It felt hard beneath me, unforgiving as freshly packed dirt. I curled myself around my grandma’s body, to try to comfort her, as if I could crawl into her skin. I sometimes used to sleep in her bed when I was little. She’d seemed so big back then, vast spirit and broad chest, always emitting warmth. That night, breathless, in my arms, she felt too narrow, as if her bones had been whittled. A scattershot burst of rain hit the roof, followed by a strong wind—the house seeming to sway with it.