My Monticello(58)

What about us, Knox said, turning me to face him. Are we okay, Da’Naisha? Do you still love me—do you still want me?

Do you want me? I said, overlapping his words, feeling foolish and vulnerable and like the liar I was and still am. He took his glasses off again and sat them on the desk, so that his face shone, naked, open. He extended his arm, and I stepped close to his body, because I wanted to. He brought his arms carefully up and around me, and each place he chose to touch me felt polished. His fingers grazed my neck, his thumb stroked the bone at my collar. His chin nested against my part. More now, he said into the cushion of my hair. I want you more now. I love you more.

I’m pregnant, I said into his chest.

What, he said, cradling my shoulders and rocking me back so that he could see my face.

I’m pregnant, I said again.

Knox’s face did a slow-motion time-lapse, from shock, to joy, to panic, then back to that joy, his hands large and trembling at either side of my face. He brought his mouth to my mouth, smiling, weeping, his hands never leaving me. He kept on kissing me, moving me back with those attentive hands, until I felt a wall behind my body. Until his whole body found mine, like mine was an extension of his, a feeling of pleasure so startling it almost brought the world back. Oh God, he said, like swearing, like praying. I may have echoed him. God, we whimpered. God, we cried.


XIV.

It’s quiet now, almost sunrise again. As I write, I imagine men gathering below us, somewhere beyond our stone-covered bridge. The walkie on the chair ticks softly, and even though the signal has not yet come through, those men are coming. I know the way ghosts know, the way mothers do.

Yesterday afternoon, I couldn’t help but notice how, amid frantic preparations, folks had found small ways to take care of themselves and one another. Ezra had brought up armfuls of fresh T-shirts from the gift shop, and LaToya and Gary helped him to pass them out to everybody. And Georgie, along with Carol, cleaned the first floor of the house, wiping dust from everything. Ira played a game of chess with KJ, the boy’s sunken chest puffed up with pride. Mama Yahya came out of the parlor beaming, her children’s hair gleaming in fresh braids or twists, along with Yamileth’s. Ms. Edith and Lakshmi garnered help to cook a humble supper: saved eggs scrambled and cooked over a fire, with spring onions and thyme, chunks of potato dug right from the ground. Wild greens, cherries even, pitted and sweet. We hadn’t eaten hot food since our attempt to go to town, and it felt like a feast, that meal we ate all together—even though our hearts trembled, our bodies were hungry still. Mr. Byrd brought out a crate of dusty bottles of wine, from some hidden place, and we ate and drank, bringing food down and trading off on the lower shift, so everyone could be a part of our fleeting celebration, because we all understood what was coming for us.

Earlier, I’d asked Mama Yahya if she might do something with my hair too. She’d had me lean my body back over a basin, in the lower yard, and ladled warm water over my head. Her fingers deftly raked my scalp, and afterward, sitting on the ground between her feet, I felt almost new. She’d set a straight part, combing my hair back and securing it into two tight knots at the nape of my neck. Before I got up, she folded a strip of fabric for me, wrapped it around the perimeter of my head, so that I was crowned in color.

I ate along with everybody, smiling despite the dread, laughing because sometimes you’ve got to laugh just to breathe. I could feel Knox looking at me with his new knowing: this vessel I am. At one point, Mama Yahya handed me her baby, her boy. He was heavy in my arms, his skin so delicate; he smelled of the lavender water she bathed him in. His weight on my lap felt like a kind of correction—like soil falling back into a hole, rich and newly full of air.

I ate; then I went to check on MaViolet once again.

I went to her hoping she’d be awake, that she might even take a bite of food in her mouth and taste how good it was. When I arrived, her body was still in that bed, but my grandmother Violet was gone. When I saw her, I thought of that time right after those early devastating storms. Police cars had lined up along First Street, lights pulsing blue and red in MaViolet’s window. At first, people thought they’d been sent to help, to shuttle folks to shelters, or bring supplies, things needed since the power had been out. I knew that the police had been charged to help elsewhere in those weeks before they’d disbanded; they’d helped at the university. But that day, on MaViolet’s street, a line of officers in helmets and shields stood facing the houses but not looking at the people inside, as if they’d been commanded not to see. For a period of about twelve hours, shifts of officers would not let anyone in or out. Not even for medication. Not even to get food or water. It pained her, she’d told me when I went to see her, to be an old lady and still the source of so much blame and fear that her own hometown would direct its resources against her. Now MaViolet lay there in her high bed, eyes silvery and flecked with yellow like mercury glass. And me, her last living relation. I put my hand on top of her hand and told her, finally, that I was pregnant. I told her I was determined to win some kind of way. I told her I would name my baby Violet, after her.

Then I stumbled out to the lawn to tell Knox, to tell everybody. They must have known from my expression. I collapsed to my knees and I could feel them, all around me. Somebody grasped my hand so hard I felt sharp nails digging, pain cutting through numbness, reminding me to take a breath. I could hear sobbing, mine or everybody else’s, until our shared anguish was almost a song.