My Monticello(59)

Back inside, Ms. Edith brought me a basin of warm water. I struggled to undress my grandma, to wipe down her body then pull her housecoat back up around her. It was Georgie who brought a bolt of faded fabric, fringed crimson, carrying it across his arms.

The sun was already falling when we buried my MaViolet, her body wrapped inside those curtains. We buried her alongside the pale path, the earth broken open, our shovels chipping through the tangle of roots. We lowered her body right into the ground, along with a square of Mama Yahya’s precious fabric, halfway between Jefferson’s gated graveyard and the slave cemetery below.


XV.

Some hours ago, Knox woke me on our pallet by the greenhouse windows. I felt his eyes on me even before he said my name into the dark.

Naisha, he said. I don’t know what I was thinking, but we are so fucked, honey. We just don’t have enough, he said. Not enough people, or weapons, or anything. Those men are going to plow right through us.

I wanted to say, I know already. But by then, it was so hard to swallow, to form words. I managed a couple. We’re here.

Nineteen days, we’ve been here on top of this little mountain. Nineteen days, exploring dusty cellars and bright side rooms, slashing ribbons and touching everything: ours. Even the faulty map of Africa, even the crimson French curtains. We’ve wandered down the all-weather pass and roamed the unfettered grounds. We’ve huddled in the rebuilt slave cabin and imagined the searing heat of the iron house. Nineteen days feeling like nineteen years, and this morning, I can feel the men assembling below us in the quickening dark. Soon they will roar up past the trees and through the garden, trampling collards—there’s no time left. I can almost hear them now.

Please know we fought with all we had—we fought to win. We fought with our bullets and bare knuckles, our bullhorns and Mace, our skepticism and our faith. I’ve collected everybody’s names, along with the dates of our births and MaViolet’s dying day. I’m placing these pages inside Thomas Jefferson’s book, Notes on the State of Virginia, tucked between his accounting of the widths of our rivers, the heights of our mountains, his limits and his hope. I’ll press that book back onto the shelf in the docents’ library, this room where my grandmother’s image hangs. Looking at her picture now, MaViolet looks stately, resplendent even. Maybe someday, someone will find our names, among books or ashes, and know that we were here, that we mattered too.

I don’t know what will happen. I don’t know what’s happening elsewhere, outside of our town, our state. I only know I will not let them take this body of mine. I only know this fight will cost them something too. Mr. Byrd helped me to prepare the bottles, half full of gasoline with rags wagging out—I’ve got Devin’s Zippo in my pocket, if it comes to that. They might well overtake us, but they will not win this house—not whole. If our bodies are found here, I hope we are buried between the two graveyards, so that we can stay together at least. Buried or not, we’ll watch over all that happens here, forever and ever, along with all the others who’ve lived and dreamed and died here. Let our bodies fill the space between old and new, until all of it is indistinguishable, until all that remains is one great glow of souls lighting the way back home.





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS




This debut would not have been possible without the tireless support and fierce smarts of my fabulous agent, Meredith Kaffel Simonoff, as well as the immense care and enthusiasm of my generous editors, Retha Powers, Barbara Jones, and Kate Harvey. You all are amazing!

Thank you to the wonderful folks at DeFiore and Company, including Adam Schear, Colin Farstad, Emma Haviland-Blunk, Jacey Mitziga, Linda Kaplan, and Parik Kostan; at Henry Holt, including Allison Carney, Amy Einhorn, Caitlin O’Shaughnessy, Catryn Silbersack, Christopher Sergio, Gabriel Guma, Janel Brown, Jason Liebman, Jaya Miceli, Jolanta Benal, Maggie Richards, Maia Sacca-Schaeffer, Marinda Valenti, Nicolette Seeback, Patricia Eisemann, Rima Weinberg, Ruby Rose Lee, Sarah Crichton, and Vincent Stanley; and everyone at Harvill Secker and Vintage who supported this book.

With warmth and gratitude to Brooke Ehrlich and her team at Anonymous Content, including Becca Rodriguez and Jessica Calagione; everybody at the Chernin Group, particularly Peter Chernin, Jenno Topping, Kaitlin Dahill, and Christina Porter; as well as the fine folks at Netflix.

Thank you to the incomparable Roxane Gay, whose early story shout-out for “Control Negro” was the seed of this collection. Thank you to everybody at Best American Short Stories, especially Heidi Pitlor and Naomi Gibbs of HMH.

Thank you to the book people who championed my writing before this collection, in particular Jaimee Garbacik and Mackenzie Brady Watson. Also Rob McQuilkin. With gratitude to all of the authors who supported the launch of this debut or were willing to take an anxious call, even if you hardly knew me, like Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. Thank you to LeVar Burton for choosing “Control Negro” to read live as part of PRI’s Selected Shorts. Hearing you read my words was tremendous!

Many thanks to the literary journals and magazines who’ve published work from this collection: everyone at Guernica, including Meakin Armstrong, Autumn Watts, Hillary Brenhouse, and Morgan Babst, who rescued “Control Negro” from the slush; and the folks at Phoebe and at Prime Number Magazine, including Taylor Brown, who chose “The King of Xandria” as a winner.

Thank you to the members of my longtime writing group, Kristen-Paige Madonia, Hope Mills Voelkel, Aaron Weiner, Raennah Lorne, and George Kamide. Thanks to UVA’s Young Writers Workshop, WriterHouse, the Virginia Festival of the Book, New Dominion Bookshop, and our local salon of women writers, begun by Sharon Harrigan. With gratitude to folks who share local Black stories, like Charlene Green, John Edwin Mason, and Lisa Woolfork. Thank you to institutions like the Jefferson School that highlight local Black history, and to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, for its preservation and care of Thomas Jefferson’s plantation home, where I have felt both awestruck and heartsick.