The Prophets(12)
The cage was unlocked when thinking about The Two of Them. And it was, then, no surprise to her that they chose each other above the other, more readily available options. It was unremarkable that they mostly didn’t pay attention to a woman, not even when forced. Not even in July, when toubab women would wait for toubab men to render themselves unconscious from spirits. These women—who went on and on about what it meant to be a lady (a term Maggie thought foolish)—got down on barn floors, pulled their dresses up over their breasts, spread their legs from one corner to the other, and writhed for the men they publicly despised.
Isaiah and Samuel weren’t moved in January either, when people sometimes huddled together for warmth. This close to a woman—whose skin and hair were dark with readiness, whose breath comforted and agitated, whose nether-scent threatened to make the insides of men shatter from longing—and neither of The Two of Them so much as twitched a pinky finger. No, those boys risked more than was necessary searching each other’s faces, again and again, for the thing that made rivers rush toward the sea. Always one smiling and always the other with his mouth angry and ajar. Reckless.
She looked out the window again at the barn and saw the sun peek its head through the eastern trees. The pork was almost done. She took a plate and wiped it with the edge of her dress and went to the dining room table.
She had set the table with unfathomable resentment. White table linen, sharp at the corners, napkin rings strangling, cutlery already its own kind of deadly. All living things smothered, even the picked-wildflower centerpiece. The dim candle lighting cast a brass shadow, making everything, even Maggie, appear appropriately solemn.
She had to arrange the table the same each day: Paul always at the head; Ruth always to his right; Timothy, when home, always to his left, and three extra settings for the occasional guests. She would stand around after she had set the table and listen to the family give, in unison, thanks to the long-haired man whose gaze always turned upward—probably because he couldn’t bear to see the havoc wreaked in his name. Or maybe he just couldn’t bother to look. Maggie only knew about this man because she let Essie talk her into going to one of Amos’s sermons one Sunday.
They held court in the woods, in the circle of trees at the southeastern edge of the cotton field. The man whose name she couldn’t speak for a reason was there with a few of his scraggly minions and she wanted to turn right around when she saw him. But Essie had begged her to stay. She seemed so proud—and something other than proud, but Maggie couldn’t tell what.
Amos stood upon a big rock that neither time nor water had worn down. But that was exactly what the clearing smelled like to her: the moist and tired things that hid beneath rocks—or, in this case, stood on top of them. There were about thirty people in the crowd then, sitting on logs or on the ground. That was before people started to believe Amos. He opened his mouth and she sucked her teeth. He wasn’t doing anything but repeating some bits and pieces she heard Paul discuss around the dinner table. She knew from experience that no good could come from folks spending so much time alone with the toubab.
She found it rather dreary. Amos did have a way of talking, though. More like singing than anything else. The rock showcased him in a new light. Sunrays came down through the leaves, giving his blackness a kind of golden hue, showering him, too, with the kind of jagged shadows that made men mysterious, which was another way of saying strong. And Essie seemed so pleased. That was what made Maggie promise Essie that she would come back and sit with her in the same shady spot Essie reserved just for them. Until it could be so no longer.
Until the day Amos’s words took a different turn, spoke of things that made Essie look down and Maggie lean back. Maggie immediately placed the meanness in them—toward The Two of Them, of all people!—and she gave Amos only a stern eye when she wanted to give more.
Uh huh, she thought, there it go!
“It’s a old thing,” she told Amos. But he didn’t listen. She didn’t wait around to hear another word come out of Amos’s mouth. She unlocked her arm from Essie’s, stood up, and marched her way back to the Big House, tall with lips curled, shadows falling down her back and light fluttering across her chest. She only looked back once and that was to let Essie see her face so she would know that it wasn’t because of her.
She stopped setting the table for a moment and turned to look at the barn from the window.
“Mm,” she said aloud.
Maggie suspected Essie knew about The Two of Them and never said a word. That was good, though, because some things should never be mentioned, didn’t have to be, not even among friends. There were many ways to hide and save one’s self from doom, and keeping tender secrets was one of them. It seemed to Maggie a suicidal act to make a precious thing plain. Perhaps that was because she couldn’t imagine a thing—not a single thing—worth exposing herself for. Whatever she might ever have loved was taken before it even arrived. That is, until she crept up and saw those boys, who had the decency to bring with them a feeling that didn’t make her want to scream.
She made her way back into the kitchen, grabbed a rag, and removed the biscuits from the oven. They had browned perfectly. She slid them into a bowl lined with a square of linen and set the bowl on the table. She held two biscuits in her hand and squeezed until the crumbs pushed through her fingers.
She looked around the room and then back at the table again. She wondered if she had the strength to flip it over because she already knew she had the rage. She placed her hand on a corner of it and gave it a little tug.