The Prophets(28)

What was most insidious about it all was what the repetition did to her. At some point, in spite of herself, she started to enjoy the rhythm. The sly smile. The cool words. The giddy sway. The pressing down. The steady pump. The last thrust. The slap. The kick. The punch. The forgotten gratitude. The lost good night. She found herself molded into the shape that best fit what they carved her into. Water done wore away at her stone, and the next thing she knew, she was a damn river when she could have sworn she was a mountain.

Mountain to river was a place. More than a place, it was a person. Beulah was a mountain. Be Auntie was a river. In between, fertile or arid land, depending on the location. The others judged her harshly, she knew, for being the first of them to go from up high to down low. But she was just the first, and her sacrifice, one of them anyway, was this: she made it so that there would be more grace waiting for them when they, too, made the descent.

And it wasn’t like she climbed down all of her own volition, carefully navigating the peaks and slopes, securing her footing so that she didn’t slip on any smooth and icy crevices. Nah. She was pushed. It mattered not whether she smiled or screamed as she plummeted. Some tumbles were worthy of pity regardless.

Because look what had become of her in the bottom-bottom: she was men’s rest stop and peace of mind; she was their cookhouse, flophouse, and outhouse; she bore them children for whom they could bear no attachment and collected the children not of her blood to replace the ones snatched away on a whim or a bill come due.

She knew she could spare Essie (not stop, but slow her fall) because womens had to look after womens—particularly when refusal meant death. Yes, she opened her arms wide to Amos, legs too; let him not only laugh, talk, rock, bump, grind, hit, and fail to say sweet dreams or farewell, but she also let him do it over and over and over again until it felt like something divine—if just for the ritual of it.

Another thing defined her worship. See, Maggie was wrong: if you get them early enough, they won’t be corrupted. You might just could turn boys’ natures such that when they see a woman, their first instinct ain’t to tame her, but to leave her be. You could coat them in enough salve that when they started preferring the outdoors, to be around the older men—who didn’t have the benefit of what they call “womanly things” precisely because they wanted the right to be reckless and pilfering; if they had embraced their whole mind instead of half of it—the error of their ways would be revealed to them, and they knew they couldn’t see that and survive intact.

Be Auntie (not Beulah) doted over every boy-child—especially the ones whose color had been meddled with. Every girl-child, particularly the ones whose skin was raven, she lorded over or left to fend for herself (as Beulah wept). Womens had to look after womens, yes. But first there had to be trial and she refused to interfere with that sacred passage for any woman, young or old.

She got Puah after the mother and father were both sold off. Puah wasn’t even walking yet and still in need of milk, which Be Auntie gave to her only sparingly, supplementing it with pieces of bread and hog parts she knew the baby to be too young to be eating. When Puah’s stomach pained her all night and her cries wouldn’t cease, Be Auntie blamed the child for her own condition and just let her scream until her throat was raw, after which she would just whine gently. It’s a wonder the child had any voice at all.

The baby was too young for grown-up food and also too young to have sown such resentment in Be Auntie, but there both of those things were, sitting uncomfortably in one tiny little body, futile but resolute.

What Be Auntie did know was that one day, Puah would be of use. It would either be as a sword or it would be as a shield, possibly both, but whatever the form, it was inevitable. Maggie wasn’t the only one who knew of the deep and hidden things.

One sticky night, Be Auntie was lying with Amos. He had come into her shack in a huff, complaining about how he tried to be reasonable with Isaiah and Samuel, but they just wouldn’t submit.

“Submit to what?” Be Auntie asked rather innocently.

Amos looked at her as though she had cursed. “A nature grander than they own! You ain’t been listening to what I been trying to tell you?” he said loudly before lowering his head to allow his voice to reach that level. He sighed. “Some folk will never understand that the part ain’t more important than the whole,” he said to her darkly. “But you hear me, Be. Huh?”

Amos’s eyes were kind. He had an open face. His tones were not unlike a story being told around a fire at night. You had to lean in, and not even biting mosquitoes could distract you once you were there. She had that, too, the voice for story, but people only wanted to hear hers as comfort, not as inspiration. But Amos also had a breezy touch. He brought himself down with her, down the mountain and into the stream. He touched the water. He slid his hand right between her thighs and she didn’t flinch at all. She knew he cared about her pleasure, but that her pleasure wasn’t the point. Still, she squirmed a little at what he had tickled. They were close together, him smiling, her with drowsy eyes.

“You need me to do what?” she whispered.

Amos sat up and looked over to the side of the shack where the children lay, piled together like refuse somebody had swept up (and perhaps someone did), and he looked at a trying-to-sleep Puah.

“How old Puah is now?” Amos scratched his chin. “Fifteen? Sixteen?”