The Prophets(29)

“Just about.”

“And you manage to keep her still locked up in here with you? Massa or nobody don’t come ’round to mess with her?”

Be Auntie looked at Puah with an envious eye. What guts this girl had to first survive whatever Be Auntie put in her belly and then to live on Empty still full. Nah, maybe that wasn’t as much guts as luck. Luck that had escaped everyone else on the plantation except Puah, it seemed. Lucky people were of no use to anyone but themselves. (Sarah was another story, but Be Auntie didn’t have that much fight, or yearning turned ’round to face itself, in her to do it Sarah’s way.)

“Hm,” Be Auntie said. “What you asking about her for?”

“I need her. For them.”

The twinge of pain she felt in her temples was for her, not Puah, she told herself.

“What for?”

“You know what for.”

Be Auntie knew Samuel and Isaiah as nothers. They were two children who she was never able to incorporate into her tribe—one, in particular, for good reason. They weren’t raised by anyone but looked after by everyone, vagabonds of a sort, but beloved ones. They were the ones who were in the barn and had to have had good natures because they took care of the animals, of life, didn’t just plant it, pick it, and put it in a sack. But one of them was also the one with the ax. Sometimes, she heard a pig squealing. Pigs somehow always knew what was coming. They fidgeted on the day of. They would try to run, but Samuel’s hands were firm. There was no expression on his face before or during. But after, when he was down at the river, washing the blood from his hands, his bottom lip would droop, and his drool splashed into the water’s rush. Boy not boy, she thought. Boy now man.

Amos kissed Be Auntie deeply. He brought his lips down to her neck. He looked at her and rubbed his nose against her.

“Let me see what I can put in her head,” she said. “I gotta be careful about it. That girl always do the opposite of what I tell her.”

It pierced Be Auntie’s heart that despite her disobedience, Puah walked through Empty relatively unscathed, as though she had taken all of the advice and cues Be Auntie offered, rather than tossing them to the ground and kicking them away. It meant that perhaps Be Auntie had erred and that Puah’s scorn and her hope, rather than the advised split then submission, could be a way, too. Oh, well. It didn’t make much difference anymore. Here it was, and Be Auntie knew it would come sooner or later: the time for Puah to know the grace that none of the others had the foresight to show Beulah, which was Be Auntie’s dawn. Don’t matter who do or don’t like it. At least I got to choose my own name.

“I think she sweet on that there Samuel. That’s the bigger one name, ain’t it? The purple one, not the black one?”

“The one that keep his mouth open, yeah.”

“Hm. All right then.”

Be Auntie pulled on Amos. Puah and the other children all huddled even though it was too hot to do that, but they seemed as though they didn’t want to take up too much space, which was wise because shrinking down kept you out of the minds of toubab, and if you weren’t sturdy enough to withstand what their minds could do (who was?), then it was best that you just be smaller than you had ever been before.

She looked at Amos. “Come on.”

He had interrupted the beat of their song. They couldn’t do their dance if the music stopped.

“Let me.”

She wrapped her arms around him and pressed her plush into his.

“Can I tell you ’bout the thunder?”

She wasn’t the singer Essie was, but she could tell one hell of a story to keep time.





Puah

Puah hated the way the cotton got stuck beneath her fingernails. She hated even more what the picking did to her fingers: made them raw and heavy, made her feel like she had something in her hands even when she didn’t. She was thick with grievance, which she had to continuously tuck back into her crevices, inhale to give it more room and hold it in place.

She held on to her sack with a grudge, snatched it from spot to spot as she robbed one plant after the next, thievery on behalf of a man who, if she could, she would pluck the hairs from, one by one, even the eyelashes, in the same way. In the corners of her eyes, the only thing that threatened to form, ever, was anger. But in the shape of her body, which marked her as vulnerable from every direction, with danger lurking in the company of anybody, she kept her vengeance pillowed and well blanketed in the nest of her soul.

At the end of the day she threw her pickings in the wagon, watched by James, whom she never looked in the eye, for Maggie, yes, but also because she wanted to deny him the courtesy of her gaze. Her wide eyes, bushy eyebrows, and long lashes would be for her own offering and hers alone. And the only people to stand at her altar would be those of her choosing. These were the things she told herself in places where she could afford to be resolute.

She lifted her dress by its hem, exposing the obsidian of her calves, and started back toward the shacks. She wanted to bathe in the river, but the men were there. She would find a bucket and fill it with river water and wash herself in the night, behind Be Auntie’s shack, instead.

She pulled on her hair, touched the roots of it, noticing the new growth that had made her braids puffy and fuzzy. It needed a good washing and greasing before being tied up before bed to keep it pressed against her mind. As she brought her hand back down to her side, she noticed movement in the distance. She walked over toward it, toward the barn. She stopped at the wooden fence circling it and saw Samuel leading a horse toward the pens and wanted to catch him before he went inside.