The Prophets(31)
Be Auntie told her to forgive them, that beat-down people did beat-down things. Toil made them hot and cruel, but mostly hot, and sometimes the best a woman could do was be a sip of water. That was how Puah knew that Be Auntie could never be her real mother, no matter how many lullabies sung or pains rocked. Her real mother would never ask her to be a sacrifice to ungrateful, nonreciprocal fools. Her real mother wouldn’t baby every boy no matter how grown and chastise every girl no matter how sweet.
“Shameless,” Be Auntie mumbled at any girl within earshot, and Puah didn’t like the way it was hissed at her. It was like no matter what she did or didn’t do, any evil would be laid at her feet and regarded as the product of her own belly. “Grown,” she heard Be Auntie say when any kind observer would have said “growing.”
There was no one else in the world, she thought, cursed to carry such a burden. Everywhere a girl existed, there was someone telling her that she was her own fault and leading a ritual to punish her for something she never did. It hadn’t always been this way. Blood memory confirmed this and women were the bearers of the blood.
It was worse when the cruelty came from other women. It shouldn’t have been; after all, women were people, too. But it was. When women did it, it was like being stabbed with two knives instead of one. Two knives, one in the back and the other in a place that couldn’t be seen, only felt.
Maybe Be Auntie had no choice. Maybe after so many times of being beaten in the fields by Massa only to return, scarred, to the shack to be beaten by her lover’s hand, she had finally decided to yield. Maybe she thought she could influence manhood in another way, shower them with a tenderness they could carry with them and share with other women they encountered, if they remembered. That was the problem. The desire for power erased memory and replaced it with violence. And Be Auntie had the bruises to prove it. Nearly every woman did.
That was why Puah despised Dug so. She knew all the attention, all the energy, all the titty milk Be Auntie was giving him was a complete waste of time. No matter what she did—no matter how blessed the kisses to the cheek or how mellow the song sung, even deep into the night—his hands would still grow to a size that could snugly grip the throat and easily crimp into a fist tight enough to smash teeth.
Men and toubab shared far more than either would ever admit. Just ask anyone who had ever been at their mercy. They both took what they wanted; asking was never a courtesy. Both smiled first, but pain always followed. And, too, both claimed they had good reason for this absurd behavior: whatever forces in the sky had declared that this act had to take place, that what could have been pleasure if both parties were willing had crumbled into a gagged and lying thing, it was as much beyond their control as sunshine; it simply wasn’t and couldn’t ever be their fault. Nature was stubborn.
Whatever. Puah had a plan to escape Be Auntie’s fate, the whims of false brothers, and toubab. She had a place to retreat to.
In the imaginary—where the Other Puah lived, which wasn’t too far, which sat right up against where This Puah lived, parallel, but crisper in color, more textured in sound, only seen by This Puah when she tilted her head in just the right position and paid close attention to the rhythm of her heart—there was enough to eat.
The Other Puah feasted lazily on strawberries and other sweet-smelling fruit, licked honey from her palms, and used a knife and fork to eat roasted chicken, which fell delightfully from the bone. There, her laughter was a mask for nothing and the tingling at the tips of her fingers came from how willingly they were kissed. She frolicked, the Other Puah, because there was no one lying in wait, anxious to take advantage of her kindness, misuse it, and leave it squirted on top of her like a shooting-star-shaped stain, drying and, in time, flaking, to be lifted off by breeze or troubled water.
Her suitors walked on black-sand beaches, skin like they had been made from the substance upon which they stood, each more loving than the next. They each sang songs about her, using words that she didn’t recognize but knew to be charming because of how smoothly they left their lips. And in the imaginary, just like in the Empty place, she chose one above all others, the one who had eyes like gently closed doors and made everyone who looked into them conjure up a masterpiece to knock. But like all dreams, these too were interrupted by the sharp point of toil.
Dug’s crying brought her back. He fussed like he knew it would snatch her into the now, dissolve the imaginary in the palm of her hands. She cut her eyes at him.
“What you want, Dug?”
He just smiled.
It starts young, Puah thought before she retreated to the corner.
* * *
—
SARAH’S SHACK ALWAYS SMELLED like outdoors. She kept dandelions tucked in corners and stuffed some inside her pallet. As big and sturdy a woman as she was, with skin that Puah thought could be shadow’s substitute, she did little dainty things like that; that, and she would also adorn her head with baby’s breath. She said she did it to trick herself into thinking she wasn’t trapped, that when she closed her eyes, she could think of herself gallivanting with nowhere in particular to go, wide as a meadow and unchained, and not a single toubab face for a thousand miles.
Puah walked through the cloth that hung, dirty, in Sarah’s doorway.
“Can you do it up?” Puah asked her. “So it ain’t touching my neck. Cooler for when I in the field.”