The Prophets(32)

Sarah sucked her teeth. “Hello to you, too.”

Puah smiled. Sarah looked at her head.

“Gal, you wouldn’t be asking me that if you just wrapped it when you was out there like everybody else do.”

“Chile, I can’t be bothered with all that. Besides, wrapping makes it even more hot.”

Sarah shook her head. “This why your braids never stay long. You wild with your head.”

Puah put both hands on her head, shook her hips, and walked around the shack on her tippy-toes.

“What you call yourself doing?”

“Missy Ruth. Don’t you see how dainty and delicate I is?” Puah batted her eyes. Sarah rolled hers but couldn’t help but laugh.

“Gal, you is a fool,” Sarah said, and she pulled a stool from under the table. She flopped down on top of it. “So, you wanna be her?”

Puah came down onto her heels. “No’m!”

“Stop conjuring that up, then.” Sarah rubbed her temples. “Quit all that foolery and let me fix your head.”

Puah sat down on the floor between Sarah’s legs. She drew her knees up to her chest and hugged them, the hem of her dress safely underfoot. Sarah began to undo her braids starting from the back.

“Your hair growing,” Sarah said during the unfastening.

“I feels like shaving it all off is what I feels like.”

“You must be remembering an old thing,” Sarah whispered, staring at the back of Puah’s head. “Like I can remember old things.”

Puah yawned and scratched a spot behind her ear.

“Stop moving!” Sarah scolded.

After a moment of silence Puah spoke.

“I had asked Samuel to come on over to get his hair plait, too.”

Sarah stopped undoing. “And what he say?”

“He ain’t say no.”

“But did he say yes?”

“No.”

“Mm hm!”

Puah shifted. It was the first time that she had considered that he might not come, might not want to come, might be prevented from coming because . . . It wasn’t like Samuel to be rude, to say he’d be somewhere and then not show up. Then again, he never said he would show up.

He was the only man on the entire plantation who ever cared about what she thought, who really, genuinely gave a damn and didn’t feign interest as an oh-so-transparent ruse to get in under her dress. He was the first man who wanted nothing but her company and conversation, who cheered her up when she was down by sticking daisies in his hair and walking around like a chicken. Big as he was, he never once shifted his weight in her direction or tried to block out her light with his shadow. Where she felt like Isaiah ignored or only tolerated her, she knew Samuel truly saw her and didn’t recoil at the notion of her grace.

“I hope you ain’t letting Amos fill your head with no foolishness,” Sarah said.

“No.”

“Hmph. Just like Amos to send you out to that barn to cause havoc.”

“I ain’t causing no havoc, Sarah. And Amos ain’t send me.”

“Who send you, then?”

Puah rolled her eyes.

“You need to go on ahead and leave them boys be.”

“Samuel is my friend,” Puah said, her eyebrows bending into her frustration.

“How many of your ‘friends’ make your neck-back goosebump like it is now?”

“Those heat bumps.”

“Gal, go on with that mess.”

Sometimes it was hard to endure Sarah’s truths, as unsweetened and thorny as they were. They had no roundness, no smooth edges, and every point was pin sharp. Still, from every pin-sized wound, only a little blood was let. In the small, manageable droplets, Puah could see the answers that even Sarah never intended to confront. That was a blessing that most people turned away from. Not Puah, though. Puah knew that the secret of strength was in how much truth could be endured. And on a plantation full of people asleep in lies, she intended to stay awake, no matter how much it stung.

“Well.”

“Well nothing. Leave him be.” Sarah sighed.

Heat came off Puah. She had hoped that Sarah felt it, that it soothed her enough to know that she had said enough and that Puah had heard enough. Tiny wounds, that’s all. Better hurt now in the company of sisters, than hurt later wearing the chuckles of men down her back. A moment passed before Sarah spoke again.

“I don’t wanna be up in here talking ’bout no mens, no way. They take up too much space in us as it is. Leave no room for ourselfs to stretch a bit or lay down without being bothered.”

“You right,” Puah conceded, if only with her words.

“So you want your hair up you said?”

“Yes ma’am.”

Sarah gently pushed Puah’s head forward, exposing the nape of her neck. Puah leaned into it, her chin touching her chest.

“My Mary used to be so tender-headed. I had to do her hair in big box braids. Two or three was all she could take.” Sarah laughed. “You ain’t tender-headed a bit. I can do nicer plaits, smaller. And take my sweet ol’ time.”

Puah closed her eyes and took in as much as she could.

Time, that is.



* * *



—

THE SUN WAS CREAMY at the horizon when she decided to go see Samuel. Some of the other people sat outside their shacks trying to relish as much as they could of the day as it was being pulled out of their grasps. Even the children who, earlier, had an energy that couldn’t be sapped had slowed, sat down to mourn its passing.