The Prophets(36)

The first place she lived wasn’t by a sea. It was deep in the bush, which had protected them, and the ground, from sun, and made their eyes suitable for night. Flowers burst all around her in colors that she hadn’t seen anywhere in Miraguana, St. Thomas, Charleston, or Vicksburg. Fruit was abundant, and the plums were thick with the juice that ran from the corners of her mouth and trembled at the edge of her chin as surely as any dew.

She had not yet arrived at her name, which is to say that she had not grown enough to be given a name since names came from how your soul manifested, and that couldn’t be known until it was time to transition from girl to whatever it was you chose to be after. But everyone had to begin there: girl. Girl was the alpha. Even in the womb, the healers had said, the start was there before anything might change. Circles came before lines; that was what had to be honored. When the babies arrived, they were girls irrespective of whatever peace blossomed between the legs. Girls until after the ceremony where you could then choose: woman, man, free, or all.

A girl with so many mothers, aunts, and sisters, draped in the softest fabrics, no unkind eyes or untoward glances. Sarah remembered the laughter most, but also a wagging finger when she had once tried to slip from under the bush’s protection.

“You want to get gobbled up by a lion, yes?”

“No.”

“Then you come over here right now, child!”

She walked sullenly back to the arms of the many mothers, but she would get gobbled up by a lion anyway. And no one would hear her testimony of the ship. Nothing about its sickening rock or the marks left on wrists and ankles from heavy shackles. Not a word to be heard about the thing in the corner that moved, and she was sure it wasn’t a shadow because there was too little light to cast one. Instead, silence. Nobody wants to hear that old Africa shit. We here now, ain’t we? What difference do it make ’bout before the ship? That was the danger. The danger was alive, you hear? It was living. Nothing there can save us now.

They silenced her, all of them but Maggie, who had a lot of an old thing in her.

Easy, Sarah, O Sarah. Breathe. Rejoice. The memories are still yours to keep.

If they were open to bearing what she carried, she could tell them about how she learned of freedom’s possibility. There were words being carried across waters after she was sold from St. Dominique, that the people had had enough. The same blades they had chopped the cane with were held high, in unison and in charge, and blood spilled such that the ground itself was black and soft no more. Sarah wondered if the soil in Charleston could likewise be transformed. They all had blades. Yovo (now toubab) damn sure put the blade in her hand and expected her to chop the cane as if that was all the blade could be used for. But to raise the blade was to accept the risk that the danger was living. And how could she ever permit that slithering thing the chance to crawl toward her Mary?

Their first kiss was under the arc of sweetgum trees. No moisture in the air, but between them, yes. It was spring and their calm had come from each other’s embrace. Breath. Slow. Blinking. One chin lifted and the other bowed. A stray hair that Sarah tucked behind Mary’s ear.

“Plait it for you later, all right?”

“All right then.”

Maybe it wasn’t just danger; maybe all skin was living, too. Maybe all bodies understood gentle touch. Could bosom and bottom alike be curved precisely for a loosening hand, a knowing lip? All Sarah knew for sure was that when she and Mary were between, they were between: legs entangled, and the dual bushes that each held their own shining stars had joined. Bellies rose and fell and never—never once—did they fail to look into each other’s faces and see what was actually there no matter how many times Charleston had said it wasn’t.

Sarah saw that same look between Isaiah and Samuel, sometimes. Only sometimes because the mean one, Samuel—who seemed to be choosing man because he didn’t understand how that made the other possibilities remote—was fighting against himself because his desire didn’t look like anything he had ever seen before. The other one, Isaiah, had better imagination. She wasn’t sure if he had chosen woman or free, but it was clear he had chosen one or the other because violence wasn’t his primary motion.

Given the numerous times Sarah stepped onto a greedy but unwelcoming shore, it was in her to know. Against dipping suns, and airs dripping wet and smelling of honeysuckle, she saw how Samuel turned his body away when Isaiah turned his body toward. She saw the ax in Samuel’s hands and the pail in Isaiah’s. For Isaiah would milk the cows and Samuel would slaughter the hogs. Isaiah’s hard-earned smile and Samuel’s understandable fists: she could precisely attribute glee to one and despair to the other because one’s spirit had clearly sprouted wings while the other took refuge in the echo of caves. Both, she knew, had a purpose, however imperfect. Life was being clung to, whether with balm or sword.

No one looking could see what she saw because no one looking knew what she knew. To everyone else, Samuel and Isaiah had blended into one blue-black mass, defined by the mistaken belief that it was a broken manhood coating their skin and not, what—courage? Though it could have been foolhardiness, too.

Girl is the beginning, damn it. Everything after is determined by soul.

There were no sweetgum trees on Empty, so Isaiah especially, but Samuel, too, must have had no choice but to settle for the cover of a ratty barn roof that even the pallid moon could penetrate if it wanted to. Their safety was therefore less and she felt for them, but only to the degree that it was rooted in her own memory of what was lost.