The Prophets(42)

They misunderstood her. She saw their chests, streaked with fear, heaving in unison. But they also glistened, which she understood as a beckoning. Men rarely spoke the truth, so it was crucial to read their signs. Since these niggers knew better than to let her see their eyes—downward gaze, downward!—she had the good sense to discern intention from their bodies. Never mind that her own eyes had already grazed them, held them down, dissected them, and consumed them. She had her own imagination, which she didn’t consider because she had for so long always been at the whims of someone else’s. She gave in to their misunderstanding.

“This is a barn, or something else?” she asked them, this time a bit louder.

Their silence was, to her, a delight. She wondered how she looked to them standing there, her dirty nightgown and copper hair, her skin able to shift so much more with the light than theirs and so she could take on the characteristics of every time of day or night—crystal in the day, pale blue at night. And in the in-between—at sunset, at dawn, in the twilight hour—that was the beauty she loved most of all. She moved in closer, almost like a dance, adding her shadow to the shifting ones. The light, too, seemed to fear her, flickered, dimmed.

“You. What is your name?” she asked, looking down at them.

“Isaiah, ma’am,” he said. “And this here is Samuel.”

“I don’t remember asking you for his name.” She pointed at Samuel but looked at Isaiah. “And I take it that he can speak for himself. Can he? Can he speak for himself? You do his speaking, too?”

“No’m.”

There. There it was: the requisite undressing. Her words had made them disrobe. They had taken off their arrogance and let it fall to the ground before them. She had done it without the use of the whip, which illustrated, for her, the difference between women and men. Men were bluster, endless, preening bluster that needed, more than anything in the world, encouragement through audience. For men, privacy was the most frightening thing in the world because what was the point of doing anything that couldn’t be revered? What difference did it make to stand on a pedestal when there was no one there to look up?

Women, most women, did it differently. Privacy allowed them the power to be cruel but regarded as kind, to be strong and be thought delicate. It was crucial, though, that she be alone in this, for men were liable, even in these spaces, to snatch from her these tiny moments of a more balanced nature in bloom. Men, it seemed, were built for the sake of catastrophe and were determined to be who they were built to be.

But Isaiah and Samuel, they were an anomaly. In this place—she had still not received an adequate answer to explain why it felt like that to be there—they had understood the necessity for privacy and the dangers of audience. Though maybe they didn’t understand enough, judging from their shared welts. Perhaps they wore those outside to alleviate the ones inside. Finally, a subject she understood in the reality of this other place. She walked in the space between them and stood there facing the light so that her gown obscured their view of each other. All they could possibly see was the suggestion of each other, the roundness of head and perhaps the broadness of shoulder, through the filter that draped her body.

“This is another place, ain’t it? Here is somewhere different. I can’t be the only one who knows it, am I?”

“Missy?” Isaiah asked.

“I don’t want to hear you talk no more. I want to hear this one speak,” she said, looking directly at Samuel, whose neck was bent forward and head bent down, mouth ajar.

Ruth followed the outline of his curves: over his head, around his shoulders, along his arms, to the bend of his legs and the bottom of his rough-hewn feet. He was blessèd. The night wore him well, so well that she would have no need for the other one, the one with the more cheerful eyes, even under these circumstances, that she could feel even though they never looked at her directly. It was easy for her to picture herself wearing Samuel closely, like a shawl or beaded necklace, something simple to drape for a cold occasion or a festive one, only to remove when the sun returned to the sky or it was time to rest.

She touched Samuel and he stiffened, nearly recoiled, but that didn’t stop her from running her fingers down his back, following the path of welts, thick and thin. In her mind, she played images of what this must be like for Paul. Did he, too, touch the niggers he took before he took them? Were his eyes open? Did he hold his breath? There were enough of them now—bright-faced niggers marked in Halifax tones—for her to raise up from her deep denial about how her savior could allow himself to stoop so low. The only reprieve was in knowing that these sins were merely transactional and so weren’t sins after all. If God could forgive, then she must also.

She looked down at the crown of Samuel’s head. “Lie back,” she whispered, and yet he didn’t weep.

Pitiful. Just pitiful, which is how she preferred it. That way, she maintained her sense of control. This one was big, but he was prostrate, as he belonged. As rough as it was, the kink and coil of his hair posed no threat in this state of supplication. She wound herself around him because time was the one thing that wasn’t on her side. Timothy would be home soon, stalking the grounds for a subject to paint. James might be patrolling with a few of his men, who she reckoned were only a step above nigger status themselves. Paul could be anywhere. She couldn’t be seen this way, as she was, unencumbered by corset or hand in marriage, keen to let her breasts sag and not be pushed up until they threatened to constrict her lungs. No, all that did was heighten her anger and everything—every single thing—that had a source eventually returned to it. But in the meantime, in between time, it had to be let loose.