The Prophets(50)

“You can’t hesitate, neither,” Sarah added. “Snatch it up and go.”

“When you get back, I lead you to the yarrow. Then we begin.”

“Maybe they need a little something extra, for protection?” Puah asked Maggie.

“What you think the yarrow’s for? When you get back.”

Puah nodded. She got up. She felt like she should bow, so she did. Then she turned and left.

Maggie giggled. “So nervous when they new.”

“She knew to bow, though. And ain’t nobody told her to do that. Which means her insides are working. You was right for choosing her,” Essie said.

“She choose me. Glowing the way she do, I’d be faulty to walk past her and not notice.”

Maggie walked over to the boys. She got down on the ground and folded her legs in the way she was told the first women did it. She ignored the pain in her hip in favor of theirs. That couldn’t become habit. Too many women lost that way, she thought. But this one last time was okay.

She looked around the barn. They had kept it so neat for what it was. There was no dung, even now, littering the place. Flies crowded around, yes, but there wasn’t anyplace on Empty where that wasn’t true. The horses were clean. The ground was swept and the hay was stacked in rectangles, except for the pile they must have been ready to work on before they were snatched up. And the smell wasn’t so bad once you got used to it.

“I heard it was Ruth what got them beat. Said they looked at her with not a bit of shame. And you know that ain’t nothing but a lie,” Essie said.

“Devil’s tongue,” Sarah said.

“I ain’t think you believe in their words, Sarah. You got a heart change?” Be Auntie asked.

“I don’t believe they words, but it don’t mean they words don’t tell you something ’bout them.”

“I don’t see why Missy Ruth would cause trouble here. What for? She too busy chasing the tongue-face ones.”

“Tongue-face?” Sarah asked.

“Ones that can’t keep they tongue in they mouth when she walk past. Act like they don’t even care that it could get cut off if they caught. Seem like the danger make them wanna do it more!”

“Mm!” Maggie jerked her head.

Wouldn’t that be nice, though? Be Auntie thought. To have hair as straight and red as Ruth’s, or blond, or any color other than deep black. To be her kind of skinny: flat on both sides. To wear pretty gowns and frilly bonnets, and bat not-brown eyes at all kinds of men who would gladly fall all over themselves to see what that put-on blinking might mean. Toubab women moved through the world gracefully. They pointed with soft hands that never knew any kind of labor that they couldn’t somehow escape because every man fancied them dainty and delicate.

No. There wouldn’t be any way Be Auntie could ever be that, no matter how much flour she threw at her own face, looking a plum fool or a haint, one. But she had decided on other means. She would do everything that was inside of her will to do to convince men that she was special, too. The only way to persuade any man of something like that was to agree to be the rug he wiped his shitty feet on. The key to every man’s lock was going along with the untrue assessment of himself as worthy.

“What Missy Ruth want with sodomites?” Be Auntie asked.

“Don’t use they words on them boys. You want the ancestors to heed or not?” Maggie scolded.

“I don’t think she do,” Essie said.

“How you know what I want?” Be Auntie asked.

“’Cause it’s plain, Be Auntie. All your wants plain. To everybody. To me.”

Sarah laughed. “See how quickly mens’ needs have us at each other? Hold, I say.”

“We talking ’bout a woman right now, though,” Essie held.

“And what she did to mens, ain’t it? How ’bout what she do to us?” Sarah looked at Essie finally.

“You know what I mean,” Essie replied.

“Quit that noise! We can talk those big things later. Now we gotta be together. One hand,” Maggie demanded.

There was silence except for the breathing of The Two of Them and the small weeping of Isaiah.

“What you want me to do with these strips, Mag?” Essie asked.

“Hold them ’til Puah get back. Sarah—come and sit by me. I need your steadiness.”

Sarah shirked. She scratched her scalp. She twirled the end of a cornrow. She looked out on the plantation and turned up her lips. “Gon’ stand right chere ’til Puah get back. Right. Chere.”



* * *



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PUAH WEAVED A MESS of big, green elephant-ear leaves into a pouch. She wondered how Maggie knew that strands of red hair would drape the lavender like a spider’s web, marking the precise stalks that had to be pulled. She knew whose hair it was, but why was it there? She didn’t have the sense to burn it so that birds wouldn’t get at it? Fool.

She didn’t like being so close to the Big House. Being that close meant that she was in its clutches in a way that was more tangible than pulling cotton in the adjacent field. Here, toubab were at their most merciless. Home did that to them: made them defensive, hostile, and scared of any dark thing that moved. They were afraid that all that they had accumulated and stored inside the hearth would be snatched away and returned to the unrestful spirits they belonged to.