The Prophets(52)

“Beatrice, there’s a nigger over here! Is niggers supposed to be over here?” the tiniest one said. His face was dirty and he kept pushing his long blond bangs away from his face.

“No they ain’t!” Beatrice said. She was older, maybe fourteen, and the boy favored her, so Puah thought she might be his older sister.

“I beg your pardon, Missy and Massa.” Puah kept her head down as she spoke. “Massa Paul send me over here to collect some of that there flower. Missy Ruth is having one of her belly spells and they need it to settle her discomfort.”

Beatrice looked at Puah from head to toe, then toe to head. “And who you be?”

“Puah, ma’am.”

“What kinda name that is?”

“I don’t know, Missy. Massa Paul give it to me.”

“Don’t let her take our flowers!” the little boy shouted. “They’s our’n!”

“Hush now, Michael. She ain’t taking nothing.” Beatrice’s eyes narrowed.

Puah wanted to grab her own dress up the middle, ball up her fist, and punch Beatrice dead in the center of her face. She took a step back with her right leg and then caught herself.

“Yes, Missy. I leave you be. I let Massa Paul know you say no. Thank you kindly, ma’am.”

Puah turned to walk away.

“Wait!” Beatrice shouted.

Puah turned toward her. “Yes’m?”

Beatrice sighed. She looked down at Michael and then over to the patch of comfrey. “Go on and get what you need. And be quick about it!”

Puah bowed, which pinpricked her inner self, and ran over to the patch. Carefully, she plucked stems full of blooms and added them to her elephant-ear pouch. She stood up and then headed for the field’s edge.

“Hey! Maybe you can teach me how to make a carry-pouch like that one you got,” Beatrice called at Puah’s back.

Puah turned and nodded. “Yes’m.” That was what her mouth said. But the stiffness of her back, the squareness of her shoulders, the tight grip of her jaw, and the rhythm of her step all said in unison: Never!

Then she dashed into the field.



* * *



—

“WHY YOU HATE MEN, Sarah?” Be Auntie walked up next to her with a slight, tender smile bending her lips. Her eyes said that it was a legitimate question and not Be Auntie being Be Auntie, trying to give known enemies the same consideration as proven friends.

Sarah looked at her briefly, then returned her gaze to the direction Puah would be returning from. “I don’t hate men. I hate y’all making me have to consider them.” She turned her neck a little to look at Maggie and Essie out of the corner of her eye. “And if’n I did hate them, I reckon I be well within my right.” Her gaze returned to direction of the morning sun. Her face was alive with light in the way only darkness could catch it and do with it what it would. She placed a hand delicately upon a cocked hip. “And I don’t love men, either. More like neitherway with them. They just—there, like a tree or a sky, until they natures do what it do. I don’t bother with them.” She sighed. “Only reason I here is ’cause Maggie call for me. And maybe ’cause The Two of Them . . . maybe they not men-men. Least one of them ain’t. Might be something else altogether.”

“Like Massa Timothy?” Essie said from inside.

“Ooh, girl!” Sarah laughed.

Be Auntie shrugged her shoulders.

“Hunk them shoulders if you wanna. You gon’ learn,” Sarah shot back.

“You forget your people,” Be Auntie said before she turned to walk away.

“You talking ’bout me or you?” Sarah let fly.

“One thing to feel your own pain. Right another thing to feel somebody else’s,” Maggie said aloud, only looking at Samuel and Isaiah. “And selflessly. Not because you feel like they your’n—like a child or a chosen lover. But just because they breathing. I seen a hare once not leave the side of another one caught in a snare. That thing hopped around like it was in the same kind of pain as the trapped one. If a animal can do that and we can’t? Well, what that say ’bout what they are and what we are? Like we might’ve gotten the names mixed up, ain’t it?”

“I choosy with who pain I feel,” Sarah said. “Some people pain is eternal. Some people worship they pain. Don’t know who they are without it. Hold on to it like they gon’ die if they let it go. I reckon some people want their pain to end, true. But most? It’s the thing that make they heart work. And they want you to feel it beat.”

“How ’bout these two here?” Maggie asked.

Sarah glanced at Isaiah and Samuel. Her brows furrowed. “Nah. They ain’t deserve what they got.” She let out a breath and shook her head. “But I ain’t do it to them. I was the only one I see who outright refuse to get up in that rickety-ass wagon. So, I ain’t carrying that burden, no. I got my own weight.”

“You ain’t get in that wagon and you ain’t do nothing to help neither. Some of that weight your’n to bear whether you heave it or not,” Essie said.

“So you claim.”

“What is, is what is.”

“Essie, I seen you up in that wagon. Holding that baby of your’n, too. Your eyes was closed, but mine won’t. I risk a whipping standing there on them weeds, but I ain’t go. What you risk, honey? You tell me that.”