The Prophets(53)

“How you can fix your mouth to say that to me, Sarah, I don’t even know.”

Sarah exhaled. “You right. I ain’t wanna be led to this, which is why I ain’t wanna come in the first place.”

“Yes, enough of this fussing. The air foul enough,” Be Auntie added.

“I say let me be loose!” Sarah said.

“You be what you need to be, but be careful, too.” Maggie looked at Sarah. “Remember, the chopping up starts before they have the ax in they hand. They begin with the eyes. You know what I mean?”

Sarah was going to say yes, but she caught the sight of Puah the minute she made it out of the field. She walked past the Big House and then sped up when she got nearer to the barn. Sarah smiled and nodded her head.

“You quick, girl,” she said as Puah approached.

Puah returned the smile and entered the barn. Sarah followed her inside. Puah handed the soft green pouch to Maggie.

“You made this for carry?” Maggie asked Puah.

“Yes’m.”

“Ooh wee! This fine. Fine indeed!” Maggie held up the pouch and eyed it. “You got everything?”

“Yes, ma’am. All we need now is that stuff you said. The marrow.”

“Heh! Yarrow, honey chile. Come on over here with me. Let me show you what I mean.”

Maggie led Puah toward the back of the barn. They stopped for a moment near Samuel and Isaiah. Puah saw that they were still breathing and even heard Samuel moan slightly, and then she and Maggie continued.

Maggie brought her past the horse pens far to the corner of the barn. There, in the darkest spot, yarrow bloomed bright red.

“I ain’t never seen no flower bloom in the dark,” Puah said.

“Not many can. Specially not this one. But look-a-there. Go on. Pick it. Then hand it to me.”



* * *



—

“BRING ME THAT ROOSTER. No worries. I cook it tonight for the toubab.”

They formed a broken circle around Isaiah and Samuel. Each one of them wore a different face, a solitary sin: Maggie: solemnity; Essie: sorrow; Be Auntie: elation; Puah: dreaming; Sarah: indifference. Maggie noticed it and hoped none of it would keep walls up where there should be windows.

“We leave room for you to enter,” Maggie said.

“Because we call on you,” Be Auntie said.

“To give us memory of how to lay hands,” Essie said.

“And to ease and restore and protect,” Sarah said.

And then they looked to Puah.

“You remember?” Sarah asked.

“. . . and to love in the dark places that nobody sees,” Puah said finally.

“Great ones, we come to see the waters sing!” Maggie nodded and sat down next to Samuel and Isaiah. She whispered to them.

“This not gon’ be easy at first, you understand? There’s something you also gotta do. It seem unfair, but there something you gotta give in exchange. The ancestors, they be a little fickle sometimes. Demanding. Or better, we do it wrong, misunderstand what they ask, and get mighty upset at the result. But one thing we know for true is that you gotta yell loud enough for them to hear you. Because, you see, we don’t have the drums no more and your voice gotta carry. Not just across the distance, back to over there from where we was took. Your shout gotta pierce the barrier. It gotta get through the thick divide between us here in the light and them there in the dark. For this, you gone need each other. The strong one and the seeing one. The hard one and the mellow one. The laughing one and the crying one. The double night. The good two. The guardians at the gate.”

Maggie never understood all of the words she spoke. She knew they came from sometime else and she let them come through her because that was the only way the circle would be potent. She stood up. Her eyes rolled back in her head. She bent and grabbed the rooster by its feet and moved it in a circular motion. She broke its neck and spilled its blood. Puah gasped, but Sarah touched her shoulder.

“Shh. Stay inside the circle,” Sarah whispered to Puah.

Each of the women dipped her left hand into the pail where Maggie had mixed just the right amount of everything collected so that the water had become a loose paste the color of swamp. In unison, they held their wet hands up to the sky and then, as gently as each of them knew how, they placed their hands on the leaking trail of scars on Samuel and Isaiah’s backs.

Isaiah let out a cry so piercing that it made Samuel flinch. Maggie saw it even with her eyes looking elsewhere.

“Yes. Call on them. Call them in her name,” she said softly.

Samuel whimpered and squeezed his eyes shut. Sarah dipped her hand into the pail again and rubbed his back, following the trail of cruelty etched there by fools. She pressed ever so slightly and a blister popped. Its juice ran down Samuel’s side and he finally let out the sound he had held back with all of his might.

“This ain’t your disgrace,” Maggie assured him. “This belong to someone else.”

Their backs were shiny now, thick with the swamp paste, and it stung like it was supposed to. The women laid down the dress strips on their wounds. It hurt to move, so Samuel and Isaiah lay there calling for mercy in the name, but not yet receiving it. Isaiah placed his hand on Samuel’s, who wanted to move his but couldn’t. The circle understood that as their time.