Vox(47)

I follow twin dirt ruts from the road, past a vegetable garden the size of a small farm, and kill the engine behind a Jeep with vanity plates. The Virginia tags read IMPURE.

Sonia unstraps herself from the car seat and vaults out in the direction of two goats.

“Whoa, little girl. Wait a minute,” I say. In the forty-five-minute drive out here, I explained that the girls she’s about to spend her day with might not talk very much. “Just like school,” I said. “Remember that.” But then, of course, the Ray girls would be at school on a Friday.

A screen door, tilted on its hinges, swings open, and Sharon steps out onto a porch that isn’t quite parallel to the ground. She’s in frayed overalls and a checked cotton shirt; a blue bandana tied on her head with the knot on top keeps her hair in check but doesn’t cover it. Ropes of muscle line her forearms, where the shirt cuffs are rolled back, and in one hand she’s holding a wrench. In the other, a plastic drywall bucket.

Sharon Ray could be a modern Rosie the Riveter, if Rosie had been forty-something, black, and wearing a silver-toned word counter on her wrist.

She smiles from the porch, sets the bucket and wrench down, and walks to where Sonia and I are standing. Then she tilts her head slightly to the right, toward an outbuilding that seems to be in better repair than the family’s house. We walk in silence to the barn, Sonia wide-eyed at goats and chickens and three alpacas roaming freely around the property.

“What’s that?” Sonia says, pointing toward one of the furry beasts.

“Shh,” I say.

Sharon smiles again but says nothing until we’ve reached the barn. She slides a wooden beam as thick as a man’s thigh aside and pushes the door open. Smells of sweet hay and not-so-sweet manure hit me like a slap.

“Nothin’ like a little horseshit to wake you up, is there?” Sharon says. “Sorry. I mean poo. I forget myself sometimes.”

“It’s okay.” I’ve never been one to mince words around my kids.

“So, you’re Sonia?” She bends down and takes my daughter’s left hand, running a thumb where Sonia’s wrist counter should be. “I’m Ms. Sharon, and I think we’re gonna be good friends, you and me. You like horses?”

Sonia nods.

“Use your words, girl. You got ’em, right?”

“I told her—,” I start.

“You’re probably wondering why I’m talking so much.” Sharon unsnaps the silver band on her left wrist and slides it off. “Fake. Del made it for me last year, once he figured out how to get the real one off. Made three more for our girls.” She turns back to Sonia, as if nothing she just said could possibly be more interesting than livestock. “So, that one in the back, he’s Cato. Next to him is Mencken. And that bullheaded roan mare over on the side is Aristotle. How ’bout you go say hello to them while I talk to your mama?”

Sonia doesn’t need to be asked twice, and runs off toward Aristotle’s stall.

“She won’t bite, will she?” I say, nodding to the mare.

“Not unless I tell her to,” Sharon says. “You look surprised, Dr. McClellan.”

“Jean. I guess I am.”

“Del’s an engineer in mailman’s clothing. Got things all set up here so it looks like we’re following along, nice and quiet like. Good man, my Del, even if he is a white boy from town. Come on over here, and I’ll show you something.” She leads me past Cato and Mencken—odd names for horses, I think; not as odd as naming a mare after a classical male philosopher—and opens a door at the back of the barn.

Del’s workshop is both a science lab and the antithesis of any lab I’ve ever seen. Most of the machinery looks as if it were cobbled together from spare game console parts and kitchen equipment. On my right is an old slide projector that has been gutted; on my left, on a clean worktable, are five CPUs from the 1980s, their insides arrayed neatly in rows.

“What does he do in here?” I ask.

“He tinkers.”

“Why?”

Sharon stares at me. “Why do you think? Take a good look at me, Jean. I’m a black woman.”

“I noticed. So?”

“So how long do you think it’s gonna be before Reverend Carl and his holy Pure Blue sheep get it in their heads that it ain’t just women and men who were made differently under God’s eyes, but blacks and whites? You think mixed marriages like mine are part of the plan? If you do, you’re not as smart as I thought.”

I feel myself going red. “I never thought about it.”

“Course you never. Look, I don’t mean to be unkind, but you white gals, all you’re worried about is, well, all you’re worried about is you white gals. Me, I got more to fret over than whether I have a hundred words a day. I got my girls, too. We still send ’em to that school and do what we can on the weekends, until we can figure out a way to get out of here and over the border, but Del and I know a tide’s comin’ in. I guess before the year’s out, we’ll start seein’ more than just separate schools for boys and girls. And just like now, they ain’t gonna be equal.”

There’s no emotion in her voice, no self-pity, only cold, clear observation, as if she were reciting a recipe or reporting the weather. I’m the one who’s sweating.