Grace Read online

  Copyright © 2016 Natashia Deón

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is Available

  Cover design by Elena Giavaldi

  Interior design by Megan Jones Design

  COUNTERPOINT

  2560 Ninth Street, Suite 318

  Berkeley, CA 94710

  www.counterpointpress.com

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  10987654321

  e-book ISBN 978-1-61902-772-5

  For Ava

  and Ash

  and Lee

  my sister, Katrina

  Momma and Dad

  and You.

  The stars we are given. The constellations we make.

  —REBECCA SOLNIT

  Contents

  Part I

  1 / Flash

  2 / Flash

  3 / Flash

  4 / Flash

  Part II

  5 / 1850

  6 / Flash

  7 / 1855

  8 / Flash

  9 / 1855

  10 / Flash

  11 / 1860

  12 / Flash

  13 / 1860

  14 / Flash

  15 / October 1862

  16 / Flash

  17 / 1862

  Part III

  18 / Flash

  19 / April 1863

  20 / April 1863

  21 / April 1863

  22 / Flash

  23 / April 1863

  24 / April 1863

  25 / Flash

  26 / May 1864

  27 / Flash

  28 / May 1864

  29 / January 1865

  30 / Flash

  31 / Flash

  32 / June 1865

  Part IV

  33 / Flash

  34 / June-November 1865

  35 / May 1866

  36 / Flash

  37 / Flash

  38 / Flash

  39 / 1870

  40 / Flash

  41 / Flash

  42 / 1869

  43 / Flash

  44 / Flash

  45 / Flash

  Part V

  46 / Home Coming: 1869

  47 / Judgment

  48 / The Rigor

  49

  Acknowledgements

  Part I

  I AM DEAD.

  I died a nigga a long time ago.

  Before you were born, before your mother was born, ’fore your grandmother.

  I was seventeen.

  Still am, I reckon. And everyone that was there that night is dead now, too, so it don’t matter that I was a nigga.

  Or a slave.

  What matters is I had a daughter, who had daughters, and they had theirs. Family I could’ve saved a whole lot of trouble by tellin ’em the things that I know.

  But there are some stories that mothers never tell their daughters—secret stories. Stories that would prove a mother was once young, done thangs with men she could never tell, in ways she could never tell, and places she should never. Private stories where love, any ’semblance of love, would lead a person like me to the place I was that night in 1848. When I died.

  FOR TWO DAYS and two nights we been running.

  Me, and the child inside me.

  Pain is trying to get me to stop, make me push away the pain but I won’t push.

  My pretty yellow dress is stained red and brown now. Not by the blood of the man I killed, like they think. It’s mine.

  The dark of night’s been hiding my running for a while, muffling the sounds of my chest gushing in and out from my own hard breaths. Every few steps, the blue light of the moon sneaks past the treetops and strokes my face, urging me on—the only mercy I get in these hot Alabama woods. The devil’s coming and I have to keep moving, for this baby, for me. But the pain’s burning so bad now, I cain’t hardly do nothing but fall against this old tree, hands slip-sliding down its trunk, stinging.

  Barking from the hunting dogs is shooting across the air, bumping around inside me. I have to move faster, run like Sister once told me to.

  I beg my belly, “Hold onto me. It ain’t time.”

  But this baby got a plan. Its head’s at my opening spot, burning hot, ripping my hips wide apart, carving a way out.

  I hold in my screams and bow over hard in the dirt, knees first. A man’s voice shouts, “This way! She’s up this way.”

  I want to live.

  Want this baby to live.

  But she’s betraying me. Every muscle in my body’s slamming shut so I push. She’s tearing through me. I push. I don’t want to, but I push. Screaming mute deep inside myself, pushing so hard but hollering so low they cain’t hear me.

  A wave of warm pours out of me, carrying my joy and deep sorrow. Before God and this oak tree, she come. And she don’t cry. I guess she want us to live, too. I move her into the triangle of moonlight that sets my arm aglow. She see me and I see in her the good part of love.

  The weight of ’em push me over—these dogs, clawing and biting at my back. But the pain ain’t gonna make me give her up to ’em. I got to protect her, get up, keep running.

  I feel my legs, so I bend ’em. Feel ’em firm on the ground, so I push up. I hold her close with one arm and pull up with the other. I can make it. I tell myself again how to run, counting my steps—one two, one two, one two.

  A spark of light. A loud pop.

  Nothin.

  My last thought is to not fall on my baby.

  RAY THROWS UP his skinny arms like he won something, stepping right through me, making me see what’s left of me—a hazy mist of what was—arms and legs, a face, body shaped like mine.

  Am I dead?

  “Murderin’ bitch sure as hell weren’t gon’ get me, too.” He marches ahead with his smoking gun at his side.

  Where’s my baby?

  “Bobby Lee!” he yell. “Where the hell you at?”

  Growling dogs echo from all around us. He stops and squishes his eyes together, trying to see through the dark, wipes his meaty hands down the front of his stained shirt. A jagged piece of fingernail, packed black with food, catches on his clothes. He bite the nail and spit it.

  He sets his gun on the ground, tilts it between his knees, cups his hands on the sides of his mouth, “Bobby Lee!”

  Bobby Lee’s voice races through the darkness, desperate. “Call off the dogs! Call off the damn dogs!”

  “Where you at?” Ray say, snatching up his rifle.

  I see them dogs tugging her from my body, trying to rip her from under my arm, but I helt her tight. Made sure of it before I went.

  For the first time, she cry.

  Her voice is so beautiful but so scared. It anchors inside me.

  Bobby Lee dives on that dog, hammers his fists down on it, shaking my baby free.

  “What the hell you doing, Bobby Lee! Set that nigger baby down and let the dogs get a go.”

  Bobby Lee pulls his knife, cuts my baby’s cord and ties it up. “It’s alive!”

  “And we don’t need it growing up like the momma,” Ray say. “Murdering white peoples. Bounty’s same, dead or alive.” He calls out into the woods, “Hen-ray! Get your pasty-white ass out here and help me. Your cousin done lost his mind.”

  Henry comes falling through the tree line and stands next t
o me, fat and out of breath and smacking on a nasty pine needle. The slobber on it’s dried sticky and white and his sick breath rises from it, turning clean pine to outhouse shit. He doubles over his lap with his hands on his knees, catching his breath. “Bitch must be part Indian or some shit,” he say.

  “No match for no pure-blooded Virginian!” Ray say, flinging his rifle hand above his head.

  They so proud of what they done to me.

  Henry say, “What her name was again?”

  “Reba or some shit like that,” Ray say. “Just another of Cynthia’s whores.”

  Naomi. My name’s Naomi.

  “Bobby Lee, I thought you’d be happier than a two-peckered billy goat,” Henry say.

  “That’s what I’m tryin to tell you, Cousin. He done lost his mind,” Ray say. “Bobby Lee, let Henry wrap the body and give the dogs their reward.”

  But Bobby Lee don’t listen. He carries her strides away to a nearby bush where the moonlight is.

  He drags his shirt off and over his head one-handed, switching my baby back and forth from arm to arm as he do. He wraps his shirt around her, whispers, “You all better now. You gon’ be all right.” With his muddy hands, he wipes away the blood and white mess from her face, says to himself, It’s a girl.

  At the crunch of Ray’s steps, Bobby Lee puts his hand beside his own gun. Laughter, bursting from Henry, sends Ray back to my body to go see what the fuss is. When he get to it, he see Henry hovering over them dogs eating the afterbirth from ’tween my legs.

  “You like that, nigger?” Henry say. “I’m sure you used ta having dogs in yer privates.”

  I don’t care he laugh at me, though. I only care that Bobby Lee don’t leave my baby. He lay her on a bush, rewrap her in his shirt as Ray come back his way. Bobby Lee says over his shoulder, “She got blonde hair.”

  “Still a nigger,” Ray say and fires his pistol at my baby. Almost hit her this time.

  Bobby Lee yells at him. “What the hell you doin, Ray?”

  “That ain’t your baby, Bobby Lee,” Ray say. “Yours is dead. Two years now. So let that nigra one go.”

  But Bobby Lee don’t. His breaths are slow and long, and the air stutters out his nose. In a raspy voice, he say, “I know it ain’t mine. I heard some slave traders down in Tallassee was looking for negro babies, is all. They just a quarter-mile up the road. Might be worth something. They buy and sell all time of night.”

  “How much you think they give us for it?” Ray say.

  “Least fifty. You and Henry gon’ wrap up that mother. Get our reward for her. I’ll go see about this one.”

  “Ah, naw! I’m goin wit you,” Henry say. “You trying to keep the money all to yourself. We posed to split everything. Bitch and baby.”

  “Take Henry,” Ray say to Bobby Lee. “I don’t like the way you been cuddling up to that thang.”

  “I don’t need him slowing me down. He mess around and make it die before we get our money.” When Bobby Lee march off, Ray grabs him, holds him still, but Bobby Lee say, “We family, Ray. You know I wouldn’t cheat you.”

  Ray lets go. “Come on, Henry. Help me wrap up this whore. And Bobby Lee, you don’t ’cept less than forty-five.”

  “I want forty-five, too,” Henry say.

  “We cain’t all get forty-five,” Ray say. “Math don’t work that way.”

  BOBBY LEE DIDN’T get back ’til nearly four hours later.

  Ray and Henry were already ’sleep, crouched on the side of the road next to my body. Ray wake up, yelling, “What the hell took you so long?”

  “Couldn’t find nowhere to sell that baby,” Bobby Lee say. “So I tossed it in a field. Coons and critters will have her by morning.”

  “You throwed the baby out!” Ray say.

  “I knew it!” Henry say. “You just trying to keep the money.”

  “Show me where you left the baby then,” Ray say.

  “I said it’s dead and I ain’t got the money. Check my pockets. Go’n check ’um. See, nothin.”

  “Aw, y’all,” Henry say. “We shoulda let the dogs get a go.”

  It was the first time a man lied for me. It was the familiar ring of lifesaving untruth. A death rattle that has followed me all my life. And it was the sound that plunged me into the flashes.

  1 / FLASH

  Faunsdale, Alabama, 1838

  THE KNOCKIN’S ALWAYS there behind the wall in Momma’s room. I call it Momma’s music. My sister Hazel calls it Momma’s tired tune, a shrill note sucked and blown from a stiff reed.

  Hazel’s the closest thing I got to a good daddy so she never beat me for misbehaving, never leaves me long, and never tries to touch me the wrong way. She keeps me safe in this world, keeps me safe from the knockin.

  We sit in the back of our dark two-room shack, huddled under a blanket together. She’s trying to drown out Momma’s song with her hand cupped over my ear, fogging it up with her whispering, telling me we gon’ play a game called “Let’s see who can fall asleep the fastest.” But after ten minutes of trying, even the late of midnight cain’t shake my eyelids free so now me and Hazel gon’ play a new game. It’s called “Who can be the quietest the longest.”

  We always quiet, though. We got to be so Massa don’t remember we here. Hazel say Massa might forget about her, like he did me, since I was born early and he ain’t sure I come at all. The whiskey keeps him guessing and asking every year. He come out to the yard in the falltime to hand out our yearly portions and he mumbles his question about me under his breath and to the air like he ain’t really asking. Hazel say he scratch his head, squint his eyes, rub his belly, and mumble some words about a baby from a while back, too unsure to make his words clear but hoping somebody pick up on ’em anyway and cure his memory, tell on me.

  But nobody do.

  My Momma’s worth protecting so everybody look at him walleyed ’til he leave the question alone.

  Me and Hazel go out late at night or at dusk when Massa’s gone to town, or ain’t coming back for days. We was wrong twice. Had to run back fast. The fear made me faster than Hazel. Faster than Massa, too. It was dusk both times.

  Dusk is where it’s safe.

  And dusk is where the magic is. Where you can hide things in the orange-pink shade of a losing day. Even the green waters of Moss Lake get blended gone from dusk. You can stand a running leap away from its wave and not see the water. Like it’s just another part of the field.

  Dusk blends me away, too.

  It’s why Hazel takes me out in it, hand-holding, running me through the short patch of the woods to the flatlands where gray shadows form four feet above the ground, mouth height, and buzz. Netted clouds of gnats, they are. And we race the light through ’em and they spread when we do, then close behind us, recaptured. I spit out the slow ones.

  Hazel say I get my speed from my daddy. I hate that we ain’t got the same one, though. Her daddy was the nigga before Boss. Mine was a tenant farmer that Massa tried to sell a bad piece of land to. “Before you know it,” Massa woulda told him, “you’ll have your own slaves”—the same way he promised every poor white fool renting land from him. Probably made the offer on one of his celebration nights when he would spend the money he didn’t have and invite the whole town, make Momma dress up and smile.

  I tell peoples my daddy was a Indian like the ones I seen around here. Hazel keep my hair braided long down my back to prove it. We lie ’cause family’s more important than truth and ain’t no point in reminding Momma.

  The knockin’s getting louder so Hazel say she gon’ whisper my favorite story in my ear. “And when the prince came, he gave her a kiss to remember him by.” Thas how she always try to finish my story.

  “Ugh! Not a kiss, Hazel! Tell it right.”

  Hazel’s gon’ be full-grown soon. She turned eleven her last birthday. I picked the same day for my birthday so I be just like Hazel even though she come four winters before me. Momma said when Hazel was born, she could hardly push her out on the ac
count that Hazel was fat. But that ain’t why Massa couldn’t sell her like I first reckoned. He sell big fat babies all the time. Even the ones with big heads. Hazel say it’s ’cause money come hard for white folk, too, like it did when Massa lost most everything he had. That was the year I was born. Hazel say he sold off most of the slaves that lived here with us and said he was gon’ buy some new ones but they never come. So we got a two-room cabin on our own, separated by a wall and a door. Me and Hazel stay in this back room where cain’t nobody see us.

  We sleep together on the feather-stuffed mat inside a bed box and keep a wood barrel turn upside down next to us. We use it for a table most times but if Massa seem like he gon’ come back this way, Hazel cover me with it and put our piss pot on top so he don’t get tempted to wonder.

  Hazel’s smart. She know everything. Even thangs Momma don’t know.

  “A’right, a’right,” Hazel say. “When the prince came . . . he give her a tickle like this!” She grab my foot and rumble her fingers around. I laugh so hard my mouth git stuck open and fill up with air so cain’t no words, no sound, nothin come out and I cain’t breathe.

  “Pleeeasseee! Stop, Hazel, stop.”

  “Sssh!” she say and look over her shoulder toward the back wall listening for Momma’s music. It’s still playing. A soft knock. A louder one.

  She pinch my big toe, tug it out like she gon’ crack it. I hate that. She whisper, “Say, ‘I smell like stinky cheese.’”

  “You smell like stinky cheese,” I whisper, giggling.

  “No, say, you—Naomi—smells like stinky cheese.”

  I catch the sound of my laugh in my hands.

  HAZEL’S MAKING SHADOWS on the wall now. I ain’t got a dog but Hazel make me one. She use both hands to put a shadow of me on the wall, too, and make the legs walk.

  Hazel say she put everything she love on that wall cause it block out the bad. Thas why she mark on it for everyone thas gone. She up to five scratches now, all of ’em baby girls. Most of ’em came between us, all but one. That one come and go last summer but I don’t miss her. There ain’t enough room for a baby and ain’t enough warm when cold winds blow through.

  Massa tol’ Momma that he give her a better life than the others on the row and say he can keep a good eye on us where we is. He’s particular about everything—how they hang clothes on the line to dry and how Miss Dean spin the cotton and stitch the clothes. He make a rule that Hazel got to keep her candle burning on the nights he come so he won’t mistake her for a rat or a coon and shoot her. She never forget. The candle she got burning now is brighter than ever.