the Bible and that was all right, I guess. But after then, they got to talking crazy, talking ’bout running North. But I don’t understand. What do house niggas got to run for? What they got to lose? They live in the big house, get treated good. Now they trying to trade an easy life and a kind master to starve. Worse, get kilt. “Freedom,” they said. “North,” they said. I keep my freedom in my mind.
The more I listened to Hazel, though, I could see her almost fooled by ’em. They probably want to leave her somewhere, make her the ’scape donkey. She nodded her head with ’em saying her um hums, and thas rights. I knew she didn’t mean none of it, though. The only reason she go to them meetings is ’cause a James. He’s sweet.
I’ve seen the way he is with her. When they’re walking, he’ll reach for her side to guide her this way or that, hardly touching her but she’s moved. If not direction, inside herself. Her hardened brick body becomes something looser. Frail. Like crumbling rock. No . . . sand. Like she’s made of drying wet sand and any brush could crumble her away. And that night I last followed ’em, he skipped his fingertips along the back of her hand, then around to her palm and through her fingers before settling into the spaces.
She didn’t break apart, though.
Only her gritty edges tumbled away. Changed her. One day, I want to be changed, too.
When she get to me, I say, “Tell me, Hazel! Tell me!”
“We gettin married!”
We both scream and hug and Mama Dean claps her hands, then holds ’em to her mouth. I say, “You gon’ have to practice me now, Mama Dean. We goin to a weddin’!”
I grab James and do a twirl and a jig wit him, do another dance on my own. Hazel puts her hands on my shoulders, trying to hold me in place. “Naomi?”
“I’m just warmin’ up, Hazel!”
“Naomi?” she say, pressing down harder on me. “We goin North. We gon’ run.”
My stomach drops out of me.
My feet stop directly.
All I can think about is Berry and Francis who only made it as far as the creek, then didn’t. “Run?” I say.
“They talkin ’bout war, Naomi. War to free us. The time to be a slave is over.”
I don’t want to die.
I unpin my hair and turn my back to Hazel so she see I want her to braid it, but she only runs her fingers through it once, then pats my head. “We all goin together,” she say. “You and Momma comin, too.”
I start fixing Hazel’s hair real fast and put it how she like it so she forget about running.
“Me and James’ll be like Abraham and Sarah in the Bible.”
“You want your hair up or down?” I say. “It’s pretty up.”
“You hear what I said, Naomi?”
I want her to stop talking about war or leaving so I bend my arms in her face to get her hair good. It’s an accident that I’m smashing my arm in her mouth so she cain’t talk, but her mushed mouth keeps moving anyway.
“It’s your wedding, Hazel. I’m gon’ make you the prettiest bride ever was.”
She untangles herself from behind my arms and yells to Momma on the porch. “Momma! Me and James gon’ ask permission. We gettin married!”
Momma don’t move.
She never do.
Faunsdale, Alabama, 1846
THE RAIN’S BEEN slapping the ground all day, soaking through the house, making our floors mud.
Hazel put a fire on to keep us warm. I like to watch it burn yellow and orange and see-through—a halo of colors birthing light through the ruins like the rainbow after the flood. It reminds me that God’s still here.
I been getting better at my reading since it’s been getting dark early. Hazel’s been practicing me for hours today and my butt bone hurt, but ever since she said, “Use the only part of your backside wit some meat on it,” I been tilted up on my thighs so this oak chair don’t hurt so much. If I was big and healthy like Hazel, I could sit any ole kinda way, but as it is, I got to sit crooked.
The boys especially like her healthy. You’d think them boys could see right through her clothes the way they stare at her chest. She keeps her arms crossed when she outside so cain’t nobody see ’em. Peoples think she got a bad attitude because of it. Truth is, the only thing she ever hated was her big tits. I wouldn’t mind if I had ’em even though she say they sweat underneath. I’d be happy to wipe ’em dry all day long but I ain’t even got a bump yet.
Hazel promised that my fat’s gon’ come after I get my period. I ain’t told her it come last month cause I’m gon’ surprise her. Just wake up one morning wit a big fat butt and big tits and Hazel gon’ say, “Why you wearin’ my britches?” And I’m gon’ say, “My ass too big for mine.” Then we both gon’ laugh.
But today, I got just one fat leg.
Yesterday, a wasp stung me on it when I was popping berries from that ole mulberry bush next to the pigpen. It hurt so bad and I cried so loud ’til I seen my leg getting big. By the time I got home, it was swolled up like an air-blown pig gut. I ran back to that ole bush and spent the rest of the night swatting at it so that wasp come back and get the other one. He didn’t come back, though. Now I got just one pretty leg. I been sitting wit it half off the chair, swinging it around so Hazel can see. But she ain’t said nothin, yet.
Momma’s been pacing the room since she got back from the church gathering this morning with Massa’s nana and the other white folk. She allow Momma to go, stand outside the window and listen.
Momma’s brushing the dust off the window shutters wit her fingernails. More like a scraping but we don’t stop her. Thas how she keep busy sometimes. It let me and Hazel keep to our reading. We take turns. It’s Hazel’s turn now. “‘Yay though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.’”
“Hazel?” I say. “God like art?”
“What? No, art means are. You are with me.”
“Well, why they talk like that? Thy and though?”
“That’s just how God talk. Let me finish.”
“A’right.”
“‘Thou preparest a table . . .’”
“Hazel?”
“What.”
“You think God understands us then? We don’t talk like that.”
“He understands all different kind a talk.”
“What about Momma? She don’t talk. He understand her, too?”
“I imagine he do. Now let me finish, then you can read.”
I be quiet.
She starts slow like she think I’m gon’ say something but I’m just gon’ listen this time. She say, “‘Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies.’”
“Hazel? What ‘preparest’ mean?”
“God’s expecting you. Always with you. Even when you don’t think He is. When your enemies are all around you.” She push the Bible to me. “Here, now you . . .”
A hush covers our room. The rain quit beating, the bugs quit chirping, and Momma stopped scratching, all at once. The kind of off-quiet that make you pay attention and expect. Like the moment after lightning, waiting on thunder.