and blood is squeezing around ’em, pushing my eyeballs out, slicing pain behind ’em. Whoever got me here put piles of sheets on top of me making it hard to move.
The sheets bend and make a space under my neck between my chest and chin like a roof’s peak, where hot is puffing out and blowing steam over my face. A wet rag is sagging down from my forehead to my mouth, almost dry from fever, rubbing the thin skin on my top lip raw.
Shivers send my teeth chattering. My jaw is sore and my ear holes are plugged like they brimming wit water, muffling noises outside of me.
My imaginings got me thinking that some man’s standing above me with a knife, ready to cut me up ’cause he know I cain’t move. For a hour, I been facing the spot where I think he is but he ain’t killed me yet.
Throw-up’s racing to my mouth, bitter, ’cause I’m thinking ’bout Momma killed. I swallow it back down, breathe slow, keep it from coming again.
Lord, I miss Hazel.
THE SCENT OF a woman is on me like lavender and sugar. Must be a negro ’cause she clean. But somebody oughta tell her she wasting her time trying to save me ’cause I think God mean for me to die here.
My eyelids is lighting up red so I reckon God’s coming for me now. I peel ’em open, peek through to see God, but it ain’t Him, just an open window above me burning my eyes with light and dust.
I close ’em, don’t deserve to see the light no how, gon’ accept my punishment, stop getting better. Sleep.
I BEEN UP a long time today.
Tears for Momma and Hazel’s keeping my eyes from burning.
The musk of tobacco smoke is in my hair. Must be what yellowed the wallpaper, turned its tiny pink flowers brown. I been catching a corner of the paper wit my fingernail, flicking it up and down, give me something to do ’til I die.
I reckon I got in this room yesterday or the day before cause the moon outside the window ain’t changed much since the last time I seen it. The round of it looks like Mama Dean’s spinning wheel, hanging in the sky, stuck on nothin.
The clouds are stretched across the moonlit sky like ready-to-spin cotton across a dark tabletop—pulled apart, kneaded back together, its different little pieces tangled into one. Mama Dean once told me, “We’re all like this spinning cotton. A God-made thang. Blended together the pieces are strong. Apart, the wind gets them, blows them away, makes them dirty before they have a chance to make something beautiful.” I reckon I’m like that cotton, blown-away dirty.
I can move an arm now. Can almos’ touch the bed next to me. I ain’t on a bed, though. What I’m on is something hard but dressed like a bed, with a pillow under my head and these heavy covers. I reckon it’s a trunk cause I can feel a big latch on the side. It reminds me of the door knocker Hazel made for me. She’d carved a woodpecker from pine and put a string through its beak and a separate piece of wood so when you pulled the string, the bird would peck the wood. She said, “See, ain’t all knockin bad.”
My neck’s sore from my jaw ache but I can move my head, can see the pattern on my sheets—more yellow flowers. I cross my eyes to fix ’em on the dry, gray stain below my chin. I take a big sniff of it but it don’t smell like nothin. It’s clean.
Across the room, a white chair stands in front of a vanity, a shawl with red feathers hangs lazy down its middle. The vanity holds perfume bottles, two drankin glasses and a washbasin. Wax is sliding down a lit candlestick there, too. Its holder got a pattern etched in it like Hazel’s fire poker got. It brings my tears back ’cause I don’t know where I lost hers.
I’ll wait. Let Him take me peaceful.
THE KNOCKIN SOUND woke me up but it ain’t Momma and it ain’t this trunk.
A white woman is on the bed in front of me with a man.
There ain’t a wall, nothin between us.
She’s on all fours, looking at the ceiling, grunting. Her face is a schoolteacher’s but her act is a slave.
Her blonde hair is spiraled to her wrists and rocking back and forth. The naked man behind her is pushing, into her, cupping her tits with his hands now, rubbing her nipples with his fingertips. It’s making me shamed to see so I close my eyes.
The man say, “Is she watching us, Cynthia?”
“Frank, just finish.”
“I’m just saying. If she was, it would be sorta nice.”
“That would be extra.”
THE DOOR ACROSS the room swings open and pushes a gust of wind over me, bringing men and their voices near to my bed. Their hot-whis-kied breaths rain moist on my cheek. I keep my eyes shut. Pretend I’m dead. Let their funk, spit, and sighs blanket me. I won’t move.
“You sure she out of it?” one of ’em say. “I ain’t had one of these black whores in years.”
“You think Cynthia mind?” another one say. “If we just . . .”
“She’d be making money, wouldn’t she?”
The blood’s pumping fast to my head now, my face is swelling, lips tight, eyelids sealing from swell, cain’t open ’em if I wanted.
I hear a woman’s voice: “You think that black bitch is better than me? Hell, I’m good enough for the both of yous.”
“That sho’ looks nice, Cynthia,” one say.
My blood keeps rising. Everything go black.
THIS MORNING, A woman’s humming a peaceful song and dancing nice with a little boy. He’s barely tall as her armpit, standing on her shoes.
I ain’t never seen hair so red.
She say, “I love you, Johnny.”
I MUSTA BEEN sleeping good ’cause she changed my clothes and gave me a new pillow stuffed with mint.
The boy’s gone.
A man’s there in the boy’s place, sitting on the corner of the bed with his back turned to me. His red neck looks like not-done meat with white lines creased deep and jagged across it. His grayish hair is lined with a razor’s edge above his neck. I see him in the mirror smiling and when he laugh, his shoulders bounce. When he ain’t laughing, his teeth poke out his mouth like a egg halfway out a chicken. He covers his mouth with one hand to hide it, lets his buckteeth wet his palm. When he pulls his hand away, he stretches his lips over ’em to cover.
The woman slouches in her chair, painting her makeup on. Her silk gown clings to her curves. The man was fixing to say something but took a deep breath instead.
Finally, he gets up and goes to her, puts his hands on her shoulders, squeezes. “Cynthia, I wanna take you away from here. Give you the good life.”
Cynthia laughs out loud. “And make a good woman outta me, Nate?” She throws her washrag in the basin. “Take me away from my kingdom?”
She squats above her chair, smacks the wet rag between her legs, and swishes it around her privates, then stands up and sprays a burst of perfume there, too. She slides her frilly britches over her hips.
He puts his hands back on her shoulders.