The Wind Done Gone Part 6

All of this drew me in like fresh clean water. I was so tired of talking to G.o.d. It was good to talk to R. He talked back, and he f.u.c.ked, and he kissed. He was better than G.o.d; then he was my G.o.d. He taught me how to read and write, and it was as if he created me. I started writing and it was just like he took a rib from my chest and created a partner for me. Adam had Eve and I have pages. My pages are my Eve and they are my Cains and my Abelsand the generations descended from Adam. I liked R.a"sure enough. Liked him the way I liked G.o.d. I admired him and wanted things from him. I took my little pet.i.tions to him and they were answered.

I didn't start loving him until he saw Other. I didn't start loving him till he wanted her and me, but wanted me more. I didn't start loving him till he preferred me to her. Oh G.o.d, I loved him then. So much was reconciled for me in his reach for my nipple before her breast, my kiss before her breath, so much reconciled and so much redeemed, forever reconciled and forever redeemed.

And now it's coming unraveled. What if Mammy always loved me, and loved me more? What if Garlic was right? What if Lady was black and loved me and loved me more? What if I had never lost the first race? What does that do to the savor of the second? Why was I all the time looking over R."s shoulder at the Congressman walking away from me? Why was the Congressman walking away with a dark lady? Why am I not considered the most beautiful woman in the Capital City? How much longer shall I stay here?

_. t. came to me last night and I could not move myself to turn toward him. In my mind I said, "Hand, reach to him"; in my mind I said, "Leg, raise up and drape on him." In my mind I moved to caress him in all my old ways, but my body didn't move. He waited for me as he sometimes does. I am twenty-nine years old. Or am I thirty-one? For fifteen years he has come to me quickly and directly or still and waiting. Never exchanging touch for touch as we did in my dreams. He touched me, or I touched him. Tonight he lay waiting, and I found no way to touch him. He closed his eyes and said to me, Et tu, Brute? Et tu? Then he told me the story and we were back to the days I was fifteen and he was just over thirty; he was young and I was younger; he was teacher and I was student; yes, he told me of Caesar and the friend who betrayed him, the last one to stab him, and we wrestled like bears in the bed, arms grabbing arms, rolling around in the bed, laughing, because this is what we loved, him teaching me, and me touching him. It was good for us, that. Good and gone, like the wind done gone. Congressman stopped by to discuss something with R. When I carried in a decanter, the Congressman seemed to be studying the angels dancing on the toe of his boot. He didn't meet my eye. R. smiled on me fondly and took the decanter from my hand. When the door was closed, I could hear R. laughing. If the Congressman made a sound, you couldn't hear it on my side of the door. I would have liked to stay and visit. But it wasn't mine to linger without invitation. I went upstairs and started sorting clothes, first mine, then his. Those are the jobs that remain to me, the ones that require discernment.

R. is having the house packed up. He wants to sail for Europe. London'to begin. One of the colored girls from Nashville spoke to me of London. She sang there, or hoped to sing, for the Queena"is that how it was? Or had she already done it. Queen Victoria, who took sides against the slave trade, short and squat with lots of babies. I would like to see Buckingham Palace, and the Thames River, and the white cliffs of Dover again. I would like to see something more than the dark Mississippi or the lingering Potomac. He says we'll leave from New York. But I am not leaving for New York. I'm looking for the words to tell him that I wish to remain in the Capital City.

<, on="" it="" will="" be="" easter.="" i="" like="" the="" preacher="" at="" my="" washington="" church.="" i="" can="" walk="" to="" the="" church="" from="" our="" townhouse.="" he="" was="" enslaved="" in="" mississippi.="" he="" came="" to="" washington="" looking="" for="" a="" wife="" he="" had="" lost="" before="" the="" war.="" he="" had="" been="" sold="" down="" the="" river="" into="" louisiana,="" but="" he="" heard="" his="" wife="" had="" made="" it="" into="" georgia,="" then="" up="" into="" washington,="" so="" he="" came="" here.="" truly,="" it="" was="" not="" the="" wife="" he="" was="" looking="" for,="" but="" the="" children,="" who="" had="" gone="" with="" the="" wife.="" he="" loved="" him="" some="" children,="" that="" man="" did,="" loved="" him="" some="" children.="" around="" atlanta="" he="" tired="" of="">

My Congressman has never been married. Rosie sews a little for his sister. Rosie says his sister "always be after him *bout marryin'. "Specially when dis young friend of hern come by. She ain't *exactly a pretty girl, but they say she, Corinne, be real smart. She wear these round gold gla.s.ses and she got a neat-enough figure, just ain't much to it. But they say she went to Mount Holyoke, pa.s.sin', for a year, and that's supposed to be something'. She graduated from Oberlin." Rosie says the Congressman say, "A man who can't protect a woman ought not get married." She say his sister say, "If you can't protect a woman, no colored man in this country can." The Congressman don't answer that. At least not so Rosie can hear. I'm wondering what his answer is.

After the war my preacher got baptized and came up to Washington. He's real easy on the eyes and not so hard on the conscience. The old ladies like it when he comes to call. I can't wait to hear him preach Easter Sunday. I'll wear my new hat.

,/ have had a life, and all of it is divided, but not like the newspapers up North say.

When I saw R. in his army uniform, it killed something in me. Even now, when he lies naked in my bed, why do I sometimes see those bra.s.s b.u.t.tons on him, see them when I don't want to see them? Why do I touch the little k.n.o.bs on his chest and pull them like pulling the bra.s.s off his jacket? When I see the bra.s.s on the jacket, why do I hear coins jangling in my father's pocket?

All Daddy counted was acres. All Other counted were the coins. All I count is the slaves, trying to get the number down to ought. Always ending up with one; sometimes it's Mammy and sometimes it's me. There always seems to be one of us who don't want to be free.

Angs are not easy for my Congressman. There are Negroes in the Congress now and one or two in governors' mansions, but the tide is turning. R. doubts my Congressman will be re-elected. I fear he will lose his seat at my table as well as his seat in the Congress. If R. has no use for him, he'll find no place for him. It would be beyond the breadth of R."s imagination or the length of his eyes to see our friendship. To give the devil his due, if R. saw our friendship he might stir a breath to protect it. He is not a man lacking in generosity. But you can't protect what you don't see. The Congressman will lose our house with his seat.

I didn't read the papers till I came to this city. I have been a farm girl even when I was a farm girl living in town. All I knew were the people on our place, the land, the sky above, the crop, and dreams printed on paper and bound in leather covers. Here the dreams walk and talk, eat and spit. The world comes to me. Comes to my table for dinner, invites me to tea, sits by my pot while I drink my morning coffee. I who didn't know till days after the war had begun or until days after the war ended. Now I sit in the shadows of those making the news of the day.

Reconstruction has been under attack from the moment it was born. The Klan is on the rise and increases in its violence. No one knows how long we coloreds will keep the vote. The Freed Men's Bureau is overrun with people who can't read or write, who don't know how old they are or where they were born, but are looking for somebodya"a wife, a mothera"whose name they cannot spell, whose age they do not know, whose state of residence they do not know. These are the people I lend money to. I know the time and day I was born. Mammy made Lady write it down.

Lady told me that. When I traced her neat script with my finger, she quickly tripped along, "Your mother worried me from the moment you came, to get that inscribed in the Bible." Mammy wanted the day and the exact time. "I told her," Lady said, "I thought the day would do, but Mammy wanted the time, and we don't own the exact time anywhere here on this plantation."

I am twenty-nine years old. He is forty-six. I have no words to tell him that I am not traveling with him to London. I have lived under his roof almost half my life, and the only other people who have provided me a roof are dead. I will go to London with him.

Tonight when he lies beside me I will reach for him before he reaches for me. I have half my life before me, and I cannot afford for him to grow bored.

Strip to London has been postponed, indefinitely. We are leaving for Nashville! I will see Jeems. R. has some connections in that city. A maiden aunt with a bit of fortune and an awkward a.s.semblage of hangers-on, threatening to bleed her whiter than she already is. Folk in Charleston think he should have gone as soon as possible, and the letter was delayed in the post, so he needs to leave already. He wants to travel lighta"without me, and this is a thing I would have accepted. It is our usual way for me to stay at home, stay in our little enclosed world, but coming to Washington has changed that, and I have no taste for staying put. He tells me that people will know I'm his mistressa"if I go.

I tell him, "Everybody I know knows I'm your mistress. It's only some of your friends who don't know. And can that matter to you now? Now, you think on marryin'

me?"

"Precisely, my dear," he says. "I can't take you as mistress where I may one day want to take you as wife."

I shake my head and insist. I would like to stamp my feet. I have no taste for being separated from him now. "Don't you have friends in the city with whom I can stay ? " He doesn't seem to be giving it a thought. So I say, quietly, "Some of the old folk from Cotton Farm live in Nashville. Write to the family at Belle Meade. Ask them to let me stay in one of the old cabins. All things can be arranged between gentlemen."

"I am surprised you'd be willing to stay back in the cabins."

"Why? Lincoln freed the slaves. What do I have to worry about?"

"It's been a long time since you were in the cabins."

I let him pull me into his arms. "I'd do more than that r >s ror you.

He kisses my head and agrees to write the letter. "I feared you were succ.u.mbing to the charms of Washington," he says.

Hope of visiting Jeems makes me nostalgic for s.p.a.cious, high-ceilinged rooms and lavish plaster embellishments. The outer doors, the front doors of Tata were six feet wide. When they were open, it was as if the side of the house had been taken down. We will take back this place, we will take back this place, a tree once grew where this dining room stands and will grow there again; we will take back this place, nature says as you move through the house; and it was Garlic who created the structure that said it.

Later, I take a nap and dream of Jeems.

7/.

Scarriage ride to Belle Meade is not to be. Me be, we be, I am, we are sailing to London. We are sailing to London. I am and he is, the sail and the wind, and the old city. We are a whisper of wind seeking for London, a clean rag from the wash on a straight-up pole, pushing on to London. We are these new people who sail for pleasure. But the wind and the whisper and the rag are part of what I know, and the me in the other we, I am, fears. We are a sailed people. We sailed to America. We taste the path of our abduction in our tears. It's as if the house is on fire and I've got to get out quick.

Hate or fear of "crossing the water" may be the only thing I have left of my mother's, my grandmother's. Surely, it's the only thing that I have that I know I have. Maybe I have something else and I don't know it. If the fear were truly mine, I could touch it more intimately, get into its crevices, or let it get into mine, and I would know it. This feeling hangs down low in me, a heavy lump of an unexplored thing, like a clod of brown-red mud giving off some old mother heat.

The old aunt died before we could pack for Nashville. I long for forest. I yearn for the trees and the horses of Jeems, the steam from their nostril sand the steam from their fresh dung. I miss the safe inland cities. Nashville, 156 Atlanta. These cities with their front porches on the ocean, Washington, Savannah, Charleston, scare me, like a door left open on a dark night with robbers about.

But I am hungry for the city on the Thames. I think of the palaces, Hampton Court where Queen Elizabeth lived, I think of the Tower of London and all the things I read about in those Walter Scott novel sand those slow Jane Austen pages. The only one of those I ever loved at all was Mangeld Part. f.a.n.n.y hated slavers. I think of all those ladies now becausea"why? Becausea"why? Because, having forgotten what I saw there, they are all I know of the world to which I am going. Dusty pages. Mouse supper.

laughed so hard at breakfast, my insides got tickled. I laughed so good, I was the giggle and I was drunk on it too. I laughed so hard this morning my stomach hurt from stretching and shaking. The deep belly laugh cures more than you know that ails you. I had forgotten that. It's been so long since I had one. The rumble and the jiggle of the thing does a woman more good than a poke. But the good strong belly laugh is harder to come by than a good stiff poke.

L.

Debt Chauffeur, that's my name for him now, wants to marry me. He asked me down on bended knee, and I would have been honoreda"except he wants us to live in London, and he wants me to live white. I crowed at that. I laughed so hard, and not a tear came. He couldn't understand it. I don't often think on how white I look; it's always been a question of how colored I feel, and I feel plenty colored. He said that no one in London will know that I'm supposed to be colored. And I said I am colored, colored black, the way I talk, the way I cook, the way I do most everything, and he said but you don't have to be. She was "black" and she didn't seem it, and she was not that much lighter than you, and she was "black."

At last that explained everything to him. I understood it near at once. It had never seemed before that he so little knew me. Always at least he knew the difference between her and me, and now he saw little difference, and the advantage was all to Other.

I tell him. Mammy is my mother. I think of her more as the days pa.s.s. I can't pa.s.s away from her. He says she's the one asked me to do it. I don't believe him, and he hands me another letter. script was ornate but the words were crude. I didn't recognize the handwriting. Before I read the contents I guessed the fine script belonged to some Confederate widow, a general's wife or daughter, who owed a favor to Lady and repaid it to Mammy. But what I read Mammy would never have dictated to any friend of Lady's. I suspect she came to Atlanta, came to Atlanta and didn't visit me, came to Atlanta and got someone from the Freed Men's Bureau to do her writing. I can hear her saying, "Git it *xact. I ain't here fo' no about." Syllable and sound, the words were Mammy's.

Dear Sur, You done already send one of mah chilrens back to me broke. Lak an itty bitty thang, a red robin, you done twist her soul lak da little neck and huah can't sang no mo'. She was mah Lamb, so I guess that how that goes.

Now you got mah chile. What was my vary own. Dat's a love child you got, Cinnamon. Skinny as stick, spicy and sweet. An eyes-wide-open-in-the-daylight child. She need a rang on her finger and some easy days, dat gal do. I had me the roof and the clothes, I watch huah Lady wear de jewels but Ah ain't ne'er cared nothing about dat. Ah done toted and tarried and twisted mah own few necks, but dis ain't about dat. Let mah child love you. And let Gawd love her too.

For what I done for you little Precious. Yo' chile dat died. Marry mah little gal. I am sincerely, Her Mammy Beneath the last two words Mammy had placed her mark, a cross in a circle.

cried enough to ride back to Africa on a slide of tears. "Mah little gal"a"what I wouldn't give to hear her speak those words I see on the paper; what I would not give does not exist. I want to eat the paper. I would give anything to hear her say "mah little gal." What am I writing? I would give everything to hear her say anything at all. I want Mama, I want my mother. I want Mammy. It's easy to want her, now that I know she wanted me. If I coulda wanted her when I didn't know she wanted me, she might be mine right now. She might be alive right now. Mammy never stood foot on London. Ah ain't goin' dere. I ain't goin' nowhere she ain't been. I'm staying here and looking for what's left of her.

T H E W I N D D O N E G O N E.

gebt says all that's left of Mammy is me. He is polite enough to flinch as he says it. I ask him if he's imagining me fat and dark. He don't answer. He tells me about a dream Other used to have. A dream of hers. She was lost in a fog, running, looking for something, and she don't know what. Other never knew what she wanted, so she never had it even when she did. I ask him why he's still talking to me about her when she's buried in the ground. I say I know what I'm looking for. When I was a little girl I was looking for love. When they sold me off the place I was looking for safety. At Beauty's I was looking for propriety, and now, and now I have drunk from the pitcher of love, and the pitcher of safety, and the pitcher of propriety till I feel the water shaking in my ears. But thirst still burns. What I want now is what I always wanted and never knewa"I want not to be exotic. I want to be the rule itself, not the exception that proves it. But I have no words to tell him that, and he has many feelings for me, but that is not one of them.

Later, I look at my reflection in the gla.s.sa"and I try to see what he sees. I look for the colors. I see the blue veins in my breast. I see the dark honey shine of my skin, the plum color of my lips. I see the green of my eyes, and I see the full curve of my lips and the curl of my hair, and I _ know that it's not so very bad being a n.i.g.g.e.ra"but you've got to be in the skin to know.

Am I still laughing? It is not in the pigment. of my skin that my Negressness lies. It is not the color of my skin. It is the color of my mind, and my mind is dark, dusky, like a beautiful night. And Other, my part-sister, had the dusky blood but not the mind, not the memory. There must be something you can do or not do. Maybe if the memories are not teased forth, they are lost; maybe if the dance is not danced, you forget the patterns. I cannot go to London and forget my color. I don't want to. Not anymore.

efhad never known him to be ignorant. But he is. He thinks like the others, the common tide. He thinks that the blackness is in the drop of blood, something of the body. I would have thought he knew enough women's bodies to know that that could not be true. And enough blacks and whites to know there is a difference. What did I suck in on Mammy's t.i.t that made me black, and why did it not darken Other's berry? Was there some slight tinge, some darkening thing about Other? Lady's fort.i.tude; Other's willingness to take to the field? And how does one explain the sisters except that part of the blood memory must be provoked and inspired and repaired, time and again, to become the memory.

This tied-up-in-ribbons gift I want from him, he has no picture in his head of what that gift looks like unwrapped. No picture at all. The lift of a hat, the dip of his backa"those gestures would remain as they have been, but the bitter curve of his lip holding back a laugh that salutes all that is strange and lacking in harmony in me, in him, in us, would vanish. That curve in his lips, that spark in his eye ofa"trutha"yes truth, there is so much in me strange and discordant. The notion of respecting me, as me, myself, would be, is, half foreign to his mind. No, no, not foreign; foreign is this coming week of travel, that idea is not foreign to him. Respect for me is foreign to me. Respect for me is an accomplishment of his, mine by gift, not mine by right. Absence and exoticism are such different keys of longing. He adores me, he has worshipped me, I believe he loves me, but never could the tone of his feeling be formed so that this cautious emotion, this st.u.r.dy food, "respect between equals," be what you called the way his heart turned toward mine.

It was always some warmer feeling, not the cold distance of temperance.

I want his respect. I have fragments of it and fractions. He admires my mind. I have read more books than any woman he knows well. The way I break rhythms, the way I make rhythms, he yearns for the music of my way of telling, of being, of seeing. But now our love songs are played in two keys: grief and remorse. I prefer grief to remorse. Without mutuality, without empathy to join and precede sympathy, I am but a doll come to life. A pretty n.i.g.g.e.r doll dressed up in finery, hair pressed for play. I will be the solace of sorrow but not the solace of shame. I have been dropped too deeply into the shame bucket to borrow any that belongs to somebody else. I wrap my shame in his respectability, I let his arms wrap *round my shoulders, his weight press me into a sense of place. His self plunging into my heart awakens me, and, with it, a weak humiliation I've known so long, an aching bruise it pleasures to touch.

And yet and still I have wanted this for a long time. It was my first woman's dream. I have wanted this for too long to walk away without the prize I have coveted. I will marry him. I will marry him. I believe I will marry my Debt.

I read what I have written, and I wonder if I am not deranged. There is such a distance between the words and the events. And a greater distance between my feelings and the events. My feelings are closer to the words. I have never felt close to the events, because I have never controlled them. Someone else has written the play. I wish I could think it was G.o.d. I merely take my place on the stage. I wish whoever was writing the action would send the Congressman to call. "If I will not play the role in London, Debt sees no reason for us to quit the country. If I am to remain colored, I can remain colored just as easily here. According to him! I don't believe colored is easy anywhere. But I'm pleased to be spared the sea voyage. Again I remember stories from the quarters when I was young and stories from the docks in Charleston, stories of men and women and children chained into the bowels of ships. I hear them crying down the century. There is a song that came from the ships. I heard the story. The slaves sang some old tune and the ship was lost at sea. The owner was a slaver from way back and deep in his soul his conscience clean. But the ship got caught up in a storm where storms don't come, and he thought he saw the hand of G.o.d when the lightning cracked in the darkness. And he prayed to G.o.d to save him. And G.o.d spoke to him. G.o.d said, "I ain't saving you ifn' I don't save the ship. And I ain't saving the ship lessen I save the Daddys, and I ain't saving the Daddys without the Mammas and I don't need the Mammas less I save the babies. You is less to me than spit. But if I save the babies, I'll save the Mammas." And G.o.d saved them all, and the man did not forget, Amazing grace! How sweet the sound of the slaves singing that saved a wretch like me. He once was lost but now he's 165found, was blind but now he sees. That happened to an Englishman; let it happen to me. Please Lord, let me see what it is that I want.

woke up this morning and some strands of my hair were on my pillow, the red b.u.t.terfly was on my face, and my bones ached where they came together, like somebody was splitting kindling on me, and I am tired. I am shaking when Rosie comes for a fitting; she gives me the address of an old conjure woman born herself on African soil who lives just on the east side of the Capitol building. The conjure woman tells me to lie down in a dark room, and I do. I'm like one of those creatures from the swamp, one of those ghosts who only ride at night. I sleep in the day and come out in the darkness.

Debt says we are to marry before we go home. I am too weak to say anything but yes.

Say was my wedding day. Strangers stood up for us. I believe they played Mendelssohn's wedding march.

Rosie sewed my dress and didn't say a word. It was the golden color of sweet cream. When R. slipped the gold band onto my finger, I thought, I wish this had happened a long time agoa"when I was still in love with Planter, when I still begrudged her every kiss she had off him. We return to Cotton Farm for the wedding trip. He says, "We should be home for Christmas." Where does he think that is?

S rises from the middle of Cotton Farm surrounded by its fields of sorrow. It is hard to get out of the carriage in this territory of truth and illusion.

The wide front doors are flanked by windowsa"sidelights, we call them. Over the door is the half-circle of a red Venetian gla.s.s fanlight; the diamond-shaped muntins surrounding the front door hold blue gla.s.s.

"Muntins"; Lady taught me that word. I was born in a world of colored light and flickering shadows. I was born in the kitchen of a great house. 8/ Xarlic was waiting at the door. Outside it, really. He had on just his own new clothes, but he stood ramrod straight, as he had in his old before-the-freedom livery. After dinner Debt ceremoniously gave me the keys to the house, the house he had inherited from Other. Later that night Garlic took them from me. "Did you dream of this when you first came here?" I had to ask him that. Age had not stooped him. But when he stood with a hand tucked inside his shirt, it brought to mind Mr. Napoleon Bonaparte. "What didn't we dream of?" he responded. "What didn't we dream?"

We took supper in the dining room. Debt was irritated by every manner of small thing. He squinted at the bright light coming through the window where no curtains hung. And we shivered in the cold. "I'll burn this place to the ground it we can't get things *round here the way they need to be for folks to live in it," R. roared. Garlic said, "Gold damask would suit the room well, sir." I agreed, and R. approved the funds for this and other renovations.

168.

Some things were the samea"the cool tile floor, alternating diamonds of light and darker gray, and, outside, a planting of periwinkle, a small evergreen vine that bears blue flowers, the scent of periwinkle and flowering almond reminding me of when I was his Cinnamon and she was his coffee.

visited the cemetery today. I stood over the grave of my mother, then of my half-sister; I stood over the grave of my father, Planter. And then I knelt at the little boys' graves, the graves of his sons. Shall I always wonder if my mother and Garlic killed those children? And will I ever know? I asked Garlic directly, and he answered, "If we didn't, it was because we didn't have to." Sons would have challenged Garlic's authority over the house. "I wonder what problems I pose to you ? " I asked. "None at the present time, none at the present time," he said. Then he stopped and pulled out my father's watch, the one Other had given him. His finger released the mechanism, and the face was revealed. His finger snapped the watch shut. "If you had been my child, this place would be yours, now, yours." Why did it seem so plainly Garlic's to give and take away? I wondered who had planted the tree just up from the gate, the tree that killed Planter when he smashed into it. I wondered how long some folk can watch and wait.

Shristmas is coming. In the old days we'd be looking for the Yule logs now. The white folk thought there was only onea"as long as the Yule log was burning, it was Christmas and n.o.body was whipped and n.o.body really worked *cept those in the house. That was our hard times: when the house was full of guests needing cooking and looking after all the night, even the night before Christmas, but it was good foods and smells for kitchen folk too, and the field folk had a holiday by taking their rest. While the Yule log burned, things were different. So one log burned in the big house and another burned way out in the quarters. Out there somebody tended the ghost fire, burning the second log and maybe a third, to within an inch of the big house loga"an inch bigger, an inch longera"but something close to it. We would trade the bigger log for the smaller. That way we kept Christmas longer.

The year I turned twelve the Twins, Other's big boned red-haired Twins, came up to the house for a big dinner before leaving on a winter's hunt. Jeems was with them. No one went to bed till late. The night was cold and quiet. The stars so still and lovely, until they began to cry out and awaken me. I slept beside Other on the floor of her room. I got up, pushed open the window, and stared out like a wolf cub. That is exactly how I felt. Young, dangerous, like I could loot a henhouse on my paws with my teeth. Frisky, like the moon was lifted into the sky to listen to me howl. Like I could bite anyone and eat anything and leave my piles wherever I pleased. That night I felt that way. Everybody should have one night like that sometime in their life. But you pay the high price. If you have one, you'll want another, and maybe never get it. Yearning is a heavy purse. But not to know is a lighter, more starving, burden. Me, I carry the weight of knowing, cuddling close the hope I will know again what I have known before. I stood out there. Opened my mouth and howled. I made no real sound. Only a high pitched sob no one heard, a squeaking whine that came from the soup of sky and earth and time spinning inside me. I looked out into the darkness and saw Jeems looking across his own darkness hearing me. His teeth and eye whites shined so bright into my darkness, I got scared. I stuck my thumb in my mouth and began to suck. I ran back to my piece of the floor, curled into a little ball, and rocked myself to sleep. It was Christmas Eve.

ghristmas Day came and went. Plum pudding, goose, just us. No one from the neighborhood. No one Debt is willing to know is willing to know me. I believe that the count in the community is he has gone to crazy. When Debt got up from the table to go into Lady's old office, a room I am changing into a library of sorts, I asked Miss Priss and her parents to join me. Garlic carved from the joint and we all ate well.

Today is New Year's Day. I am too tired to write most of the time. Downstairs they're cooking black-eye peas. It supposed to bring good luck. I'm not eating any black eye peas. Nothing no black people are doing in any large number is bringing good luck to anybody. We ain't got no good luck. I won't eat any black-eye peas. Maybe I'll eat the greens, though. Garlic eats greens every first of the year, and in a way he is a rich man. Maybe the greens work, less folks do it. Maybe it works; some of us are getting over.

This place, every inch of it, feels like a tomb. I can't wait to get back to Atlanta.

We are leaving today. And I think back on the first time I left this place for good. Planter say, "You the devil yourself, child."

"How you know that?" I ask.

"Every time I look at you I feel the devil inside me. Your Devil calling to my devil to get out."

"How you get him back in when he come out?" I ask.

"I drown him in whisky," my Daddy says.

"How'm I gonna get my Devil back in?" I ask Daddy.

"I don't know, child, I don't know. What I do know is there's nothing for you on this place, child, nothing but vinegar. I'm not waiting for the day my daughter's husband takes her sister to his bed. It's done everywhere over this county, but it won't do here. Side by side to my Miss, she will suffer in the comparison, and you will suffer if I leave you here to watch her marry." He said all that. It was all mixed up and halting. But he got it out after a time.

I got mine out quickly, at last. "You could set me free."

"It is better be a slave to a rich man than a slave to poverty. Poverty is a cruel master, a cruel master every day. And there are kind masters in the world."

"I don't want to go."

"You distract your mother more than you know. And I have lost too many children for her to lose none."

"What has that to do with me?"

"I'm willing to lose another to make her feel the loss of one. My sorrow needs company."

So he sold me to his friends in Charleston with the promise they would be kind, and they were kind enough. But the influenza came through, and so many died in so few days, so many wills, and I was pa.s.sed along with the Thomas Elfe chairs from house to house, until, like the chairs, I stumbled into an establishment more starved of cash than elegance, and I was sold. Too many folk died, and I was in the market and my b.r.e.a.s.t.s were turning red from the sun. Later, the skin from my chest would come off in sheets. This is my story and I tell it again.

I get in Debt's carriage. It was an altogether different girl that got into Planter's then. Back then, before the country was at war, when the belles were still dancing, and the swains still provoked swooning, when the blue blood of the South was hunting', shootin', fishin', drinkin', arguin', and even studyin' a little, at Virginia, at Princeton, at Harvard, and at William and Mary, before the first public brother-against-brother blood had been publicly shed, I went to war, and I was a battlefield.

My weapon against fear was anger. My shield against pain was my own scream less bloodless, battlefield surgery performed without ether or alcohol. I cut off memories, I gouged out feelings the way you gouge out the little dirty places on a potato you dig up in the field before you serve it at the table. I gouged out dirt holes where I found them in my soul, and in my mind, and in my heart. I amputated and cauterized with searing thoughts, thoughts so disgusting I not only never thought them again, I recollect distinctly I have never thought again in the particular place that sp.a.w.ned the particular thought. And with the bleeding parts cut away, the necessary places cauterized, I survived, as fortunate soldiers do.

I fought my war before the war. And in it I earned my courage. And when I stopped being afraid, there were not many places left to hurt, and I thought so fast and cleara"so separate I was from feeling. Feeling slows down most women's minds. Mine is not hindered like that.

It is not burdened.

I think quick. So I recall it's not slavery and freedom that separate my now from my then; it's when I could read and when I could not, it's when Mammy loved me and I didn't know it, and when Mammy loved me and I did. It is when Lady was white and when Lady was black. It is still me, and it's still a carriage, but me in the carriage has changed more than I would have thought possible. All my old dreams have come true, and I am too tired to dream anew.

Other's man, house, and farm are mine; this is not a complete surprise. These things were hoped for and achieved. To look in the mirror and know, not simply that my beauty eclipsed hers, but that it is elemental, that it does not require purchase or contrast to be, or to be valued, is a miracle. A miracle begun when? When I saw myself reflected in the Congressman's eyes as I twirled in his arms. I want to see myself, again, in that mirror.

We are back in Atlanta. It seems so short and flat after the Capital. A place to move through, not a place to stay. A place that was not, a place that will be, but a place of friends. This is the only city in the world in which I have friends. Am I am ready to rest and be thankful?

tiptoe into Beauty at breakfast this morning. Just looking at her makes me smile. She powders her face so white and dyes her hair so red, I expect to hear G.o.d shout down, "So you think you paint better than me!"

"Mrs!" Beauty says out loud to me. I hold out my hand 176 and wiggle my finger; the ring sparkles. She presses a cup of coffee into my hand and I too sip. "I wasn't jealous of you having him in your bed. I had that before you did, but I don't believe anybody's ever married me. I think I'd remember if they had." We both laughed.

"I know you've been asked," I say.

"Asked, yes, I've been asked but not by him, and he's the only one I'd give up my ladies for. For him and a proper ring, I might just have given up p.u.s.s.y."

"You are too horrible," I say. If I could be scandalized, I would be.

She hugs me. It's a way of saying congratulations, well done. She kisses me on the forehead and I kiss her on the lips. I am so tired of being alone, and Debt has not been true company for me in a long time, since before Precious died. We are just old times now. I kiss Beauty because Jeems is a glorified stable boy and the Congressman is far away and because we both love R. One way of looking at it, all women are n.i.g.g.e.rs. For sure, every woman I ever knew was a n.i.g.g.e.ra"whether she knew it or not.

We dip toast into our coffee, and it is sacrament, benediction, and prayer.

I go home and pray for more.

SCongressman sent his card *round to me. I waited for him all the afternoon, and he did not come until evening, when R. received him and I sat in the drawing room keeping busy, not with my sewing but re-reading this diary. The men caught me at it. The Congressman feigned s.n.a.t.c.hing it away. Mr. Chauffeur a.s.sured him that the sanct.i.ty of the little book would never be violated under his roof. The Congressman commended R."s virtue, and I contradicted him. He possessed not virtue in .. r . surtelt, tut cunoslty m c enc lt Beauty and I were out in the shops together this afternoon. We pa.s.sed the Congressman, and he lifted his hat and bowed in my direction. There was a sober look on his face and a smile of complete contentment that provoked restlessness in me. I want to taste what he tastes.

"I am feeling a touch poorly. My joints are aching almost all the time now, and I must be clever with my hair; I've lost quite a bit of it. There is a doctor in Washington I particularly like. I've asked R. to make arrangements for me to see him. There's worry in R."s eyes. His worry makes me worry more. ;t. has asked the Congressman to accompany me back up to Washington, as he is going in that direction and R. is tied by business to this city. The Congressman has further suggested that I stay at the home of his sister, a Mrs. Harris who lives in Le Detroit Park near Howard University. I am alarmed to be so happy. Later, R. told me that he was touched by the Congressman's kindness and would seek to do business with the man even when he wasn't in office. "Some of them are rather fine sorts of men," R. says. "Not the finest, but fine."