Ours, p.36
Ours, page 36
* * *
He had to go see her. This he knew and regretted knowing, had trembled the moment he woke to the thought on the couch. He left Luther-Philip, who had fallen asleep in Justice’s bed with the bust still in his arms like a doll. Cold crept about, so Justice lit a small fire in the bedroom fireplace before leaving out, dressed casket-sharp.
Saint’s house remained as unwelcoming as before. Selah was sweeping the porch when he got there, and she stopped sweeping as he approached. By the time he made it to the bottom step, she had gone inside while Saint and her companion greeted Justice at the threshold. Saint nodded, then returned inside, leaving a trail of stinging cold for Justice to follow.
Never had Saint allowed someone entry to her divining room. She wanted to see his face up close, to hear his voice as clearly as possible. The monstrous vision from Justice’s last visit had not left her. Last night he proved his potential for danger.
Justice sat in a rickety chair opposite Saint’s by the small table. Dozens of candles burned all over. The throne of bones cackled from its skull mouths, Justice believed, when Saint’s weight hit the chair. If he wanted to turn around and leave to his home where a friend sadder than a stormy Sunday waited, her companion blocking the door made that impossible.
“You knew to come,” Saint said. A threat lingered where should’ve been the mere sharing of an observation. “And now you’re here. Any blood on your hands?”
“No,” he said. The candles frightened him. Every flame waved, a testifying witness around him. “But blood still on yours.”
“You know what you planned on doing to your friend? I bet you do. I bet you know, just like you knew why you pulled that knife on me the first time we met. ’Member that?” Saint smiled with half her mouth.
Justice looked at the table and its woodgrain only deepened the memory. “I don’t forgive you, Saint.”
“I saw your demon. You saw it, too.” The room filled with quiet, reflecting the utter quiet of the rest of the house, which made Justice’s recollection of the roaring inside him more powerful. His legs shook. Without thinking, he rubbed the top of his right hand. Felt the thin bone.
“I have no medicine for what’s in you. No conjure for the monster you are. Only advice.” Saint spoke softly. “That little scar of yours don’t own you. Own your damn self.”
Justice slammed both fists into the table. “Who owned you when you killed my family? Who had you on a chain?”
“And if you ever show up in my visions again how you did last night, Justice . . .” Saint tapped her fingers on the skulls of her armrests.
“You love talking about slavery, but you not talking about how you just as bad as the masters.”
“Justice—”
“Who you still chained to? I bet he know. Don’t you?” Justice called over his shoulder to Saint’s companion. “You chain him up to you, don’t you? What give you a right to own him?” He stood, knocking his chair to the floor. “What animal is you, dragging him around like a dog? Who dog you still is, Saint?”
Saint was about to speak until Justice took a deep breath and, with all his might, barked at her.
Every candle in the room blew out except one on the table that lit Saint’s face. Her eyes were completely white with spinning clouds of blue. It seemed to Justice she had stopped breathing. “Out,” Saint said with her throat. “Out!” like a bloody cough.
Saint’s companion stepped to the side and opened the door. Justice blew out the final candle, kicking the floored chair out of his way.
* * *
Like she God. Like she Jesus fresh off the cross. Bring people to Ours and act like she the queen. I heard about what they do in kingdoms. Kill anybody who don’t do what the king and queen want. She think she run somebody. She don’t run nobody. She kill any and everybody all she want and nobody raise a brow. Now she in my face talking about blood on my hands—then he imagines his hand around Luther-Philip’s neck, punching him.
* * *
When he returned home, Justice lit lamps throughout the house. The gloomy day made his home feel less alive. In that gloom, the house appeared carved from stone. Everything with a name had lost its name in the stark savagery of the gloom’s undoing. In the bedroom, Luther-Philip continued to sleep.
Justice pulled the bust of his mother from between his friend’s arms, placing it back on the table. He returned to the room and got in bed with Luther-Philip, still dressed for a funeral. Warm, stiff clothing made it hard to wrap his arm around his friend. ‘What made him take it out the fire,’ Justice thought, and dozed off in the complete malaise of a day.
When he awoke, Luther-Philip was no longer in the bed. The fire had gone out and the room’s lamp had been snuffed.
“You burn your house down leaving your lamps on,” Luther-Philip said as he entered the room with two cups of tea. “You need food.” Justice agreed. After they ate, they sat in the front room and silently beheld the sculpture once more before Luther-Philip headed home.
* * *
Early evening, Luther-Philip returned. The bust was gone from the table. He called out to Justice and heard a wordless response toward the back of the house. When he entered the back room, he froze, said, “Why?”
Justice was sitting on the floor, pants off, blood on his hands. “I’m not nobody’s animal,” Justice said. “I’m not a animal. I’m not a animal. I’m not a animal. I’m not a animal, Luthe.” He mewed.
With the sharpest knife he could find—“I’m not”—witnessed by the bust of his mother positioned to face him though she was carved to look up and away, Justice had begun slicing off the brand on his leg—“a animal”—not cutting much, not getting far.
* * *
Justice cleaned and wrapped his leg. Luther-Philip watched. It took forever to boil the water, even longer for it to cool down enough to safely pour over the wound. Then witch hazel followed by what little alcohol Luther-Philip could find. A flap of skin slightly folding up from the E’s top arm stopped midwave and folded back onto the leg beneath the pressure Justice applied under the watchful, horrified gaze of his friend.
The following day, Luther-Philip didn’t return to check on Justice. Nor the day after or the day after that. Limping around Ours, Justice was asked about his well-being while he looked for Luther-Philip. He lied, something about a sleeping leg that wouldn’t wake up, and nodded when offered an unwanted remedy. Luther-Philip was nowhere, gone from the world, it seemed. Not at Mr. Wife’s, where Justice left him a letter, not by the tree soon-to-be-called God’s Place, and not by the lake which took all day to get to and all day to return from. All the while, Justice grunted as he hobbled about without cane or long stick, without a shoulder to hold on to.
[2]
One day, Joy went missing, evidenced by the absence of the scraping of the shovel against Saint’s floors. The grating noise had morphed from frightening, to irritating, to angering, to useful as Joy announced herself with violence against the house, giving anyone who wanted to avoid her misery a chance to escape.
When Frances asked for help to look for her, Saint outright refused. The twins agreed but looked in unlikely places, such as beneath a stack of wood, behind the teakettle, and in each other’s mouths. They feigned disappointment each time she didn’t appear and would’ve been convincing if not for Naima’s recorded fantastic hatred of the woman and Selah’s notorious disinterest in anyone not Saint or Naima.
Frances asked around Ours if anyone had seen her. It took a while, but eventually someone told him that he should ask Aba. “Not like he say much.”
But Frances didn’t try Aba because she didn’t need to. Come to find out, Joy had taken her new best friend, the shovel, and dug herself a five-foot grave just southeast of Creek’s Bridge. Without meaning to, Naima stumbled upon her lying on her back in the hole, open to the elements, the shovel laid on her chest to feet. Naima took her time getting to Ours, but eventually she caught up to Frances to let her know. “Her crazy ass in a hole she dug down by the bridge. I told her she need to get up out from there but her ass crazy so she stayed in there.”
Naima said it loud enough for folks in Ours to hear. By the time Frances made it to where Joy had dug herself the grave, a large group of people had followed behind to come see for themselves. “Girl, get up from out there,” someone chided, as if the hole took Joy farther outside than she was. “If you die, then what you gone say?” someone else chimed in, to great agreement. Ignoring the chorus, Joy remained where she lay with her arms crossed, the shovel tucked underneath their firm embrace.
When asked if she needed anything while down there, Joy blew air from her nose. When asked why she was in that cold dark hole, she sneezed. It became a game, the children asking one question to hear her petty snorts, the adults asking the other to hear her infant-like release of snot. Frances shooed most of the game players away and jumped into the grave, after which Joy let out a piercing scream that chased Frances back to the surface.
Someone offered to float her out by pouring buckets of creek water into the grave until she rose to the top, dead or alive. The Ouhmey shrugged off that idea, mostly because it would’ve taken forever. A woman told Frances to jump in there again and just snatch her back to the surface, but another made the point that she could just hop right back in there whenever she felt like it or dig another hole when no one was paying attention. “You got to fix the ailing that got her in there in the first place,” an older man said, barely audible over the autumn wind. Soon enough, people returned to Ours to avoid the chill and to avoid catching whatever Joy had. However, before the spectators fully dispersed, Frances overheard someone mention that no-talking Aba could probably get her out. Hearing his name a second time, Frances went to him at once.
Upon seeing her, Aba slammed the door in Frances’s face so fast the wind of its closure billowed her open coat. Frances knocked again. No response. She was about to give up when both Selah and Naima ran up to the door and began knocking. First Naima. Then Selah. Then Naima. Then Selah. They took turns that way, making a counting game of it: Naima knocking once, Selah knocking twice, the next girl adding one knock until the beat fell relentlessly upon the door, accompanied by their high-pitched giggles. Naima fussed when Aba opened the door on what was to be her thirteenth knock. “You messed up my count,” she said. “You must be ready to go.”
“He look ready,” Selah said. “You ready, Mr. Aba?”
Aba blew air hard out his nose and Selah said that he acted just like Joy. She rocked on her feet, ball to heel. Naima dug in her ear, then sniffed her finger.
“What it smell like?” Selah asked.
“Something God don’t touch,” Naima said, then said to Aba, “Joy need your help. You slammed the door on Joy, not Saint.” Aba’s face softened then, to both Selah’s and Naima’s chagrin. They had both expected chaos, a little battle to ensue, which is why they came in the first place.
Instead, Aba, shirtless, grabbed his coat, put on his boots, and followed Frances and the girls back to the hole that Joy had dug for herself. Aba understood as soon as he saw her. He looked down and Joy look up. Her eyes grew brighter, and she bent her knees. Aba jumped down to the newly opened space she made for him.
‘This not a grave,’ Aba thought, ‘this a beginning.’ Silence, a need for it, a hunger for isolation to keep one’s inner clarity intact—in her grave he saw his own refusal to speak.
He patted the dirt wall and Joy responded yes. He patted it again and she asked if a week was long enough. Aba nodded and climbed out of the hole, bringing Joy’s shovel with him. It took a while but with various gestures and pantomimes he somehow managed to get Frances to understand that Joy would remain in that hole for a week, lying down, covered in dirt up to her neck like she was under a blanket. Frances was to bring her water throughout the day. No food. If it rained, she had to use common sense to know to check on Joy in case the dirt caved in. Aba finished his gestural speech and went home.
The following days, Frances brought Joy water. On the fourth day, she started speaking to Frances again, asking for more dirt to cover her body. On the sixth day, she wanted to be buried completely, dirt over her head and the hole she was in filled to the top. Frances resisted, arguing with her until she lost her voice. Joy, firm and with much volume, requested that she be buried completely. “I will not be able to leave unless you do this for me. Just for a day,” she said. Frances covered her head and passed on all food and drink for herself until it was time to retrieve Joy from the ground.
When Frances returned on the seventh day, she searched for Joy’s grave. She found the small linen dress that Joy had been wearing draped over the burial. Frances nearly tore Saint’s house up looking for Joy, and looked up and around every tree that caught her eye. It would take hours for Frances to learn that the once-buried woman had sauntered over Creek’s Bridge and through the small field that stretched between Saint’s house and Ours, her bare body exposed and caked with dirt. What happened when Joy reached the intersection of Tanager and First became a disputed story:
* * *
Joy wasn’t naked but wore thin golden armor covered in intricate engravings of playing children. The moment her feet touched the cold stones of the road, a prolific garden sprang up all around her and followed her as she walked Tanager to Second then First, making a left on First and summoning lilies from the turn of her heel as she headed south toward Oriole. Hyacinths, roses of every color, bougainvillea climbing the fences, melons breaking from the ground while their rinds split overripe in the lush spring-summer of Joy’s passing.
* * *
Or, Joy wasn’t naked but wore black, roiling storm clouds as a dress. The moment her feet touched the cold stones of the road, a curtain of ravens lifted from the earth in an endless torrent that could only be explained as every pebble, grain of sand, and dust fleck cracked open and released shadow after shadow of wingspan unto the heavens.
* * *
Or, Joy was naked, but no one could see her except the Ouhmey’s houses. The moment her feet touched the cold stones of the road, every window and door to every home in Ours flew open, a harmonic chorus of continuous notes streaming from the open mouths of the doors until she passed and, as though offended, the windows and doors slammed shut at the sight of her naked ass.
* * *
Without lore, though, Joy walked naked and straight-backed to Aba’s house, opened the door without knocking, and didn’t leave. When Frances discovered this, she protested on Aba’s porch, yelling as loud as she could that she needed to come on out and put something warm on her body. Joy, with much cheer and not a lick of clothing, opened the door to her new home and asked Frances to bring her belongings with a kindness that frustrated Frances even more. After a few days of her protesting and Joy asking Frances to bring her her things, Joy got her way and woke up one morning to a well-packed sack of her belongings, including her broken mirror, though the loose shard was missing.
Frances returned a couple weeks later to speak with Joy. Joy asked Aba if it was all right for a visitor close to Saint to enter his home. Hesitantly welcomed, Frances sat in a chair by the window and across from Joy.
“When you coming home?” Frances asked.
“I am home,” Joy responded.
“Your home with me.”
“My home is wherever I decide to lay my head. Didn’t you decide to change where your head lay without needing my approval?”
Aba chuckled once in the background. He went into the bedroom and closed the door when both Frances and Joy cut eyes his way.
“You leaning heavy on something that can’t hold you, Joy.”
“You missed the hard time I had watching Selah while y’all went looking for that other one. You missed the times I needed you when the dreams got bad. You—”
“I’m here now trying to get you to come back with me. Don’t that count for anything? Don’t it?”
“Nothing different will come of it. Not a thing.” Joy was indifferent. This delayed visit fit the pattern she had escaped by coming to Aba’s. Had Frances come earlier, she may have been more receptive. Because Frances didn’t come begging the next day, Joy knew it was because Frances had lost track of time with Saint.
“This not the place where you supposed to be.”
“Why do you want me back? You can visit me here when you want to see me. Can’t you do that? Can’t I have my own thing without being your shadow?”
“My shadow?” Frances was hurt.
“I followed you from New Orleans to the wilderness, through Mississippi, back across the river to this place. I stayed with Saint for you. I never left your side. The nightmares get bad, you nowhere to be found. Saint get sick and you by her side for days. We hardly share words in that house. But when I come to do a thing that’s for me, you don’t want me to do it.” Joy’s voice became lighter. “Do you know I almost killed Selah?”
“You what?”
Joy nodded. “I woke up because she spoke to me. The knife point had already broke skin a little.”
