Alice Randall: The wind done gone

“Why would she do that?”

“What would we a done with a sober white man on this place ? " e gone to sleep and got up again. The house, Garlic's house, is cold, silent, dark. It feels so different to know this was Garlic's dream and not Planter's. Not my father's.

Garlic pulled the string, and Planter danced like a bandy-legged Irish marionette. Everything but the horseback riding. That was his. There was always something African about Planter, and Garlic was it. Even Planter's love of the land had something African in it. Black people are ancestor worshippers. And they have the sense of sacred places.

Me heard the stories. My heart is still crick-crack-breaking. There's a bright bitter feeling snaking down my chest. I don't feel my heart beat, but I want to.

My forehead sweats hot beads, my hands sweat cold. My nose is beige and my mother's black. I look at my fingers and sometimes I think the tips of them are purple. I look at my face and see a faint redness on the cheeks, as if a scarlet butterfly landed on my face while I was sleeping and left its rouging flying-dust.

Now what has Garlic told me? That he helped Planter win him in a card game by poisoning his old master, Planter's opponent. That he chose to work for Planter because Planter was an impotent man. Oh, God! What God do I now imagine in heaven? Where are his hair of gold and eyes of blue? My Daddy's eyes. The only God I knew built Cotton Farm, ran the slaves on this place. Now that ain't Planter. Ain't Daddy. Now what?

Now Planter was a man without position or land who Garlic manipulated with his black hands into winning our land from another white man in a card game. Garlic the poisoner. I would laugh if it were not so sad.

I would laugh if every laugh didn't jostle loose bitter burps of knowing, leaving vinegar vapor on my tongue, the only vestige of the illusion of my father's power.

Gvam leaving here today. The place where I was born. I wish I had not come back. The three little graves, the boys' graves, the heirs' graves. It's like this-Mama kill those children? Or not. Ain't sure which way I want it to be. I think I don't want her to have done it.

And then I feel, if she did it, I know for sure she loved me. Loved me enough to kill. And it hard for someone who ain't a killer to kill.

Miss Priss told me long time ago of how Other and Mealy Mouth killed the soldier. Knifed him to death, on the steps, with his own sword.

They pretended like they hadn't. But dark eyes see everything on a place like this. Or do they see nothing? I've seen nothing. I know how every inch of this place smells, and you can't change a place without changing its smell. I kinda loved her for killing that soldier. All of them did. They said he needed killing and couldn't be no black to do it, so they was glad Other did it. Mama rested easier with the smell of murder gone from the place. That's how we all knew Other wasn't a natural-born killer. And Mama and Garlic weren't neither, for the smell of killer was gone from the place when the soldier died.

How happy can I be? Must I cry? I believe I must go, and keep going.

There is nothing left for me here. I've had no word from R.; she's had two formal, kind missives. What will I find back in Atlanta upon my return? An abandoned house? A place to work at Beauty's? What?

Garlic will make arrangements for me to leave. It will be easier for them when I am gone. And it will be easier for me.

Jeems rode me back to Atlanta behind his horse, Hannibal. It's strange to think of Jeems driving his own horse and not one belong to the Twins or to their place. It's stranger than the Twins being dead. We all knew one day they would die, but no one knew one day Jeems would drive his own horse. Jeems is a good-looking man. I wonder I ain't seen it before. I guess it's what a fine-looking man he's become. I wonder what he would have been if the Twins had survived the war. Something less.

He's built a house for himself and a church for the community, he tells me while we're riding, but did I see he's not settled? Did he seem less each time he swung down from the horse? And don't he look fine with reins in his hand? A hammer give not quite the same effect. But he's a farmer during the week and a preacher on Sunday. He milks his cow every day, and don't ride enough.

He told me all this and I laughed and tried not to laugh too hard. Ever since I heard Garlic's laugh, I've been laughing too much, off and on, all the time, like crying. Jeems, he watched me laugh.

"Ever think on getting married, gal?”

“You asking me?”

“Why should I aske you?" I laughed again. There was no reason he would ask me. I knew and he knew I knew it. So he surprised me when he said, "Maybe I'm ak sing you." I didn't laugh. The words jangled in my head like pennies in a jar-not enough to buy something with but enough for the sound to strangle thought. Nobody ever put that question to me. And I didn't expect to ever hear it on a ride down from the country to the city.

From a man I ain't kissed. I'm greedy for a second serving of those words. I want a dessert of those words, a soup, a salad. I wanted to salt those words and snap them in like peanuts. But Jeems is a friend back to sugar-tit days.

"Don't ask me.”

“I'm asking you. Will you marry me?”

“I'm not the marrying kind.”

“You not or he ain't?”

“I ain't. My Mama never married. We don't marry.”

“Too bad," Jeems said and he clucked the horse on.

We walked on down the road. "How's Miss Kareen?”

“Miss... ?”

“Kareen.”

“She's in a convent.”

“I know that. In Charleston. How she be?”

“Why you ask 'bout her?”

“She was the one we really liked." The words fall on me hard, like a blow-a smack across the face, a slap on my rum pass leaving the bright red blood tattoo of a hand. "We-you mean the Twins? " I thought it was Other they sniffed after. I thought the home folks thought Kareen's moaning over B. was some kind of too much sorry-for-yourself play-acting.

"We all loved Sugarbaby. B. was fixin' fo to marry hua. Woulda, 'cept for Gettysburg. S. was sweet on yo' sister.”

“I don't have a sister." I didn't get the words out to say S. nor any other Southern gentleman would marry a nigger, when Jeems interrupts with one sly, snarled word: "Yeah." I was ashamed for Mama and ashamed for not knowing he knew. I knew who he meant. And I knew he knew I knew. Why do I get stuck in these little circles?

Mammy didn't marry; I suspect I won't either. He asked me if I had a reason. And I just stared at him, letting him take the answer to be no. But it's like this. Long ago. Long ago. How long ago? I don't even know. I stopped letting myself want anything I could not have.

Hours later Jeems pulled the carriage up in front of my house and I got out.

R. wanted to know who the boy was who had brought me back from Cotton Farm. I wanted to wince when he spoke "boy," but I answered, "Jeems," and gave him my smile. For the first time, the first time ever, I'm wondering what it was he did remember about before Emancipation. "You remember the Twins Other was sweet on?”

“Those big red-haired boys?”

“Them." He nodded, but there was an unspoken question hiding in his smile.

"Jeems was their tenth birthday present. He was ten too.

"The Twins are dead now.”

“Yeah, they are.”

“Gettysburg.”

“Gettsyburg." Already R. had lost interest. He wasn't interested in slaves. I tried another smile, but my mouth sort of stuck to my teeth, and all I made was something that looked like snaggles peeking through half a moon. My face was changing. I wondered if he could see it yet. I smiled the half-broken smile that conceals. I achieved a fraction more. The edges of my lips were heavy, and I could feel the inside of my lips sticking to my teeth.