Alice Randall: The wind done gone

I always wake up before I arrive, 'cause I know I'd be punished for losing stuff. Sometimes halfway through I put everything down, I untie the shawl, and search for something in the bundle, something both worthy of saving and within my ability to save. Something that's both light and valuable, something I can hold on to when I drop other things. But nothing small enough to carry seems valuable enough to save. I tie up the bundle and try again to carry it all, finding again that everything gets jettisoned along the way.

Last night the dream was different. The people who awaited my bundle-to whom my bundle belonged-were waiting. I could hear their voices just beyond the woods. My parcel was empty. It got colder, so I drew the shawl around me. I wanted to turn back, but I didn't know the way. I start down one road; it looks familiar. I start down another, then another. I return to the first, when I come across a little chair, the last thing I had jettisoned. I start following bits and pieces back to where I had begun. I take the shawl from around my shoulders and begin to make again the package I had jettisoned, even as I shiver.

When I awoke from this dream, I made my way to Beauty's. I didn't dress first; I just threw on a wrapper and went. She was very deep into her cup. One of her girls shared it with her but vanished when I appeared. I told Beauty my dream. She asked me if I knew what it meant. I shook my head no. She took my hands in hers. She took a ring off of her finger; it was big and green like an emerald but it was what she called a peridot. That's how I knew about my ear bobs She slipped the ring on my finger. "I'm not going to tell you where it comes from. I'm just going to tell you that it's yours.”

“Where was the ring when I was looking through the shawl ? “

“On my hand.”

“I can't take this.”

“You can't take it, or steal it, or earn it. But I can gift it to you.

You can't pour all your water on a table and then have a cup to drink.

I'll be your cup." The stoned weighed on my finger. A tiny slowness of hands. I kissed Beauty on the lips. She kissed me back, and a bit of her powder came off on my cheek. Her paint dabbed my lip. She wiped the stain off my mouth. "Your dream 'minds me of Hansel and Gretel.”

“You the witch or the grandmother ? " Beauty looked surprised. "Baby, I'm Hansel." Hansel play-acting grandma. I laughed all the way home, but my throat didn't tickle. I look after the girl what had just left. I didn't know much more about Beauty than these new girls did. I knew exactly what she was saying. Girls will be girls. The men would leave and we'd crawl into bed together like kittens, scratching, pawing, tumbling into sleep.

We were in Venice at the time of the revels before Lent. I went into the plaza wearing a mask and hood. I saw a pretty girl, dark skin, dark eyes. She smelled strong of fish and capers and fried artichokes.

I kissed her for Beauty's sake. For Lady's sake. Behind the veil of the mask, in the old Jewish Quarter, I kissed her, kissed her, and didn't cry, because I know one day I will die. And I will not rise again.

I leave for Cotton Farm this afternoon. R. has hired a carriage to take me there. I can't go there in his. Cotton Farm. R. fought and tried to die in a Confederate uniform to save this place. I have tried to forget this, but I remember.

On the road to Cotton Farm, I carry the same copy of the same letter back to the farm as I carried away from it. It's been with me all these seventeen years.

It's a pissed bed on a cold night to read words on paper saying your name and a price, to read the letters that say you are owned, or to read words that say this one or that one will pay so much money for you to be recaptured. It be better never to read than to read that page with your name on it. There are not that many people who can read who have read those kind of words written about themselves, so you won't know it, won't be known, if I don't tell it. And I ain't gonna tell it, 'cause I don't want any more folks to know. After some of the things I've read, I know if God had loved me, I'd a been born blind.

They say Harriet Tubman can't read a lick, and she the black Moses. If not reading didn't help her keep walking on water, surely reading, what there was for her to read, would have sunk her!

I copied it out. The letter Planter wrote. I couldn't read a word of it that day. I came to know what it said before I knew how to read it.

It was not an easy text. I didn't come to know its meaning all at once. I had to study on it. First, I couldn't decipher some of the words; then I didn't know what some of the words meant, didn't know the deep meaning of some of the words I knew. When R. finished teaching me, I understood every syllable and I memorized all the sounds.

Dear Thomas,

I hope this letter finds you prospering. Around here, prices and cotton are high, trouble and weeds are low-and you've got rice on top of the cotton unless the malaria rolls through your parts as it does some years, leaving whole acres of slaves dead in the swamps-you should see a fine profit this year. I have a fancy girl I want to settle on you, at a price, a good price. Her name is Cindy...

It’s a delicate situation, delicate situation know you will understand. The girl is no longer a child and she's getting in the way of our Mammy's work. A matter of divided loyalties. My eldest daughter adores her Mammy; she's beginning to find her Mammy's daughter tiresome. But I have a certain tender concern for this child. To put it clearly, I would not like to see someone who looked so much like my sainted mother ill-used in field or bed. I hope you will take her into your house as a lady's companion. Let her comb your lady's hair, let her wash your lady's silks, and when your son is married, she can be your wedding gift to the new bride and groom. Your boy is spirited and intelligent; he'll manage the thing right.

In her day to come, Cindy will be a trusted Mammy in your great house, which I know you will let your son and daughter-in-law inherit. I will sell you the girl for a dollar. In consideration of the low price I am asking and the value offered, please keep her in shoes and simple fabric for dresses. Feed her well and use her kindly. If you, or any of your sons, ever have a little bloom that needs planting out of the neighborhood, please write. In particular, I wouldn't mind settling a little of your eldest son's property (the progeny of my girl) on my place, if it's a convenience to you.

Twice I've been kilt by a man. Once was when I read Planter's words on paper. At the end of every day Planter counted his money, his acres, and his slaves. All that counted were the acres. And these are the acres to which I return.

It almost takes my breath away, Cotton Farm rising from the mists.

Mammy died two hours before I arrived. They say waiting on me to come kept her living so long. She was about sixty years old. Now I'm near to thirty and she'd be the age of the century when the war came.

Sixty-five. 1865. I'm just writing sums because I don't know what to write and I don't want to think.

She expected me up to the end. She died sitting in a chair facing the door. She was rocking, watching the door when it opened. She croaked my name and didn't even bother to draw her last breath. She died with a look of triumph on her face and a sweet ham in her oven. She thought it was me. But it was just Miss Priss, wearing one of Other's cast-off dresses. Why she wanted to put it on, I don't know. The visiting colored preacher pronounced Mammy dead and took the ham home to his children. No one in the old house wanted to eat it.

I need to put down this pen and stop writing for me. I need to put down this pen and send a letter to R. before Other does. I want him to hear the news from me. Every time Mammy wrote to me, someone heard my news first. She had to tell somebody, and they had to write it down. I always hoped it was them that left out the words I wanted to hear.