Edward Jones - The Known World

“Ain’t nobody doin nobody share but they own.”

“Ask mistress if I can do her share. Ask her.”

“We done spoke on it last night,” Moses said, taking one step back. “We talk on this all the time. What you been thinkin, huh?” He took another step back and was at the door and people were looking in from the lane and he knew they were looking. “I ask her, she ask me, and we settle this here thing bout evbody workin before the sun even come up. What you been thinkin, huh?”

“Elias, I be fine,” Celeste said. “You see. I be fine.” She put her hand on his shoulder and he turned to her. She had combed her hair before the pain came on and he could see how her hair, on either side of the part, had fallen in line with the will of the comb. “What you think? You marry a weak somebody? I’m here. I’m here.” She went around him and said to Moses, “I’m comin. I’m on my way.” Elias had earlier taken Ellwood, his youngest, and the other children under five up to the house and now Tessie and Grant followed their mother. She left the two men standing in the room and went out and joined the others as they made their way to the fields. May and Gloria walked on either side of her and took her hands. It was a bright day, as much sun as anyone would want, the kind of day some people would pray for.

Celeste was fine until after dinner. She returned to her half-completed furrow and as soon as she bent over, the pain of the early morning came back and she sank to her knees. She screamed and clawed at the plants until she took hold of one, uprooted it and squeezed. “Dear, Jesus, take this away,” she said of the pain. Before Elias could reach her, the baby in her was coming. He was down to her, holding her, when the baby arrived and settled in a bloody puddle in the furrow, still connected to her mother. The women came to Celeste and told Elias to step away, step on away. Celeste’s children came to her as well but two men picked them up and took them away. Celeste fainted. “Step back, Elias,” Delphie told him. “Step back, I say.” “Leave her be,” he said to Delphie, crying and believing in some insane way that by holding his wife he could make all things right.

Delphie took hold of Elias’s neck with both hands and shook him and he released Celeste and Gloria held Celeste but not at all in the way Elias had been holding her. The ground had not had rain in a few days and so was quite ready for the bloody puddle.

In the end, Elias picked her up and carried her back to the cabin. She woke along the way and did not know where she was or, for a moment, remember what had happened. She did know that the sun was full in her face and that so much sun meant she might not have any rainwater to wash her hair.

He laid her on the pallet in the cabin and no sooner had Gloria and Delphie came in to see to her and change her clothes than Elias thought of Moses. “I’m gonna kill him,” he said, the words coming like a hiss.

“What you goin on about, husband?” Celeste said. “What all you goin on about?”

Elias stood up. “I’m gonna hurt him like no man’s been hurt before.” Delphie rushed to the door and closed it and put a hand up to Elias’s chest. “Ain’t no place out there you needs to be now,” she said. “Leave him there. Please, Elias, leave him.”

“You move, Delphie. I don’t wanna hurt you to get at him. You move now.” He was not shouting. He had heard Tessie at his door and he wanted his daughter to know from a calm voice that her father was coming. In his mind, he could see her standing beside Grant, and he could also see Grant looking up at his sister as she called first to her mother and then to her father. He had forgotten that little Ellwood was up at the house. A calm voice was what his daughter needed. “I been knowin you a long time,” he said to Delphie, “but you gonna make me go through you and I don’t wanna do that.”

“Husband, come over here,” Celeste said and tried to raise herself up on her elbow. Gloria gently pushed her down. “Stay,” Gloria said.

Delphie put her hand at Elias’s throat, the more to gain his attention, and said, “Leave this mess be right now.” “Husband, I want you to come over here. Ain’t you listenin to me, husband?”

Out in the field Moses was in just about the same spot as when Celeste fell. He was waiting for the right time to tell all to go back to work. Clement, the man who had stolen Gloria from Stamford, had gone up to the house not long after Elias carried Celeste away. Now, as Moses worked out the words in his head, Caldonia was moving to Celeste’s cabin, and Loretta was following her. Loretta had forgotten to bring the satchel of bandages and root medicines.

Caldonia tried to open the door but when it wouldn’t budge, she called Celeste by name, then she called Elias. “They inside,” Tessie said. Delphie opened the door with one hand and held the other arm out to keep Elias back. “Moses made her lose her baby,” she said to Caldonia. Delphie remained at the door and Elias lowered his shoulders and Delphie said to Tessie and Grant, “Your mama and daddy need yall to stay here for now.” Before the children could speak, Delphie closed the door.

“This ain’t over, Delphie,” Elias said as Caldonia and Loretta knelt to his wife. “This ain’t over by a little bit.” “I ain’t never said it was, Elias,” Delphie said.

Moses stayed away that evening and the next evening the house was quiet as he came up to the back. He knocked and waited until Zeddie came and let him in. “She be in the parlor,” Zeddie said and Moses took off his hat and went on through. He was wearing his good pants but had not bothered to wash as he sensed there was no use.

Loretta was standing at the window and Caldonia was in the middle of the settee. “Why would you put a woman in the family way in danger, Moses?” Caldonia said.

“She playactin,” he said. “They all playact sometime. I ain’t never seen a one that don’t playact sometime.” Loretta’s back was to him and he spoke some of his words to her back and some of them to the grandfather clock next to the window.

“She lost her child, Moses. Don’t you know that?” Caldonia said.

“I heard that,” he said.

“You let me know from now on when somebody talks about feeling bad. You come to me first.”

“That could make things bad all round. Real bad.” He wanted to say her name but they were not alone. This is me, he wanted to tell her. It’s me you sayin all this to.

Loretta turned from the window. Whatever she had been watching was no longer of interest. She unfolded her arms. This could have been my husband, she thought, and I could have been his wife. Married, one together. Would she now have been wherever Priscilla and Alice were, out in God knew where with her child?

“I don’t have any more to say, Moses. This is a disappointment. I don’t have any more tonight.” Loretta took two steps, signaling Moses that he was to leave.

He went out the back door but did not go to the cabins. He stood many yards from them, watching the smoke rise from all the chimneys except his own. He heard a hum and thought it might be all the evening conversations rising as one above the cabins and making a noise to the universe. A hearty laugh drifted out of the lane but by the time it reached him there was no life in it. He wanted to go out to the woods and be with himself, something he had not done in days, but he would have had to go down through the lane and he did not want to see any faces seeing his own. There was a long way around but he chose not to take it.

After he had been standing there nearly two hours, the life along the lane quieted and he went down and into his cabin. There were no sounds from the cabin next to his, from Celeste and Elias’s cabin. Moses took off his shoes. He sat with his back against the door in the dark. About three o’clock he just leaned over and fell asleep across the doorway. Not long after he did that, Elias came and tried to push the door in, but finding it barred, he went back to his cabin.