Natashia Deon - Grace

I don’t answer.

“What brings you to Conyers, girl?”

I cain’t speak.

The second one comes over to me, walking wide-legged. He slides his hand down my backside, pinches my ass with his whole hand. My lips quiver but I ain’t gon’ cry.

“It’s about time we had a go,” he say, unbuckling his pants.

“Right here? Right now?” the third one say. “In the broad daylight?”

I cain’t move.

“Let her ’lone!” I hear her say. Cynthia is running down the stairs coming this way with her two pistols popping in the air. “Let her ’lone!”

The first man, the leader, backs up with a hand in the air. With the other, he pulls me close to him, say, “Whoa now, Cynthia,” and puts me half in front of him.

She waves both pistols across everybody. She say, “I said, let her ’lone, Jonas.”

“Just having some fun, is all,” Jonas say. “We’d have paid you.”

“She ain’t one of my girls.”

“Then this ain’t none of your business,” he say.

She fires in the air again. “I reckon it is.”

“You crazy,” the second brother who had his hand on my ass say.

“I’m crazy, Tommy?” Cynthia points her pistol at him. “That wasn’t what you was saying three nights ago when you were crying on my shoulder about the bitch that stole your shit and you still want her back.”

Tommy steps behind Jonas.

“You hiding, now? Way I see it is I made it a fair fight. It was three on one and now, me and my Walkers here make it three on three. The girl don’t hardly count.”

Jonas tears a pistol from behind his waist and points it at her.

Cynthia gets real still.

Everybody do.

I hear us breathing.

“We at a stalemate,” Jonas say.

“I don’t reckon so,” Cynthia say, keeping her eye and one pistol on him.

She dumps all the bullets except for one out of her other gun without looking, and snaps the chamber closed. “Sometimes, the only thing between life and death is luck. Ain’t no rhyme, no reason, no God to come save you, just Lady Luck.”

“Don’t give me your bullshit, Cynthia. You can take the girl and we’ll go.”

“How lucky you think I is?” she say.

She takes the pistol with the single bullet and presses it against her head.

I close my eyes.

She fires — click, click, click.

I open my eyes, breathing hard. She points the pistol back at the men.

“There weren’t no bullet in there,” Jonas say. “Some kind of trick. Tommy, grab her guns!”

Cynthia flicks her wrists, daring him.

Tommy don’t go.

“This ain’t none of my business,” the third man say, straightening hisself like he just stopped by to say hi. He say, “So I’ll just go. .”

Cynthia stares at ’im with dead eyes and tilts her head sideways, enough to make him want to stay.

“You ain’t gon’ shoot,” Jonas say. “How will that look to the law? A whore shooting upstanding citizens like ourselves.”

“Regular pillars of the community,” Cynthia say, laughing. “Hell, law can only take me to jail or hell, no place I ain’t already been.”

She keeps the fully loaded gun on Jonas. The other one she holds directly at Tommy’s head.

Jonas say, “Don’t worry, Tommy. Ain’t no bullet in there.” But Tommy don’t move.

Nobody moves.

Cynthia lowers the pistol she got pointed at Tommy and fires. Its sound is like rocks hitting together, but louder.

Tommy screams, grabbing his hand where the bullet grazed, blood spills through. He clinches his hand between his legs, knees the dirt, whining and rolling around.

Cynthia don’t flinch. “Jonas?” she say. “Now how lucky you think you is?”

“You bitch!” Tommy say.

She fires her pistol near him again, burying a bullet in the ground. “Shut up. It’s just a graze.”

He opens his hand, sees the flesh ripped, holds the wound closed and clinches his teeth, swearing and spitting through ’em.

Jonas lets go my arm. He pushes me to Cynthia, his voice shaking. “I’m trusting you now, Cynthia. You know we was just messing around. G’wan and take her. We don’t want no trouble.”

He backs away, pulling the third man away with him, and nudges Tommy with his foot. Tommy’s still whining.

“Quit yer crying,” Cynthia say. “You can pay me with the other hand.” She keeps her pistol on ’em when she grabs me and together we snake our way backward to the brothel house.

I think Cynthia’s gon’ keep me safe, after all.

THE WIND SWISHES through ancient treetops, spraying leaves from their perches, tumbling the gold ones to the ground. They roll along green fields, tickling thin grasses — a soft touch to the hard ting of Josey’s daddy, Charles, blacksmithing. Three weeks of rain has brought every living thing to the surface. Worms and even roots are ground cover now, flattened ’cause everybody’s trampling over ’em.

A dirt road runs between Charles’s shop and the cotton field where rows of negroes are bent over and reaching for the next burst of white on a cotton stalk. Their dark faces and hands seem to sprout from their muted clothing — men in gray overalls and women in long gray dresses and headscarves. The children’s hands sting from pulling weeds ’cause their palms ain’t calloused like Josey’s. Two years ’til she’s a teenager and she’s careless with her picking, careless with her sitting, careless with her running. She rounded a corner this morning, headed toward the slaves’ quarters, going too fast to see the black boy who was carrying the basket of food. She hit him whole-bodied, his spilled cabbage heads rolled, and Josey crawled after ’em but they were already ruined, he said. “Cain’t sell ’em like this,” he said. Sheets of cabbage leafs peeled away.

“You all right?” Josey said. He didn’t answer.

The boy was about Josey’s age and, compared to her, harmless. I gave him the name Wayward years ago because of the way he comes and goes on this plantation without much notice. He don’t belong here. He takes shortcuts through this property three or four times a year carrying vegetables and fruits bound for market trade across the river. If somebody asks, he’ll lie and say he’s selling for the Graham household. Confusion and his look of purpose — his look-busy —keeps people from asking more questions. But I do. I do ’cause of how he stops and stares into Josey’s yard sometimes, waiting for a glimpse of her. And when he get one, his expression turn to mush.

Josey’s legs are splayed open now like a boy. But she’s covered and sitting next to Ada Mae and near the other negro children. From here, she looks like a white watermelon seed among the black ones. Frail-looking and out of place.

She sings a made-up song and pulls without looking, belting out another note now, the longest that ever was, and Ada Mae looks to the sky for mercy.

Across the field, Slavedriver Nelson stands in the dirt with his steed and no hat on letting the sun beat down on his blood-orange face. His lashes shade his pale-blue eyes as he squints through the sunlight to see his negroes in the field. When the light hits his eyes directly, their color disappears, then reappears when the full shadow of his towering horse passes over him. I float around ’em both, watching how Nelson runs his fingers through her mane like he’s petting a dog. Calls her Maybelle.

The offbeat trot of another horse draws our attention. Up the road, I can see the rider coming closer. It’s George. He bobbles on top of his horse seeming lightweight and as small as a ten-year-old. His bobble becomes quick ticks when his horse picks up speed, jerking George this way and that. Like George cain’t control it. He’s headed right this way in a hurry.