Natashia Deon - Grace

“Mr. Smith?”

“I ain’t got no place else to go,” he said. “She’s healthy, far as I can tell. But I cain’t do it on my own and. .”

“Don’t you have family?”

“No, ma’am. None to speak of, ma’am. My wife. She was all I had. And now. .”

Annie held up her hand to stop him talking.

She paced with my baby. Her happiness at a chance to be a momma was guarded by her fear. She carried Josey near the warm fire, looked into Josey’s eyes and it’s like she fell in love. She said, “I don’t have no money to give you, sir. Don’t have anything of value, no place for you to stay. Nothing.”

“And there’s nothin I want from you, Missus Graham. Just your kindness. For you to say yes.” He sat down slowly in her big armchair, scooted to the edge of it, his knee jumping. He held it still with both hands. “I don’t want to push you none, Missus Graham. But I’m afraid that if you don’t spare me this, this baby won’t make it another night.”

“I will!” Annie said.

“You will?” It was the first time I saw Bobby Lee smile — all his straight yellow teeth flashing between his thin lips. Josey cried as if for joy, too.

“Thank you,” he said. “Thank God for you.”

Sissy came out the kitchen with a full-bosomed slave. “Miss Annie, she here.” The nurse hurried to my baby and scooped her from Annie’s arms, quieted her with her breast.

“Cain’t no good come from this, Miss Annie. You cain’t help God. You cain’t just give a baby. If God wanted you to have a baby, He’d give you one. Look at me. . he didn’t give me one befo’ Paul pass. Ain’t nothin wrong wit not havin’ one.”

“God’s giving me one now, Sissy.” Annie shook Bobby Lee’s hand like they made a deal, said, “I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Smith. Sincerely, I am. But I think God sent you to me.”

“No, ma’am,” he said. “God’s blessing me. You’re giving me and this baby a special gift.”

Annie sat down on the sofa next to the wet nurse and touched Josey’s forehead, swept her wispy blonde hairs aside, watched her suckle. She said quietly, “Mr. Smith? What do you call her?”

Bobby Lee washed his hand around his head, smiled. “I didn’t want to name her ’til I knew she was gon’ make it.”

“Josephine,” Sissy said, bitterly. “I woulda named mine Josephine.”

“That’s a beautiful name, Sissy. Yes, we’ll call you Josephine.”

“HOW YOU THINK your daddy got you, huh, Miss Josephine? You weren’t always his. You used to be white.” Sissy paces around Josey, clinching her teeth, rabid.

“It’s ’cause a you I’m here!” she say. “I’m the one Annie blame. I’m the one she told, ‘Don’t come back,’ like I was a stranger. All my years she lied. Said I wasn’t like the others. That I was her friend. That I was like her. Just born unlucky. So where’s my reward?”

Tears smear down Sissy’s cheeks. Her grunts of emotion almost cover the crunch of coming footsteps from somewhere behind us, not near enough to see.

The front door of Sissy’s house swings open. “Mama!” a boy’s voice calls — the black boy who belongs to nobody — Wayward. “Mama!” he say again.

The footsteps from the woods stop behind Josey. Ada Mae. She grabs Josey arm, and tells her to run.

“Come back here!” Sissy yells. “I know who you are. You owe me!”

BLACK NIGHT SURROUNDS us — Johnny and I — as we sit near Cynthia’s back door. It’s open, a little, and the new gambling parlor is just on the other side. At dusk a triangle of light seeped out and soaked the porch floor where it got trapped and spread to the steps and out to the dirt where it colored our game. I can see better now.

I get down on my knees, balance myself on one hand, and shoot my marble across the dirt. Missed the one I was aiming at.

As much as I love our games, I know me and Johnny cain’t do this forever. Cain’t play forever. Johnny’ll grow up soon and go the way that we have to — blacks and whites. I spoke to Albert last week about his South. About leaving here once and for all like Hazel woulda wanted me to.

He said we had two choices. The Railroad, north, or these Freedom Fighters, south.

“Both got problems,” he said. “The Railroad’s made of good people with safe places to get negroes out of this country. Not to Boston. Negroes is slaves there, too. North means Canada.

“Problem is, the Underground Railroad, north, don’t start ’til Virginia. Who gon’ get us to Virginia from Georgia? There ain’t no secret maps to show us how. It ain’t organized for us here. We’re too far south.”

Albert had heard of a newer railroad to freedom that comes twice a year, fall and spring. And that’s only maybe.

“It can take us up to Virginia,” he said. “More dangerous and a longer journey. Could leave us worser off, too.”

Our second choice was these Freedom Fighters going south.

“Law ain’t looking for negroes heading to Mexico like they do for ones going north. But the way south has been weakened in the last two years. Slave owners are getting wise to the trick. Fighters used to go around asking owners to hire their slaves for the week. Paid top dollar for borrowed labor, but not enough to buy a slave outright, and when that slave never got returned, the Fighters and their property had a one-week head start.

“Didn’t take long for word to spread that owners was getting duped, their slaves kidnapped, for the cost of a week’s wage. So for a long while, couldn’t nobody — a kidnapper or employer — hire out a slave. Not even for a day.

“The Freedom Fighters had to change their method ’cause nothing was gon’ stop ’em from risking their lives for God’s will — to set the captives free — so they started taking ’em. Outright stealing ’em. Took whole families. Made their own meshwork of willing men, and fed and watered steeds, lined the way from here to Texas, racing the devil. That became the fear of slave owners, the threat — having their property kidnapped.

“So Fighters started moving into communities, building relationships with owners, would hire a couple of their new neighbor’s slaves for the day, return ’em back. Hire ’em for two more days, return ’em. A week, return ’em, kneading the leather soft so that the next time they hired slaves, they’d take ’em. Weren’t no going back, neither. For nobody. To the life they built or the people they knew.

“The Fighters are more careful now. Don’t go near places they been. They ain’t been through Conyers before. Are set to do it in the next six months. A pass through only,” he said. “An arrangement made by the Mexican girl, Soledad.”

“I know her,” I told Albert. “I mean, I met her.” She left here raging at Cynthia with a mask of grief and the devil in her eyes.

“Her father was a Freedom Fighter in Mexico and she said when these men come, we’ll know who they are by the orange stripe on their satchels. Orange, like sunsets and sweet fruit — the taste of fought-for freedom.”

JOHNNY HUNKERS DOWN next to me and shoots his marble. It flies past mine skipping a trail over the soft dirt. It leaves a dotted line behind. Click.

I squat on the last step behind Cynthia’s brothel. Inside, a handful of customers hoot and holler every time dice shake or get flung across the floor. Fists slam down and glass cups jump from broken tables. Crumpled dollars wave in the air to get in on the next game. A voice yells, “Seven!”

A young man is cheering ’cause he bet against the roller. The rest of the men inside moan ’cause they lost. An angry man throws his hands up and yells to the only winner, “You cheated! You and the roller in it together.”