Natashia Deon - Grace

We work together, he told her. You buy supplies where I cain’t. Say I work for you. White peoples. . they can be your peoples, too. Tears streamed down her face as he told her.

She whispered, “I’m negro, too.”

Charles was knocked out asleep on the floor from dreaming the future before Josey even finished the dishes last night.

A cricket is chirping in this room somewhere. I don’t know where, but it’s already on my nerves, creaking and calling for company. Before I finish my thought, Josey sits straight up in bed and startles me, hollering, “Frogs!”

The panic in her voice shakes my soul. Charles rip the sheet down. I’m already beside her. Won’t leave her. Won’t ever leave her. Her eyes are wide open now, still screaming from her bed mat. “Frogs!”

She crab-walks herself back against the wall, kicking and swiping at her bed sheets. “Get away from me!”

Charles swishes his hands around her mat, turns it over, reaches under it but don’t come back with no nothin. “They on me, Daddy! The frogs is on me!”

Charles lunges for the floor lamp near the window, feels for the wick, lights it, shines it on her covers. “Where the frogs, Josey! Where? I don’t see nothin.”

He kneels next to her, holding his lamp, pressing his hands in her sheets, back and forth. “I don’t feel nothin, Josey.”

“They on me, Daddy!”

“Nothin’s here, Josey! Ain’t nothin. .” The lamp swings its light on Josey’s legs. Deep gouges and cuts are all over ’em, gleaming with wet new blood. The wounds are still trickling. “What is this, Josey?” Charles say. “How you get these?”

“Get ’em off me, Daddy,” Josey say, tired. “Get these frogs off.”

“Josey?” he say, shaking his head, confused. “Josey, these ain’t no thorn bush.”

“Get ’em off me, Daddy. Please!”

“Who done this to you, Josey?” He grabs her arms, “Josey, who done this! You fell down? You done it?”

“The boy,” she cry.

“What boy, Josey? Some boy come in here?” Charles rushes the window, pushes the curtain out. “He come through here, Josey? Somebody come through here?”

He holds hisself out the window hole trying to see as far as he can. She hugs her knees to her chest, crying. He comes back to comfort her, falls next to her. “Josey, what you mean, a boy? Was it your dream? Is that where the boy was?”

Charles don’t know what to do, like I didn’t. Like I don’t. He looks too scared to touch her. Her cuts. Finally he say, calm, “It’s all right,” and pulls her to him.

CHARLES NEVER WENT back to sleep last night. He been sitting wide-eyed and quiet on the floor where the sun rose on him. In the center of the room, sunlight seeps through the wood plank walls, striping his face and the dirt-brown floor with white. Specks of dust float into the light like clear bits of lemon in a glass pitcher of sweet tea. He’s been replaying last night in his thoughts. What it means for a slave to be sick in the mind. If that’s what this is. If that’s what he’s been trying not to see in her strange silences.

There’s a hundred reasons for a person to sit quiet and alone, he’s been telling hisself. A broken mind ain’t the only one. But now, these night terrors have come. The way they’ve come for other slaves he’s seen broken in time. He knows what could happen if Slavedriver Nelson finds out. He remembers Sister Kate was killed after she confessed her bad memories and said they stick in her head. Said these things that stick pull off the skin inside, and show her the bad over and over again ’til she ache so bad she cain’t see. She couldn’t scrub it away like she did them floors so she blamed her hands and cut ’em in the kitchen where she thought nobody could see. The stick wouldn’t rub off in a ball and get caught in the wind like it did for them slaves who pretended to forget. And she couldn’t. And like them horses that broke their legs, them sheep that laid down too long, or milk left out of the shade, she cost too much to make better and wasn’t worth nothing so she got ended quick.

But Josey was fine, he told hisself. A hundred reasons, he told hisself.

Last night’s cricket is stamped dead in the corner of the room now. Its wispy gray stick legs are flat out. It didn’t have a chance in the shuffle.

Charles gets up when he hears Josey stirring. He puts on food, his good face, and sets the table. When he sees Josey come through the curtain wearing a strained smile, he rejoices a little, quick to take it in as only joy. She’s all right. He was wrong. He has hope again. And even more, today, they’ll be free. Slaves from three plantations are meeting on this property. Even four months ago it wouldn’t have been so ’cause all this was just a story.

Even Missus Graham never came to say if the rumor was true. Other plantations have. Some said it was true. Some, a lie. But here, Missus Graham never said nothin, ain’t broke routine. Even when the letters started coming frequent last December, nothin. Nobody could read ’em but her.

And when Slavedriver Nelson never came back on horse or foot, everybody got suspicious that maybe we was free, but we decided it was safer to stay unsure than be a runaway.

So the ones of us in the field waited for somebody like Nelson to take his place and when none came, Seth took on the role hisself even though he was a slave, too. He ran a tight ship. One of decency and respect. He wanted to keep order for Missus Graham. Keep everybody fed and housed and working for the Graham plantation ’til there was an answer from somewhere, or at least ’til we got through winter.

Finally, we got that answer — a preacher from Montgomery County. He was a slave like us ’til January just gone. We are free, he said. The clay that was the Emancipation Proclamation had hardened and dried and was signed by the president of the United States hisself. The president has power over all us, he said, slave and free. So we could go and be sure. Many have. Don’t know where they’re going, though. They’ve passed through here over the months claiming north, and saying come with us, but we’ve said no, we’ll stay.

But this preacher know what he’s talking about. He got papers he can read and men with him to testify to the same. So finally, the go meeting has come. It’s at noon. Everybody’s gon’ announce their intentions — where they gon’ go and what they gon’ do. We leaving, too.

“Come on now, Josey, put your birthday clothes on,” Charles say, pulling his suspenders over his button-down shirt.

“Yes, Daddy,” Josey say but keeps sitting at the table like she’s done since the end of breakfast, stone-faced and staring straight ahead. She ain’t touched her food. Ain’t brought her hands up from under the table to take even a crumb to her lips. Sweat is beading on both sides of her forehead like it’s hot. I go near her and listen to her breathe in pants. It ain’t her vapors.

“I cain’t believe it’s official,” Charles say, chuckling. “Four months we been free. I guess it’s true what they say: the journey to freedom starts when you first believe it.”

Josey’s breathing quickens. A grunt. Another.

“April’s good as any day to start,” he say, chuckling. “But not good as God, though. He good, ain’t He?”

Charles got one foot halfway in his sock, hopping away from the wall, and almost falls over laughing. . at hisself, and this good news. The first time he heard the rumor of the president’s order from Jacob and Jacob Jr. was when he got home at dusk on the day after the meeting, after what happened to Josey, those months ago. And that day, he had nobody to share his joy with ’cause Josey was already in bed when Charles came in shouting about it.