Natashia Deon - Grace

I had been dead for minutes or hours, I don’t know. Found Albert laid on the forest floor. He was wrung out from exhaustion there and wishing for dead, teetering between sleep and passed-away ’cause that night, Albert had followed me from the brothel and through the woods. I didn’t know then. He was chasing me, trying to reach me to save me, was somewhere between me and them bounty hunters. By the time he got to me, my labor had taken over and the dogs had closed in. He called my name through the darkness. It was the last time I stood alive. Saw him waving his arms for me to come his way when the spark in the dark took me. His was the last face I saw.

Seeing me fatal didn’t stop him from trying to save me. He shook me to bring me back, closed his hand over the bullet hole in my head, pushed down hard to stop the bleeding but it wouldn’t stop. He almost put his knee right on top of Josey when he moved from straddling me. She had been so still, so quiet in my arms. That’s when his face became like twisted rock behind waterfalls, tears and sweat — one river — poured over it. He grabbed a razor from his pocket and set its edge on the cord that connected Josey to me but a weakness set into his strong hands and he could hardly hold the handle, couldn’t get the razor to slide. It fell out his hands.

All he could do was scramble to the shadows when the footsteps overtook us. Bobby Lee would be the one to cut Josey free.

I stayed with him for a while and waited for him to fall asleep there, heartbroken. Watched him wake and cry hisself back to sleep that night, empty. His dry tears had crusted a straight white line from one eye, over his nose. It was cracked when Slavedriver Nelson rode up next to him.

Nelson yelled something at Albert but Albert didn’t move. The dark handle of Albert’s razor was still resting in his open hand but Nelson didn’t see it. Not even when he got off his horse and kicked Albert’s foot. Twice. Albert sat up the second time, looked around wild, called out, “Naomi!” then, “Charlie!”—a man we both knew from Cynthia’s.

From instinct, he closed his fist around his razor and slid it under his foot. Nelson shoved his shotgun in Albert’s chest.

“Who do you belong to, boy?” Nelson said. “You a runaway?”

“Char. . Char. . Charlie,” Albert stuttered. “A man was found dead in Conyers. Charlie Shepard, his name. Charlie. .”

“I can’t understand a word you saying, boy. Where your papers?”

Albert stood up slowly and reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out his wrinkled freed-man papers, then dropped ’em. When he bent over to pick ’em up, he lifted his foot off the razor and slid it in his shoe, gave his papers to Nelson. “So you free?” Nelson said. “Then you need to find your way off my property. I give you less than a minute.”

Albert nodded and reached for his papers.

“Now, hold on, boy. .” Nelson said. “These papers say Albert Pyle. But you said you Charlie. Which is it?”

Before Albert could respond, George came riding up. He was just about eleven years old then. He said, “A man just gave a baby to Annie! A girl baby. I’ll be an uncle!”

“Must be the full moon tonight,” Nelson said. “Folks just flooding in. Tell your sister I’ll be there directly.” When George snapped his reins to start his horse, Nelson turned back to Albert, said, “If you a runaway, boy, you got thirty days to be claimed. And if nobody come, you the property of the Graham plantation. So which is it, boy? Your name? You lie to me and you gon’ have worser problems.”

“Charlie,” Albert said, lying. “My name. It’s Charles.”

“Well, Charles. You got thirty days for somebody to come claim you.” And just like that, Albert gave up his freedom to be near Josephine.

Because he loved me.

“THIS A TIME to be happy,” Charles now say. He takes her hand. “The choice is yours, Josey. What you do with it, is your choice. Tell me you’re happy,” he say, desperate. “Tell me you can be free. Tell me it’s over. Tell me that makes you happy.”

Tears flood her eyes. “I’m happy.”

SWAYING FLOWERS THEY are. Women and children, men and babies being blown up the road toward the Grahams’ slave quarters. They wear their oranges and yellows and bright blue garments like they been saving up a rainbow since Africa. They’re from here and everywhere, all of ’em choosing to start their journey to freedom from this place. And it’s real this time.

More people are on their way, through battlefields and their fires, filing up the road in a colorful funeral march, letting this past go. Four months of waiting since Lincoln’s signed paper set us free. It’s time for us to blossom the way God meant us to. Even in ash.

Charles pulls Josey through the rainbow sea of people. The two of ’em are the only ones dressed in white. The crowd peels away as Charles forces his way through, zigzagging around folks who won’t move at his loud, “’Scuse me!”

His naked black head is a foot taller than everyone else dressed in color, so when he moves it’s like a bee walking on petals. They make their way to the front where the preacher stands on top of a wooden box getting ready to speak. I float down to join ’em, stand next to Josey, find her po-faced and pale white. Her color matches the beam of Charles’s smile.

A skinny brown woman in orange glides through the crowd and stops behind us. The baby on her hip is in orange, too. She drops her packed bag and stands on her tiptoes while a man in a straw hat shimmies around her and holds her waist.

Ada Mae and Everett wait across the yard handholding. They been a pair for a few weeks now and there are rumors they’ll marry soon, rumors that the war is nearing, rumors that the North is recruiting negroes. We heard thirteen thousand soldiers lost their lives in Fredericksburg, Virginia, most of ’em Union soldiers, the North. It happened at the river crossing just before Christmas. A victory, folks here say. And a slaughter. So now, the North is recruiting any life, black or white, and when the fighting gets near enough, Everett say he gon’ enlist, too. He’ll join the escaped negroes that left months ago. But for those of us who are still here — black, white, and free, the war is all worry. ’Til it comes. At least Everett will have a weapon now. For the rest of us, our only weapon is hope.

Throughout this plantation field, folks got sheets knotted on the ends of sticks or thrown over their shoulders like satchels. Inside ’em are needed things — food, clothes, skins of water, and a few tokens, reminders that they are the only survivors of slavery. That said, more than one man’s got nothin; ain’t taking nothin, don’t want nothin, they got all they need — their lives and their freedom.

The preacher say, “As we go from this place, let it not be in fear. The Bible say, God does not give us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind. We are strong. We’ve endured. And now, God has touched President Lincoln and softened his heart so that he be like Pharaoh and set us free. He’s given power and bravery to the heroes that are carrying out God’s will for our great land. I say to you, don’t be afraid. We go with God to wherever he leads us. He has brought us this far in His love and grace and He will lead us home. Amen?”

Charles say, “Amen.”

The whole crowd say, “Amen.”

The woman in orange yells, “But where we go?”

Preacher leans toward her. “Praise God. . that’s the blessing,” he laughs. “Go where you want. Federal law say you are free. But be cautious. There’s still a war raging, north and south, and there’s safety in numbers. Some of us from the Brown plantation are going north. Others going west.” He opens up to the crowd, say, “Come with us to the lands of milk and honey, away from this place of our captors. Will you come?”