Natashia Deon - Grace

I nod and raise up to his lips this time, want him to taste me again. He slides his hand up my side, touches my breast, spiraling his fingertip around my nipple. It tingles me everywhere.

I stop him. Slide his hand over to center, hold it to my heart. I don’t want him touching me like that. No, Cynthia don’t want him touching me like that.

“Let’s go,” he say, and grabs my hand to pull me up with him to leave but I don’t get up. I keep his hand in mine and nudge him down ’til he kneels.

I want his touches.

I want to stay here with him forever.

He say, “I need to tell you something. I’ve kissed other women. . been with others. Done more than kissing. A few.”

I stop him talking. Kiss him open-mouthed the way he just taught me.

“Mimi. . you’re so innocent. You sure you want your first time to be with me?”

He’s asking too many questions.

“I don’t want to take nothing from you,” he say. “Except to take you from here. Keep you mine. We could get married. . well, not official, but. . we could live like husband and wife. I’d never take another. .”

“Yes,” I say. “I do.”

His face softens and every fine wrinkle in it goes. He’s like an angel to me. I say, “Be my first time. Show me what to do.”

BEFORE DAWN, I went looking for some body.

But bodies were mostly moving around this property in pairs, readying to work in the mill and seed the fields — tomatoes and beets — too soon for melons.

Some negroes were planning in secret — sowing turnips in the cow pen, burying silver spoons. While others were ’sleep or rousing, except for slaves like Charles and Josey who don’t sleep much. Those are at home, defeated and afraid. But I ain’t afraid. Not of the dark, not of taken-back freedom, and not of George.

I thought he’d come home last night. The pang of his arrival rose up in me a desperation. And fear. But it wasn’t fear of him. But because I don’t know how to kill him yet. How to touch the living with no hands.

I’m not ready.

That makes me afraid.

So I was looking for some body this morning.

Somebody to practice on. A weak vessel. A small animal. A fly. But I found Annie first.

The squeaking of her porch swing in the 5:00 a.m. darkness was like slow groaning breaths. Her rocking back and forth called me to her. And she was alone. Her hands were warming around her cup of tea and her thick blanket was wrapped around her shoulders, swallowing her whole body like a soft turtle shell. Except her legs dangled outside it.

I NEVER TRIED to step in nobody before.

It didn’t seem right to. Evil even. Possession. But I don’t mean to stay. I just need her for a while. ’Til George gets what he deserve.

I stood beside her as she rocked. Watched her, considered how I might do it. Then changed my mind at first. But remembering Josey strangled on the ground made me do what I did next: I stood in front of Annie as she rocked back, waited for her to rock forward again and I simply fell back onto her and waited to melt away inside.

But the pain came instant.

Like grabbing the handle of a hot pan, not knowing it was hot, then two seconds later dropping it ’cause your palm’s on fire.

I fell away. I don’t know what that was.

I was simmering after, but I was mostly fine. So I stood beside Annie again. . for Josey. If I could be inside Annie for two seconds, I could stay longer if I tried harder, if I made up my mind to.

When Annie stopped rocking is when I did it.

She crossed her legs under her blanket and sat there, still as dead, and stared out into the nothingness ahead of her, so I braced myself.

It should have been such a small thing, like a toe to a body. But it wasn’t. Or it was exactly. Like breaking a pinky toe on the corner of furnishings — a sudden, raging, tear-bringing pain, that takes your whole body to the ground. I fell inside her. I wouldn’t let go this time.

But every time she moved, it was like something was stepping on that broke toe, breaking it again. She coughed — a new break. She swallowed — a new break. She reached her arms out to set her cup down and tears warmed my eyes.

And this heat! Her body on mine is like a boiling wet towel placed all around me. Lesser, when Annie stops moving, but wrenching still.

I try not to move.

Don’t want Annie to move.

And when she does, I try to keep pace with her, move when she move. Move like she move. No rubbing against one another.

And now, through this heat there’s a peace. I can feel Annie’s skin as if it were mine. We rock on her porch swing together, in tandem, me and Annie, my form inside hers, the cold air sharp on her cheeks. But I’m still hot. Simmering.

I can hear her thoughts.

She’s trying to clear her mind of the strangers in her bed. A new couple. One of ’em, her husband. She’s lost now between her memories of him and the haunting sway of the skeleton-bare trees a ways off. “Empty,” is the word her mind repeats. Her husband Richard’s word. The word to describe their mantle. It comes to her first as an utterance—“Empty.” Then a question—“Empty?” Then finally, a revelation—“Yes,” she nods. “Empty.” Even the sky’s empty, she thinks. The only cloud in it is sliding out of sight.

I make Annie pick up her cup of tea, in pace with me now, and put two fingers into the loop of its cool thin handle. The heat inside her is rising on me like a coming rash. No, hotter. Like standing too close to a fire and not moving away. Skin tightening and fluid pooling to blisters. I feel heavy inside Annie. Weighty, from the swelling, the living of someone else’s life. But I won’t let pain be my excuse to give up. Josey didn’t.

I need answers and George needs what’s coming to him.

Annie pulls her blanket tight around her shoulders and brings her cup to her mouth. Mint vapors rush through her nose, washing it clean, clearing the way for the mint to come in, and the light scent of paprika or something like burnt chili powder. It’s the burning of metal and flesh and gunpowder. The war is tracing the wind, its cannons and drum lines not far off.

Tallassee’s already sent its able men. Who’s left are women, the old, the crippled, and the good excuses. Somebody had to stay behind. Protect our town and the mill they made an armory. Tallassee Falls Manufacturing Company first made cloth, now makes bullets. It’s the Confederacy’s now. So we get to wait for the war with carbine rifles. We’re all waiting for what’s next.

I make Annie swirl her finger in her warm tea water. Taste it. “What’s happened to us?” she say to herself. “Isn’t your marriage worth fighting for? Is it worth more than this land?”

Annie remembers the good years. The good things about Richard. The way he made her laugh. Her mind drifts to the day he asked her to marry him on a bended knee in the mud. See, Annie married Richard for love and not money. A fact that didn’t matter ’til years later when she saw how he mistreated both. And her plan was to keep her family property in her name but when Richard had his stroke and lost all esteem, he needed something to believe in. More than that, he needed something to ground him here to this place when she felt him drifting away. She needed to build him back into the man he was before the stroke.

She never doubted that Richard would always care for her and for Josey and for the children they never had. And now, her hurt about it is sudden. He’s been gone for fourteen years, and for the last four years of those, she had resolved in herself that an ending is what she wanted.

It’s over, are powerful words, she thought. She’s decided now that she won’t be the one to say it. Speaking it is the same as killing a thing; can’t pretend there ain’t a dead body in the room after it’s done. So Annie don’t want to hear Richard’s words out loud or on paper.