Natashia Deon - Grace

“If I can be a better wife this time,” she tells herself, “he’ll love me again. If I can show him that I’d sacrifice for him, be true to our vows, he will.” Annie decides that she’ll let Richard see her being good to that woman he brung home. Let him see his harsh words turn to loving kindness.

Annie needs time. Time to prove herself. Don’t want to give him a chance to sit her down and say ending words. So she’s gon’ keep her distance ’til she’s sure she’s convinced him to start again. She’ll volunteer at the mill. Stay out of the house all day or invite folks home. Busy is what she’ll be even if it means parties in wartime. Her neighbors would still be pleased to call her friend. “Yes,” she tells herself, “I am his wife.”

Her thoughts make me sorry for her. Sorry that somebody’s listening.

The porch door slams shut behind us. “You all right, Missus Graham?” Bessie say, leaving the warmth of inside. She pulls her sweater snug around her chest. “Can I get you somethin?”

“Thank you, Bessie. This tea is fine.”

“Cold by now,” Bessie say.

“It’s fine,” Annie say.

“I’ll be nearby if you need me.”

When I step out of Annie, searing pain makes my back bow. I fall to the ground limp. I cain’t move now. A cool mist like aloe settles over me, rewarding me for leaving Annie alone.

But I have to do it again.

Get stronger.

I follow Bessie through the screen door and inside the house. I stay close as she strolls through Richard’s study where last night he left a green-shaded lamp on his desk burning oil. It’s fizzled out now. Red and brown leather books are lined side by side on his shelves and some are too high for Richard to reach without a ladder. White pages are spread open on his desk and black words, like smashed ants, are scattered on the page.

Bessie straightens a stack of books on the side table and picks up an empty teacup with a dried brown drip of tea down its side.

I follow Bessie down the hall, watch her pick up a puff of lint from the floor. She kneels and dusts the spot with her sleeve, stops sudden and looks over her shoulder at me. My breath catches. I flush with heat and don’t know why. She’s gone to the kitchen, now. I go there, too.

She sets Richard’s cup into a sink full of already drawn water to let it soak, wipes her hands along the sides of her dress. A black kettle toots on the stovetop and smoke comes out of its hole. She lifts the kettle off the fire before humming a church song, returning to the sink. She swishes Richard’s cup in the water. I move toward her. She say, “What you here to do?”

I look around the room, then back at her.

“What you here to do?” she say again, louder, and this time looking me right in my eyes. “Why you here?”

“You talking to me?” I say.

“Ain’t nobody else here but us.”

It’s like the hairs on the back of my neck rise, my eyes widen, my nostrils round, my whole face gasps for the air it don’t need. Years of nobody listening and she the first to speak to me.

“What you intend to do?” she say to me. I can hardly move, trembling.

“Haunt this place?” she say. “Haunt me? ’Cause I ain’t gon’ let you do that.”

“H — how you see me?”

“You ain’t getting inside me,” she say, then lifts and slams Richard’s cup in the water. Splashing. The cup breaks.

“Nobody sees me,” I say.

“You ain’t getting inside me!” she say again. “You understand?”

“Yes — yes’m,” I say.

She gathers the three broken pieces of Richard’s cup from the water, cursing under her breath as she do.

I say, “How you see me?”

“Look what you made me do,” she say. “You a troublemaker!”

“I’m sorry.”

“How I’m s’posed to fix this?” She’s crying now.

“May — maybe Charles could fix it. He fix most things. .”

“I know Char’s,” she say, huffing over the water. “You don’t need to tell me about Char’s. Don’t tell me nothin about him. Don’t need to talk to me!”

She wipes her tears with the underside of her forearm. “I cain’t do nothin right.”

She lays the broken pieces on the counter and I’m sorry about it. Sorry what Richard might do to punish her. I’ll help her. Go to her to help her, but she pretend she don’t see me now. I reach out with the hope to touch her like Annie but a searing pain shoots through me.

“How you see me?” I say.

“Feel you more’n see you. Feel you angry.”

She takes a wet cloth and calmly rubs the drip of tea from the outside of the broken piece of cup.

“It’s not meant for you to be inside people. It’ll kill you more than dead you keep trying. You keep doing what you do, you won’t even be a mist. You people always trying.”

“There’s others here?” I say, and take a step toward her.

She takes a deep breath, “Why you botherin me?”

“Can you help me? Show me how to touch the living?”

“Y’all are all the same. Always finding me. Trying to hurt me with your questions.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Don’t you?” she say. “Want to hurt someone, though.”

She don’t know me. How can she know that?

“Forgive,” she say. “There’s the answer to your question. If you ever plan to go home, you got to forgive.”

“This is home.”

“For now. But one day it ain’t gon’ be, that’s the truth. You’ll be back here like the others. Asking how to keep away that hellfire you feel when you try to live somebody else’s life. Somebody else’s body. You’re all selfish!”

“You don’t know nothin about me. Answering questions you ain’t been asked. I ain’t here for me.”

“The girl you follow, she’ll die one day, too. Everything that lives do. Then what reason will you have to be here? What you gon’ do then?”

“She’s my daughter! I won’t ever leave her.”

“That’s what you think now. It’s not true. One day you will leave her, by your choice. It’s what you’re supposed to do. At some point, every mother has to let her child go.”

I don’t want to talk to her no more.

“You got to forgive. If you want to help her. If you want to be stronger. Whoever it is, you’ve got to let it go. .”

“You don’t even know what that man did to her! I ain’t giving him shit except what he deserve.”

“Don’t matter. ’Cause don’t nobody deserve forgiveness. Nobody. Not even you.”

“What you know?”

“It’s a gift. Not for him. Forgiveness is a gift for you. For the girl you follow.”

Richard calls from the top of the stairs, “Bessie! Bring a cup of tea to my study. I’ll be there momentarily.”

“Yes’sa,” Bessie say and hurries to get a new cup down from the cupboard. She takes a small pouch, smaller than the inside of her palm, and packs it with fragrant leaves. She drops it into his cup and pours hot water over it.

“Revenge ain’t for you to do,” she say. “What’s done is done. Ain’t no justice. Only grace. You gotta decide if you want to help her.”

“Of course I want to help her.”

“Then leave her be.” Richard’s footsteps come down the stairs and Bessie leaves me standing in the kitchen, alone.

She’s wrong.

She cain’t know. Not about me, not this burning, not what I’m gon’ do to George.

She don’t even know me. She’s probably not even a mother. Probably. Advice as old as time: Don’t never take advice about raising a child from somebody who ain’t got none. They cain’t even fathom the kind of crazy a good parent is able to ascend to while still seeming normal on the outside.

There ain’t even no children here. So she can save her advice for somebody else.