Natashia Deon - Grace

I don’t say nothing. A couple people said Soledad was crazy and others said she was right to leave the brothel when she did. But I don’t know if you can be crazy and right at the same time. Or maybe we’re all a little crazy.

“She probably speaks horribly of me,” she say.

“No, ma’am.”

“She never has anything nice to say about anybody. But maybe you wouldn’t tell me what she’s said anyway.”

“I would. Honest. But she don’t talk about you.”

“Talk bad about me, you mean?”

“She don’t talk about you at all.”

She stops eating.

“I mean, she don’t talk much about nothing.”

“Nothing, huh?”

Soledad pushes herself away from the table. She’s back in the kitchen, clattering around in it.

I shouldn’t have said nothing. I need this place to stay. So I’m just gonna sit here and be quiet.

She comes back in tossing three steaming tortillas straight on the table, mostly dried out. They crumble into pieces and catch in the tablecloth. She sets a fresh bowl of soup on top of ’em, reckless, so some of it laps over the edge.

“I left them on too long,” she say, and sits back down, breaks the hot tortillas with her fingers. “You consider Cynthia your friend?”

“I don’t know,” I say.

“How close?” she say.

I lift my shoulders and keep eating.

Soledad drags my bowl from under me, leaves me holding my spoon above the table. “So what do you do for her?” she say.

“Do?”

“What do you do to earn your keep?”

“I clean.”

“Clean?” she say. “How much does she sell you for?”

“I never. . I mean. . I only clean.”

“Sounds to me like she’s a better friend to you than she was me.”

She slides my bowl back, picks up her spoon and taps the table with the wet end of it, making a moist spot on her tablecloth. I can feel her watching me. All of this talk is confusing. I feel like I keep saying the wrong thing.

She say, “I’m glad you and Cynthia are friends. Did she tell you her family owned slaves?”

“Yes’m.”

“Tell you her daddy beat ’em, killed ’em, sold ’em?”

“Yes’m.”

“So I guess y’all talk about a lot but nothing at all.”

She stands straight up and goes back to the kitchen.

I don’t look up but I can hear a drinking glass clunk on the countertop followed by the familiar ting of glass touching glass, then the gurgle of alcohol pouring in.

Soledad comes back to the table holding a drink. I can smell it’s gin. Cynthia’s favorite.

She say, “I’m sorry. I ask too many questions, don’t I?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Just making conversation, is all. But right now you need to eat and we’ve already promised not to waste a good meal on Cynthia.” She laughs a little, smiles at me. I do, too. Take some more of my soup. I can eat this every day even though it burns my throat from spicy. It’s good, though. Something maybe Hazel mighta made to kill a cold.

She say, “So where are you from? Your family?”

“All over,” I say, lying. Jeremy used to say that it’s easier to not have a beginning. That way new friends don’t judge you too fast. I want Soledad to be my friend.

“Of course they would be,” she say. “Keeping negro families together has its challenges, doesn’t it?”

I don’t say nothin.

“Did you hear about those murders in Faunsdale? Black people killed, in a horrible way. Their owner. Did you know them?”

“No.”

She say, “I heard Cynthia found you. You’d come from some place else. Had an infection or something. She nursed you to health. Probably just a rumor.”

I hold my spoon over my bowl. I don’t know if I should answer.

“Eat,” she say. “I’m just making conversation. Sometimes a good conversation makes a better meal. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yes’m,” I say, even though I thought we weren’t gon’ talk about Cynthia.

Soledad smiles and stirs her stew. We both eat in silence this time. I wish I had some good conversation to say. I feel like she wants something from me but I don’t know what it is.

After another ten minutes of slow eating and noticing how Soledad’s watching me still, she takes the last two gulps of her gin. She sets her glass down in front of herself and starts picking the tortilla crumbs from the table. Finally she say, “Why are you here, Naomi?”

“Ma’am?”

“Since everything’s so perfect between you and Cynthia — she trusts you with her son, you sleep in his bed, eat at her table, she nursed you to health, saved your life — what are you doing here? I think it’s more than ‘no place to go.’”

Escape is what I want to say but don’t. I’m afraid of my words. Afraid to ask her for what I need. To help me go south to escape Cynthia, and Jeremy. . or. . maybe west to find him.

“What have you heard about me?” she say.

“Nothin.”

“Nothing?”

“Just rumors, is all,” I say.

“Rumors?”

“Yes’m.”

“Thing about rumors is they can be true. Tell me what you’ve heard and I’ll tell you what’s true.”

The back of my neck’s getting hot.

“Go on,” she say. “Everybody should get a chance to clear their name. Isn’t that fair?”

“I heard you help people,” I say.

“People?”

“Negroes. You get them south.”

“Is that what you’ve heard?” she say.

“Yes’m.”

“Then when are you planning on going?”

My gut drops.

“I could arrange for you to get there,” she say. “Over the border through Texas. Is that why you’ve come? You want to start all over again somewhere else? Leave this behind. Take you and your friend Albert.”

I run my finger through the holes of her tablecloth.

She leans forward, “Is that who told you about me?”

I want to say, help me get away from here. Take me south. West. I don’t care. I look up at her to say something and notice how her brown eyes are fixed just above mine — somewhere on my forehead.

I know that look.

I’ve seen the look of the lie before — cain’t look me in the eye. Seen it too many times. Jeremy.

“No,” I say in a hurry. “I have no reason to leave here. Albert, neither. Any negro who would is a fool.”

The expression on her face changes suddenly. “Indeed,” she say. “I’m not like my father. Freedom Fighter. Revolutionist. . a fool.” She sits back in her seat, picks up her spoon, scoops her red broth. “It took me this long to finally have something in common with him,” she say. “The way he and I feel about Cynthia.”

She picks up a tortilla, hangs her wrist from the edge of her stew bowl. “Did Cynthia tell you she kidnapped me?”

I shake my head.

“I guess she didn’t tell you everything, after all.” She drops the bread in her stew, gets up and goes to the cabinet where her colorful dolls are. She lifts one out — the girl figurine — and comes back with it. She sets it on the table next to her bowl.

“I was young,” she said. “My father was a Freedom Fighter. Rescued slaves and took them to Mexico where they had a chance to be free. He took in everybody. Even Cynthia. Cared about other people more than he did me.

“Cynthia was a teenager when he found her, covered in blood, her father dead next to her. I was only seven when she came but it was the moment my memory started. I remember her presence from the beginning. Powerful and bold, she was. Almost a decade older than I. Unlike any woman I had ever seen before or since. Beautiful in a different way.

“I wanted to be her. Did everything I could to make her my friend but she didn’t want me around. For years, she shooed me away. Then one day, when I was fourteen, my mother asked me to choose the material for a dress. My coming-of-age celebration. And a celebration it would be. I decided that I’d be more beautiful than any girl who had ever become a woman. And I was.