Natashia Deon - Grace

“Watch this,” she say, lowering it to the forest floor. “Yah!” she yells, and sets the turkey free. It runs right toward Squiggy. I swear it ran over his head and now they cain’t stop laughing. Squiggy claps his hands and say the only word he know — not, Momma—“Again!”

Behind me, an on-the-loose bantam stumbles straight in the road and gets runned over by a wagon. It gets up limping. Falls back down. Gets up again, fixed. I swear they live forever.

Three, four, five children are running after that wagon now. A man, half dressed in a soldier’s uniform, rides in it with a knapsack on his back — one like Jackson had when he first come home. All these years and soldiers’ bodies are still coming home. Not all of ’em dead. But no one asks anymore where these survivors have been. Only about the war.

“We don’t need your help,” Rachel say behind me.

“Just let me help him,” a man’s voice say.

Heat envelops me. Something I haven’t felt in a long time.

“No thank you, suh,” Rachel say.

I turn ’round to ’em. See what I’ve dreaded for five years. George’s face hits me like a madness. And I remember everything. I rush at him, get set ablaze passing through, nerves inside exposed and wild. I’ve wanted this. Burning alive. And I don’t care. Before he disappeared, I swore that no matter what Bessie said, I’d give my life for my daughter’s justice.

But I stop now.

Hesitate.

Children change everything.

Heartbreak.

My grandchildren.

I don’t make a move. Don’t want to leave this place.

George drags Squiggy by the arm out of the gutter and back onto the path. Squiggy’s knees scrape. “There,” George say. “All better now.”

“We fine, suh,” Rachel say. “We don’t want to bother you none.”

“It’s not a bother,” George say and bends through me to pick up Squiggy but Squiggy arches his back, knees George in his sack but George don’t feel that, neither. “Calm down, boy,” he say. “I’m just trying to lift you to the road.”

“He don’t like being helped,” Rachel say, forceful.

“Is that true, little man?”

“He don’t talk, neither,” Rachel say.

“He don’t need help, don’t talk. . You either a true gentleman or the perfect woman.” He laughs and pulls his flask from his pocket and untwists it open.

He takes a swig, then wipes his mouth with his backhand. “Just water,” he tells Rachel, screwing the lid back on. “I’ve been off the poison almost six years now. Then last week. . a small backstep. You ever sneak a little drink?”

Rachel don’t say nothing.

“Good girl,” he say. “Type of thing can put a man in his grave. How old are you?”

“Be five my next birthday.”

“Five years old! Whew! An old soul. Well beyond your years.”

“Come on, Squiggy,” Rachel say. “Momma’s waitin for us.”

“Squiggy? That’s a strange name for a boy. I’m George.”

Rachel pulls Squiggy along.

“You’re Josey’s children, aren’t you?” he say. He lifts his flask to his face and circles the space around it. “I can see it all in here.” He walks over to Rachel, bends down to her and sweeps her sandy blonde hair behind her ear. “Just like yer momma.”

Rachel backs away.

“Hold on now,” he say, kneeling and holding the back of her head to keep her still. “I’m just looking.”

A loud-talking woman passes the mouth of the road a few steps away and a pear falls from her basket. She follows its roll down the short mound and meets eyes with George there. She pauses at what I see, too: George leaning too close to Rachel.

He flips a silver coin from behind Rachel’s ear and shows it to her. Rachel gasps in delight. “Magic!”

The pear woman smiles, too, and George winks at her.

“Show me again, Mr. George! Show me how!” Rachel say.

“A good magician never tells his secrets.”

“You can tell me, suh!” she say, holding his arm, begging. He stares at the place where Rachel is touching him and she lets go directly. “I’m sorry,” she say.

“Naw. .” George say. “You can touch me wherever you want.”

“George?” Annie calls from the main road. “You saw him in here?” she says to somebody up on the road with her — the pear woman.

“Please tell me, Mr. George,” Rachel say. “I won’t tell nobody. Promise. Please.”

“Another time,” he say, and gives her the coin. “I’ll see you again. And only because you’re special.”

ALBERT’S BEEN LOOKING different around the face since he got burnt up twelve weeks ago. Thick scars have risen from under his skin like it’s been burrowed through. Other skin is yanked back in some places, slanting his eyes and spreading his bottom lip wider than it should be. The hairs left on his head are long and in thin bunches while the rest of his head’s got shiny bald spots, like flat rocks in high grass.

Albert got his name from iron even before the fire. Before he was born. Iron is black metal. Smith, a craftsman. A blacksmith. But right now, Albert is just iron. I been doing the smithing. “Don’t be afraid of the metal,” he said. “It won’t hit you back.” But metal is not what I’m afraid of. I suspect he know that, too. He’s been asking me to start the coal fire in the forge for him and it amazes me how forges can hold the greatest heat inside ’em. Like brick ovens, they are, turning the blackest iron orange-hot. Inside it, wild fire can be controlled. Bellows send large flames lapping and can send the same fire to a low burn. But if you get it wrong, there’s only a bucket of water nearby.

Albert asks me to place the iron evenly in the fire pot, not on the coal. Asks me to give him his hammers, but some of ’em three pounds. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. But fire’s already changed everything.

Albert made me give him a piece of mirror the other day. He stared at hisself, turned his head slowly from side to side, raised his hand to touch his face. He told me, “No use in crying.”

And that time, I didn’t stop myself crying for him.

I cried because I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have the face I was born to make.

I cried because being negro is hard enough.

I cried because I wished I had his courage. And because, in that moment, I was certain that even if he didn’t want for me to be his family, I wanted him to be my friend.

Cynthia once told me that a man and woman could never be friends. Said, “Sex’ll always get in the way ’cause men are lazy. A woman friend is what you call convenient. ”

But Albert ain’t lazy.

And me and him rely on each other now. Every day and in most ways, we do. For things most men and women not related or married would never have the pleasure to share.

There ain’t many secrets between us now.

That’s my fault because I thought he was a dying man when I spoke to him honest and open about my regrets. And I figure his secrets are gone now, too, since I spent the first three weeks working on his toileting. “Life is funny,” he said. “When the shame goes, what’s left to do?”

I sneak up on Albert and slowly reach for a bunch of his hair with my scissor blades open. Before I can snip it, he spins me around, holds both my wrists in one of his hands, laughing. He say, “You trying to take away my power, Delilah?”

He crisscrosses my arms in front of me, making me hug my own seven-months-pregnant belly and he scratches in my armpit. “What you gon’ do now, Delilah?”

“Let me cut it,” I say. “Just a little off the top. Even it up.” He keeps flicking his finger in my pit. We laughing. We take care of each other.