Natashia Deon - Grace

I make myself look busy in the shop. I grab my broom and start brushing the metal scrapings across the floor. I can feel him staring at me.

I don’t say hi and stay busy, turn my back to him, hear him walk into our room. From the corner of my eye, I can see him holding a sack of potatoes. A few seconds more, I hear ’em thud against our cutting board in our bedroom area. One, two, three of ’em. We need five. Five potatoes for stew. And before I think to stop myself, I walk my broom over to the doorway and fix my lips to say, “We need five if the stew’s gon’ turn out right.”

But when I get to the doorway, he’s already walking straight to me. No dance.

Damn.

He say, “We cain’t keep doin this, Naomi.”

I sweep. I keep sweeping. I swing my broom over the edge of a thin piece of metal that’s melted and froze to the floor.

“Naomi?” he say. “You listenin?”

He grabs my broom from my hand and I don’t stop him. Instead, I look around to see what else needs doing.

He say, “I don’t want to keep playing these games.”

I think I’ll start the kettle for tea.

I go in our room for the kettle. He follows behind me.

“When I come in,” he say, “You go outside. Or you go out before I’m up.”

I pour pitcher water in the kettle and go back to the shop, set it on the grates near his furnace.

“We cain’t keep going around and around like this.”

I think the dust on the windowsill needs wiping down.

I take a cloth and wipe the sill.

“Is this about the kiss?” he say.

Ain’t that somethin. All of that dust came off in just one wipe.

“Naomi?” He’s too close to me.

“Get away from me!” I say, harsher than I shoulda. “I just don’t want nobody touching me!”

“You mean you don’t want me touching you?”

“I’m going outside to stretch,” I say and grab my coat off the hook next to the door, reach for the doorknob, but he reaches around me and holds the door closed with the flat of his hand.

“Open this door, Albert.”

“Why’d you kiss me?”

“Step away from this door, Albert. This baby. . this baby. .”

“Just stop avoiding me and listen. .”

I don’t want to.

I cross my arms over my belly. “I need to go outside and walk for this baby.”

“Just be honest with me,” he say. “Tell me why you kissed me?”

“Why’d you rub my feet like that?”

“Like what?” he say. “How am I supposed to rub somebody’s feet? I just did what you asked me. . I don’t know.”

“Then I don’t know, either.”

“You do know. Tell the truth.”

“How can I?” I say. “There’s a lot of questions in just that one. If you don’t know why you touched me different, I don’t know why I kissed you.”

“I want to spend the rest of my life with you,” he say.

I wish I could disappear.

“And if you feel this way, too, let me know now.”

He unblocks the door.

I cain’t look at him.

“Do you?” he say.

I wish we could go back to the way we was.

Wish we could erase the lie my kiss told. It’s easier if you don’t love me, I want to say but don’t.

“Naomi?”

“You’re a good man, Albert. But ain’t no more room in my heart to love. Jeremy took all I had with him. And I’m sorry for it.”

He nods his head.

Clears his throat.

“Don’t be sorry,” he say. “That’s all I wanted to hear. The truth.”

I want to take it back. Take back everything I just said and lie. What’s wrong with somebody believing they’re loved in every way? I shoulda lied. Made an excuse for why we couldn’t be together like that. And that way, he’d always know he was loved.

“And this baby?” he say. “Could you let it love me?”

My heart breaks at his asking. Must be what sorrow is. Not being able to change the truth. Not even for love.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he say. “The child ain’t mine. But seeing as Jeremy’s gone, you can let her love me.”

“I cain’t make somebody love somebody else, Albert. I cain’t promise that.”

“But you’re the mother. Mothers can set a child’s heart to the way she should go. So set her heart on me.”

I don’t know.

“Say yes.”

His softness right now — the way his eyes plead and his shoulder sag, defenseless — remind me of the way James was with Hazel. His surrender.

“All right,” I say.

He hugs me like his body ain’t still in pain or my belly ain’t a bridge between us. And for the first time, touching him this close feels right. For the first time since Momma and Hazel, I feel like I’m where I’m supposed to be.

THE KNOCKING ON the door is hard and wild.

I hobble to a stand on my swole toes. Cynthia yells my name from the door and pushes it open, barges in. She don’t never come out here. Not for months.

“Gaw-lee, look at cha,” she say. “Ain’t grown a pinch. Belly’s still small as four months pregnant. Not the six or seven you claim. Albert, you sure this ain’t your baby?”

“Can I get you a drink?” Albert say.

“No,” she say.

“Can I get you something else?” Albert say.

“Privacy. With Naomi.”

I don’t want him to leave. Albert reads my thoughts and don’t go. He say, “Let me get you whiskey. Or bourbon?”

“I just want a minute with her,” she say.

“What you need?” Albert say. “Naomi can’t do nothin for you in her condition.”

“This is something I need to say to only her. Wait outside the door if you want to. What you think I’m here to do, Albert? I’m the one helped save your life.”

“The past is the past,” I say, final. I nod to Albert. Let him go out.

“You should sit down,” Cynthia say. “Your feet don’t seem right. Might be getting the swelling condition. Could make you seize if it gets too bad.”

“I’m fine. I’ll stand.”

“Could kill the baby, too.”

She helps me sit.

From her waistband, she wiggles out an old brown leather notebook. Her mother’s diary. The same one she’s held onto and cussed at on the nights she’s drunk.

“Maybe things would’ve been different if I woulda read it before recent,” she say. “Maybe not. I don’t know.” She opens her diary to a folded page. “I need you to read something.” She sits next to me on the bench and holds the book out for me to take but I stare at it, think of all the private things I’ve ever done and never wrote down. But if I did, I’d never want a stranger to see it.

I say, “I cain’t read this.”

She flicks her wrist. “My momma wouldn’t mind. She’s dead.”

I shake my head. I won’t.

Cynthia lays the book flat on her lap, closed. “All right,” she say. “My mother was dying when I found her. I was eleven years old. She had been in bed all day and into the night when she called to me. She took my hand and what I remember most is how cold she was. Middle of the hot summer and she was cold. Her grip was so weak. Even her tears were weak. They dried just as they fell.

“All she kept saying was, ‘I’m sorry.’

“When she died, she left me with an empty box and a blade. The blade was on the end of a candlestick holder. The holder had a small lever inside that slid up and down. And when I pulled it down, a blade shot out the top of it and the holder itself became my handle.”

Cynthia holds out her book to me again. “Please, Naomi. I want you to see. I need you to read it.”

I reach out for it, hesitating.

She jerks it away. “I just want you to know,” she say. “My momma was a saint. Remember that when you read this.”