Natashia Deon: Grace

I AM DEAD.

I died a nigga a long time ago.

Before you were born, before your mother was born, ’fore your grandmother.

I was seventeen.

Still am, I reckon. And everyone that was there that night is dead now, too, so it don’t matter that I was a nigga.

Or a slave.

What matters is I had a daughter, who had daughters, and they had theirs. Family I could’ve saved a whole lot of trouble by tellin ’em the things that I know.

But there are some stories that mothers never tell their daughters — secret stories. Stories that would prove a mother was once young, done thangs with men she could never tell, in ways she could never tell, and places she should never. Private stories where love, any ’semblance of love, would lead a person like me to the place I was that night in 1848. When I died.

FOR TWO DAYS and two nights we been running.

Me, and the child inside me.

Pain is trying to get me to stop, make me push away the pain but I won’t push.

My pretty yellow dress is stained red and brown now. Not by the blood of the man I killed, like they think. It’s mine.

The dark of night’s been hiding my running for a while, muffling the sounds of my chest gushing in and out from my own hard breaths. Every few steps, the blue light of the moon sneaks past the treetops and strokes my face, urging me on — the only mercy I get in these hot Alabama woods. The devil’s coming and I have to keep moving, for this baby, for me. But the pain’s burning so bad now, I cain’t hardly do nothing but fall against this old tree, hands slip-sliding down its trunk, stinging.

Barking from the hunting dogs is shooting across the air, bumping around inside me. I have to move faster, run like Sister once told me to.

I beg my belly, “Hold onto me. It ain’t time.”

But this baby got a plan. Its head’s at my opening spot, burning hot, ripping my hips wide apart, carving a way out.

I hold in my screams and bow over hard in the dirt, knees first. A man’s voice shouts, “This way! She’s up this way.”

I want to live.

Want this baby to live.

But she’s betraying me. Every muscle in my body’s slamming shut so I push. She’s tearing through me. I push. I don’t want to, but I push. Screaming mute deep inside myself, pushing so hard but hollering so low they cain’t hear me.

A wave of warm pours out of me, carrying my joy and deep sorrow. Before God and this oak tree, she come. And she don’t cry. I guess she want us to live, too. I move her into the triangle of moonlight that sets my arm aglow. She see me and I see in her the good part of love.

The weight of ’em push me over — these dogs, clawing and biting at my back. But the pain ain’t gonna make me give her up to ’em. I got to protect her, get up, keep running.

I feel my legs, so I bend ’em. Feel ’em firm on the ground, so I push up. I hold her close with one arm and pull up with the other. I can make it. I tell myself again how to run, counting my steps — one two, one two, one two.

A spark of light. A loud pop.

Nothin.

My last thought is to not fall on my baby.

RAY THROWS UP his skinny arms like he won something, stepping right through me, making me see what’s left of me — a hazy mist of what was — arms and legs, a face, body shaped like mine.

Am I dead?

“Murderin’ bitch sure as hell weren’t gon’ get me, too.” He marches ahead with his smoking gun at his side.

Where’s my baby?

“Bobby Lee!” he yell. “Where the hell you at?”

Growling dogs echo from all around us. He stops and squishes his eyes together, trying to see through the dark, wipes his meaty hands down the front of his stained shirt. A jagged piece of fingernail, packed black with food, catches on his clothes. He bite the nail and spit it.

He sets his gun on the ground, tilts it between his knees, cups his hands on the sides of his mouth, “Bobby Lee!”

Bobby Lee’s voice races through the darkness, desperate. “Call off the dogs! Call off the damn dogs!”

“Where you at?” Ray say, snatching up his rifle.

I see them dogs tugging her from my body, trying to rip her from under my arm, but I helt her tight. Made sure of it before I went.

For the first time, she cry.

Her voice is so beautiful but so scared. It anchors inside me.

Bobby Lee dives on that dog, hammers his fists down on it, shaking my baby free.

“What the hell you doing, Bobby Lee! Set that nigger baby down and let the dogs get a go.”

Bobby Lee pulls his knife, cuts my baby’s cord and ties it up. “It’s alive!”

“And we don’t need it growing up like the momma,” Ray say. “Murdering white peoples. Bounty’s same, dead or alive.” He calls out into the woods, “Hen-ray! Get your pasty-white ass out here and help me. Your cousin done lost his mind.”

Henry comes falling through the tree line and stands next to me, fat and out of breath and smacking on a nasty pine needle. The slobber on it’s dried sticky and white and his sick breath rises from it, turning clean pine to outhouse shit. He doubles over his lap with his hands on his knees, catching his breath. “Bitch must be part Indian or some shit,” he say.

“No match for no pure-blooded Virginian!” Ray say, flinging his rifle hand above his head.

They so proud of what they done to me.

Henry say, “What her name was again?”

“Reba or some shit like that,” Ray say. “Just another of Cynthia’s whores.”

Naomi. My name’s Naomi.

“Bobby Lee, I thought you’d be happier than a two-peckered billy goat,” Henry say.

“That’s what I’m tryin to tell you, Cousin. He done lost his mind,” Ray say. “Bobby Lee, let Henry wrap the body and give the dogs their reward.”

But Bobby Lee don’t listen. He carries her strides away to a nearby bush where the moonlight is.

He drags his shirt off and over his head one-handed, switching my baby back and forth from arm to arm as he do. He wraps his shirt around her, whispers, “You all better now. You gon’ be all right.” With his muddy hands, he wipes away the blood and white mess from her face, says to himself, It’s a girl.

At the crunch of Ray’s steps, Bobby Lee puts his hand beside his own gun. Laughter, bursting from Henry, sends Ray back to my body to go see what the fuss is. When he get to it, he see Henry hovering over them dogs eating the afterbirth from ’tween my legs.

“You like that, nigger?” Henry say. “I’m sure you used ta having dogs in yer privates.”

I don’t care he laugh at me, though. I only care that Bobby Lee don’t leave my baby. He lay her on a bush, rewrap her in his shirt as Ray come back his way. Bobby Lee says over his shoulder, “She got blonde hair.”

“Still a nigger,” Ray say and fires his pistol at my baby. Almost hit her this time.

Bobby Lee yells at him. “What the hell you doin, Ray?”

“That ain’t your baby, Bobby Lee,” Ray say. “Yours is dead. Two years now. So let that nigra one go.”

But Bobby Lee don’t. His breaths are slow and long, and the air stutters out his nose. In a raspy voice, he say, “I know it ain’t mine. I heard some slave traders down in Tallassee was looking for negro babies, is all. They just a quarter-mile up the road. Might be worth something. They buy and sell all time of night.”