Nebula Awards Showcase 2016 (24 page)

It wasn't but a hop, skip, and jump through the woods into Rosetree proper. Surrounding the town green were the church, Mrs. Toussaint's general store, and the dozen best houses, all two stories, with overgrown rosebushes in front. At the other side of the town green, Easter could see Soubrette sitting out on her front porch with a lamp, looking fretfully out into night.

It felt nice knowing somebody in this world would sit up for her, wondering where she was, was everything all right.

In her wretched accent, Easter called, “
J'arrive!
” from the middle of the green.

Soubrette leapt up. “Easter?” She peered into the blind dark. “I can't see a thing! Where are you, Easter?”

Curious that
she
could see so well, cutting across the grass toward the general store. Easter had told the angels not to without her asking, told them
many
times, but still she often found herself seeing with cat's eyes, hearing with dog's ears, when the angels took a notion. The problem being, folks
noticed
if you were all the time seeing and hearing what you shouldn't. But maybe there was no need to go blaming the angels. With no lamp or candle, your eyes naturally opened up something amazing, while lights could leave you stone-blind out past your bright spot.

They screamed, embraced, laughed. Anybody would have said three
years
, not days, since they'd last seen each other. “Ah, viens ici, toi!” said Soubrette, gently taking Easter's ruint hand to lead her indoors.

Knees drawn up on the bed, Easter hugged her legs tightly. She set her face and bit her lip, but tears came anyway. They always did. Soubrette sighed and closed the book in her lap. Very softly Easter murmured, “I like
Rebecca
most.”

“Yes!” Soubrette abruptly leaned forward and tapped Easter's shin. “Rowena is nice too—she
is
!—but I don't even
care
about old Ivanhoe. It just isn't
fair
about poor Rebecca . . .”

“He really don't deserve either one of 'em,” Easter said, forgetting her tears in the pleasure of agreement. “That part when Ivanhoe up and changed his mind all of a sudden about Rebecca—do you remember that part?
‘. . . an inferior race . . .'
No, I didn't care for him after that.”

“Oh
yes
, Easter, I remember!” Soubrette flipped the book open and paged back through it. “At first he sees Rebecca's so beautiful, and he likes her, but then all his niceness is ‘. . . 
exchanged at once for a manner cold, composed, and collected, and fraught with no deeper feeling than that which expressed a grateful sense of courtesy received from an unexpected quarter, and from one of an inferior race . . .'
Ivanhoe's just
hateful
!” Soubrette lay a hand on Easter's foot. “Rowena and Rebecca would have been better off
without
him!”

Soubrette touched you when she made her points, and she made them in the most hot-blooded way. Easter enjoyed such certainty and fire, but it made her feel bashful too. “You ain't taking it too far, Soubrette?” she asked softly. “Who would they love without Ivanhoe? It wouldn't be nobody to, well,
kiss
.”

It made something happen in the room, that word
kiss
. Did the warm night heat up hotter, and the air buzz almost like yellow jackets in a log? One and one made two, so right there you'd seem to have a sufficiency for a kiss, with no lack of anything, anyone. From head to toe Easter knew right where she was, lightly sweating in a thin summer shift on this August night, and she knew right where Soubrette was too, so close that—

“Girls!” Mrs. Toussaint bumped the door open with her hip. “The iron's good and hot on the stove now, so . . .”

Easter and Soubrette gave an awful start.
Ivanhoe
fell to the floor.

“. . . why don't you come downstairs with your dresses . . . ?” Mrs. Toussaint's words trailed away. She glanced back and forth between the girls while the hot thing still sizzled in the air, delicious and wrong. Whatever it was seemed entirely perceptible to Mrs. Toussaint. She said to her daughter, “Chérie, j'espère que tu te comportes bien. Tu es une femme de quatorze ans maintenant. Ton amie n'a que dix ans; elle est une toute jeune fille!”

She spoke these musical words softly and with mildness—nevertheless they struck Soubrette like a slap. The girl cast her gaze down, eyes shining with abrupt tears. High yellow, Soubrette's cheeks and neck darkened with rosy duskiness.

“Je me comporte toujours bien, Maman,” she whispered, her lips trembling as if about to weep.

Mrs. Toussaint paused a moment longer, and said, “Well, fetch down your dresses, girls. Bedtime soon.” She went out, closing the door behind her.

The tears
did
spill over now. Easter leaned forward suddenly, kissed Soubrette's cheek, and said, “J'ai
douze
ans.”

Soubrette giggled. She wiped her eyes.

Much later, Easter sat up, looking around. Brother had barked, growling savagely, and woken her up. But seeing Soubrette asleep beside her, Easter knew that couldn't be so. And no strange sounds came to her ears from the night outside, only wind in the leaves, a whippoorwill. Brother never came into the middle of town anyway, not ever. The lamp Mrs. Toussaint had left burning in the hallway lit the gap under the bedroom door with orange glow. Easter's fast heart slowed as she watched her friend breathing easily. Soubrette never snored, never tossed and turned, never slept with her mouth gaping open. Black on the white pillow, her long hair spilled loose and curly.

“Angels?” Easter whispered. “Can you make my hair like Soubrette's?” This time the angels whispered,
Give us the licklest taste of her blood, and all Sunday long tomorrow your hair will be so nice. See that hatpin? Just stick Soubrette in the hand with it, and not even too deep. Prettiest curls anybody ever saw.
Easter only sighed. It was out of the question, of course. The angels sometimes asked for the most shocking crimes as if they were nothing at all. “Never mind,” she said, and lay down to sleep.

While true that such profoundly sustaining traditions, hidden under the guise of the imposed religion, managed to survive centuries of slavery and subjugation, we should not therefore suppose that ancient African beliefs suffered no sea changes. Of course they did. ‘The Devil' in Africa had been capricious, a trickster, and if cruel, only insomuch as bored young children, amoral and at loose ends, may be cruel: seeking merely to provoke an interesting event at any cost, to cause some disruption of the tedious status quo. For the Devil in America, however, malice itself was the end, and temptation a means only to destroy. Here, the Devil would pursue the righteous and the wicked, alike and implacably, to their everlasting doom . . .

White Devils/Black Devils
, Luisa Valéria da Silva y Rodríguez

1871 August 2

The end begins after Providence loses all wiggle room, and the outcome becomes hopeless and fixed. That moment had already happened, Ma'am would have said. It had happened long before either one of them were born. Ma'am would have assured Easter that the end began way back in slavery times, and far across the ocean, when that great-grandfather got snatched from his home and the old wisdom was lost.

Easter knew better, though. A chance for grace and new wisdom had always persisted, and doom never been assured . . . right up until, six years old, Easter did what she did one August day out in the tobacco fields.

On that morning of bright skies, Pa headed out to pick more leaves and Easter wanted to come along. He said, Let's ask your mama.

“But he
said,
Wilbur.” Ma'am looked surprised. “He told us,
You ain't to take the baby out there, no time, no way
.”

Pa hefted Easter up in his arms, and kissed her cheek, saying, “Well, it's going on three years now since he ain't been here to say
Bet not
or say
Yep, go 'head
. So I wonder how long we suppose to go on doing everything just the way he said, way back when. Forever? And the baby
wants
to go . . .” Pa set her down and she grabbed a handful of his pants leg and leaned against him. “But, darling, if you say not to, then we
won't
. Just that simple.”

Most men hardly paid their wives much mind at all, but Pa would listen to any little thing Ma'am said. She, though,
hated
to tell a man what he could and couldn't do—some woman just snapping her fingers, and the man running lickety-split here and there. Ma'am said that wasn't right. So she crossed her arms and hugged herself, frowning unhappily. “Well . . .” Ma'am said. “Can you just wait a hot minute there with the mule, Wilbur? Let me say something to the baby.” Ma'am unfolded her arms and reached out a hand. “Come here, girl.”

Easter came up the porch steps and took the hand—swept along in Ma'am's powerful grip, through the open door, into the house. “
Set
.” Ma'am pointed to a chair. Easter climbed and sat down. Ma'am knelt on the floor. They were eye-to-eye. She grasped Easter's chin and pulled her close. “Tell me, Easter—what you do, if some lady in a red silk dress come trying to talk to you?”

“I shake my head
no
, Ma'am, and turn my back on her. Then the lady have to go away.”

“That's
right
! But what if that strange lady in the red dress say,
Want me to open up St. Peter's door, and show you heaven?
What if she say to you,
See them birds flying there? Do me one itsy bitsy favor, and you could be in the sky flying too.
What then, Easter? Tell me what you do.”

“Same thing, Ma'am.” She knew her mother wasn't angry with her, but Ma'am's hot glare—the hard grip on her chin—made tears prick Easter's eyes. “I turn my back, Ma'am. She
have to
go, if I just turn my back away.”

“Yes! And will you
promise
, Easter? Christ is your Savior, will you
swear
to turn your back, if that lady in the pretty red dress come talking to you?”

Easter swore up and down, and she meant every word too. Ma'am let her go back out to her father, and he set her up on the mule. They went round the house and down the other way, on the trail through woods behind Ma'am's back garden that led to the tobacco fields. Pa answered every question Easter asked about the work he had to do there.

That woman in the red dress was a sneaky liar. She was ‘
that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world . . .
' Warned by Ma'am, Easter guarded night and day against a glimpse of any such person. In her whole life, though, Easter never did see that lady dressed all in red silk. Easter knew nothing about her. She only knew about the angels.

She didn't
see
them, either, just felt touches like feathers in the air—two or three angels, rarely more—or heard sounds like birds taking off, a flutter of wings. The angels spoke to her, once in a while, in whispering soft harmony. They never said anything bad, just helpful little things. Watch out, Easter—gon' rain cats and dogs once that cloud there starts looking purplish. Your folks sure would appreciate a little while by theyself in the house. Why not be nice? Ma'am's worried sick about Pa over in Greenville, with those white folks, so you'd do best to keep your voice down, and tiptoe extra quiet, else you 'bout to get slapped into tomorrow. And, Easter, don't tell nobody, all right? Let's us just be secret friends.

All right, Easter said. The angels were nice, anyway, and it felt good keeping them to herself, having a secret. No need to tell anybody. Or just Brother, when he came out the woods to play with her in the front yard, or when Ma'am let her go walking in the deep woods with him. But in those days Brother used to wander far and wide, and was gone from home far more often than he was around.

The tobacco fields were
full
of angels.