Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (116 page)

“For my starting lesson, I gone speak” (hollering got worse) “bout the need for Tribal Kindness. I put it frank … Don’t test us too much, please, not at first. We still partway homesick. Remember, Blanks, under … everything runs this need to treat each other right, to try and …”

Most bleachnesses now slapping hands together, like they knowed Auntie were trying and make a speech, like they found that right comical at first but only for round about one minute.

Water-bodies clangored to finish naming. But Reba, bad eyes working this room, she act most sated. She yet took clapping to show how some of these heathens had already understood, and first thing! She just lay there, peeking round (bashful but pleased like some old sunning turtle), grinning so’s her three brown tooths’ nub ends showed. Well, her students just loved that, sure. Oh, you never did hear such hooting, whistling, kicking on seats. Paste-faces in back, grinning, talking mong theyselves, stood for a better view of her down there on the floor.

Chief singer man come closer, held his hammer down onto addled head of our good King’s greater great-aunt. Reba shuddering, eyes unblinking mong blankets’ stains, been waiting to hear what-all they gone title her, smiling with a edge of fun, vain to the end. Reba use the hammerhead to scratch some stray itch on her scalp. Water-bodies laughs. Man cup one free palm behind he ear. Hammer man lean clear across Reba and nearer to her hundreds pupils. Didn’t one crag-face try naming her. Probably not one soul in the big white room felt worthy of guessing Aunt Reba’s full title nor her rank. So the headman snort out a name of he own for our most holiest of all. This, too, me and my cousins would remember later just by how it sound. Seemed that important. Head whiteness named my answering aunt “No Takers.”

Man just pull a face, roll his eyes, pass on to our next-oldest person—a body young enough to yet be standing, waiting, looking not at hammer man but, like all us kin been doing, down at her, down at Auntie in last trouble.

Reba yet wear that spiny necklace made out pods. Acting confused, staring all bout, Auntie yank it off. Only then did us notice how her whole head, all along, been mostly a skull with six tanned crisscross strips of hide and one million earned old crinkles covering it, cooperating in hiding bone. Someway, that necklace—forever tied in place below—always made your eyes go there to it instead. Now you seen only the answering skull bulking
there a eighth-inch beneath. You seen how Reba’s eyes was testing in they sockets, pulling deeper, going back to where and home to what?

First Auntie, fuddled, reach down, start a spastic feeling of her shiny scars, grabbing one old handful of snakebit thigh skin, prying, twisting it for news bout what-all this mean, fighting to understand she own new name. By now, Auntie’d lost even her deepest wounds’ true voices. Still, even so confused, Reba considered her hurt spots the only things worth trusting.

(Lady About to Maybe Meet Her First Slap, much as anything on earth, your scars is
yours.)

Auntie dangled the seed choker for Momma to come fetch. Guards finally let our Queen stoop and take it, me going down with her. Queen then press necklace to she mouth, kissing it good while looking right at Reba. Flat on the floor of our first great stage, Aunt, addlepated, were yet grinning out at multitudes what lacked skin tint and any kindly mind for others. But, while nodding towards them, Reba still joked quiet up at my mother, “Us flat got us a
task
all right. What Festival Dance Day do … this be? Seem like I were trying and remember something.”

(Necklace’s seeds would be the start of you plantation’s only okra, plus the first peanut plants in this whole northeast end of Carolina … foods you-all never would of tasted or knowed about without they being saved from holy Africa in this Tear-crossing witch jewelry.)

Our King heself were getting pushed off by some dough-head what’d named him best. Momma—watching—start shaking the worst yet, got shuddering nigh as bad as Auntie. Reba turn our way. Not seeing nothing clear, but feeling all what’s going on in her every crook and bone, her final strength cried to us (bove the loudness of our lasts being named), “We soon gone meet in the Court of Our New Whitenesses. We just … being led off to go get dressed up fine, to sleep some. Oh, a nap! Where my good stick? Had that thing a long while. Hard to find the perfeck one. Good sticks don’t grow on trees, well … yeah, but … I trying saying we is soon to … Meet … glory … in a room what makes this one look like my little shack … back home … built to hold our dead red birds. Remember, young ones? So, go on off with them. Trust.” She coughed bad. “Do. Us’ll see each other directly. Remember: act kinder than them does. That our best lesson. They always gone be … watching. In a land so bleach, black skin bound to show up plain. The un-ones knows you started off as kings—gone expect you to be forever better at everything than them—and just to break even. Anybody seed a fine stick staff? Round here someplace. Can’t go far without.—Look, royalty, try.”

Two young straw-hairs lift Reba’s pallet, starts toting her wherever they takes the extra ones. Where do bleachnesses store they leftovers? They had to lug our Reba by the unchained group of us. When her stretcher drawed close near, Auntie been set high onto sky-eyes’ shoulders, us couldn’t see up that far, we only spied one edge her blanket, one dry Reba wrist dangling down. The other hand still tested her mute hurts. Then us all broken line.
We tried and touch her while us could. Great-aunt Reba goes bouncing past on a bed of sticks, two long, two short crossed at either end. Us press forward to feel one hand’s rough knuckles. Our fingertips quick traced Reba’s broken blue nails, quick felt a snakebit knot set—one great bulb jewel—in the middle of her ivory palm, us reach to squeeze them stiff old horny fingers what’d finished off so many snakes, what forever pointed out things to us, what pointed so at
us
, accusing, schooling, teasing. Then two boy Bleaches and one old shrunk unmarried woman—they was quick gone round one corner. Gone.

Black child in the shiny turban set aside he fan. Acting bored official, he yanked cloth tubes out a sack. Then he shown us how to pull these over heads, round our limbs. Our coverings looked like the namers’ own, just darker in color, coarser in weave. You felt smothered cross you shoulders, tugged at under arms, expecially clamped twixt legs. Clothes be a softer kind of shackle. Black tar meant to hide our hurts—like how you’d wax away a scratch on furniture—it rubbed off, spoiling cloth. Was then—from far at the end of one long hall—us heared something, a sound, the cavedin leaf-mold voice.

Us perkened so, staring at each other, not rightly knowing one the other—such a goodly percentage of familiar skin now been quenched back of hiding cloth. Her cough reached us as a warning and a promise. Then something else done rivered up underneath it, calmed us so. Be her snaggle laugh. Us stood, mouths open, eyes salt, listening harder than us ever had. By now Auntie’s laugh and cough done braided into being one turn-taking sound. We love to hear it working in her still.

Out from under such rasping—she trying/saying something. But couldn’t none of us understand. We look to each other, worried what-all we missing. Something good, we bet, something to remember. King draw hisself up to he full tall, lift he chin, go, “I believe Reba probly mean, ‘Closest things I gots to childrens, go on out. They can’t hurt us now. We kings. Go make the world over. But, this time, get it right. Show them how. We royalty. We
they
royalty. Why we answer? Cause they axted.’”

But a long stillness stretch clear from down them arched brick halls. On the floor, back yonder, under blankets, in the Chamber of the Leftover, “No Takers” hush herself.

Blinking, sun’s favorites, we now squinting on a street. Port town’s market day swelled so, buy and peddle. Like a storm on Tears, such haggling and push, hurrying bout, outdoing one the other. Close by the slammed back door of our strange temple house, three open wagons.

Chain-hitched to them was roomy black-brown creatures bent low under the biggest whips we done seen. After us got pushed up into carts, we noticed how—in a fancier leather wagon at the very back—our first female-type whiteness be setting, quiet and nervous as a bird. Seem like, if you bothered her, she could sputter straight up into the air, all wings and spur, sliced wind. For now, she perched there, not so sure, not so
not
sure, sparrow-sized
but face set in a high-strung manner big as bossy life. (Like the Bleach men, she steadily pretending to be human!) Bout her neck, and left wrist, in finest gold, dainty as possible, two narrow chains showned—ornament for proving who be boss.

She rest, surrounded by many packets of store-bought shiny things, round boxes and paper wrappings piled. Seem her couldn’t stay propt upright wivout store stuff’s help. From under one these bumbles, two white dogs popped, yibbing-barking seeing us. White fluff piles not no bigger than a coconut apiece, they faces act stuck-up, even while they teeth stay bared. She try hushing dogs while holding a new hat. It so fine she afraid to crush it in some shipping box. That hat proving the day’s breeze, twelve egrets’ worth of whitest feathers, shifting. Spying us, her of a sudden gone still. She mighty white. Scared, she let feathers hide her face’s bottom part but them blue eyes of yours just stared so hard and cold, two metal linchpins fixed right at us.

That day, the sash round you white dress’s middle were blood red, the color what’d got us into this.

Our King, on another wagon, clatter right by us then. His hands looked clamped again. And King been stuck into the ugliest checkedy shirt I ever seed since. Liver-colored, yellow, red, and green—shirt seem nearbout harder-going on he dignity than them chains did. King appeared headed in a whole direction other from us ones’. Me, my Queen Momma, one semi-prince, and two old cousins hunkered here—we was all fussed at by that clean child turbaned up. Someway, trusting Reba yet, we figured the King and us all bound on one tour. Maybe we going by different paths but bound a selfsame place, the spot where they’d have Reba lifted high, all brown/black/blue/gray/silver, and at they very center, axting useful answers out of her.

You know, Mistress mine, even while seeing each other being droven off in all forked scattering directions, even when King’s wagon round a turn, even losing sight of one the other’s face for permanent-ever, us didn’t even know enough to think hard, “Notice. Notice this.”

MRS
., I still scrubbing. Happy? See how I clumped them silly little gilded chairs all in one corner. Moved them easy as you shifted us from Africa to Charleston, then upriver to here. Simple as you pushing us into the kitchen, out to fieldwork, back again. You the person stuck my Momma Queen in this Big-House scullery, scrubbing pots. Her one revenge been never learning English right. They’d bring her great stacks dishes dirty from you sit-down dinner parties for fifty. Momma known only to point, she say, “I these? I these?” The Queen! Do you wonder that she tried and steal away?

You forever let your overseer, Marse Winch, take care “discipline.” A certain lady one time say, “I’ll trust you to do whatever’s necessary for maintaining ‘slave morale,’ my dear Winch. I offer you complete authority on one condition: that you never trouble
me
with the details.” You recollect
saying that, woman? I heared you. It cost me Momma. The redheaded sweet-faced Winch, a good and faithful servant like Castalia, he never onct troubled you over how he troubled us. Oh, he really do his job.

Lady? You got so much to answer for.

One day, eleven years into our being owned, my momma got sent to kitchen garden for picking supper okra. Sun was setting. Momma took the colander nearer sun. Sun looked ripe, promising and ready. Like for to pick. She walk to the garden, in the garden. Sun there. Through the garden. Sun yet there. Go to the Marsden property line. Closer sun. Next thing, she been you personal property but off you personal property. Without no excuse nor wrote-down pass. Uh-oh. She come to herself in a woods six miles from here. Momma decided in African, “My my. I late. Supper bout over. No okra. They out hunting me, sure. I lost. But, no, I now gone do
this
instead of dishes.” She look around, breathing like when you seriously know you breathing. “I
this,”
Momma say. “Now, I Queenly free.”

She were bout thirty-five years old. Didn’t look one bit like the beauty what been brought over young. Her shape missed Africa so much, it’d swoled, changed, dropped on her. Which left the Queen being somebody else, somebody heavy but less. Sent out to fetch okra, sent barefoot, she had no smart plan for leaving. (Other runaways been known to first steal atlas maps from out the Master’s study room.) This woman just walk when walking feel right. This woman only understood you two thousand acres. How
could
she plan ahead when the one thing she known best was what she most hoped to forget?

Momma yet carried the big house’s best colander. It were blue and white made to look like marble. Later, when they caught her, she still had holt that thing. Momma felt the Law might go easier on her if—while trying and free herself—she didn’t lose nothing rightfully blonging to you. She slept in ditches, up trees, hid nights in haylofts on bandoned farms. Even with no food, she got clear cross Nash County, then on to Edgecombe.

A lady over in Tarboro put a fresh-baked cherry pie on her kitchen sill for cooling. If Momma had took the pie
and
its pan, she could of got away free, sure. Instead she stood out there in plain view, shaking from she hunger and the jitters. Queen tried and dump hot crust and scalding cherries into her borrowed colander. See, Momma wanted not to steal nothing
but
her freedom plus the food she needed. Queen’s mistake been trying and stay out of worse trouble than she been in already. Her mistake was trying and stay out of worse trouble than Freedom its own self is.

They brung her back in ropes. The colander rested pretty on the wagon seat beside her. Colander looked boastful like
it’d
turned her in. Seeing us lined beside the farm road, Queen smiled but shy. Maybe she was troubled over how she’d failed at getting free. Maybe how—leaving—she hadn’t said bye to any one of us. Not even wiry Princess Me.