Sapphire's Grave (13 page)

WISE, NORTH CAROLINA

JUNE, 1904

As she turned down the grassy incline and approached the rambling house, Queen Marie was reminded of the awkward building in Warrenton where Vyda Rose had lived and worked. The multiple and obvious additions to this house gave it an irregular appearance, like a mangled octopus, Queen Marie thought, its arms reduced to nubs, immobile, powerless except to offend the aesthetic senses.

Several children ran into the house when they saw her approaching. A tall, sun-bronzed woman opened the door and came out, holding a child on her hip. She raised a slender hand to shield her eyes from the noonday sun. Queen Marie raised a hand to wave at the statuesque woman in bare feet and a faded dress. The woman waved back, reluctantly, Queen Marie thought, and motioned her restless children back into the house.

It was a warm day, even for June, and Queen Marie felt sweaty and frumpy beneath the gaze of this subtle beauty, whose not so subtle appraisal of Queen Marie and the plump brown child she carried on her hip had found them both wanting. The woman’s stare turned wary and took on a slight frost.

“Evenin’, Ma’am,” Queen Marie offered breathlessly. The woman assessed Queen Marie’s tight-fitting dress and the dark, wet rings at her armpits. She nodded slightly. “I’m Miz Queen Marie Fields, and this is my grandbaby.”

The woman arched an eyebrow and regarded Queen Marie with open curiosity. She was the kind of woman Queen Marie had once expected to be, before Prince and the rearrangement of her priorities: a decent, respectably married woman, though her literary talent would surely have taken her beyond Warren County, Queen Marie thought with some superiority.
She
would not have been the wife of a laborer.

“How you doin’?” the woman finally responded, her voice low and surprisingly husky. “I’m Miz Suzanne Yarborough.” There was an awkward silence. Queen Marie shifted the child to her other hip. “Come on in,” Suzanne said, almost grudgingly, opening the door and stepping inside the dark house.

The windows were covered with heavy brocade drapes that blocked out the sunlight completely. Queen Marie squinted at the pattern that laced the dark, emerald green fabric, then scanned the room briefly in the light that glowed faintly from a hallway behind the room. It was sparsely furnished. A wood burning stove crackled in a corner. A couch dominated one wall, and a large bed with a headboard of thick iron bars languished across the room from it, draped in a light green bedspread of soft, nub-bled fabric. Queen Marie’s eyes fell again upon the curtains with their curious, raised pattern.

“Have some siddown.” Suzanne motioned toward the couch. “I got those from my mama when she died,” Suzanne volunteered, nodding toward the curtains. Then, she added proudly, “She was an undertaker’s wife—” whose husband, Queen Marie had heard, had lost his business in a gambling loss, at least two decades before his death. She had heard of the family and its misfortune, long before she had heard of Prince Junior’s marriage to the only daughter, the widow of a traveling evangelist. What a disappointment, Queen Marie thought, to have sank to being the wife of a common tobacco hand!

“And this is my husband, Prince Junior.”

Queen Marie started as a tall dignified man entered the room, looking for all the world like the best in Queen Marie, and all that she had worshiped, adored.

You look like a world
to me
like the mountains of Abarim
my sorrow
like John the beloved’s
sea of glass like crystal
my tears
you look like the Venus
of a cloudless heaven
radiant as rubies
my passion
my joy

“Dis here Miz Queen Marie Fields, an’ dass her lil’ grandbaby.”

Prince Junior smiled with recognition—of the name, not the woman. “Well, look here!” he exclaimed, smiling broadly at Queen Marie and offering a large, work-toughened hand that reminded her of cured tobacco. “Dis here Vyda Rose mama,” he revealed to his wife, who nodded, mouthing a silent and thoughtful “Oh!” and turning to regard Queen Marie with a knowing look, an evil, judging look, Queen Marie thought, as if Prince Junior’s revelation had clarified something about Queen Marie that Suzanne had been struggling to discern, something nasty and shameful, cause for nausea and distaste.

“Hah you?” Queen Marie inquired politely of Prince Junior, ignoring his wife, recalling a supply shed at the edge of the woods, and a night long ago; tempted to smile coquettishly—but she was not a girl anymore. She was a tired woman, heavy and haggard, her heart filled with regrets.

Prince Junior laughed suddenly as the baby caught his attention. “I reckon dass Vyda Rose lil’ gal, ain’t it? She a cute lil’ thang. Ain’ she a cute lil’ thang?” he asked his wife, who did not respond, only regarded the child without interest, her mouth set in a thin line. But Prince Junior had not looked at her. His face became solemn. “We was so sorry to get the news ’bout Vyda Rose. We all loved her. She was a sister to us.”

Queen Marie looked down at her feet. There was a long silence. Prince Junior sank into the uncomfortable couch beside Queen Marie. Suzanne stood near the beloved curtains. Prince Junior’s forehead puckered as if in concentration, and Queen Marie took his hands in hers, not stopping to consider the appropriateness of her action. Suzanne glared at them, unnoticed by the pair as they shared in their common grief for several moments. “She wanted you to have this chile,” Queen Marie finally blurted. It was not the explanation she had prepared. This meeting was not what Queen Marie had envisioned. But Prince Junior nodded, almost absently, certainly not alarmed. Suzanne remained mute, watchful from her place near the window.

It had taken Queen Marie some time to collect herself, and her grand-daughter, and to give the child away; this child who was all that remained of Vyda Rose, the only legacy that Queen Marie could claim. She looked up at Suzanne, whose eyes had softened somewhat, thinking, Queen Marie felt, that the child was, after all, a child, and innocent, in need of training in uprightness—if she was to be the kind of woman, Queen Marie thought dolefully, that she had herself expected to be.

Queen Marie hugged the child tightly, until she began to squirm, then wiped a tear from her eye as Suzanne took the baby without a word. One of the children, or perhaps a breeze from the hallway behind the room, closed a door gently. No one spoke in the darkened room for a long time. Then, Suzanne spoke softly.

“You come on by and see ’bout us sometime—” A signal to Queen Marie that she should go, and leave the baby, becoming a caller, an occasionally passing shadow, in the little girl’s life.

INEZ, NORTH CAROLINA

JULY, 1904

Lately, Queen Marie’s vision seemed to be failing. She was thirsty a lot, and given to frequent urination. A yellowish cast tinged her skin, and an acrid, metallic odor settled on her breath. She slept a lot, and woke to strange noises. The house seemed to rock and sway, with a life and will of its own.

She began to attend church, not out of an interest in finding God, but to fill the lonely spaces in her heart created by the absences: of Fields, of Vyda Rose. Uncomfortable with silence, Queen Marie had never learned to be with herself.

Sometimes, she visited her grandchild, telling her stories of her mother’s life, not hoping that the child understood, but hoping that this repetition of history would keep Vyda Rose alive. But the ever watchful Suzanne always lingered in the doorway or behind the chair where Queen Marie sat with her grandchild on her knee, making Queen Marie feel like an unwelcome guest, an intrusion upon the proper rearing of a child who was to become a lady.

Most days, Queen Marie felt as though she might as well die, of use to no one, not even herself. She drank incessantly, until she had to drink, and her days became less than a blur, her life an ongoing stupor, punctuated with periods of sleep and hallucination. She visited the witch, telling herself that she had come to effect a blessing upon her grandchild, a shield for her against Suzanne’s cunning and arrogance, protection from the venom of her contempt.

But when she arrived at the clapboard house, the sorceress chastised her with a penetrating yellow stare, until Queen Marie was shamed to tears. Falling into a straight-backed chair, she sobbed and muttered incoherently. The sorceress watched from her own chair across the small battered table, patient but uncaring.

The sun set. It rose again. Queen Marie could not recall sleeping. But she awoke with her head resting on the table, to find the sorceress still sitting, still and silent. Queen Marie noticed that the sorceress did not blink, had never blinked in Queen Marie’s presence, the yellow eyes phosphorescent and hard as marbles.

It was rumored that the sorceress had lived since the beginning of time. Queen Marie shifted nervously in the hard wooden chair. Others said she had come to be two centuries ago, the product of a white man and a conjure woman from dark Africa. It was said that she had run a brothel, where devil-children were schooled into magical whores, their services phenomenal and costly.

It was said that she knew all things. This, Queen Marie believed with all her heart.

“You brought it on yourself, you know,” the sorceress told her without speaking. “You and your helplessness, your selfish greed.”

Queen Marie felt defenseless. “But nobody told me—”

“Your mama told you. You shoulda heard her actions, not just her words. Sister showed you. All you ever needed to know, you knew. And you still ain’t come yet to faith. You never will.”

Queen Marie closed her eyes. They ached, as if heavy weights were pressed against them. She saw Vyda Rose, a teenager. Vyda Rose had been here several times, desperate and afraid, her face the face of an ancient woman. Queen Marie shook her head; but she saw Vyda Rose’s babies, rudely ejected, unequipped for survival, into a world that did not want them, a world they did not want. She saw their bodies lifted from the hard, wooden floor of this room—

“I fault you for that,” the sorceress said.

—and buried in the soil of Queen Marie’s heart. She had not known that Death was there. She had not known of the babies. Her heart bled. She felt her tears becoming a sea. She felt a tugging, as if she was drowning, the sea opening up to swallow her.

She wished that it had been her.

But it had not been her. And now it was too late.

“Help me,” she begged, as the waves began to lap at her chin. Couldn’t the sorceress see that she was drowning in tears and the blood of her granddaughters?

“I can’t help you,” the sorceress answered, her face stone. “You will have to help yourself.”

And the sorceress left the room. Her body remained upright in the straight-backed chair, her eyes fixed upon her guest. But Queen Marie knew that she was gone, as surely as she knew that she had just conversed with the devil, without once opening her mouth.

“You selfish ol’ hag!” Queen Marie screamed aloud. “You took my Prince from me! You took him! You killed my Fields and my baby, and you took my grandbabies away! You hateful ol’ woman! I know where you come from! I know you come from hell!” Her throat felt constricted, aching and raw. The waters receded. She got up to stumble blindly out the door, past the church where the voices of young women much like herself had urged her to grace, but she had not heard; past the home of her mother, and the woods where she and Prince had first made love, changing irrevocably the course of her life, setting her feet upon a quest to find her calling in another, her affections upon a false and wooden god, the gifts of her heart, her spirit, and of her hands hidden, unknown to her daughter, and to
her
daughter.

Queen Marie began to run. She would share the gift. The child would not understand, but Queen Marie would share it now, while there was breath in her body, and inspiration in her soul. She turned abruptly to cross the road. She never saw the truck coming. She heard the horn, her calling to another plane.

A blue-gray transparence enveloped and absorbed her. She was aware that she was lying down, aware of a light weight resting upon her body. She was aware of her neck, that she could not move it. She wanted her grand-daughter. She wanted to die.

There were people—somewhere. She heard hushed voices in conversation. She wanted to move. She wanted to die—though not in any tragic way. She wished no ill upon herself. She simply wished her life to end, quietly here, in this blue-gray transparence, where no one would notice and hushed voices would continue in conversation. She wanted the world to end, the tragedy of living erased, having never been. What was the point, anyway? She wanted the curtain called, her life a mere satire on something meaningful and real.

She thought that she was dozing. Her mother appeared, shaking her head sadly. Queen Marie reached for her grandchild, who did not recognize her. Suzanne was there, a serpent spewing venom; and Prince Junior, without judgment. She felt profoundly the absence of Prince; but Sister, who had neither needed nor wanted him, was there to testify to this. Queen Marie understood her now, and understood her own error. She wished, now, to die peacefully.

But the child would live, and Queen Marie would live within her. Queen Marie saw her, a toddler, a precocious child, a confident teenager, a woman unafraid of fear, unafraid of her Self. Queen Marie would live within her, all her genius dormant, preserved for posterity.

HENDERSON, NORTH CAROLINA

DECEMBER, 1930

Because he hath set his love upon me . . . because he hath known my name.

—Psalm 91:14

It was December, and cold. Jewell hesitated for a moment before raising the knocker on the great Gothic door and letting it fall with a single, clamorous
clack.

She seemed apprehensive, the man was later to tell her, holding her buttonless coat closed around her ample figure. He noted the slender, tarnished ring that encircled the fourth finger of her left hand, before his eyes moved back to the woolen coat, and down to her large feet clad in army-issue boots.

“Do come in,” he said. “You must be freezing. May I take your coat? Please have some tea.” He motioned toward the cherry buffet which held a silver teapot and silver-edged cups. Her eyes widened and he realized she was actually quite young, perhaps not yet twenty-five.

“Please,” he said. “Sit down.”

“Yessir,” she barely whispered, and lowered her thick black lashes in a manner no doubt intended as deferential, but unintentionally coquettish. She offered him a brief nervous smile, revealing a deep dimple in one plump cheek, and moved hesitantly toward a stiff chair that stood before a blazing fireplace. Perched primly on the edge of her seat, she glanced up at him expectantly as he filled a silver-edged teacup from the pot.

“Cream or sugar?” He turned to face her and found her staring at him, her mouth agape. She really was lovely, he noted, in that way some Negro girls are lovely, her skin brown and clear as maple syrup and her eyes as large and luminous as twin full moons. There was about her an innocence, though a Negro girl of twenty-five, he thought, must certainly be far from chaste; an amazement—perhaps with the opulence of her surroundings, he realized, envisioning the shanties in which the Negroes lived.

“Sugar,” she said abruptly when she realized she had been staring.

He was aware that his actions, in treating her as his guest, were causing her some discomfort. “Sugar,” he repeated. What a fitting name that would have been for his new employee had their relationship been less formal, more . . . personal. It certainly suited her, he thought, better than—what was her name again?

She smiled suddenly and disarmingly, a smile as broad as a cane field and as blissful as a honey bee; sweet and lingering, like molasses from the icebox in a warm kitchen on a cold, cold day. His own aristocratic, clean-shaven face came within an arm’s length of hers as he carefully presented the steaming hot teacup to her. She accepted gratefully, holding the teacup tightly with all ten of her cold, pudgy fingers; and puckering her full lips softly, she leaned forward and kissed the hot tea gently with her breath, her blackened eyelashes resting on her cheeks, her breasts falling, then rising as she took in another breath and opened her eyes. She did not seem surprised to find him still standing, leaning toward her with his arm extended. She smiled again, and he drew away from her with an exaggerated clearing of his throat.

Still standing, he began to babble. Duties. Wages. Working hours. She lowered her head, turned her incandescent eyes up toward him, nodding her comprehension. She assumed that there was no wife, and that she would answer only to him. She recalled stories, whispered around outhouses and kitchens, of lonely white men venting their passions on Negro women, and quickly dismissed the thought. She was a married woman, respectably immune to the hackneyed image that had plagued Negro women since the tobacco-filled days of chattel bondage and sexual servitude.

He was done, at last, with his litany of details they had spoken of the week before, when her predecessor, an ancient Negro woman called Mae, had announced her retirement from his service and gone to live with nieces in New Jersey. She knew that the old woman had kept a clean kitchen, but asked to inspect it and her room. He obliged with ceremony, pointing out where Mae had kept her cast-iron pots and large iron tub; how to operate the wood-burning stove; the time at which he took breakfast and tea. Her room was a tiny alcove beneath the sloping eaves of the attic. He was apologetic in explaining Mae’s wish to remain in the attic even after the boys were grown and had moved away, and suggested that perhaps she would like to sleep in one of the larger better-insulated rooms. No, really, the boys were long married and off on their own, and it really would be no trouble if she chose one of their rooms. In fact, he insisted. “Just choose one.”

She chose the smallest room, farthest from the master bedroom with a door that led out onto a balcony. She had dreamed of a room like this but never hoped to have one.

Not even as a servant in borrowed quarters.

HENDERSON, NORTH CAROLINA

JUNE, 1931

The early days of Jewell’s tenure as maidservant passed without incident. He was kind to her, and gentle when his eggs were slightly overcooked or his collar was not pressed just so. He would talk to her in the evenings, making awkward conversation across the great chasms of race, caste, gender, and power that separated them, as she dusted, polished, and attempted, tactfully, to discourage conversation. Oblivious to her lack of interest, or perhaps mistaking her curt “yessirs” and “nosirs” for respectful restraint, he would ask her opinion on matters that she supposed were of concern to white people. She rarely had an opinion, or knew what to say, or how to say it diplomatically.

Occasionally, he would make her have lemonade or tea with him when she served him on the porch. These interviews were agony for her. Had she possessed the vocabulary and dared to be impertinent, she might have pointed out to him, as he seemed to forget, that she was a Negro, and far too much about the business of her own survival, and that of her children, to trouble herself with philosophical abstractions; that she only wanted to be left alone in the evenings to rest her weary feet and that, by the way, another night or two off to be at home with her children would be nice. That was her opinion. But then, she would look at his long, equine face, so intense as he droned on and on in his clipped, Yankee locution, and feel badly for him and for her unkind thoughts. He paid her generously for working all day and attending to his comfort into the night, drawing his bath and serving him warm milk, and listening to the prattle of a lonely man too far removed, in distance and in time, from the company of a family he loved and longed to share these evenings with.

And he was
gentle
toward her, she reasoned one early evening in late winter as she polished the mammoth piano that dominated the dining room. It had belonged to his late wife, and he cherished it. Sometimes, his eyes became glassy as he gazed at the piano, recounting to her some story of his wife’s adventures as a concert pianist. These open displays of emotion, coupled with his genuine concern for her, were a distant departure from the gruff and hardened dispositions of the men in her life: her father, loving when she was a child, but stubborn and, as she reached adulthood, withdrawn; her adolescent boyfriends, groping and insensitive; her husband, unkind, unloving, and uncaring, unreachable and immovable despite her efforts to please him. It had been a long time since someone had been
gentle
toward her. Lord knows, she admitted to herself with a sigh, sometimes her children’s shrieks and the crude demands of her husband made her want to run; run far away and be
free.
Sometimes she wanted to be a girl again. She paused, held the dust cloth over the gleaming grand piano, and studied her reflection in the rich, polished wood. She wanted desperately, sometimes, to be a girl again, protected and diminutive in her father’s arms; to believe that no peril could befall her in his arms.

She wanted to be held, as she had been as a girl, beneath the lattice church steps in a blackberry patch, where a thrill had coursed through her small body, carrying with it the promise of something else: something richly delicious and satisfying, like bowls and bowls of chocolate tapioca, or soft, ripe melon eaten with abandon, its sweet, sweet juices dripping down her chin. She wanted someone to soothe her with soft sweet words and make her feel . . .

Precious. Dear. She stared for a moment at her callused hands, her belly, round and sagging from too many babies and too little attention to herself. Her eyes came to rest again on the reflection of her face, worried, beleaguered by the strain of being giver, caretaker, provider—too many things, and to too many others. She had never been tended to, had never received the promise, made beneath the church steps, of sweetness and
life.

She sank heavily onto the piano seat. An early evening breeze, slight but insistent, stirred the branches of the oak tree outside the dining room window. She thought she felt it around her ankles. In the living room, the fire chuckled softly in the fireplace. It made her think of the wood-burning stove in the old church near the creek where she had been baptized. Her fingers found the ivory keys. They picked out a tune.

Take me to the wa-a-ter . . .

Absently, she began to hum the second line:

Take me to the wa-a-ter . . .

Tears came to her eyes, startling her. Why in heaven’s name was she crying? And with so much work to do! She meant to jump to her feet and resume her chores; but her body would not obey her mind’s command. A lump formed in her throat. She swallowed with difficulty. Without rising, she clutched the dust cloth and began polishing,
scrubbing
the shining wood, her teeth clenched, her knuckles nearly white. Youth and innocence had toyed with her, hinting at a glimmering kingdom come, and saddling her instead with a sorrow and bitterness so intense that she could taste it. Tears began to trickle down her cheeks. “Do you play?” he asked.

She jumped up from the piano seat and turned to face him. He was standing in the shadow of the doorway that led to the living room. Hastily, she wiped the tears from her eyes, but it was too late. Boyish elation turned to concern as he saw that she was crying.

“Sugar? Is something wrong?” He moved a step toward her, and the sloping, horselike planes of his face caught the light from the lamp across the room. In them, she saw tenderness, caring. It was almost as if, she thought for a second, he felt the pain and disappointment that she felt but could not explain; but in truth, even if she could explain, he could never understand.

None but the ri-ighteous . . .

Baptized in privileged, patriarchal whiteness, he did not know the bitter gall of toiling thanklessly, each moment fighting for one’s very survival and that of others. He did not know the sting of discovering the loss of one’s innocence, unjoyously, and long after it has passed, finding all your expectations disappointed, the promise unfulfilled. He did not know the heavy burden of needing, the futile
wanting
of things unreachable and unknown. He did not know that he had called her Sugar. The planes seemed to soften before her eyes. She sniffed, rubbed her nose with the back of her hand, a gesture he found puerile and endearing. “Not really,” she replied, in answer to both of his questions. It moved her that he thought of her that way: sweetly. He did not even know that he had called her Sugar.

HENDERSON, NORTH CAROLINA

DECEMBER, 1931

Today she came bearing her usual large purse, filled with he could not imagine what, and a child of perhaps six years, the small head resting on her shoulder, wrapped in a woolen scarf. Plump arms and legs seemed to stick out in all directions, awkward and restless from the nearly two-mile walk that brought her mother to the house on Chestnut Street each Monday morning. Watching her from the window of his parlor, he shook his head in disbelief. It was a pleasant morning, warm for December. Still, he worried about her predawn treks to work, and had offered more than once to drive her.

He rose from his chair in the parlor and hurried out to meet her. Jessie, she announced as he took the child in his arms, was under the weather. He looked at her questioningly and was startled when the child’s forehead, burning with fever, brushed his neck. She had had no choice but to bring the feverish Jessie with her to work. She hoped that he did not mind if Jessie slept quietly upstairs this week while she went about her chores. “She a good chile. She won’t give no trouble.”

“Of course not,” he said. “But shouldn’t she see a doctor?”

“Oh, naw,” she replied with a wave of her hand. “It’s just a touch of the fever. She gits that sometimes.”

Supposing that she knew about these things, he carried the child inside and placed her gently across the bed in the upstairs room with the balcony. The child stirred and muttered incoherently. Watching her remove Jessie’s coat and calm the fretting child, he was moved, as he often was, by the efficiency and grace of her capable hands. Feeling awkward and unhelpful, he asked if there was something he could do.

“Why, yes,” she replied, glancing upward to smile at him. “You can bring up some ice water and a couple of glasses.” He nodded obediently and started toward the door. “And some aspirin,” she added. “I’m almost out.”

“What does your husband do?” He rocked slightly in the old, creaking rocker, trying to appear indifferent to her response, as if making polite and obligatory conversation. In truth he was concerned. Jewell was wary. Jessie had been asleep in the room with the balcony for most of the day. His casual
what does your husband do
had really been a worried
is there
enough money to see a doctor?
She did not care to discuss with her employer any aspect of her life other than her employment. But she appreciated his concern. She smiled at him from her seat on the porch swing and did not answer immediately. She had come to regard him with genuine affection in the months since he had found her crying and called her Sugar.

“Jessie will be jes fine,” she said, glancing away from her mending to give him a knowing and reassuring look, “and she don’t need no doctor.” He responded with a brief sheepish grin. They returned to the comfortable silence that had replaced his earlier attempts at conversation. He rocked. She mended. They listened to the crickets.

Jessie tossed restlessly in her borrowed bed.

Night had fallen, and moonlight spilled through the knotted limbs of the oak tree outside the window, casting shadows like long, dark fingers across the bed in the upstairs room and Jessie’s ravaged face.
Jessie?
he had asked her.
Not Jessica?
She had looked at him in surprise. She had never noted before the care that white folks took to give their children lengthy, pretentious names, only to shorten them later in the interest of brevity and practicality. Always Joseph, William, or Patricia Ann. Never Joe, Billy, or Pattie Mae.
Jessica,
she realized, had never occurred to her.
No,
she had answered him.
Just Jessie.
He inclined his angular head and parted his lips in that way that she had come to recognize as inquiring.
Jessie,
she explained,
was named after my husband’s mama,
who had died, she was convinced, of exhaustion; overworked, used up, and begging, if not for love, for sympathy at least. This child, she thought now as she rocked her precious Jessie, she would rescue from that fate. Somehow.

A light sweat had broken out on the child’s forehead. Her condition seemed to have worsened since yesterday when, running a slight fever and too sick to go to Sunday evening worship, Jessie had vomited just before bedtime, and fallen into a fitful sleep, interrupted by periods of wakeful restlessness and confusion. She reached again, as she had done at six-hour intervals yesterday and today, for the bottle of aspirin that stood on the night table and, breaking the small white tablet in half, she parted the weary child’s lips gently with her finger and deposited the half-tablet on her tongue. The child recovered from her grogginess long enough to accept, almost desperately, a glass of water; then another. Finally, Jessie fell back in her mother’s arms, exhausted and relieved.

It broke her heart to see her child so tortured. Perhaps, she thought as she placed the child in the center of the bed, she should take Jessie to a doctor after all. Tomorrow, she resolved as she turned off the light and settled into the large overstuffed armchair to sleep. Tomorrow morning she would take Jessie to the doctor.

The red-gold sun nudged her, gently, out of a restive, uncomfortable sleep. Her neck ached. Her Jessie lay peaceful and content in the center of the bed. Happy that the child seemed rested and not wishing to wake her, she stood and tiptoed to the door, closed it softly behind her, and hurried down the stairway to begin the morning’s chores. The child looked better, but still, she couldn’t be too safe, she thought as she recalled Jessie’s fretful state on the evening before.

When he came down for breakfast, his face was lined with the concern that was causing her, slowly and with near-reluctance, to
see
him: past the blue-green veins that drew a cobweb pattern beneath his transparent skin; past his peculiarities of speech and manner, the myriad eccentricities of whiteness and privilege. And a kinship, at once unfathomable and inevitable, born of kindness, familiarity, and shared humanity, was coming to be. As she studied him, a look of open curiosity on her face, a blood vessel jumped at his temple. It made him appear, in some way, vulnerable, accessible. Slowly, she extended her hand, nearly rising to her toes to touch, gently, the paper-thin, delicate white skin of his temple. For an instant, neither of them moved, her fingertips warm and dry on his moist skin. His hand clasped her outstretched hand, his fingers thin and strong, his grasp firm. She loved this man, she realized without surprise. She wriggled her fingers. The brilliance of her smile startled him, as it always did, and he realized that she could not disengage her hand.

Embarrassed, he released her fingers and watched her turn and move toward the stairs. “Me and Jessie are goin’ to the doctor,” she announced without turning or breaking her stride. “Would you take us, after breakfast?”

A moment passed before he realized she had spoken. He was noticing her purposeful stride, the determined wiggle of her hips when she walked, the proficiency with which she always went about her tasks, the unconscious passion and, yes, sensuality, that pervaded everything she did. Her words penetrated this reverie, taking several moments for their meaning to register. His throat was dry. He went to the sink and filled a glass of water, swallowing it in several great gulps.
Yes,
he whispered, as her footsteps traversed the floor above.
Yes,
he repeated, although she could not hear his pledge.
I will do for Jessie whatever you need me to do, becauseshe is yours and therefore mine.
The enormity and certainty of this realization filled him with hope and dread, and he reached again for the spigot.

An awful scream, tormented and hoarse, emanated from the upstairs room. The drinking glass shattered in the sink. His heart raced as he hurried up the stairs and down the hallway, then tore in two as he flung open the door to find his domestic and the object of his newfound devotion doubled over on her knees, vigorously and desperately rocking the lifeless Jessie in her arms.