Sapphire's Grave (14 page)

INEZ, NORTH CAROLINA

FEBRUARY, 1932

For the Lord hath called thee as a woman
forsaken and grieved in spirit, and a wife of youth,
when thou wast refused, saith thy God.

—Isaiah 54:6

Her clients rarely came before dusk, and were even more rarely hesitant or apologetic. Hers was the port of last resort, she often chuckled to herself, a final, desperate hope when human effort proved ineffective and nothing else had worked. So this woman, clad in the modest attire of a domestic, and appearing at lunch time, captured the interest of the sorceress long before she approached the clapboard house surrounded by rye. She had seen, with her spirit’s eye, the woman leaving the great Gothic house and slamming the door behind, pondering and vacillating as she walked. The nervous apprehension, the tortuous guilt, recalled another young woman, in another time years before.

This woman was plump, with worried red-rimmed eyes and a dimple in one cheek; a girl with good manners, from a spartan Christian home. Oh, the trivial dilemmas of the moral, the unholy longings of the holierthan-all. The sorceress had known this girl, as she knew most of her clients, and the nature of her dilemma, without asking. But it was such an entertainment to watch the upright squirm on their respectable rear ends at the home of a witch as they whispered confessions of desire, consummated at last. They never meant to, you see. These were not the kind of girls who were
prepared
for these encounters, much less for their consequences.

So she had allowed the plump brown woman to sit down at her table and explain, beginning in a tentative near-whisper that seemed to gain vehemence as her story rushed to a pinnacle and spilled onto the little table in all its garish wickedness. He had been white, this woman’s paramour, and apparently a man of some social stature. A caring man, the sorceress sensed, for the girl softened as she spoke of him. Her manner became unaffected, natural, and she answered the sorceress’ questions with an unexpected candor.

The woman recounted the story of the tender coupling that had brought her, ultimately, to this place. Her brown eyes pleaded for understanding, as her hands clasped her rotund belly, an unselfconscious gesture, and her eyes filled with tears as she spoke of her Jessie—her dear sweet six-year-old treasure; and of the gentle comfort of his cheek against her tear-dampened cheek, his hands resting on her weary hips.

She had not rested, she recalled, since the day of her loss. Friends had kept a vigil, offering food and bible verses and feeble words of comfort, mumbled uneasily but sincerely.

The Lawd knows how much, jes how much, we can bear.

He works in mysterious ways.

We’ll understand it better by and by.

Some sat with her through the night, her grief so weighty, the pain so obstinate, a great mountainous grief here, in her chest, that would not be moved, too stubborn even to allow the tears to fall. Finally, when the last of the sympathies had been expressed, and her Jessie was alone in a cold, dark cavern six feet below the ground, she went to the house with the upstairs room, and sat there for days, staring at nothing in particular, her loss too great for words. As night began to fall, he would stand helpless outside the door, his hands at his sides, his mouth open, saying things, she was vaguely aware.
There was nothing you could do. You do know that.
Don’t you. Oh, Dear. Don’t do this. You do have to grieve, you know. Let yourself.Please. I can’t bear to see you . . .

Some days he held her. She could not recall when this had begun. She had become aware, all at once, that he was holding her, as she expected him to; that he had held her before, had done this, perhaps, for some time. He rocked her gently, reacquainting her paralyzed mind with other times; cherished times of her youth, of tender looks and kindness. Slowly, something inside her had begun to open, like wood lily petals in the noonday sun; like floodgates opening slowly on rusted hinges. He rocked her, until something broke loose and rushed out of her; something soft and warm and flowing as she had always imagined milk and honey flowing.

Their tears flowed freely that night in the upstairs room, his cheek next to hers, his sinewy hands strong, reassuring, holding her firmly as she flowed and flowed beneath him, their bodies, their souls a river, a rhythm flowing into morning and evening and again into night; that great mountain of grief molten like lava, and flowing out of her each night. Jessie, her baby, becoming an angel of light in the memory that he was giving back to her each day in the house on Chestnut Street; her chores, his routine domestic needs forgotten, these moments in the upstairs room bringing her back her Jessie and the promise of blackberry passion, the secret of unbridled joy heretofore unknown to her, but disclosed in all of its unfolding mystery there in the upstairs room where she had lost her child.

And suddenly she knew in the unkempt room of the sorceress that she wanted this baby, wanted badly and at the cost of propriety this tawny child of auburn locks and easy smile and dewy eyes. She clasped her belly. She wanted this child. The brown woman’s eyes fell upon the yellow woman and the proffered unmarked bottle of death on the table before her. Suddenly, the spirit of this woman and of death in this room became unbearable to her, and without another word she stood and left the room, closing the door resolutely behind her.

SANDY CREEK, VANCE COUNTY, NORTH CAROLINA

MARCH, 1932

The frost melted and springtime came, bringing with it the hope of warmth, life, and gaiety. And as she went about her chores at the small home she shared with her husband, and at the house on Chestnut Street, performing for both men such services as she felt bound by duty or love to perform, Jewell frequently dropped a basket of dirty linen to rush to the door and spot a hummingbird before it sneaked into a tree hole; or allowed a flatiron to overheat as she rushed to capture two lungsful of cool, rain-drenched air; and a smile of peace and satisfaction would spread across her round face.

It was on such a cool and rain-drenched morning that Eugene first noticed the life that had swelled within his wife. She stood barefoot on her toes in the yard, her round chin raised and her eyes closed, leaning forward slightly. She seemed oblivious to the heavy raindrops splashing red mud around her ankles. For weeks now, he had been sure that Jewell was going mad. And of late, he had noted the dwindling of his usually ample supply of blackberry wine. He had never actually
seen
her pilfer it, or smelled it on her breath. But this exuberance, this newfound love of
life,
was raising new suspicions of his wife.

She had always hummed as she worked, her scrub brush moving across the wooden floor to the cadence of soon-ah-will-be-done-ah-with-the-troubles-of-this-world. Now she sang aloud, sometimes even whistled or leaned a broom against a wall so she could dance a brief jig alone. He felt, at times like this, that she was unreachable, filled with a life force that undermined his tenuous hold on her, and he resented this.

Yet he loved her, in his way. Today, he watched her leaning into the rain and thought of Easter picnics when she had been a girl, cheerful and eager. He was moved with affection for and fear of that girl. Later, Jewell sat silent and unsmiling in a straw-bottomed chair, her dress draped primly over her wide-open knees, towel-drying her woolly hair before the open, pot-bellied stove. Her hands worked deftly and expertly in quick, jerky motions of the towel. He felt compelled to, and so he asked her:

“Do you have a lover?”

Her hands stopped in midmotion for a moment, then resumed their task as she eyed him from beneath the mass of wildly tangled hair. “Do you,” she asked, her knowing eyes reminding him of late-night returns to their bed bearing the scent of whiskey and strange women encountered in juke joints and bordellos; silent women, and never mentioned; strangers meeting needs he could not articulate to his wife. He looked away.

“I have many lovers,” she answered superfluously, still gazing at him with the knowledge of ages and he thought of the rain kissing her face, the wind running its fingers through her woolly hair; her toes embracing red mud and the look of rapture upon her face as she danced with or without the broom; and he wondered what other lovers his wife had found to replace what they had lost, the dying embers of a passion he had promised and failed, he knew, to deliver, in the face of her righteousness and domesticity and what he presumed to be her contempt toward him and his manifold shortcomings. She laughed, a pleasant, mocking laugh that made him smile with guilt and slink out the back door, her laughter following him into town and haunting him there, relentless and cruel.

HENDERSON, NORTH CAROLINA

APRIL, 1932

She amused him with colored folk mythology of men who could heal and women who could fly. He taught her to make liverwurst and call it pâté, feeding it to him on water biscuits from behind the rocking chair where he sat speaking passionately of the world war; interrupting his frequent discursions by passing glasses of champagne in front of his nose and spilling it playfully down his chest, his soft stomach. He laughed the first time it was blackberry wine that stained his white starched shirt; pâté and blackberry wine on her tongue as she hovered over him, one plump brown leg slung over each arm of his rocking chair. He began, over time, to feel a
merging
with her, even as he wondered when this fellowship would end, and she would leave him to return to her own mysterious world, the one she inhabited with family and friends beyond his Gothic door.

She would someday be lost to him, he knew. This kinship would not, could not last. He loved her profoundly and with desperation, fearful that each sun-filled day with his Sugar would be the last. Each Monday morning he waited anxiously in bed for her to arrive, climb the stairs, and wake him before she made breakfast. Often he caught her as she turned to leave the room, and held her ferociously, breathing deeply the aroma of coconut oil or Dixie Peach®, and holding it deeply, lovingly in his lungs, willing it to enter his veins and fill his heart so that she, some part of her, would always be there with him, even after she was gone. He wanted to
savor
her, preserve the taste of liverwurst and blackberry wine; feel forever the tremor of her voice as she sang spirituals in his ear until he slept, peaceful and content, only to awaken on Saturday morning and find her gone—to that other world that she inhabited and of which he could never be a part.

He asked her of her aspirations. He wanted to imagine in his dotage what she might be doing, and with whom. He wanted a glimpse of the future he felt certain he could not share; needed to know she would be happy and at peace with herself in some industry that gratified her, for he felt certain that this wonder of innocence and discernment was both capable and anointed. He felt certain, as he watched her listen to the moonlight or commune with the magpies, that indeed she would someday fly. It was only a matter of time.

“I think,” she told him cautiously and with an embarrassed smile as they lay on their backs in the yard, “I think that if I had my rathers, I would study the clouds.” She lowered her lashes and blushed profusely but rushed on. “I would study the clouds, and showers and hurricanes. I would study the mercy and anger of God.” She ventured a peek at him from the corners of her eyes. “I know that sounds silly.”

“But of course it doesn’t,” he told her gently. “There are people who do that, you know. They are called meteorologists.”

She grinned at him suspiciously and giggled. “No there ain’t.”

“Yes there are. Meteorologists.”

“Me-de-or-ol-o-gist.” She repeated the word twice, and tilted her head thoughtfully, meditatively to one side, her expression sober, then grim. “Well. I don’t reckon a colored girl like me—well. You know. They wouldn’t let me . . .” Her voice trailed off, and for a moment her eyes lost their usual gleam. His heart broke for her, and for the loss of human potential that she represented. “But it’s okay,” she finally said slowly and evenly, as if to comfort him, or to convince herself that indeed it was okay. “I’ll be a me-de-or-ol-o-gist in my heart.” She smiled brightly and stood, smoothing her skirt. “And I’ll start dinner,” she tossed over her shoulder as she started toward the house.

“You really don’t have to,” he reminded her, as he often did.

But she wanted to. She wanted to make him pot roast with turnips and candied carrots. She wanted to serve him iced tea and sundaes because he had taught her to love and forgive herself, and to appreciate her surroundings. She was not sure how, or what was the relationship between these two lessons, but he had done this: made her recognize her worth and see the beauty of the earth. She had needed him. She no longer did. She desired him the way one desires watermelon and fly swatters in summer. He made her existence
nicer.
She wished him happiness and comfort. She wished to give him these things, even at her own cost.

So when he began to make oblique references to the swelling of her ankles and the occasional morning dyspepsia that drove her to chew mint leaves and drink honeyed vinegar, she needed only to know that he wanted this, that it made him feel pleasure and pride. She knew without basis for this knowledge that this was the outcome of their doing, and she hoped that he would understand this too; but he never asked. As The Day approached he often propped her feet on his lap and leaned over her to massage her belly with olive oil. One night he found the scent of cloves beneath her belly, and paused to investigate this with his tongue.

But the baby came, that night and half the next morning, bringing with her gifts to her father that indebted him forever to her mother: a heightened anticipation of life; a decreased sense of his own mortality; and a shared purpose—their precious baby girl.

The sun did not shine that day, but hid behind a thick and barren cloud, upstaged, the new-again mother was sure, by the light of her new gift of love; for this child’s pale narrow face confirmed her mother’s knowledge that she had been conceived of love and not of duty. A veil of yellow downy hairs dusted the tiny precious crown. She called the child Amber because she had upstaged the sun. But he called her Clovey, his sweet clove, with a sprinkle of cinnamon embellishing her small round nose, and a sensuous nutmeg mouth so like her mother’s. He owed them both. He would never let them go.