The Black Rose (6 page)

“The baby … Ain’t even quite seven years old …” Mama whispered, then she began to speak so quickly that Sarah almost couldn’t keep up with her words. “Seem like you was talkin’ ’bout as soon as the midwife slap you to life… . You could ’member all them words an’ numbers … ’an you could make Owen laugh, chile… . You brighten that man life so … yes, you did … time you took that stick in yo’ hand, wavin’ it an talkin’ … you ’member? You was so little… .”

Sarah listened as hard as she could, but she was afraid Mama’s mind was going to sleep again. She didn’t understand what she was talking about. Then, just that quickly, Mama seemed to be praying. Her eyes drifted away.

“Lord, I promised I’d learn to read all them words in yo’ Good Book … or one of these chillen would read it to me … an’ I thought it’d be Sarah, ’cause seem like she could do it … an’ me an’ Owen talked an’ said we’d take her out the field … put her in one of them freedmen schools … but we needed her back ’fore long. Lord, we ain’t have the chance. Fo’give us, Lord… .” Mama’s eyes snapped back to Sarah’s, seeing her. “Sarah … you hear me?”

“Yes’m,” Sarah said.

“When Lou bring that Bible-book … you keep it, hear? That’s the Lord’s book. All them words in there … I want you to read ’em. I want you to read His word… .”

Sarah didn’t know anybody who could read, except for white folks, or maybe Mama Nadine and her son with the Creole name. She’d learned the letters in her name when Mama and Papa let her go to the school in the woods when she was little, but that was all. She’d stayed in school for only three months, then she’d stopped because Mama needed her help. Sarah had flipped through the pages of Mama’s Bible many times before, but the tiny symbols on the pages were a mystery. “Mama, how I’ma … ?”

“Shhhh,” Mama hushed her. “You go to school. Tell Alex and Lou I say you goin’ to school, hear? They gon’ take you out them fields … an’ you gon’ learn to read all them words. Jus’ like I promise God … Jus’ like I promise … You hear me, Sarah?”

“Yes’m,” Sarah said. “I’ma read all them words.”

“An’ then you come read ’em to me. You come back, hear? Come see me.”

Come see her? What did Mama mean by that? Was Mama sending her away? Even though Sarah suspected Mama was speaking foolishness again, she felt flames licking inside her throat. Her eyes burned, too.

“The par’ble of the seed and sower, like Preacher say …” Mama said, her whisper more faint. “One seed. Owen say seem like you the seed, Sarah, an’ I knowed it, too. I always knowed it, chile.”

Then Mama closed her eyes, breathing fast. She let go of Sarah and clutched at the briers around her neck, trying to pull them away.

“Don’t do that, Mama,” Sarah said, taking Mama’s hands gently. “Missy Laura say that gon’ make you well. An’ you gots to drink this tea now, jus’ like Mama Nadine say.”

But Mama had gone to sleep. Sarah watched the rising and falling of her mother’s chest, terrified it would stop like the sick goat they had when Sarah was little. When the goat’s stomach stopped moving up and down, Papa had stooped over and said,
He dead, Sarah
, even though Sarah had been staring straight into the goat’s wide-open eyes and was sure he would jump back to his feet at any moment. But he hadn’t. That was how Sarah learned what
dead
meant.

Up and down. Sarah sat at her mother’s side, watching her breathing, listening to the menacing gurgling sound from deep in her chest. Up and down. Was Mama Nadine praying for Mama and Papa right now in her brick house, kneeling in front of her candles? Sarah hoped so. Even after Louvenia came and quietly slipped the black Bible-book in the crook of Mama’s arm, Sarah was afraid to let her mama out of her sight.

Mama was still breathing when Mama Nadine came to their cabin with the morning light. But Mama was in a deep sleep, and she wouldn’t wake up even when Alex shook her hard and Mama Nadine said her name so loudly that her shrill voice rang from end to end of the cabin. Mama Nadine sighed and said she was very disappointed Mama hadn’t drunk the tea, then she lit four candles, two at Mama’s head and two at Mama’s feet. With her eyes closed and her face vacant, she began to chant words Sarah didn’t know.

Papa woke up then. Much to Sarah’s surprise, he brought himself to his feet and walked very slowly out of the front door without saying a word to anyone. He wobbled when he walked, but he never lost his balance. Sarah followed him, and she found him sitting on the porch in his rocking chair, fumbling to light his pipe. His hand was shaking so much he nearly dropped the match. The brier necklace from Missy Laura still hung from his bare neck.

“You well now, Papa?” Sarah asked, relieved despite her worry for Mama.

He shook his head slowly back and forth, finally reaching the pipewith his match. The tobacco in the pipe lit up in red, and smoke floated from Papa’s nose. “Crazy woman makin’ all that noise …” he muttered. “Cain’t sleep.”

“Mama Nadine ain’t crazy. She makin’ Mama well!” Sarah said.

“No, she ain’t,” Papa said flatly, his voice full of knowing, and Sarah felt like he’d just hit her in the stomach as hard as he could. “She sho’ ain’t.”

Sarah walked around to stare at Papa’s face then, to see if he was awake-Papa or asleep-Papa. His eyes were dark red, and his face was angrier than Sarah had ever seen. He’d lost weight since he’d been sick, because she could see his sharp cheekbones above his beard. He was slumped so low in his chair that he looked like he might slip out of it and crumple to the floor.

“I ain’t gon’ let it …” Papa said, muttering again.

“What, Papa? You ain’t gon’ let what?”

He nodded curtly, taking another draw on his pipe. He coughed this time, but he stubbornly kept the pipe in his mouth. “I ain’t gon’ let it take me,” Papa finished finally, although he was looking out toward the fields instead of at Sarah. “Not like this. No, suh.”

Let what take you?
Sarah was going to ask him, but stopped cold because she realized she knew perfectly well: Yellow Jack.

Owen Breedlove sat on his front porch all through the day, and even after it got dark, when Alex and Louvenia came out crying, telling him their mama’s breathing had stopped. He wouldn’t come inside to look at his wife’s body, even though he’d jumped the broom with Minerva Breedlove nearly twenty years ago, he’d cried in her arms without shame when he heard the news that no man owned him but
himself
, and he’d never touched another woman in his life.

And he didn’t return his youngest daughter’s hug when she stumbled outside, climbed wailing onto his lap, and wrapped her arms around him so tightly he had to strain to breathe. As if she thought she could pull him away from Yellow Jack’s hands all by herself.

Chapter Three

Every night before she went to sleep, Sarah tried to strike a new pact with Jesus. Sooner or later, she was convinced, she would find the right way to make him happy. If she gathered firewood. If she swept up both the floor inside the cabin and the front porch. If she churned butter in Mama’s churn, even though it was such terribly hard work that it made her arms ache for days. If she pulled weeds for six hours straight, maybe even seven, without resting for food, water, or play. If she prayed for a full hour until she went to sleep. If she washed clothes all day Saturday and again on Sunday. If she tried very hard not to get cross with Louvenia, even if her sister cuffed her or cursed her first, or if Louvenia refused to get out of bed the whole day. If she said a blessing every time she ate even a bite.

One day, she knew, Jesus would be happy with her. One morning she would wake up from the bad dream he was giving her and Mama and Papa would be back.

In fact, every morning she lay very still before opening her eyes and reminded Jesus of all the things she had done to please him. How she hadn’t eaten the taffy Missus Anna gave her so many weeks ago because she was waiting for Mama and Papa to come back. How she had not used His name in vain. How she had not mussed her clothes or stepped on any ants or clapped her hands to take the life of a single mosquito. Clutching Mama’s Bible-book tightly to her chest, Sarah would whisper, “Please, Jesus? Please? Ain’t I done good?”

Then she would wait, listening for sounds that would tell her if her wish had come true. Many mornings, in fact, she was
sure
she heard the sounds: Mama’s feet whispering across the floor near the cookstove, or Papa’s whistling breathing while he slept and then a grunt as he rolled over on his side. Those mornings, she would wait as long as she could, her heart thumping against her naked breast, holding her breath and wishing so hard that her forehead pulled tightly across her skull. Then she would sit up and open her eyes to see if it was real this time, or simply in her head like so many mornings before.
Chile, yo’ head sho’ tells some stories. Seem like you
anywhere but in dis room
, Mama used to say.

Or was she saying it right now? Was she
really
hearing Mama’s voice this time?

Sarah felt a stinging kick to the soft of her hip. When she opened her eyes, Louvenia was standing over her, not Mama. Louvenia’s plaits were wild in the air because she hadn’t combed them out in so long. There was a crust on her face, running from her right eye all the way to her nose. And her dress was filthy; she hadn’t washed it, or herself, in as long as Sarah could remember. Louvenia was making no efforts to please Jesus at all, Sarah thought.

As if she’d heard her thinking the words, Louvenia suddenly swooped down with her arm and snatched the Bible-book from Sarah’s hands. “Hush all that prayin’! They ain’t comin’ back,” Louvenia said. She rarely spoke now, but when she did, her voice always startled Sarah because it sounded so much older. “This book ain’t gon’ help you, neither.”

Sarah sat up, but she didn’t grab at the book out of anger even though she wanted to so badly that her muscles twitched. Jesus might see, and that would ruin a whole day’s promises. “Give it back, Lou,” she said as calmly as she could.

Instead of answering, Louvenia whirled around and broke into a run. She forgot all about Jesus and promises and goodness as she watched her sister running off with Mama’s book.
“Give it back!”
she shrieked, and this time it was her own voice that startled her, so loud and big that she was sure she would wake people for miles. “Gimme M-Mama’s book!”

But neither running nor screaming helped, because Louvenia was fleeing from her so fast that she seemed to be flying, even when she stumbled and nearly lost her balance. Sarah heard her sister sobbing, and she sobbed, too, realizing she couldn’t catch her no matter how fast she ran. Louvenia was growing smaller and smaller as she ran ahead, disappearing in the shadows of trees. Finally Sarah fell and tumbled to the ground, scraping her knee against a rock until it bled, and she could only watch her sister’s retreating form as she ran along the creek, her dress flying behind her. Louvenia had gone crazy, Alex had said. Maybe he was right.

Sobbing so hard she could barely breathe, Sarah made her way back to the cabin, where it seemed like Mama and Papa should be waiting. She surveyed the things that belonged to her parents: Papa’s rocker on the porch, Mama’s churn and rusty washtubs out front, Papa’s plows leaning against the side of the cabin. Not even realizing why she was doing it, Sarah crawled behind the wagon wheel leaning against the house, smelling the sweet, dry earth, and felt around for Papa’s jug. Wasn’t it still here? She couldn’t see anything but dried-out corncobs, stones, a big ham bone, and a bent spoon. No jug. Papa must have moved it. But where?

“Papa!”
Sarah screamed, momentarily daring to believe that if goodness and promises didn’t work, then maybe Jesus would send her parents back when He saw how angry she was.

But there was no answer except the hound’s far-off barking. Papa’s hound had run off after they didn’t have anything left to feed him. He was half wild anyway, Alex had said, but Sarah found herself wishing the dog would come loping up to her now to lick her face. No one came; not Papa, not Mama, not the hound.

Sarah’s chest heaved and her entire frame shivered with sobs. She climbed up the porch to go inside the cabin, which was so empty it felt profane. Her eyes roved quickly around the room, looking for …
something
. Mr. Long had hired some Negro men to come burn the bodies up, and they’d taken Mama’s and Papa’s clothes to burn, too. They had to burn out the fever, they said, or else someone else could catch it. Nothing was left but shrunken bodies charred beyond recognition, which Alex had dug a hole for and buried. Then Missy Laura and the other croppers had come out, lit a fire near the buried bodies, and sung sad songs all night. But it wasn’t the same. Sarah had seen funerals before, and a burned body wasn’t the same as watching someone put at peace under the ground. A burned body meant they were just … gone.

Her parents
wer
e gone, Sarah realized as she stood in the middle of the empty cabin. Jesus wasn’t going to send them back, no matter what she promised or how hard she worked. And Alex was gone, too, over to Vicksburg because he said they couldn’t make enough wages cropping without Mama and Papa. Mama would have been very worried about Alex over in Vicksburg, what with all the foolishness she said was going on. But he’d left anyway, and he’d visited only once so far, on Sunday, bringing them fifty cents, and he’d left at dawn on Monday morning, like he’d never been back. Sarah gasped for air as her sobs pummeled her insides.

Then something on the shelf above the cookstove caught Sarah’s eye: Behind Mama’s near-empty jars of flour and meal and rice, there was a picture she’d seen Mama admiring before. Feeling a tiny sense of relief from her sobs, Sarah dragged a chair to the shelf, stood up on it, and reached for the photograph as carefully as she could, so she wouldn’t tip over.

It was Papa. He was younger than Sarah had seen him look before, maybe in his twenties, and he didn’t have his beard, but Sarah could tell it was him from his eyes, which were twinkling with life even though his face had no smile. Ole Marse Long had let Papa pose for that photograph before the war, when his whole family sat for portraits, and Mama had been busy washing clothes that day. Mama had said many times she wished she had a picture of her face, too. She said she had nearly forgotten what her own mammy and pappy looked like, and she wanted to leave something for her children to remember her by.