Whoa! That’s a tellin’ one, this one with all them niggahs and white folks favorin’ one nother. We relatives, but cain’t tell nobody. All them fancy white women—they all cousins or aunts or some kin could be named for sure. The black one to the right in the muslin skirts, that’s my Ma, but she paid for them skirts what was given to her by the white man, yes, the one in the center with authority like he God, he reignin’ over the land. That’s the world of a plantation, Sweet Tamarind, where this was took. My chirren there, too. His chirren, but cain’t tell nobody (like you cain’t tell by lookin’). Anyway, Ma she paid for all them slips and the lace by her wrists with plenty strap marks down her back. Some so raw the cloth stuck to her flesh where it turned inside out from the lash and the weft of the cloth liked to growed into her like she was a new kinda crop they playin’ round with to see what’s more productive. Well, you can see lookin’ at her, lookin’ at me and my young ones, we was sure nough productive. Shame. Shame on a man who is Grandpa and Pa to his own kith n kin. Then goin’ to turn round an ignore em, like she wasn’t his daughter cause she was dark like indigo, like the night quiet ringin’ with sounds of water courtin’ the winds, tree limbs rockin’ niggahs to sleep or shakin’ em wake if they gotta gal to visit fore sun-up. Keep tellin’ myself ain’t no sin in bearin’ no child when there ain’t no choice. And the Good Lord know, I got respect for the living and the dead. Cain’t nobody come sayin’ my babies ain’t gotta right to live. Slave or free, they’s the bounty of God. That makes em worth lovin’ and lookin’ after, whether you, Julius Mayfield, ever come to realize you wasn’t the Almighty or not. My chirren deserved respect cause they alive. How could that be such a hard idea to get to? Even if we was jus’ a pack of hounds. Folks love they dogs. I love my daughters. My ma loved me when she could, fore that witch Master Mayfield callt a wife most beat her to death and left her in her good dress bleedin’ blue and no more a distraction to her than some dust on a table leg. Said she didn’t notice no bleedin’ negress nowhere. Couldn’t recall any colored woman missin’ that mornin’ neither.
That’s what threw my Pa, my lover, over the line, so he finally found some of himself in me and mine. That’s why I saved this here picture of everybody. Cause everybody didn’t last till the next harvest. That’s a sad thing to say. It’s a sad thing for me to remember, but it’s the truth. Buried my ma and took her place for the next white man with black cloth over his head and flashes like bits of God’s wrath come to capture our souls. Pa-lover said wasn’t true, was darkie legend that souls end up in these here pictures. But if that’s so, why am I cryin’ now?
Gotta go on ahead and find myself somethin’ else to do. Get tired visitin’ the way back times, I do. Yet I cain’t get to the nowadays less I go way back. Sides, I done enough for one woman in two or three lives of anybody. I guess I got me a right to set here and look at what I come from and what I beget to this world.
Now look at that stirrin’ young gal! That ain’t no show turkey vaudeville somebody. No. That ain’t nobody’s outside woman, either! That’s me in my calico matchin’ with my girls. Didn’t mean to look over em so at first, just I surprised myself, so good-lookin’ I forgot, anyway all three of those lil beauties is mine. Mayfields to the bone, I say. They all look so different I worry sometimes that a body might not put em all together as one. And that there hurts a woman’s feelin’s. I know. I seen folks peekin’ to check if they all favor Julius Mayfield or not, or even if they favor me! I swear for glory I take for a wonderment a child God’s done let out the heavens. Got no time to be creepin’ bout the Devil’s doorway, seein’ if he been up to mischief or not. Besides, a Mayfield’s a Mayfield however they turn out. Can spot em a mile away if you close to the right circle and got any idea of what blue-bloods is.
Look at how that rose from the sleeve of her dress bring out the red in Elma’s lips, look to be painted but they not. I got me a mind to get me a brush or an embroidery needle so I can show all the colors them dresses bring out in my daughters’ hair, they cheeks, even they eyes take on different kinds of lavender if they wearin’ rose at dusk. There’s always been more to my girls than black n white, else they faces wouldn’t look chiseled like a Ethiop one day and flat like a Cherokee the next. They changin’ constant, sorta how no one day come out jus’ like some other day, but more like one day slips into another with a slower rhythm or a brighter sound to it. I live some muffled days now, when I barely hear anybody even when I listen close. Then I got days I could hear a stranger’s dreams like they was my own. My girls are like that. One day Blanche the whitest niggah wench I ever set eyes on. Next day I find myself callin her “missie,” cause I ain’t sure if she French or Irish or whatever else kinda white done took to these parts. Now, Elma can look tawny, her eyes blue or purple dependin’ on the time of day. And Juliet is a deep bronze with a set of veins all different colors pulsin’, filled up with the spirit of her blood so she look like one of them twirlin’ mirrors at the travelin’ medicine show. But don’t none of that matter cause I getta swellin’ in my heart which is what the ol’ folks say is truly a African heart if I hear any one of my chirren a-callin’ for me. Ma, Mawmaw, Mama, I answer to everythin’. Girls gotta way of callin’ for they mother let you know if they happy, in trouble, in love, or foolin’ with the haints or a wish they done felt crawl from they toes to they mouth and out comes the call for me. Ma, Mawmaw, Mama, and off I go without even turnin’ my head round to see who might be about. Slave or free, my girls got the best of me. If somebody don’t like that they can whup me later, if they dare. And sometimes, one of them evil niggahs or a white trash beyond they station might very well go on ahead and do that very thing. All I got to say is nigh everythin’ close to God can be beat out a soul, but they cain’t whip the Ma outcha. I know that.
I’m just gonna sift through these here pictures a bit longer to see if anything jumps out at me. Jesus knows my body’s a vehicle for the Holy Ghost or any other kind of somethin’ we cain’t actually see but can get right up on ya and change your whole life. I never know what or when some creature from the other side gonna need me to get somewhere or tell somebody somethin’. That’s why I keep those bottles hangin’ round my porch, sometimes I want just a little warnin’ if a body from the other side or a African borned soul needs to speak through me. Hard on a body to be in this world and the next world, goin’ back n forth at a stone’s throw, like I ain’t got enough to do. Oh, I found me somethin’ to be right proud of. Wish time didn’t make sucha brittleness in my bones and these here pictures. Life ain’t like that, not really. Well, got fits and starts, but memories don’t break off at the edges, crack up the middle leavin’ scars where they weren’t none. Pictures sure nough do damage to a body’s recollections, even though I could see how sometimes they help me go back quicker to what’s no more, yet close as breath. So, I guess I’ma do my best to handle em more gentle. Cause this one right here got a big markin’ comin down Blanche’s face, like a knife been took to her. My chirren may have lived some full and dangerous lives, but that you cain’t tell by lookin’. Real seein’ is a art, but like everythin’ else you got to have a gift. This is Blanche with her beloved Roswell Sr. A woman dressed in lace that fine and coiffed just like somethin’ from a New Orleans magazine don’t have no knife scar down her face. Look at my Blanche! Did so well for herself! Though Roswell was a mite older than what I woulda picked, they’s benefits to taking up with a man what’s settled. Got everybody in Charleston respectin’ the ground he walks on. There is somethin’ could be said for that.
Oh my, cain’t hide from the gaze of a sorrow-filled child. It shouldn’t be but it is, my sweet Juliet with that Willie, Willie Chisolm to be exact. He didn’t mean her no harm in the beginning, but the Lord’s got a way of undoin’ deceit. I tried to tell my chile that, but she trusted in guile, not the truth. I know I couldn’ta laid up next to a man so all the time angry with me, hurt and wild with suspicions, while my lil one, Eudora, was there in the next room, nev
er imagining her presence was like a venom nobody took the time to stop from poisoning . . . Oh, Juliet, however could you believe gainst the truth so much, or want the lie to be the truth so much, you’d write “Eudora is Happiness” neath that child’s face. A Ma can set her eyes on only so much pain in her chirren, then comes time to do somethin’ else. Leave em in the Lord’s hands. Ask the ancestors for guidance. Tend to what I got cookin’ in the kitchen. That works most of the time for me. Fussin’ with my pots, turnin’ down the fires.
Betty cupped her hand and swept a fistful of soil from Julius’s grave into her purple satin pouch, tied it closed, and tucked it into her bosom. Then she slowly gathered up the pictures, inspecting them carefully to make sure nothing that didn’t belong in there was there and wrapping the album back up in the cloth. With head held high she gazed at the headstone of Julius Mayfield, for whom she still held both an indignant passion and mightily felt connection. Then off she sauntered toward the shouts of her granddaughter, whom she had left shouting in the first place. Betty shook her head, chuckling about how a body could shout about the same thing with the same words for so long when it didn’t bring an answer. Finally, Betty yelled back, “Heah I’ma comin’. Put your bonnet on. I’ma comin’ to ya now.”
“Good Gracious, Nana! Where on the earth have you been? Don’t you know we’ve got to get a move on or the ferry’ll go right on without us? All this packing I’ve done, all this planning up to this very minute, and off you go without so much as a how-de-do.” Eudora was vexed.
“Well, a body can’t just up and leave without some good-byes here and there. A couple of thanks for years of friendship and such.”
“Grandma, you didn’t have time to go so far as to find a soul. Next folks downstream are more than an hour away, but judging by how you lookin’ right now, maybe you did go crawlin’ through the marsh to say a fare-thee-well to somebody. Don’t know who. Don’t know who’d receive you in a mess of briars and weeds as a bustle. Less you got a beau back up in them woods who don’t know he’s free yet.”
“Young lady, mind your mouth first off. I got rights to go from hither to yon, if that’s my choosin’, and whatever kinda courtship I got goin’ on is more than the one you ain’t got goin’ on anywhere.”
Eudora smarted from her Nana’s words, but pride pulled the pout of her lips back to her teeth, let the red blush fade fast enough for her to regain her composure. “Now, see here, Grandma, we’ve no call to taunt one another today. Why don’t you make yourself presentable again. Then we’ll be off to Charleston.”
Betty pulled some of the red amaranth still tangled in her slips away from her comely but scarred legs. “I was lookin’ just fine, and I wasn’t tauntin’ you. I was simply speakin’ the truth. In the ol-timey days, a gal with your blessed health and keen smile’d be surrounded by young bucks hankering after a wife.”
Eudora was losing her patience. “Nana, the ol-timey days, as you see fit to call them, were slavery days. And those young men, bucks as you choose to call them, weren’t lookin’ for a wife. They were lookin’ for a good breeder. So they’d be more valuable to . . .”
“Julius Mayfield, that’s who.” Betty glanced at Eudora’s frantic attempts to create order, seeing only a mass of confusion. “Can’t bring yourself to say his name, I see. Well, huh, that surely tells me somethin’.”
“And what might that be?” Eudora’s anger was slipping out of her control. Her greatest desire at this moment was to pull her skin off and suck the Mayfield out of herself. Yet the best she could muster was to clamp her teeth like a hound on a niggah.
“You can’t get very far, can’t get nowhere, without takin’ all your self. From the way you soundin’ to me, looks like you plannin’ on leaving your grandpa out of who you are. You telling me you some creature made outta smoke and mirrors? You best check yourself again, gal. If all this talk proves anything, proves you a Mayfield.”
“Nana, please stop. They owned us. They owned us. That’s not a family. It’s . . . like harvestin’ niggahs ’steada rice or cotton. Don’t you see that, Grandma? We’re some by-product of nights when decent white women would have not a thing to do with the likes of Julius Mayfield.”
Before Eudora could get another word out, Betty grabbed a switch, took it to her granddaughter’s cheeks, hands, any visible flesh. Thinkin’ to finally break this girl of disrespect, living in a dream where folks was not folks just cause they allegedly belonged to somebody. Don’t a soul belong to nobody but God. Betty knew that. She just been visitin’ with her gods, her companions, the only family she knew about. The switch landed on Eudora more ferociously, but Eudora wouldn’t give up insultin’ her Nana. “Is this how he loved you, Nana, with the threat of the whip, a fist, being sent downriver? Am I here because you believed love and violence could sleep in the same bed?”
Betty raised the switch up once more. This time to teach this gal a lesson in respect, but somethin’ held her hand back. She almost believed she felt Julius grab her wrist to stop her, sayin’ Enough is enough, my dusky love. Everthin’ the chile says is not untrue. Betty dropped the switch. Her eyes sought out the darkest corners of the room, not Eudora’s eyes waitin’ for her Nana to hold her. Too much’d been said, more razor-thin scars set to swellin’ up. Betty’s anger was spent. Her body seemed to shrivel right in front of Eudora, who reached for her grandma. A gesture of reconciliation, but Betty’d have none of it.
“Don’t touch me, gal! I ain’t got the strength to carry your misery away from what I love. Get yourself lookin’ like somethin’. We can get on our way like you say, but you still takin’ yourself and all this land, whatever come with it is in you, you takin’ that to Charleston, too. All anybody’ll have to do is look at you sideways and know you a Mayfield. You don’t know you a loved one. You the only one don’t know.”
A diffident Eudora disappeared to tend to her wounds. Betty chuckled to herself. That chile don’t even know what a good beatin’ is.
Lijah-Lah handled his canoe like a woman’s body he knew well. The weight of the Mayfield ladies’ goods was a challenge, especially with Eudora all the time fidgeting this way and that, like her looking round would wind her in Charleston’s harbor any sooner than the way folks always go, no faster than the breeze, no slower than the tide allowed. Lijah-Lah knew his waters from the Ashley to the Cooper rivers. His knowledge was formidable. Was born under the light of a different God, folks said. Lijah-Lah came out his mammy praising the Infidel, but not the Devil. The Infidel made his mark on him and gave Lijah-Lah a firm hand on an oar, direction, and a quiet confidence that too many times nearly undid a white wanting to go someplace. Somehow Lijah-Lah could only understand where the whites wanted to go. After that he didn’t respond to anything they went on about. Went back into his mother’s spirit, they whispered, where the tongue of the Infidel had never been silenced, brought to praise the name of the Lord Jesus, Almighty, son of God and Savior of us all. No, Lijah-Lah was one of the last to know the other Holy Book. The one he read five times a day, prayed on and beseeched the souls of his ancestors to show him the true way. Lijah-Lah was, therefore, a man prone to long periods of introspection and meditations; the less he opened his mouth, the longer he would live to find his fate. There were only a few of his kind left, who didn’t eat crab or pig’s meat, who shied away from the jamborees likely to seduce every other river soul. Eudora found him peculiar, but Betty’d ride with no one else. Betty’s reasoning was questionable, but consistent. “I like being in the company of those whose God protects em. Long as the oars in Lijah-Lah’s hands I’ma get wherever I’m fixin’ to be goin’.”
Somehow, Eudora became the one who didn’t speak or listen, least not to Betty and Lijah-Lah. Today, of all days, Eudora was full of voices in her head, smells of the marsh, the blackness of the water. If she could help it, she’d never come back here again so long as she lived. No matter the mystery of the whiteness of the lily pod, or was it truly white with its honey-colored center where
its sweetness lay, in the sepia sway of the creek, rippled with shadows of ancient cypress, the surprise of silver moons winding toward the sun. Eudora felt herself part of all this, and that caused the auburn hair on her arms to stand on end. She was only from these islands, not of these patches of sand begging the salt marsh, rivulets, the rills, to let them join.
“Hey now! Hey!” swept through the air like the dance of dragonflies. Mama Sue-Sue ’long with all her kin were waving Betty and Lijah-Lah toward them. Eudora snapped, “Ignore them, just keep rowing.”
“What you want I do, Mah Bette?” Lijah-Lah erased Eudora.
“I say we say good-bye to our neighbor folk, that’s what I say.” Betty almost got the canoe tipsy with her excitement.
“Mah Bette, please, let me get us there,” replied Lijah-Lah. Betty had nothing to say to that. Her eyes, old as they were, wandered the glistening blue of Lijah-Lah’s veins pulling the oars. Betty was enough of a woman to imagine Lijah-Lah pulling her toward him through the night, through sweat and weeping that blessed women are familiar with. Shaking her head, getting Lijah-Lah out of her bones, left Betty with nothing to concentrate on but Eudora, pouting so she competed with the Spanish moss, lips ’most dangling from her face.
“What on earth is on your mind, chile? We all set here to do what you got your heart set on and look at you. You look meaner than dirt.”
“That’s exactly what I’m talkin’ bout, Nana. How’re we going to have a new start if we carry all this back here with us? We don’t have time to visit every soul you know on these islands if we want to get to Charleston at a decent hour. Brother Diggs and Blanche should be happy to see us, not come draggin’ from their beds to greet their vagabond relatives.”