“I don’t pretend to understand the ways of those people.”
I take another sip of tea; everybody else is having more than that, strawberry water with cane sugar and whiskey, and you’ll see the effects come an hour. The quietest men will swoop taken women off their feet; the softest women will raise their voices in their sisters’ faces, and I wonder all of a sudden about Jericho; he is with the children dancing to old Sally Walker, almost indistinct from the others, but I can see his eyes. Behind them, he is elsewhere.
My own child and his new wife are greeting people, making their rounds.
“They make quite the pair,” Link says.
“Who?” I ask.
“Who you think? The bride and groom. And she couldn’t look any prettier.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“Happy too. That’s the thing. Sometimes you see these people jump the broom and they can barely look each other in the eye. They just doing it cause they got a child need minding or mama who thinks it’s time to take up the family way. But not them. Seem like this was an idea all their own.”
“All their own indeed,” I say, and we laugh the way people laugh when either one of them could have spoken, their minds are so connected. It is a hearty laugh, from deep down somewhere, but it is light too because she knew the joke already.
They do look happy. It is hard to watch them period, but especially without Isaiah beside me. Most days I can pretend he is out on the farm; he spent most of his waking hours there and I didn’t begrudge him that. Those early years were the cotton ones. Working on the halves, Isaiah would fill a sack with fiber he pulled from the dried bolls, then carry the sack to the wagon, weigh it, dump it out clean, and some days he’d report picking over five hundred pounds. It didn’t matter though, not when it was time to settle up, and Mr. Dennis’s mouth would run in circles about the cost of seeds, tools, jackets, fertilizer; my husband couldn’t write enough to record, and even if he could, no white man would have read it; more times than not, we’d come out with fifty cents for the month. “This little bitty money,” he’d toss it at the table, but I’d stretch it, baby. I’d sell eggs and mend seams, and he’d fix clocks and guns, and we’d stretch it, and inside our house, we didn’t talk about Mr. Dennis. We didn’t think about him either. Because of that it is the nights that are merciless, the nights and occasions like these—
“You any keener on her?” Link asks.
I look at Link. We came here together after the war. Different plantations, but both motherless, we’d walk the turn row to town together. People say I have started to favor her, or her me, not just in the way we laugh with our heads back and our shoulders shaking, or because we say in our scratched-up voices all right instead of hello when someone greets us. No, our noses have plumped, our eyes have narrowed, the skin on our necks is slack, and more than once I’ve had to inform a young person we weren’t born sisters. I say that to say it is not possible to lie to her.
I shake my head.
“Time has a way of working that stuff out. And babies.”
“Lord willing,” I say. Though a part of me is afraid of their new family, on behalf of Jericho, sure, but also for me. I hadn’t foreseen living so long. Most people I talk to are half my age; Link got the sugar and lost three toes on her left foot, my son and his bride haven’t made it to my table yet, and though the pig was masterful, I have a taste in the back of my tongue like soot. When they finally reach me, it feels like the only way to purge that metallic flavor is to speak.
Before I can even say Congratulations, I start.
“Eliza, can I take you aside for a moment?”
She follows me to a part of the yard where the music isn’t swallowing our words whole.
“It was a beautiful ceremony,” she says. “And the food, I haven’t tried it, but everybody is complimenting us. I told them it was all—”
“Jericho James has just as much a right to Major as you do,” I cut in. “He’s his son.”
“I know that,” she talks in that squeak she uses and for the first time I want to lay her across my knee the way I would my own daughters. They aren’t with me—one followed her husband north and the other one followed hope in the same direction, but I’d take my own hand to them both if they hadn’t learned by now that there are times when it’s safe to let your voice ring out in this world.
My words are stuck in my throat. I didn’t expect her to mold to my touch.
“Well, if you know that, then you know he’s gotta start sleeping there like it’s his home. It was improper at first; boy needed a mama after his own run off, and I had to see to his meals, teach him how to use the bathroom, clean after himself, but now he’s older and I’m not going to be here forever.”
“I know that.”
“Oh. You know that, huh? Well, see to it that he sleeps with you beginning tonight then. First night will set the tone for the rest of your marriage. He’ll think of you a certain way if you let him know at the jump he’s one of you.”
“He is. Me letting him know that won’t be an act or a show, just the truth. Listen, Miss Josephine, I made a vow up there in front of that preacher and all of you to wed myself with Major, and I didn’t just mean Major, I meant Jericho James, and you.”
“Well, good then.” I nod. It wasn’t too often I caught myself speechless. I credit it to the fact that the girl knows her letters, not makeshift from the slave master’s daughter who wasn’t but nine years old herself, but from an actual teacher, who had been trained by a white woman. I was proud of that when Major first told me, but the more time went on it began to unsteady me. I had thought of the world a certain way, but a different picture of it had been painted and there were countries I hadn’t even known existed.
“All right then,” I repeat. “It was a mighty fine ceremony.” And I walk off adjusting my hat. I slip on the way back to my seat and more than a few young men reach for my arm, but I steady myself; even if they hadn’t been there, I would have been all right.
ON OUR WAY HOME, WE GLIMPSE THE NEW WHITE NEIGHBORS out front. They don’t live but a rock’s throw from me, the only property in my line of sight that I don’t own. The small farm used to be the overseer’s, and I can’t glance at it without wanting to spit. Now these new people grow a few crops: corn, and I’ve noticed them picking peas and bedding sweet potatoes. They moved in a few months back, just finished closing in their chickens with hog wire, but I haven’t ventured to say five words to them. Today, despite my misgivings, I feel like nothing can touch me.
“All right,” I nod, and tip my hat. A young couple, no kids yet. The man has always been the one to speak; I catch him some mornings selling fish from an ice chest. The girl just drags behind him like a dog enduring a bad foot. As we talk, guests from the wedding ride by on the winding gravel. Oaks flank the lane, which is just wide enough for one mule at a time. I know the full names of everybody who passes. They wave at me, then shoot one quick glance at the neighbors and speed off.
“We didn’t want to interrupt. We heard the noise out front. Sounds like you had a party.” This from the man of course.
“My son got married.”
“Married, huh? Well, congratulations. Who’s the lucky girl?”
I nod behind me though I know they can’t see that far back. “Gal in the white.”
“Well, I’ll be. We didn’t formally meet, but my name is Vern; this is my wife, Charlotte.”
“How do you do?”
They reach their hands out, but I know better than to take them. Most of their kind live closer to town and for that very reason, we try to stay put. Link’s nephew is the one to stuff mattresses and weave baskets;