The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers

Genres: African American Women's Fiction; Cultural Heritage; Literary Fiction; Authors of color; Book Club Picks

Synopsis

An instant New York Times, Washington Post and USA Today Bestseller • AN OPRAH BOOK CLUB SELECTION • ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2021 • WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR FICTION

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: New York Times • Time • Washington Post • Oprah Daily • People • Boston Globe • BookPage • Booklist • Kirkus • Atlanta Journal-Constitution • Chicago Public Library

Finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel • Longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction • Finalist for the Kirkus Prize for Fiction • Nominee for the NAACP Image Award

"Epic. . . . I was just enraptured by the lineage and the story of this modern African-American family. . . . I’ve never read anything quite like it. It just consumed me." —Oprah Winfrey

The NAACP Image Award-winning poet makes her fiction debut with this magisterial epic—an intimate yet sweeping novel with all the luminescence and force of Homegoing; Sing, Unburied, Sing; and The Water Dancer—that chronicles the journey of one American family, from the centuries of the colonial slave trade through the Civil War to our own tumultuous era. 

The great scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, once wrote about the Problem of race in America, and what he called “Double Consciousness,” a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Bois’s words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans—the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and tenant farmers—Ailey carries Du Bois’s Problem on her shoulders.

Ailey is reared in the north in the City but spends summers in the small Georgia town of Chicasetta, where her mother’s family has lived since their ancestors arrived from Africa in bondage. From an early age, Ailey fights a battle for belonging that’s made all the more difficult by a hovering trauma, as well as the whispers of women—her mother, Belle, her sister, Lydia, and a maternal line reaching back two centuries—that urge Ailey to succeed in their stead.

To come to terms with her own identity, Ailey embarks on a journey through her family’s past, uncovering the shocking tales of generations of ancestors—Indigenous, Black, and white—in the deep South. In doing so Ailey must learn to embrace her full heritage, a legacy of oppression and resistance, bondage and independence, cruelty and resilience that is the story—and the song—of America itself.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Release date: July 27, 2021

Publisher: Harper

Print pages: 464

Sample

We are the earth, the land. The tongue that speaks and trips on the names of the dead as it dares to tell these stories of a woman’s line. Her people and her dirt, her trees, her water.

We knew this woman before she became a woman. We knew her before she was born: we sang to her in her mother’s womb. We sang then and we sing now.

We called this woman back through the years to our early place, to our bright shoots rising with the seasons. We know her mingled people. How they started off as sacred, hummed verses. And now, we go back through the centuries to the beginning of her line, to a village called The-Place-in-the-Middle-of-the-Tall-Trees. And we start with a boy, the child who will change everything on our land.

Wait.

We know you have questions, such as, if we tell the story of a woman’s line, why would we begin with a boy? And to your wonder we counter we could have begun with a bird’s call or with a stalk of corn. With a cone from a tree or a tendril of green. All these things lead back to this woman’s line, whether we mention them or not. Yet since our story does not follow a straight path—we travel to places here and across the water—we must keep to the guidance of time. To the one who first walked past a tall, grass-covered mound in a particular place in the woods—and we have questions as well, for, despite our authority, we cannot know everything.

And so we ask if a child cannot remember his mother’s face, does he still taste her milk? Does he remember the waters inside her? Can you answer those questions? No, and neither can we. Yet, we remind you that many children commence within women, and thus, this is why it is completely fine that we begin with a boy.

And so we proceed.

The Boy Named Micco

The boy lived on our land. Here, in a Creek village that was between the wider lands straddling the rivers of the Okmulgee and Ogeechee, near the Oconee River, which crawled through the middle. Though Micco had playmates among the children of his village, he was an unhappy little boy, for he felt the tugging of three sets of hands. Whenever this tugging began, he felt confused and miserable.

There were the hands of his father, a Scottish deer skin trader named Dylan Cornell. There were the hands of his mother, Nila, a Creek woman who belonged to a clan of the highest status in their village, the Wind clan. The little boy’s parents were yet alive, but the hands that pulled at him the strongest were of a man who probably was dead, though no one knew for sure. They were the hands of his mother’s father, a man who appeared one day in the village.

This was in the years after 1733 and the arrival of James Oglethorpe and his ship of petty English criminals, what he called his “worthy poor.” They were those who had been sentenced to death or hard labor for the stealing of an apple or a loaf of bread or some other trifling thing.

When Oglethorpe came to our land, he thought he found a comrade in Tomochichi, the leader of the Yamacraw people, another tribe of our land.

Yet Oglethorpe had not made a friend. Tomochichi had not made a friend, either. He’d only encountered a pragmatic white man determined to set anchor and build a colony for his English king. Tomochichi had seen white men before, so he was interested in trade, which was a long-standing commerce. There had been Englishmen moving along the paths, going north and south and east and west, for more than a hundred years. Though Tomochichi was a wise leader and probably smelled greed on Oglethorpe, he had no idea of what would follow: sin.

For the original transgression of this land was not slavery. It was greed, and it could not be contained. More white men would come and begin to covet. And they would drag along the Africans they had enslaved. The white men would sow their misery among those who shook their chains. These white men would whip and work and demean these Africans. They would sell their children and split up families. And these white men brought by Oglethorpe, these men who had been oppressed in their own land by their own king, forgot the misery that they had left behind, the poverty, the uncertainty. And they resurrected this misery and passed it on to the Africans.

And now we reach back even further.

The Grandfather of the Boy

The young man who would become the grandfather of Micco was perhaps eighteen or nineteen when he appeared next to the tall mound that marked the entrance of The-Place-in-the-Middle-of-the-Tall-Trees.

The young man was barefoot, and his soles were thickened and rough. His gray-colored shirt and pants were wrinkled, and even to those who were standing far away his garments gave off the smell of mildew—which made sense, because when someone asked him in English how he had arrived at their village he only told them that he had been walking when he’d arrived at a river. Then he’d found that he was hungry, so he had tried to seize a catfish at the edge of the water but had fallen into the river. He talked with his hands, making wide gestures and animated facial expressions—even more so when he described falling into the river—and the villagers laughed. Yet he did not want to offend. He laughed along with them.

“Where do you come from?” an elder of the village asked.

“Over there.” The young man pointed vaguely. He smiled some more, and when the elder asked another question—where was he headed—the young man said he meant to go south.

“Truly?” The elder looked back wisely at the rest of his cohort, and the other men held this elder’s gaze.

Then there was more talking and more asking. But when the young man told them a very small man the size of a child had pulled him from the river and led him through the woods to the mound at the edge of the village, then the small man suddenly had disappeared, the elder gave his cohort a new, surprised look. Now this? This was a different matter altogether. And so the elder and his cohort clustered, whispering in their own language while the young man smiled and nodded as if he understood the snatches of words that he was hearing. He did not understand at all. The elders were whispering about what the young man meant when he had said that he was headed “south.”

They did this because the young man who had found his way to the village was a Negro.

Thus, the elders assumed he was headed to the lands that the Spanish called “Florida,” and that the young man was looking for certain Seminoles. The people who lived in The-Place-in-the-Middle-of-the-Tall-Trees knew much about the Seminoles, because the Seminoles had once been a part of the Creek people before they had broken off to form their own nation. And the Seminoles gave sanctuary to Negroes, taking them into their villages. They mated with Negroes, too.

And so if this young man with mildew-smelling clothes was seeking the Seminoles, that meant that he was not free.

Though slavery wasn’t legal yet in the territory Oglethorpe had settled—that would come years later—there were ways that the English or Scottish got around the law. And one of those finagling men owned this young Negro, which meant that somebody might come looking for him and that somebody might try to cause some trouble. Ordinarily that would mean the people in The-Place-in-the-Middle-of-the-Tall-Trees should take hold of the young man, carry him back east, over the Oconee River, and collect a reward from the English or Scottish person who owned him. Yet the young man had mentioned that a very small man had pulled him out of the river. Could this mean the young man had encountered one of the “little people”? These were supernatural beings and when they chose to show themselves it was a serious matter indeed. The small man would not be happy if this chosen young man was betrayed.

While the male elders talked, they tried to ignore the nudging and giggling from the women of the village. The women were looking the young man over: Though he was not tall, he was inordinately handsome. His forehead was high, and later, the people would discover that was a natural characteristic—he did not pluck around his hairline, as some men in the village did. The young man’s kinky hair stood at some length. His dark-dark skin was smooth. His muscles were well formed. His teeth were white as sweet corn, and when he smiled, there was a warmth to his entire face.

As the older women watched the young man, they reminisced about the days when they still visited the moon house during their bleeding times, when their breasts were high and their bellies did not carry pouches of fat. And the younger women who still saw the moon fantasized about rolling on top of the young man and riding him fast, like a warrior chasing battle.

The male elders came out of their huddle, and their leader asked the young man what was his name?

“My name be Coromantee,” he said.

Yet we can tell you, the young man was lying; this was not his real name.

And we can tell you that, though he had been born here on our land, his mother had been born across the water. She had been pushed out of her mother in a place in Africa called “Gold Coast” by the English, who had been traders in slaves and riches and goods for many years. The white men had invented an aberration and called the African people of the Gold Coast “Coromantee.” In the future, no one would know where this term had come from, or why the white men had invented it, only that, as white men are fond of doing, they decided that whatever moniker they gave those that they encountered was right. And so when the white men traded with the residents of the Gold Coast: Coromantee. When the white men took the Gold Coast women for temporary wives: Coromantee. When they herded these people into the dungeons of the slave castles along that coast: Coromantee.

We can tell you the origin story of this young man’s grandparents, and the origins of their parents, until we reached the very beginning of what you know as time. We can tell you the lives of gods—but truly, don’t you want to return to this charming young man with the beautiful, dark-dark skin?

He stayed more than mere days in the village, for each time the young man declared his intention to go south the elders urged him to stay. They did not want him to leave. When Scottish deer traders came through the area, their arrival was never a surprise, and by the time these traders rode their horses into the village, the villagers had hidden the young man they had begun to cherish. Eventually, he was so loved and admired that he was adopted by a Creek family who was of the Panther clan.

Thus, the young man’s name became “Coromantee-Panther.”

From an uncle in his adopted family, he learned manhood skills, as is the Creek way. He learned how to use poison on the water or a net to catch smaller fish and how to catch the bigger ones by grabbing into their mouths. He should ignore the pain of their bites. And Coromantee-Panther told his new uncle he was grateful for these skills, for he had not been allowed to learn how to feed himself in the place from which he had escaped. That is all he would say, and because Coromantee-Panther seemed sadly pensive whenever he mentioned the time before he came to the village, the uncle did not ask him to elaborate.

Coromantee-Panther showed himself to be courageous. Once while hunting a bear attacked his uncle, who would later say a red-colored spirit—a spirit the color of war—entered his nephew, giving him strength. Right when the bear jumped on the uncle, Coromantee-Panther leapt on the animal’s back, slit its throat, and pushed the bear off the uncle before he suffocated from the weight.

“That was risky, eh?” The uncle spat out red phlegm and laughed along with his adopted nephew. When they brought the dead bear to the village, the family feasted on its roasted ribs as the uncle told of the courage of Coromantee-Panther. The tale would be repeated for many years among the people. Coromantee-Panther did not have a chance to prove himself in battle, however, for the village in which he lived was called a “white” town because it was committed to peace. There were other villages throughout the Creek confederation who believed in war, and they were called “red” villages. The young men of these villages would shed blood without thought. Yet Coromantee-Panther was a hunter who brought more than enough meat to his adopted family regularly, proving himself capable of supporting a wife. There were many young women who wanted to marry him, too, though they knew he’d probably been a slave and he continually repeated his intention to leave the village and go south.

In times to come there would be other Negroes who made their reputations, men who contained warriors’ spirits. Who would marry Creek women who birthed strong children and some of those children would prove themselves, men like Ninnywageechee and Black Factor, men with dark-dark skin and bushy hair, who rode hard without fear and spilled much blood in honorable ways.

The eventual wife of Coromantee-Panther was a young woman of the highest rank, from the Wind clan. She had strong ankles, lean calves, and a beguiling space between her top front teeth. Perhaps she was beautiful, though all young women are beautiful in their ways, and this is not that kind of story. Like all offspring she had a name, given by her mother, but we shall call her “Woman-of-the-Wind.”

She caught the eye of Coromantee-Panther by indirection, because she did not place herself in front of him to win notice. Rather, her absence reckoned with his interest and he began to look for her. To watch her cutting meat into strips for drying. Other young women came to Woman-of-the-Wind to tell her that Coromantee-Panther had asked for her. She would look up from pounding dried corn to see him smiling at her. She was self-conscious about the space between her two front teeth; also, she considered too much humor to be a sign of foolishness, but she couldn’t help but smile back at him.

Though the young Negro wasn’t as high of status as Woman-of-the-Wind, she was taken aback by her feelings when he offered her the skin of the bear that he had killed.

“I have much affection for you,” Coromantee-Panther said. His Creek language skills were rudimentary, but he had practiced that phrase with his adopted uncle. When he touched his chest and gestured to Woman-of-the-Wind, she put aside the corn. She took his hand and walked with him deep into the woods to a spot where they lay on the bearskin. He was not an experienced lover, but his sincerity made up for what he did not know. He pleased her greatly that night and many nights to come.

Soon, Woman-of-the-Wind and Coromantee-Panther were married with the blessing of her clan, and he moved his belongings into her family’s hut, as a married Creek man did. At least, that is what happened during those times, before everything began to change.

The Daughter of a Powerful Union

The young woman’s devotion to Coromantee-Panther was strong, but she did not want to hinder him on his journey south. Thus, on the day that he finally left the village—twenty-three moons after he had arrived—when the elders gave him a horse and supplies, and had taught him to read the marks on the sides of the trees to find villages that would be friendly to him, Woman-of-the-Wind did not inform Coromantee-Panther that her womb was heavy with his seed. She only dearly loved the twin babies that she gave birth to, a boy and a girl. The girl’s name was Nila. The boy’s name was Bushy Hair. Both children would have their father’s courageous, red heart, though each would take their own path to claim that mettle.

In time, the twins grew, and Woman-of-the-Wind was courted by men of other clans in the village. Not only was she desired because of her high status, but also, she had been the only mate of Coromantee-Panther, who had loved her dearly. On the day that her husband left, he had clung to Woman-of-the-Wind and wept before she pushed him away, telling him go to the south. Go to his freedom, and she would remember him always, and Coromantee-Panther had slid onto the bare back of the horse the elders had given him for his journey. Woman-of-the-Wind would never marry or mate again.

Surely, such a woman was extraordinary, and when the daughter of Woman-of-the-Wind came of age, Nila had many suitors as well. She was a rarity in her village, beautiful in a very odd way. Nila had her father’s dark-brown skin, his kinky hair, and his warmth. She had her mother’s entrancing space between her top teeth and her high status. Frequently, young men from her village and other surrounding villages came to present Nila with meat and softened deer skins to win her favor, but Nila did not want an ordinary man for her husband. She was arrogant, and her weakness was her vanity. She had been told too frequently how wonderful she was, that, as the child of Coromantee-Panther and Woman-of-the-Wind, there was no one as special as she was. Thus, when a handsome, blond Scotsman named Dylan Cornell began to travel to the village for trade, Nila accepted his proposal of marriage.

Woman-of-the-Wind tried to intervene; she told her daughter that she’d had a bad dream about Dylan Cornell, but Nila would not listen. It was only after she married the white man that the wisdom of her mother’s dream rang. Dylan told her that he would not be moving to Nila’s village, as Creek men did, and that he would only visit every three moons. Also, he revealed that he had another wife, a white woman who lived far on the other side of the Oconee River, in a town where other white people lived. When Nila told Dylan that she would travel with him, that she did not mind sharing his dwelling with another wife so long as they could all live peacefully, he laughed at her. He told Nila she looked like a Negro. The only way he could carry her to the east of the Oconee was as his slave, for when Nila had been a very little girl, the law had changed in the territory where Oglethorpe had landed: Negro slavery was now legal.

Nila could not believe her husband had dared to compare her to a slave. Her heart filled with red anger—the inheritance of Coromantee-Panther—and air whistled though the space in her front teeth. Nila poked her finger in Dylan’s chest and told him the obscurities of her mind, and then her husband struck her.

She touched her cheek in shock, but her heart was still red. “I would sleep very lightly, if I were you, Dylan Cornell. For I am going to burn your manhood with coals. And I would be careful about eating as well. I will treat you like a sturgeon and poison you.”

Yet Nila did not keep her word. She did not burn or kill or poison her husband, for he sidled next to her and begged her forgiveness. He stroked her kinky hair and told her he did not know what had come over him, and Nila’s red anger paled, and she consented to lie with him. It would be like this every time Dylan struck her on his visits to the west. He would fool Nila into believing that his nature had changed and she would believe him until the moment he struck her again and called her names that began with “black.” Dylan told her she was a “black wench” or she was a “black devil.” He told her she looked like a slave.

Yet in those early days Nila still held out hope, and when she became pregnant Dylan was tender with her. Their child was born in an interval between Dylan’s visits. When he returned, Nila allowed Dylan to rename the baby “Jonathan,” though she had called the boy “Micco.” Moons after the baby’s birth there were two more visits where no striking occurred and Nila reasoned that time had changed her husband. However, on the subsequent visit once the baby was walking, Dylan began to strike Nila again and it was worse than before.

Nila did not dare tell anyone about how she suffered with her Scottish husband, especially Bushy Hair, who was protective of his twin sister as he had been the baby to emerge first on the day that they were born. Her arrogance kept her from admitting that she had been foolish not to listen to her mother’s dream. She kept her shame inside, for she didn’t want her family to be ridiculed in the village, for the people to marvel that the extraordinary daughter of Coromantee-Panther and Woman-of-the-Wind had thrown herself away on a white man who beat her.

Nila learned to raise her arms to catch the blows so that her bruises would not show on her face. She learned to hope that Dylan’s visits every three moons would end, but he continued to visit. Sometimes she was lucky and sitting in the moon house when his visits occurred, for Dylan did not know how to count the days to avoid her womanly seclusions. Yet other times, she was not fortunate, and she tolerated his embraces, for Dylan would force himself on her. Nila drank a tisane made from wild carrot seeds to keep from being with his child. On the rare times that didn’t work, Nila would brew another tisane of wild ginger root, drinking this to expel the contents of her womb, or, as a last resort, boil the berries of the pokeweed.

The Incident of the Cracker

Nila’s only son would grow to be tall, but Micco looked neither Negro nor Creek nor Scottish. His hair was dark, but it was not kinky; it crisped into tight waves. After his fourth year, his skin darkened to a brown that was the color of pecans. He had picked up selfishness from Dylan Cornell, whose visits had slowed to every six moons. The Creek had not learned yet about locks or being selfish with food and goods—that would come much later—but Dylan inculcated a love of property to his son. Whenever other children picked up something belonging to Micco in his hut, he would snatch it back.

“Mine! Mine!” the boy would scream.

Micco soon became a very lonely child, for other children began to avoid him, and, because he was a boy, when he reached the age of four or five it was frowned upon for him to hover around his mother and the women of the village. Though he ardently looked forward to his white father’s visits, Micco didn’t receive much attention from his father, either, except when his father insisted that he learn how to read so he could know the most important words to the white men besides their laws: the book that Dylan called the Bible. These lessons were so important to the lonely little boy that when his father hit his mother Micco turned his head and tried to ignore his mother’s weeping. He would lie at the foot of the spot where his parents slept and pretend not to hear Dylan forcing himself on Nila, her sad begging for Dylan to please stop, because Micco lived for the mornings when his father would roughly nudge him with a foot and say, “Good morning, boy.” This wasn’t much, but Micco grabbed at these bits of affection, as children crave the love of their parents.

His only friend was his uncle, Bushy Hair, who spent time with the boy when he was little and took over his manhood training when he grew older. This training was Bushy Hair’s responsibility, as was the way of the people. Like his sister, Bushy Hair had his father’s courage as well as his sweet charm and kindness. He talked to the boy, listening as if he were a grown man. Bushy Hair did not laugh at Micco, either, when his arrows did not fly straight at low-flying birds or slow deer, and his voice was not harsh when Micco ran from the water of the creek when a fish bit his hand. Bushy Hair was patient. When Micco eventually shot an arrow straight and killed a fat bird, and when he withstood the gnaws of the fish on his hand and threw it on the banks of the creek, Bushy Hair smiled and told the boy, well done, nephew. You are a great hunter, and Micco felt much love inside.

This peace that Micco felt would be broken, because in his fifteenth year there was trouble between the people of the village and a white man who had settled on the other side of the Oconee River. The people called him a “cracker,” for the sound of his whip when driving his five head of cattle right up to the boundaries of the village. The cracker was a stringy man in both hair and body, and ornery, too. He didn’t try to keep his cattle from running through the village cornfield, laughing when women had frantically waved to warn him. He had made obscene gestures at the women as well. Several times, men of the village had ridden out to the cracker’s farm, a shoddy place with a tiny cabin he had erected without the permission of the people. The men had talked to the cracker, warning him about his animals. He would nod his head in agreement but then kept driving his cattle onto the village grounds.

One morning a village woman was not quick enough to grab her toddling child from the path of the cracker’s cattle and her child was trampled to death. Though the village was a “white” place of peace, this insult could not remain unanswered. A group of younger men rode out to the place where the cracker had set up his pathetic farm, but the cracker was ready for a fight. He pulled out his long gun and trained it on the four men who stood in front of him. However, the cracker had not considered that his back was unprotected. There was a fifth man behind him: Bushy Hair, who made quick work of the cracker and left him dead.

The cracker’s wife had been standing at the window of her cabin watching the scene play out. She had screamed when she saw Bushy Hair hit her husband with his ax. He had been so quick she hadn’t been able to warn the cracker. She screamed more, a sound of hopelessness, and one of the men wanted to go inside the cabin and kill the wife. This was understandable as this man was the father of the dead toddler.

Yet the three other men did not want to harm the cracker’s wife; they still wanted to adhere to peaceful ways as much as possible. Bushy Hair listened to both sides, then asked the toddler’s father to leave the cracker’s wife unharmed. They had solved the problem of blood revenge, according to Creek ways. In times past, if someone in one village was killed in anger by someone in another village, the two places would get together, consult, and the culprit would be handed over to whichever village had been wronged. The white woman’s man was dead, Bushy Hair reasoned. She wouldn’t remain, especially since they were taking her husband’s cattle back to the village.

Perhaps Bushy Hair’s kindness had been his mistake, for the cracker’s wife found her way east of the Oconee and reported the killing of her husband to a headman in a town populated by white people. Bushy Hair found this out when his brother-in-law came for a visit only a moon after the killing.

Upon his arrival, Dylan Cornell marched straight to the elders of The-Place-in-the-Middle-of-the-Tall-Trees. Standing in the ceremonial grounds—turning his body so that the sun highlighted his yellow hair—Dylan declared that whoever had killed the cracker had broken the law and must be surrendered to the leaders of the white men.

The head elder scratched his chin, unconcerned by Dylan’s passion.

“Whose law?” he asked.

Dylan swept his arm. “The law of the government of this land!”

“Whose government? Whose land?”

The debate went on in this circular fashion. The other elders asked questions, such as, would the white man’s government come to the village? No, Dylan said. The cracker only had been one man. No one was coming this far out to avenge him, but the murder was a matter of honor. The elders tried to explain to Dylan that indeed the cracker had violated honor according to the Creek ways, but Dylan did not listen.

Someone else asked permission to speak: it was Bushy Hair.

“You’re shaming our family, my brother.” He told the truth. Nila was not at the meeting of only men, but the male members of the Wind clan sat in the gathering, and they were mortified.

Dylan Cornell left the next day, and Nila was happy to see him go. Yet within only one moon he returned. He professed that he missed his son dearly and that he wanted to take Micco on a trading trip across the Oconee. Nila didn’t want Micco to go. She’d had a dream that Dylan would try to take her son from her, but she knew if she tried to stop her husband, she would have to tell the people in the village what she had been enduring at his hands. She was frightened of revealing her shame, and she was frightened of losing her son. It was a prison made by the violent hands of her husband, but she had one option left to her. She asked her brother to accompany Dylan and Micco on the trading trip, and she was relieved that Dylan agreed. Not only that, he promised Bushy Hair much bounty.

It was dark in the early morning when the two men and the boy left. Only Dylan rode a horse with a saddle. The other two rode their horses bareback. There was much friendly talk from Dylan because Dylan did not know that his brother-in-law despised him. Though Bushy Hair had no idea that the white man had physically abused Nila over the years—he did not have the gift of dreaming, like his mother and sister—he was repulsed by the white man on general principle, for over the years Dylan had earned other marks of contempt.

The white man did not partake in the sacred green corn celebration.

No one in the village ever wanted to hunt with him, either, for Dylan could not use a bow and arrow, only his long gun. And he stomped through the forest like a full-grown bear, too, which scared away the game.

Further, while it was true that Dylan was expert in the language of the Creek people, he’d used his expertise to whine fluently about the killing of the cracker, yet hadn’t uttered one sentence of sympathy for the toddler who had been trampled.

Micco had no idea the enmity that his uncle held toward his father. He was happy to be in the company of his two favorite men and didn’t question why his usually sweet uncle only grunted in response to Dylan’s chatter. Yet halfway on the journey to the Oconee River, Micco was awakened by the sounds of struggle between his uncle and father. They were fiercely fighting, and unlike most men who bully women, his father was not backing down from the fight. He was heavier and taller than Bushy Hair and this gave him an advantage. The two men rolled on the ground in battle, and when Bushy Hair finally got the best of Micco’s father, the white man called out for help, using his child’s English name.

“Jonathan, Jonathan, help your father! Help me, my son!”

This was a choice no child should be forced to make. Micco didn’t know what to do as he watched the struggle. He didn’t want to choose, but he remembered how Bushy Hair had always made him feel good inside with his loving words. And he remembered how Dylan had hurt his mother, leaving bruises that she’d had to cover with long sleeves, even in the heat of summer. So the boy made a choice: He trotted to the site of the struggle and kneeled at the head of his father. The boy took out his knife, grabbed hold of his father’s chin, and slit his throat. Then Micco sat there on the ground and wailed, rocking back and forth with blood covering his hands.

His uncle let his nephew cry for a long time before touching the boy’s shoulder. Bushy Hair told him, gently, that they had to bury his father according to white men’s ways. They could not leave him for the wild animals. That would not be right. After the body was put into the grave hole, Bushy Hair told Micco that he had not wanted things to go this way, but Dylan had jumped him in his sleep. Micco looked at his uncle for a long time before asking, was this the truth? And Bushy Hair told him he would never lie to him. Yes, it was true, and he did not know why Dylan had attacked him.

Uncle and nephew spent a moon hunting and sleeping late. Bushy Hair told stories of the wily rabbit that constantly found himself in trouble with the wolf, but who always found a way to get loose, because the rabbit was a very smart creature who could not be caught. During that moon, there was a peace that Micco had never known, and he was happy, though he awoke sometimes with his face wet: his father now came to him in dreams.

When Micco and Bushy Hair returned to their village, it was Micco who decided to tell his mother that his father had died from eating tainted fowl, prepared by a white man at a trading destination. Micco said it was too difficult to bring his body back. He did not need to pretend sadness at the death of his father, for he did grieve. Yet his mourning ran alongside relief that his father never would hurt his mother again.

Nila was no fool. She had shared a womb with Bushy Hair and had carried Micco inside her body and fed him from her breasts. She saw the glances her brother and son gave one another, and she knew that one or the other had killed Dylan. Yet her own grief wasn’t over her husband. She only mourned the guilt of her son. Nila made a long face and cried and beat her chest over Dylan, but inside she was leaping. Though no longer young, Nila still visited the moon house for her bleeding times and reckoned she had two or three summers before her woman’s change. She was of high status, and there were younger men in the village already giving her nice looks, even at her age. The elders of the village told her her husband had been a white man and not of the people. Therefore, Nila didn’t have to mourn Dylan for four years, as Creek women were required to do when they became widows. She could shorten her grief time to four moons, as Creek men did. After her mourning period, Nila intended to choose a Creek man as her second husband, for a Creek man understood the responsibilities of the people and knew about the requirements of loyalty to the family of his wife.

Nila warned Micco that no matter who his father had been or how friendly white men might seem, they would never truly love or respect the Creek people. That was her first gift to her son. The second was the cow that her brother had given to her from the five head of cattle that had been split up among him and the others, after the killing of the cracker. Nila wanted no part of that bounty. She wanted to be free of the possessions of white men.

The Scourge of Mr. Whitney

And so the sin was intrusion, as when a neighbor calls at the entryway and when there is no answer walks inside anyway. Or when there is an answer, he kills his neighbor and pretends the dwelling was empty. When the Englishmen and Scotsmen came to the land of the people, cattle took over. It was no paradise before, but there were rules followed by the Creek, the descendants of beings who built Rock Eagle and hunted the deer and gave thanks before they dressed the meat. Who ate the corn and kept its season sacred.

And then the treaties, the agreements between these intruders and the people, all of which would be broken, and the land that would be taken—and taken again.

There was the Treaty of Savannah in 1733.

The Treaty of Coweta in 1739.

The Treaty of Augusta in 1763. Ten years later, a second treaty in that same place.

The Treaty of New York in 1790, and the realization that our land would be fertile for short-staple cotton, and after this, there came an invention by a man named Eli Whitney. Think of him, a man stewing in the juice of mediocrity, the blankness of his legacy breathing down his neck, tinkering with his rude invention. Or did a slave invent the gin, as some have said? Workers tend to have more genius than the boss, to reduce the strain of labor. Whoever its inventor, before the gin, one daily pound of cotton. After, fifty pounds, more slaves, very few deer, many cattle and pigs, and running talk of planting, for the gin was a way to separate good from evil. More specifically, cotton bolls from seeds.

The intruders on the land weren’t Englishmen or Scotsmen anymore, because a revolution had been fought. Now they were “Americans,” “white” men, and though to the Creek the color white meant peace, that word meant something else to the intruders.

And now those called Coromantee or Igbo or Wolof or Fula were “Negroes” or “slaves.”

And now the Creek were “Indians.”

And there was the Treaty of Colerain in 1796.

The Treaty of Fort Wilkinson in 1802.

The Treaty of Washington in 1805, and our land was no longer what the people called it.

Now the white men called us “Georgia.”

The Tracing of the Line

When we follow the centuries to come, a family will remain in our same place. Here on our land. The-Place-in-the-Middle-of-the-Tall-Trees will be called another name: Chicasetta.

The family won’t know the original name of our land, nor the name of that first, taken African of their line, the one whose mother had traveled over water. Nor will this family know about the Creek woman who was already here. They won’t know the names of Coromantee-Panther, of Woman-of-the-Wind. Those will be lost to everyone but us.

There will be generations that lie between the people of The-Place-in-the-Middle-of-the-Tall-Trees and their descendants: a woman who will be named Eliza Two Pinchard Freeman, also called Meema. She will marry a man named Red Benjamin, and he will take her last name.

And Meema will bear a daughter named Sheba, who will grow up to be free with her love.

And Sheba will bear Clyde, a son. His father’s name will not be known by her family.

And Sheba will bear Benji and Charlie, twin boys, for a different, unknown man.

And Red Freeman will pass away, his death making Meema a widow woman and Sheba a half orphan.

And Meema’s daughter, Sheba, will continue to be free with her love: for another unknown man, she will bear Adam and Abel, also twins. And for a last man, Sheba will bear a girl named Maybelline, called Lil’ May. Hours after this baby is born, Sheba will die in a lake of blood.

And Lil’ May will give birth to Pearl. And ten years after Lil’ May bore her daughter, she will bear a second child. A boy, Jason, though his family will call him “Root.”

And Pearl will marry Henry Collins. She will bear the twins Miss Rose and Henry Jr., called Huck. After many childless years, she will bear Annie Mae.

And Annie Mae will bear a daughter, Pauline, for an unknown man, and then she will leave this child behind in Chicasetta.

And Miss Rose will marry Hosea Driskell, and she will bear Roscoe, a troublemaking handsome boy. And Miss Rose will bear Jethro and Joseph, the twins who will die in their cribs.

She will bear Norman, another son.

And finally, Miss Rose will bear a daughter, and she will rejoice. This girl will be named Maybelle Lee, though she will insist that her family call her “Belle.”

And Belle will bear three girls: Lydia, Carol, and finally, a last daughter: Ailey, who will learn to honor a line reaching back to people whose names she never will know. To praise the blood that calls out in dreams, long after memory has surrendered.

Dream and Fracture

I’m three going on four, and there’s a voice. Like that song my mama sings sometimes.

Hush, hush

Somebody’s calling my name

But it’s not my mama calling me. It’s Lydia, my big sister. She’s the one calling and I love her very much.

“Ailey, baby, it’s time to get up. Come on now. We’re going to Chicasetta today. Don’t you remember?”

Her voice pulls on me, but somebody else holds on. Somebody’s calling my name. It’s the long-haired lady. I love her very much, but I don’t know what she’s saying. She’s rocking me in another place. She’s singing to me, but I don’t know the words, and the long-haired lady tells me pee-pee. Go ’head, right now. Let it go.

But I don’t want to. I don’t want to pee-pee ’cause it’s gone be a yellow wet spot in my bed and Lydia’s gone feel sorry for me. She’s gone say, “Oh, it’s all right, baby sister. I’m not mad.” But I don’t want nobody to feel sorry for me. I want to be a big girl, but I can’t hold it and the wet spot’s here and I’m awake and the long-haired lady’s gone.

* * *

I’m four going on five, and I’m riding in the brown station wagon. Mama’s got her hands on the round thing, and we’re going and going. I’m screaming for Daddy. Where is he? Lydia’s touching my head, rubbing.

“Don’t cry, baby,” she says. “We had to leave him home. He has to work at the hospital to make money for us. Remember what I told you?”

But I don’t remember.

Coco’s in the back with all her books. She’s nine already. Lydia’s eleven going on twelve, but Coco’s in the same grade. She’s smarter than everybody, but Mama says she loves all her girls the same. And we are going and going, and I’m screaming, and Coco’s pulling at my braid.

Mama turns that round thing and we’re on the side of the road. We ain’t going no more and the cars go by and make the station wagon shake.

She says, “Coco, give me that paper sack.” She pulls out a chicken leg and I’m hungry. I reach for the chicken and Mama pulls back. “Are you going to be a good little girl?”

And I say yes, and she gives me the chicken and I eat it, and I love her very much, even though she yells sometimes. Then we are going and going for a long, long time. There’s a long dirt road and there’s a house and a bunch of people on a porch. A bunch of grown-ups and everybody stands and waves except for an old, white lady sitting in her chair, and I say, “Why’s that white lady there? Is that Aunt Diane’s mama?”

And Lydia tells me, “No, baby. We left Auntie at home. That’s Dear Pearl, she’s our great-grandmother, and she’s only light skinned. Please don’t hurt her feelings.”

Mama’s getting out the car and everybody here knows everybody, but I don’t know nobody and I’m real, real mad. Then a man with white hair comes down into the driveway, and he looks white, too, but I remember what Lydia told me. I don’t want to hurt his feelings.

I say, “Are you a Black man?”

Mama says, “You should remember him, Ailey, you’re a big girl now.”

The man says, “All right, now, give the child some time.”

I say, “My name’s Ailey Pearl Garfield. My mother’s Mrs. Maybelle Lee Garfield and my father’s Dr. Geoffrey Louis Garfield.”

The man says, “My goodness! That’s a lot of information.”

He has eyes with all kinds of colors. Real strange eyes, but I think I remember him.

I say, “Is your name Uncle Root?”

He says, “What a brilliant child!”

He picks me up, and he holds me, and I feel safe, and I love him very much.

* * *

I’m six going on seven in the big kitchen in Chicasetta. I know everybody now. I know my granny’s Miss Rose and she lives in one house. Her sister’s Aunt Pauline and she lives in another house. Their brother’s Uncle Huck, but he only comes out of his house once a week. He has a boyfriend that he kisses on the mouth, but I’m not supposed to know that. I know their mama is Dear Pearl and her brother is Uncle Root. I know my mama’s brother is Uncle Norman. All the grown folks can tell me what to do, even if I don’t want to listen.

It must be a Saturday or maybe a Sunday, because Baybay and Boukie ain’t here. Aren’t.They come during the week and play with me. Baybay’s mama drops them off and we run and we play, but they don’t talk proper. And my mama says I have to talk better, but sometimes I forget. In the kitchen my granny is putting biscuits and grits and sausage on a plate, and Mama tells her that’s too much food. I’m already chubby.

Miss Rose says, “You leave this baby alone and let her eat in peace.” She pours coffee for Mama, but my sisters and me can’t have no coffee. Any coffee. We have hot chocolate.

Coco says, “Actually, there are stimulants in chocolate as well, similar to caffeine in the coffee.”

Mama says, “Stop talking back to grown folks. Just be grateful for the plentiful food on this table and the hands that have prepared it.”

It’s time for the grocery store, ’cause Mama ain’t gone eat folks out of house and home. Isn’t. But Coco don’t want to go to town. Doesn’t. She wants to stay with Miss Rose to help make preserves. She promises she will be well behaved and try not to be rude.

Then, we are in the station wagon, I’m sitting between Lydia and Mama. I’m full of breakfast, and my mama and sister smell real good, like grown ladies do. I’m happy listening to the radio, but then that white lady sees us at the Pig Pen. She don’t know that Lydia is with us. Doesn’t.

Lydia don’t look like none of us. Doesn’t.Daddy’s got brown eyes, but he looks like a white man. Mama’s dark like chocolate and little and pretty. She makes her hair straight with a hot comb and blue grease. I’m dark, too, but not like Mama. I got red in my skin underneath the brown like my granny. Coco’s eyes and skin match, like caramel candy. Her nose is wide like Mama’s, and she’s real short, too. Her hair’s like Mama’s, and it grows real long. Lydia’s hair is long, too, but won’t hold a curl. But in the back of her head, she’s got a kitchen. It grows in curls like mine. That’s how you can tell that she’s a Black girl. She’s got a gap in her teeth like Mama’s too. Her skin is light but not like Daddy’s. She looks like she went out in the sun and stayed a long time and got a tan. But Mama says Black folks don’t get tans. We already got some color. And Mama don’t care if folks are ignorant about her children. Doesn’t. She carried all of us in her belly and we belong to her and we should love her very much.

It’s cold in the store. When Mama pushes the cart up the aisle, the white lady waves at us. Mama waves back and says good morning, and the lady and her cart come our way. She’s old like my granny and has a pink shirt and a jean skirt. Her brown shoes are ugly. I don’t like those shoes.

The white lady says, “You are so good with children.”

Mama says, “Thank you, ma’am. I try my best with these two. There’s another one at home.”

“How long have you been in service?”

“Ma’am?”

The lady touches Lydia’s shoulder. “This one won’t need a nanny soon, and my daughter has a little boy who’d just love you. Let me give you her number. She’ll pay well.” The white lady puts her hand in her purse and pulls out a pencil. She puts her hand in again and has a smooshed piece of paper, and Mama frowns, but then she smiles. She says Lydia is her daughter. They have the same teeth, but Lydia is getting braces next year.

“Gal, you’re funning me!” The white lady shakes her finger close to my mother’s face, and I say, “Ooh,” ’cause you ain’t never supposed to put your hand in somebody’s face. Aren’t.

Mama steps back. She’s still smiling.

“I promise I’m telling the truth. This is my daughter, and I ought to know. I was there for the labor, all seventeen hours of it.”

The lady points her finger at my sister. “Are you telling me this here is a colored child?”

Then Lydia starts singing our favorite song about how she’s Black and proud. I start dancing, shaking my booty. Mama tries to grab my hand, but I run behind Lydia. The white lady turns pink. Then she pushes her cart away.

Lydia says, “I’m Black.”

Mama says, “Don’t you think I know that? And who’re you talking to? You know better than to cause a scene in public!”

Mama walks away, and Lydia pushes the cart and puts our groceries back on the shelves. The bacon and the cereal and the mushy, light bread. At the checkout, she buys me a candy bar and says she’ll hide it for me so Mama can’t see, but in the parking lot the station wagon is gone.

Lydia holds my hand and we wait for Mama. We wait and wait, and then Lydia says we’re going for a walk. My legs start hurting, and Lydia kneels and tells me climb on her back. She starts walking again. There is a house, and I think I remember this place. The red flowers. The bird in the tree: coo-coo, coo-coo. I climb off Lydia’s back, but before we knock Uncle Root opens the door.

“Young lady, before you start, my name is Bennett, and I’m not in this mess. This is supposed to be my summer vacation, so I’m not getting in the middle of this. And I told your mama the same when she called and woke me from my very enjoyable nap. Come on.”

We follow him through the living room and into the kitchen. Lydia sits in a chair and pulls me onto her lap. She puts her chin on top of my head, but her lap is too skinny. Her bones hurt my booty.

Uncle Root picks up the phone on the wall. “Hello? Miss Rose, I have your grandbabies.” He waits and there’s squawking.

“Say she’s still mad, huh? This one over here is ’bout a wet hen, too. Well, what did Maybelle Lee expect? Children don’t have any sense. Did she think they’d just wait at the store while she drove around? She should know better. If this was Atlanta, no telling who’d have these girls.”

More squawking, and he makes a silly face. “All right, Miss Rose. Okay. All right. That’s fine.” He hangs up and tells us our granny says we should spend the night in his guest room.

Lydia says, “That sounds fine.”

I say, “Yeah, that sounds fine.”

“But first, young ladies, let’s ride over to the Cluck-Cluck Hut. Get us some chicken and biscuits and French fries. Matter of fact, let’s stop back by the Pig Pen for some ice cream. I got a pie in the freezer and we’re about to have us a party. Power to the people!”

He raises his fist.

I say, “Ooh wee!”

Before it’s time for bed, Lydia asks Uncle Root for another sheet to put underneath me. I’m scared she’ll tell him what I told her about the long-haired lady, but Lydia don’t say nothing. Doesn’t. That night, the long-haired lady comes to my dream, but she only sits with me. In the morning there’s no yellow stain. Lydia tells me that’s what she’s talking ’bout. Two nights in a row with no wetting the bed. Who’s a big girl?

And I say, “I am!”

“Give me some skin, big girl!” I hit her hand hard and she turns her palm down: “Now, on the Black hand side!”

For breakfast, Uncle Root makes us cheese and eggs and pancakes topped with butter and syrup. He says he knows how to feed some hungry children. Don’t play him cheap.

Then we are going and going in his long car back to the country. At the driveway, we all climb out of the car, but Uncle Root tells me to stay with him. Let my sister go first. The screen door opens, and Mama comes out to the porch and down the steps. My sister runs to her. She’s crying, and Mama hugs her and rocks her side to side.

Lydia says, “I’m sorry.”

Mama says, “It’s all right, darling. It’s okay.”

* * *

I’m nine already, because my birthday was a week ago. I’m looking for Lydia to walk to the creek with me. It’s Friday afternoon. Baybay James’s mama came and got him and Boukie Crawford, and I’m bored. If my big sister comes with me to the creek, she’ll break off pieces of the sugarcane and give that to me to suck until the juice runs out. But when I call her name, Lydia doesn’t answer.

I run to Coco on the front steps. “Come on! Let’s go to the creek! Let’s go!”

“You sure are full of energy. You need to settle down.”

Coco fusses like an old lady and looks like one, too. Her hair’s braided and wrapped into two buns. She climbs up from the steps and calls through the screen door, asking can we walk to the creek?

A voice comes back. “You taking the baby?”

“Yes, Mama, I got her.”

“All right, then. Y’all be careful.”

Coco takes a long stick from the pile by the side of the house. There’re blackberry bushes on the way to the creek, and the stick’ll protect us from snakes. Then she decides which way. We can walk north, but then we’d hit the soybeans that Uncle Norman’s planted. After that, there’s a forest with trees and shadows, like in a fairy tale. That scares me, so we take the longer way, walking east through the peach trees until we come to the dirt road.

Now we have to choose again. If we take one direction we’ll walk out to the highway, but that’s not allowed. If we walk the other direction, we’ll go past the burned-down plantation house and the old general store. That road will end at our family church, Red Mound. So we have to turn west again: that’s the way to the creek. There, we see a light-green pickup truck parked on the grass, and Lydia on a blanket on the ground. Her long hair’s out of her plaits. Her shirt and bra are off, and I see her breasts. There’s a man standing over her. A grown man. Tony Crawford, Boukie’s cousin. Tony goes to our church, and he is naked, and he’s stroking his long, long penis.

Coco slaps her hand over my mouth and drags me by my hand back to the main road. She starts running, as I try to keep up. Slow down, I beg her. My legs are tired. She doesn’t stop until the plantation house. I breathe fast, my hands on my knees.

“Coco, why was Lydia naked? And that man Tony, too?”

She sighs and stays quiet for a while.

“Okay, like, she was hot, Ailey. It’s really hot today—and—and—that’s why she had her shirt off. And—and—the man—he was trying to compete with Lydia. It was a game, okay? Just a game to see who could pee the farthest. And—and—boys urinate standing up instead of sitting down. With their penis. That’s what that thing was.”

“I know that. I’ve seen a penis before, lots of times. I saw Gandee’s in the bathtub. He made me touch it, and it stood up like Tony’s.”

She socks my shoulder.

“Ow, stop, Coco! You’re heavy-handed!”

“Don’t you ever say that again about Gandee. Do you hear me? Ever, to anybody. It would hurt Mama’s feelings real, real bad. She would cry all the time and wouldn’t stop. And you don’t want that, do you? Pinky swear?”

I think about that awhile. I like to think now. I don’t like people pushing me around.

“What about Lydia? Would her feelings be hurt, too?”

“Definitely.” Coco sticks out a short finger and I hook mine to hers and I swear I never will say a thing. On the walk back to the house, she starts talking to herself. She’s like an old lady again, only she curses under her breath. She says she’s glad that Gandee’s dead. She damned sure is. That low-down motherfucker. That nasty asshole.

Lydia’s gone at dinnertime, and Mama walks through the house, out the door, and into the field that Miss Rose says is her front yard. Mama calls my sister’s name. She asks Coco and me, do we know where our sister has gone? No, ma’am, we say, but then it’s dark. There are no streetlamps out in the country, only june bugs. She starts calling people on the phone, and Uncle Root and Uncle Norman and Aunt Pauline come to the house. Aunt Pauline sits with my mama on the plastic-covered sofa and reads out loud from her Bible about the Lord is her shepherd, and she shall not want, but my mama’s still upset.

Then she calls my name and kneels down in front of me. She asks again, had I seen Lydia?

“Tell me, baby,” Mama says. “It’ll be all right. I won’t be mad at you.”

When she begins to cry, I tell her about what I saw at the creek, but I don’t tell about Gandee, so maybe my pinky swear wasn’t broken. Coco’s mad at me. I can tell. She stares at me hard.

Mama tells me what a good girl I am, then she calls the sheriff’s office, though my granny begs her not to. No telling what the law would do to a colored man, once they get hold of him, but Mama doesn’t care. She calls anyway, but the sheriff says she needs to call back the next day. He couldn’t do anything until Lydia’s been missing for twenty-four hours.

Uncle Root starts calling Black folks in town, asking them about my sister. He tells them she’s very light-skinned with long hair in two braids to her waist. She’s tall, too, but she hasn’t yet filled out, so she looks her age, which is fifteen going on sixteen. And have they seen her with Tony Crawford?

I’m not hungry at breakfast, and neither is Coco. We sit on the front steps of the porch and that’s how we see Lydia in the passenger side of Tony’s truck. Lydia opens the door, but Tony must have said something, because she stops before she kisses him on the mouth. That’s what Mama sees when she comes out of the house, before Tony drives away. She yells down from the porch to Lydia. She tells her she better not move. My big sister stands, shaking, and Mama runs out to the field, through the peach trees. She comes back with a switch, and Lydia starts screaming.

The screen door slams, and my granny walks onto the porch.

“Wait a minute now, Belle. Let the child explain.”

“What explanation? That nigger kissed her!”

The screen door slams again. This time, it’s Uncle Root.

“Maybelle Lee. Don’t do this, beloved. Please don’t. This isn’t like you.”

But Mama starts stripping the leaves off the switch, and my big sister is screaming even louder.

“Cry all you want! Go ahead! But you’re going to get this whipping. And let me tell you why. You’re getting whipped because you scared the shit out of me. I was wondering where you were and whether you were alive or dead! My fifteen-year-old child . . .” Mama shakes the branch in my sister’s direction. Tears leak from her eyes, but she doesn’t wipe them away. “. . . and your granny didn’t even want me to call the police! Said if I did, Tony Crawford might end up killed, because that’s the way they do Black men in this town. But when I called the sheriff anyway, he told me fast girls run away all the time. That’s what he called you! A fast girl! He didn’t even care about you, because you were somebody’s Black daughter. So I started to pray. That’s all I could do, Lydia. Pray that nigger wouldn’t kill my child. That she would come back home.”

I’m standing in front of the porch and crying, and Coco’s on the step behind me. She hugs me around the shoulders. Mama drops the peach branch and falls to the ground. She starts to holler like at church. To wave her hands like when the Spirit comes around, only Mama doesn’t sound happy. She doesn’t sound blessed by God, and Uncle Root runs down the steps and pulls her into his arms. He tells her not to cry. Please don’t cry, beloved, but Lydia doesn’t move from her place in the yard. And my sister’s still screaming.

At church on Sunday, I sit between Coco and my granny. On the other side, there’s Uncle Norman. Nobody else from our family is there. Nobody’s been talking much since my sister came home. I feel bad this morning, so I wore a dress that Lydia made for me. I twirled in my dress to make her smile, but she didn’t say anything and I hope she’s not mad at me for tattling.

Before the sermon, Mr. J.W. leads us in a song. He’s the head deacon, and he gives one line and then we give it back. But Mr. J.W. has a very bad voice, and even though I’m sad about my sister, I want to laugh. I cover my mouth, because I don’t want to get in trouble.

Elder Beasley stands up from his chair. He goes to the lectern and flips through his Bible.

“The text that I take this morning comes from Genesis, chapter four, verses one through thirteen. Y’all got that?”

I have my own Bible. It’s white leatherette. My granny gave it to me for my birthday, and I find the pages because I read really well. I’m proud of myself and I put my Bible on my lap and pretend I’m a grown lady. I wave at the air with the cardboard fan that has the picture of the blond Jesus and the lambs.

Elder Beasley reads to us about the story of Cain and Abel. How Adam knew his wife and then she conceived, and when Cain and Abel grew up, Cain killed his brother.

“Cain is a murderer, ain’t he? There ain’t no doubt about that. He is a low-down, nefarious criminal! He killed his own brother because he was jealous. He didn’t have faith enough to say, all right, now, God has not seen fit to praise him. That’s done made him mad, but he didn’t say that, maybe, he needed to pray and ask, ‘Lord, what do you want from me? Forget about my brother. What is it I can do? How can I get that favor you bestowed upon Abel? Am I doing something wrong? Help me, Lord. Give me just a little sign.’ But, y’all, Cain didn’t do none of that. No, he had to act a fool and take and kill his brother, and then he received his punishment.

“Some of y’all sitting up in here, you done had hard times. You struggling. You got bills to pay and no money. Some of y’all’s children, they done fell in love with the world and they have disappointed their people. Some of y’all are raising grandkids that those children done left you with. I ain’t calling no names. We don’t need to do all that. I’m just telling you I know what you going through. That’s what a pastor is for, but I’m not only your pastor. I’m your brother in Christ—”

The door to the church creaks open. Tony Crawford and his mama walk up the center aisle. When they pass me, I see his face swollen red and purple. One eye is closed, and Tony walks like he’s real tired. Everybody in the church starts whispering, but Elder Beasley tells us, Amen, let us pray.

* * *

I’m thirteen going on fourteen, and it’s a June morning. Mama and I have been up in the dark, preparing for the journey to Chicasetta. By the time she makes breakfast, the sun is flirting with the sky. My father arrives, home from working the night shift in the emergency room. But my sisters aren’t there in the kitchen, as Mama fixes plates for Daddy and me. Grits, eggs, and sausage biscuits. No coffee for me; I’m still too young.

She gives Daddy instructions. Don’t forget, there’s Tupperware in the deep freezer with directions on the lids. He has to defrost and then put everything in a pan before he puts it in the stove, otherwise the plastic will burn and smell bad, too.

He pats his thighs. When she settles on his lap, he kisses her cheek.

“Woman, you do know I’m grown.”

“I don’t want you to go hungry.”

“I need to lose weight anyway. I’m pretty sure I can miss a few meals.”

“But don’t be eating out every day. That’s not healthy. There’s plenty greens in that Tupperware.”

“I’ll be fine. I’ll just miss you, woman.”

“How much? Tell me.”

They banter back and forth, but I want them to notice me. “Are you going to miss me, too?”

“What kind of question is that?” Daddy asks. “You are my precious baby girl! Of course I’ll miss you. Who’ll beat me in chess while you’re gone?”

“Anybody can beat you. You don’t know how to play.”

Mama laughs, and he tells her this is certainly her daughter, because I sure can cut a brother off at the knees. She hits his shoulder lightly, and he kisses her, only this time on the mouth. They start ignoring me again, talking in their low, “just us” tone.

This summer’s different: When we start our journey south, only Mama and me in the car. Lydia’s down south already. She’s going to be a junior at Routledge College, studying social work, and I’ve been so lonely in the City without her. Lydia’s the one who used to wake me up in the morning, kissing my face with loud smacks. Who congratulated me that my twin bed was dry, the year after the long-haired lady had stopped coming to my dreams. Lydia, who debated with me about which clothes I should choose. Who told me that I wore jeans too much and, when I protested that our cousin Malcolm wore jeans every day, the one who told me this was true but that Malcolm wasn’t as pretty as me. She’s my best friend, but she’s gone all the time now, except for summer.

Coco’s gone from the City, too. She’s headed to her third year at Yale. She was accepted early, and now she’s on the premed track. She called last week and told Mama she was taking the bus down to Chicasetta. Yes, it’s a three-day ride, but she wanted to see more of the country. And don’t worry about her ticket. She’d already saved up from her emergency fund.

It’s a strange ride in the station wagon. I don’t squeeze between Lydia and my mother. There’s no slapping at Coco’s hands as she reaches over the back seat and tugs my braids, and when we pull into the driveway at the farm, Dear Pearl’s not there on the porch. She’s gotten older. She doesn’t like to be out in the heat. Still, it’s a surprise not to see her waving her church fan, to see, instead, my sisters waiting for Mama and me up on the porch. That’s when Uncle Root rises from his chair, his gait spry; he doesn’t hop down the steps, as in past years. He takes his time, and when he kisses my cheek I notice I’m the same height as he is.

My playmates don’t come around anymore, either. Last summer I started my period, and Mama told me I was getting to be a young lady. I couldn’t be running around with musty roughnecks smelling themselves. Mama said Baybay James and Boukie Crawford are a year older than me and boys that age want to get into mischief, but they weren’t doing that with her daughter.

Come day, go day, as the old folks say, and the hours are so quiet. I wear a beat-up hat while we pick weeds in the garden. My sisters are quiet. Coco is fascinated by the dirt, rubbing it between her fingers, and Lydia can’t focus on her weeds. She straightens and puts her hand to her forehead, shading her eyes. Like she’s looking for something in the distance.

My mother’s so happy, though. Happier than I’ve ever seen her, and every day, she climbs in the station wagon and goes visiting. The news she brings back isn’t that exciting. Somebody had a baby. Someone else is putting in a den in their garage. Or maybe, flowers have been planted in the front yard around those cement blocks propping up another family’s trailer. One evening, her eyes shine as if she’d been on an adventure. Like she’s been sipping a glass full of magic.

I’m sitting on the porch with useless hands: I don’t know how to sew quilt pieces. My stitches are too large, my granny says, so I should sit a spell. Enjoy the company, but I’m pouting. My sisters have gone to the American Legion, and I’m forbidden to go. I’m too young, they said. I wouldn’t even be let inside the Legion, let alone able to buy a drink.

Mama’s an expert sewer, but she only keeps the pieces of cloth in her lap. She rocks in her chair, smiling, and Miss Rose asks, what’s gotten into her? Had somebody took and gave her some money?

“No, ma’am, I’m just happy! I got three daughters and all of them doing well! I’ve done my worrying over them. They gave me a few gray hairs, but it looks like things will be all right. Only four more years and my baby will be done with high school.” She pats my leg, as if I need reminding that I’m her last child.

“Don’t shout till you get happy,” Aunt Pauline says. “Remember, the Devil always working.” She’s the pastor of her own church.

“That’s fine,” my mother says. “But I’m the one who raised these girls. Not Satan.”

My granny tells them, don’t fight. It ain’t nice to do that, and Aunt Pauline says she was just saying. She reaches and squeezes my granny’s hand. She says she’s sorry, but days later my great-grandmother passes away. ...