look down and the knife—it is gone.
As soon as I look back up, whaaam! I stagger. The ringing comes harsh and loud, making me totter. I cover my ear but the ringing gets louder. He’s punched me on the same side as the cut.
He comes closer and I close my eyes, knowing what’s about to happen to me, knowing I’ve got to move away but I can’t. Where is the knife? Does he have the knife? The ringing’s like a nightmare.
“You get out a here before I kill you,” I hear, like it’s in a tin can. My hearing’s half gone and I open my eyes. There’s Miss Celia in her pink satin nightgown. She’s got a fire poker in her hand, heavy, sharp.
“White lady want a taste a pecker pie, too?” He flops his penis around at her and she steps closer to the man, slow, like a cat. I take a deep breath while the man jumps left, then right, laughing and chomping his toothless gums. But Miss Celia just stands still.
After a few seconds he frowns, looks disappointed that Miss Celia isn’t doing anything. She’s not swinging or frowning or hollering. He looks over at me. “What about you? Nigger too tired to—”
Crack!
The man’s jaw goes sideways and blood bursts out of his mouth. He wobbles around, turns, and Miss Celia whacks the other side of his face too. Like she just wanted to even him up.
The man stumbles forward, looking nowhere in particular. Then he falls face flat.
“Lordy, you . . . you got him . . .” I say, but in the back of my head, there’s this voice asking me, real calm, like we’re just having tea out here, Is this really happening? Is a white woman really beating up a white man to save me? Or did he shake my brain pan loose and I’m over there dead on the ground...
I try to focus my eyes. Miss Celia, she’s got a snarl on her lips. She raises her rod and ka-wham! across the back of his knees.
This ain’t happening, I decide. This is just too damn strange.
Ka-wham! She hits him across his shoulders, making a ugh sound every time.
“I—I said you got him now, Miss Celia,” I say. But evidently, Miss Celia doesn’t think so. Even with my ears ringing, it sounds like chicken bones cracking. I stand up straighter, make myself focus my eyes before this turns into a homicide. “He down, he down, Miss Celia,” I say. “Fact, he”—I struggle to catch the poker—“he might be dead.”
I finally catch it and she lets go and the poker flies into the yard. Miss Celia steps back from him, spits in the grass. Blood’s spattered across her pink satin nightgown. The fabric’s stuck to her legs.
“He ain’t dead,” Miss Celia says.
“He close,” I say.
“Did he hit you hard, Minny?” she asks, but she’s staring down at him. “Did he hurt you bad?”
I can feel blood running down my temple but I know it’s from the sugar bowl cut that’s split open again. “Not as bad as you hurt him,” I say.
The man groans and we both jump back. I grab the poker and the broom handle from the grass. I don’t give her either one.
He rolls halfway over. His face is bloody on both sides, his eyes are swelling shut. His jaw’s been knocked off its hinge and somehow he still brings himself to his feet. And then he starts to walk away, a pathetic wobbly thing. He doesn’t even look back at us. We just stand there and watch him hobble through the prickly boxwood bushes and disappear in the trees.
“He ain’t gone get far,” I say, and I keep my grip on that poker. “You whooped him pretty good.”
“You think?” she says.
I give her a look. “Like Joe Louis with a tire iron.”
She brushes a clump of blond hair out of her face, looks at me like it kills her that I got hit. Suddenly I realize I ought to thank her, but truly, I’ve got no words to draw from. This is a brand-new invention we’ve come up with.
All I can say is, “You looked mighty . . . sure a yourself.”
“I used to be a good fighter.” She looks out along the boxwoods, wipes off her sweat with her palm. “If you’d known me ten years ago . . .”
She’s got no goo on her face, her hair’s not sprayed, her nightgown’s like an old prairie dress. She takes