and I’m left to trail by his side, to hold his hand, to say his name over and over. I make them take him to the House, as it’s nearest. We go in the back hall through the servants’ quarters, and Fannie, our dead mistress’s house maid, is up, looking scared, her arms crossed over her breasts. How dare she have time for propriety?
They lay Jonah down right on the ground on a threadbare bit of rug. There’s nowhere else left to put him. I go down with him, afraid to pull my hand out of his firm grip, the only thing about him holding on.
“Mama?” he ask me, like to make my heart break.
“Yes, baby,” I say. Lying comes easy. “I’m with you now.”
I’m looking round the kitchen and in my meager basket thinking, what can I use? How can I save him? I can barely catch my breath, never mind my thoughts. The men are watching, the housemaid is watching; I can see the horror lilting off their faces as shadows in the night. That’s when I remember my candle, the single flame, all mine. Yeah, I know what needs doing to close up those wounds.
“I’ll be needin’ somebody to hold down his arms,” I tell the room. “And someone to hold closed his mouth. Mind he don’t bite his tongue, now. Muffle him. He will scream. And we don’t need to wake no more white folks.”
* * *
—
When it’s over I am weary. I walk to my cabin slow because I have to drag all my gathered sorrow along with me. I push open the door, wanting only my sleeping girl, wanting only to rest my head. But I can’t ’cause I’m not alone. I walk in and sniff the air and know that he’s been waiting on me and that he’s been waiting awhile. I always know him by his smoke, white-man smoke too thick and fine for the likes of us. It’s in my clean air, still curling.
I ignore him. Sit on the bed by my sleeping girl, watch the breath come in and out of her easy, like he must have been doing this long while. She sleeps so deep, my baby. She don’t know how cruel real life is. My own fault. I want so bad to touch her but my hands are stained. I look at my palms in what little light the moon gives out.
“You know you too pale to hide in the shadows, don’t you?” I whisper-speak.
He chuckles out a breath of that smoke. “You take care of that boy?”
“Jonah.”
“Yeah, him,” he say. “Y’all fix him up?”
“He’ll survive it. Can’t take no drink ’til it heals. Can’t pass no water. If the thirst don’t kill him, he’ll survive it.”
“Good,” he say. “Knew you’d save him. It’s a waste but we’ll have to make a good use of him elsewise now that he’s a eunuch.”
When he says “we” I don’t know if he means me and him, but there’s a thrill in his voice like maybe that’s what he’d intended for Jonah all along from the moment he bought him, his mind on how he’d keep his henhouse safe when he gallops off to war.
It’s a greedy shame, but I can’t help but touch Rue’s thick dark hair. So much thicker than mine too, resilient. She’s been sticking flowers in her hair again and I pick out the petals. Fool girl. Wasteful little sweetheart.
“Belle,” he says from behind me. I keep my eyes on my girl just a little while longer. Now, where did she get that warm, dark skin so much like her daddy’s? I gave her everything else but that’s all his doing.
“Come along now, Belle,” he says and I know my defiance has gotta run short sometime. I kiss her, my girl. Not her face but the air above it and I’m so sure that she feels it, even through his smoke. She smiles in her sleep.
I go outside with Marse Charles but I don’t have to go where he’s wanting to take me. He’s a fool, doesn’t even know what’s happening to