Ours, p.3
Ours, page 3
* * *
Sunset like a halved blood orange, and Miss Wife was sitting in a chair in front of Miss Love’s home. She had to let him know that during business hours he could linger all he wanted, but when night came waltzing down the road, the bakery became her house again, like a fairy tale, and he had to waltz down the road as well, back to his own private space in the world.
“We closed now,” she said, which were the first words spoken between them in days. “We closed,” she repeated. And he sat there as though he didn’t hear her, staring off to the west as the sun dropped, and it seemed to him that the sun bled in the sky like that because of Miss Love’s disapproval.
Miss Wife investigated Miss Love’s face, wanting to see if his feelings made sense. For all he knew, he only wanted to pull his old wife out of a property ledger that had moved her name from one column into another, consequently moving her from one plantation to another roughly one hundred miles away. Clotho. ‘Her name was Clotho,’ he thought, summoning her into himself, then imagining her image beside Miss Love, not to compare but just to be sure they didn’t favor and that he wasn’t stuck trying to force alive a dead thing.
Up there, the bleeding in the sky neared its end and purpled behind Miss Love. ‘She can even bruise God,’ Miss Wife thought, then said to Miss Love, “I was just waiting to make sure you got back safe. I be on my way,” and stood and walked home. Miss Love lingered outside until he shrank to nothing in the distance.
It had grown dark when they met up accidentally in the middle of Oriole Street on Second Street. They both saw a wobbling light approach them from the opposite direction and when they got upon each other, they were surprised to see that they both had the same idea. Miss Wife had decided to visit Miss Love and Miss Love had thought to do the same to Miss Wife. Shocked into stupor, they settled on standing close for a little while without talking, just standing there softly gazing at each other, then going back to their separate homes.
When Miss Wife next proposed, Miss Love said yes. From their marriage came baby Luther-Philip Wife, born April 2, 1841.
[5]
Saint spent most of her days walking around Ours alone, her companion waiting somewhere in the darkest room of her house. She greeted everyone and knew everyone by name. Thylias once said about Saint that she could see everybody’s seeing, and this carried some truth, considering Saint had grown accustomed to conjuring for the entire town, even if it meant one conjure contradicted another. In many ways, she had become a resource toward better understanding a world they had been locked away from, but more importantly she helped them retrieve parts of themselves they had forgotten belonged to them, beginning first with resolve. If they wanted something done, do it. If they needed help, just ask. Saint made herself available for the asking, and the more they knew they could ask for anything, the more they learned that they could receive. Even if she rejected their requests, the rejection belonged to them. For this, they were grateful to Saint.
For her own sanity, Saint refused to do more than that. She conjured but did not lead, gave advice but was no mentor. Ours didn’t have a mayor. Wasn’t even a discussion about getting someone to do it. Had they asked her, there was no telling how loud she would’ve laughed in their faces. They wanted her around more, to do things with them, an appeal for her to allow them to fall in love with her. Saint knew all about love, and she believed her refusal to give it protected both herself and Ours.
• CHAPTER 3 •
Plague of Arrogance
[1]
Eventually, the corpses of white folks appeared miles away from Ours, making a strange and inexplicable perimeter of death. Patrollers marked where the bodies were found with red flags. Few people were unaffected by whatever killed off folks, but theirs was a minuscule number. Soon, white folks started heeding the red flags, not wanting to test if they had immunity to whatever disease floated up that way.
Walking just an inch within the red flags’ border caused severe sickness. Some noticed that this sickness didn’t yet happen to any Negroes but did affect some of the Indigenous Americans, discovered only when a white patroller who scanned those death grounds noticed the body of, in his own words, “an Indian without breath or color.”
When all the flags were put into place, a St. Louisan schoolteacher noticed that within the rectangular perimeter existed a single town, a recently “colored” town as he had put it, and that the source of this white death was more than likely in Ours. Flyers went around explaining the “White Plague,” and no new Negro was allowed into St. Louis for all of 1841, purchased or not; it took that long for Saint to realize that she had marked the stones she placed around Ours with the wrong symbol, meaning only to deter those whom she deemed potential problems for Ours’s residents, including sheriffs, politicians, patrollers, anyone dealing with the law and enslavement; and to kill those who at any point in time had enslaved others. Instead, her stones were set to destroy anyone who had ever thought at any time that Negroes were less than human, for which she felt little pity, more so mortification that she had made a mistake like that after having so long dealt with stonework. It wasn’t until a day or so before she decided to change the stones that Negroes started to drop dead where once they hadn’t.
“I see,” she said to herself when told by some of her people that they found Negroes dead on a path a few miles north. The Ouhmey didn’t have what they needed to bury them, but Saint told them not to worry. The earth was better off.
After a sheriff captured a white runaway prisoner alive just a mile away from Ours, near enough for death to have occurred earlier in the year, the St. Louisans realized that the plague had gone away on its own. They lifted the ban on Negroes but the fearful attitude toward them, as well as their absence from certain parts of St. Louis, remained the same from then on.
Eventually, Saint wanted better protection from the stones that didn’t attract as much attention from outsiders. She created a new pattern that would hide Ours. She went to the east and south stones and replaced them while her companion replaced the west and north stones. From then on, Ours was marked on maps but impossible to find. People who wanted to visit to either cause trouble or interview citizens there about the plague found themselves standing in an open field where they expected Ours to be.
Everyone living in Ours had to be marked with a small scratch somewhere on their bodies in order to return to Ours if they left for any reason.
“But when we leave, won’t it look like we came from nothing?” someone asked.
Saint shook her head and said, “You will always look like you are approaching from the visible horizon. People not walking over Ours or even through it. They’re going around it and not knowing so.”
This confused most of the residents, but a few understood and those few understanding it seemed to satisfy the rest. Some pretended to understand and that, too, gave comfort.
[2]
During the summer of 1846, a reporter from Delacroix attempted to follow a wagon full of Ouhmey home, hoping to discover where Ours lay hidden. He trailed them on horseback and marked any interesting landscape. To the west, a large mound afire with daylilies appeared after fifteen minutes of travel. After thirty minutes, bladed sycamore leaves suddenly sliced the sky above the shoulder of a hill, the increasing verdancy filling out the dull blue horizon. Oblivious, caught gaping at the sharp-white sky, the reporter realized he no longer saw the wagon. Thinking he had accidentally slowed down, he quickened the horse’s pace into full gallop. Passing through a mist, he cursed when he noticed a rickety wooden sign explaining he had entered St. Louis, meaning he had somehow passed Ours.
He made several attempts and each time he lost the wagon, distracted by a bird swarm or his own mental ramblings coming to him with the dual rhythm of the walking horses and the wagon’s squeaking wheels. Then the squeaking stopped. And there the hypnosis of atmosphere overpowered the reporter and put him to sleep. Lethargy overcame him at the same location each time: the mist, the near-ceaseless galloping, and, at the end of it all, the rickety sign taunting him.
Huffing, he decided to ride his horse beside the Ours wagon, ignoring the people’s horrified expressions as he tried to make conversation with the horseman. When he gathered that all he could get from him was a disinterested “No, suh” or “I can’t say I know, suh,” he rode in silence and took brief notes without looking down at his notebook. They passed the mound that appeared to burn brighter beneath the red tongues of daylilies, then made their way through the thickening woods that threw down bough-shadow, sycamore leaves waving their shaded arrowheads above the reporter. He realized he had fallen asleep on his horse after his own snoring woke him and the shock of it sent him falling off his horse and into the tall, bladed grass. By then, the wagon was completely gone and the rickety sign reading “St. Louis ahead” mocked him for the last time.
When he returned to Delacroix, no one believed his ghost story and didn’t care to investigate for themselves. He took out his notes to read over the descriptions of the landscape. Much of his writing consisted of illegible lines drawn down the page, signaling where he had dozed off. Single words floated vaguely on the page. Page after page of frantic scribbles until he came to an intricate portrait drawn in pen that startled him. It depicted a woman, Negro, and was drawn with incredible skill as though he had been a trained portraitist all his life. He rubbed his fingers across the page to feel the grooves the pen made with each line because it made her more real. ‘Maybe this woman was on the wagon,’ he thought, and dedicated the rest of his day to finding her while forgetting that he had no artistic ability in the least with which to sketch.
The reporter stopped every Negro in his path and asked, abrupt and cross, if they knew the woman depicted in the drawing. Everyone said no.
“What is this woman’s name?” he asked, forcing the page into their faces. Still, whomever he asked politely feigned ignorance. He tried to threaten them, but even though he was white, his authority reached less there than anywhere else in the nation, as Delacroix had no laws banning Negroes from rejecting any level of advance from white folks.
He considered using intimidation, but his diminutive stature and own pallid complexion, much more intense than any others around him of his own race, ghosted him even out of his own imagination, such that he couldn’t empower himself to raise his voice or puff out his rib cage where a chest of any sort should’ve been.
The reporter searched the busy streets, bumping into patrons and tightly packed vendors. Down the bustling road, past the butcher whose assistant he had already bothered for information, he found the assistant’s son who shined shoes. The boy was no more than five years old, a seemingly easy-to-frighten child with big brown eyes and a tearful gaze of perpetual anxiety. When the reporter demanded the boy tell him the name of the woman in the drawing, the boy looked back to get his father’s attention, but his father was busy quartering chickens. The boy looked again at the drawing and started to cry.
“This is not the time for your tears,” the reporter said, kneeling and far too close to the boy’s face. “Tell me who this woman is.”
The boy moved his mouth to speak but something behind the reporter caught his attention. He pointed behind the reporter, who turned, prompting the boy to run off into the crowd.
Saint’s blue dress and eventually her stern and stone-smooth face snatched the reporter’s attention. He yipped in shock and turned red after hearing the ping of his bright voice. Saint smiled, her high cheekbones carved malevolent, and leaned a little on her snakehead staff.
“Little dog,” she said.
“You” is all the reporter managed to say, his tongue fear-clumsy. He stood, tugged at his limp shirt collar, and, feeling more confident, showed her the sketch. Haughtily, the reporter shut the notebook with one hand close to Saint’s face, the breeze from the notebook’s closing causing her to blink. The reporter continued, “I must get into Ours.”
Saint smiled and examined the activity around them. Vendors pushed carts of assorted crops, carpenters sawed planks of wood, while within the crowd each Ouhmey face froze in place, watching.
“What business do you have there?” she asked.
“There is word that your town is the center of a scandal. Death. It is imperative that I get—”
“You do not have my permission.”
“The deaths of dozens of white men give me permit.”
“That was long ago,” Saint said. “And it had nothing to do with Ours; rather it was a coincidence of location.”
“You will take me to Ours.” He raised his voice and spat as he spoke.
Saint flipped her wrist and an ivory lace fan blossomed from her hands. She covered her mouth and yawned. The reporter jumped when she snapped the fan shut. “It was a pleasure meeting you . . .” She tilted her head.
“Marcellus Addington,” the reporter said. “I will have your audience.”
“Mr. Addington,” Saint said. “A pleasure, indeed.” She turned to leave but Marcellus grabbed her shoulder and spun her around. Wind picked up, then a burst of thunder shook the ground. At the sight of her eyes—both pupils and irises milk white, blue veins marbling—he released her and stumbled back. “That sketch was a warning. This, Mr. Addington, is a promise.” She blinked, her eyes gone back brown as her eyelids opened. Saint rubbed her thumb against her staff, massaging the carving of a snake’s jaw that, to Marcellus’s witness, whipped out a split tongue.
Before Marcellus could gather himself, Saint departed. Quick as she had appeared she disappeared, into the throng, taking the sudden winds with her. Marcellus flipped through his notebook to reference the sketch once more, but the sketch had disappeared.
* * *
The final time Marcellus tried to get into Ours, he succeeded. Early that morning, he jumped into the evening wagon heading to Ours. All went according to plan, which was no plan at all, simply him riding with the baffled workers who seemingly had no interest or energy in rejecting him.
As usual, he fell into a stupor once they reached the more wooded area, but this time when he came to, he found himself sitting on a chair inside a beautiful room. Fabrics of many colors made rivers along the floor and walls. Curtains hid what little sunlight remained of the approaching evening and dozens of candles lit throughout the room turned the fabric into frozen undulations scattered about the floor. As if he were underwater and on fire all at once. He tried to stand but couldn’t. He wanted to scratch his face, but his arms wouldn’t obey. Only his head was free to survey the rest of the room. When he saw the off-white chair in front of the wall of books, he thought nothing of its strange style, much more intricate than anything familiar to him, but the longer he looked, the more frightened he became. The chair, more like a throne, was made entirely out of bones.
It took a few days for people in Delacroix to realize Marcellus was missing. They assumed he went crazy chasing after the ghost town and just ended up in trouble, possibly eaten by a pack of coyotes. Eventually, all of Delacroix carried on as though Marcellus had never been part of their community. To do so was easier than wild speculation that what happened to him could also happen to anyone else there. When he finally reappeared, his hair was white along the side of his scalp and completely gone in the center. His eyes were both heavy and wide with alertness. When he spoke, gibberish tainted his tongue.
[3]
In autumn of 1846, Saint began to have vicious afternoon headaches. Nothing eased them, no combination of boiled herb and flower and no stones laid across her body. She would lie on her back while sunlight shrank and expanded around her, whistling as it did so. One throb caused the light to widen, and the whistle’s pitch and volume went shrill and high. The next throb caused the light to shrink to the width of a coin and the whistle’s pitch and volume fell hum-like and low.
When the light beamed its widest and the whistle’s timbre shrieked, she saw through the blur of her pain a shadowy figure standing at the foot of her bed. He didn’t seem menacing so she didn’t fear him. He felt familiar, and though she couldn’t see his face, she knew he watched her with unbreakable urgency. An hour passed before she could move without her companion’s help, and once the headache stopped, she felt terribly hungry but otherwise well. The shadowy figure disappeared forever after the first appearance.
The headaches, however, repeated every Monday afternoon from 3:00 p.m. till just before 4:00 p.m. Then out of the blue, on the first day of 1847, the headaches stopped and never returned. She documented this in a leather-bound journal where she kept many happenings in her life as well as recipes, lists of conjures and when they were made, dreams and their interpretations, predictions, and enemies. In one note she had written about a man coming to her wanting to save his already-dead wife. “He will come to me in the evening, years from now. There will be eight of us in the room. A light will come and breath to the dead.” She considered what she had written. The prediction was short and a bit elusive. Some people who visited her for conjure knew clearly what they wanted without shame. Others who sought her help arrived at her doorstep with despair clouding their judgment, just enough to make devastation into curiosity. Saint hoped that the man wouldn’t come to her with hope, for she didn’t have the gift of raising the dead and her awareness of this sat heavy in her heart.
