Ours, p.4
Ours, page 4
Perhaps the journal’s most important task was to keep Saint’s memory in line. She couldn’t recall anything before the moment she found herself lying facedown on a beach in Florida almost a century ago and the times between then and now were so fragmented she could barely remember the day, month, or year. Conjures slipped from her memory as soon as she put them to paper. She wrote, “Cannot remember root for ease of mind. Conjure for protection against evil eye didn’t work last time I tried.” What conjures she retained lost potency or backfired in shocking ways.
She had written the details of her headaches: dates, day, time, duration of pain. The pattern unfolded consistently but its meaning, if there was meaning, escaped her. Yes, she had once seen a shadow, a figure clad in dark, made of the dark, she remembered and wrote that down as well as “familiar,” “not friendly but not evil,” “watching me.” She closed her journal. Her companion stood beside her the entire time, facing away as if to give her privacy, though he couldn’t read or write or understand without her permission.
[4]
By the time he was six years old, Luther-Philip read with the ten-year-olds. In the morning before he went to school, Mrs. Wife practiced his letters and sentences with him every day from the time right before he left for school to the time he stepped foot in the door coming home.
In the evenings, they closed the bakery and retired in a room in the back with two beds, one for the couple and the other for the son. Until sunlight ran out, Luther-Philip read. Then Mr. Wife would light a lantern so Luther-Philip could read some more over dinner. Mrs. Wife tickled Luther-Philip if he got a word wrong and fed him some brown cream bread if he got a word right.
After Luther-Philip fell asleep, Mrs. and Mr. Wife went back into the front of their home and prepared for next day’s bakery rush. Mrs. Wife coughed and covered her mouth with her arm so as not to wake their son. She saw drops of blood in the nook of her elbow.
Luther-Philip woke the next morning smelling the usual fresh baked bread and hearing his father’s footsteps enter the room to help him get ready for school. They walked the half mile together, Mr. Wife squeezing the top of his son’s head and Luther-Philip giggling and squirming to get away. Luther-Philip practiced spelling words he learned the day before: p-a-p-e-r, paper; f-r-i-e-n-d-s-h-i-p, friendship; s-i-g-n, sign.
“How you remember all these words so well, son?” Mr. Wife asked.
“Sometimes, you have to see a thing to remember it, Papa,” Luther-Philip said, and at the sight of his friend Justice waving from the school door, ran off without Mr. Wife. He turned briefly to see his father and grinned. Mr. Wife smiled back, considering his son’s words.
The bakery still hurried with activity when Mr. Wife returned home, and he immediately got to work. Mrs. Wife was finishing up a cake when he got in. She coughed and shook her head. Mr. Wife brought her a cup of water. She drank it down and seemed all right until the coughs knelt her over.
“Been coughing all since you been gone. I tasted a piece of bread and choked. Haven’t been right since,” she said. Mr. Wife remembered the coughing had started the night before but said nothing. They pushed through the day and by the time the sun split purple on the horizon, Mrs. Wife had a fever and, knowing a fever could kill, Mr. Wife asked a neighbor to watch Luther-Philip while he ran to Saint’s for help.
When he returned with Saint, Mrs. Wife had gotten much worse. Neighbors couldn’t keep her cool with fans and water they dripped onto her face. She refused to drink anything and had grown pale. Within minutes, her fever became the death sentence Mr. Wife feared and his eyes clouded with tears.
Saint glared at Mrs. Wife. She stunk like an aged man, boozy with rum. When she blinked, Mrs. Wife was facing her. When Saint blinked again, Mrs. Wife’s face had become that of a coal-skinned man with red eyes. Saint flinched and the man-face winked and grinned. A gold tooth flashed from the top row of his teeth. He rolled his face away from Saint and when his head rolled back, it was Mrs. Wife’s again.
“Everyone out,” Saint spat. “Everyone out of this damned house!”
“Saint—” Mr. Wife started but decided to gather everyone there and lead them out after he saw the impossible emotion chiseled across Saint’s face.
Saint stood motionless in the stuffy room. A chair waited for her at the bedside, but she knew better than to go anywhere near Mrs. Wife’s sick body. She stood and she waited. The lantern light tossed soft shadows on the walls that groaned and let in all the chatter and hisses of tree branches outside. Mrs. Wife moaned. Saint waited. Mrs. Wife laughed and the stench of cigar smoke filled the air. Her head dropped to the side, facing Saint. When Mrs. Wife opened her eyes, they were the sick red of a fresh wound.
Saint had only a marginal sense of familiarity for the possession she witnessed, as though a vacancy in her memory kept trying to refill with some truth. Never had she been possessed in this way, but she felt perhaps she had witnessed such a thing long ago and been less fearful. And with this present fear came a need to bow. She couldn’t help herself and knelt before Mrs. Wife’s bed on both knees and lowered her head like a devoted priest.
In a man’s voice, Mrs. Wife said, “Why did the rooster cross the crossroad?” and laughed. The man’s voice boomed and stuffed the room until the walls creaked. Finished, the spirit in Mrs. Wife went quiet, then scowled at Saint. “You never welcomed me,” he said. “You never asked my permission to bring your shit into my home.” He spat on the floor with Mrs. Wife’s mouth. “Who you think you is? Throwing filth into my home. Leaving The Gate open.” He spat again. “I should level this whole town. Arrogant filth. Amnesiac sphynx. Go close The Gate, fool, or more than water bring you down.” Mrs. Wife went silent. It was over. The possessor’s rage had expired and with it the smell of smoke dissipated until stale air floated throughout the room with nowhere to escape but through the chinkless roof. Mrs. Wife’s body stopped moving and Saint didn’t try to heal it. There was no one left inside the body to heal.
“There was nothing I could do,” Saint said, storming by Mr. Wife and his neighbors. She continued speaking as she walked away. “Bury her immediately. Pour sea salt over the grave. I’ll have the salt brought to you within the hour.” With a quick stop, Saint looked off to the side and said, “I’m sorry,” then marched on.
Mr. Wife said nothing, for it seemed Saint had apologized to the world, and who was he to respond for the world?
He took Luther-Philip by the shoulders and told him that his mother had died. He asked Luther-Philip if he understood and the boy nodded, astounded into calm. The boy would stay with Franklin and Thylias for the night. Mr. Wife and a few men from town wrapped Mrs. Wife’s body in fresh linen and carried her to what was to become the cemetery: the only open land in town that stretched south by the easternmost road, Third Street, and south of Bank. Mr. Wife unwrapped his wife’s face, touched her cheek, then rewrapped her.
After digging all night, Mr. Wife and the men poured the sea salt over her wrapped body before covering her with dirt, then covered the dirt with the remaining salt. In the lantern light, Mr. Wife caught a glimpse of the men’s faces: confusion touched by anger. “I thought Saint—” one man began to say, then stopped. When Mr. Wife asked him to repeat himself, the man shook his head and said, “Naw, that’s all right.” But Mr. Wife had already heard the growing distrust in the grunts of the dirt-shoveling men, the question as to why Saint couldn’t, didn’t save Mrs. Wife. If she could free them all unscathed, why not this, too?
Back at the small house that doubled as a bakery, Mr. Wife swept the bedroom floor. He removed the damp, tobacco-smelling sheets and blankets from the bed he and his wife shared. Without questioning the pungent smell that rose from the linen’s dull creases, he set the sheets and blankets on fire behind the house along with the dust he swept from the floor. Saint’s companion had delivered the sea salt in a tied-up woolen satchel with a note of instructions hanging from the closed mouth of the bag. Tucked just under the string that held everything together was a small bottle of oil. He poured the oil into a bucket of water and cleaned the entire floor, back to front. When he finished, the room smelled sweet like a pine forest, and in that forest he laid himself down and wept.
[5]
Saint had put her own in danger and therefore become dangerous. While her companion delivered sea salt and oil to Mr. Wife, she visited Creek’s Bridge. By the water, she undressed and asked for forgiveness. The creek fell silent for a moment, then sang again against the rocks its acceptance. She stepped into the cold water and, kneeling, hand-washed her entire body. It was late March and thirteen years had passed since she opened The Gate at the creek to throw in all the traumas her newly freed followers had experienced: lashing after rape after stolen spouse after sold-off child after starvation, all thrown into The Gate to free their spirits from enslavement, to give even the soul a second chance, but because she didn’t close The Gate, anything could stomp from the other side and freely ride the back of anyone in town.
Spirits always live near water, this Saint knew, but some spirits require an invitation and instructions, neither of which she knew to give. She was rash, then, in her execution, and working with half a memory only made her more reckless.
While in the creek to close The Gate, she tried to remember beyond Florida’s swamp water, but lightning cut jagged scars of light across the darkness of her own blank mind. Then came bizarre fruits and birds more colorful than a garden, and a brilliant storm catastrophized the sky above her while a subtle sadness stretched beneath the front of her skull until it popped and the living memory dissolved.
After she bathed, she cut open her palm and let blood drip into the creek. Because she had not closed The Gate properly and for years its now insatiable mouth had been open, she gave of herself to it. There were other, less painful methods, but she couldn’t remember them. She only remembered that she had known them before. Still, Ours was lucky that the spirit that crossed over the water warned Saint with a single death instead of vanquishing everything she had built, one citizen at a time. One casualty was an immeasurable gift.
Familiar, the face of the spirit that possessed Mrs. Wife wouldn’t leave her. It appeared when she wrapped her hand to stop her palm from bleeding. It lingered when she rubbed olive oil on her skin and tied several matches to her hair. On her way home, the face followed her like a neighbor sharing late-night gossip. It stayed with her when she refused to look at the bakery from which still emanated cigar stink that her protection wash pushed from the inside out. The face watched as she removed her shoes, covered them in sulfur, and burned one shoe on the front porch and one out back. The face grinned at her when she drew a hot bath with seven drops of geranium oil, seven pinches of sage, a pinch of saltpeter, seven cloves of garlic, a splash of lavender petals, and seven basil leaves. After she dried off, the face grinned beside her own in the mirror. It was an uncle’s face or a father who didn’t take his fatherly duties too seriously but knew how his praise alone could feel like all the love in the world. Hairless face, wide nose gold-ringed twice on one side. Beautiful onyx skin and the gaunt cheek grin he flashed her way, both reassuring, though the grin carried multiple meanings: a severe joy, the calm before the storm, an intricate expression of rage. The face’s red eyes carried no desire to harm; rather they embodied harm itself. A single gold tooth would’ve, on any other occasion, made Saint laugh to herself, but all she could do was avoid its reproachful shine. And upon seeing this countenance in Mrs. Wife’s room, her knees folded beneath her into a bow.
She did know this man, had to have known him. Why else did her fear soften into longing when his face disappeared, delicate as fog, after she peered into the mirror, as though the woman staring back at her was no longer enough?
She felt a similar kinship during her migraines when she had seen the man shrouded in complete darkness stand at the foot of her bed. ‘Had to have been the same man,’ she thought. At the snap of her fingers, Saint’s companion closed the bedroom door. ‘Had to have been the same spirit warning me as gently as he could, but I paid no mind, so he warned me less gently. He had been warning me all that time. Now look at this life.’
She invited her companion to where she sat and made him stand beside her facing the mirror. His height impressive, the mirror’s wooden frame cut off his reflection. Eyes full of harm, his face no longer sweet, he gazed vacantly ahead without blinking. Saint grabbed his hand, then let go, his lukewarm skin a map to nowhere. She unwrapped her hair and let the long twisted locs drop past her shoulders, down her long neck. She sighed, and her companion rubbed her hair, attention fixed on nothing specific. In the mirror, Saint watched herself cut a sneer, upper lip curling like a page on fire. She sighed once more, and her companion lowered his arm. ‘Death all around,’ she thought. ‘Death all around. For how long?’
Ours resided in Saint’s shadow, its own shadow melting in her umbra’s hold. She had freed the slaves and promised them a safe home, promised them freedom, something she always remembered having in some capacity for she could read whatever books she wanted, smell a cut of lavender fallen into the bowl of her upturned palms, split a gleaming trout and fry it in cackling oil without permission, and make love whenever and however she wanted. She wore what fitted her desire, whetted her anger when it felt best to do so—often, remorselessly.
Freedom didn’t mean safety. Saint wanted to supply both. But soon she felt herself falling in love with those she had saved, and if there’s anything more shockingly unpredictable than freedom, it’s love. If there is an unhealed wound, love takes the shape of the wound. She knew, from the moment Ours became real, that the shadow of her love was cast not by her but by her broad-shouldered, insatiable hurt. It would only widen if she stayed close, if she decided to love them all anyway. Accordingly, she stepped to the side, taking not only her wound but her love with her.
That night, while lying in bed, Saint heard “Why won’t he stop howling inside his self?” and shot up, intemperate with ire. That voice, belonging to a woman named Aurora whom she had abandoned years ago in a small town of shacks just outside of Ours before Ours was founded, followed ghost-quick to her bedside. Aurora, at the end of her teenage years or the beginning of her twenties; Aurora, sold from a New Orleans plantation to an Arkansas one as punishment for beheading a rooster without permission, the so-called master in New Orleans dead the day after she was sold; Aurora, severely bowlegged and slow-walking, witty and verbose, had somehow heard a voice coming from Saint’s companion who hadn’t spoken a lick. Saint knew, already, that Aurora had a gift that involved listening in on the feelings of others. She made it clear to Aurora never to use her gift on people without their permission, and Aurora agreed, but Saint’s companion bellowed on the inside. The harder Aurora tried to ignore, the more compelled she grew to listen. Got to be so intense her nose started bleeding. “Why won’t he stop howling on the inside?” she had asked, crossing the most explicit boundary. Saint nearly assaulted the woman, but instead, she left the shoddy shacks thrown up too quickly to be considered safe, left behind those who had grown to love the first plot of land they had made their own. Saint left that intrusive woman on her own beat-up porch, went so fast she burned up her lungs with heavy breathing, distraught because a stranger heard a voice that she hadn’t heard in months, no matter how hard she listened in the quiet of that dismal house. Behind her, Aurora apologized, screaming that she didn’t mean to and that something truly was wrong with the man Saint traveled with.
Now, Saint made her companion sit outside her bedroom door in a chair pulled up to the wall adjacent her room. His gaze struck the opposite wall without anticipation or curiosity, eyes staring bloodshot, shown by lamplight hanging from a tilted wall hook. If he blinked, she missed it.
She closed her door and returned to bed, lowering her open window to only a crack as if that would keep the kindling of Aurora’s voice from burning her ears. Still, she would be lying if she said she wasn’t curious about Aurora’s well-being out there in the wilderness, surrounded by raggedy shacks. “Aurora,” Saint said, “at least you heard some life in him.” Her snake staff caught her eye in the moonlight. She left her bed and grabbed the staff, bringing it back to bed and laying it beside her. “At least you heard a life in there.”
• CHAPTER 4 •
The Climb
[1]
Wanting to be nearer to death, Mr. Wife wrapped himself in his own filth. He became industrious for death, pumping out sweat and snot and tears, and rising only to relieve himself out back.
In the outhouse, the dark engulfed him and he decided that the sunlight angling toward him through the cracks in the roof and walls succeeded only in giving dust a way to be seen. It had already been made obvious to Mr. Wife that nothing left worth seeing endured after Mrs. Wife’s death, and the reminder of such worthlessness hurt him into spite. He squatted, wiped clean with some leaves, and went back inside with a steeling hatred against the light.
When he visited the outhouse at night, moonlight carried the weight of his disdain, and because the darkness had more strength to it, the dust coalescing with the darkness, the moon’s rays were too weak to carry the debris of the living (his grief) or the dead (his wife). A subtle glow fell through the roof of the outhouse and he thought of the lantern light that glided toward him the morning he and Mrs. Wife reconciled. In this way, the moon had won him over where the sun had failed him, and despite the cold, Mr. Wife sat in the reeking outhouse until daybreak.
Boredom shook Mr. Wife from trying to summon death through inactivity. Waiting for death in stillness made little sense anyway. It was when one least expected it that the heart popped behind the rib cage, the brain hemorrhaged inside the skull, or the veins themselves fell victim to a violent torpor that shut down the body while death scooped out what remained. A horse kick to the chest, the crash onto the stony ground from a fast-moving wagon, an overturned surrey floating down a river, a bullet nesting in the bag of a lung, or in the middle of laughter so sweet that when the dead finally realized they were dead, it was too late to get angry—those were ways death came, and Mr. Wife had to live in order to make room for the scythe. ‘Mrs. Wife must have done some living before she died,’ he thought. ‘She must have had some living done to die that way.’
