Ours, p.8
Ours, page 8
The next day, the bones returned. Same spot, same position. Having seen strange things all her memory, which at this time had become reliable in recalling everything from her time in Florida to present day, she allowed the bones their space in the small room next to the kitchen. Days later, the bones amassed into a larger pile, dominating the wall’s edge with their increasing number.
She understood the predicament when she saw a recognizable ring on a stray fingertip bone. Every single bone had once been part of someone she had ended on the plantations. The silver ring and its embedded aquamarine belonged to that so-called master’s son who dropped dead the moment he stepped out of his surrey and touched foot to ground. She remembered it because she thought it pilferable but decided against taking it when its cheap gleam failed to keep her attention. It didn’t protect him because he didn’t understand its powers. It wouldn’t work for Saint because she doubted it had power to begin with.
When enough bones piled as high as her hip, she told her companion to make for her a chair. The chair’s design became more outlandish when bones from the dead bodies around Ours, reaped from her earlier and mistaken conjure with the stones, appeared beside the chair. Over a dozen skulls and twice as many femurs, kneecaps, and pairs of ankle bones. The small bows of clavicles, the butterfly silhouettes of sacrum and ilium pairs flanking spine bones stacked like ivory cups against the floor. Her companion added every bone that appeared in the room to the chair until, indeed, it had become a throne.
‘Three of them dead,’ Saint thought once more, meaning Justice and his parents. Who took care of the details? Who managed to kill the snakes with a shotgun wound and a good knife’s work? Preparations had been made prior. The snakes had to have been expected or at the very least hunted after someone discovered their existence. Perhaps, they were spotted slithering from Honor and King’s house, three incredible bodies sliding from the ajar front door and onto the road. Surely, that caused a public disturbance in town, unless it all happened late at night while everyone slept. Most people. And to know to bring them to Saint. ‘To my bottom step,’ she thought, ‘on my property, without me noticing. No knock. Just left them there for me to see in the morning like a warning. No. This is a threat. A show of power. That even I can be taken aback, swindled into security.’ And with that, the only person knowledgeable and audacious enough to do such a thing was Aba. She should’ve known. She always had known. She didn’t want to know.
Saint sat in the dark room on the chair made from the skeletons of her enemies. The dark touched thick as molasses, while candlelight from dozens of glassed-in and open-flame candles bulged from mantels built into the walls. She sat and tried to remember. Her memory reached as far back as Florida, always Florida. She had awakened in a sand-caked dress barely on her, its white forever stained by her own sweat and the salt from the water that had also eaten away at her skin. Her mouth stung at the corners and her lips cracked to bleeding. She was thirsty, dizzy, and lost in breathtaking humidity.
A small girl in the prettiest little dress had approached Saint with a leather bag of water. She poured the water into Saint’s mouth then disappeared into the bushes, the flower pattern of her dress eaten by squat plants and the darkness behind them. An hour later, a band of Negroes with hair like storm clouds or vines or with both sides shaved low, and bodies glowing as though polished by the salt air, gathered around her and kneeled. One man dabbed her bleeding forehead with a towel that smelled like roses. Two women rolled her onto her back, the men looking away just in case her clothing tore from her.
The women carried her on their two shoulders while the men closely followed, machetes in their waistbands, guns in their hands. Saint could hardly understand a word they spoke, a sprinkling of English dispersed within sentences constructed of beautiful if unfamiliar words, like rain falling on tin and through even that a bird calling for its mate. They walked for many miles, took intermittent rests for water, forehead dabbing, surveying the humid land, which became muddier as they went along, until finally they were surrounded by swamp, a landscape Saint had not seen before, where even trees bowed to the sodden ground that birthed them.
“Naket cehocefkvte?” a woman said, and Saint stared at her mouth. “Nombre? Your name?” the same woman asked, and Saint replied that she didn’t know. “Call you Saint, then,” the woman said. Saint didn’t ask why and was too tired to imagine a reason for herself.
Sunlight dripped through cedar leaves and onto the thickets below. And within this memory of reclining trees, the sweet smell of rotting plant life and roasting deer meat from a nearby set of houses, the bird-rain language pouring from the dark mouths of her saviors—within this memory another memory bloomed. Lightning. Sugarcane burned to the ground. Winds strong enough to bevel the heavens. Hooved animals capsized, floating off, then sinking, their dead eyes staring, staring.
Saint tried to hold on to this storm in her head that occasionally and without notice punctured the easier recollections, though the speed by which it punctured always surprised her. As sudden as the Negroes who saved her from some coast in Florida appeared to her, they were eradicated from her thoughts by a storm that eradicated everything beneath it, a storm not in Florida, but before there, a time of deliberate oblivion; had to have been. Why else remember the destruction without the pain it delivered?
* * *
Breaking herself from that memory, Saint left the dark room of bones and stepped outside. She sniffed the air, grimaced, and looked for a sign of what approached. Just up the road appeared Mr. Wife, whom she hadn’t seen in quite some time. He strolled toward her home. Where else could he be going, her house the last house on the northernmost road heading west toward some mangy woods that marked the end of town? Upon seeing him, she remembered the spirit’s face that took Mrs. Wife’s life to teach Saint a lesson. One life for one lesson, a cry-worthy price.
Two boys, Luther-Philip to the right and Justice to the left, flanked Mr. Wife. Recognizing them, Saint wished the day would end. Justice had survived. Fine by her. But what of his parents? She watched as the three stopped just beyond her house. Then Justice looked up at Mr. Wife—who nodded in return—and walked the rest of the way alone, right up Saint’s stairs, and onto her porch. Saint smirked because Justice eyed her as though regarding a stranger whom he wanted to pass.
“They dead, Ms. Saint. I know it was me you wanted, but . . .” Justice paused. Up to that point they were face-to-face, but suddenly he lowered his eyes, scanned her porch, picked at his fingers. And for the first time, Saint saw the boy in all his details. His hair dense like the men’s hair in Florida. He had grown into a solid boy, not much taller than the other children but vaguely more mature, expressed through a face that with little effort appeared bored and solitudinous. He favored Honor more than he did King, but he had the lighter brown skin of his father. His thin eyes secretive, expressionless. “I still got venom in my leg,” he continued, and Saint realized why Justice stopped looking at her. He wasn’t afraid, or shy, or even sad in such a way that it overtook him. Justice needed something from her and was too proud to ask for it, too fractured in his understanding that he needed help from the woman who everyone in town had said tried to stop him from being born. They never told him directly, but gossip has wings and whispering fails near the heightened listening of children. They murmured and he heard, clear as glass shattering across a floor.
Saint kneeled and reached out with both arms for Justice, who looked back at Luther-Philip and Mr. Wife, but they were already gone back to town.
Justice finally approached, and Saint pulled him in for a hug. When Justice slipped the knife from his back pocket, Saint’s companion swooped down and grabbed his arm on its way down toward Saint’s neck. Saint finished her hug with a squeeze, then stood. She liked how Justice kept looking at her even while her companion restrained his arm midair, Justice’s hand clenching the knife so hard veins protruded from his small fist. He looked at her with blank rage.
“Let it go,” Saint said, as kindly as possible.
Hot wind slipped between them. Justice dropped the knife. It clanged against the porch. Sunlight vaulted from the metal blade into a blade of light that lit Justice across his right cheek. Saint picked up the knife and stuck it in her head wrap. Other than the departed slit of sunlight, Justice’s face didn’t change, though tears slid onto his lips.
“I’ll give this back when I’m finished. Sit on the porch. I’ll brew what you need,” Saint said, and, before she entered her house, added, “We will talk when I return. Don’t run away, now.” She closed the door, leaving her companion outside to stand in front of the door and block Justice from getting in if he decided to try his luck once more.
By this time, after Luther-Philip tried and somehow managed to suck some of the poison from Justice’s leg, Justice felt a sharpening numbness beneath the knee. It started as a tingle, the firing of nerves until the fire burnt out into a cool melt that erased all feeling. The conjure snake’s venom, Saint knew and Aba, too, needed more than a mouth and some bandage. It needed conjure for full removal; otherwise the venom leftover would spread and mummify a person alive or, least of it, require amputation of a limb. Better than the death that would’ve resulted had Luther-Philip not been there to do something stupid out of desperation. Saint didn’t know Luther-Philip’s mouth had saved Justice and would’ve wondered how his teeth hadn’t rotted out in the process, but she assumed someone had helped him, always thinking first of Aba as the culprit of heroics useful or otherwise.
Even with a numbing leg, Justice marched on up that woman’s porch, looked her square in the eye, and, when he believed the moment best for it, whipped out his knife so fast the hot air chilled around him and Saint. ‘He won’t run away,’ Saint thought, ‘but he might have some maroon in him, yet.’
* * *
In the 1700s, Florida was under the control of the Spanish, who allowed Indigenous Americans and enslaved Africans to experience a kind of war-tied freedom that rivaled the non-freedom of chattel slavery and rejected American settler interference in all its boldness. The catch was that the Indigenous Americans, called Seminoles because they had escaped from various oppressions in the newly established Georgia and South Carolina, and the maroons, Black Seminoles consisting of both escaped enslaved Africans and Negroes who had never been slaves, had to defend Spanish land against the American colonizers. Freedom always had its price: substantial, horrific, a currency of blood. But some maroon groups broke off from both the Seminoles and the Spanish, wanting to remain untethered, unbothered, and unbeatable on their own terms. This is the group that had found Saint.
Saint eventually discovered she had washed up near the Apalachicola River, right at the bottom of the thin strip of land that ran beneath Alabama. A woman who had offered her shoulder for Saint to lean on as they left the shore took Saint to her home to rest. There, Saint found the living arrangements more than suitable and the hospitality eased her pounding head and stinging, dehydrated lips.
The woman, who called herself Essence, made Saint lie down on a pallet on the floor of a house in a settlement hidden amidst water tupelo reflected so clearly in the endless lake that the trees appeared to grow from themselves. With all this water, the mosquitos flew their hunger into her legs and arms. Itchy bumps covered her skin already patterned with throbbing bruises, and it took everything in her not to scratch herself worse. Her stomach itched. She lifted her shirt just enough to show a thin but noticeable dent in the side of her belly. Fingering it, she knew it meant something important, but gave up on trying to know what.
Essence stepped out of the cabin and returned with some cooked deer meat, rice, and dandelion greens. “From friends,” she said. Saint wondered if this woman and any of the others living there knew languages beside rain-on-tin, birdsong, and English. What she heard: a creole of French, Gullah, Spanish, Mikasuki, and Muskogee she would never learn.
Saint had been found off the Gulf of Mexico on May 3, 1758. By two weeks’ passing, she had become mostly herself, memory not included. When she looked at her hands, she knew they were hands, that they could build, sweep, cook, wash, sew, fold, open, harm, and humiliate; but she couldn’t remember a time when she did any of those things before waking up with sand and seashells in her hair. Occasional headaches pestered her. Déjà vu delivered her into deep melancholy, inspiring her sometimes to punch her lap or the ground in frustration when the simplest tasks reminded her of a past her mind could no longer touch.
Essence was pregnant and Saint hadn’t noticed when she arrived, too busy healing her tattered body and forcing herself into unsuccessful bouts of reminiscence. But now, able to move and smile without pain, no longer distracted by her own bruised state and faulty mind, she saw every detail she had missed during her stagnation.
One day, while watching Essence prepare supper, Saint thought of Essence’s firm belly as an egg where not only a child but also the beginning of a new world approached. Sometimes, she imagined being part of the world soon to come. Other times, she spiraled into sorrow when she saw Essence rub her belly. Essence’s pregnancy seemed most familiar of all occasions of déjà vu, and because Essence would be pregnant for a long time, Saint expected her sorrow to continue for just as long.
By July, Saint had completely merged with Essence’s household. There was Essence, of course, and her husband, Hu, who was part of the group that found Saint. He stood several inches taller than Essence with reddish brown skin. When he spoke, Saint understood him the least, but she learned his ways around words much like she had to learn her way around the land. He had shaven the sides of his head, leaving a single thick long braid of hair traveling down the center of his scalp and just past his shoulders. He kissed Essence frequently on her cheek, forehead, small pecks whenever he could, though Saint paid attention to the machete tucked to his left hip and the gun holstered on the right. He carried them everywhere, kissing on Essence while at any moment ready to sabotage a passing boat of colonists or assist with raiding some poorly defended plantation a day or two north in Alabama.
Sometimes, Essence threw metal bits she received from Hu’s pillaging into a large black pot that sat near the wall by a small table they used for eating meals together. An iron chain wrapped around the pot’s waist and sticks of cedar jutted from its mouth. Tucked amongst the sticks were tools: knives handle-down, hoes, hooks, and a few nails. Saint saw that a few planks of wood had several nails jutting from them. Essence must’ve pulled them off a ransacked boat or from a ruined house, Saint thought. She looked at the pot, a cauldron really, questioning its purpose and why Essence kept wasting good firewood and tools by leaving it all inside.
Essence and Hu treated Saint like a daughter. She appeared younger than they were, naive and a bit docile. Her soft skin confused them the most, dark and scarless. Even her head wound healed into newborn clarity. Her only scar marked her stomach, but they figured she was born with that one. Saint had a strong face, high cheekbones and brown eyes that seemed gentle at first but on second look contained a dangerous light. Essence was naturally tall, slender and long-limbed. Saint being a head shorter than her and a few heads shorter than Hu only made it easier to call Saint “girl.”
Despite Hu’s infrequent presence, the work he accomplished assisted not only Essence but the rest of the village. Whenever he returned, he came with sacks of hand tools, weapons, and rations to last them for a few more weeks, sometimes months. With these, Essence divvied out to her neighbors what she knew she didn’t need. Then Saint delivered it all to everyone in the village. She became known as the Bag Girl and they were always excited to see her.
Essence noticed Saint’s emotions went together with the weather. Coincidental at first, a downhearted glance matched an overcast sky. Shortly after, Saint laughed at one of the village cats assaulting a hen, and the clouds parted, revealing a sky that carried none of the animosity it held moments ago. Essence watched it happen for weeks until the second sign. Saint drew symbols into the mud and strange things would happen around the village. Some people became ill at random. Others were healed of an illness that had bothered them for years. Essence noticed that Saint used the same symbol, but the effect depended on if the base of the triangle faced toward or away from Saint. She also noticed how each symbol connected with a particular person depending on whoever upset or pleased her that day. Mama Sarah’s bad hip went limber as a newborn after she thanked Saint with a hug and a basket of fruit. Saint came home and idly drew a triangular shape with the point arrowing toward herself. Jon Jon, flirtatious and never keeping his hands to himself, got a strange bout of stomach cramps after slapping Saint on the behind and saying she needed to come to his house for more. She drew her triangle with the base facing her, and Jon Jon shat his guts out for two days straight.
“You got, in you, energy, girl. You been told that?” Essence asked, then shook her head to reject any answer. Saint would have no memory of being told that she had bad breath, let alone something as vague as energy. “Somebody told you. You wouldn’t remember them telling but somebody in life has told you. I tell you again.” Essence rubbed Saint’s locking hair with both hands and smiled. “Come with me tonight.”
Saint nodded. A light in Essence’s smile, some shimmer behind her lips that hinted at resolution, comforted Saint. That night, she followed Essence, who had packed enough supplies, food, and water for a few days, into the muddy wilderness. With the mirroring water around and beneath them, the night sky lit up like lanterns from their feet. Even pregnant—by how many months, Saint never asked—Essence moved quickly, the splashes beneath her nearly inaudible. ‘It would be a couple months more before the baby comes, three at the most,’ Saint thought, and tried to walk without shifting the water and soft earth too much beneath her. The ground pulled at her ankles such that when she lifted her feet, a sucking sound rang out. Why the earth wanted her more than it wanted Essence, she didn’t know.
