Grace Read Free

enough warm when cold winds blow through.
    Massa tol’ Momma that he give her a better life than the others on the row and say he can keep a good eye on us where we is. He’s particular about everything—how they hang clothes on the line to dry and how Miss Dean spin the cotton and stitch the clothes. He make a rule that Hazel got to keep her candle burning on the nights he come so he won’t mistake her for a rat or a coon and shoot her. She never forget. The candle she got burning now is brighter than ever.
    Massa brung that black man with him tonight, too. The one who started the knockin. I can feel him thumping Momma through the wall. It sets a pace in my chest like a drummer ’bout to lead a marching band. When I close my eyes, I imagine I see ’em, black boys dressed in raggedy clothes, holding fourth-hand instruments, ready to please the crowd.
    Knockin’s stopped.
    That means Momma’s through.
    Me and Hazel tiptoe fast to the split in the wall. Hazel always beat me to it cause she don’t never want me to see Momma after the knockin. Say it’s private. But I want the light from the other room to slide over my face, too, so I cheat and step back a little, just behind her.
    I can see Momma sitting on the edge of the bed wit no clothes on. That black man that was on top of her don’t have no clothes neither,just walking ’cross the room like he ain’t got no care in the world even though he black like us.
    He make the light disappear when he pass us.
    Massa Hilden’s in there, too, standing in the corner watching. He don’t never wear the jacket to that brown suit. His whole body’s swole up in the material, making it cinch tight around his waist like a blouse. A gap in his shirt spreads open where the button’s gone. It mouths silent words when his gut moves from breathing. The hair on his belly is poking through the gap, thick and coarse and tangled like a pile of wadded thread, brown and white. It loops and crisscrosses over his shiny pink belly fat.
    Cain’t see his silly shoes, though.
    Those make me laugh cause they long and skinny and ugly like the pillow bandages Hazel make for our monthly flow. He’s walking in ’em.
    On the back of his trousers, a lump sticks out above his butt where he keeps his pistol. Its off-white handle, the color of new teeth, is showing just above his waist and it keeps everybody in order, even white peoples. He always got it on him, can get downright dangerous when he’s drinking. Killed a white man a few years back. He tells people it was an accident but Hazel say he meant to. He shoot at a lot of people. Even my real daddy. It’s why Hazel knows my daddy was fast. Massa said my daddy wasted his time, wouldn’t sign the papers to buy that land, coulda sold it to somebody else so he shot at ’im. He called the law on Massa. Didn’t nothing happen, though.
    â€œNaomi, get back! You gon’ mess around and get us all killed,” Hazel whisper.
    â€œI just want to see his shoes, is all.”
    â€œShhh . . .” she say, waving me away.
    I ease back a little. “They leavin? Momma ready for us now?”
    I hear Massa. “I need males. Nine months of waiting needs to pay off bigger for me. These girls ain’t pulling in nothing. No more girls, you hear me? Else they gon’ end up like you.”
    â€œYes’sa, Massa Hilden,” Momma say. “God gon’ bless me wit a boy this time.”
    â€œAnd how’s Hazel?” he say. Hazel slides away from the wall slow like she don’t want to hear. She come toward me and I step aside, pretend I ain’t interested in getting in front of her to see Massa’s long baby feet.
    â€œShe should be of age now,” he say.
    â€œNo suh, no suh,” Momma say in a hurry. “She’s just a baby.”
    â€œYou just make sure it’s a boy this time.”
    â€œYes’sa, Massa Hilden.