Sapphire's Grave Read Free

just
do it tomorrow;
and finally, they did not do it at all or talk about doing it or, eventually, even think about it.
    But when he was gone, she could think of little else: his hands his mouth his breath and his eyes, wide with wonder and excitement when he came.
    Sometimes, she recalled the smell of hibiscus and juniper, on a dew-soaked April morning, beneath the elm.
    And there lived in Sister the memory of things horrid to recall; things she had lived in her own time; things passed to her from her mother, and her mother, who had received them from hers. Sister chose not to recall. She would not cause her daughter to recall. They would be free of this memory, and pure. The former days were past, carefully interred, and securely, she thought; and all things had become new.
    LICKSKILLET, WARREN COUNTY, NORTH CAROLINA
    SEPTEMBER, 1873
    There had been a time when life was new, and love untried; when love, in fact, had filled these very rooms. That had been when she was young and thoughtless. She had assumed that things would always be this way. Never had it occurred to her that he was not “future-minded.” The too lavish gifts during the early days of their marriage, she had accepted eagerly and with appreciation. He was a good man, hardworking and devoted. Maturity, purpose, and a vision for their future would come later. She had been sure of it, as she squeezed his large brown hand, dry even in the sweltering summer heat. She had envisioned growing old together.
    But not so soon, and not like this. She could not recall just how or when the fabric of their well-woven love had become frayed at its edges, the delicate porcelain bracelets and carved figurines becoming relics of a long past and foolish time of extravagance. The babies had come in rapid succession, leaving her strained and impatient, as cruel, cold winters, scant meals, and past due debts ushered in a harsh reality.
    They whispered of her Sunday mornings, supposing that she did not hear:
He be wit’ his woman on Thursday nights, while she prayin’.
Straight-backed, steely-eyed, Sister brushed past these women in their severe white dresses and, one child’s small hand held tightly in each of hers, she lowered herself stiffly onto a pew, all the while staring straight ahead at the mammoth cross that lent a calculated austerity to the otherwise humble schoolhouse, which on Sundays doubled as the Bull Swamp Methodist Church. Thus seated, she would squeeze her eyes shut against the hot torrent of tears that pushed past her lashes to stream down her carefully powdered cheeks. Always, she thanked God first for her height and carriage. They communicated a haughtiness and indifference that she did not possess but needed desperately to convey, enabling her to disguise her pain as piety until it subsided, finally, mercifully, if only briefly.
    And after a time, she would no longer wonder about his paramours, about who, how long, how frequently, or how many. These questions, like most others, would cease to matter. Gone—the artless girl of so many hopes and unspoken pleas ago; gone, her eyes would tell him each time he looked at her, to some distant place where his touch no longer melted her and his tears no longer moved her and his words, thankfully, could no longer hurt her.
    This morning, as on many others, she rose before dawn to begin her washing. But this time, she paused in the doorway of her shotgun hut, squinting at the darkness that stretched ahead, listening, but hearing only the breathing of her sleeping children.
    Last night, she had dreamed an indecipherable dream of yellow-eyed witches and devilment, and things unspoken, unheard of. She had dreamed of pirates and thieves transporting human treasure stolen from another continent; of loss and sorrow and heaviness too awesome to bear; and of a broken heart, and contrite spirit. She had dreamed of a great black bird, its wings spanning an ocean. Without understanding, she had nodded and said:
Yes, Lord. Thy