Sapphire's Grave Read Free Page B

fingernails as the woman brought her hands to her face and cried. Touched by the woman’s distress, Sister searched for words of comfort. A slight movement not six feet from the woman caught Sister’s eye; and there, on the dirt floor, lay a tiny bloody mass of human flesh and exposed bone, gasping desperately and hopelessly for life.
    The woman vanished with all of her surroundings.
    Sister awoke with a start.
    Each morning thereafter, Sister awoke with an aching jaw and grinding teeth, surprised to find how tightly they had been clenched throughout the night. Her back began to give her trouble. Her hair fell out in clumps.
    And a spirit came to rest upon her. Subtle at first, it went unnoticed as she went about her tasks:
Aloneness
; then Sadness followed. Before she knew it, they had settled comfortably, growing sturdy and rotund.
    The others, Anger and Worry and Death, also flourished unnoticed. Each day began to blur into the next as Sister slowly came undone, detaching herself from her children, her surroundings, her miserable reality.
    Before long, her absence from the pews at Bull Swamp caught the attention of the overtly righteous: Those who with practiced eye sought out and discovered opportunities for public displays of charity and compassion. This vanguard brought the following disturbing report to the Bull Swamp Motherhood Board and Missionary Group Number Two: Sister had been feeling poorly. Her usually tidy home was in disarray, and the children needed tending to. Certain of their heavenly reward, the women determined that they would visit Sister at home.
    And so they came with covered heads, outfitted in white and carrying their bibles. They opened steaming covered dishes, fed the children, and saw that they bathed. They set the disordered house to gleaming, tactfully not mentioning or alluding to the wayward husband’s conspicuous absence.
    Finally, silently, the women joined hands in prayer. It had become apparent to all present that their reserved Sister, whose snooty arrogance had often occasioned their annoyance, was in a much more sorry state than they had first imagined: Her sickness was one of spirit, not flesh, and her ailment was of the heart.
    As they began to pray and leap and shout in earnest, they noted that their formerly pious Sister did not pray, but instead stared glassy-eyed ahead, an expression of serene patience on her heretofore expressionless face. One by one, they fell silent.
    And within each one of them,
godness
stirred, moving them to compassion. Mother Hedgebeth moved to take Sister’s hand.
    “Baby, we don’t know what it is, but it ain’t go’ do you no good to hold it in. ’Taint no secret what God can do if you jes—”
    “ ’Taint no God.” An audible and collective gasp was followed by a hushed astonishment in the small spotless room, and Sister smiled contemptuously at the cadre of stunned believers. “Betcha didn’t know that,” she added.
    SHOCCO CREEK, WARREN COUNTY, NORTH CAROLINA
    JUNE, 1874
    There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass
through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a
witch.
    —Deuteronomy 18:10—Exodus 22:18
    Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.

—Exodus 22:18
    It was June. The merciless heat and the endless outpouring of anger, sorrow, and hurt had taken its toll.
No more today,
she thought. She feared that her power was waning. Wiping the sweat from her brow, the sorceress sat heavily in a cane-backed chair. She sighed, releasing a gale that whistled faintly as it moved across the barely furnished room; wove its way through the rows of candles arranged on small, rectangular tables of varying heights; and settled against a wall covered with gilt-framed mirrors. She caught a glimpse of her own reflection in the dwindling, late-afternoon light that peeked through the small round window above her head. The skin was becoming sallow. Small bags were