She belted her part as she made her way closer to the white clapboard church. She was late as it was, having spent the morning talking with Jubi, who hadn’t set foot in St. Jos eph’s all of Gladys’s eighteen years. Not even for her baptism. Ruby and Sampson left guring their girl would make her way when she was done being doted on. On account of their positions in the church, they had to be at service early and had no time to tangle and tussle with Jubi, still color- struck after all these years. With her eyes near to the heavens, Gladys marveled at how the church ste eple poked away the clouds in the clear sky. Her focus was so xed on her destination, she didn’t listen for any di erences in the sounds she’d grown accustomed to, not even the grumble of the slow-moving pickup truck behind her. Inside, cousins Carl Darren Danube and JB Springer watched her form swish as their lips drooled beer from breath that still reeked of last night’s whiskey. “That gal, there, think she better than the rest of ’em,” JB said. He wiped his leaky lips with the back of his hand and passed a paper-bag- sheathed beer bottle to Carl Darren, who nodded in agreement. “She probably think she better than us,” Carl Darren said. “My granddaddy told me don’t trust none of them Duprees. He say they act the way they do on account of their color. All exc ept that gal’s mama. She ’bout the only one, I reckon, who know her place.” “Why don’t we have us some fun,” JB sneered from the driver’s seat. If Carl Darren had wanted to disagree, he didn’t. JB cr ept closer to Gladys, who never once looked over her shoulder. Nearing the house of worship, she picked up her part with the altos as the choir wrapped up its nal song before the sermon. Her own voice reverberated so much in her ears as she sang “The Lord is Blessing Me Right Now” that it wasn’t until the extra heat from the engine warmed her legs and bounced gravel nicked her calves that she knew she was not alone. Holding tight to her shoes, Gladys st epped o the road and into the elds to let whoever was behind her pass. Instead, they slowed. She dropped her arm from her hat and gazed at the ground. Carl Darren, with his arm hanging out of the window, seemed to press his back into the leather seat of the truck. JB leaned across him.
“Whatchu doin’ out here on the road all alone?” His lips turned to reveal a pernicious smile Gladys tried not to see. She didn’t know whether to raise her head and respond or ke ep her head down and pray for them to pass. “I asked you a question,” JB demanded. She raised her eyes, then answered, “Just headed to church.” “You think the good Lord save souls like yours?” “I don’t know.” Gladys stared back down at the ground. “I reckon we won’t know ’til judgment day.” “We can be the judge of that.” JB snickered and patted Carl Darren on the chest. He cut the engine to the truck, opened the door, and hopped down. As he made his way around to Carl Darren’s side, Gladys st epped back onto the road and continued her walk. She wanted the music to overtake her mind but couldn’t a ord the oblivion of distraction. She had to pay attention. Hadn’t her mama always told her to be aware of her surroundings? Hadn’t Jubi told her to never trust white folks, no matter how nice or well-meaning they were? Hadn’t Mama Em told her to never get close enough to be needing their niceness? All her life she’d heard the whisperings of the women in her family about the ways of white folks. Whisperings that ceased when they realized she was in the room. But even in the snatches of conversation she caught from the hidden corners of the two-room house she shared with Ruby and Sampson, the lesson was always the same. As her daddy said, “Don’t trust ’em. Don’t put nothing past ’em.” What would he say if he knew she was in a position of needing their niceness now? Speci cally from JB and Carl Darren. The worst ones to need well intentions from. She’d seen how Carl Darren, his daddy, and even his granddaddy, if he happened to be around, treated her when she went with Ruby into town. She always felt an extra chill as soon as she crossed the threshold. It pulled up her back like a ngernail tracing from the base of her spine to the middle of her neck. Facing the Danubes unnerved Gladys, but not Ruby. Rendered immobile and useless, Gladys would wait for her mama at the door of the store under the
watchful eyes of the Danube men, who counted every dollar down to the penny before they let Ruby leave, lest they be cheated out of what they’d never miss. Gladys knew slinking away from Carl Darren and JB would be much more di cult now. She had no cover to cling to, no person to protect her, and God himself was a mile away if he was an inch. “Where you runnin’ o to so fast?” JB asked. “My mama and daddy waiting for me at church,” Gladys said. “They shouldn’t have left you behind. A pretty little thing like you. Anything could happen.” JB and Carl Darren fell in line behind Gladys’s purposed and intentioned st eps. JB walked with a hitch, hard and wanting, as Carl Darren shu ed to ke ep up. Gladys mumbled her song; hymns trembled on her lips as she clutched her shoes and held her hat even tighter. All her limbs had a job to do. One in opposition to the boys behind her. JB reached for her shoulder and pulled her backward until he could throw his full arm around her body. He maneuvered her neck toward one of his stinking pits as he whispered that it wasn’t right for her to ignore them. “God say you’re supposed to love your neighbor,” he espoused. “Ain’t that right, Carl Darren?” “It sound like the good book to me.” Gladys tried to pull away, but JB clutched her close. “So tell me something, Gladys Dupree...” She looked up, shocked he knew her name. A smile played across his face. A grin so wide and devious she could make out the devil in his dimples. He had sandy hair, greasy and stringy, stubbly shadow, and gray eyes. Gladys knew JB could be handsome, charming, and unassuming when he wanted. She knew there were girls in Land’s End who would have welcomed the attention she was so easily receiving. But those girls were nothing like her. And with them, JB and Carl Darren would behave nothing like this. “... Do you love me and my cousin the way God says you s’posed to?” “I reckon,” Gladys answered, looking down toward the ground. “How can you say that and you ain’t never showed us? Has she, Carl?” “ ’Fraid not.”
JB pulled a stful of Gladys’s dress as he squeezed her neck and shoulders. “Don’t run, now,” he mused, adjusting his belted pants. “Carl Darren, get her.” From behind, Carl Darren grabbed Gladys and covered her mouth. She could neither get out of his grasp nor run around JB, who blocked her path. O the road and into the elds, Carl Darren pulled Gladys by the arms while JB shoved her torso. De eper and de eper they went, into the cotton that was no taller than their waist. Not yet in full bloom, the eld was more green leaves and yellow owers than the white bolls that wouldn’t show until S eptember. “Grab her feet,” JB hu ed, out of breath. “It’ll be easier that way.” Drunk as they were, they stumbled under the sun beaming on their heads as they hauled her deadweight. Even Gladys closed her eyes against the bright rays that promised of the oppressive summer to come. Not that she knew anything about working in the eld. Perhaps it’s the reason they chose her. Like Carl Darren and JB, Gladys had gone to school. She’d graduated. She’d planned to go to college. They assumed she thought herself better. They mistook her fear for arrogance, but to them it was all the same. Uppity was uppity. “This good enough right here,” JB said, dropping Gladys’s feet. Steady, she bit the ngers of Carl Darren’s free hand and ran. “The bitch bit me,” he yelped. JB tackled her. She thudded to the soft earth, skin scraped on the way down by the spurs of plants that had yet to open. Her hat shifted forward on her head and covered her eyes. The shoes she had casually dangled by her ngertips, she gripped like a barrier that could ke ep them from her. In the end it wasn’t to be so. Gru hands tore at her dress. Mouths whispered lthy words against her ears. Belts jangled loose, followed by the unmistakable zip of pants coming undone and the shu e of limbs detangling themselves from clothing. Gladys bucked her legs and hips, but they pounced upon her body, one forced to hold her still while the other thrusted. She did not plead. Gladys did not beg. She froze. And even this they took for insolence. Her fear mistaken for hubris. JB was insulted at the nerve of her pride. As if it alone would ke ep her from ruin. In his blinding anger, he wound his belt around his hand and
whipped Gladys’s hat-covered face with the wide gold buckle until the straw tore, her yellow skin bled, and her mind went blank in blackness. W HEN G LADYS AWOKE, IT WAS to birds circling the air above her. They hovered low, ready to peck her clean. S eparate skin from bone. She felt around her body. Legs, arms, face. Blood coated her ngers, thick and goopy. It didn’t pour from the wound. It coagulated in the cut, clotting for the preservation of skin. Between the absence of voices in the distance and the position of the sun in the sky, Gladys gured it was late evening, almost supper time. T h e y g o n ’ b e l o o k i n g f o r m e , she thought to herself as she tried to stand. Her feet barely held her, even though it had been more than four hours since she was attacked. When she was nally upright, she noticed the stickiness and throbbing pain between her legs. The pulsing from her face. Her dress was tattered, but she was still alive. Gladys left the shoes but grabbed her hat. She smashed it onto her head and held it there as she stumbled out of the cotton elds. On the road, she could see her home. Sampson’s truck wasn’t in front. No doubt he was looking for her. It was just as well anyway. Gladys didn’t want to walk in the front door. Didn’t want her shame to even darken Deacon Sampson’s doorst ep. Instead, she cut through the elds on the other side of the road until she came to the clearing between the new house and the old. The new house was the one Sampson had built on Emma’s land. The one that sat in front of the fork, judging everybody who made a left. The old house was the one Emma had grown up in, raised by Evangeline. Approaching the house, Gladys smelled supper cooking from the pots inside. She let herself in and welcomed the shadows of the dim room. “Ruby, that you?” Jubi called from a corner Gladys couldn’t determine. “You nd her?” Gladys opened her mouth, but no sound es caped. She had none to give. Neither reason nor explanation. She thought it best if she was found, even if she had to do the legwork of her own rescue. “Chile... Gladys, is that you?” Jubi came closer to the door and saw Gladys standing stock-still just inside it. “What happened?” she asked.
Gladys opened her lips but said nothing. “Jubilee, who is it?” Emma called from de ep within the old house. Her voice, though hoarse, pronounced her full name, as Emma had intended her to be called. “Gladys, Mama,” Jubi answered. The irritation in her r eply was as evident as the skin she could not shed and the heritage she failed to hide. Turning back to Gladys, Jubi closed her eyes and took a de ep breath. “Looking the way you do, it was bound to happen.” She shook her head. “C’mon in here and let us get you cleaned up.” Jubi took Gladys by the arm and walked her slowly through the house until they were in the living space. What used to be the only space. There she left Gladys standing alone as she busied herself dragging out a massive tin washtub and a small cauldron. “What’s going on in here?” Emma asked. She emerged from the bedroom she at one time shared with George; a shawl draped around her shoulders and wool socks covered her shu ing feet. Gladys turned her head slightly. It was enough for acknowledgment but not enough to see, hoping she wouldn’t be seen in return. “I’m gettin’ Gladys cleaned up. That’s what’s going on,” Jubi answered. “What happened?” Emma croaked. She cleared her throat as Jubi kissed her teeth. “Can’t you see what happened?” In the dim light, Emma had to strain her bluing eyes to see Gladys clearly. It wasn’t until she was beside her, lifting the strips of the ripped dress, gently pressing the gash across her cheek, and eyeing her bare legs streaked with dirt and blood, that she understood her own daughter’s contempt. Gladys, the baby of the family, could no longer be treated as such. She had encountered the ways of the wicked in Land’s End. The ones who’d run Jubi back across the tracks. Those who’d hated Evangeline’s and later Emma’s midwifery work, but called on them in the dead of night when one of their own was losing too much blood during a hospital birth. Those same ones who’d taken her mother from her before she’d even opened her eyes. Emma saw their handiwork as Gladys stood
waiting for a way forward. Or better yet, a way out. But all she could be o ered was a ticket through. “Take them clothes o ,” Jubi instructed. She poured hot water from the cauldron she lled from one of the pots on the stove and then headed outside to the garden. Mama Em put her own hands to work, taking her great-grand girl apart bit by bit. The raggedy dress slipped from her shoulders and the tattered slip fell from her hips. Torn underclothes were pulled down and away until Gladys could do nothing more but hold on to her hat. It was all she had then. It was all she had now. But Emma knew better. Her gentle ngers grazed across Gladys’s back and pulled her in close. She removed the straw from her hands and dropped it on the pile. Emma’s embrace was the only salve for what Gladys braced herself through. The old woman let her feel all of her until her shoulders dropped, her back slumped, and her head drooped into the crook of Emma’s shoulder. The thick blood from the gash on her cheek began to loosen and run with the wetness of her salty tears. Gladys w ept the way she wouldn’t with Carl Darren and JB until her cries turned to sobs, her sobs to wails, and her wails to convulsions, rocking both her and Emma’s frail body. “C’mon now,” Jubi said, coming in with a bundle of herbs. “Ain’t no use carrying on like this. What’s done is done.” “Give her time, Jubilee. She ain’t got what you made of.” “I’m sure it’s making in her now. C’mon, baby, get in.” Jubi gently pulled Gladys from Emma’s bosom and helped her settle in the tub. Gladys didn’t even wince from the heat. Steam swirled as she lowered herself down. Despite the length of the trough, Gladys drew her knees to her chest, circled her arms around herself, and buried her head. In her own cocoon, she sat in the water unmoving, not at rest. “Jubilee, you gon’ need some more herbs in that water—” “I already got ’em, just trying to get her settled.” “Well, you better get to it. I hear the truck pulling up outside.” Emma shu ed to the door. It slammed as she and Jubi st epped onto the rickety porch, leaving Gladys in the tub of steaming water and leafy herbs:
mugwort and rosemary, dandelion and lavender, chamomile and sage, and a heavy hand of cotton root just to be safe. On the porch, Emma took to the rocking chair her George had carved and whittled while Jubi stood behind the rail. With the truck parked in front of the new house, it was only a moment before Ruby and Sampson burst through their back door. Surprise etched across their faces to see Emma and Jubi waiting for them. “Where’s my baby?” Ruby asked, breathless. “Inside,” Jubi answered. “We need to see her. There’s talk in town and across the tracks?” “Go’n inside.” Ruby and Sampson moved as one, but Emma held up her hand. “Just Ruby,” she said. Sampson looked from his love, the color of the universe before God called for light, to her mothers twice over. Their white-oak faces studied his cinnamon with stern warning. One he ignored. He said, “She’s my daughter too.” “Some things men ain’t meant to see,” Emma added. “I’ll holler if we need you,” Ruby said. She moved forward toward her mother and grandmother, never once looking back. They had decided that she must see Gladys alone. Sampson watched Ruby clear the few yards between the back porch of the new house and the front porch of the old. He xed his eyes on the locks of her thick brown hair braided tight to her scalp, until she was gone. Until all that was left to look at were her mothers, who bore screws through his skin, so much darker than theirs, until he had no duty but to retreat. Their hard faces r epeated what Emma had already made clear. S o m e t h i n g s m e n a i n ’ t m e a n t t o s e e . They had never shown weakness in front of anyone before, and they weren’t about to start now, even if he was kind of their own. Jubi waited until Sampson’s door slammed shut before she helped Emma out of the rocker. They walked inside the old house, hand in hand, to see Ruby kneeling beside Gladys in the tub. “Who did this?” she asked.
Gladys didn’t say. She didn’t lift her head to address her mother. She didn’t turn around to see Jubi and Emma. Hugged to herself, Gladys wished to abandon her body the way she had lost her mind when she had the audacity to stroll on to church as if she owed neither taxes nor tithe. “What you heard in town?” Emma asked the question Jubi was too afraid to give voice. She knew how gossip swirled. Truth and lies digested like soup all in one swallow. “Heard something about some boys bragging across the tracks?” Ruby answered. “ ‘Some boys’ got a name?” Emma asked. “JB for sure,” Ruby answered. “Maybe Carl Darren.” Jubi inhaled the wisps of her wraiths. “I’m glad you know your mess when you hear it,” Emma chided. “It ain’t wrong wantin’ a better life,” Jubi said. They carried on conversation as if Gladys and Ruby weren’t sitting amongst them. Not that they were listening. Jubi and Emma spoke freely, taking up sides in their same ght. Ruby reached into the water, not bothering to unbutton her blouse sleeves, searching for a towel. “Your clothes getting soaked,” Gladys said, as she felt her mother’s ngers move around her body. “They ain’t more important than you. Besides, this shirt gotta be cleaned anyhow. All the sweating I did in service trying to praise my way away from worryin’ ’bout you, it’s some funky.” Ruby laughed, trying to inspire her daughter to do the same, but she was met with a portent of silence. Towel in hand, she squeezed water on Gladys’s back, leaving a trail of herbs sticking to her skin. “You gon’ have to wash her hair too,” Emma said. “Can’t leave that devilment lingering on her head.” “I will,” Ruby answered. “I’ll help you,” Jubi said, coming over to the washtub. “I’ll make the tea,” Emma said. “What for?” Jubi questioned.
Emma gave her a hard stare, willing words to stay on the right side of her mouth. Though the sentiment was the same, as old as they were, it no longer had the e ect it once did. Jubi rolled her eyes and ignored the warning. She humphed then sneered, “If’n she anything like us, it’s a boy, and she won’t need no tea.” “Remember, I wasn’t like y’all,” Ruby said softly to Jubi beside her. “Jubilee!” Emma sang, her tone another test. “We don’t leave these things to chance.” Emma shu ed into the kitchen to pr epare the tea beside the res simmering the long-forgotten supper. On either side of the washtub, Jubi and Ruby, mother and daughter, scrubbed Gladys until her skin was smooth and tender to the touch. Squeezing the towel over her head, Ruby washed her daughter’s hair last. With care, she scratched and massaged her scalp the same as she had her body. “Mama, you’ll get me a comb, please,” Ruby asked, raking her ngers through Gladys’s lush, sandy-brown tendrils. Her hair curled at the roots and waved at the ends, nearly straight, like Jubi’s and Mama Em’s. She was more their daughter than Ruby’s. Favored them in what Jubi would say were all the right ways. Now she was bound to them by burden. Connected through a cautionary tale. “Here you go,” Jubi said, handing over a ne-toothed comb. “Thank you.” Ruby studied it for a moment, knowing she had never used such a comb for herself. It would have snapped in half before it ever pulled through her tight coils with ease. Shaking her head, Ruby released the old indignity. She raked her ngers through Gladys’s hair and chased it with the comb, detangling the strands and making sections. When she was done, she dropped it on the oor and let her hands do the rest. They pulled together Gladys’s hair into a neat braid that stopped well below the nape of her neck. Length was all they had in common. Jubi braced her body against the braid. An a r ont to all she’d become. “I wish you wouldn’t do that.” “Why not?” Ruby asked. “You know why, and ain’t no need in getting Mama started today. Old as she is, it’ll put her in the ground.”
“It won’t, and you know it.” Ruby smirked. “You don’t know what’ll do what. We’ve been killed for less.” “Gladys didn’t die today.” “Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t. Who’s to say?” “She is,” Ruby said. “Lean back for me, baby.” Jubi marched away from the tub and joined Emma outside as Gladys reclined like she was told. Under her mother’s touch, she tolerated the cooling water oating with conjure potions a mite longer. Ruby worked her arms and shoulders, humming hymns, until Gladys let her head fall into her hands, giving up more of what she’d tried to hold tight. Of what she’d wanted to brace alone. “You gon’ be all right, you know that, baby,” Ruby said gently. “You sure?” Gladys asked. “I am. This don’t change nothing. Nothing at all.” “You sure?” “Only if you let it. That’s the only way this can have power. Is if you let it.” “What about Eugene?” Gladys whispered. Ruby stilled her hands from their work on her daughter’s body. She was intentional about not letting the end of her healing be abrupt, but this question was one she hadn’t planned for. In her own worry with Sampson, she hadn’t considered that there could be someone else with as much care or concern. Yes, she knew Eugene Washington was courting her daughter, but she’d never imagined it to be serious. Not since he was fourteen years older and Gladys was dead set on going to Tougaloo to become a nurse and not some man’s wife. She assumed on account of the age di erence alone it was only kind words they were ke eping due to the distance, not a serious relationship with the prospect of marriage. Ruby asked, “When does he come back?” “Saturday.” Ruby detected the desperate hope in Gladys’s voice and let her lead. “Well,” she began, “if that’s what you want—” “It is, Mama.” Gladys sat up in the tub and turned her head to face Ruby. Whispering, she added, “In case trouble comes.”
Ruby nodded, thankful her complexion didn’t give away the blood draining from her countenance. In their family, trouble always came. She thought that by now the curse had been broken. Taken a season o like the fallow land on the farm. But now she saw it persisted just like the generations. Returning stronger and with vengeance. In half a day, Gladys had reorganized her future on account of what was done to her. She swapped school for security, education for Eugene. Playing with all the permutations, Ruby stroked Gladys’s braid and nodded her head. She acc epted the rash hoping it was wise. “You ought not put him o ...” She couldn’t bring herself to add the fear Gladys had already aired. I n c a s e t r o u b l e c o m e s . Ruby knew it had already arrived.
J u n e 1 9 5 3 It wasn’t until Gladys was gone for good that Jubi crossed the tracks for the last time in her life to put all trouble to bed. She set out for Danube General Store. Sure, she could have asked Sampson to carry her in his truck, but she wanted people to see her walk. She wanted the nosy neighbors, church ladies, and anyone else who’d come to get their ll of the latest Dupree family fall to know, which was grounded in incontrovertible fact, instead of just hearing about it. In a white skirt suit she’d made for herself, plus matching gloves, pantyhose, short heels, and no hat, Jubi walked unhidden with her long, now-gray hair, loose about her shoulders, swinging across her back. She may have been dressed like one of St. Jos eph’s ushers, but her mission was nothing close to biblical. But it was of God. If necessary, vengeance would be hers. And who could blame her? Carl Darren and JB going after Gladys was certainly a sin and a shame. At least that was the consensus from the porch-watching neighbors who had nothing better to do after a day of work than to talk about the goings-on at the Dupree house. They’d been shut out and ranks had closed against them from even asking H o w d o ? when passing the porch or borrowing a cup of sugar ever since Jubi came back bloody from across the tracks. Seeing her in all her white—for she was still in ritual with Emma—w alking with no hat, not even trying to ke ep her precious skin from turning color, they could do nothing but be gobsmacked by their own speechlessness. Their general pitiable condescension turned over into muted pride. They let her pass them by before they began a new line of p eppery prate. “Did y’all see Jubilee walking into town?” “She looked some good, huh?”