heaven, telling tall tales to the Lord. She listened, passing time by pushing a needle through an embroidery patch, humming her lips and rocking her back to disrupt the silence of bodies ceasing to function. He continued, “You know Evangeline did more to ke ep me rich than I ever did.” Z ephaniah Foster directed his attention toward Emma. He didn’t call her to his bedside for fear of seeing a mixed re ection that would surely haunt him on his way to death’s door. Instead, he talked at her while she sat idle on the oor at the foot of the bed. “Everybody would have died if it wasn’t for your mammy. I k ept ’em bred and she k ept ’em fed. When the yellow fever spread through the quarters, I thought I was going to lose it all. The niggers and the harvest. But Evangeline got us through. Healed them all one by one. Wasn’t down longer than a week or two before we were back up and running. Anything I needed her to do, she did. Even when she didn’t want to... like how you was born. I’ve never forgotten that. After all these years, I got no choice but to nally make it right.” That evening, when it was just Emma and Evangeline in the quarter shack, Emma asked, “What Mr. Dupree mean when he said you didn’t want to do something when I was born?” “Chile, don’t concern yourself with the fool talk of a dead man,” Evangeline dismissed. “He got to get all his words out before he go in the ground.” Emma wanted to mind her ma’am. Had planned to, really, had not Z ephaniah Foster died in the night. Between the sorry gathering for the funeral and no one else to read the last will and testament to besides those who worked the land, Evangeline was some surprised when it came to pass that he had told the truth. “As for the matter of my estate, all land parcels and property structures, I, Z ephaniah Foster Dupree, of sound mind and body, do leave all my worldly possessions to Evangeline and daughter Emma.” The Land’s End town attorney, a man by the name of Watkins, stumbled over the words as he read them. His forehead damp beneath the curved brim of his top hat, he removed it to wipe his brow as he read the words again and again. More to himself than anyone else, because who could believe a white man had
left his house, his land, his money, clothes, and jewels, to a colored, let alone a colored w o m a n . It was scandalous if it was true. Begged the question, what kind of hoodoo had she worked on him to make him so bene volent in death when he had been anything but kind in life? But the gift was given on account of one condition being ful lled. “Emma must attend school to learn the facts and guring of an enterprise such as this.” Watkins, so besotted by the words he’d read, k ept murmuring to himself. But the matter was settled. The will nal. Since it was written in Z ephaniah Foster’s own hand, and with no living relatives to contest its validity, Watkins folded the papers, placed them back in the Bible he’d retrieved them from, and handed it all over to Evangeline—will, Bible, and keys. He had barely galloped his horse across the boundary line of the Dupree farm before Evangeline gave her rst order to the families working the land in freedom as they had enslaved. “Take what you want and tear the house and that tree down,” she said, nodding toward the large oak standing proud between the stables and the shacks where they lived. “I’ma continue minding my business, and y’all can mind your’n.” The next day, obedient to a dead man’s wishes, Evangeline sent Emma to the freedmen’s school, lest she be haunted by a restless soul on the other side. It was inside the school, a quarter shack on an abandoned farm nearby, where Emma’s curiosity was piqued and she was left with another question. Upon introducing herself and where she came from, the teacher asked if she knew her birthday. Emma stared blankly at the brown woman, whose hard vowels and clipped speech belied her Northern-born upbringing. The teacher tried again. Asked if she had any idea how old she might be. It was a question Emma had never heard before. What did she know about age? Of course she returned to Evangeline for an answer. One the old woman was reluctant to give. “Why the teacher need to know that?” she asked. “To put me with my right group,” Emma answered. “Ain’t like they ever seen you befo’. Why cain’t they just put you with the new chillun? You don’t know nothing ’bout no book learning.”
“But do you know how old I am, or my birthday, or when I was born?” Emma persisted. “I suspect it’s in the record books I pulled out of the big house, but I can’t ’cipher them letters and numbers.” The answer was satisfactory. Enough to ke ep Emma from questioning even more. She didn’t know that on the occasion of her birth Evangeline had k ept an excellent record of her own. One she would never forget. Evangeline recognized the coming of Emma’s day of return with the change of the seasons from winter to spring. The encroaching of longer days and shorter nights always brought with it a thickness in the atmosphere. More than humidity, there was a heaviness hanging. Lurking. The kind of environment where the wet heat grips and you either grow or you rot. And even that is a kind of growth in itself. Especially for a secret. The rot spreads and metastasizes over everything in its path until the malignant cannot be deciphered from the healthy, the good from the bad, the help from the harm. Untold mysteries thrive in such an underbelly. They threaten to consume all who try to contain them. Evangeline could always feel it cre eping like moss or a vine. It was waiting to greet her, to remind her of what happened before and what was still to come. That’s why Evangeline welcomed Emma’s third inquiry all on her own. Too full with the untold threatening to burst, it happened on Census Day. Evangeline had heard about the assistant marshals going from house to house, taking record of all the families. They’d started on the other side of the sliver of land that had been cordoned o by white contractors driving colored inmates for the railroad to come. When a marshal nally reached the Dupree place, Evangeline stood outside the quarter shack with Emma and readily gave him the information he asked for. Name: Evangeline Dupree. Race: Colored. Age: Unknown. Occupation: Midwife. Husband: Henry Dupree. Deceased. “Ma’am, you was married?” Emma asked.
“We jumped de broom when he couldn’t stud no mo’,” Evangeline began. “But the consumption got him couple years before you came along. Was the only one I couldn’t save. Truth be told, my Henry was so stubborn, he ain’t wannna be saved.” Emma chuckled with Evangeline. The census taker, peeved and impatient, cleared his throat and spat a brown, slimy wad of tobacco-tinged phlegm near their feet. They both shu ed over to avoid the mucus sitting atop the dusty road. While Emma stared at the ground, Evangeline met the man’s icy gaze with her own cold glare, both incensed by the other’s insolence. He continued: Children: None. “Then who is this gal here beside you?” the census taker asked. “She mine, but she ain’t m i n e . Cain’t you tell? She in the world by herself. You can record her as such.” “We don’t record children without they parents.” “Well, you gon’ have to for this one,” Evangeline said, looking down toward Emma. “I’ll tell you what you need to know and you can write it down just like you did for me.” The marshal, instructed to make as little show of authority as possible, disagreed in silence and wrote the information as Evangeline gave it. Name: Emma Dupree. Race: Mulatto. Age: Emma looked expectantly for Evangeline’s answer. Never taking her eyes away from the marshal, she said, “She was born the same year the war started.” “Eighteen and sixty-one,” he said. Emma did the quick guring in her head and exclaimed, “I’m nine, ma’am. I’m nine years old.” “Yes, you is. Now hush.” Occupation: Husband: Children: “Is there a place where she can put her parents?” Evangeline asked.
“I guess she can write it down where it says children. The gov’ment’ll gure it out.” Children Parents: Emma looked to Evangeline. Evangeline to the marshal. She said, “For her pa, write Z ephaniah Foster Dupree.” “Old Master Dupree was my pa?” Emma asked. “Who else could it be?” Evangeline shifted her weight from foot to foot on the rickety porch where she stood as the marshal dipped his pen in ink and wrote the name as he’d been told. When he nished forming the nal letters, he and Emma turned expectantly, but Evangeline had gone silent. Eyes closed, mouth shut in a line, she neither looked nor spoke, though she could feel Emma’s eyes imploring her to give up the ghosts. The marshal sighed with edged impatience. “What’s the ma’s name? I knows you know it.” “I knows it. But you don’t need it.” Evangeline st epped o the porch and marched past the marshal toward the farm storehouse. “C’mon, Emma. I gots work to do.” Emma scampered behind her, leaving the marshal as bewildered as she. Evangeline gured an age and a pa would have to be enough for one day. It was more knowledge than Emma had ever had about herself her whole life, but now that she’d been fed she was insatiable. Hungry for what Evangeline swallowed. Greedy, she p eppered her with questions. “Did you know my r e a l ma’am?” “What was she like?” “What did she look like?” “Was she big like you?” “Light like me?” “Wait, did you deliver me from her like you do the other women’s babies?” It was the last question Evangeline silently prayed Emma wouldn’t think to ask. The girl had been assisting her with births for the last couple years. She was training her up in roots and wombs and knowing when to pluck at their peak both herbs and babies. She’d told herself as she watched the marshal make his
way to their door that she’d tell Emma the truth. The whole bloody, sordid a air. But now that the time had come, she wasn’t sure if she could handle it, never mind Emma. “Ma’am, did you birth me too?” Emma asked again. Evangeline stole a glance at the girl, who had eyes wide as the moon. Though she wasn’t dark like the cosmos her mama came from, she held her features all the same. Eyes, lips, dimples, and twitching ears. Everything else was Z ephaniah Foster Dupree. Evangeline studied Emma—th e innocent and the evil resting in one face—and made her choice. “Ma’am?” Emma asked again. “I birthed you,” Evangeline said. “ ’Twas the same day yo’ real mammy died.” “Oh.” Emma paused. Relief and confusion washed over her at once, her delight short-lived much like her own mother’s life. Evangeline didn’t know how old she was when she died. Only that she was young, just a few years into her tide. Fecund and nubile enough to carry and birth, but much too young to die. Evangeline turned the only words she had to describe that day over in her mouth. She folded them between her lips, teeth, and tongue, like she would later do to her chewing tobacco. Only this she had to be careful how she spit. Wouldn’t be no tin can to catch it but a person. Emma. The daughter. “What was her name?” Emma asked quietly. Another question Evangeline hadn’t expected. She was ready to answer what happened and why. She was even ready to answer for her role, forced at the lash of Z ephaniah Foster Dupree as she was. She was not pr epared to color in the details. The de ning features that make a person whole. Amongst them being a name. To speak of the dead in anything but reverence and remembrance of who they were when they were alive was to curse them on the other side. Evangeline didn’t know enough about Emma’s ma’am’s beginnings to tell her about the end a n d give her name. That she could not do. She could not call forth a spirit and not have pleasant things to say. Names were sacred. She wouldn’t risk tarnishing the pure with the profane. Instead, she hedged her attempt at honesty. She said, “The name we called her wasn’t her real one. You know, your ma’am came from across the water. Old Master Dupree named her before she got here.”
“Well, what did he call her?” “That’s enough.” Evangeline heaved a sigh. “You don’t need to know everything today.” Satis ed with what she had, Emma returned to school bubbling with information for her teacher and few friends who hadn’t been snatched away to pr epare for harvest. Giddy at the chance to con rm she was nine years old, she had forgotten to ask after her birthday, or even what season she was born, because she knew Evangeline didn’t ke ep up with no calendar. She could call Christmas and New Year’s and sometimes Easter but not much else. She followed the seasons. Planting season. Growing season. Harvest season. Resting season. It was generally the same for the women as it was for the land, with her busiest time for births being in the late summer and early fall, before rest was necessitated on account of the healing body and a demanding new babe. “When you go home, ask your ma’am about the time when you was born, and whenever it is, we’ll be sure to celebrate your birthday,” the teacher instructed. Emma did as she was told. Ran all the way home with her lunch pail, her primary reader, her math ledger, and the Bible passed to her from Z ephaniah Foster Dupree. She was breathless and eager when she arrived to an empty quarter shack. Dizzy with her own discomposure, she tried to focus on the lesson she was to complete for the next day—w riting the names of her family in her Bible—but she was too riled up with her own rapacious need to know. When she heard what she thought might be Evangeline’s st eps coming up the road, she ran out the door to greet her. Several times it was nothing but the wind whispering, making her think she heard mud mushing, or twigs breaking under what should’ve been the woman’s weight. It wasn’t, but Emma answered the conspicuous calls until nally it was. Lugging her bag of tools and tinctures, Evangeline walked side to side, weighed down by her bag on one side and a sudden grief on the other. If Emma noticed the sadness, she didn’t care. What child concerns themselves with the murky emotions of an adult? She red into the tale of her day, showing o the names she had written in her Bible once they were inside. Evangeline followed Emma’s nger as she pointed across the neat handwriting as the girl read,
“ ‘Emma Dupree and Z ephaniah Foster Dupree.’ ” She pointed to the blank line and looked at Evangeline expectantly. “This for my ma’am. My real ma’am.” Emma’s voice trembled. “Can you tell me her name?” “I told you it weren’t her real name, so why write it down? You don’t wanna lie in God’s word, do you?” Emma shook her head no, found her pencil, and lled in the blank anyway. “What’s that say there?” Evangeline asked. “That’s your name,” Emma answered. “You like my ma’am. The onliest one I know.” Evangeline snatched the pencil from Emma’s hand, turned the Bible toward her, and furiously scratched out the place where Emma had written her name. “I just told you don’t lie in God’s word, and you do it anyway.” “I gotta have something to show my teacher tomorrow,” Emma protested. “No, you don’t,” Evangeline shouted. “Not everybody gotta ma’am. Not everybody gotta pa. Be glad you got someone here looking after you in the rst place.” “Well, can you at least tell me around what season is my birthday? Ms. Jacoby said we can celebrate whenever it come ’round.” “Why would you want to do a thing like that?” Evangeline asked. “She say it’s what you do on birthdays. Celebrate.” “What them white people do.” “Do you know when it is?” Emma asked softly. “Planting season,” Evangeline answered. “You was early. Three days after the equal day and the equal night. But we ain’t celebrating. Not in this house. I told you, yo’ ma’am died the day you was born. What’s there to celebrate about that?” Even with a few of the answers she craved, Emma had been dashed just the same. In the light left inside the shack, she looked up at Evangeline, resolute in her decision, with her hands hugged to her hips, her at nose blown wide across her face, and the sturdy posture of planted feet. The white apron covering her shirt and skirt were spackled with fresh blood. Emma examined her, from the rolled sleeves to the hat askew on her head.
She asked, “Ma’am... did the birth not go okay?” Evangeline humphed. She reached for the table and chair her Henry had whittled himself and collapsed under her own weight. She looked down at the oor she and Emma covered with boards from the big house. Shoulders rounded, head hanging, sadness wore her like a wet winter coat. Sopping and heavy. “It went something like your’n,” Evangeline said with a slow, gravid tongue. “The baby’s here. The ma’am on the other side.” Evangeline lifted her head enough to see Emma’s hands covering her eyes as her ngers pulled at the edges of her hair. The image was too much for Evangeline to process. Too identical to what had happened before. Springing from her chair, she snatched Emma by her bent arms and yanked her from where she stood. “Get yo’ hands outta yo’ head,” she said, tongue moving lightning fast. “You ke ep up with all these questions about your ma’am, and you may end up just like her. Freedom only been a few seasons. They might ght another war and take it away.” Arms held down by Evangeline’s grip, Emma couldn’t move to hide the tears that welled, pooled, and fell down her face. Evangeline continued unmoved. She had seen worse. She said, “You wanna celebrate like them white people? You go’n right ahead. But not here. Not all birthdays is worth the trouble, let alone the memory.”
M a y 1 9 5 3 For Gladys Dupree, it wasn’t a birthday she wanted to forget but something else entirely. Long before she was Tati’s mimi, or Nadia’s mother, Gladys remembered how they came with hot pans in hand, crooked smiles and curious eyes. Heads on swivel trying to catch a peek, a glance, at who they’d heard about and wished they knew. It’s a peculiar position, for sure, to hear but not know. Knowing, grounded in fact, is altogether di erent from hearing. With hearing, words could be lost, messages devoid of meaning. Implications could be treated as incontrovertible fact and fact as merely ction. Perhaps this is the reason most people only hear. Few ever really know, and only one knows all. But trying to be in that number, though impossible, provides the fun of the hunt. The hearers sidled up to Ruby and shook hands with Sampson, all saying the same thing. “We heard...” It was enough to drive Sampson to drink. He too had heard and still didn’t know. The wall of silence between him and the Dupree women was thick. He may have wanted to marry Ruby Ann Dupree and have her take his last name, Benjamin, but they never got around to it, what with Gladys, and the farm and all. She would always be a Dupree woman. Her allegiance belonged to her mothers and the secrets they k ept amongst themselves. Still, talk had reached him as it had everyone else in Land’s End. Everyone save for Eugene. An out-of-towner already, and that didn’t account for his professional travel, he was stuck at the foot of the st eps of the new house, where Ms. Mattie from church had come to call, ignorant as the day is long. “We heard what happened,” Ms. Mattie said, standing on the front porch. Ruby and Sampson remained seated on the long wooden bench with the high back as Mattie’s words, nearly whispered, arrived to their ears, loud as the