k ept going, one hand holding underneath her belly to encourage the child to stay awhile. Their st eps were her guide, the breaking of branches underfoot, the heaves of air they inhaled to expand their chests and ke ep going despite the burn they felt from overtaxing their lungs. All they carried were themselves and the few rations they squirreled away in their pockets, while Sarah (?) was saddled with not only supplies but her unborn. The expected anchor she was determined to buoy to freedom. They had a long journey. That she knew. C a n a d a was the word they’d said her hair-braided map would take them to. She wasn’t sure if it would be farther than when she was marched to the coast, but she had to try, even as big as she was. Everything hurt. Her ankles and knees were swollen beyond their regular size. Her ngers, also swollen, pulled at the air as she propelled herself forward. They had to get to the water, the bank of the bay, where they would wade until they reached the mouth where the rivers split. Had this been years earlier, they might’ve found assistance de ep around the river lands from one of the ve tribes, the nations, that had lived there long before the pale faces arrived. But they were gone. Remnants of what had been of them were buried in the blood-soaked ground, turned over, mowed down, and planted with cotton. They ran, she trotted, until the bottoms of their feet burned with each st ep. Only Sarah (?) had worn shoes around Z ephaniah Foster’s place, and she had discarded those at the outset of their journey for pinching her already-hurting feet. Feeling the mud between her toes and the sticky sand spurs biting her heels motivated her to ke ep moving. To ke ep listening. It was one thing if she pushed her own body to breaking. It was altogether di erent done at the will and whim of Z ephaniah Foster. She ruminated over his taking and the seed he’d sown into her and picked up her pace. Managed for a moment to catch up with Gordon the Preacher, who nodded his own grimaced face. They were pushing against the darkness, running to beat back the light. Hedging that on the equal night they’d have hours before any cocks crowed or overseers blew the horn for work. The farther north they went, the harder it would be to stave o the day, because the men had heard through whispers and
word wanderings that the sun rose on the free people rst. The Southern-born and bred in bondage received the last light of the sun’s rays and all of its wrath. But in the midst of running, some longed for what they’d left. The pallets on the dirt oors of their shanties and a guaranteed meal in the morning. The faces of the people they knew, the ones they called kin. It wasn’t enough to make them stop, or make them turn, only slow because anything was better than ragged breath, cut feet and arms, and feeling like your heart was about to jump out of your chest. In those slowing st eps of doubt, they had to name their goal. F r e e d o m . Reinforce for their own sanity what it was that they were doing. R u n n i n g f o r f r e e d o m . The song, “Don’t Let Nobody Turn You ‘Round,” began as a mumble in their mouths. Though they couldn’t sing and refrained from humming, they chanted in time and tune beneath their breath. Their bodies moved to the rhythm of their words. Fourteen feet and fourteen arms st epped and pumped and beat as one until at last they’d reached the water. Sarah (?), Gordon the Preacher, Clarence, and the rest threw themselves into the cool and sank to the bottom. They doused their scent, calmed their bodies, slowed their hearts, tended to their cuts, and baptized themselves anew all in one dunk. Slowed down for the moment, Sarah (?) felt the full weight of her body as she walked through the shallow water. Her joints screamed for rest, but she chanted on. She popped and cracked the knuckles of her ngers beneath the surface of the water to bring back to them a normal feeling despite the swelling. But it wasn’t her ngers or her feet she had to worry with. She felt the shift as soon as she was submerged but k ept going anyway. The lowering of the baby in her womb. The rst pain shot through her like an arrowhead to the inside of her leg. A warning. One she would have to ignore if she wanted to ke ep up. If she wanted to make it until they stopped, just before morning. She k ept on walking some, swimming most, following the men in front of her. Every now and again, one would hang back to glance at the map in her hair or draw it out again in the air. They studied the bends and curves she carved
with her own ngers before they pushed past her, sloshing water and creating waves as they went. They ate nothing of the few vittles they’d brought before entering the water, knowing it would need to last them at least a week, maybe more. Spurred on by the adrenaline coursing through their bodies, they at last reached the mouths of the many narrow rivers that fed the bay. As Sarah (?) trudged on, she noticed the men splitting o two by two. Joshua and Clyde went left. Amos and Clarence to the right. Gordon the Preacher and Jedidiah stayed straight. It was then she realized why they’d each had to make their own marks on the ground. Why Clarence had said, “She got one.” Each man had his own map. They were to leave as six but end up as one, each man breaking o at di erent points in the journey together, hoping the many di erent trails would throw o the dogs and get at least one of them all the way to freedom. So whose map did Sarah (?) have? Which path had she braided? She tried to catch their eyes, but none looked back, not even Gordon the Preacher. She felt in her hair, wet but still tight to her scalp, and found the starting point of the braids. Where she began marked the Dupree land. She followed the path she’d crossed in her strands until she got to the spot that marked the open mouth of the bay and the straight braid that indicated the way. Sarah (?) followed behind Gordon the Preacher and Jedidiah, waiting to see which of the two would take her all the way. Whose course had she copied? As they moved into the river, the tree-lined banks rose up beside them. Tall and thin, eerie and ominous, Sarah (?) looked up toward the heavens as another pain in her pelvis gave her pause in the murky brown water. It sent her pitching forward, splashing as she ailed and failed to nd her footing. “She gon’ get us caught and killed fa sho’,” Jedidiah muttered. “We ain’t long together here,” Gordon the Preacher whispered in a gru voice. “After tonight you’ll be o on your own.” “Not if she don’t stop with all that ruckus ’lertin’ the rollers like she doing.” “You just ke ep on going your way. We’ll go ours.” Jedidiah trudged away from Gordon and Sarah (?), placing distance between him and the ones who could ke ep him bound. In the middle of the river he
walked, only his head and shoulders above the water as Sarah (?) k ept in st ep with Gordon the Preacher in the shallows. In quiet, anger-stabbed silence they walked until day began to break and they had no choice but to leave the scent-cloaking safety of the water for the inconspicuous obscurity of the trees. Back on land, Sarah (?) followed Gordon the Preacher and Jedidiah away from the water’s edge to where the trees nearly touched, roots overlapped, and branches created a shady canopy cover to disappear into. There is where they began their climb. Jedidiah scaled the thick bark of one of the trunks until he reached a pair of limbs that would hold his weight. “You gotta go your own way,” Gordon the Preacher said before he did the same. Shooting pains came from every which way now that she was back on dry land. Sarah (?) knew she was in no condition to climb. She wouldn’t even be able to get her swollen feet to grip, let alone her swelled hands to brace her weight as she tried to move up. Understanding the plan more fully, she walked away from Gordon the Preacher and Jedidiah resting in the treetops. Limping and waddling, hands in her hair, she made her way through the trees, tracing the straight path she knew was hers, and maybe someone else’s, until she found a dip in the dirt carved out by tangled tree roots and lled in with a felled trunk. Sarah (?) pushed her way into the knuckle in the ground and huddled her body in a ball, hoping to calm the waving pains in her womb and put both her and her baby at rest. With her hands knotted together beneath her belly, she held them both rm, humming “Don’t Let Nobody Turn You ‘Round,” and “Follow the Drinking Gourd,” mixing melodies on her way to dream. S ARAH (?) HEARD THE HOOVES BEFORE she ever felt the hands. Their rumble trembled the ground and rent her away from slumber. Caught in her cove, she knew she had but two choices. She could stay crouched and covered and wait to be cornered by the horses and the dogs, or she could run. Her eyes blinked wild and rapid, adjusting to the broad sun as she inched away from her crawl space. Though she heard the coming commotion, they still seemed to be behind her.
Padding gently but quickly, Sarah (?) tipped on her toes, watching every st ep to neither break a branch nor trip over a root or rock as she made her way back to the river. Down the bank and into the water she went as the waves in her womb started up again. Pains, sharp and de ep, forced sounds from her mouth she tried to drown in the water. She submerged herself fully every time she felt them coming. Still the screams wrenched her mouth open, forcing her re exes to swallow, choke, and gag for air. She tried to measure her movements to the surface. To only allow her nose to break for breath until she could get to the other side. The other bank. But the dogs were in the water, paddling with their paws toward her oundering form. They latched on once they reached her. One on each arm, biting down with their canines and incisors, forcing her to yelp from the penetrating pain. Sarah (?) tried to wrestle herself away from the pair of hounds. When that didn’t work, she tried pulling them in de eper to drown them. But it was too late; Z ephaniah Foster had already caught up to where they were. Sitting atop his freshly groomed white racing horse, he looked down on the struggle in the water as he waved a rag in his hand. Sarah (?) recognized the covering she pulled from her head and tucked in her dress, knowing it had fallen in the running and given them away. Their eyes connected, and victory glowered over defeat. A smirk that started at the corner of Z ephaniah Foster’s mouth spread across his face into an ugly sneer as he swung his legs and dismounted the horse. He trudged down the bank and whistled for the dogs to return to his side as he entered the water in his high boots. The dogs released Sarah (?), and she sighed momentarily, relieved of the sharp pain. Until the wrenching in her womb started up again. The kicks and punches mixed with the de ep waves of contractions sent her pitching forward into the water, doubling over at the waist, begging to the spirits that enchanted the river for relief or death. Neither arrived. Only Z ephaniah Foster. His hand seized Sarah (?) by her uncovered head. He dragged her backward through the water and up the bank, where he dropped her in a pile of her own
writhing, blubbering bigness. “I got her,” he hollered. Soon more hooves came galloping to where Z ephaniah Foster stood with his catch. His sons, identical twins, Alexander and Antony, sat high upon their horses while Gordon the Preacher and Jedidiah cried from behind after being dragged the distance from their treetop hideouts to Sarah (?)’s cove. She chanced a look at the two men who’d meant to leave her, the ones who blamed her for their capture, and saw blood running from their legs. They’d been hamstrung in haste and dragged yards behind running horses; their cries were the song of pain and anger. Hurt and hatred. The mixed bag of hard emotions that produced the sorrowful soulfulness of the blues and generational trauma. Whomever came after in the lines of these three captives would be cursed with the blood memory of their torture. “Ooooooowwwwwwww,” Sarah (?) cried out from where she cowered. The baby she carried worked its way down, teasing and testing to pr epare her for the pain to come. “Nigra thought she’d abscond with my property like I wouldn’t come after it,” Z ephaniah Foster spat. “All you niggers belong to me. We’ll make sure you don’t need any more reminders.” “Father, how would you like to get them back?” Antony asked. The spitting image of their mother, from their comely faces to their swirling red curls, the twins, only ve years older than Sarah (?), waited for their father’s word. “Those two you can drag all the way back to Land’s End. This one here”— Z ephaniah Foster kicked Sarah (?) in the back with his sopping boot—“ needs to go on the atbed behind the carriage.” He kicked her again, and she splayed on the ground, collapsing over her own distended belly as she cried out in pain. More concerned with what she carried, Z ephaniah Foster quickly snatched her up and locked the heavy iron shackles around her wrists. “Father, have you seen this?” Alexander asked. “Seen what?” “Has this wench ever worked for Mother without her head covered?”
“Alexander, what does that have to do with anything? You know your mother won’t dare have her back. It was a chance as it was, having her tending in the house, as dark as she is.” “What I mean, Father, is there’s something in her hair. Something Mother surely would have caught if she ever had her hair uncovered.” Z ephaniah Foster yanked Sarah (?)’s chain, turning her around to see what Alexander referred to. Though dripping wet, tangled with leaves and mud, the map to freedom was unmistakable. With heavy hands he tossed her head back and forth like a ball, assessing the path plotted in the overlapping plaits. Using a nger, he found their position and pressed into her head. “Two hundred and twenty-two miles you made it with my property.” Z ephaniah Foster yanked Sarah (?) back by her braids. “That’s the number of lashes waiting for you when we get back.” He struck her across the face. The force from his arm and open hand clotheslined her when the blow connected and knocked her back to the ground. F OR TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY-TWO miles, Sarah (?) rode hog-tied in her chains, lying on her side, on the atbed behind the carriage driven by Z ephaniah Foster. Antony and Alexander had galloped ahead, with Gordon the Preacher and Jedidiah being dragged behind them. Their bodies bounced against the ground in the race to return with hands, feet, legs, and other limbs occasionally tramped by a hoof. In the beginning of the journey, Sarah (?) could count on their consistent screams to ke ep her company as she howled through the agony of birthing pains. But somewhere along the way, their cries died down to trembled whimpers, and then even those she ceased to hear. By the time they approached the peak of the bay, Gordon the Preacher and Jedidiah were death quiet. Alexander and Antony cut their bodies loose and tossed them in the water. “It’s a shame too,” Alexander said. “I was looking forward to delivering their lashes.” “We still have that one.” Antony nodded toward where Sarah (?) lay in the atbed.
“Yes, but Father said he wanted to see to her personally.” Perhaps it was the personal insult that she’d tried to run o with h i s child, though he didn’t think of the child as a person to raise but as another thing to have. Whatever the injury, the journey warped Z ephaniah Foster’s wrath. Once they reached Land’s End, they trotted past the quarter shacks, paraded in front of the big house where Missus Elizabeth sat in her rocker sipping sweet tea. “Who knew the women could be a icted with the drapetomania as much as the men,” she said as the carriage made its way toward the whipping tree, a large oak that stood between the stable and the shanties. Z ephaniah Foster disembarked from the carriage in an even greater rage than when he’d plodded through the river and pulled Sarah (?) backward up the bank. Marching toward the house, he hollered orders. “Barnabas, dig a hole to protect my property. Make haste or you’ll be lashed too. “Evangeline, I want my property out today. You understand. “Antony, take my blades to Thomas and have him sharpen them enough to slice ice. “Alexander, fetch my cats out the house.” “But, Father, we don’t have cats,” Alexander protested. “We don’t have pets, but we have two cats coiled in the corner of my study. Fetch them for me. It’s time to make them sing.” Z ephaniah Foster opened the back of the atbed as Y a s , S u h and Y e s , F a t h e r rang from the lips of all who were commanded. Sarah (?) locked eyes with him and saw only the frigid stare of a man disconnected from all feeling. He dragged her chain across the atbed and then carried her bound body to where Barnabas had dug the hole for her stomach so she could lie on her belly. Prone on the ground, prostrate before the whipping tree, Sarah (?) whimpered and writhed in the dirt as the pains started up again. Her movements muted as Z ephaniah Foster released her legs, granting himself full access to her back. He ran the chain still connected to the cu s on her arms around the base of the tree, the chain around the shackles on her feet he secured to one of the wheels of the carriage. Sarah (?) was pulled taut, unable to roll, shrivel, or wiggle
away from the pain coming from inside her own body, let alone the crack of the lash once Z ephaniah Foster started swinging. Alexander returned with the cats, which had spiky barbs on their tips. “Thank you, now gather everyone around. I want them to see what happens when you get a notion toward freedom and the audacity to chase it.” “With a map no less,” Alexander added. “With a map no less,” Z ephaniah r epeated. Alexander met Antony by the blacksmith’s workshop and passed the word to gather everyone around the whipping tree. It was a message that didn’t take long to spread and a task that needed no hurry to complete. Everyone in the quarters had heard them arrive. Those who hadn’t been directly employed to assist in what was sure to be a spectacle already cr ept around the edges, curious about the cruelty that was going to be administered. Standing above Sarah (?), a cat in each hand, Z ephaniah Foster bellowed to his progeny and property. “They say a war’s coming,” he began. “I say let it come. It’s time these Northern-born Yankees understand that everything they have comes from us. The cotton of their clothes and the crops that make up the food on their tables. It all comes from right here. Without it, without men like me, they’d have nothing.” As Z ephaniah Foster spoke, the audience watched his face contort and change colors. The red de epened beneath his skin as his cheeks blew out words and sweat dripped from his brows, nose, and lips, matting his hair to his scalp. In the same shirt, work pants, and high boots from the journey to retrieve Sarah (?), he marched amongst the crowd, dragging the cats and jerking them for emphasis. “Slavery now, slavery tomorrow, slavery forever,” he screamed. “We had to go two hundred and twenty-two miles to Tuscaloosa to bring her back. For every mile it’s a lash. And if one of you looks away, there’s two hundred and twenty- two lashes for you too.” Z ephaniah Foster turned away from the crowd of somber brown faces to where Sarah (?) lay on the ground. She rattled her chains and whimpered from
the dull ache of built-up pressure and the sharp shooting pains of her coming babe. The cats cracked. Nine knotted tails ripped open what was left of the material clothing her body. Nine more followed, tearing into her skin. Sarah (?) howled as Z ephaniah Foster worked the whips in continuous circles. Antony and Alexander k ept count. A strike from each cat, a couplet, counted as one complete whip. Sarah (?) was beaten until red blood ran from her body and colored the brown dirt beneath her with rivulets of her life. By the last set of lashes, she no longer shrieked in pain. Her body no longer jerked between the chains. Not even the worming down of the babe in her belly, ready to open her up, brought a sound from Sarah (?)’s lips. She dangled near death, wishing it would kiss her good night. “Antony! Bring me my blades,” Z ephaniah Foster hollered when he had nished the ogging. The twin ran from where he stood to his father’s side with the satchel of sharpened knives. “This is what happens when you chase after what you were never meant to have,” Z ephaniah Foster yelled, selecting the longest razor. “You niggers have got to understand that this is the only life you’ll have. Forget freedom. It’s not coming for you. And if the Yankees have a notion to take it for you, we’ll ght ’em until every last one of ’em is dead.” Z ephaniah Foster walked toward where Sarah (?)’s head rested on the ground. Her breath was shallow, barely blowing at the dirt. He lifted her by the tails of her braids, holding them tight at the base of her neck. Sarah (?)’s eyes didn’t even utter from being pulled against her wounds. No sounds came from her mouth. Her back, a mangle of mush, contracted in on itself, congealing the blood as he used one hand to hold up her head. With the other he placed the razor to Sarah (?)’s scalp and dragged it back against the grain of her hair. He worked methodically, following the twists and bends of the plotted paths to a freedom she would never have, until her long locks were shorn and fell into the cracks of her opened skin. “Alexander! Unchain her. Antony, get my brine.”
Antony ran quickly for the barrel k ept lled to the brim beside the whipping tree. He pushed it slowly toward where Sarah (?)’s body lay on the ground, lining it up so that when he tipped it over all contents would fall in her cuts. “I’m done, Father,” Alexander said once he’d released her. “Pour,” Z ephaniah Foster yelled. Antony kicked over the barrel. The sting of the solution made of vinegar, turpentine, salt, and red p epper brought Sarah (?) back from the brink of wherever she had been. She emitted a shriek so piercing and loud, the ocks beating their wings in the sky changed direction. But no one noticed the birds. No one looked up. No one looked away. They watched her pain, were witness to her torture. “Evangeline! Deliver my property.” “Massa, let me take her in the—” “Right here!” he demanded. “You do it right here.” Evangeline scurried over to Sarah (?)’s side and tried to gently turn her over onto her raw back. Sarah (?) kicked and twisted away, trying to nd a salve, a balm for her body, but there was only dirt, only hair, only brine. She shook in pain as Evangeline pushed her legs open. “I sees the head,” she said aloud. “Push for me, and it’ll be over soon.” She coached Sarah (?) in a gentle voice. Sweet and full of song. “Push for me and your babe’ll be here and you’ll be on the other side of it all.” With an unknown source of strength, Sarah (?) wrestled herself up to her elbows, bared her teeth and body, and gave a good push. And then another. And another. And another... “Wh-aaaaaaahhhh,” the baby wailed. “Issa girl,” Evangeline said, pride pronounced in her voice. Z ephaniah Foster marched over and with the same blade he’d used to cut Sarah (?)’s hair he cut the cord. “Take her back with you,” he said. Evangeline didn’t even protest about how she still needed to deliver the afterbirth. She wrapped the baby in her apron, clutched her to her chest, and pushed through the crowd of people standing shoulder to shoulder, sti with
the images of what they’d witnessed. Brown eyes dead, muscles exed and tensed, they’d never forget what they’d seen. What they were about to see. Allowed to turn her back, Evangeline was walking away when she heard the rst of Sarah (?)’s new screams. Piercing as it was, it curdled her blood and even quieted her baby. She turned around and from the middle of the crowd she saw Antony and Alexander standing where they had rechained Sarah (?)’s body to the wheel and whipping tree. Z ephaniah Foster stood over her with his blade in hand, cutting each one of Sarah (?)’s ngers below the knuckle until she had nothing but nubs. “This is what happens when you run,” Z ephaniah Foster yelled to the hushed crowd. He snatched Sarah (?) by the collar of her shredded dress and swiped the blade once across her neck. The baby kicked and shrieked against Evangeline as if she too felt what her ma’am was feeling. The little bundle wailed with wanton abandon, crying all the tears Sarah (?) never would. No one looked away. No one blinked. Not even Sarah (?). S eparated from her body, she still wasn’t dead. They didn’t know that while bodies could be kidnapped and used, bought, sold, and bruised, seasoned until broken... minds could never be tamed. O O H , T H E Y A M S M E L L S S O g o o d . M a m a a n d t h e o t h e r w i v e s h a v e b e e n p r e p a r i n g t h e c o n t i n u a t i o n d a y c e l e b r a t i o n f o r B a b a f o r m a n y m o o n s a n d n o w i t ’ s fi n a l l y h e r e . P o u n d e d y a m a n d p l a n t a i n , a w h o l e r o a s t e d g o a t , fi s h , a n d a n e w d r u m f o r B a b a a s a g i f t . I h e l p e d M a m a fi t t h e s k i n t i g h t s o i t w o u l d t a l k . B a - t a - t a . B a - t a - t a . S h e w o n ’ t m i n d i f I p l a y a f e w t a p s . B a - t a - t a . B a - t a - t a . W a i t ! W h a t ’ s t h a t ? B a - t a - t a . B a - t a - t a . W h y i s i t s o w a r m ? S o b r i g h t ? B a - t a - t a . B a - t a - t a . I c a n ’ t s e e .
M a m a , i s t h a t y o u ? I t ’ s m e —
E p i l o g u e 2 0 2 4 When Gladys told Tati and Nadia all she knew just minutes into the new millennium, she began with her return to Land’s End in 1960 with Eugene and four-year-old Nadia, just ve days before Jubi was put in the ground. Emma followed shortly thereafter. They were eighty and ninety-nine then. Laid side by side in a bed of the old house, in the room that had once belonged to Emma, George, and Jeremiah, they mustered an unknown strength to speak what they had never spoken before. Jubi’s marriage to Logan. Their bloodline connections on both sides of the tracks. The admission punched Gladys in the gut and hollowed Ruby right where she stood. But there was more. Emma told all who gathered the truth about a grief-stricken George and the boys she couldn’t ke ep. When Gladys walked Tati and Nadia through the Bible of names, she told them the same and about the curse that, maybe, broke with her. For she was the rst one to ke ep all the babies she’d wanted. The rst one to have boys. The rst to be released from the blood. A mercy from the one no one knew. Gladys told them her legend, and by the time she left she had but one request. “When I go to the other side, take me home.” It was on the trip to honor Gladys’s nal wishes in 2019 that Tati rst felt the pull of the land. While the Dupree beach had long been taken by the local government through eminent domain, the farm was still in the family. The old house, like Ms. Teena’s next door, was beyond disr epair, and the house Sampson had built was a cottage for a caretaker. Tati walked the grounds, through the dirt
patch where nothing grew and between the graves. The three crosses for the boys tucked in the fence. The headstones for Emma, Jubi, and Ruby and the new plot where Gladys had just been laid. By the time she’d made it to the cottage and walked the rooms where Gladys grew up, she was convinced of but one thing. “Mama, let’s stay,” she’d said. “Tati, I can’t just pick up and leave. I have a life.” “Ask Mr. Curtis to come too,” Tati suggested. Nadia had met Curtis Knight when Tati was still in college. Curly salt-and- p epper hair, mustached and goateed, he was attractive in the way of a shorter Rick Fox. At the time they were both in their midforties and had children from previous relationships and a want to be in something real without a whole lot of drama. Over the years they’d dated, gone on vacations, and created a life together even though they maintained s eparate homes. Nothing that couldn’t be overcome by an overnight bag and making space in drawers when they wanted to be closer. Which they often did. Nadia looked at Tati curiously. “I guess,” she said, for she felt the pull too. The needling to nd a reason to prolong leaving the Southern land. H o w ? was the only question left to answer. They returned to Chicago after Gladys’s service as planned, but they knew the trip would be temporary. They gave themselves a year to close down their lives in the city and begin again in Land’s End. For Nadia, that included selling the salon she had opened after Tati graduated undergrad. The storefront on Seventy-Ninth Street between Yale and Princeton Avenues had been home to Nadia’s Nubian Salon for sixteen years. It featured all the xtures and comforts she had rst procured for the salon in her basement, multiplied by eight stations: large burgundy chairs, silk capes, and the latest R&B, especially Mary, played from speakers mounted conspicuously throughout the space. She had also brought in two nail techs. When people came through her doors, she wanted them to stay awhile, to fellowship in the ways that only women can when, for a few hours, their heads were in someone else’s hands and their hearts were free from the stress and burdens of kith, kin, or some man they loved, sometimes more than they loved themselves.
Selling what she had worked so hard to build over thirty- ve years gave Nadia both grief and gumption. Doing hair, owning her own business, had been the backup. Something she had never planned for but believed the one Gladys had told her about, whose name no one knew, had destined for her all along. What else could it be? It was as if she was marked from birth. Selling it o felt like both betrayal and freedom. The ending of one legacy and the beginning of another. As for their homes, Curtis sold his house on 125 th and Longwood, while Nadia decided to rent hers out. “It’s time to make a commitment we can’t easily walk away from,” he’d told her one night as they lay in his bed. “And you wanna prove that by moving with me and Tati to Land’s End?” “Nadia, we’ve been committed to each other for years. There’s nothing left to prove. You know where I stand.” And she did. He’d been kind and patient with her. Given her space to soften and room to rely on someone else. He’d made her feel safe and opened himself so that there were no secrets between them, not even closed doors when they went to the bathroom. He’d loved her with all of himself and in turn she couldn’t help but do the same. Together they packed his home and then hers from top to bottom, along with help from her brothers and their wives and children, and nally with Toya, Tati, and even Desirée, who was home between photo shoots in her busy career as a photographer that took her all over the world. The grievances and grudges between the women had dissolved with the truth. “I can’t believe y’all leaving for the country,” Toya said, sitting on the futon in the basement. Nadia had k ept her original salon intact despite expanding to the storefront. She still preferred to do her hair at home, along with Tati, who’d started coming to get her hair done on Sunday mornings in Mimi’s stead. “It’s time to do something new,” Nadia answered. She couldn’t explain what she felt in Alabama. The urge to set roots on land that, even though it was rightfully hers, she never knew. It’s a trying thing to get people in the North to understand why, as a Black person, you choose to live in the South. A land of terror and terrible memory, yes, but also of such beauty and rich history, despite the blood.
But Tati knew the reason. The real answer. She said, “It’s the right thing to do.” Once Curtis’s and Nadia’s homes were emptied and loaded onto trucks to drive south, Tati’s condo in the South Loop was next. A junior partner for Sidley Austin specializing in labor and employment, Tati had wanted for years to do something di erent. Coaching track at her old high school and sometimes reading her poetry at open mic nights in the city gave her moments of joy and snatches of satisfaction, but what she was looking for was peace and maybe a partner. It was something about Land’s End that said it was there she could have both. And she was determined to get it. She sold her two-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath place on South Wabash, not caring, wanting, or needing the security that could have come from renting or subletting. While Nadia felt the call in Land’s End, she wasn’t as convinced as Tati or even Curtis about it being something they could do forever, somewhere they would live forever. If she had learned anything in her sixty-three years, it was that plans change, sometimes by mistake, sometimes on purpose, even if you don’t know it at the time. She k ept her house because it was both an investment and a testament to all she’d come through. The same reason Gladys had k ept up the property in Land’s End. When Tati, Nadia, and Curtis arrived at their new home in January of 2020, it was eleven months after Gladys had been put in the ground beside her beloveds. They greeted the caretaker, Ethan Danube, who had expected their arrival from the correspondence Tati k ept up after Gladys died. In the warm, dry air of a Southern winter, Ethan handed over the keys to the cottage and Tati paid him his severance out of the proceeds from the sale of her condo. He then got in his pickup truck and headed across the tracks to where he lived with his own wife and children. In all her emails to Ethan, Tati never did inquire after his family. She didn’t want to stir up trouble before she had gotten settled, but the nagging of knowing a Danube man never left her. “What do you want to do rst?” Tati asked Nadia and Curtis once Ethan was gone. Holding on to Curtis’s hand, Nadia looked over the land, the cottage in front of them, and the fence to the left, where she could just make out the crosses of
Emma’s lost boys. “I don’t know,” Nadia answered. “We can do whatever we wanna do, right, Miss Moneybags?” “Mama, it’s not even like that,” Tati de ected. “I got enough to get us through a year, maybe two, between my savings and the condo sale, but maybe you should open a shop. Collect some booth rent along with the rent money from the house.” “Won’t be no need for that,” Curtis said. “I got us.” “We are retired and plan to act like it,” Nadia added. “Mmmm.” Tati scrunched up her face. “Y’all nasty.” “Old ain’t dead.” Nadia squeezed Curtis’s hand. He kissed her temple. Tati rolled her eyes and headed toward the door. Nadia joined her while Curtis hung back. They walked into the cottage together, the house of Gladys’s youth, through the rooms and out the back door. On the porch, where Sampson had once been barred from entering the built-upon shanty, they looked out over the burial space and paid silent respect to the loved ones lost, known and unknown. As they went about the business of moving in, Tati’s rst st ep was getting the land listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the old house preserved, and the cottage equipped with a salon space for Nadia. One she insisted on. “I still gotta do my hair. Besides, it’s memories.” “You still gon’ do my hair, right?” Tati had asked. “Yours and mine,” Nadia had said. “Yours and mine... especially since I don’t have no grandbabies.” Curtis and a contractor built a screened-in carport with a walled-o room where Nadia set up her salon chair from the basement along with her hair stove and hung her neon sign. It was in that space that Nadia, again, broached the subject of babies with Tati. “It’s too quiet around here,” she said, standing behind the chair, pr eparing to do Tati’s hair. “We live in the country. What else did you expect?” Tati answered, ipping through an issue of R o l l i n g S t o n e where Desirée had shot the cover star.
“I expected it to hopefully be more than just us,” Nadia said. “All them stories your mimi told us, it don’t seem right for us to be the last two.” “Gotta have a man to have a baby,” Tati lamented. With all that had happened with Roman and all she knew from Nadia and Gladys, she had been wary about babies ever since. It was a dealbreaker for the men she’d dated seriously. Her hesitancy to start a family. Her lack of desire to carry. Her diligence in sticking to a prescribed method of birth control. But as fate would have it, there’s not much to do when the world shuts down and you’ve moved a thousand miles away from home besides surf the internet and scroll through apps. She changed her location from Chicago to Land’s End, expanded the radius of which she was willing to travel for a date, and scrolled and swiped until she’d made a match. His name was Joshua Freeman IV. Born in Toronto, he’d moved to the States as an adult and made Mobile home. A professor in the sociology d epartment at Talladega College, he k ept a small apartment near the campus during the semester but preferred to spend his time near water. Never married, no children, Tati and Joshua were the forty-year-old unicorns they didn’t know they had been looking for. Dates on Zoom, with dinner delivered via Uber Eats, turned into face-to-face meetups at beaches and parks. When Joshua came to call on Tati in Land’s End he too felt the call gurgling from the ground, though he couldn’t name it. He thought the eerie feeling was due to the graves behind the cottage and not his own blood alighting with familiarity. Chasing after ghosts had never been his thing, despite his profession. He knew his family started from somewhere in Alabama, but where exactly, he couldn’t call. Those stories had stopped being passed down by the time he came along, but he indulged Tati on trips to the courthouse and the archives all over the state in search of a name. With enough money in the bank, and a lower cost of living, instead of jumping back into law, Tati gave herself fully to writing, penning the stories of her family and the land completely in verse. She and Joshua spent their days wearing white gloves, elbows-de ep in dusty record rooms searching manifestos, captain’s logs, and personal diaries, delicately
photocopying what they could, and taking notes of what they could not. Her only lead had been Mimi’s Bible and the 1870 census, where she saw with her own eyes Evangeline’s mark and Emma recorded on her own, with Z ephaniah Foster Dupree mistakenly listed as her child and not her father. As for his last will and testament, given to Emma with the Bible after his death, and the records Evangeline pulled from the big house, they were lost to time, all unbeknownst to Tati. With the information she did gather, Tati would write for a few hours in the evening while Joshua pr epared syllabi and assignments for his online classes, before they found themselves in bed, sometimes their own, sometimes a hotel if they were too far to return. They’d make a night of conversation and questions, the mental stimulation increasing sexual appetite, which they indulged with reckless abandon. Naked, minds full, and bodies spent, they clung to one another as if they had found every answer they’d been looking for, though they had none. Only with Joshua was Tati not so hesitant, did her desire shift and her diligence wane. It was summer, a Sunday, two years after the shutdown, when she realized she was carrying. Or, more speci cally, that Nadia pointed it out to her. “When you plan to tell me you pregnant?” she asked casually. “Tell you I’m what?” Tati asked, incredulous. Nadia continued maneuvering around the kitchen, washing rice and chopping okra. She’d taken to cooking after discovering a tin of Gladys’s recipes written in her own hand when they cleaned out her house after she died. Amongst them sweet potato pone, a pan of which she had in the oven beside the corn bread. Nadia shook her hands dry in the sink and stared out the window that looked over the fork in the land. “You glowing, your face is round, and your breasts are bigger than they’ve ever been.” Tati paused, touched her body. “I thought it was just getting older.” “Girl, you know gravity don’t work that way.” Nadia turned around, a smile dancing across her lips. “When the last time you had a period?” Tati paused again. Thought. Counted. Couldn’t remember. A she epish grin spread across her face.
“You better tell him,” Nadia advised. Neither of them acknowledged the slight crack in her voice. The wounds from Roman they both bore but they didn’t speak of. He was as much on the other side as the ones laid out back. Instead, Tati invited Joshua for dinner. Over smothered okra and fried cat sh, corn bread, sweet potato pone, and sweet tea, Tati broke the news. The expectation she’d con rmed with a test from the pharmacy. “Are you serious?” Joshua asked, pushing long locks away from his face. “I wouldn’t play about something like this, sugah,” Tati said. “Well, shit, let’s get married!” Joshua jumped out of his seat and pulled Tati out of hers. Though she was glad for his excitement, his jubilance didn’t carry. “For what?” she asked as he rocked her side to side. Joshua pulled back and looked at her squarely. “If we’re having a boy, I want him to have my name. It’s tradition.” “Most folks in our family have girls rst,” Nadia said, from where she sat beside Curtis at the table. “And she can still have your name, even if we’re not married,” Tati added. “They’re still yours,” Curtis said, trying to soften the sting. “Both of them.” “Is it because y o u don’t want my name?” Joshua asked Tati, his hurt unmistakable. Tati didn’t answer. Not right away. In the moment she didn’t quite know what she wanted. She had told Joshua about Roman. About growing up without him, writing poems dedicated to his absence, and what happened when she found him. He understood why she had avoided children, and in a way, also marriage. But here were both o ered on the same day. A baby she hadn’t planned for but hadn’t prevented, which she planned to ke ep, and a man who wanted them both. Over time she said yes. And though they didn’t have a big production of a wedding to entice Instagram envy, the small ceremony at St. Jos eph’s just up the road from the farm where only their immediate families were in attendance was enough for them both. In a loose white dress that gave room for her growing belly to breathe, Tatiana Merét Washington exchanged vows with Joshua Daryl Freeman IV. She stood in the same place where Gladys had stood with Eugene, the circumstances
similar but di erent. And when it came time for the birth, she opted to stay home and have a midwife come to her. In a new house she and Joshua had built behind George’s addition, she sat in a birthing pool erected in her living room and ushered forth life from her womb. A girl of medium brown with a head of jet-black curls. Their small family complete and full. They walked with her, at rst strapped to Tati’s chest, and then in a stroller, from their door to the shack, where they ran her small ngers over the plaque a xed to the cured wood that established part of her family line. They walked her through the graves and grass to Nadia’s cottage, naming all that they knew. They gave her a litany, a liturgy, a history to hold on to and recall at will. At the cottage, Tati and Joshua found Nadia in the carport salon. Emma’s mirror stood in the corner. Nadia faced away from it, her head down as she worked a at iron roots to ends in her graying hair. “What y’all doing?” Nadia asked. “Taking a break from writing,” Tati said. “Thought we’d walk with the baby for a while,” Joshua answered. Nadia turned to look at Tati as she held the baby. “When you gon’ start doing this child’s hair?” she asked. “She’s eight months. You need to start her in a routine now or she gon’ be tender-headed.” “I do it,” Tati said. “Not enough.” “I told Tati to let me cut it o ,” Joshua joked from his seat at the dryer. Both Nadia and Tati stared at him as he chuckled to himself, a blank gaze laid over both their countenances. “It was just a joke, geez.” “You know some things we don’t joke about,” Nadia said. “Why don’t you go on in the house with Curtis. I think he’s watching the game or something.” “I know when I’m not wanted,” Joshua said, feigning hurt, as he retreated from the salon. Once he left, Nadia clipped her half-done hair out of the way and then grabbed the baby from Tati’s arms. “C’mon, let your nana do your hair,” she said.
Nadia sat in the seat of the washbowl with the baby clutched between her thighs. The little girl pointed at Emma’s mirror. Babbled. “Ma, ma, ma, ma.” “Yes, baby, that’s your mama right there,” Nadia said, parting her granddaughter’s hair with ease. “So how’s the writing going?” “I nished the dedication,” Tati answered. “The dedication?” Nadia r epeated, still focused on parting the baby’s hair. “Ain’t that only a name?” she said, as she tried to coax the little girl away from the mirror, but she was stubborn. She k ept looking at herself. K ept saying, “Ma, ma, ma.” “Yes, I’m mama,” Tati said, standing in front of the mirror. To Nadia she said, “The dedication is more than just one name.” “Well, let me hear it,” Nadia said. Tati pulled her cell phone out of her pocket, opened the le with her manuscript, and read: D e a r S a ’ r a h , W h o c e l e b r a t e s t h e d e a d ? W h o c l a p s f o r t h e d e c a p i t a t e d ? T h e d i s c a r d e d T h e f o r g o t t e n T h e a n s w e r i s W e d o W e s p e a k H e r A n d E m m a A n d J u b i l e e , w h o p r e f e r r e d J u b i A n d R u b y A n d G l a d y s , w h o I c a l l e d M i m i A n d N a d i a , w h o y o u c a l l N a n a A n d m e , T a t i a n a , w h o y o u c a l l M a m a A n d y o u
W h o t a k e s p r i d e i n l e g e n d ? W h o b o a s t s a b o u t t h e b e h e a d e d ? T h e c u r s e d T h e c h r i s t e n e d T h e c r o w n e d T h e a n s w e r i s w e d o W e s p e a k T o t h e l a n d w h e r e s h e c a m e i n c h a i n s S o i l m a d e r i c h a n d f e r t i l e b y o u r b l o o d C o n n e c t e d i n o u r b o n e s B o u n d t h r o u g h t i m e l i k e t h e s i n e w s a n d t i s s u e s S h e w a s h e r e A s y o u a r e n o w W h o s i n g s a m o t h e r ’ s s o n g W h o fi n d s j o y i n t h e s o u l s o n t h e o t h e r s i d e T h e a n g e l s T h e a n c e s t o r s T h e a s c e n d a n t a r c h i t e c t s o f o u r p u r p o s e T h e a n s w e r i s w e d o B e c a u s e w e r e m e m b e r