she hears a sound.
A pale man with hair the color of acorns
slips into the yard
through the back gate.
She recognizes him. The man called Reynolds.
A woman with flaxen hair comes out the back door to meet him,
glancing behind her at every step.
The master’s wife.
Reynolds pulls the master’s wife to him
until they are hidden behind the magnolia,
its branches almost touching the earth.
It’s daylight. Another day. Another magnolia.
She has stopped to rest underneath its bows, just for a moment.
Just a moment of rest.
The master appears. She is frightened. Caught.
He holds a hand out. “I’m not here to hurt you,” he says.
But he is. He hurts her anyway.
The magnolia tree’s fallen seedpods litter the ground.
Their sharp edges dig into her back.
Three months later.
The master and his wife
can be heard fighting from the orchard.
My ancestor wonders
if a child between them would truly make it better.
It wouldn’t.
But the next day
she feels one growing inside her anyway.
When she shows,
the master’s wife notices
but doesn’t seem to care.
When she shows,
the master notices,
and he cares.
He cares very much.
He comes for her. He holds her weathered, soft face
between his hard fingers.
His blue eyes stare down into her brown ones.
The others in the field notice.
He sees them over her head.
“Tonight, Vera,” he says roughly, and releases her.
He walks away.
Vera knows this time, he means to hurt her.
She runs.
There are paths to take. Rumors of the way to go.
She leaves as soon as the sun sets
and hopes she remembers the stories.
She tells no one lest he come for them, too.
He may come for them, too.
She takes nothing with her but a bit of fruit and sweet honeysuckle, nectar still in the stem.
She runs for hours.
Master Davis has the money for pattyrollers, but she didn’t expect to hear them so quick.
The dogs bay in the distance.
She splashes into a creek. Doubles back.
Works upstream with skirts held high.
Climbs a tree whose branches hang low.
Her arms are strong.
She works with the trunk, sends prayers to the roots,
thanks the tree for its help,
drops down fifty yards north of where she started.
She settles into the dark shadow of that helping tree
and spills out the fruit
and the honeysuckle, crushed but still good.
She sits cross-legged on the cool earth and draws a broken blade down her palm.
The cut is deep, but it hurts less than the blisters on her feet.
She is a memory walker, but tonight she does not want to walk.
She wants to run.
She smears her blood onto the fruit and the flowers, presses the mixture and her hand as deep into the ground as they’ll go, and calls the ancestors to aid in a rhythmic chant of her own making.
“Protect us, please. All of you. Everyone.
Protect me so I can protect her.
Help me see the danger before it strikes.
Help me resist their entrapments.
Give us the strength to hide and to fight.
Protect us, please. All of you. Everyone.
Protect me, so I can protect her.
Help me see the danger before it strikes.
Help me resist their entrapments.
Give us the strength to hide and to fight.
Give us all we need to hide and to fight…”
They hear her. Their voices rise up from the earth.
Up through her wound and into her veins
and directly into her soul.
‘Bound to your blood?’
She gasps. The dogs are at the creek. Tears drop into the dirt.
“Yes, please! Bound to my blood!”
‘A price.’ The voices sigh, sad and heavy.
‘One daughter at a time, for all time.’
“Bind us to it!” she cries.
Her body trembles with a wave of desperation,
an ocean of determination.
She and the voices say the words together. “And so it is.”
A molten core of red and black sparks to life in her chest.
As it spreads through her limbs, burning her up from the inside, she turns to me, sees me.
Her eyes are volcanoes, bloodred fire streaming from the corners.
Power erupting over her skin,
she wraps a hand tight around my wrist.
“This is your beginning.”
The old mother’s walk, like Patricia’s, is only the beginning.
In the grip of her power, I am passed through
eight generations of women.
Her descendants, my foremothers.
A stream of strong brown faces meet me, one life after the next, one after another into a blur.
Angry faces and sad ones. Scared ones and lonely ones.
Proud ones and ones tired from sacrifice.
Their faces. My faces. Our faces.
They show me each of their deaths,
when the furnace of power in each mother’s chest
passes down to her daughter.
Their resilience is bound to my flesh.
I spin, twist, stumble onto grass.
I see my mother when she was young. She walks through campus. The light inside her shines bright
even through her heavy winter coat.
A girl with smiling yellow eyes walks beside her.
Snow sprinkles the girl’s hair;
its black waves hang loose down her back.
They turn together down a brick path, talking and laughing.
I see my mother behind the wheel.
I am sitting in the passenger seat, watching her as she watches me, our spirits meeting in a blend of Vera’s walk and my newfound gift.
The car approaches.
The accident.
Just an accident.
No one’s fault.
My mother wraps her hand around mine and squeezes.
“It comes for each of us, honey.”
Just before the car strikes, she presses her love against my heart, and fades.
I am myself, sitting in the hospital. The light in my chest is small,
a flame only just lit.
I revisit my own memory with my ancestor’s eyes.
Through her, I see my power, still new, simmering in my chest.
The police officer’s body shimmers
like air over hot summer asphalt.
The police officer and nurse brought me and my father into
a tiny, mint-green room.
The mesmered memory returns in full.
I see his badge, his shoulders wide as a door,
the stubble on his chin.
Bushy eyebrows, blue eyes.
I blink, and the shimmer dissipates. The glamour drops.
I see her old sweater, her narrow shoulders,
the tears streaming down her chin.
Black hair like a raven, black brows, face too beautiful to be real.
Features both young and old.
Two golden eyes like Sel’s, filled deep with sorrow.
Not like Sel’s…
They are Sel’s.
Sel’s mother’s lower lip trembles. She speaks through the pain.
“You won’t remember this,
but I want you to know
that she was my friend.”
55
BLACKNESS.
Vera stands before me, bathed in blood and flame,