My musings are interrupted by the door opening just a bit, the soft pad of feet on the wood floor drawing my attention. Before I can wonder what the noise is about a giant orange tabby launches itself onto the bed, gazing at me with luminous eyes for a heartbeat before walking onto my chest.
“Mrow,” the cat says, as though we had already been introduced.
“Ah-choo,” I say in response, because it must be said that although I enjoy the presence of felines, especially if they happen to be adept mousers, their existence does not agree with mine.
I sit up and scoop up the cat in one move. I no longer wear a corset; the loss of Jane set me off on a spiraling path of doubt and uncertainty, and in my endless revisiting of that day, I could not help but wonder if I might have been able to save her if I had been less restricted in my movements. I do wear a binder across my breasts during the day, but in my rest I wear only a sleep shirt (and a few throwing knives strapped to a holster on my thigh). Sometimes I think that Jane must be looking down at me from on high with that smug expression of hers, and it brings me a moment of gladness.
I set the cat down while I dress, and it sits and watches me with wide green eyes. I had not seen any sign of a cat yesterday afternoon while we’d helped Miss May box up her few belongings. But the cat looks well cared for, and there is something about it that reminds me of Jane, perhaps the way it looks at me as though I were the silliest creature on the planet.
Carolina told me a story about a man he had met from the Punjab who said that all things that die are brought back for another chance at life. The best people reach enlightenment, but the rest of us might have to come back as a lesser creature. Carolina had told me the story as a way of explaining that the undead plague had to be some sort of cosmic punishment for humans being so terrible to one another. But I had been quite taken with the idea of people dying and coming back as something like a grasshopper or a rat, and the way that cat looks at me makes my heart ache. Maybe Jane is not up in heaven being insufferable, after all.
“You will be glad to notice I am no longer wearing a corset,” I say to the cat, because if it is Jane I would rather forestall a lot of meowing about my attire.
“Who’re you talking to?” Sue asks from behind me, and I startle.
“Lordy, Sue! Creeping around like a thief is like to give me a heart attack.”
She laughs. “I ain’t the one fixin’ to sleep the day away. I was just coming to fetch you.” She holds a plate for me; there is cornpone and a nice slice of fried ham, and my stomach grumbles. “I saved you some breakfast, because Lily was eyeing it.”
“That girl is growing like a weed and has the restless dead’s appetite to match,” I say. “Thank you.” I take the plate and begin to eat, the cat cleaning up any crumbs that fall. I eat standing up, and Sue watches me appraisingly.
“What?” I say around a mouth full of food.
“You disappointed that San Francisco is a bust?” Sue asks.
I chew as I think, turning my thoughts over and in on themselves. “I suppose I was looking forward to seeing the cosmopolitan city we had been dreaming about. But I should have known that it would suffer from the same ills as every other place.”
Sue nods. Her expression is pensive, and the corners of her mouth turn down. “You ever remember Nicodemus and think maybe there’s no point to all this fussing? Maybe we aren’t supposed to be in control of our own lives. Maybe we just get to messing things up.”
I frown. “Are you saying that you think that it’s colored folks’ fault that they’re being run out of San Francisco?”
Sue shrugs. “I don’t rightly know. I see everything that’s happened here, what Miss May’s seen, and I just feel like, when it comes to Negroes, it seems like our mistakes pile up faster and harder than anyone else’s.”
“I think that’s because there are a lot of folks who are just waiting for us to fail so they can seize the opportunity to put us back into a cage of their making. If it had not been for Gideon Carr, Nicodemus might still be standing. He destroyed that town from the inside, because he thought he knew better than anyone else. It had nothing to do with any kind of inferiority of the Negro.”
Sue nods and sighs. “It just feels like nothing is ever fair for us.”
“I believe that feeling is the truth, hidden under so many things that feel coincidental but are in fact purposeful. Remember Ida talking about the Lost States? How the laws ostensibly made to ensure people are equal are enforced to keep people in servitude? Back in Nawlins, it just was not proper for a Creole man to marry a Negro woman, but he could keep her on the side if he wanted, no different from a wife. What do you think would have happened if all those well-to-do men started marrying Negro women legally, making them legitimate ladies of means?”
“Things would start to change,” Sue says.
I finish my food and brush the crumbs off my skirt, the orange cat sitting back and grooming itself. “The world naturally trends toward injustice, and it is colored folks who bear the brunt of that. The moment it looks like a Negro will break out of those chains, both real and metaphorical, the faster folks are going to arrive with their torches. First, they will try to offer helpful advice; next, they will try to burn you out for your own good. I reckon if it had not been for the Years of Discord and the enterprising nature of the Chinese folks in San Francisco, the white people here would have found a way to force the Chinese out. But they are too powerful, so white folks are directing their ire at the Negro sector instead. It is no different from what the writings of Mr. Frederick Douglass predicted.”
Sue gives me a bit of side-eye. “I don’t know who that is.”
“I read some of his essays to you on the boat over here. Remember? ‘Power concedes nothing’? Either way, Miss May is right. If the Negro wants to flourish, then they will have to find a place to put down roots and push them down so deep that nothing, not even the dead, will be able to pry them loose.”
Sue grins and rocks back on her heels. “I never took you for a radical, Miss Priss.”
I ignore her teasing tone. “Well, I suppose hearing Miss May’s tales of woe last night have put me in a different sort of mind.”
The truth is, I had been thinking about all sorts of things since losing Jane. I cannot help but remember the way she had never hesitated to call out some random bit of unfairness or chicanery. (As long as it was not her own, of course.) There is something admirable about being willing to stand up against injustice and name the devil true. And now that I am in a position to reinvent myself, to be a fine Negro woman here in the great state of California, I want to have the courage to stand against unfairness, no matter how difficult and ugly it might be.
Of course, everyone knows that it is much easier for a leopard to talk about changing its spots than to actually start to wear stripes.
“Either way,” I say to Sue, bringing myself back to the moment at hand, “I am interested in finding the place past Sacramento that Miss May mentioned, Haven. Jane had a letter from her mother that told Jane to find her there.” I swallow past the sudden lump that forms in my throat, taking a deep breath and letting it out before continuing. “Jane was convinced that it was another Survivalist stronghold, in the manner of Summerland; I find it curious that Miss May says it is in fact some kind of Negro town.”