Sapphire's Grave Read online

  And made love and gave birth in them, she dared not say aloud. She picked a new dandelion and gently stroked its delicate head with her forefinger. He did not speak. She continued. White folks don’t understand, do they? She did not look up at him. He shook his head. She had not asked if he understood. She assumed that he did. He appreciated her confidence in him, although it was misplaced; and he held her, wanting to absorb and consume her, to engage in and share her in a way that he could not put into words.

  So he asked her to marry him instead. And she said yes because she understood him to be offering her somethingness, and because in her world this was all there was, and yes was the thing to say: yes to belonging to and with. They were to marry next spring at the small white church, but she changed her mind and asked him to meet her in the tobacco fields on Valentine’s Day. And the preacher married them there in the presence of their families, in the fields that she and the ancestors loved.

  She thought he understood her, and for a while he behaved as though he did. So she settled into his home and waited for something to happen. She waited through planting and harvests as babies and more babies sucked her breasts and took parts of her away, their greed and neediness draining and straining her, causing lines to appear on her once hopeful face as spirit and vigor and curiosity left her, leaving in their place a dulled precocity and absence of will.

  He took, too, giving, but taking and taking. No one had ever taught Jewell to be selfish, so she kept on giving, hardly noticing the selfishness of her family, barely missing her former joy, and finally, not missing it at all. She thought of Santa at Christmas, and the fairy when a child lost a tooth. She thought only rarely of the fantasy departed, the thing that she had missed; only when he rolled off of her and onto his side to smile at her; and she smiled back, damp and only slightly uncomfortable and thinking it would hurt his feelings if she got up to clean up and dust herself with starch. And she did not allow herself to miss it, that thing that she had once thought existed, but had since then come to disavow.

  He had intended to leave. In fact, he had gone, briefly, on a three-day pilgrimage of self-pity and mental and moral sadomasochism. He had not been particularly missed. The children were accustomed to his absence, and his wife had been prepared for his inevitable departure. He had come back a changed man, chastised and full of self-realization. This was not apparent to his wife, who seemed to be holding her breath as they passed each other in the small house. He supposed that she expected a violent upbraiding, a volcanic and inebriated eruption of the rage he had presumably nurtured with bottles of corn whiskey for the past three days.

  But Eugene had returned repentant, not enraged; and while he would never relish the small pink reminder of his wife’s betrayal, he recognized his own role in bringing it to pass. He would maintain the peace in his home in penance for his own sin, and for the sake of the wife he had defrauded.

  Her expression was one of surprise when she saw the peace offerings he had arranged on their bed: several yards of hunter green velvet from the piece goods store, and a bottle of lilac perfume he had purchased from a vendor on the road home. She did not smile or thank him for these things. Of the fabric, she fashioned for him a fine green robe that covered him to his shins. Herself, she doused in perfume. And life continued to live itself in their home.

  HENDERSON, NORTH CAROLINA

  OCTOBER, 1939

  . . . The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.

  —Jeremiah 31:29

  Each year she was a pumpkin.

  Her mother had made her an elaborate pink tutu the year that she was six. Her father had bought her tights and ballet shoes. Clovey was confused. Last year’s ensemble had impressed itself upon her. She had thought herself a pumpkin. Her bottom lip trembled. Tears of confusion and loss filled her large brown eyes as she recalled the tent-like orange dress and black tights she had worn last year from house to house as patronizing white people filled her bag, and her sisters’ and brothers’ bags, with candy corn and butterscotch stick candy, fruit and nuts and an occasional silver coin; the half-pumpkin mask, fastened at first to her head with twine, then carried proudly in her arms as the evening progressed and the mask became uncomfortable; its squarish nose and half-moon eyes carved lovingly and perfectly, the mouth a painful smile that looked to Clovey like the mild unnamed discomfort she had lived with her whole short life; like the subtle nausea that no remedy had suppressed.

  Trick or treat

  smell my feet

  give me something good to eat

  She had thought herself a pumpkin.

  Her parents decided to indulge her. The tutu was set aside for a time. It would come in handy later, when her father—her very own, special father—would insist that she take up ballet. Her mother would insist to him that her sisters do the same; even though they were not special girls like Clovey, whose special father had somehow bestowed upon her the specialness that Clovey loved and loathed. She had cherished and borne this specialness since she was four, and Aunt Suzanne had excluded Clovey from the family portrait. Images of that day would blur at the edges as Clovey grew older, but she would often see that portrait in the home of her Aunt Suzanne, and she would never forget that it had changed her life forever.

  It had been Easter Sunday, and Clovey’s mother, whose work with needle and thread had become renowned, had outdone herself this time: Clovey and her sisters were resplendent in outfits differing only in size; yellow gingham jumpers worn over crisp white cotton blouses, with yellow gingham ribbons decorating their pale straw hats. There had been an undercurrent of excitement as the girls were oiled and pressed that morning. A picture would be taken before dinner at Aunt Suzanne’s, a portrait to include the entire Yarborough clan: Mama, and Papa—the Papa that Clovey shared with her siblings—dapper in a coat and tie; Clovey’s sisters and brothers; her aunts and uncles and cousins; Great-Aunt Lilly and -Uncle Horace. Even the reclusive Great-Grandma Sister would be present for the occasion, the matriarch ancient and mysterious to Clovey, and almost never seen. To Clovey, this was just as well. Great-Grandma made her squirm, as many adults did; but Great-Grandma, in particular, with her fixed stare both void and full of a knowledge recognizable and frightening, even to a four-year-old.

  And Aunt Suzanne. Clovey had noticed her, as she had noticed Clovey, that Sunday after church. Clovey had been standing with her three sisters, arranged in descending order of height, accepting compliments as bonneted heads bobbed their approval of Mama’s handiwork. The yellow gingham jumpers in four varying sizes had stolen the show this Easter morning; and Clovey, the smallest and most darling, was the star of that show. Accustomed to, though still shy of, the attention of others, Clovey had smiled humbly and lowered her head, occasionally peeking from beneath the straw brim to appreciate the attention that she was receiving.

  But once, she had glanced upward to meet the attention of her aunt, a look upon her face that Clovey could not interpret. The look passed, but Clovey had experienced, not for the first time, that vague feeling of discomfort in the pit of her stomach. She would feel it again as the day wore on.

  There was a sprawling oak outside the house where Aunt Suzanne lived, where Mama had once lived, its branches expansive and glorious at the foot of a grassy incline toward the road. The family had gathered beneath it, children in front, boys kneeling, girls standing, their shoulders turned inward toward the center of the gathering. Clovey, the smallest child, had been positioned in the center, uneasy on Great-Grandma Sister’s bony lap, when Aunt Suzanne had spoken:

  “You know, she ought not to be there.”

  Clovey had looked up, twisting in her uncomfortable seat to see who had been spoken of. Her eyes had fallen first upon her mother, who had stiffened noticeably, her smile congealed. Then they had fallen upon her aunt, whose eyes were upon Clovey, staring hard and mean. To her horror, in fact, the entire gathering had stared at her, and a hush had fallen over the crowd. All motion had
ceased.

  “She really ought not to be sittin’ there.” Aunt Suzanne had repeated, and her jaw had taken on a stubborn set. Beside her, Aunt Lilly’s face had registered horror and dread, and her eyes had shifted anxiously from Clovey to Mama.

  Clovey would recall forever the look of pain and anger, the weariness and age on her mother’s face as she had turned woodenly toward Aunt Suzanne.

  “What did you say?” she had asked, as if the dreadful statement had not been made twice. Her voice was not the voice of Clovey’s mother, the gentle, loving, scolding voice that Clovey had come to recognize as Mama’s. It was a croaking, rasping voice; unpleasant and cold. It was a voice as hateful as a field rat frozen stiff and defiant in the privy one frigid winter, when Clovey had sought to use it in the middle of the night, its paws curled into weapons poised eternally for attack.

  Aunt Suzanne had twitched nervously at this voice—it was one that she had never heard in all the years of mothering, adequately if not affectionately, this child adopted as a baby and now become a woman, spawned in iniquity, confirming the hereditary nature of wickedness. But Aunt Suzanne had stared back at her, defying Satan, daring her sometime daughter to attempt to defend her transgression.

  “This is a family portrait,” Aunt Suzanne had said, lifting her chin and squaring her shoulders. The two women had faced each other for a child’s eternity, time suspended, and Clovey had stood teetering on the precipice of a short-lived simplicity, at four facing the great abysmal depth of enlightenment, guilt, and shame, driven from the Garden of Eden. Her mother’s eyes had turned to slits, and her words had slithered out of her like venomous serpents freed from a snare.

  “You evil ol’ witch. You mis’able ol’ bag o’ self-righteousness one foot outa yo’ grave—”

  “Stop it!” cried Aunt Lilly, shocked. “Dass yo’ mama.”

  Great-Grandma Sister began to cackle inaudibly. Clovey could feel her laughter.

  “She ain’ none o’ my mama.” Clovey’s mother turned on Aunt Lilly, then back to Aunt Suzanne. “You never could stand to see nobody happy, ’specially if happy didn’ come like you think it ought. You think I ain’ knowed you was judgin’ my mama? Now you judgin’ my chile. My chile.” She turned to face Clovey—bewildered, frightened Clovey—and tears suddenly filled her eyes. She rushed toward the child, the tears spilling onto her cheeks, and gathered Clovey in her arms, muttering all the while between clenched teeth. “Like you ain’ got da res’ o’ yo’ life to be dealin’ wit’ other folks’ ’pinionatin’ . . . she gotta start tearin’ you down ’fo’ you even big enough to understan’.” She turned toward the speechless crowd. “Come on ya’ll. We leavin’ dis place—” and she started up the hill toward the wagon that had brought her here, her husband and children trailing behind her. “You is ev’ry bit much part o’ dis family as anybody else, and don’ let nobody tell you diff ’rent . . .”

  But the damage was done. The child’s mind, already sharp and perceptive, had begun to assimilate facts and to draw unpleasant, if tentative, conclusions: She was different, hence her yellow-orange skin, red hair, “extra” father, and the vague discomfort that had persisted from her earliest recollection. She began to understand, on the most intuitive level, the source of that discomfort. Tossed furiously about in her mother’s arms with each jolting step, she looked beyond her mother’s shoulder, down the gentle slope toward her father—the one she shared with the others, the brown-skinned, round-faced, kinky-haired others. He regarded his feet as he walked, his hands in his pockets, and although she could not hear him, he appeared to Clovey to be whistling. She stared hard at him, tears stinging her eyes; but he did not look up, and she realized that he looked at her mother rarely, if ever, and never in all her recollection had he regarded Clovey directly at all. Her stomach began to churn. Her lip trembled. She hugged her mother’s neck and began to hiccup and sob as she tried to express her confusion and shame; but all she could manage as they reached the wagon was:

  “Mama why come . . . wh- wh- why—”

  Clovey’s mother placed one foot on the wagon, shifting Clovey from her shoulder to her knee, and looked into the pained, tear-streaked face for a long time. And as the others cleared the hill, she wiped that face and kissed it hurriedly. “You’s special,” she said earnestly, her eyes affirming the seriousness of her proclamation. “You hear me? Don’ let nobody tell you diff’rent.”

  The pumpkin garb was large enough, and loose-fitting, to accommodate Clovey until she was nine, a thin child, and small for her age. The carving of the pumpkin mask became an annual ritual for Clovey, who demonstrated a level of skill and precision that raised eyebrows. “I carved it myself,” she would tell people; and they would smile and say, “You did?” regarding the perfectly shaped symmetrical features so proficiently chiseled—surely not the work of a six-, seven-, eight-year-old child.

  But her father—the Daddy uniquely hers—encouraged her. She began to work with wax, carving the shapeless lumps into donkeys and possums, trees and rivers and maps, Mama and Daddy and her teachers. Soon, hardened clay figures began to clutter the mantel above the fireplace at Daddy’s house, to overflow from cardboard boxes salvaged to contain the increasingly well-crafted and imaginative figurines.

  She finally outgrew the pumpkin gown; but still, she felt herself a pumpkin among the ghouls and witches and demons at Halloween. Pumpkins were benign, never confrontational. Their grimaces bespoke a determination to bear with a smile whatever anguish perturbed them. Always, they were silent; but always, their oddity brought them more attention than they expected, and they crouched behind curtains on windowsills, until someone noticed this and moved them to where they could be viewed from outside, reluctant stars on a stage opening onto the world for all to see.

  Her mother made her another orange gown, this one accented with thin black stripes of felt that traversed its length; a longer gown, but not much longer. Clovey would always be short. She would always be slight like her father. As a preteen, she would hope that this would render her inconspicuous, but it would not.

  Her two daddies, by this time, had become Daddy and Eugene. Generous, doting Daddy, who indulged and encouraged her to intellectual and artistic pursuits; and frosty, distant Eugene. She did not call him Eugene to his face. She did not call him anything. She established with him a kind of truce, of silent, mutual surrender. Each of them understood and accepted that the other was. Occasionally, and for the sake of her mother, she was later to understand, he would force himself to grunt a compliment at her carving or sculpture or sketch. He was never overtly hostile, but that fact, too, was owing to the delicacy of relationships in their home. There was a tension between her mother and Eugene. One false move or unkind word could topple the fragile structure of this tactfully maintained domestic tranquillity. Eugene and Mama shared a bed but lacked the warmth that passed between her mother and Daddy. And if Eugene demonstrated no affection toward his own children, he was yet more detached from Clovey.

  Only the children—the other children—seemed oblivious to the suspenseful drama enacted daily in their home. Clovey was their baby sister, and although she did not resemble them, her uniqueness, to them, lay in her status as baby of their family. Yet Clovey remained lonely. Her siblings could not shield her from the taunting of her classmates at the public school for Negro children. So her mother moved them all to a private, Christian school. Later, Clovey had a tutor, who conducted classes daily at her father’s house as her mother worked. A dreamy child whose thoughts meandered during science lessons, Clovey doodled at lunchtime and during “recess” while her work was checked for accuracy and comprehension. Once, she drew a girl, a friend, her mother as a child, and called her Jessie. Her father’s jaw dropped. Her mother’s eyes filled with tears. Even Eugene was moved when her mother showed him the portrait done in charcoal.

  And Clovey became aware of the power of art to speak to the heart, to move things immovable. Neither science nor words seemed to hold this power f
or her, for Clovey could find no words to articulate the turmoil that stirred inside, the cauldron of unanswered questions and unresolved emotion that simmered beneath her mild-mannered facade. But these things radiated from her drawings and paintings, the conflict and irony and tragedy of her family’s lives expressed in colors vibrant or subdued. She painted in browns and matte mauves the comfort of being sheltered in her mother’s arms. She sculpted from a block of ice Eugene’s distance and apprehension toward her. She painted the falsity of Aunt Suzanne’s smile. Great-Grandma Sister’s vision and intelligence were captured in a pair of finely fashioned disembodied earthen eyes. In clay, she rendered her own internal conflict, limbs and fists and outstretched hands reaching out from a formless, fiery base.

  Her father smiled at her. Kindness fairly glowed from a page filled with the sunlight and favor of a gracious god. Portrait of Daddy won first prize in a local children’s art competition. The judges had not known that the fledgling artist was a Negress. Hasty apology was made and the award withdrawn. They had understood the child to be a resident of Henderson, not merely a student there. Let it go, her mother admonished her father, whose face was reddened with embarrassment and seldom-seen anger. Clovey did not understand. She could not appreciate the significance of her loss, and at any rate had little interest in winning. Portrait of Daddy found a permanent home above the great fireplace in the master bedroom, replacing a gilded mirror that had been in the family for generations. Later, Portrait of Daddy would exceed the mirror in value and prestige.