Good Fortune (9781416998631) (51 page)

S
OMEHING ABOUT THE DAY DID NOT SEEM RIGHT
. I
T WAS ONE
of those days when I could look up at the winter sky and feel something odd in my bones. I thought that maybe it was a touch of the sadness I still felt over the death of Mr. Caldwell. Or that I was fearful, given that injustice had struck so violently and so close to home. Whatever it was, I tried to dismiss the feeling.

Daniel had picked up a job with a local lumber company, but he continued transporting ice to the cities for extra money. He decided that morning, because his deliveries were light, that he'd take me with him to the city.

At one of the few stops he had all day, Daniel asked me to watch the wagon while he went inside. The streets were not busy, almost empty in fact, so I decided to walk around near the wagon, just to stay warm.

I don't know what possessed me to turn, pick up the discarded newspaper, and look at the half-soiled page. Perhaps it was my excitement in finding a newspaper I didn't have to pay for. But whatever the reason, one minute I was sitting idly, thinking of the nice school I would have one day, and the next, I was staring at the words that screamed
at me from the page. I felt something unseen pulling the breath from my lungs like a ribbon from my hair. It read:

I couldn't find my breath. I was only vaguely aware of Daniel saying my name over and over and of him steering me back into the wagon without calling attention to us. Then I passed out. I don't remember doing so, and when Daniel recounted it to me later, I denied the whole event. I didn't believe it; I couldn't believe it. Daniel spoke to me about the ad, later, and Florence came up behind him, trying to explain to me that John was dead, but I merely laughed in her face. She didn't know what she was saying, how could she know? She didn't even know John. It wasn't her that he promised he'd see again.

I told her this. “You're wrong. That can't be right, can't you see?”

I couldn't understand their blank faces.

“Daniel?” I questioned my brother. He knew for sure. But my brother simply told me that Florence was right. John was dead; it was the truth.

“But Daniel, how could you say this?
You?
You were there, Daniel, you should understand!”

“Anna, listen,” he started.

“How can I listen when you won't tell the truth!” I shouted out at him, tears watering my eyes. Then Mama Bessie's hand touched my shoulder, and she handed me that paper, those false newspaper words, that thing straight from hell. And again, the words came, the truth, the comforting sighs, and this time—this time I listened … the veil lifted.

They're right
.

I raced off into the starless night. The cold, shooting through my body like the white man's bullet, was a blessing. Maybe, just maybe, it would steal me away to death, too.

If Daniel hadn't found me out by the lake, teardrops frozen on my face, I think my soul would have disappeared before daylight. But he did: Daniel found me. I didn't want to see him—not at first, at least. I didn't want to see anyone, and I think he knew that. But he was there, nonetheless. Back at Mama Bessie's he sat with me late into the night. I didn't want anyone else there.

It was nighttime, or very early morning, when I picked up my writing tool. I should have been sleep, but sleep just wouldn't come, not then. I felt broken. Fate had pointed its long finger at my name. So I sat by candlelight and pulled out a small journal Mrs. Rosa had given me.

One more year. One more year, I'd say, if yesterday was today. One more year I'd hold this hope, so sure, this love, still pure. I'd ask my mind, “How long do memories stay?” And I'd ask my heart, “Can you hold on just one more day?” But today, I sit silently. Tears won't even come. I sit and I wait and I listen. If he is dead, his spirit will come. It must come!

But alas! I heard nothing, I saw nothing, I felt nothing. A tear finally did come, followed by a symphony of rain down my cheeks.

Why can't I feel his death? And why does hate come so easily? I hate them for drowning my soul and taking a life needed here in the world. But Mama's words burn like hellfire in my ears. “Love beats it every time. Love kills hate every single time. Love lives on till the end.”

Well, I ask, Mother, is this the end?

CHAPTER
 
47 

A
FTER HEARING OF JOHN'S DEATH
, I
WANTED TO GIVE UP ON
all I did, all I had. John was gone, and in his memory lived a part of me that was now gone too.

But I realized I had to go on, for Daniel, for Florence, for the children who now depended so much on me and my words of encouragement. I had to move on for the part of myself that was still present, conscious, and alive. The part still proclaiming, this is not the end.

December rolled by, and I found myself in the year 1824: another year in this freedom land. January and February flew past me without my recognition. I made it my purpose to come closer to God and to myself. I had always gone to church, every single week, but this was different. I sank far down into myself, listening closely to what was inside. Beyond the sadness, beyond the fear of what lay ahead of me, I sought out a place within where God sat. I prayed blindly to God and to that peace I knew was in my spirit. I devoted my time to teaching, finding joy in the students' smiles and determined faces. And somewhere in all of this, I found a small hope, hovering somewhere in me. What was it that I was hoping for? I didn't know.

I tried in every manner at first, after John died, to avoid Mrs. Rosa. Something about sharing pity didn't strike me well, and I felt it would be best if I kept my distance. But soon enough, I couldn't escape the pull of Mrs. Rosa. She was like a mother to me, and I found myself eventually scurrying back to her house, back into the world I felt so comfortable in. When I went back the first time, after many months, she welcomed me with open arms and dried my tears even before they fell.

Mrs. Rosa helped me, more than anyone, with my growth. I was able to set a piece of my heart in her hands for healing.

“These books have been sitting, waiting for you, Anna.” I nodded. “I can see your heart crying riverbeds of tears, but things will be all right. Sometimes, I've got to remind myself of that, but deep down, I know it to be the truth.”

“How'd you know what happened, Mrs. Rosa?” I looked at her tired eyes and thought she had gained some years in just the few months since Mr. Caldwell's death. She still had the same patient, dignified composure, however, and I was easily enfolded into her wings.

“Your friend—Florence, I believe—she stopped by to speak with me. She figured you hadn't been by in a while and wanted to explain things to me.”

“I'm sorry, Mrs. Rosa. I just haven't felt quite like myself.”

She drew her arms around me and held me close for a long while. My tears spilled on her shoulder and she wiped them away.

“Anna, they are seasons, that's all,” she said. “Life is littered with them. The springs and summers—they're so hot, so safe, so beautiful. But then …” She stopped as Little Sue, who had been sleeping on a pillow in the corner, clutching her bean baby doll, lifted her sleepy head to her mother and blinked twice.

“See daddy?” the little girl asked, lifting her arms, so Mrs. Rosa could pick her up. Mrs. Rosa walked over and lifted her up, then sat back down with the child on her lap.

“Daddy?” the child asked again, but it seemed more habit than a real question, as if her dreams were filled with images of a person who had been stolen from her reality. Little Sue laid her head on Mrs. Rosa's shoulder with a whimper and closed her eyes again as her mother stroked her hair.

“Shh, Little Sue,” Mrs. Rosa said softly. Then she turned back to me. “But then the falls with their chills, and the winters with their bareness and freezing condemnations must come and go as well. But it's all meant to cycle onward. That's what life's about, Anna.”

In the days that followed, I let Mrs. Rosa's words sit in my mind so I could consider them.

Florence's reaction differed from Mrs. Rosa's. She worried about me the most. At first, she just couldn't understand, despite my painful attempts to explain. She felt it was her duty to bring me back across the separation I had created. But her attempts only frustrated her, pushing me farther into my corner. She confronted Daniel about me when she thought I wasn't paying attention, and labored over the “right words to say.”

“Give her a little bit of time,” I'd hear my brother say. “Anna will find her way back. You'll see.”

Daniel was right. After I swam in my grief for a while, I finally chose to come up for air, for good. Then, Florence settled back down.

“You seem different, Anna,” she said to me one day in early March. “It's almost like you left for a long time an' came back as someone new, or just … just a little different from before.”

I shrugged and smiled. “What's so different? I still look like me, I still act like me,” I said calmly, knowing that all those physical things made no difference. I knew that my feelings had changed me.

Florence looked at me closely. “You're, well, I don't have no words for it,” she said, throwing her hands up.

But I wasn't the only aspect of her life that had changed. She and Daniel were growing very close. She'd taken well to Daniel's proposal that she accompany him to the Hadson community meetings, even though she'd always swear it was a waste of time. She'd try to persuade me to accompany them every week, but I preferred my solitude and went with them to the meetings only once in a while. Later on, I'd look up and see Florence strolling back through Mama Bessie's door, exhausted, exclaiming that she would never go to one of the Hadson meetings again. But she did go, and I found out that her complaints about the meetings really were only an act.

“Florence? Don't mind what she say to you, Anna, she loves them meetins! She found herself a voice she ain't neva
had befo', an' oh what a loud, strong voice she got. Don't let her fool you,” Daniel told me.