Grace by Natashia Deon Read Free Book Online

landmarks became borders. Their asking her permission to stay became demands. Their maps, their boundaries, meant the end of the Indians’ world. It’s always how white men came to own things: “If you can define it, you can own it,” they’d say. “If you can define it, it can be fought for, killed for. A woman, a slave, a cow, dirt, an idea.” And it is what happened. Thousands lost their lives. The Creek Nation fought the new United States of America. The unshapeable spirit had been shaped into Tallassee’s pretty picture. And the lines of her cheekbones became battle lines. And it wouldn’t be the last time. There’s a civil war coming.
    â€œIf you lucky,” Charles said, pulling a broken plate from the water, “when the past comes to greet you, all it want to say is, ‘I remember you,’ then smile from longing.”

6 / FLASH
    Conyers, Georgia, 1846
    T HE LAST THING I remember is Hazel telling me, “Run!” And I ran with all my soul, I did.
    Then walked some.
    Rested beside a stream and drank water. Ate some stale bread Hazel gave me. And when the bread was gone the second day, I used Hazel’s fire poker to kill again. But I prayed over that coon. Prayed over it with my Bible, started a fire the way Hazel taught me to. Roasted it, ate it, slept ’til daylight and ran again. ’Til nightfall, I did. Three more days this way. Three more days with Hazel’s voice in my head telling me, don’t stop. “Go north,” she said. So I kept on, under the cover of rainwet leaves and gray clouds.
    By nightfall on the fourth day, I found that North Star. But by then, I was too tired for it to matter. Had been climbing up and over and up and over, the backs of my arms were sore and my muscles were burnt to cinder.
    The rain had started again, was overflowing, making the ground a stream of cold. I was slipping over rocks, walking more than running, catching myself from falling. I tied big green leafs around my bleeding bare feet but still felt every grounded thistle like a blade.
    Rain kept pelting my face. Was soft tickles at first, then turned to hard pinpricks from hitting the same spot again and again.
    I stumbled into a road, soaking wet, turning myself this way and that way. The light of two buggy lamps showered me and the sign in the road next to me. It read: Conyers, Georgia.
    The buggy’s horses were coming my way, snorting, their hooves pounding. That’s when I threw myself off the road.
    Now, I don’t know how long I been in this room.
    Or how I got here.
    Or who put me in these dry clothes.
    Or why I feel full. I don’t remember eating after that second night.
    My whole body hurts and my eyes is swole shut. I cain’t see. Puss and blood is squeezing around ’em, pushing my eyeballs out, slicing pain behind ’em. Whoever got me here put piles of sheets on top of me making it hard to move.
    The sheets bend and make a space under my neck between my chest and chin like a roof’s peak, where hot is puffing out and blowing steam over my face. A wet rag is sagging down from my forehead to my mouth, almost dry from fever, rubbing the thin skin on my top lip raw.
    Shivers send my teeth chattering. My jaw is sore and my ear holes are plugged like they brimming wit water, muffling noises outside of me.
    My imaginings got me thinking that some man’s standing above me with a knife, ready to cut me up ’cause he know I cain’t move. For a hour, I been facing the spot where I think he is but he ain’t killed me yet.
    Throw-up’s racing to my mouth, bitter, ’cause I’m thinking ’bout Momma killed. I swallow it back down, breathe slow, keep it from coming again.
    Lord, I miss Hazel.

    T HE SCENT OF a woman is on me like lavender and sugar. Must be a negro ’cause she clean. But somebody oughta tell her she wasting her time trying to save me ’cause I think God mean for me to die