Sapphire's Grave by Hilda Gurley Highgate Read Free Book Online

succession of ravagers had come to a halt. The smirks and stares of the other women became more overt. The men, both Negro and white, looked away when she passed. But Sister persevered—there was nothing else she could do. There never had been.
    Soon, she was again too weak, too sick to work. Her children were taken. “Don’t let nobody hurt ’em,” Sister begged, delirious and befuddled with laudanum or whiskey. “Don’ let ’em hurt my—” her throat was hot and parched—“hurt my babies. Please don’ let ’em . . .” She knew that she was dying. But she knew also that she was dead already inside, and had been dead for what felt like years. She had lived, had heard and seen and felt and acted only to the extent that was necessary for survival and the care of her children. She had been, for most moments of her recent life, otherwise dead.
    Sarah, her eyes solemn and calm, squeezed Sapphire’s hand reassuringly. “Ain’ nobody go’ hurt yo’ babies. I swear ’fo’ God. I’ll guard ’em wit’ my very life.”
    Slowly, Sister relinquished Sapphire’s feeble grasp on life. She experienced a curious mixture of regret and relief—regret that life had dealt with Sapphire this way, and that she was of no use now to her children; relief that Sapphire would finally be free of this, her brief and miserable life, to face whatever circumstance, pleasant or ill, awaited her hereafter. For Sister had become convinced, during her internment in the barn if not before, that there was no hope in Sapphire’s life for a meaningful existence, only misery and loss; and if no hope, then certainly no kind, benevolent God in the heavens to meet her at the celebrated pearly gates. She knew that Sapphire had no fear of death—no hell, Sister thought, could torture and consume her as the hell from which she was at this moment departed. Sister supposed that she should close Sapphire’s eyes. But then she thought perhaps she should not, for this would impart to her passing an inappropriate finality. She did not know if this was the end, or the beginning of another life, perhaps more merciful than the one before. Surely, it could not be less so.
    But whatever this mystery, this death, she would face it open-eyed, her chin raised and defiant, as if issuing a challenge to death itself:
    O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?
    ST. JOHN’S PARISH, SOUTH CAROLINA
    FEBRUARY, 1772
    Sapphire was buried in a hole at the edge of the woods. Few people mourned. Her children, timorous but instructed to be brave, moved like wooden soldiers toward their mother’s inglorious grave, and the thin dark woman who had been Sapphire’s only friend stared angry and appalled over their small heads as Sapphire’s body was dumped unceremoniously into the hole and covered with dirt.
    Some folks said that Sapphire’s spirit would never rest. She had challenged God and death, making of each a formidable opponent and dooming herself for an eternity. Had she gone meekly, death might have taken her to a place of quiet and calm, her ravaged soul to comfort, her spirit laid at last to tranquil rest.
    Instead, the soul met its eternal fate; but the spirit of Sapphire lived on in her daughters; three, hundreds, then thousands dispersed, bound by a collective memory of suffering and shame. Persisting against monumental antipathy, they would pass bits and pieces of their inheritance from daughter to daughter, the things that Sapphire did not carry to her vile grave: tools of endurance, a hunger for love, and a haughty, surly spirit to defend and protect them from further pain, but with dire consequences and at great expense. Sapphire would leave her daughters, also, her hugeness of heart, and a willingness to sacrifice, labor, or even kill, for that which she loved.
    And long after Sapphire was buried, and few remembered her name, she would live on, her acrid presence surviving several centuries, so pitiable yet so unpitied, a vilified