CHAPTER 1

1932

Allise DeWitt might give birth to their first child anytime. Herhusband Quentin, in his farm work pants, long-sleeved shirt, andhigh-topped shoes, looked ready to step out the door. The manyacres of the DeWitt farm spread along the eastern edge of the Chalu Riversome seven miles from Deer Point, the southern Arkansas town where theDeWitts lived.

Allise's uppermost concern rested in her misshapen body. She gave nothought to her bed-tangled reddish hair. Her dark hazel eyes pled with herhusband. "Please hurry home, Quent," she said. "This could be the day."

He kissed her cheek. "Cotton picking gets underway today. I'll do mybest to finish early." Quent slapped a straw hat over side-parted light brownhair combed into slick perfection and rushed out the door.

Allise leaned against the kitchen counter. Tousled strands of hair fellabout her pale face. Twisting her wide wedding band, she listened to theold farm truck rumble down the back alley with Quent's younger brother,Sam, at the wheel. Sam didn't resemble Quent in the slightest. He tookafter their father, stocky and earthy.

Her tall, handsome husband had grown strained under his farmresponsibilities—so strained she now saw few traces of the fun-loving beauwho had courted her some three years ago. Well, that memorable summer andbeautiful Christmas wedding in Pennsylvania are behind us.

Quent's blue flannel robe hung loosely over Allise's expanded girth.She thought of eating for the baby's sake, but the sight of food scraps onher husband's plate brought on a feeling of nausea. She trudged upstairs tothe bedroom. Catching a glimpse in the mirror of her tired eyes and therumpled curls framing her milk-white face, she straightened the mussedhair with her fingers and sank onto the chaise lounge.

She lay there for several hours, fearing the unknown, before the firstcramping pain began. She trudged back downstairs to phone Dr. Walls.

The doctor came as soon as he could leave his office. Cramps, he said,were an early stage of delivery. "I'll examine you later, Allie. Get in bedand rest up for your labor." With her settled, he took the overstuffed chairnear the window. His presence—spectacles perched midway down his noseand a neatly trimmed gray mustache—comforted Allise. He picked up abook, positioned it on his rotund belly, and started to read.

Glancing at him, Allise thought he must have sat like this with manypatients over the years. What would Deer Point do without him?

By sunset on the DeWitt farm, one cotton sack remained to be weighed.All the black tenant hands walked toward their farmhouses—all but one,eighteen-year-old Maizee Colson, the daughter of Jonas and Rebekah. Shewas their eldest, the pretty daughter with the dark almond-shaped eyes.

Maizee was last in line to have her sack weighed, and Quent took histime at the scales. Then he grabbed her arm, and holding her back, hepeered around the weighing shed door. Convinced they were alone, heshoved her to the back of the shed. "Pull those clothes off, girl, and getdown there."

A human mass heaved and grunted over Maizee. Each hard thrustinto her slight body dropped Quentin DeWitt's cold sweat onto her darkskin. Searing pain shot through her sunbaked arms, which he held pinnedagainst the floor. Nothing like this had ever happened to her. She lay inparalyzed submission, tears oozing from eyes set on a dim corner of theceiling. Maizee wanted to cling there in the cool, elusive place, apart fromthe scourge being inflicted upon her.

Quent gave one last guttural groan and rolled onto dirty coarse cottonsacks that only minutes before had been emptied of the day's pickings. Hisheavy breathing cut into a thick silence. Sensing his vulnerability at thatmoment, Maizee wondered what she should do.

Suddenly, Quent stood, and she thought of blood. Wondering if itwould gush down her legs when she stood up, she glimpsed his white fleshdisappearing inside a trouser leg. Maizee imagined her fingers reachingout to claw it. Stain his white with his own blood. Stain my brown fingerswith his blood.

He looked down at her nude form with cold, steel-blue eyes and sneered."Get up, girl! You ain't hurt. Go on home." Without a backward glance,Quent pushed the sagging door and stepped out into the mid-Septemberevening, heated yet from a blistering Arkansas summer.

Maizee lay in the darkness and listened to voices drift across theevening stillness. "Gawd damn it, I'm starved! Allie may be having a baby,and you taking on wenches." Mista Quent had roused his brother, MistaSam, whom she had seen dozing in the truck parked beside the shed.

"Let's go, Sam. I'm hungry too." Mista Quent sounded more like hewas giving in than issuing one of his usual sharp-edged orders.

Maizee heard metal slam against metal as the rickety old truck bumpeddown the rutted dirt lane to the main road. When she could no longer hearit, she knew the men were on the highway headed for Deer Point, sevenwagon-long miles due east.

With no sense of time and alone in the shed, she felt out of her body,not wanting to be a part of it. Then, remembering, she felt between herthighs for blood. Satisfied, she pulled an empty sack reeking of mustycotton over her nakedness and rolled onto her side. With knees drawnto her chest, she lay motionless. Thoughts exploded like charged wirestouching each other inside her head.

In seconds, she came to her knees and wailed, "Nigga!" Whimpering,she pounded the dirt-strewn floor with her fists. Then, as suddenly aswhimper and pounding began, they ceased. Maizee's clenched fists relaxedinto callused hands incapable of harming anyone. She reached for her whitebloomers and pulled them on. Her flour-sack dress lay crumpled nearby.Pulling it over her head, she stood and tugged it down her body beforetying a sweat-stained red bandana about her short plaits.

Then, with the screech of a wild animal, her anger boiled over again.Poised like a mad dog ready to attack, she snatched up a long, empty sack,wadded one end, and spun it round and round. The shed filled with frenziedmotion. Hoes and weights leaning against the walls, tools hanging fromnails—all crashed to the floor, settling about her. Her breath came in harshgasps, and her legs buckled. She sagged to the floor, limp and spent.

For some time, Maizee sat amid the rubble. Then, pushing to her feetagain, she walked out into the night. Trudging across the field in darkness,she wondered how long it had been since everyone left the weighing shed.Momma! She gonna be mad! She be mad when she knows. What I gonna tellher? Maizee tried to hurry along, but her body was past taking commands.Her mind dredged up an ugly word she was forbidden to use. She was notdumb about the thing that had happened to her. Momma and Daddy cain'tdo nothing. Just have to put up with white folks.

For most of her day, Allise had lain on her back, eyes closed. A dullache wrapped around her torso. Opening her eyes, she saw the doctordozing. A book lay across his belly, rising and falling with each breath.His small round specs sat askew on his broad nose. He looks exhausted. Washe up all night tending sick folk?

She tried to move without waking him, but he woke, moved to thewindow, and pulled a watch from his vest pocket. "It's two o'clock. I mustexamine you." Allise winced. Probes of her body, even by the kindly olddoctor, felt like a violation.

He pulled down the sheet, and she curled into a fetal position andmuttered about needing her mother. She tried to pull Philadelphia's teemingstreets, its chugging trolleys and ringing church bells, into a pool of focusedthought, but it was beyond her. Rubbing her backside, she groaned. Thedoctor rose from his chair and wedged a pillow behind her. Pressing intothe soft support, she rolled tired eyes up at him. "I lost my teaching positionbecause I was pregnant. Did you know that, Dr. Walls?"

Her eyes met his gaze. "I didn't, Allie, but it doesn't surprise me."

Allise pushed back tears. "Fresh out of college, I came south to be thebest teacher I could be. Oh, where is Quent?" she shouted, and then addedunder her breath, "Oh, where's my patience?"

Dr. Walls ignored her comments. Time passed slowly. The phonerang. He hobbled downstairs to answer it and in a few minutes was back,breathing hard and holding his watch. "It's four o'clock, Allie. Seems a longtime, but first babies take the longest." He took her hand. "I must run to theoffice and dress a wound. Be back soon. First let's see how you're doing."

"I want water. My mouth is dry."

"You can't have water, dear." He folded back the sheet. "It's going tobe a while."

She watched him walk out, gray fedora and worn leather medical bagin hand. "Please hurry."

He nodded over his shoulder, and she felt abandoned. Like the dayQuent had walked out after her outburst. Big as a hippo and feeling ugly,she wanted to blame her tirade on being pregnant. She had ranted at herhusband that day about losing her job and being an outsider in Deer Point."We're never invited to your friends' homes. It's as if I have the plague sincethey learned I'm a Quaker."

"Oh, Allie—"

"My name is Allise!" she had screamed. "Everyone calls me `Allie.' Ihate it. You're addressing someone that's not me." At that point, Quent hadwalked out of the house.

I needed him to listen, and he walked away. I need him now. Where is he?Alone and scared, her discomfort became more acute. "Oh, God!" shewhispered. "Please come home, Quent."

Maizee opened the back door of the shotgun tenant house. A bulletsent straight through the front door would exit out the back door. Sheswept through the kitchen past her mother and younger sisters. Rebekahglanced up from a dishpan of steamy water on the wood-burning cookstove."You late! Where you been, girl? Lookey, ain't no reason to go off sulkingin there. Ain't nobody feeling sorry for you. Ever'body here be slaving inthat cotton patch same's you, and you loafing off so somebody else has todo your work."

Sweat streamed down Rebekah's round face. Maizee heard harddrawnbreaths escaping her mother's heavy frame as she shifted on thesqueaky wood floor. Fire in the kitchen stove died slowly, like the heatunder the tin roof tempered all day by the late-summer sun. The few raisedglass windows in the house allowed a small escape for the heat.

Her mother's words trailed through the curtained doorway betweenkitchen and bedroom. Maizee sat on the bed, chin cupped in her hands.She imagined Dessie May's five-year-old face puckering at their mother'sharsh tone. Nine-year-old Josephine—known as Li'l Joke—cleared supperfrom the red oilcloth that covered the table. A pang of guilt swept throughMaizee, for clearing the table and drying dishes were her tasks.

Rebekah and her sisters still wore their field-worn, printed flour sackdressesand grubby white bandanas knotted at their napes. White folkssaying my black plaits is pigtails. Maizee jerked off her red bandana, waddedit, and wiped her scalp. Holding the headpiece as if it were repulsive, sheflung the wad against the wall behind the bed frame.

From the kitchen, her mother's words reverberated over the clatterof dishes and throughout the three-room house. Listening to Rebekah'sfrustration, Maizee felt the same bone tiredness all her family endured.Small-framed like her daddy, Jonas, she didn't tire quickly. She had hissharp features, slender build, and medium height but not so much the lookof milk drops in his bloodline.

Daddy don't stumble much, but when he does, he's the first to laugh at hisself.She had a vision of Jonas leaning against a porch post, his work-hardenedhands draping limply between raised knees. Does he have enough laughs leftin him to bear what's happened to me?

Cass and Dalt, her younger brothers, rested against the weatheredporch wall. Maizee knew this evening ritual of cooling off before bedtimeon summer nights.

While no one paid any attention to scolding in the kitchen, Maizeealso knew the whole family depended on her mother's get-up-and-go toprod them through each day. Her momma had the kitchen in order andkindling piled beneath the stove for cooking a predawn breakfast when sheheard Rebekah urge Li'l Joke and Dessie onto the porch. "Jonas, I don'tknow what's wrong with Maizee, but I sho aim to find out." Returning tothe middle room where Maizee sat, Rebekah plopped down on the bed."What's going on? You ain't got some silly little old boy hanging roundthat cotton shed, have you?"

"Nome." The room was dark, and her mother couldn't see her tears.Maizee hoped she couldn't hear the quiver in her voice.

"Listen to me, Maizee. You know you cain't be coming in here latelike you done tonight, shirking your work." Her tone softened. "Stuffsgotta be done, chile. Li'l Joke and Dessie still gotta bathe off fore we cango to bed."

"I know, Momma." A shiver ran along her spine as she thought ofwhat her daddy might try to do to Mista Quent. Why daddy would ... Ablack man trying to kill a white man. She shoved the consequences from hermind. I cain't tell 'em.

"I declare I don't know how we ever gonna make it in these old cottonfields." Rebekah leaned forward on heavy arms. Chubby hands rested onher knees, pulling her dress taut as a tent over a high, round belly. "All us istired—just so tired." She sighed, pushed up from the bedside, and waddledback toward the porch.

After what seemed an eternity, Allise heard the doctor's returningfootsteps on the stairs. He deposited hat and bag on the lounge, and shecried in a raspy whisper, "Water! Please, Dr. Walls, just a sip."

"You can't have water, Allie." He asked about a clean washcloth, foundone, and wet it under the bathroom faucet.

She sucked on it and quieted, but before long her moans became aconstant plaint. Suddenly, her knees came up with a sharp pain, and shecried out, "Dear God, is this day never going to end?"

The doctor took the watch from his vest fob. "It's near six." He strokedher hair. "It will end, Allie. Always does." He lifted the sheet. "Won't belong." Pulling the sheet back over her, he said, "The baby's in commandnow."

"Baby's in command," she mocked. "Do something! Why isn't Quenthere?"

"Shh." He smoothed her tangled hair and patted her lips with thedamp cloth. When she quieted, he sat with watch in one hand, book inthe other, and dozed till another loud cry roused him. He grabbed for thefalling watch, and the book thudded on the floor. At the bedside, he heldup his watch. "Past seven. It's coming now." Shushing her, he waited.

Allise admired his gentle face. "Do you know I'm a Quaker? AFriend?"

The doctor nodded. "Don't push if you have the urge." She reached outto him, and he patted her hand.

The last nine months had been the longest of her life, and now her babywould be born any time. Deer Point women had said any decent pregnantwoman would stay home out of public view. Heedless of their dictates,Allise had wandered around town, visiting such places as Henmann'sBakery for a sweet roll and King's Drugstore to check the perfume counter.Strange men gawked at her, and women sent questioning looks her way.

Now, licking full, parched lips, Allise imagined the judgments behindthose looks. Her mind wandered. She and Quent had laughed at thesilliest things during their courtship. He didn't laugh that day—the time Ilost my temper. He just walked out. Quent walks away from unpleasantness.She massaged her hard belly. I need him. He would be here if he knew thebaby—

Sweat beaded Allise's forehead. A muscle squeezed, pushing the babytoward the birth canal, and with her back to the doctor, she shouted,"Quent!" Dr. Walls touched her shoulder. Thinking the doctor was herhusband, Allise clutched his arm and moaned, "Quent." Turning, she sawit was Dr. Walls.

Gasping on an ebbing pain, Allise groaned into the next contractionand tried to squirm into another position. "Oh, dear God! Why isn't hehere?" Then she heard a rumble in the back alley. Quent's shouts trailed intoher languid consciousness, and she released a weak sigh. Heavy footstepscrossed the porch into the kitchen, the foyer, and up the stairs. She followedthem, and her concerns eroded like sand in lapping waves.