“Mama?”
She did not know whether she was asleep or awake when she rolled from the bed and lifted Midas’s arm. She was barefoot, and she lit the lantern—another gift from Lady—and opened her cabin door. Taking a long stick from the woodpile outside, she began walking, both hands occupied. When she felt lost—for, even though she knew the farm, it was foreign in the dark—the voice that sounded like her mother would keep calling. She walked until she heard the shrill sounds of a child screaming, overridden by the howls of a beast. At first these sounds were faint, but as Aggie walked closer to the creek, they became louder.
Her mother’s voice urged her on, like a grip on her arm or a push on her back. At the creek there was a horse tied to a tree. The animal was chuffing in distress. And there, on the grassy bank, the monster’s body covered a screaming child. The monster’s scales were gone and only its pale skin was left. Aggie put down her lantern so she could grip the long stick in her hand. She approached the back of the Ninki Nanka and began to hit its body until it wailed in pain. She kicked the monster, and it finally fell off the child, then she told the child, run, run. The child did not run, however, only crouched nearby. Yet the monster heeded Aggie’s words, and as it ran past the lantern, she saw it was only a man: her master, Samuel Pinchard. He ran naked to the horse, put a foot in the stirrup, and climbed onto the saddle.
Aggie walked to the lantern and picked it up, then went back to the child, who was naked, too. Aggie lifted the lantern, and as the light cast its godly benediction, she saw the child was Mamie.
“Come here, lil’ sister,” Aggie called. “I ain’t gwan hurt you. Come here, baby.”
Mamie crawled to her and grabbed on, whimpering. Aggie took off her shawl and wrapped the child in it and they sat together on the grass. They stayed at the creek until the rooster in the barn far away made its urging crow. For several days that followed, she gave her responsibility for the Quarters-children to Pop George, in order to care for Mamie. No one saw Samuel during those days, though Pop George asked everyone about him. And Aggie pondered the stories of her mother, about the creatures that her African grandmother had told Kiné of, in a courtyard, long ago. Were there truly supernatural monsters stalking the water? Or were these monsters only white men who walked on two legs, abominations but not strangers? Only dangerous because they were familiar—in one’s home, in one’s temple, on the dirt of natal land?
IV
The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men. The problem of education, then, among Negroes must first of all deal with the Talented Tenth; it is the problem of developing the Best of this race that they may guide the Mass away from the contamination and death of the Worst, in their own and other races. Now the training of men is a difficult and intricate task. Its technique is a matter for educational experts, but its object is for the vision of seers.
—W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Talented Tenth”
You misjudge us because you do not know us.
—W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Talented Tenth”
Brother-Man Magic
After I returned to the City, the old man would call me every Sunday. He tried to keep his peace, but when winter came, he began throwing hints about David, that he had asked about me. Maybe I wanted to give the young man a call.
I was too embarrassed to confess that David had mailed me letters and cards for two months that fall, asking me for a second chance. And I’d been planning to forgive him—after making him suffer a sufficient amount of time—until I received David’s very last letter in October. In it he confessed, he knew his cause was pointless. He still loved me, but he’d started dating another girl. Her name was Carla Jackson, she was real nice, and David hoped he and I would always be friends.
And so I reconciled with Chris Tate instead, who’d been looking pitiful in the hallways at school. He’d call my house, pretending to ask for homework, and when my mother hung up on her end, he’d beg me to get back together. He hadn’t been seeing anybody else. He promised. In November, we returned to our regular spot behind the lower school.
Chris was a good kisser, but his other idea of romance was to grab my breast with one hand and pump it, as if seeking pasteurized, whole milk. He’d pull my hand and place on the front of his jeans.
“Touch it, Ailey.”
“No. You don’t deserve it.”
“Please. I’ll take you to the movies.”
I nudged him away. “That’s not the logical order of things. First you make me your girlfriend. Then you take me to the movies. Then I jerk you off.”