Java Sparrow Press

Three moves later into the wilderness it seemed, the wind was blowing the fireplace until it was near smoldering wood, smoking her cabin like it was on fire. She couldn’t put another log on. Already, she’d used more firewood than she could afford for the month. She didn’t have the strength to cut her own trees, though she was surrounded by them.

She squinted at the figure she was working on this particular night, barely able to make out the face any longer. It was getting too dark. The face was lopsided. It was past midnight, and her body was heavy with the dread of tomorrow. More domestic work. A new family, same role, same work. This is a life of not being seen.

For the moment, her mind was alive with creation. It is the only time she’s not so alone in the world. All the women are Grandma. Grandma was God. Her God abandoned her. Never again. Some women don’t get to create babies. These clay women are her creation. She is re- creating Grandma over and over again. She’d make sure that she’d create a million Gods if that’s what it took to feel safe and loved again.

Grandma was stern and discerning in a way that she hadn’t learned how to be yet. No amount of will and strength could save Grandma from infection when she cut herself. She let it long and linger in her flesh until she realized it was feasting upon her like leeches. By then, it was too late. She had already taken to fevers. And her foot went from blue to green to black … then it spread.

With only colored doctors and no colored hospitals nearby, Grandma died half-here and half-gone. The family could only give her moonshine to dull the pain once they could no longer afford the medicines. She was twelve watching Grandma die. Not that she knew that then. She knew something was happening. Her life was changing.

Grandma showed her how to make the women in clay when she was seven. Then, Grandma died when she was thirteen. She was put out of her family home, accompanied by scandal and despair, at fourteen. Her father found the clay women. She had just begun building her kingdom of Gods. Then, evicted because of them. Now, thirteen years later, living alone with her created Gods, it feels like the only reason she’s still alive.

No matter how tightly she squints, she doesn’t have enough light to make out the face of the woman she’s working on. There’s no more oil for her lamps. The left side of the face looks like melted wax that dried that way. The eye is a slit, and the mouth is barely more than a comma. She has the nose of an Egyptian statue – an oblong hole, half-chopped off. She would have to rework it after adding more moisture to it during daylight hours. Maybe, with fingers that weren’t trembling with freezing cold. Her bones were rattling under her flesh like chains of the dead on the hunt for forsaken souls.

“You may be the greatest one yet. I will return. I will call you … Amina – A warrior among warriors: You shall have a home with me and I with you. Welcome.” She breathes into the clay with all her guilt and hope, her loneliness and desire to live. She breathes Grandma into Amina. Or what she believes she has of Grandma in her. She’s not like Grandma at all. Grandma had people. Grandma was loved. Grandma wouldn’t allow her to be cast away in the middle of the woods with only barren trees and the river’s stream to keep her company. But she shares what little she has left with her Gods.

Amina was near enough to perfect. Close to the exact replica of Grandma. But, Amina has to wait another day. The thought of wetting her fingers to reshape her, worried her. It was too cold to warm up after she went to the stream to get more water.

The fire blows itself out, when the wind howls like wolves at her door. Her low-oiled lamps have gone with it. The candles went out with the first howling of the wind. She can’t work in darkness AND the cold. She puts Amina on the shelf with the others propped up with wooden branches that she sharpened into small mannequin stands.

Over one hundred and fifty of her gods stand on the shelves, standing at the ready. Even the ones that are propped up, needing more Earth, or Fire – she doesn’t doubt their power and reach. They are God’s army.

She jumps into her small twin-sized bed, and the old wood pops and creaks like a stiff elder. She pulls the blankets over her head, and curls into her body until there is no body left. The shivers will stop. They always do. Then, sleep will come.

The howling of the winds becomes a loud lullaby that she can sleep through until her door blows wide open. It knocks her chair to the floor in a crash. The door slams up against the wall in another crash. She jumps up and sees it’s not just the wind alone. It’s a man that’s kicked in the door. His shadow stands in the doorway like death has come home.

She jumps up not really sure what to do. But staying in bed to make herself easy prey is not an option either. He smells of soured dairy, spoiled beef, and too much liquor in her small one-room cabin like he’s the man of the house. She feels around for her carving knife not sure if he can see her in the darkness. But certainly he can hear her. She’s trying to quiet herself but even to herself she sounds like a hyperventilating beast.

The cold wind comes in and dances right in the middle of the floor. But now she’s freezing because she’s terrified. Never one to keep a disorganized mess, her blade is right next to her shelves of women of clay. He grabs her up from behind before she can grab it.

She wants to scream but she has no people. People scream for help. There are four miles between her and the nearest cabin. It was intentional. Those who know of her would say she bought it on herself with her voodoo hexes – ‘God don’t like ugly’.

He smells like a backwood moonshine – jasmine with juniper and a hint of magnolia, dipped twice in a bloody, meaty juice. With his liquor courage – brute force and blinding strength – she is in a vice grip. He is hard and cold. So cold he feels like death. Like, when her uncle died and she touched him in his pine box. Her father popped her for being disrespectful of the dead. But it was really for being curious about death when it scared him. She understood there was no warmth left. That must be what it means to be dead: the absence of heat. With life comes heat. This man was proving it.

His hand covers her mouth to keep her from screaming, though she knew she could be dead for a week before anyone would come check on her. She was alone in the world.

The man is at her backside. The backside her father said no one would ever want if she kept playing with dirt and voodoo, worshiping sin and angels of death. He never understood what the clay women were. It was never about darkness and death, nor light and life. It was about creation. Expansion. It was re-imagining herself as someone else. This was about creating herself again. In her own image.

She twists and turns, trying to wriggle free of him. He is stealing the little heat she has left in her body. He is undressing her, peeling off her layers. Small and lean, but not strong enough to free herself. She wrestles with babies all day, not men. Her life hasn’t prepared her to be a match for this fight. He has the hold of chains on her body. All the scratches she can give are not enough. His liquor is armor. Her nails are pebbles in comparison.

When she is pushed away from him, she doesn’t know why or how. She falls to the floor spraining her wrist when she lands. She crawls to the corner of her bed to protect herself. She licks the blood from her swelling lip, reflexively. She looks for him in the darkness of her small room. Only one eye is working. She didn’t realize her eyes were impaired until she tried to use them. The darkness overtakes the room.

In a panic she tries to see between the darkness. There is only more darkness, but there is also movement. They are not alone. The shelves are empty. Closed jars of moist soil waiting to be formed remain on the bottom shelf. The other shelves are empty. Grandma’s shoulders cast shadows on the walls up to the ceiling. The shadows blend and collide until it all becomes a growing and looming darkness. They surround him until he blends with the darkness that is them.

She isn’t sure what she is seeing when she sees him flop and wiggle like a fish gasping for air. The darkness converges even more on the brute. He’s being swallowing into it, until there is no more brute of a man left. He doesn’t scream. He exhales in a soft sigh. Then, he’s gone.

When it’s all said and done the room is silent and dimly lit now. There is heat where there was cold and chill. The wind is still howling outside like it’s on its last leg of battle. The door is closed with the chair up against it again. The hanging plants blow in small circular motions near the window. Everything is once again safe and quiet.

The women of clay, the Gods, stand where the man once stood. Dark shadowy figures crowd upon each other in the small cabin blending into each other, swaying as multiple dark figures, instead of one. They are tall and broad, gray, tar-black, and midnight blue, all facing her with sockets for eyes, and an absence of light.

All were made in the image of Grandma. All Gods, when she thought her God was gone. She looked up from her place on the floor at their feet – bleeding, broken, and bruised.

Amina – warriors of warriors – with half her face in place, and the left side drooping, stands closest to her. Her smile is crooked, and one eye socket is soft peace. “And you shall have a home here with me, and I with you.”

Amina pulls her from the floor. Her sore and limp wrist is healed when Amina touches her hand. The blood dries on her lip. The pain above her eye stings until it suddenly disappears. The swelling in her shoulder is gone. The tears on her face dry up. They stand like guardians and gatekeepers, protecting her while she gets in the bed to sleep.

When she shivers under the covers. The fire rises, and the heat spreads. There is more wood where there was little wood left. She looks around, and it was like a man was never there. Even the smell of him is gone. No blood, no aging meat, no soured dairy, no perfumed liquor, and the smell of an unwashed body has vanished completely. The smell of old wood and lamp oil lingers in the air.

She looks at the women that have returned to the shelves. They are in the order on the shelves that she left them in. Amina stands out in front waiting to have half her face reset during brighter, warmer hours. She is not so sure Amina needs more work after all.That night was nearly the same as every other night. Except tonight a storm ravaged the land like it was trying to separate the Earth from the heavens. The wind howled like it was running from something bigger than defeat on the battlefield. Nature sounded like the end of the world. The thunder beat like drums of war. Lightning striking nearby may as well be vengeance, led by those who once lived in the body. Everything seemed alive outside. Alive, and a little supernatural.

She molded her little clay women the same as she had since she was nine – years – old. That’s when her grandmother taught her how to make them. For protection. With the precision of a surgeon she tended to her creation. Their faces were small, round, and complete. She shaped the cut and muscle in their arms, pinched the strength in their thighs, and caressed their bottoms’ roundness and heft. She rubbed softness into their waist, sliced the slight in the small of their back, and the chisel of space in their clavicle where their delicacy lay with breaths they will never take.

That night was nearly the same as every other night in her young unmarried life. She shook off chill after chill, but she was alone. The hair stood in spikes on her forearm. Tonight, a storm was at her doorstep that she didn’t know how to brace herself for.

The two windows shook like it was being ripped from the panel of the tiny cabin of a house. The space between the door and the frame smacked wood against wood, so much so, she had to put a chair underneath the doorknob to quiet the constant knocking. The hanging plants blew in circles, like pots being stirred by invisible hands. The shadows of fire played off the wall in tall, dark figures that, if she hadn’t known better, would have thought they were coming for her. Instead, they seemed to sulk and brood in her one-room home, waiting on more information before they planned their next move.

The chill in the air was unwavering. Even the sheep skin and blankets nailed to the walls for insulation wasn’t enough to battle the cold trying to come in tonight. With each howl of the wind the temperature dropped another two or three degrees. This is the kind of cold that could settle in the bones.

Domestic work was but a bit above being a slave or sharecropper. She found little peace in it and even less joy. But it afforded her her home with a fireplace, a bed, two windows, and shelves in which her clay women lived. Her shack of a house was out in rural nowhere, away from the rest of the Negroes. Once they found out what she did. She was moved further and further away from her people. There are multiple kinds of segregation. This could be life in the South. Lonely.

Where some women had books, fair skin, wealth, or men, she had her clay women. Jars of moist soil were waiting to be formed. Where other women had husbands, or children, she had more mud to gather.

Some of the clay women are pale gray, reddish-brown, tar-black, orange-ish brown, and eggplant. Some would have to be put through fire to set. Others needed more water to be formed properly and that would be enough. A few of them were propped up with sticks and strings while the clay dried hard enough to stand like stone. If they could not stand, she’d have to go back outside and gather more mud from the streams to add to them. They must be sturdy on their own – they needed more Earth. They were a mighty and strong force, more than one hundred of them standing firm on her three shelves.

They all had one thing in common: they were made in the image of her grandmother – God herself. Grandma didn’t shrink. She didn’t bow before anyone or anything. Likewise, the clay women can’t bend, they are created without knees. They won’t ever kneel. Their heads won’t hang, nor will their necks bend. Their eyes only look straight ahead, not away. Their bodies weren’t made for the life she lived.

Her clay women will never live the life of caring for and calming children that were not born of their body. They will never clean toilets they can’t use at the Johnson’s, or wash clothes that she will never wear. They were not born for domestic life. They will never live as a permanent underclass. They can’t be on their knees if they are without them.

Every day since she was a young one being reprimanded for playing in the dirt, she began creating a nation. She hid the women for some time. She couldn’t know that it would put the fear of God and the Devil in her family. They feared her. They never asked her why, or what for. Instead, she was exiled from her kin.

She left with nowhere to go. Her mother, a seemingly willing prisoner of her husband, helped her find domestic work that included room and board with a ‘nice’ Jewish family. The women of clay scared them when they found the figures while randomly searching her room. She was making breakfast one morning, then she was promptly relieved of her duties before she could serve it.

They apologized for any grievances but pushed her out with her things, and all the spare cash they had on hand. They were paying her to leave them, AND absolving their family of being cursed. They thought the clay could be voodoo dolls of them. She moved again, prepared to keep her secrets, more secret.