hands she held sheet music, her thin lips moving soundlessly to the melody.
“Mornin’, ma’am.”
Olga’s eyes remained fixed on the stanza. “Who sent you here?”
“My aunt.”
“And who is your aunt?”
“Mavis Hawkins, ma’am.”
“Yes, I know her. She takes in my laundry. She seems to be a decent woman.”
Mrs. Olga raised her violet eyes and peered at Easter over the thin rims of her glasses. After a moment she summoned her closer with a wiggle of her index finger. Her mouth curled into a smile as she watched Easter carefully navigate the edge of the carpet.
“That’s good, you know how to follow instructions. Do you know how to cook?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You’ll be helping Mary prepare the meals among other things. Slim will advise you of your duties. I pay two dollars a week and the leftovers can be divided between yourself, Mary, and Slim.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Three weeks later Lawton Fields, Mrs. Olga’s husband of twenty years, returned from his trip abroad. He was tall and lanky with narrow blue eyes and a bulbous nose that protruded from the center of his face like a cauliflower. He was not an attractive man by any stretch of the word. Olga was no great beauty herself, but certainly appealing enough to have snagged a better-looking man than Lawton. The truth was that the two were a perfect match. Both were liberal thinkers and curious about the world. However, Olga’s phobia of great bodies of water only allowed her to experience the world through her beloved books.
Lawton had an adventurer’s heart and traveled often and for great lengths of time. When Easter first laid eyes on him, he was returning from a four-month expedition to South Africa, where he had retraced the footsteps of his hero, the great missionary and explorer Stanley Livingston.
The sight of Easter drew his breath away, as she held a striking resemblance to the women of the Khoisan tribe.
When she walked into the dining room, a plate of sausage balanced in her hand, he looked up into her face and his memory swept him back to South Africa. The hairs on his arms rose just as they had when his feet first stepped onto African soil. It was a magical place, that Africa.
“What’s your name?” he asked, looking deep into Easter’s eyes.
“Easter, suh.”
“Easter.” He repeated her name as if savoring something tasty. Olga’s brow arched and Lawton sunk his fork into the plump flesh of the sausage.
Easter, Mavis, and the older children carried the scant pieces of furniture from the house and set them down in the front yard beneath the hot Georgia sun. The chintzes swarmed and the children screamed and pointed as the tiny black bugs made a beeline to their death.
Easter soaked rags in camphor oil, dropped them into cooking pots, and set them aflame, filling the house with smoke, killing the chintzes that remained hidden in the walls.
Outside the younger children played tag and hide-and-go-seek. Mavis sat in her rocking chair with her eyes closed and Easter laid herself down beneath the shade of the tupelo tree and read.
Over the past few months it had been her great pleasure to work for Mrs. Olga. The woman had recognized Easter’s intelligence early on and did not miss the longing that flashed in her young employee’s eyes whenever they swept across the hundreds of books that lined the shelves.
“Can you read?” she’d asked one day as Easter rubbed mineral oil into the wood moldings around the doorway.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Really? Who have you read?”
Easter rattled off an impressive list of writers and their works. Mrs. Olga was flabbergasted, she had never met a well-read Negro. “Well,” she said as she removed her glasses and rubbed the strain from her eyes, “you are more than welcome to borrow any book that strikes your fancy.”
Easter was delighted, and devoured four books in just as many days. She read deep into the night. She read until the flame of her candle burned down to wick.
The two women discussed, in depth, the books that Easter had read. Mrs. Olga was impressed with her insight and was happy to find that Easter’s aptitude stretched beyond the frivolity of the dime-store romances most of the women in her generation swooned over. Olga started to feel that she had found a kindred spirit in the young Negro maid.
The day began to slip away and the sun swelled until it was blood-orange and then began its descent. Mavis and Easter went into the house, raised the windows, and opened the doors. They swept the dead chintzes into a black pile in the middle of the floor and then scooped them up and sprinkled them into the flames that crackled and spit in the fireplace. They moved the furniture back into the house and Mavis made a dinner of boiled yams, snap peas, and stewed chicken feet. The children were fed and put to bed. Mavis and Easter were sitting at the table enjoying a slice of pecan pie when the sound of a shotgun blast ripped through the quiet. The children bolted out of their beds, Mavis’s fork clattered loudly to the floor, and Easter pressed her hand to her heart. A second shot sounded soon after the first and everyone dropped to the floor. They waited for a third shot, but none came, just the pounding of fleeing feet. They crowded under the table, trembling and clutching one another, until the flame in the oil lamp burned out and the house went as black as the deed that had been done.
The following day, clusters of people gathered along the road, on porches and out in front of the general store, and the story of what had taken place the previous night jumped from one mouth to the next. A white man named Hampton Smith had been shot dead as he sat taking his supper. The second bullet had struck his wife in the shoulder.
“That nigger done gone and lost his mind,” Mavis’s neighbor, a widower named Bishop Cantor, said as he eased himself down onto the porch step, removed his hat, and fitted it onto the broad cap of his knee.
Easter stood near the doorway, her hands clamped at her belly.
“Who?” Mavis asked.
Bishop dropped his eyes and mumbled something Mavis didn’t quite hear.
“What you say, Bishop?” she hissed, stooping down alongside him, her youngest child straddling her hip.
Bishop drummed his fingers on the rim of his hat. “They say Sidney Johnson was the one that done it.”
Mavis puckered her lips and shook her head pitifully. Her knees cracked when she rose.
Bishop saw the dark wetness on the material of her dress. “Boy needing changing,” he grunted before he placed his hat back onto his head and stood. “Sidney must be miles away by now, and done left a heap of trouble behind him. White folk gonna make sure somebody pay, don’t matter who, jus’ as long as it’s one of us niggers.”
Mavis nodded her head in agreement and reached over and pulled a rotten
