but ’stead look at me, dancing and singing for niggers that got a day’s worth of dirt under their fingernails.” Her words were soaked with disappointment. “My mama probably turning over in her grave.”
Easter stared down at Rain’s pretty toes.
“What about you? What you wanna be? I know you don’t wanna be my maid for the rest of your life, do you?”
Easter shrugged her shoulders. Being with Rain for the rest of her life sounded just fine to her.
“I don’t know, haven’t really given it much thought.”
Rain turned the flask up to her lips and drank deeply. “Stand up, girl, raise your dress and let me see your goods.”
Easter turned a crooked eye on her. “What?”
Rain’s face went slack. “Well someone’s got to do it, might as well be you.”
“Do what?”
“For all the writing and reading, you just as dumb as a doornail, ain’t you?”
Easter blinked. She was completely lost.
Rain leaned over and peered directly into Easter’s wide eyes. “You gonna have to take my place in the show until I’m healed.”
Easter’s jaw dropped.
“Close your mouth, chile, this place full of flies,” Rain chuckled.
Easter knew Rain’s entire routine by heart, every hip-swaying, groin-thrusting boom-chica-boom-chica-boom-boom-boom move, but that didn’t mean that she could pull it off in front of an audience of sex-crazed sharecroppers. And furthermore, Easter didn’t have Rain’s curves—she was as flat as a board.
Nor did she find it easy to melt into the music, so her attempts at a lascivious bump-and-grind were appalling; in fact, she resembled an epileptic in the throes of a seizure. Comedy was not her intent, but it was the end result and the audience roared with laughter and threw pennies at her feet.
“You a clown, girl! A straight-up fool!” Rain howled when Easter chicken-walked off the stage and into her open arms. “It wasn’t me, but it was good!”
“You think so?” Easter was panting.
“Better than good,” Rain said, and then pressed her warm lips against Easter’s. It happened just that once but Easter would relive it a million times in her dreams.
Ten shows and three towns later, Rain’s ankle was healed, good as new. Easter was glad for it, because she was growing tired of playing the fool. The show was working its way down the Savannah River toward Elberton and Easter had fifteen dollars saved. A few more weeks and she figured she’d have enough to hop a train heading somewhere. Maybe, she thought, Rain would come with her.
But Slocum had other plans for Easter, and one evening as she sat eating her dinner of fried snook and boiled potatoes, his bloated, bow-legged shadow fell over her.
“What?”
Slocum grinned as he ceremoniously unfurled the burlap poster he held, revealing a colorful caricature of a cross-eyed, tongue-wagging, knock-kneed Easter.
Rain clapped her hands together and squealed, “You’ve arrived!”
Arrived where? Easter wondered. The bowels of life? The filthy heels of existence?
That night after the show, the moon sat low and full in the sky as Easter made her way to Rain’s tent. This was something she looked forward to all day. It was their time and their time alone in which they did whatever they wanted. Sometimes Easter would sit snug between Rain’s legs as Rain used the comb to carve fine lines through Easter’s thick hair and then braided it into neat rows. Other times Easter would paint Rain’s toenails or knead the knots in her neck until they melted away. Sometimes they’d play Bid Whist or just talk. Always, Easter waited for another kiss, but it never came.
“You never stop scribbling in that notebook, what you scribbling?” Rain had pressed until Easter broke down one day and began to share the stories she’d written about Waycross and the people who lived there. Easter read aloud the tales heavy with Southern dialect and folksy wisdom and Rain’s eyes rippled with the images Easter’s words created. “You should write a book like dem white folks. You just as good as they are.”
That night Easter arrived at Rain’s tent as usual, pulled back the canvas flap, and stepped inside. She saw Rain and something else … someone else, and then the light suddenly disappeared. She thought she’d been struck blind, but then her eyelids suddenly popped open and her shocked gaze collided with Rain’s dreamy, moist one. The young girl she’d been kissing blushed, turned her face away, and raised delicate fingers to her lips. Rain caught hold of her wrist and gently eased the girl’s hand back down into her lap. “Don’t be ’shamed,” she cooed lovingly, and Easter almost bit through her tongue.
After that, Easter made up her mind and then made her escape. She crept past the watching horses, the sleeping dog, and the blind prophet who strapped himself to a tree at night because he had fits that sent him stumbling deep into his own black heart. He saw nothing and he saw everything, but Easter never mustered the nerve to place her hands into his; had she done so he would have warned her to avoid the city sweet and told her to point her compass north.
Elberton, Georgia’s landscape was littered with gaping holes and the sound of dynamite blasts echoed frequently across the horizon. Most of the men in and around Elberton worked in the quarries, gauging the earth until they struck rock that resembled sparkling river water frozen in time.
Easter had walked all through the night and only stopped to rest when the night sky began to flake away. She caught the scent of strong black coffee and followed it to a shack with a picnic table set out front. A woman was standing in the doorway staring thoughtfully down at the chickens that pecked at the dirt around her feet. When she looked up and saw Easter coming she hollered out, “Got eggs, grits, and hopping John. That’s it.”
“That’s fine,” Easter said.
“You look bone-tired, girl.” The woman set a battered metal cup down on the table and poured it full with coffee.
Easter stared down into the dark liquid. “You got milk?”
The woman shook her head. “You a li’l early, the boy ain’t come with the milk yet. Got sugar though.”
“That’ll do, I guess,” Easter said and waved her hand through the screen of steam rising from the coffee.
The woman walked off and called over her shoulder, “I’m Claudia, by the way.”
By the time Easter had finished her meal, two men and a woman carrying a basket of johnny cakes on her head had joined her. They were all heading into Elberton and welcomed Easter into the back of their horse and buggy. The johnny cake she’d bought from the woman was wrapped in newspaper, which was how she came across the ad:
