them, so sent out word that they were in search of a suitable cleric to lead their flock.
As fate would have it, Reverend August Hilson and his family had recently been displaced by the race riots that erupted in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Negroes who managed to avoid being shot down in the streets like dogs, or burned to a crisp as they slept in their beds, packed up what they could and fled Tulsa.
For weeks, August and his family lived like nomads, wandering from one town to the next until they wandered all the way to Greenwood, Mississippi. There, August learned that his services were in dire need, “Just down the road,” the bearer of the news advised, “in Money.”
August Hilson and his family took possession of a home on Nigger Row on a cool November day. The photographer from the local newspaper came to capture the auspicious occasion. The family posed on the porch. August was seated in a mahogany chair cushioned in red velvet. The long, dark fingers of his right hand curled around his favorite Bible. His left hand rested on the intricately carved lion’s head which looked out at the photographer from its post at the top of the armrest. His wife, a peanut-colored, petite, full-bosomed woman named Doll, stood dutifully at his right side with her left hand on his shoulder, her right hand wrapped around the long neck of her beloved pink parasol. The children—a daughter named Hemmingway and a son named Paris—were stationed to the left of their father, arms still at their sides.
It was the first time any of them had ever been photographed, and even though they were practically bursting with glee, their expressions were painfully somber and their postures were as stiff as stone.
From beneath the dark blanket that covered both photographer and camera, the photographer counted off: Three … two … one …
The bulb exploded, expelling a puff of white smoke. A cheer went up from the small crowd that had gathered to watch the spectacle, and the Hilson family officially began their new lives.
Days later, when August was presented with a framed copy of the newspaper article, he took it into the drawing room where the light was brightest. There, August stood for many minutes gazing wondrously at the grainy picture. He thought they all looked like wax figures—well, all except Doll, who had the faintest wisp of a smile resting on her lips.
August was too modest a man to hang the framed article on the wall for every visitor to see, so stored it away on a bookshelf. Every once in a while, when he was home alone, he would remove the framed treasure and ogle the picture.
Over the years, the clipping yellowed and curled behind its protective glass, and the photo began to distort and fade. Sometimes when August peered at it, Doll seemed to be sneering; other times, she bared her teeth like a badger. August blamed the changes in the picture on figments of his imagination, poor light, and aging eyes; he had a bagful of explanations to explain it away. The final straw, however, came when he looked at the picture one day and saw that Doll’s middle and index fingers on both hands were crossed; August could not for the life of him decide if the gesture had been made in hope of good luck or for exclusion from a promise.
He tossed the memento in the river, but it was too late—his fate was already sealed.
Doll was the love of August’s life, but she was also a thief.
Back in Tulsa, she had closed her arms around the shoulders of an elderly parishioner and expertly procured a shiny, dark plume from the woman’s brand-new Easter hat.
She was a bandit—stealing her daughter’s prized silk hair ribbons and all of her son’s blue marbles. When she saw the children crying over the loss, it filled her with giddy pleasure.
Before the children came, Doll had even stolen her husband from his first wife. It wasn’t her fault—the spirit of a dead whore had taken root in Doll’s body on the very day she was born.
Doll’s mother, Coraline, was six months pregnant with her second child when Doll, who was five at the time, looked up from the bowl of shelled peas and asked, “Mama, how was I when I was a baby?”
Coraline was slicing carrots for stew. She stopped, raised the back of her hand to her sweaty forehead, and swiped at a damp braid of hair. The question unearthed a memory and a smile.
“You come into this world screaming holy murder, and didn’t stop until you were a month old. Like to drive me outta my mind. It was your daddy—God rest his soul—who stopped me from throwing you down the well.” Coraline laughed and swiped at the braid a second time.
Doll raised her hand and stroked the taut skin beneath her chin. “Maybe you the one shoulda gone down the well,” she said.
The knife slipped from Coraline’s hand and clattered to the table and her mouth dropped open in surprise.
The statement was horrible—yes—but the voice behind the statement was terrifying. Esther Gold, Esther the whore—dead and buried for half a decade, and now come back in her daughter, in her Doll? Coraline blinked with disbelief.
Esther the whore had been a fixture in Tulsa, and could be spotted, day in and day out, wrapped around light poles, beckoning men with a wiggle of her finger, hissing like a snake: “Pssst, come here, I got something that’ll make it all better.”
She had been a beauty once, bright-skinned and thick-legged, with a curtain of hair that stretched all the way down to her waist.
Esther.
Too pretty for any woman to want as a friend. So beautiful, men didn’t think about loving her; they only fantasized about melting away between her creamy thighs.
Poor Esther.
The men she welcomed into her heart and into her bed should have worshipped the ground she walked on—and they did for a while—but eventually her beauty felt like a hot spotlight and their confidence faded away beneath the luminous beam. They questioned her loyalty and themselves.
Why she want me?
The answers always fell short of what they needed, which was a scaffold of assuredness sturdy enough to bear their egos. Esther replied, “I love you, ain’t that enough?”
They said it was, but it wasn’t and they didn’t know why. So the men beat her for loving them.
They beat the goodness and the sweetness out of her. They beat her into the streets, into back alleys, down into the dirt, into the gutter, onto her knees, her back, and then they climbed on top and emptied their miseries inside her.
Esther.
The voice was unmistakable, but Coraline had to be sure, so she said, “What you say, gal?” And Doll repeated herself in the same whiskey-and-cigarette scarred voice.
Coraline rounded the table, caught Doll by the collar of her dress, and dragged her out the house and down the road to the old woman called Sadie, who had herbs and potions that would deal with a tramp soul like Esther.
“Uh-hmmm,” Sadie grunted as she used her thumb and forefinger to stretch Doll’s eyelids open. After peering in the right eye and then the left, Sadie rocked back on her heels and nodded with confidence.
“Yeah, she in there
