RED DIRT WITCH
N. K. Jemisin
THE WAY TO tell the difference between dreams that were prophecy and dreams that were just wasted sleep was to wait and see if they came three times. Emmaline had her third dream about the White Lady on the coldest night ever recorded in Alabama history. This was actually very cold—ten degrees below zero, on a long dark January Sabbath when even the moon hid behind a veil of shadow.
Emmaline survived the cold the way poor people everywhere have done since the dawn of time: with a warm, energetic friend. Three patchwork quilts helped too. The friend was Frank Heath, who was pretty damn spry for a man of fifty-five, though he claimed to be forty-five so maybe that helped. The quilts were Em’s, and it also helped that one of them had dried flowers (Jack-in-thepulpits) and a few nuggets of charcoal tucked under each patch of leftover cloth. That made for a standing invitation to warmth and the summertime, who were of course welcome to pay a visit and stay the night anytime they liked. Those had come a-calling to the children’s beds, at least, for which Emmaline was grateful; the children slept soundly, snug and comfortable. That left Em and Frank free to conduct their own warmthmaking with an easy conscience.
After that was done, Emmaline closed her eyes and found herself in the Commissary Market down on Dugan. Dusty southern daylight, bright and fierce even in winter, shone slanting onto the street alongside the market, unimpeded by cars or carts—or people. Pratt City wasn’t much of a city, being really just the Negro neighborhood of Birmingham, but it was a whole place, thriving and bustling in its way. Here, though, Emmaline had never seen the place so empty in her life. As if to spite the cold, the market’s bins tumbled over with summer produce: watermelons and green tomatoes and peaches and more, along with a few early collards. That meant that whatever this dream meant to warn her of, it would come with the heat of the mid-months.
Out of habit, Em glanced at the sign above these last. Overpriced again; greedy bastards.
“Why, greed’s a sin,” said a soft, whispery voice all around her. “Be proper of you to punish ’em for it, wouldn’t it?”
This was one of the spirits that she’d tamed over the years. They liked to test her, though, so it was always wise to be careful with ’em. “Supposin’ I could,” she said in reply. “But only the store manager, since the company too big to go after. And I can’t say’s I truly blame the manager, either, since he got children to feed same as me.”
“Sin’s sin, woman.”
“And let she who is without sin cast the first stone,” Em countered easily. “As you well know.” Then she checked herself; no sense getting testy. Illwishing opened doors for ill winds to blow through—which was probably why the voice was trying to get her to do it.
The voice sighed a little in exasperation. It was colorless, genderless, barely a voice at all; that sigh whispered like wind through the stand of pines across the street. “Just tellin’ you somebody comin’, cranky old biddy.” “Who, Jesus Christ? ’Bout time, His slow ass.”
Whispery laughter. “Fine, then—there a White Lady a-comin’, a fine one, and she got something special in mind for you and yours. You ready?”
Em frowned to herself. The other two dreams had been more airy-fairy than this—just collections of symbols and hints of a threat, omens and portents. It seemed fate had finally gotten impatient enough to just say plain what she needed to hear.
“No, I ain’t ready,” Em said, with a sigh. “But ain’t like that ever made no mind to some folk. Thank you for the warning.”
More laughter, rising to become a gale, picking Emmaline up and spinning her about. The Market blurred into a whirlwind—but through it all, there were little ribbons that she could see edging into the tornado from elsewhere, whipping about in shining silken red. Truth was always there for the taking, if you only reached out to grasp it. Thing was, Em didn’t feel like grasping it; she was tired, Lord have mercy. The world didn’t change. If she just relaxed, the dream would let her back into sleep, like she wanted.
But... well. Best to be prepared, she supposed.
So Em stretched out a hand and laid hold of one of the ribbons. And suddenly the street that ran through the market was full of people. Angry people, most of ’em white and lining the road, and marching people, most of ’em black and in the middle of the road. The black ones’ jaws were set, their chins high in a way that always meant trouble when white folks were around, because Lord didn’t they hate seeing pride. “Trouble, trouble,” sang-song the voice—and before the marchers appeared a line of policemen with billy clubs in their hands and barking dogs at their sides. Emmaline’s guts clenched for the blood that would almost surely be spilled. Pride! Was it worth all that blood?
Yet when she opened her mouth to shout at the marchers for their foolishness, the whispery voice laughed again, and she spun again, the laughter chasing her out of dreams and up to reality.
Well, this was what she’d wanted, but she didn’t much like it because reality was dark and painfully cold on her mouth and chin, which she’d stuck outside the covers to breathe. Her teeth were chattering. She reached back.
“Ain’t time to get up,” muttered Frank at her stirring, half-dreaming himself.
“You got Sunday to rest,” said Emmaline. “You want to live ’til then, you get to work.”
His low, rich laugh warmed her more than his body ever could. “Yes ma’am,” he said, and did as he was bid.
And because they had set to, Emmaline missed that her only girlchild Pauline got up and walked the hall for awhile, disturbed by bad dreams of her own.
SINCE THE SPIRITS had given her a full season’s warning, Em spent the time preparing for the White Lady’s arrival. This meant she finished up as much business as possible in the days right after the dream. The cold passed quickly, as cold was wont to do in Alabama. And as soon as the weather was comfortable again, Emmaline set Pauline to grinding all the herbs she’d laid in since November, then had her boy Sample put her shingle out by the mailpost, where it read HERBS AND PRAYERS, FOR ALL AND SUNDRY. This brought an immediate and eager stream of customers.
First there was Mr. Jake, who’d gotten into a spat with his cousin over Christmas dinner and had wished death on him, and now was regretting it because the cousin had come down with a wet cough. Emmaline told him to take the man some chitlins made with sardine oil and extra garlic. Then she handed him a long braid of garlic heads, ten in all, from her own garden.
“That much garlic?” Jake had given her a look of pure affront; like most men of Pratt City, he was proud of his cooking. “I look Eye-talian to you?”
“All right, let him die, then.” This elicited a giggle from Pauline, who sat in on most of Em’s appointments these days.
So, grumbling, Jake had bought the garlic from Emmaline and gone off to make his amends. People talked about Jake’s stanky, awful chitlins ’til the day he died—but his cousin ate some of the peace offering, and he got better.
And there was Em’s cousin Renee, who came by just to chat, and conveniently told Emmaline all the goings-on in and around Pratt City. There was trouble brewing, Renee said, political trouble; whispers in the church pews, meetings at the school gym, plans for a boycott or two or ten. Way up in Virginia, folks were suing the government about segregation in the schools. Em figured it wouldn’t come to nothing, but all the white folks was up like angry bees over the notion of their precious children sitting next to Negro children, competing next to Negro children, befriending Negro children. It was going to get ugly. Many evils came riding in on the tails of strife, though—so here, Emmaline suspected, would be their battleground.