And here and there the new shade of blue and the new shade of red. The swirl. The way it's just like eyes-wide-open dreaming. I would dance with any feet in shoe leather.
The candles burn down. The band gets louder and lazier. I twirl with some gentleman from Boston, a former abolitionist, come to Washington to help create the new national university. I believe it's called, or to be called, the Smithsonian Institution. R. talks to someone from Treasury. "What can he be saying now?" my dance partner teases. I would blush, but the red's already on my face. The butterfly. What is he saying now?
Something he's said before and before. Something he's said before.
That's what he says now. And he won't hear what's being said now.
There's money to be made after the war. Each year it seems a little more. There's money to be made after the war, but R.’s not making very much of it. He doesn't feel the tides the way he did, or the wind. He doesn't listen the way he did. He's somewhere else all the time now, responding to new acts with old gestures fragilely bridging past to present, ending his span before the future is reached.
Of course, he made money during the war and before the war. Why is it called that way? Collected money, gathered money, from where it had been, resting or clinched, into a grand green pile somewhere behind the doors of his bank. All those words would be better than "made." Behind the door of his bank is a place R. has never taken me. It's the only remaining place I know of for sure.
This gentleman from the Smithsonian is asking me if I knew that James Smithson, the man whose will left the money to start the Smithsonian Institution, if I knew James was illegitimate. "He was born James Lewis Macie. He took his father's name only after his mother died." I smile and start listening a bit more attentively. I didn't know this and it does interest me. He says James's mother was an English lady.
It's good to know the daughters of English gentility have illegitimate children too. "The times are changing. Barriers are falling," he says mid-spin. But I'm thinking: I know dimly of clubs and weddings, lines across which no colored can step. Not even me with he. He goes to places I cannot go.
And I'm still playing pronoun games. Who is object; who is subject; is it me, or am I it?
Someone has tapped on the shoulder of the Smithsonian fellow, and I never discover how Macie became Smithson; my waist is released from his vise. The music slows down. I'm in the arms of the dark prince, my Congressman. My new partner and I move in a glorious syncopation. I stop wondering about the places I cannot go and go. This is the first territory into which I have entered into which R. cannot follow.
Prancing across the floor with the Congressman, I hold in my breath, press the back of my tongue against the roof of my mouth to make my chin, my throat, look taut. I want him to see me like I used to be. I want him to confuse the past with the present. I want the past and the future to fuse. I want to scare my Congressman into believing the things I believe about the future. I want to possess him. What would it mean to make him mine? By what skill would I achieve the capture?
Is it more than that? I want him to want me. And it's so hard to tell if he does.
He whispered strange stories into my ear. "My Daddy," says he, "had such a headache, my Mama hit him upside the head with a skillet, and I popped out, full dressed in overalls, ready to pick a day's cotton-just so Mama could take a day's rest.”
“I don't believe you.”
“Find a record that proves me wrong. A birth certificate. A baptism sheet. Anything.”
“It's tragic those things don't exist.”
“I've told you what I think of tragedy." I wanted to hit him upside the head, but I didn't have a skillet.
When I was short and lived on the farm, I knew my way to a field of exotic wild verbena with orange-colored flowers and lemon scent. They were favorites of Lady's, but this verbena looked like another wild herb that was poisonous. You could tell the difference by looking at the petals-one had tapered petal sand one had squat squared petals. I no longer remember which was which. Things I thought I would never forget I have forgotten. Things I have prayed to forget I have remembered. He loves me, he loves me not. Once I stood in a field of somebody else's flowers and had my way with them. Now I've got a man but ain't got no way to have with him or without him. Mammy hated when I talked that way. But I knew that language too. It comes back to me now. Surrounds me now in this Capital City. Now I have a man and a house, but my house has no garden. I don't know where the wild flowers grow 'round here. I have no way to know. And I don't know how I would know. I possess no way to know. None at all.
And I can't recall how to tell a curing from a killing herb.
He has interesting memories that trot out to me in well-turned phrases, my Congressman. His smile is quick. He has the habit of charm. He is a public feast that is gnawed daily, not my private meal. What would I not give for a corner of this bread to call my own? That's easy. My freedom. This feeling I call "free" I would trade for nothing. Not one thing. And I don't even know good what it is. What it is. But I know I saw it, like a crack of light coming in under the door, saw it in the Congressman's eyes. Felt it tingling on the places on my arms he touched while we danced. Feel it in the circle of the dance. Around again and around again till everything collapses or disappears. I felt that free-y feeling in his arms. Now we slither around the ballroom.
Am I the invisible feet of the snake? Or am I the horse prancing?
Did I know right then what it was, or was it the moment later? The moment when R. tapped the Congressman's shoulder, waited imperiously for the Congressman to step away, then pulled me closer, like a shackle snapping on my wrist, felt the hand that had signed the paper to buy me caress the nape of my neck. Just as the feeling was escaping, I could named it, free-y. But it was gone, and that old familiar feeling, that comfortable feeling, of being possessed came to me. We danced something gallant, in the old lazy high-stepping way. The Congressman walked away and off the dance floor; the Negro man walks away. R. and I are left on this dance floor become a stage. This is our cake walk.
Everybody looks at us high-step.
A Confederate and his quadroon. Redeemed I was, I was sold and he bought me. I should let him be my God; I have let him be my God. He redeemed me and I have loved him for it. Where do I go, to go and sin no more? The Congressman walked away, arm in arm with some young dark lady, the gap-too the girl. He walked away as R. twirled me on my aching toes.
am trying to remember; but I don't know what I have forgotten. I wish I had run down the road alongside Other toward Mammy. I wish Other had got there first but Mammy kept looking down the road for me. I wish Other looked up to Mammy with pleading eyes. I wish I arrived at Mammy's knee. I wish Mammy bent over and lifted me from my feet. I wish Mammy kissed me as Other watched. I wish Mammy loved me and Other saw it.
But that's never going to happen. She's dead now. She's dead, and all I think about is not her and where she is and what she is now; I still think only of her and what I want and what I missed. Look at me this way. They always say we don't have family feelings. I hate proving them right. When I lived with the white people in Charleston, I used to cry out loud for my Mammy just so they wouldn't think I didn't care that I was torn away and stole. I wanted them to know I felt something. And I did feel something. Just not something for her. My cry was a lie.
I liked R. right from the first. He was good-looking and tender almost and he was funny in a biting way. And he could always see how strange life was, how it was what you loved that bit you, how it was the thing you lost and scrambled to find that killed you, how you were always doing the almost exact opposite of what you needed to do to be happy.