“We’re not such bad women. I’m not.”
“You can’t wait to get away from me!”
“What would you feel for a woman who was covered with filth and sores?”
He blinked, looked at himself. “And I guess you’re used to better!”
“Of course I am! Let me help you and you will be better. You could not have been this way for your wife.”
“You’re not her!”
“No. She could not help you. I can.”
“I didn’t ask for your”
“Listen! She ran away from you because you are Doro’s. You are a witch and she was afraid and disgusted. I am not afraid or disgusted.”
“You’d have no right to be,” he muttered sullenly. “You’re more witch than I’ll ever be. I still don’t believe what I saw you do.”
“If my thoughts are reaching you even some of the time, you should believe what I do and what I say. I have not been telling you lies. I am a healer. I have lived for over three hundred and fifty years. I have seen leprosy and huge growths that bring agony and babies born with great holes where their faces should be and other things. You are far from being the worst thing I have seen.”
He stared at her, frowned intently as though reaching for a thought that eluded him. It occurred to her that he was trying to hear her thoughts. Finally, though, he seemed to give up. He shrugged and sighed. “Could you help any of those others?”
“Sometimes I could help. Sometimes I can dissolve away dangerous growths or open blind eyes or heal sores that will not heal themselves …”
“You can’t take away the voices or the visions, can you?”
“The thoughts you hear from other people?”
“Yes, and what I ‘see’. Sometimes I can’t tell reality from vision.”
She shook her head sadly. “I wish I could. I have seen others tormented as you are. I’m better than what your people call a doctor. Much better. But I am not as good as I long to be. I think I am flawed like you.”
“All Doro’s children are flawedgodlings with feet of clay.”
Anyanwu understood the reference. She had read the sacred book of her new land, the Bible, in the hope of improving her understanding of the people around her. In Wheatley, Isaac told people she was becoming a Christian. Some of them did not realize he was joking.
“I was not born to Doro,” she told Thomas. “I am what he calls wild seed. But it makes no difference. I am flawed anyway.”
He glanced at her, then down at the floor. “Well I’m not as flawed as you think.” He spoke very softly. “I’m not impotent.”
“Good. If you were and Doro found out … he might decide you could not be useful to him any longer.”
It was as though she had said something startling. He jumped, peered at her in a way that made her draw back in alarm, then demanded: “What’s the matter with you! How can you care what happens to me? How can you let Doro breed you like a goddamn cowand to me! You’re not like the others.”
“You said I was a dog. A black bitch.”
Even through the dirt, she could see him redden. “I’m sorry,” he said after several seconds.
“Good. I almost hit you when you said itand I am very strong.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“I care what Doro does to me. He knows I care. I tell him.”
“People don’t, normally.”
“Yes. That’s why I’m here. Things are not right to me merely because he says they are. He is not my god. He brought me to you as punishment for my sacrilege.” She smiled. “But he does not understand that I would rather lie with you than with him.”
Thomas said nothing for so long that she reached out and touched his hand, concerned.
He looked at her, smiled without showing his bad teeth. She had not seen him smile before. “Be careful,” he said. “Doro should never find out how thoroughly you hate him.”
“He has known for years.”
“And you’re still alive? You must be very valuable.”
“I must be,” she agreed bitterly.
He sighed. “I should hate him myself. I don’t somehow. I can’t. But … I think I’m glad you do. I never met anyone who did before.” He hesitated again, raised his night-black eyes to hers. “Just be careful.”
She nodded, thinking that he reminded her of Isaac. Isaac too was always cautioning her. Then Thomas got up and went to the door.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“To the stream out back to wash.” The smile again, tentatively. “Do you really think you can take care of these sores? I’ve had some of them for a long time.”
“I can heal them. They will come back, though, if you don’t stay clean and stop drinking so much. Eat food!”
“I don’t know whether you’re here to conceive a child or turn me into one,” he muttered, and closed the door behind him.
Anyanwu went out and fashioned a crude broom of twigs. She swept the mounds of litter out of the cabin, then washed what could be washed. She did not know what to do about the vermin. The fleas alone were terrible. Left to herself, she would have burned the cabin and built another. But Thomas would not be likely to go along with that.
She cleaned and cleaned and cleaned and the terrible little cabin still did not suit her. There were no clean blankets, there was no clean clothing for Thomas. Eventually, he came in wearing the same filthy rags over skin scrubbed pale and nearly raw. He seemed acutely embarrassed when Anyanwu began stripping the rags from him.
“Don’t be foolish,” she told him. “When I start on those sores, you won’t have time for shameor for any other thing.”
He became erect. Scrawny and sick as his body was, he was, as he had said, not impotent.
“All right,” murmured Anyanwu with gentle amusement. “Have your pleasure now and your pain later.”
His clumsy fingers had begun fumbling with her clothing, but they stopped suddenly. “No!” he said as though the pain had to come first after all. “No.” He turned his back to her.
“But … why?” Anyanwu laid a hand on his shoulder. “You want to, and it’s all right. Why else am I here?”
He spoke through his teeth as though every word was hurting him. “Are you still so eager to get away from me? Can’t you stay a little while?”
“Ah.” She rubbed the shoulder, feeling the bones sharply through their thin covering of flesh. “The women take your seed and leave you as quickly as possible.”
He said nothing.
She stepped closer to him. He was smaller than Isaac, smaller than most of the male bodies Doro brought her. It was strange to be able to meet a man’s eyes without looking up. “It will be that way for me too,” she said. “I have a husband. I have children. And also … Doro knows how quickly I can conceive. I am always deliberately quick with him. I must take your seed and leave you. But I will not leave you today.”
He stared at her for a moment, the black eyes intent as though again he was trying to control his ability, hear her thoughts now when he wanted to hear them. She found herself hoping her childhis childwould have those eyes. They were the only things about him that had never needed cleaning or healing to show their beauty. That was surprising considering how much he drank.
He seized her suddenly, as though it had just occurred to him that he could, and held her tightly for long moments before leading her to his splintery shelf bed.
Doro came in hours later, bringing flour, sugar, coffee, corn meal, salt, eggs, butter, dry peas, fresh fruit and vegetables, blankets, cloth that could be sewn into clothing, and, incidentally a new body. He had bought or stolen someone’s small crudely made wagon to carry his things.
“Thank you,” Anyanwu told him gravely, wanting him to see that her gratitude was real. It was rare these days for him to do what she asked. She wondered why he had bothered this time. Certainly he had not planned to the day before.