A Hook Will Sometimes Keep You
by Christine Reneé Lincoln
Right there," I thought. "That thing. I used to be so afraid of it." It wasn't so much the rusted water pump-with the handle you had to work until air and then water gushed from its spout-but the well; the hole underneath terrified me. I believed I could slip through the cracks between the wood planks and be gone. One of the most frightening thoughts in a person's life is just that, and don't I know it first hand.
I pulled the wagon with my son inside over to the oval of ragged grass that covered the center of the driveway, dropped the handle, and sat down beside the oak.
"Lord, this tree," I said out loud.
I don't know exactly when I first came here to live. It seemed always. But in the beginning, Aunt Loretta never let me forget that I wasn't born at this place. I don't remember her.my mother. What she looked like, smelled like, tasted like. I was two when she left. But when I figured out she wasn't coming back, that was when I first became invisible. It was that birthday party that did it, my seventh. Before then, each year had come and gone with no more than a "happy birthday" from Aunt Loretta and a yearning for the woman I still called momma.
But when I turned seven, Aunt Loretta gave me the most elaborate party: balloons and games, cake and homemade strawberry ice cream. All the children came: Junie, Sonny, Cin, just everybody. We ran around the yard, around this tree, playing "its" and "freeze-tag." Wasn't until later, when everyone had gone home and the streamers lay crumbled in the grass and the balloons had been popped and small pink mountains of ice cream lay melting in the dirt, that I felt it. I knew she wasn't coming back, and it was at that moment this heaviness come over me. Started at my bare feet. Most folks think when you turn invisible you get lighter, but just the opposite is true. It's more like a leadening, as if you're being pulled into the earth. I felt tired and when I looked down, I could see my feet fading, dissolving into the grass and air.
I called out to Aunt Loretta who came running out of the house. When she got to where I was sitting on the bottom porch step, all I could do was point at my dust covered toes. "Look," I screamed. "Look at my feet, Aunt Loretta."
She couldn't see it, couldn't see nothing. Lord, I was frantic, jumping up and down and pointing all the while to my feet.
"I'm turning invisible, I'm dissed-appearing, Auntie."
"Pontella, you cut this foolishness out, you hear me," she said in a trembling voice.
"Help me, Auntie," I cried, falling down into her lap. I cried until all I had left were the hiccups inside my chest, no more sound than that. My eyes were puffed, near swollen shut. But when I looked down at my feet, my legs had faded up to my knees. With a scream, I jumped up from Aunt Loretta and ran over to this tree, scrambled up its limbs so quick Aunt Loretta didn't have time to stop me. When I was younger, I would always climb this tree, sit in the crook of its branches and let the breezes rock me. Made me think this must have been what it felt like when I was a baby. Like being held in my momma's arms.
Aunt Loretta begged for me to come down. She stood at the base of the tree, wringing her hands, twisting the bottom of her floral dress between her hands, stroking the fabric with her thumbs, pleading with me. But I refused. It was as if-feeling the solid roughness beneath my fingers-the tree was the only thing that could keep me. I stayed there all the rest of that day into the evening. Aunt Loretta stayed with me; she sat down at the foot of the tree listening to my sobs until night when I stumbled down and let Aunt Loretta take me into the house. She tried to get me to eat, but I was too tired. Instead, I fell across my bed, and before I could even get my head down good on the pillow, I was fast asleep.
The next morning, the first thing I did was look down at my legs. I was still gone, now up to my thighs. I ran from the house and up into the tree. Aunt Loretta, who was in the kitchen frying slabs of bacon for breakfast, ran out after me.
"I know we must have been a sight." I chuckled. "Me sitting in this tree, with my powder-blue party dress on. Aunt Loretta standing at the bottom begging for me to come on down."
But again, I refused. This went on for days; the only time I could come down was at night when I would eat and fall into an exhausted sleep. And each morning, more of me was gone.
On the fifth day, Aunt Loretta just went on with her regular routine. Some women folk came by the house during the afternoon; they had heard about what was happening to me. I could hear them talking over on the porch. Every now and then one would look over at the tree where I sat hidden in its leaves and shake her head.
"She needs a whopping," Mrs. Fuller said. She was Aunt Loretta's best friend. She knew how to handle children since she had four girls around my age and Aunt Loretta had never had a one.
When they had each given my aunt their opinions on what she should do with me, they made their way down the driveway to leave, still chattering.
"Always knew that child was different," one said.
"Just like her momma."
"Umm-hmm."
They had no idea how their words drifted up and covered me like a blanket. That evening when Aunt Loretta came to keep me company. I whispered down so that she had to get up on the tips of her toes to hear me.
"She ain't coming back, is she?"
Aunt Loretta just looked up into the tree, her dark, sad eyes peering into my own. "I want to tell you a story, Pontella, about this tree you sittin' in," she sighed, settling down among the tangle of roots overgrown with velvet green moss into the seat-like crook that had formed at the base of the tree.
"There was this girl named Wheat, a slave girl who came to live here on this very land. It used to belong to a family called the Brantleys. But then their children grew older and moved on. Left the place to their driver, your granddaddy.
"At first, no one knew her name, how old she was (though they could tell she was a child-woman); they knew none of the things most folks know about a person. But she entered this place in the back of a wagon, and before it was all said and done, they would know more than they could ever forget.
"It all started when the old Master died. His son, the young Master, went and found himself a wife, who wanted a girl for herself. They already had the old woman, Lettie, who worked in the house and Lettie's son, Jonathan, who worked the fields. Wasn't enough for the Missus.
"You know how folks is: if one person have two slaves, they gotta have three. Like when Mr. Bubby bought that car a few years back. Then all the men around here had to go buy one. I tell ya, folks the same everywhere.
"The Missus had to have a girl, a personal slave girl. So as a wedding gift, young Master went down to South Carolina one day and came back with this girl in the back of the wagon. Even with her hands bound in rope, tied to the side of the cart, there was something about her that said this young woman wasn't nobody's slave. Her face was raised up to the sun so that she appeared as if she had been dipped in gold. Her hair was soft like a baby's but thick as rope, streamed behind her and up into the air as if it were oil-blackened flames. And tall. When the Master unloosened her hands and she unfolded herself from that wagon, she shot up like a stalk of wheat, see? She knew that she had another name, though, and when the wind stirred up the leaves or the rain pelted its melody into the dust, they murmured that name for her.
"Wheat became the Missus' girl. Worked in the house, and in the evenings, she would sit with Lettie, never saying a word, just sittin' while the old woman cleaned the kitchen and caught up with that day's darning and other sewing. Then the two would retire-Lettie to her cabin, Wheat upstairs to sleep at the foot of the Missus' bed on a makeshift pallet of blankets. They all thought the girl had settled into the place. But one morning they awoke to find that she had disappeared; she had run off.
"Master got the hounds on her, and they found her holed up in a hollow of trees on the way to Pennsylvania. They brought her back, once again tied to the back of the wagon, but this time when the Master unloosed her hands, it was only to bring her to this tree. He wrapped her arms around it so she hugged the base, stripped her so that her back was bare. Whopped that gal. The lash a tongue that licked the golden skin from her body until her blood ran down and mingled with the wet grass.
"Lettie took care of her, fixed her up; the raw wounds turning into a tangle of roots that would forever remind Wheat of the day she became one with the trees.
"After that beating, everyone figured that girl wasn't going nowhere. But one morning about six months later, they woke up to find the foot of Missus' bed empty. Again the Master went out after her and they found her, this time heading back down south.
"They had ripped one of her front teeth from her mouth so she'd be easier to find. When she came back, the blood had already crusted into the corners of her mouth and chin. The trappers who had helped the Master find Wheat had this contraption called the grave, which they gave to the Master in order to break the girl. It was the length of a coffin with small holes in the top. At the end where the head went was a slot the width of a grown man's fist. This was so they could pass in food and water. But as soon as the meal was done, the slot had a little door that was sealed shut. Nothing but darkness. The only time she would get to see the sunlight was when they would feed her. Didn't even let her out to relieve herself.
"They put Wheat inside that thing face down and kept her there for ten days. Kept her in that tight space of darkness until she didn't know the days from the years, kept her until she didn't know herself from the blackness. Until she dissolved and became air.
"At night Lettie would sometimes sneak out of her cabin to go talk to the girl, but the haunting moans that came from that box frightened her so that she couldn't move. When they finally let Wheat out, she wasn't quite the same. Even still, everyone knew it was only a matter of time before she ran again. It was the way she moved: held her body like one of them horses that couldn't be broken, the way her muscles rippled beneath her skin at just the slightest word or touch.
"The Master was near about desperate. Wheat would look up at times during the day and find his eyes on her, trying to capture her. She had begun talking to the sunlight and the grass, the wind. They told her things. She stopped sitting with Lettie in the evenings and never would go around Jonathan. Even when Wheat was around other folks, it was more like she wasn't there at all.
"Lettie and Jonathan thought the girl was crazy. But Wheat knew what they were saying; the wind told her everything. What they didn't know was how her skin hurt when they got too close. So she took to conversating with the grass and listened to the trees instead. They told her about the white people and this thing called slavery-how it had come from inside of her, inside all of them. It had been created out of the bleakest part of her soul. That she had the power to uncreate it.
"Soon after, the Master moved Wheat into a cabin of her own. Wheat knew it was only a matter of time before he would move through the night and make his way to her. That's why she wasn't at all surprised to see the door open to the silent figure that slipped into her night-shrouded room. She waited until he came to stand at the base of her bed. Her eyes glittered like a barn owl's, watching. Then she began to laugh what sounded like the hissing of snakes.
"She reared up from the bed and thrust her face into the Master's. 'I take you back,' she spat at him. 'I take you back.' Her hands reached out like talons as he stumbled away from the bed, from the room and its curse. The color had drained from his face and Jonathan, who was sitting outside his own cabin, thought at first the old Master had risen from the dead.
"He left Wheat pretty much alone after that-sent her out to work the fields with Jonathan, but she didn't mind. She loved being in the sunlight where she could talk to the things outdoors and listen for when it was time for her to leave again.
"It was Jonathan that finally did it. He worked side by side with the strange girl and after awhile he, too, started to listen. During the day he would move so that he could be closer to Wheat while they worked and at night he would sit outside her cabin door and speak in tones that sounded like the rustling of wind through new spring leaves, until Wheat's ears grew eager for his words.
"Then one night a squall came in. It was one of those fierce summer storms that rage as if to consume everything in its path, only to rush back out again in a matter of moments. When it was over, Wheat waited on the edge of her bed, her heart racing. She wanted Jonathan to come with his words that quieted her and it was then she figured out what the storm was saying, what the Master was doing. How he was using Jonathan this time. A yearning she had never felt before told her how they wanted to get her with child. She could almost feel the sharp hooks of a child's cry pierce her breasts, keep her from going away. When Jonathan finally did come, Wheat stuffed herself in the corner of the room with her hands over her ears. He whispered to her. His words scurried under the cracks in the door and into the room. Crawled over to where she crouched huddled in the blackness, trembling.
"She waited until he went away before leaving her cabin. When she finally did come out it was to this tree. The moonlight streamed through the branches with a light so pure she could feel it opening up the hidden places inside of herself. She could hear the tree, its blood, her blood coursing like a river, and she knew it was time for her to go.
"Some time within that moment when the darkness separates itself from the dawn, a stillness fell over this place, over the earth, the entire universe. It was as if God himself mourned. That's what woke up the Master and the Missus, Jonathan and Lettie. They saw it at the same time. What used to be a girl called Wheat. How she had become one with the tree, her body a broken, swinging branch that almost touched the ground."
Aunt Loretta got up, stretched herself, and went into the house, leaving me alone with Wheat's tree, my tree. The sun was still out, though the sky contained just a hint of orange and purple that signified the coming twilight. Hesitantly, I climbed down. I could finally see my bony knees that turned inward and almost touched each other, my dusty feet as I followed Aunt Loretta into our home.
"It never left me, the feeling that I would wake up one day and no one would be able to see me. Not until the day I had you." I pointed toward the bedroom window, "You were born right in that room up there."
I lifted my son, who had fallen asleep, out of the wagon and positioned him so that he lay across my shoulder. "The very moment you left the place you had been and entered the room a quiet fell, broken only by your mewling cry," I continued in a whisper.
"I understood then what Wheat knew; that you were a hook. But I also found out what she would never come to know: that sometimes a hook is the one thing, the only thing that can keep you from becoming invisible."