The Revisioners. Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
community together: we built a church, inside that a school, then a gristmill, a cane mill, a cotton gin that ground corn too. And if we had shingles, everybody had shingles; the same went for our milk cows, and fields to garden. Now that I’m old, my people’s hands are my hands. I say that to say things have changed, and it won’t fall on me to aim the rifle right between the pig’s eyes; to hang it, slit its throat, wash it, skin it, gut it clean. I have someone to do that for me now but I’ll still make the decision, point to the black boar with the white belt around the middle, because it has to be the finest.
The door swings open, and I know it is Jericho. With his long stride he runs the way other folk walk, the way I have started to hobble, hunchbacked, but I steady myself to receive him in my arms. He is a red boy, just like his daddy, and just like my husband, and his head, hair cut tight to his scalp, reaches my waist.
“You smell like outside,” I say, examining his dusty blue overalls. There’s a hole in the knee I would have to patch up that evening.
“I’ve been playing, Grandma.”
“Hmph. Well, it’s a bath for you tonight.”
He doesn’t say a word.
“You know what I mean, don’t you?”
He still doesn’t speak. Then, “What if I don’t want them to marry?”
I tap him more than slap him, right on his shoulder.
“Lord, deliver me. We’re grateful for Eliza,” I say like I’m reciting my morning psalm. “She’s kind to you, she knows her letters, she could probably learn you some better than that teacher we pay. She’ll take good care of Major and you too.”
He pauses, sits down, takes off his wide-brimmed hat, and taps his fingers against the hickory table. I can smell the lilies in a jar in the center. I get up on instinct and I pour him some cool lemonade. I still find new mercy in the fact this house belongs to me; that the pine boards overlap to keep the rodents out; the windows swing all the way open. There’s three bedrooms, one so large I can fit two beds side by side; I have an icebox instead of ceramic barrels, and I won’t ever run out of sacks of flour or my shelves of preserved raspberries and canned tomatoes, not if I live for ten more years, which I won’t. I watch Jericho drinking like his lips are a miracle to behold. Surely my own children drank lemonade. Surely they ran in and called for me over any other, but I don’t remember it. I don’t.
“Will she take care of me?” he sets his glass down. “I ain’t her child. Pretty soon she’ll start having her own and I’ll start smelling like fried skunk.”
“What do you know about fried skunk?” I shake my head but I understand his meaning.
“It’s from one of your stories,” he says, “the one about you escaping, when you were hiding in the swamps.”
“Nah, we didn’t eat no skunks; rabbit, coons, squirrels, possum stew with sweet potatoes, but no skunks, young man. Anyway, that’s enough of that,” I say because it is one thing to dip into the past but to be hauled up and tossed back in it, don’t get me started. Otherwise I don’t know what to tell him. “You been praying like I taught you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Add your worry to the list. I can tell you this: I asked for your daddy to find someone who would love him and love you and who would replace me when I’m gone.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what? The only thing you can count on is the cycle of life. Anyway, she came in and I believe it’s God’s doing.”
“How do you know though?”
I pause. “I don’t. But I will say that I had a dream the night before he brought her home and there was a woman wearing yellow in it, walking through a tunnel waving, and when Eliza walked in, didn’t she have a daffodil in her hair?”
“I don’t remember.”
“She did. So cheer up. Go in the back and get clean; I’ve got to make these cakes; if you listen, I’ll fill one of them with that blueberry jam you like.”
He heeds, but I can tell when my words don’t take root. Either way, I head out to the garden with its tomatoes, greens and okra, the banks of beets, sweet potatoes and cabbage, and rows of crowder peas, woven through the corn. The yard chickens scatter throughout for seeds and insects. I pass the smokehouse, the well, then the pen, fenced in with zigzag rails. The best hog looks at me with begging eyes, but I point my gnarled finger at him anyway.
WE PILE AS MANY INTO THE CHURCH AS WE CAN FIT and still the doorway is jammed with witnesses. I sit in the first row of course. Jericho walks in next, his maple-wood skin shining in his dark blue suit, his head held high, till he slinks in right beside me. Next is a little girl whose father works the fields, reaching into a basket and sprinkling gardenias at her feet.
The organist presses down on the pedals, and we stand. Eliza might as well tiptoe into the church from the back. Her yellow skin is powdered smooth, and there’s a crown of daffodils woven into her curly bun. I could pick her up with one hand she seems so light, and she sails more than steps down the aisle. The crowd isn’t faking when they ooh and aah. They probably haven’t seen a bride so lovely, probably won’t again. I glance over at her side of the church. Jericho saw them headed in and said without meaning to, “Mama, those folks sho is dignified.” I know they are. Her mother, Cyrile, is a schoolteacher at West Alexander Colored Convent School, one of the first schools for blacks in the parish. She sits next to her son, Eliza’s brother Louis. People tell me he is hotheaded, and I can sense it, that his pale skin is quick to redden, and he fidgets, picking at his fingers even as his sister’s and Major’s hands join. Still his suit is hemmed so fine you can scarcely see the edge of his socks. I don’t like to compare people. It is like slamming God for making petunias and roses, but it doesn’t escape me I was born a slave. I can read some, and I made sure Major finished the fourth grade. But he works the farm now, and Eliza’s family lives at the intersection of General and Christie Roads. They come from the likes of the Doucets and the Chevaliers. And they have been free for as long as they care to remember.
I remind myself I had a dress made for this event, a pastel yellow silk crepe one with a drop waist and a bowtie at the neck, from a store so fancy I had to pay a white woman to make the purchase. I am a heavy woman—even now, the seams of this gown are straining against my sides—but I know I look good. Once I overheard a younger man say as I was leaving the sick and shut-in ministry prayer meeting, “That Josephine could be my mama but she lookin more like a sister.”
Now Jericho’s old preschool teacher stands and walks toward the pulpit, clears her throat, passes a look to the organist. The music starts, and the teacher is unsteady when she joins in,
Three gates in the east
Three gates in the west
Three gates in the north
Three gates in the south
That makes twelve gates to the city Hallelujah
But it doesn’t take long before the song rises from her gut.
Oh, what a beautiful city
Oh, what a beautiful city
Oh, what a beautiful city
And I might as well be standing up there with her, patting my hand at my side:
There’s twelve gates to the city Hallelujah
Walk right in, you’re welcome to the city
Step right up welcome to the city
Walk right through those gates to the city
There are twelve gates to the city Hallelujah
When the applause settles, the preacher rises from his chair on the pulpit, walks toward us, his voice bellowing even at the start:
“How