Free The Loom by Shella Gillus Page B

her baby’s first breath.
    She was too bitter to fill her arms with the babe. That night, Michael took one look at the child that brought her to the brink of death and with a nod, left, out to the slave quarters. That night, she vowed never to allow him in her bed again.
    A month later, a bitter root sprang up on the Kelly plantation and it scared Emma speechless.
    Each harvest she had watched Beatrice in the gardens. Intrigued by the woman’s interest, one dawn she followed her out to the rich ground of soil, setting the soles of her shoes in the footprints of the one who traveled ahead.
    Beatrice walked nearly a yard before she paused. Glancing over a bony shoulder, the edges of her lips curved.
    “I want to come with you,” Emma announced.
    “Come.” The wide neck of her burlap dress had slipped back against her throat, baring a narrow back and the sharpest of blades. The early-morning rays cast a glow around her as she high-stepped across the field. From behind, her dark brown legs and elbows looked like broken twigs, thin and fragile.
    Emma gripped her woolen shawl around her shoulders against the wind and trotted faster until she clipped the back of her friend’s heel.
    When they reached the rows of vegetation, Beatrice squatted, her skirt hiked up over dark patched knees. Even from the front, she was all angles, except her head, made especially round by the tightly tied gingham scarf covering it. Emma leaned over her and watched. Beatrice teetered forward as she yanked on tiny, feathery branches then steadied herself with her left hand. Plucking the carrot from the dirt, she wiggled it at Emma. “This is a nice one. Nice and smooth, don’t you think?” Earth packed into half moons under her nails. “You try it.”
    Emma looked around. She knew little about gardens, even less about reaping.
    “Go on.”
    She scrunched up her skirt over her calves and knelt beside Beatrice. The damp soil caved around her as she leaned over ruffled green foliage.
    “Watch it!” Beatrice warned when Emma’s fingertips grazed a purple trimmed leaf. “Look at that. That’s no carrot, ma’am.”
    Wide-eyed, Beatrice shook her head. “That there is dangerous. See here.” She held her long, curved fingers inches under the limp leaf. “See those four corners and that there purple on the outside, that’s not good. That’s poison. I ain’t seen nothing like this since I been here. Seen it all the time on your father’s land.”
    Emma stared at Beatrice’s trembling hands and listened to her fear now bound in whispers.
    “Back home, this here plant killed nine folk, Emma. Nine! You remember that?”
    She nodded. Scarcely, just barely she recalled the incident.
    “Three men, five women, and a child, no bigger than this here.” She held her dark palm a couple of feet from the ground.
    “Barely walking, he was. It was something awful. Nine Coloreds gone just like that.”
    Emma stared at the olive plant. Hard to believe something so small, so fragile, had so much power.
    “Look at it real good so you remember.”
    Later that evening, standing in the back corner of her candlelit dining room, Emma leaned against a cold wall, watching her husband. The brisk night air invaded the room and sent a shiver down the length of her.
    When Beatrice served him kale, she thought of what else her friend had placed before him, what more he had eagerly received, taken. When she poured olive oil over crusty slices of bread, she thought of the warm liquid she had drizzled over her own body for him. When she served the cherry pie, she thought of her bleeding heart, the softness of a soul devoured.
    Michael’s fork pierced the brown crust and a thick red stream oozed onto his white plate. A drip slipped over the edge of the porcelain and splattered into a crimson tear.
    Emma’s chest pounded.
    Her husband spooned pie into his mouth. With each scoop, Emma saw limp olive and purple chopped so finely, diced so obscurely, sprinkled with venom