Free Strange Music by Laura Fish

won’t go to church? Me fault she’s like she be?’ I asked.
    â€˜God hurts dem dat hurt demself,’ Charles said. So I started going to Sunday church and encouraged Mary Ann to come, and Pa felled trees by Barrett Hall lake, and he and others built church school by church hothouse. Pa carved with Charles benches, altar, and one table for minister’s wife. But minister’s wife got sick. She never liked Mister Sam any more than anyone did. She wouldn’t set foot on Cinnamon Hill plantation land, though she got so sick even Mister Sam offered to lend she a hothouse nurse. I started working at night for minister in church school, sharing out corn biscuits, teaching to pickney whatever I learned to read. Mister Sam grew angry when he knew. He set me heavy daytime chores, evening chores too, and I didn’t mind much for church sermons get so boring and minister always shouts, him face have hard woodgrain marks like white planks Pa planes. Minister’s eyes look cold and blue as deep freshwater pools. I know how England brings all its coldness here, brings it with bleached white sheets or stony faces; brings it as white stone ballast in ships English build great houses with; brings it into cold air of each great chamber, savagely cold at dawn; brings it with too much agony at de heart of each slave’s soul.
    Then Charles asked me to marry him; he said minister said marriage was good. But my own heart blew cold. I won’t marry Charles. Already I’m a slave to Mister Sam, don’t want to be a slave to anyone else ever again. And church spread like blister rashes through Charles’ life. Blisters Charles, it seemed, had to keep picking at. More he picked, angry and red, bigger those bitter blisters grew. And Mary Ann grew lumps in she mouth, throat too, and I took she to church hothouse. They said it’s ulcers she’d got and she must drink only seawater. Church felt even colder when I found out what she’d done.
    And she disappearing haunted me like all she other strange acts. Why she cowered, cat-like, from everyone. Why she wouldn’t do any chores. Wouldn’t shine Mister Sam’s boots, scrub or polish yacca floor in him blue bedchamber. Said she hated blue. Blue sky. Blue sea. Blue light falling on blue-black floorboards. Blue dress from England Mister Sam gave she. Only wanted to wear my ragged brown dress. Kicking, fighting, snarling, wildly matted mane muddled round she honey-brown neck, screaming like she felt to tackle hell’s fire when Mister Sam forced she into that blue dress. He forced my daughter into its bodice, stiff-shouldered and hunched as a soldier she strutted across great-house hall. Then spewed everywhere. Sick shot across yacca floor and all over she blue dress. That night she shredded that dress.
    From then I watched Mary Ann much more closely. But it was Charles found out she truth.
    Mister Sam now begs me to send for him cousin. Mister Sam decide to make him will? Worry tightens my belly. Him will can make my sorrows go . Sheets feel slimy with sweat and sick; him skin takes on a ghastly milky hue in dim moonlight.
    Bracing myself as he rolls, I strip dirty sheets away and, easing him back into place, struggle to lay a bleached sheet beneath him, across bed mattress. Him body, twisting, breaks into sweat. Soften rigid spine .
    Him voice strangle between lips taut like slave ship’s rigging: ‘My cousin, Kaydia, is he coming?’
    â€˜Soon come,’ I say.
    Whispering, ‘Water, water,’ he rests slanted awkwardly, a slab of flesh that’s him shoulder cushioned by my knee, pain-creased face moonlight struck. I lever an arm from under him back, it dangles limp from a shoulder. I’m smoothing waves clean from wide sheet but its surface still crinkles like moon-white salt water. Him nightshirt’s skewed; him collar, mattress cloth feels damp.
    A yearning for my mama creeps out from floorboards up into