Zephryine: A Short Story

Originally published in Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora Volume 49.1

Southern heat is a different kind of tyranny. It hangs itself down over  everything like a beat-up quilt on a weak wash line. Stamps the world  down low, barely moving. Fields. Zinc-roofed shacks. Cracked-up  dirt roads. Dry main streets in Podunk towns. It say, “If I’m miserable  wrapped up in my own self, then so shall you be.” Seem like the only  thing escapin’ the heat is them trees, and God. 

But I had no interest in nothing above my head since I was nearly  thirteen years old. Them kind of higher-than-here thoughts walked on  off down a dirt road right behind my mama. The trees, God, dreams,  ain’t none of ’em ever do me no good but taunt that they was free and  knew somethin’ ’bout love that I didn’t know anymore. 

I danced in the fields more than I pulled tobacco. That was my first  wrongdoing when I was a gal on the front end of becomin’ a woman.  Jumping tobacco rows was the kind of work you ain’t do with too much  joy with my father watching you. No joy, just sweat and intention. I  never had the heart to teach my feets that lesson. So, I danced down  them rows, every now and then ripping a wide, sticky leaf instead of  pulling from the bottom. I kicked up dust while I was supposed to be  loopin’ them leaves for drying and sellin’. The last time Daddy got after  me about it was right before I turned thirteen, the same year my mama  started giving up. He hauled off and boxed my ear so bad, Mama—who  got saved a long time ago and stopped the habits that made you sick or  mad—rolled and smoked a tobacco cigarette just to blow the smoke in  my ear. It did calm the ache, I remember, or maybe it was just her nearness. I don’t remember crying. She set me down between her knees on our sagging wood steps and smoothed her brown hand down over the  side of my face ’til she got to my ear. Held her hand there, cupping my  ear like a precious thing. Mama leaned down close and whispered soft,  “You’s a mighty force, don’t you know, Zephyrine? That’s what your  name mean. ‘Wind from the west.’ Mmhm. You got a world of good  comin’ to you. Love too. Love is gonna take you up like you ain’t never  seen. Ain’t too much gon’ keep you here. No, not too much at all.” 

I didn’t have to look up at her to know that when she said here her  eyes went east to west, west to east, surveying a wide-open prison of  nature that shot out to the horizon. I didn’t know then she was what  they call “prophesyin’ my liberty.” 

Then, she went on to rubbing behind my ear with one hand and  pattin’ my shoulder with the other. Everything in me wanted to turn  around and grip her so tight, but everything in me was scared to death.  So, I sat and let her love me the way she could. She started singing with  feelin’ and tenderness. Her voice was that soothing kind of rough that  folks like to hear when you sing anything worth crooning about—be it  at the church house or the juke joint. 

The words escaped her like they did her mama before her and her  mama before her, but I know she loved me deep. Wasn’t a bit of room  for misinterpretation. My mama said things that called the future to  come find you. Folks would come by under the cover of night to ask  her all sorts of questions. She spoke, and thunder clapped its hands. She  whispered a prayer, and lights would shudder. She held a baby, and colic  cleared. She was a deep well that it didn’t seem would ever run dry. A  living remedy for what ailed. 

’Til the family we cropped for got the kind of mean you forget  white folks can get when they ain’t been nothin’ but halfway decent for  a long while. Once they cut that thirty-six cents down to eighteen, we  took to bartering for necessities, and Mama changed. 

Daddy took all the mad and sad and bitter he couldn’t fling at the  world and picked a fight with himself. The juke saw me and my brother more than it ever should have, shifting Daddy’s weight between us.  Then one night, the juke saw the two dollars Mama had stowed away  behind the stove for safekeepin’, and Daddy found his way to his eternal  drunken stupor in a ditch. That was the night the light behind Mama’s  eyes started to dim. Her words got fewer. 

The stream of visitors coming for prophecies turned to a trickle. She  said it was hard to give out words from God when God ain’t answered  her for herself. Then Lil’ John died. And Mama started staying away for  hours until, one day, she walked down the road and never came back. 

I didn’t dance down tobacco rows no more. I sweated down them  rows with intention, figuring my escape from them and the memory  of a mother whose well dried up. Her back was the last thing I saw of  her. Had to call my cousins up from Fort Sumter to help me keep what  wretched little we had. And folks wonder how hearts grow cold and the  world seem so hopeless. 

And then the devil rode up one day. He cut me off at the crossroads  down the way from my little shack. I was a few days shy of my eighteenth birthday then, alone but unafraid. He kicked up a hard wind  from the east that seemed like it could lay the whole world sideways. I  felt dust grittin’ between my teeth, burning my eyes, but I didn’t think  to run from him. 

He say, “You there! Gal, where you headed out here in the middle  of nowhere? Why you ain’t up higher than you is? Ain’t you got no where to belong?” 

I say, “I’m going wherever I can get what they told me I can’t have.  Higher ain’t never welcome me. And naw suh, I don’t.” Devil hopped down off his silky black steed with purpose. He  pulled a black leather doctor bag from a bundle that was weighing his  horse down. 

He walked right up to me and dropped that boulder of a bag at my  feet. A familiar white cloud spiraled in all four directions from the opening. He grinned real thin and wide. His teeth were bright and shining.  The way his smile stretched his face from sideburn to sideburn made my  heart climb to my throat. His skin was the color of a sliced seed potato.  Everything inside me squirmed, but my feet felt heavy. I stood right  there, curiosity doing damn fine as an anchor. 

Then, the devil reached down behind his back and whipped out a  little white tablet burstin’ with yellowed pages, looked like it had been  left out in the rain more than once. 

“I need yo’ name,” he say, still with that wide grin.

“I can’t write,” I say back. 

He stopped and thought a moment, tapping his pencil on his pointed chin, performing a ponder. 

“That’s no matter. Do like this here.” In the air between us, he drew  a slanted line one way and another back the other way ’cross the first. I  stepped backward. A letter I didn’t know made of white smoke formed  where his fingers traced. No thought but for the promise of something  different than what I had, I took the pencil from him and made the same  mark on one of the pages that had other names I couldn’t read and that  same one letter scrawled line after line. “What did I just write?” I asked. 

“You signed yo’ name.” His grin never wavered. Even as he spoke,  his mouth looked like it was chiseled just that way for this very conversation. He closed the book, and it disappeared in a thin curl of white  smoke. 

I tried to remember the one or two school lessons I got when I was  small. I knew my name meant the wind from the west. My beautiful  mama taught me that when she was getting lessons from the daughter  of the family we cropped for. And I knew there were more letters in  my name than what I’d just drawn. What I’d just wrote down in the  devil’s little burstin’ book ain’t quite stand up next to my memory. Fear  gripped me tight. He didn’t know my name. What had I just done if the  devil didn’t even know my name? 

He walked on back to his flat-backed horse, weighed down with  what looked like fifty doctor bags all tied together, gleaming like a good  spit shine’ll do. Devil steered that horse ’round and rested his bony  white fingers on the brim of his top hat. He sat up there, high and  mighty, like he was thinkin’ on some other crumb to let fall from his  table. Then, he tipped his hat and say something I won’t forget long as I  can still feel the weight of that first bag of powder in my hand. 

“You deserve to come on up a little higher, Zephyrine. People, they  gon’ come to see you. You got a big ol’ lot of good comin’ to you.” I let out a breath I didn’t know was tangled up inside me. He did know my name. He saw my tomorrow. And he called me by both.

Felt like the sun melted and resurrected itself five times. That’s how long I looked down at that bag. Now, I was never a simple girl. I knew what was in there from the cloud that rose when the bag first hit the ground. I knew what was in there from the last time I saw my only brother alive. Lil’ John, honorably discharged from two years of service keepin’ them P-47s in the air, sat on his bed with a belt squeezing his arm like a viper. Supper was ready and I was sent up to tell him and his visiting Air Force buddy so. 

“No, Zeph.” 

Now, Lil’ John would never say no to Mama’s cookin’. No. Something goin’ on in there was amiss and I scared him by coming to his room unexpectedly. Short of leaping up and closing the door ‘fore I could see what I saw, all he could do was say that gentle but firm, “No, Zeph.” 

I never crossed the threshold but I glanced to the left to see a little jar of white powder and a smaller pile of white powder both sitting on the chair in front of him. He’d motioned for his army friend to block my view.  Sittin’ on that sagging duck feather bed with that belt choking his arm something mean, my only brother held my stare ‘til the door closed on me. 

That was what did it. That was what tore up Mama’s wings for good. Before that, she could still fly even if she hovered a little closer to the ground. No, Lil’ John leaving this earth because of some mess he never would’ve known about had he stayed here. That’s what cut my mama low. And here I was, with that same mess at my feet.

The devil ain’t say no goodbye when he rode off into the dust and heat. And standing there looking at the bag, my choice was good as made the minute I knew what was in it. I wasn’t under no illusion, either. I knew it wasn’t no offering laid at the feet of a queen. It was a spur thrown down at the feet of a desperate wretch. Me. I was desperate for more than I had. I yearned until parts of me ached that had no name. There was no use lyin’ that I fancied my life like it was. I looked down the road in the direction of that leaning, rusty zinc-roofed shack. I saw how it cowered alone, prey to the circling elements. Not a single tree nearby to offer up some small kindness of protection. Every plank, nail and pane doing all they could to hold themselves in place. Just to keep this thing together and worthy just to be called a shack. 

I heard the devil when he say I deserved more. I heard him.

I went on to the shack and did the thing I’d put off. I stuck my hand in the pocket of mama’s one good dress that was folded and tucked up under her side of the bed. There were the loose strings of a pocket nearly worn through by thought and feeling, grief and fret. I was yearning for something left behind and this was the last place on my list to look. I’d saved it, praying to a God I wasn’t too sure about that she’d left something that had me in mind. And when that pocket didn’t yield a reward I shoved my hand into the other. A penny. A clothespin. A loose piece of cloth. I scooped everything in that pocket out and tossed them down on the saddest thing to pass for a bed. The piece of cloth was small and square, like a patch for a quilt. It was black with a white ‘Z’ on the one side. I flipped it over to find a white ‘J’ on the other. Both letters were raised. Mama had sewn the first letter of me and Lil’ John’s names together. I collected the patch and put it deep in the front pocket of my white calico dress. There hadn’t been no need in me going to Lil’ John’s funeral or in trying to find Mama now that sentiment was having its way. Goodbyes ain’t always what you think they’ll be. So I stopped looking for them.

I took up the bag of powder, and took one last look around. I tiptoed my finger over Mama and Daddy’s splintered bedpost and slammed out the loose front door. More was waiting on me and it wasn’t here. If something new and good was coming for me, then it needed to come on.

I didn’t make the powder. And I ain’t set these white generals, captains, lieutenants or sergeants to needin’ it neither. Just like I ain’t send ‘em across the sea to set right somebody else’s livin’ when they was guilty of taking decent lives right here at home. Ain’t no words for the things they done right here on this soil. In these fields. On these roads. Under their god’s watch. Whatever hurt they sufferin’ that got ‘em fiendin’ for the powder, well, I done felt that hurt pressed down, shaken together and runnin’ over. How I see it, the devil handed me a way to get what I’s always denied. And I took it and held it tight.

Now, I got a line that won’t end. These white soldiers see me, one after the other waiting on something like a prophecy. Some of the colored soldiers come by here but only the ones that don’t care I seen the devil and lived to tell. Only the ones who got a habit bad enough to risk whatever hell they think is waiting on the other side of all this. But them white soldiers? They all creep and sneak and sometimes crawl to see me just like the devil say. The ones so turned inside out and run-over after the war that they can’t do nothing but try to leave they own bodies. They’re trying to get out from under the heat and the kind of dirt po’ they was told would only touch coloreds. Yes, they come see me. They knock at my back door meek-like at first. If I don’t come fast enough they get to bangin’. But I set a rifle beside every door. And when they get to actin’ like animals I don’t say a thing. I just load them bullets and snap that thing closed. They can hear it. And if that don’t shut ‘em up and send ‘em away I cock it. Hard. 

Then they get to “Alright now, Zeph” or “Ain’t no need for that, Zephryine” or “Don’t nobody mean you a thimbleful a harm, Miss Zephryine. My hand ‘fore the Lord.” They do whatever necessary to get up top them trees to tickle God’s feet. That includes humblin’ themselves before a colored woman who done spent years waitin’ on a reason to touch a trigger.

When they come to me under the cover of night, I say, “You got younguns?” Most of ‘em lie, “No’m.” 

And what do I do? I serve ‘em anyway. The powder. The gum. I reach my hand way down in that doctor bag and I serve ‘em the onliest little measure of relief they gon’ get this side of heaven. I know they lie to me. But they made a decision. You ask for what you want when compassion takes up residence in town. You lie for what you need when the devil got a hold on you. Any which way you turn the looking glass, it’s a choice.

They come from miles around kickin’ up angry dust. Gritty, hateful, possessed dust. Sweatin’ to beat the band. And they near ‘bout scratch a hole anyplace they can feel they own skin. But you think all that mean somethin’ to me? I got what stands between them and even a moment’s agony. So, they shake loose my lucre - sometimes in my hand, sometimes at my feet - and I present to them what they come for. 

It truly is a sight to see. White slaves humblin’ themselves before a bitty bag as their master. Some of ‘em cuss me or spit on the ground at my shoes before they go. Can’t stand the thought that no colored woman got the keys to they kingdom in her black hands. And I know they’d just as quick lay a knife to my throat if I didn’t have a good and plenty supply for they habit. Used to be a part of me that looked on ‘em with pity. That feeling came and went. I go on down to Setter’s department store and get me a new pair of shoes for every hateful spit now. Shiny new ones wrapped in thin paper and set gentlelike in pretty boxes, tied with purple ribbon I’d put in my little girl’s hair if I had one.

“Love is gonna take you up like you never seen.”

I am waitin’ on my mama’s words to finish rootin’ in my life. Love’s the last of the lot. I’m waitin’ on it because I got enough room to believe for it now. Still can’t say I trust too much what’s up over my head giving the heat a run for its money. But I do trust my mama. If she said love’s comin’ then I believe it is. And it’ll come waftin’ on into town like the smell of hot corn pone at quittin’ time.

Until that day, I got a real piece of somethin’ right now. A hundred and thirty-two acres and an abode so fine way up the mountain that people drive this narrow road to look up at my big ol’ piece of sky right here on earth. I suppose I bested the heat, didn’t I?

My name is Zephyrine. I am the wind from the west. Everything that can be shaken gon’ shake.