Darlene thinking ’bout dropping hints to How or Jackie, or ’bout finding the mansion where the owner of the farm lived. They said his name Sextus Fusilier, that he Gaspard cousin, and he be living way out yonder in the southeast part of the farmland. He sometime did a random inspection on groups, but he ain’t come to none the details she been on yet. Darlene figure she gon question that dude, or maybe she try to find some relative or friend of Sirius. She tried to remember the names of the people he’d mentioned in…was it Dallas? She thought of doing prayer, threats, voodoo, eavesdropping. She had a idea ’bout getting the entire crew to listen in on any conversation between the high muck-a-mucks, but she let that idea go when she realized that some these sons of bitches would probably rat.
She grinding her teeth and flinching all night, kept her eyes closed while them imaginary chickens and them real ones next door clucked and flew around and every bump she heard made her sit up and try to figure out where it had came from. When she heard Jackie making noise out there, she froze up and listened like she gonna pick up some crucial information. After a time, a creaking come from behind Jackie wall partition, and a clip light snapped on behind it, lighting up the whole space a little bit. Darlene wondered if Jackie also doing the monkey while she coming off her high, and maybe she had decided to take a pill to calm her nerves. She want a pill herself. But when she listened closer, she heard Jackie getting dressed, like she on her way somewheres.
Even with her nerves, Darlene manage to get up from the mattress without making no springs creak, and with her itchy torn sheet around her shoulders, she gone down the far wall of the building, where the shadows be the deepest. She moving real quiet and crossing Jackie wall till she could curve her neck around and see what the supervisor doing. She open her mouth to ask something, but what she seen almost made her gasp. Under that clip light, Jackie had laid out a row of fluffy tubes on a low plastic end table. At first Darlene thought Jackie had killed a bunch of mice, ’cause them fluffy tubes also had tails, and it be a deep red-brown stain on most of they grayish-white bodies that look like a pattern on fur.
Jackie hands went in and out that cone of yellow light, but Darlene couldn’t see nothing but the faint shadow of her back. Darlene ain’t said nothing and Jackie ain’t notice she there. Jackie had placed a total of five them little mice in a neat row on her end table. She raised a plastic cup above one them mice and drizzled a stream of liquid over it and the shit puffed up.
Then Darlene face squinched up ’cause she figured this li’l ritual had some kinda connection to Jackie personal hygiene. Them little mice was tampons. Then it crossed her mind that Jackie be using her menstrual blood to work roots on somebody. From there, them imaginary chickens swooped in, all plucked up and weird-looking enough to be the truth: Jackie had collected them tampon mice from the trash so she could do some fucked-up gris-gris on the group. That made Darlene so sick she broke out in a cold sweat and tiptoed backward the way she had came, her breath getting short now, her heart jumping up like a fat red toad. She put her head down on her bed and pretended to sleep.
With the bulb giving off hardly no light, Jackie come out her room, dangling one the tampons by its tail. Darlene saw her stopping at the lower right corner of each the beds. To stop motherfuckers from stealing they shoes, most people stuck the legs of they beds into the heels of they shoes at night, and if you be peeping down the row of beds it be like the beds gonna run away with the dreamers on board. A couple beds up from hers, Darlene heard some drops of watered-down blood going pit-pat on people shoes. Maybe Kippy ain’t even die tryna leave, but Jackie had just dripped them bloodstains on his boots. She turnt the start of a disgusted laugh into a sleepy cough, thinking ’bout telling Sirius that Delicious had Jackie doing obeah, dripping her monthly on they shoes to stop em from running away. Man, would he bust a gut. But then again, maybe the obeah had did the job on most these motherfuckers.
The next morning, Darlene felt the need to quit Delicious pretty bad. The boring hard work and dirty conditions had broke her will, and now she had to wash that bitch’s voodoo blood off her shoes in the morning, behind her back? She kept muttering, No way, that isn’t right. Sometime her work detail wasn’t physically difficult, and they’d make her dump bushels of pink slop into the old wooden hog feeder or spray pesticides on the plants, and she’d have time to come up with plans to get out without nothing bad happening. But whenever she thought about doing courageous shit, her nerves turnt to Jell-O and she would come to my ass crying and begging me to make her feel better. She always saying she knew she should wanna leave more, enough to do some brave shit, but I be talking her out of it.
Plan A was that she just tell How she quitting and walk away—but to where? Would he let her go? No. And how far she gon have to walk, anyways? And how ’bout all that money she owed? It had fell to $908.55 at that point ’cause they been digging up sweet potatoes and she had got good at that. Then plan B became maybe she could find a lawyer somewheres—but who? And how? And to say what? And how you gonna pay a expensive motherfucking lawyer? Besides, Joe Lawyer just gonna go, You signed a contract. Plan C was to put a slit into one them melons she be packing and stick a note into the cut, but she knew they would find that shit during inspections and chuck the melon, or, worse, they’d fish out the note, trace the damaged fruit back to her, dock her pay, and do her like they done TT, who broken nose need a splint it wouldn’t never get. He having trouble breathing, his voice sounding all wheezy, but you couldn’t laugh.