Everyone sat quietly in their own thoughts as the president’s words lingered in the room like an elephant, heavy and fat.
“That new law gone change everything,” Doll said after a while.
“It ain’t gone change nothing.” Queenie spat out her words as if there were a bad taste in her mouth.
“We ain’t what we want to be. We ain’t what we gonna be. But thank God we ain’t what we was,” Crow said, his head bent toward the floor. “Still, far as I know, there ain’t a white man ever been born that understood what the colored man’s thinking, what he’s feeling. Heck, half the time, that colored man don’t know hisself.”
“What you mumbling over there, old man?” Queenie snapped.
Crow just shook his head.
Doll tightened her arms across her chest. “For sure, the Reverend Jeremiah’s gone have a few things to say about it this coming Sunday.”
Queenie shook her head. “But I still say, you can’t go mixing people up like they a bunch of eggs.”
Crow took a bandanna out of his back pocket and wiped his eyes. He went out the back door just as a bellow came from the front room.
“How dare that good-for-nothing president interrupt my show!”
Queenie and Doll exchanged glances.
Queenie reached over and turned off the radio. “Ain’t nothing ever gone change around this house. That’s for sure.” Queenie rolled her eyes. “And ain’t nothing gone change for the black man neither, no matter what the president say on the radio.”
Doll glanced out into the backyard, where her father was now bent over, scrubbing the car.
And she hoped, just this once, that her mother wasn’t right.
Chapter Fifteen
Ibby noticed the door to Doll’s sewing room was ajar the next morning as she made her way down to breakfast. When she peeked in, she was startled to find a set of dark eyes staring back at her.
“Get away from that door, like I told you!” Doll fussed at the dark-eyed girl.
“But, Mama,” the girl said, “they is someone there!”
Flustered, Ibby ran across the hall to her father’s room. She listened for a moment to make sure no one was coming after her before she took the urn from the armoire and placed it on the floor in front of her.
“Good morning, Daddy,” she said.
“That your daddy in that jar?”
Ibby looked up to find a pair of spindly brown legs attached to a girl about her age in a sleeveless gingham dress. Her hair was braided all over her head. She was standing with one hand on her hip and staring down at Ibby.
“That your daddy?” the girl said again, pointing at the urn.
“Yes,” Ibby answered, flustered by the girl’s sudden appearance in her father’s room.
The girl sat cross-legged beside her. “What were his name?”
“Graham,” Ibby said.
“That’s a nice name.”
They studied each other a few moments. Ibby could see Doll in the girl. They had the same wide mouth, long thin face, expressive eyes, and beautiful almond skin.
“You Birdelia?” Ibby asked.
The girl nodded. They stared at each other a little while longer.
“Is that your real name?” Ibby asked.
“Yeah. Mama gave me that name on account of when I was born, I had my mouth open like this.” Birdelia lifted her head, pushed her lips out, and began opening and closing her mouth. “Just like a baby bird do when they looking for food.”
“My name’s Ibby.”
“That your real name?”
“No, it’s Liberty, but the only person that calls me that is my mama when she gets mad,” Ibby said, clenching the urn.
Birdelia leaned in and looked Ibby squarely in the eyes with an intensity she wasn’t used to. “You miss your daddy, don’t you?”
“He loved me,” Ibby blurted. She had no idea why she said it, especially to a stranger.
“My daddy loved me, too. Least that’s what my mama say.”
“Did something happen to your daddy?” Ibby asked.
“Don’t rightly know. Left before I was born.” Birdelia cupped her chin in her hands, as if she were thinking about it some more.
“So . . . you never met your daddy?”
“Don’t matter none.” Birdelia shrugged. “Mama say he went back to Sorrowful Swamp, where he belonged.”
“Where’s Sorrowful Swamp?”
“Just a blot on the map, in the low country. Mama say no matter how hard you try and scratch it off the map, the stain of Sorrowful Swamp still shows through.”
“You ever been there?”
Birdelia shook her head. “No. People shy away from the place, like it reeks, ’cause they say once you go there, you never come out.”
“Is it haunted?”
Birdelia inched closer. “The way the story goes, there’s a strange silence in Sorrowful Swamp. Once a person gets caught up in that silence, they can’t live without it. And once they there, they can’t leave anyway on account they believe every bush and every tree harbors Satan. And if it ain’t Satan up in that tree, it’s bound to be the boogeyman, or maybe one of them plat-eyes.”
“Is that where your daddy is now?”