“Now, I know you did not call me to talk about all that small-town business you couldn’t stand when you were living here,” she said. “So, out with it, girl.”
Tamara smiled and imagined the fondness of her grandma’s frown as she said this, eyebrows raised, lips pursed. “When you were growing up, did you know people with saint’s hands?”
She sucked her teeth. “You want to know about that? Don’t know what good it ever did them, but sure, there were about a dozen in town when I was a child. We used to whisper about getting dreams. For a while even I wanted one, but thank the Lord he spared me that burden.”
“Is it so bad to have the hands, Grandma? Who wouldn’t want a little extra?”
“I sure don’t! Of those dozen I knew back in the day, only one lived to see forty. And he’s still with us, but Syl Freeman lives alone in that hunting shack and he don’t go out much. I think he just decided to keep his head down and survive. In any case, he’s the last of his kind. No one has had a dream in town for I don’t know how long. Your mother would claim it’s the power of the Lord over the devil’s works.”
She said this with such disdain—and a faint impression of her mother’s cadences—that Tamara had to laugh. “You aren’t buying that, huh?”
“Hell, no! Pardon my language, but your mother is just hot and bothered by that nice-looking pastor of hers. No, whatever the hands were, they didn’t come from the devil. They were holy. Too holy for a human to hold them for long. All them that got the dreams would … they would try, Tammy. They would go to the town hall and try to vote for mayor. They would walk straight up to the lunch counter at Central Diner and sit there while the white folks worked themselves into a lather. More than a couple got themselves lynched that way. If they left town, it was more of the same. They became criminals, they hid in the woods, they joined armies, but they could not abide. They couldn’t wait for their reward in heaven, they had to bring it right on down here. And they couldn’t.”
Tammy took a breath, slow and steady. “I hear you.”
“Those old souls,” Grandma said softly, “they suffered too much.”
“They—who suffered?” But she knew. She’d felt them most of her life.
“Do you remember,” Grandma said, “that old story about your nana? Been thinking about it lately. Funny that you called about the hands, because I’ve been catching myself reminiscing. An NAACP chapter here in Lawrenceville of all places. It makes me wonder what we could do with a pair of hands…”
“About Nana? You mean, the night they told her she was free?”
She could imagine her grandmother’s slow nod, her distant eyes.
“I never told you all of it. Your nana didn’t like to talk about it. It was March. Winnie and I were young, no more than six. They’d taken Charleston and Sherman was marching north and everyone knew it was over. And then there was a rumor that it had happened, Lincoln had come to Richmond and we were all free. Winnie and I ran out with the other children, whooping and hollering. We were young, but we knew what freedom meant, all right. At some point the old store house caught fire. Maybe someone set it, maybe a lamp broke, but it was burning bright. We ran for water. Everyone was busy trying to put it out. But your nana turned around, and saw them all lined up right on the edge of the forest. All the old slaves. The ones that had tried to run and got themselves turned to dog food. The ones that had collapsed in the fields. The ones that’d had the luck to die free, or close to it. Hundreds, thousands—depending on her mood, because you remember how your nana enjoyed elaborating. But there they were, watching the fire and the new freemen, laughing. The dead didn’t speak. They were silent as a knot on a log. But their eyes, Annie, she’d tell me, their eyes were brighter than the flames. They flashed so bright she could hardly see. And when they flashed, she felt the wind. It was hot and dry, as if it had blown in from the Sahara, but your nana had been born in New Orleans, so she recognized the salt in it, that green hint of the ocean. It knocked her to her knees. And then that wind, it circled around her, as if it were a dog sniffing. And for a moment, she saw. She saw that wind as a great blue fire, coursing through the sky, boiling around her.
“And before it passed over them entirely, little fingers of it touched the heads of three people from the plantation, and they fell into a dead swoon. And wouldn’t you know, just after the war the rumors started about the dreams, about the hands, about people with a knack for the numbers. And for a few years during Reconstruction it seemed that it might be working. We opened banks, we bought land, we got ourselves elected.
“There used to be more people with the hands, child, many, many more. Then white folks—well, they couldn’t abide any power they could not have. They didn’t believe in the hands, but they killed them anyway. And your nana couldn’t do anything about it, with just her cards and her numbers. You inherited that, you and Winnie. You don’t have the hands, but you can see.”
Tamara chewed on that conversation with her grandmother while life in the house moved as slowly and sweetly as it ever did. Mrs. Grundy
