Karma Mayet Johnson | 2009 Fiction Finalist

Excerpt from the novel Nothin in All This World

Eliza

Bell whisper and hum, wash my feet, one by one. Liza Sue, she whisper and hum. Liza Sue. Don’t nobody make my name a hymn like Bell. Liza Sue, she say, that old sun be up and at it soon—let’s rise and let Creation testify.

Befo’ she come to us, Bell live on a Maryland farm belong to whitefolk what don’t hold slaves—they call Quaker. When the last of her Quaker folk pass, county governor say nothing to do but sell off the so-called property. Caught Bell walkin North with free papers say she wasn’t nobody’s slave. Took her to market anyhow. Sittin with them Quaker womenfolk and all them meetings give Bell a sorta different talk. She sound like what us call a wild preacher—born with a callin.

I likes to recall the first time I seen Bell—a free-no-more woman with a red kerchief tied round the back of her head, not wrapped behind the ear like other womenfolk. Way her neck shine and sweat while she turn it round to see this new place. She wore some trousers look so blue they black. Looked like she done stitched and tied up some scraps of cloth and made them her own self. ‘Seer say, what he care if Bell walk round in scrap trousers—long as she workin. Say they found her with them clothes and didn’t want to find her no more clothes to wear, so she kept her blueblack own.

Bell say her Mama—she knew her Ma’am and call her Mama!—learnt her to grow indigo and get that blueblack color. Bell carry indigo seed sewed in her trousers and plant it by the creek of this new place. She say this way she always home.

I been weedin out by them indigo plants once’t a day now, hopin if they grow maybe I’ll see my Bell come home to me. Ain’t no sense in a fieldwoman hopin but I hopes it anyhow. I takes my time by the creek tendin to them indigo plants, just like Bell used to do, out in the dark fo’ day. Thas somethin I take from Bell—how to stop time, make it slow up, and go head and finish what you’se doin, befo’ ‘Seer come shoutin.

Only Creation know why we could not stop the time that morning. It had been the way it always was. She call me Liza Sue, Liza Sue. She whisper and moan, ain’t nothin in all this world, Liza Sue, nothin in all this world. She close her eyes and lay quiet then, only the tips of her fingers keep tremblin sometime, like small feathers on my belly or in my hair. On that mornin seem like me and Bell disappear across a mighty water, mighty as that Jordan we sing about. I always did see water when Bell let me wrap me my whole self up round her and rock her til she go to shakin.

And that was how he found us—movin on a River of Glory so swift it held us still. I hadn’t told Bell how Mass’ Bainbright would come down for me, usually Sunday. But I think she know. Us just didn’t put words to what us couldn’t fix. I sometime think he must have seen that water too, and stood there wonderin how to reach us, how to bring us back. He let his strap do the reaching, and pulled Bell up first, out the water.