Grace by Natashia Deon Page A

clump back in the candle’s flame. It falls through it but don’t melt much. Just enough to stick and harden when it slides to the tabletop.
    The flame stutters again when the door blows open. I sit up quick, pretend I’m reading.
    It’s Albert, the negro. He say, “Sorry, didn’t know nobody was in here,” and starts closing the door back on hisself.
    â€œIt’s all right,” I say. “You can come in.” But he don’t come. He stay on the other side of the door speaking to me.
    â€œCynthia sent me to fix that chair. But I do it some other time.”
    â€œNaw, come in,” I say. “I wasn’t doing nothin.”
    He creeps the door back open and I slide off the chair and go to my trunk. When I sit, my thighs bulge and spread under my dress like rising pancake batter.
    â€œIt’s good to see you better,” he say.
    He kneels next to the chair and rocks it back and forth checking which leg’s broke. Its wood shoe is split. He takes out some sort of grinder from his satchel, some binding glue, and a wood piece from his pocket.
    I watch him while he busy hisself fixing it.
    He got big ears.
    They cupped like hands on the sides of his head. I don’t know why they like that ’cause he ain’t one to listen in on other people’s conversations. His wild reddish hair is so puffy and high, he must got some other blood mixed in him worser than I got. But his eyebrows is black. And thick. He got freckles, too.
    Cynthia call him the “Scottish Banshee” on account of all the red. She said when she took him in a few years ago, she did it cause she felt sorry for him. He was a free slave who never made it north. She reckon he afraid to leave, afraid he’s gon’ get stopped, afraid some white fool gon’ ignore his papers and send him back to slavery anyway. Sometimes she say she never shoulda treated him so good in the first place ’cause now she cain’t get rid of him.
    But he helpful to her.
    He fix things, do all the blacksmithing around here, cleaning sometimes, too. Me and him ain’t never talked even though we both negro.White peoples don’t like to see black folks together no how. Always suspecting the worse like we plotting, or must be lovers drawn together by some black magic they don’t understand. So me and Albert keep our distance.
    He reaches for his glue from the floor and smears some on his new piece of wood, then puts it on the broken leg.
    â€œThanks for saving me,” I say.
    He don’t answer.
    â€œCynthia told me you did.”
    He nods, holds the new foot in place.
    â€œYou do a lot of things ’round here,” I say. “You should know you appreciated, is all.”
    He still don’t talk.
    â€œWhy you don’t cut your hair?” I say.
    â€œâ€™Cause it’s mine,” he say. “My hair’s my freedom. I can do what I want with it, when I want. I’m a free man.”
    â€œIf you free, why you here?”
    â€œYou ask too many questions that ain’t none of your business.”
    â€œYou slept wit Cynthia?”
    He stops working. Rolls his head ’round his neck like he cracking it and just stare at me. He starts working again.
    He’s funny.
    Easy to bother.
    I say, “A young man like you should be finding a wife and a home.”
    â€œI’m thirty-seven years old,” he say, stopping again. “Ain’t been a young man a long time. What you? Sixteen, seventeen? I got at least twenty years on you, girl, so don’t fool yourself into thinking you know somethin.”
    â€œI know you here,” I say. “But you say you ‘free.’ Been here five years and still do what you told, eat when you told to, sleep in the field. ‘Free.’”
    â€œChild,” he say, smiling now, like I’m the one who said something funny. “How you know I ain’t saving my money, readying to go north?Buy