Mudbound by Hillary Jordan Page B

away from us rather than toward us. Days when the old man went off with Henry, leaving the house to me, the girls and Florence. I depended on her a great deal, and for far more than housework, though I wouldn’t have admitted it then. Each time I heard her brisk knock on the back door, I felt a loosening in myself, an unclenching. Some mornings I would hear Lilly May’s more hesitant rapping instead, and I would know that Florence had been called away to another woman’s house. Or I’d open the door to find an agitated husband standing on my porch, twisting his soiled straw hat in his hands, saying the pains had started, could she come right now? Florence would take her leather case and go, bustling with purpose and importance, leaving me alone with the girls and the old man. I accepted these absences because I had no choice.
    “I got to look after the mothers and the babies,” she told me. “I reckon that’s why the Lawd put me on this earth.”
    She had four children of her own: Ronsel, her eldest, who was still overseas with the Army; the twins, Marlon and Ruel,shy, sturdy boys of twelve who worked in the fields with their father; and Lilly May, who was nine. There had been another boy, Landry, who’d died when he was only a few weeks old. Florence wore a leather pouch on a thong around her neck containing the dried remains of the caul in which he’d been born.
    “A caul round a child mean he marked for Jesus,” she told me. “Jesus seen the sign and taken Landry for His own self. But my son’ll be watching over me from heaven, long as I wear his caul.”
    Like many Negroes, Florence was highly superstitious and full of well-meaning advice about supernatural matters. She urged me to burn my nail clippings and every strand of hair left in my brush to prevent my enemies from using them to hex me. When I assured her that wouldn’t be necessary, as I had no enemies, she looked pointedly at Pappy across the room and replied that the Dark Man had many minions, and you had to be vigilant against them all the time. One day I smelled something rotten in the bedroom and found a broken egg in a saucer under the bed. It looked to have been there for at least a week. When I confronted Florence with it, she told me it was for warding off the evil eye.
    “There are no evil eyes here,” I said.
    “Just cause you can’t see em don’t mean they ain’t there.”
    “Florence, you’re a Christian woman,” I said. “How can you believe in all these curses and spirits?”
    “They right there in the Bible. Cain was cursed for killing his brother. Womenfolks cursed on account of Eve listened to that ole snake. And we got the Holy Spirit in every one of us.”
    “That’s not the same thing at all,” I said.
    She replied with a loud sniff. Later I saw her give the dish to Lilly May, who went and buried the egg at the base of the oak tree. Lord knows what that was supposed to accomplish.
    There was no colored school during planting season, so Florence often brought Lilly May to work with her. She was a fey child, tall for her age, with purple-black skin like her mother’s. The girls adored Lilly May, though she didn’t talk much. She had a clubfoot, so she lacked Florence’s slow heavy grace, but her voice more than made up for it. I’ve never heard anyone sing like that child. Her voice soared, and it took you along with it, and when it stopped and the last high, yearning note had shivered out, you ached for its passing and for your return to your own lonely, mortal sack of flesh. The first time I heard her, I was playing the piano and teaching the girls the words to “Amazing Grace” when Lilly May joined in from the front porch, where she was shelling peas. I’ve always prided myself on my singing voice, but when I heard hers, I was so humbled I was struck dumb. Her voice had no earthly clay in it, just a sure, sweet grace that was both a yielding and a promise. Anyone who believes that Negroes are not God’s