CHAPTER 1

1932

Allise DeWitt might give birth to their first child anytime. Herhusband Quentin, in his farm work pants, long-sleeved shirt, andhigh-topped shoes, looked ready to step out the door. The manyacres of the DeWitt farm spread along the eastern edge of the Chalu Riversome seven miles from Deer Point, the southern Arkansas town where theDeWitts lived.

Allise's uppermost concern rested in her misshapen body. She gave nothought to her bed-tangled reddish hair. Her dark hazel eyes pled with herhusband. "Please hurry home, Quent," she said. "This could be the day."

He kissed her cheek. "Cotton picking gets underway today. I'll do mybest to finish early." Quent slapped a straw hat over side-parted light brownhair combed into slick perfection and rushed out the door.

Allise leaned against the kitchen counter. Tousled strands of hair fellabout her pale face. Twisting her wide wedding band, she listened to theold farm truck rumble down the back alley with Quent's younger brother,Sam, at the wheel. Sam didn't resemble Quent in the slightest. He tookafter their father, stocky and earthy.

Her tall, handsome husband had grown strained under his farmresponsibilities—so strained she now saw few traces of the fun-loving beauwho had courted her some three years ago. Well, that memorable summer andbeautiful Christmas wedding in Pennsylvania are behind us.

Quent's blue flannel robe hung loosely over Allise's expanded girth.She thought of eating for the baby's sake, but the sight of food scraps onher husband's plate brought on a feeling of nausea. She trudged upstairs tothe bedroom. Catching a glimpse in the mirror of her tired eyes and therumpled curls framing her milk-white face, she straightened the mussedhair with her fingers and sank onto the chaise lounge.

She lay there for several hours, fearing the unknown, before the firstcramping pain began. She trudged back downstairs to phone Dr. Walls.

The doctor came as soon as he could leave his office. Cramps, he said,were an early stage of delivery. "I'll examine you later, Allie. Get in bedand rest up for your labor." With her settled, he took the overstuffed chairnear the window. His presence—spectacles perched midway down his noseand a neatly trimmed gray mustache—comforted Allise. He picked up abook, positioned it on his rotund belly, and started to read.

Glancing at him, Allise thought he must have sat like this with manypatients over the years. What would Deer Point do without him?

By sunset on the DeWitt farm, one cotton sack remained to be weighed.All the black tenant hands walked toward their farmhouses—all but one,eighteen-year-old Maizee Colson, the daughter of Jonas and Rebekah. Shewas their eldest, the pretty daughter with the dark almond-shaped eyes.

Maizee was last in line to have her sack weighed, and Quent took histime at the scales. Then he grabbed her arm, and holding her back, hepeered around the weighing shed door. Convinced they were alone, heshoved her to the back of the shed. "Pull those clothes off, girl, and getdown there."

A human mass heaved and grunted over Maizee. Each hard thrustinto her slight body dropped Quentin DeWitt's cold sweat onto her darkskin. Searing pain shot through her sunbaked arms, which he held pinnedagainst the floor. Nothing like this had ever happened to her. She lay inparalyzed submission, tears oozing from eyes set on a dim corner of theceiling. Maizee wanted to cling there in the cool, elusive place, apart fromthe scourge being inflicted upon her.

Quent gave one last guttural groan and rolled onto dirty coarse cottonsacks that only minutes before had been emptied of the day's pickings. Hisheavy breathing cut into a thick silence. Sensing his vulnerability at thatmoment, Maizee wondered what she should do.

Suddenly, Quent stood, and she thought of blood. Wondering if itwould gush down her legs when she stood up, she glimpsed his white fleshdisappearing inside a trouser leg. Maizee imagined her fingers reachingout to claw it. Stain his white with his own blood. Stain my brown fingerswith his blood.

He looked down at her nude form with cold, steel-blue eyes and sneered."Get up, girl! You ain't hurt. Go on home." Without a backward glance,Quent pushed the sagging door and stepped out into the mid-Septemberevening, heated yet from a blistering Arkansas summer.

Maizee lay in the darkness and listened to voices drift across theevening stillness. "Gawd damn it, I'm starved! Allie may be having a baby,and you taking on wenches." Mista Quent had roused his brother, MistaSam, whom she had seen dozing in the truck parked beside the shed.

"Let's go, Sam. I'm hungry too." Mista Quent sounded more like hewas giving in than issuing one of his usual sharp-edged orders.

Maizee heard metal slam against metal as the rickety old truck bumpeddown the rutted dirt lane to the main road. When she could no longer hearit, she knew the men were on the highway headed for Deer Point, sevenwagon-long miles due east.

With no sense of time and alone in the shed, she felt out of her body,not wanting to be a part of it. Then, remembering, she felt between herthighs for blood. Satisfied, she pulled an empty sack reeking of mustycotton over her nakedness and rolled onto her side. With knees drawnto her chest, she lay motionless. Thoughts exploded like charged wirestouching each other inside her head.

In seconds, she came to her knees and wailed, "Nigga!" Whimpering,she pounded the dirt-strewn floor with her fists. Then, as suddenly aswhimper and pounding began, they ceased. Maizee's clenched fists relaxedinto callused hands incapable of harming anyone. She reached for her whitebloomers and pulled them on. Her flour-sack dress lay crumpled nearby.Pulling it over her head, she stood and tugged it down her body beforetying a sweat-stained red bandana about her short plaits.

Then, with the screech of a wild animal, her anger boiled over again.Poised like a mad dog ready to attack, she snatched up a long, empty sack,wadded one end, and spun it round and round. The shed filled with frenziedmotion. Hoes and weights leaning against the walls, tools hanging fromnails—all crashed to the floor, settling about her. Her breath came in harshgasps, and her legs buckled. She sagged to the floor, limp and spent.

For some time, Maizee sat amid the rubble. Then, pushing to her feetagain, she walked out into the night. Trudging across the field in darkness,she wondered how long it had been since everyone left the weighing shed.Momma! She gonna be mad! She be mad when she knows. What I gonna tellher? Maizee tried to hurry along, but her body was past taking commands.Her mind dredged up an ugly word she was forbidden to use. She was notdumb about the thing that had happened to her. Momma and Daddy cain'tdo nothing. Just have to put up with white folks.

For most of her day, Allise had lain on her back, eyes closed. A dullache wrapped around her torso. Opening her eyes, she saw the doctordozing. A book lay across his belly, rising and falling with each breath.His small round specs sat askew on his broad nose. He looks exhausted. Washe up all night tending sick folk?

She tried to move without waking him, but he woke, moved to thewindow, and pulled a watch from his vest pocket. "It's two o'clock. I mustexamine you." Allise winced. Probes of her body, even by the kindly olddoctor, felt like a...