Grace Read Online Free PDF Page B

the middle of her dress. “Momma!” I yell. She hunches over and falls as Massa sits perched on his knees across the room holding that pistol. The weight of it flops his hand sideways and he fall with it.
    â€œMomma!” I say, scooting across the floor to wake her, to make her well, but she ain’t moving. Only the wind of her last breath do.
    Behind us, Massa takes his last, too.
    The wet of her dress makes my hand red. “Hazel! Momma’s dead!”
    But Hazel won’t look away from James. She’s holding his hand. I can hear her talking to him. Praying. I try to wait . . . wait long enough and say, “Hazel, what we gon’ do?”
    Hazel don’t get up. She stay praying. Seem like a hour before she say, “Amen.” Finally, she stands, strong as always except when she sees Momma, her knees buckle.
    Calmly, she say, “I want you to go, Naomi. Far as you can. Go where cain’t nobody find you.”
    â€œWhere I’m gon’ go, Hazel? I cain’t leave you and Momma.”
    She nods and goes over to the fire pit, pulls her smoldering Bible out the fire. She presses it on her dress to stop it smoking. And I cain’t stop shaking. “Momma’s dead, Hazel!”
    She comes to me, hugs me, but her comfort ain’t enough to stop this pain or the tears that pain makes to carry itself out of me.
    Hazel twists two bundles of my hair into one loose braid. It unravels.
    â€œNaomi, listen. Listen! You gotta go outta here. You gotta go north, you hear me? Ain’t nothin here for you.” She presses her Bible against my chest. I hold it tight.
    â€œI don’t know where North is!”
    â€œFollow the star like I showed you. Go only in the night.” Boss starts moaning from the floor.
    I cain’t do this no more.
    Hazel go over to him, stomps that poker further into Boss’s back and he shuts up. She heaves it out and tears her clothes with it; slices into her own flesh, along her ribs ’til she bleed. She brings it to me and puts it in my hand, bloody. “You gon’ need to protect y’self.”
    â€œHazel?” I say.
    â€œYou gon’ need food.” She gets the stale rolls from next to the oven and shoves ’em down my blouse. “You water yourself in the stream.”
    â€œBut Hazel . . .”
    â€œPeople gon’ come lookin, Naomi. Come lookin for all us. Ain’t nobody certain you was ever here.” She peels off Massa’s dark-brown jacket, rolling his fat, doughy body from side to side when she do.
    â€œHazel, please!”
    She puts his jacket around my shoulders. “We was all attacked,” she say. “I got to be here to tell ’em.”
    â€œBut I cain’t make it without you.”
    She pulls open the front door. “Go, Naomi.”
    I creep to it, wiping my tears. “Hazel? Please.”
    â€œGo!” she yell.
    She grabs the back of my head, kiss my cheek before she push me out the door. I hurry out, looking up to the starless, clouded sky, running through the dark, holding Massa’s jacket high above my head.
    â€œDon’t look back, Naomi. You hear me! Don’t you look back!”
    I cain’t breathe.
    Maybe Hazel put a mark on the wall for me, too.

4 / FLASH
    S OME SAY YOUR life flashes before your eyes when you’re about to die.
    It don’t always.
    Not for me.
    I didn’t have not one flash before I went.
    Not everybody gets to see their first birthday again. Their father’s face laughing. The day their sister got married. The friends they’ve loved.
    Maybe you won’t neither.
    Not before you die.
    It’s only now that I see the flashes. They come and go, and choose what day of my life to show me and I ain’t got a say in it. It happens to all of us dead. It’s more than just seeing the moment, it’s taking part in the memory as if it were happening again. And when you in the flash, you don’t