“It’s ready, Mama,” Jayda said, peeking her head into the living room. The woman on the couch was naked and hunched over her knees, rocking back and forth.

“Ok, now help me move her. Sugar, you gon’ have to lift up now so we can move you.”

The woman slowly unfolded herself. Jayda held out her hand and the woman placed a trembling palm in hers. Jayda could feel the roughness of her skin and the dampness of blood.

“Place the arm over your shoulder, Jayda,” Mama Harris said as she took the woman’s other arm and draped it over her shoulder. Together they hoisted the woman up and lifted her into the bedroom where the basin sat. They eased her body into the water. Jayda watched as the dirt and blood lifted from the woman’s flesh and floated to the top of the water in a brown emulsion. The woman’s head swayed from side to side. Her eyes were half-closed slants spilling tears. Her mouth mumbled incomprehensibly, and all the while Mama stroked her hand, humming a soothing tone.

Jayda went to grab the bowl of hot water with the wash rags inside. She set them at the feet of Mama Harris and dropped in two capfuls of juniper. She swished the rags around in the hot water and when Mama reached out her hand Jayda placed one rag in it while grasping the second.

“This gon’ sting a bit, but it’s gone clean you up good,” Mama Harris told the woman.

Mama Harris put the rag to the woman’s wounds. She howled and gritted her teeth. Mama continued her humming as she touched the rag to the gashes on the woman’s face and arm.

“If I could make this any less painful, I would, sugar” Mama Harris said, dipping the bloodied rag into her bowl of water and wringing it out.

As Mama cleaned the woman’s face, Jayda reached into the water and fished out the woman’s feet and began to wash the soles. The feet were the only thing Jayda was allowed to wash. When she asked why, Mama Harris told her the feet were the most important part of a person. Then she told her about the woman in Luke 7: 35–50 who used her hair to wash Jesus’ feet. Jayda didn’t see a connection between herself and that woman, but she wondered about that woman and what drove her to such humility. Who was Jayda humbling herself before? Surely not the women whose feet she washed. They were no saviors. They came in with their broken pieces and expected Mama Harris to put them back together. They’d either been beaten by a man or a baby that didn’t come full term or an illness or the world or their own destruction. Jayda hadn’t even wanted to touch them, afraid that their brokenness was contagious. Whenever she finished washing them she scrubbed her hands and arms so ferociously it left her skin raw.

This woman appeared to be no different. She would accept the bath from Mama Harris, even sleep on the couch and eat most of their humble breakfast in the morning. Then she would be gone, returning to what brought her here in the first place. Jayda didn’t know much, but she knew patterns and she’d seen this woman here before. The bruises were familiar and so were the rough heels she scrubbed.

Jayda watched as her great-grandmother hummed over the woman who was now subdued. There was a sweetness to her voice that made Mama’s face seem not as heavy and her eyes not as sunken. The sweetness was like a light. It even made the face of the bruised up woman shine.

“Almost done,” Mama Harris said, “just need you to stand up.”

Jayda wrung out her dirty rag and placed it in the bowl. She stood up and took the hands of the woman, pulling her to her feet. The water ran down the valleys of her body, leaving droplets clinging to her flesh. Mama Harris began to wash the woman’s back, breasts, thighs, and in between her legs. The woman shivered and tightened her grip on Jayda’s hand. Jayda looked up and could see the woman’s eyes on her. They were small and slanted with pupils so dark they looked black. She wanted to look away but she was rooted. The gash on the side of the woman’s face was sealing and her busted lip was crusting over. Jayda didn’t know if it were the bruises or the glint in the woman’s eyes that held her. She didn’t know whether to be intrigued or frightened. Then the woman did something Jayda found peculiar, she smiled at her.

“Come on and step out the tub.”

The woman clutched Jayda’s hands as she lifted her feet out of the tub. Mama Harris wrapped the woman in the feed sack.

“Don’t worry bout your clothes, we’ll have them washed up for you. Jayda’s gone grab you something to wear and show you where you can sleep.”

Jayda could feel the woman’s eyes boring into her as she helped her into the living room. She stopped before the couch and handed the woman a night shirt. Jayda turned to walk away when the woman spoke.

“I’ve seen you before.”

Jayda turned to look at the woman.

“Yeah, I’ve seen you before.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“This town ain’t big enough to go around mistaking people.”

Jayda said nothing.

The woman moved closer, thickening the air with peppermint and moonshine. It The smell wafted around Jayda making her eyes tingle.

“Celestine,” the woman whispered. Her eyes went from glossy to sharp, as if she’d located exactly what she was searching for. “Celestine,” she said again, this time her mouth splitting open in a smile revealing two chipped front teeth and a bottom row missing a considerable number.

Jayda blinked at the woman unsure of whether she was drunk or hallucinating.

“My baby,” the woman cried. The floor creaked as her bare feet moved forward, her arms outstretched, and tears welling in her eyes. Jayda swiftly backed away, her heart hammering in her chest.

“You don’t remember me? I am your mother, Celestine. You’re my baby. I held you in my arms before they took you away. Now you back,” the woman’s smile widened despite the obvious pain it caused her. When Jayda attempted to move again, the woman seized her arm.

“I knew God would bring you back to me. I prayed and I prayed for you to come back.”

The sight of the woman made Jayda’s stomach curl. The blacks of the woman’s pupils began to roll like a violent tide. There was a flash in them like lightning. The current had drowned whatever human was looking through them and Jayda swore she was staring at Satan.

“I am your mother,” the woman cried, “can’t you see me. Can’t you see yourself inside of me?” The woman shook Jayda while the waves in her eyes continued to tumble forward.

“They may have taken you, but you belong to me. You are a part of me,” the woman’s hand dropped Jayda’s arm and cupped her face, drawing her in closer until only a pungent breath stood between them. Jayda blinked back the tears from the woman’s rank breath and eyes that were fully flushed with the violent waves. The water rushed out ferociously as the woman dug her nails into the sides of Jayda’s face. Jayda wanted to cry out, but something held her tongue. She struggled with the woman whose snarl ironed out into a smile as the water continued rushing from her eyes. Jayda clawed the woman’s fingers from her face and shoved her backward. The woman fell onto the couch. Her feed sack flew off exposing her heaving body. Her hair stuck up in spikes and her eyes were erratic.

“Celestine!”

The name leapt off her tongue and scratched the floorboards as it sprinted toward Jayda. Jayda turned and ran from the unfamiliar name galloping at her heels. She burst onto the back porch and slammed the door in its face. Outside, Mama Harris was on her knees scrubbing the woman’s clothes in the tin wash bin. Her indigo-stained fingers were pruned like withered grapes. They shot in and out of the water spilling suds onto the porch. Jayda watched Mama’s broad shoulders roll up and down with a tenacity that mirrored the racket of Jayda’s heart. Jayda wanted to grab Mama and run, but her limbs felt powerless, so she collapsed next to her in a fit of exhaustion. Mama peeked over her shoulder at the deflated girl.

“What’s the matter, chile?”

“That woman in there, she’s crazy.”

“Hush up, now, callin’ people crazy. They ain’t no different from you and me.”

“Who’s Celestine?”

The name made Mama Harris slow her washing. She listened closely to be sure she hadn’t been mistaken.

“Celestine?” Mama Harris asked.

“Yes. She kept calling me Celestine, sayin’ that she was my mama till somebody stole me from her. Why does she think she’s my mama?”

Mama picked up her vigorous washing, hoping the sound of the water slapping the pail would drown out Jayda’s question. Tonight she was tired, more tired than she’d been in all her years. The weight of her tiredness pushed on her shoulders forcing her to hunch forward. It ricocheted off her joints and rendered her almost immobile. The only thing keeping her going was her washing. So she washed with a fervor and a desperation to beat back all of the sleeplessness and sweat and pain. The dress in her hand was wearing thin and she felt her palms going numb as they rubbed against the board. The woman had unraveled everything that Mama had kept tightly wound when she stumbled through the door. Jayda didn’t know just how intricately tied she was to that thread, and Mama Harris was not prepared to let her know about the time when she was Celestine and the woman on the couch was her mother.

That was a time before circumstances presented themselves like prison cells that would only lock the baby inside a world where pain had dominion and pleasure was obsolete. A world that Mama Harris and the Mama before her knew all too intimately. It trapped their dreams and stifled their vision in opaque cloud. When Mama Harris looked upon the baby that was Celestine, she couldn’t bare the soot of this life staining her, so, in an effort to break the curse, Mama Harris took the reins of the girl’s destiny and did what she wished she could have done for her daughter and her daughter’s daughters: she sent her away somewhere she could see the sunshine and taste the sweetness. In Mama Harris’s granddaughter’s arms is where she left the girl who soon became Jayda. Her mother was left to rattle and shake behind those cells. It broke Mama Harris’s heart every time she sewed up the woman’s brokenness, but it was a price they’d both paid for the sake of someone else having a chance. Mama Harris had done it willingly, even if that meant she’d rot in hell because of it. God had come fishing for atonement, but she decided she had nothing to atone for, so she let the truth swim in the saliva on her tongue before swallowing it.

Jayda watched the storms brewing in her great-grandmother’s cumulous eyes. It unnerved Jayda, the way Mama’s lips mumbled silent words before snapping shut. Then, the audible sound of something gulping down her throat.

“Celestine ain’t nobody.” ♦

Stephanie is a writer based in the Midwest who enjoys all things Southern goth and Toni Morrison. When she’s not writing stories, she’s writing about books.