“Shoot,” Glory said.

“I need you to help fix me.” Mawu looked down at her waist. Then she put her hand over her private area. “I need you to help fix me permanent.”

Glory shook her head.

“I don’t aim to give him no more childrens,” Mawu said, eyeing Glory steadily.

Lizzie coughed and then coughed again, as if there were a hair in her throat that she couldn’t get to.

Mawu hit her on the back. “You all right, girl?”

Lizzie nodded.

“What you got to cook in that cabin?” Mawu asked.

“Some potatoes. A fresh rabbit,” Glory answered.

“Well, that’s all us need. My mammy taught me how to make the best rabbit stew you ever sank your teeth into.”

Mawu showed a mouth of crooked teeth as if to prove it. Glory removed her capelet. In a few moments, the three women were walking toward the cabin, Mawu stopping here and there to pick an herb.

Lizzie couldn’t help but wonder what the sight of them must have looked like: a brown woman, a red woman, and a white woman. Thin, short, and fat. Tennessee, Louisiana, and Ohio.

The three women were just as different on the inside, too. One of them was hoping to give up what the other cherished and the third longed for.

TWENTY-NINE

The hastily dispatched telegraph from Georgia said it might be cholera. Diarrhea that spread as rapidly as a brushfire in the woods. The women never got a copy of the telegraphed note themselves. But they knew from the cook who heard it from the maid who heard it from the horse groom that the place back where Sweet lived was in trouble.

For days, Sweet waited to hear word of her children. That week was a difficult time, not only for Sweet but for all of the women. Each of them remembered Sweet’s dead baby from the summer before. And they knew she could not handle any more dead babies. There were four children left: three girls, one boy. Each one with the light skin born of the nightly couplings with her master. And as she walked around the place, stiff as stone, it was hard for those who watched her petite frame to believe she had birthed so many.

The women knew better than to ask. They could tell from the look on her face she knew no more than they did. So they all prayed silently at night, into sheets, pillows, blankets. Lizzie asked Drayle after the third night of no news if Sweet’s master would send her back to check on her young ones. Surely her master needed to go back to check on his plantation himself. Surely he was worried about his own family, if not the coloreds then the whites. Even though his wife was long dead, he had five white children of his own. But according to Drayle, he had made no such plans, perhaps afraid if he did go back, he would fall victim to the illness as well.

Then they learned that his white children had been evacuated from the place. And those who were sick had been separated from those who were well. And the sick ones had been taken off the land and put away somewhere safe. Temporarily, those still there believed that this had stopped the rage of the infection.

Sweet didn’t know if her children were with the healthy ones or the sick ones. So the women waited, wondering what kinds of midnight supplications Sweet made to her master to find out about her children. Wondering if he cared that these were his children, too. Not just his property, but his own flesh and blood.

But they also knew that for white men there was no such thing as separating the two. They were his children, yes. But they were also his property. And like most property they could be replaced.

This was the women’s deepest fear. That a white man would feel his slave children could easily be replaced with new ones, as if it were an exchange at a dry goods store.

Mawu, Lizzie, and Reenie sat on the low bank of the pond, each keeping her hands occupied with different tasks while their minds focused on one thing. They spoke of things light, like what they would cook for dinner and how quickly dust seemed to gather in the corners of their cottages. They watched as white hotel guests walked by. Mawu spun a story about a man back on her place who could catch flies in his mouth, snapping them up like a frog.

Chew them and eat them? Reenie asked.

Well, if he ain’t eating them, he holding them in there mighty long, Mawu answered.

Tomfoolery, Lizzie said.

The three women allowed themselves a welcome chuckle. Until they saw Sweet approaching them, carrying something spread across her arms. It looked like a garment of some kind. The three women waited. Lizzie scooted over to make a space for Sweet in the middle, so that she would be flanked by the rest of them.

When Sweet made it over to them, they could see she was carrying a dress. She passed through Lizzie and Mawu and stretched the dress out on the ground between them. She arranged the folds of it. The dress was black, but varying shades of black. Sweet must have run out of fabric; it was clear that she had stitched together all the black fabric she could find. Only the neckline and the sleeves were edged in white lace. Lizzie recognized the lace as the same fabric the hotel used for the cottage tablecloths. This made Lizzie study the rest of the dress and wonder where Sweet had gotten the other pieces of mismatched cloth.

“This for my baby. My Sarah.”

“Dead?” Reenie put down the potato she was peeling. “Your child dead?”

Only Sweet’s mouth moved. “My oldest. The one that took care of the others. She had a face from the heavens.”

“I’m so sorry, Sweet,” Lizzie whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

Sweet shook her head. “No. This a good thing, in a way. I was worried about her. She was too pretty. Some old man was bound to start trying to mess with her. I didn’t want her to end up like me. So now she gone to the Lord where she can be a true angel.”

Lizzie reached out and touched the dress. “You made this for her?”

“Ain’t it pretty?”

“When you leaving?” Mawu asked.

Sweet smiled. “We ain’t going.”

“What you mean, you ain’t going?” Mawu’s eyes flashed.

“It’s all right, Mawu. I just need y’all to do this.”

“Just say it,” Lizzie said.

“Go and bury this here dress in the woods. Next to my other baby. The one without a name. I can’t stand to be there myself. But I know y’all will do right by her.”

“I is gone say a prayer,” Reenie said.

Sweet closed her eyes and then opened them. She nodded her gratitude and headed back to her cottage.

All three women stood, and Reenie looked off at the sun to see how much time they had.

“Supposing we ask one of the men to come help us?” Lizzie asked.

“No,” Reenie said. “Us can do this our ownselves.”

Lizzie and Mawu picked up the dress and carried it between them as if there were really a body in it. Lizzie carried the top portion and Mawu carried the bottom. Reenie led. On the way, they stopped and got a shovel.

They found the spot where Sweet’s infant girl was buried, near the intersection of two forest paths that crossed one another. It was marked by a small tree. Lizzie took the shovel and dug while Mawu and Reenie folded the dress into a bulky square. The hole wasn’t man-sized. It was just large enough for the folded dress. Reenie placed the dress in the hole while Mawu hunted for rocks. They covered the hole with a hill of smooth rocks.

The three of them held hands and formed a circle around the two graves. Mawu said a prayer in a language neither Lizzie nor Reenie understood, but they all felt the spirit of it. When Mawu got quiet, Reenie withdrew a wooden cross from beneath her dress and kissed it.

Three nights later, there was a knock at Lizzie’s back door. Drayle was sleeping on the sofa, so she opened the door quietly. Sweet stood there with a shirt and pants, already folded.

“This here for my boy. My only boy.”