And then she disappeared into the darkness.

The next day, the women repeated their ritual.

Two days later, Lizzie woke and found a dress folded so tightly on her back porch step that she did not know what it was at first. She looked around, but no one seemed to notice the bundle. She took it to Reenie who immediately put down her washing and nodded. Mawu couldn’t join them that morning because her master was home. Reenie said a few words so powerful and angry they made Lizzie cry a bit.

It had been two weeks since the first word of the sickness. And Sweet had one child left. They were afraid to ask, dreading more news of the dead. And knowing that if three of her children were gone, and they all lived in the same cabin, then it was likely the other was sick as well. They didn’t want to believe that God would be so cruel to take her last child.

But they imagined feverish nights, nights of stomachaches and loose bowels and cold rags on foreheads, one sick caring for another.

Sweet stayed in her cottage, and when the women knocked on the door after witnessing her master leaving with the other men, there was no answer. They peeked through the window and saw her sleeping on the bed. They watched for the rise and fall of her chest. They knew grief like this could kill you. They left her alone after they saw signs of life.

Three days later, Lizzie could no longer wait and decided to enter Sweet’s cottage. She had heard of other plantations being in trouble like this, but she had never known any slaves on them well enough to feel the effects of it.

As she walked, she was conscious of the burden of her steps and tried to think of what she would say. She stood outside the back door of Sweet’s cottage for several minutes. And when the proper healing words did not enter her mind, she decided her presence would have to do.

She found Sweet in the middle of the room, sitting amidst a mountain of shredded fabric. Her hair was disheveled, lips covered with the white crust of dehydration.

“What are you making, Sweet?”

“Making.”

“We ain’t seen you around in a few days.”

“I told you. Making.”

Lizzie took up some of the fabric in her hands. Some of it was coarse cloth. But some of it was good-muslin, cotton, wool. Parts of it looked like undergarments, lace, sackcloth.

Lizzie recognized the top portion of a girl’s dress. The lower half of it was a neverending patchwork of textures. Lizzie went into the bedroom and saw that the bed was barren of sheets, the closets empty of clothes. Everything had been used. Maybe Sweet’s man was grieving, too. Surely he knew Sweet had sewn up everything in the cottage.

The stitches weren’t even either. Some were loose, others bunched the fabric into uneven folds.

“You got some more?” Sweet licked her lips.

Lizzie quietly observed the odd look in Sweet’s eyes. Then she left and went back to her own cottage and got a pair of pants she had discovered behind the stove, left by some previous guest. She went to the kitchen at the back of the hotel and asked the women if they had any fabric to spare. They wouldn’t give it to her until she told them Sweet was making a dress for one of her children. The cook who ran the kitchen must have understood because she commanded the younger women to gather every scrap of cloth they could find in the house that wouldn’t be missed. They came back with heaps in their arms.

Lizzie took it all back to Sweet’s cottage and dumped it in a pile on the floor in front of her. The grin on Sweet’s face motivated Lizzie to go and search again. This time, she visited Reenie and Mawu to ask for fabric. Both of them gave her what they could spare.

“She all right?” Reenie asked as she handed over a pair of worn bloomers.

“She all right,” Lizzie repeated in a low voice.

“She making it?” Mawu called through her cottage window.

“She making it,” Lizzie said.

When Lizzie returned to Sweet’s cottage, she saw the woman had hungrily grabbed up the nearest piece of cloth to her and ripped it apart. She was sewing it onto the neverending dress and as she worked, drool made its way down her chin. Lizzie decided to leave her alone.

Two days later, they were sorting eggs when Sweet came to them. Mawu had just accidentally broken an egg and found a tiny leg inside. She had thrown the egg into the grass, frightened by the omen. Sweet lay the dress out in front of them on the ground.

“They all dead now. They all gone to meet the Lord. They in a better place. They crossed over.” She spoke in a loud, clear voice as if she had rehearsed the lines. She touched the dress lovingly. Then she stretched out on it, rolled over on it.

She stood and faced the women. “Now bury her. Bury my last baby girl.”

She walked off. The women wrapped the delicate eggs and tied their bundles around their waists. They folded the dress to lessen the weight of it, and Mawu took it and balanced it on her head, holding it with one hand as she walked.

They dug the hole beside the other four mounds. Mawu wanted to stick flowers between the rocks. Reenie said the flowers would die, just like everything else. Lizzie thought it was a good idea. Mawu found yellow daisies and stuck them among the rocks. She promised to come back later and freshen the flowers. They looked down at the rock-covered mounds. They didn’t quite look like human graves because of their small size. But they did look like something human hands had touched.

The three women knew there was no telling what had actually happened to the bodies of Sweet’s children. They knew that when sicknesses like this happened bodies were burned. Even if they hadn’t been, it was likely Sweet would never see her children’s graves. They would not be marked. Her children would now be among the missing. But it wasn’t as bad as if they were sold off. Nothing was worse than that.

The three women held hands again. But this time, none of them said a prayer out loud. Instead, they prayed in their hearts and sent their pleadings through palm kissing palm. And although they didn’t admit it to one another, both Lizzie and Mawu thanked God that their own children were safe and sound back on their plantations.

THIRTY

When the women did not see Sweet the next day, they decided to go to her cottage. The door was open and the women passed through the front room. They found Sweet lying naked on the bed, no sign of her master ever having been there in the night. The cottage was bare, as if someone had swept up the bits of thread and fabric that had been strewn throughout the rooms, erasing the evidence of her grief.

Sweet had developed a rash. It covered her face and neck and part of her shoulders. Mawu went out and filled a tin cup with water. Reenie pulled Sweet up and put the cup to her lip. Later the women would have to cut Sweet’s hair, it was so tangled and matted with dirt.

Reenie said, “Drink this. Drink up.”

Sweet drank without protest. There was nothing to wipe the wetness from Sweet’s chin, so Lizzie used her dress.

“You still got a life, don’t you?” Mawu said. “You still got a life?”

Lizzie didn’t know what to say. Four children gone. Five in the last year. She just didn’t know what one mother could say to another when her own children were safe and sound, bellies full, cheeks fat, backs smooth, soft hands, soft feet, minds that could read, lips that could pronounce words grown slaves had never heard of. She was trying not to feel her own fortune. Trying not to feel that this could have been her laying in this puddle of stink, sewing big chunks of cloth into a dress for a child she would never see again.

“You ate anything yet?” Lizzie asked.

Sweet looked up, her eyes glassy.

“You hungry?”

Sweet’s eyes rolled back in her head before she looked in Lizzie’s direction. Lizzie gently lay Sweet’s head back. She went out to the hotel.