I felt like I was going to church, like I was attending something that had nothing to do with me. The whole service took less than an hour. Only my aunt and uncle were present. John looked handsome, but distant. Perhaps he was nervous as I was.

  We said our vows quickly, John lingering to press my hand. My heart fluttered. Yes, he really was handsome.

  All in all the day flew by with not too many problems. The photographer never came, which disappointed me. I asked my aunt if I could wear the dress again and pose at another time, so Mama could have her picture. My aunt said not to be silly. I could write Mama a nice letter telling her all about it, which would be the same thing.

  We feasted on a modest lunch, with a cake to celebrate. Some other black folks from the town came to dine with us. John drew them all into a long lecture about The Importance of Negro Advancement. My Uncle began interrupting with sarcastic remarks until my aunt took him away to his favorite chair. There he puffed his pipe and glared at the guests. A lot of folks showed up.

  “Come one and all,” my uncle snarled. “Y’all must think I’m Jesus Christ with the loaves and fishes.”

  “My Papa is paying for this, Uncle,” I said tersely.

  Uncle Sam snorted. “He’s payin’ for it one way or another.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He blew out through his mouth and kept on with his pipe.

  The night wound down. More folks came in, and some with instruments. I had been hankering for some music. An old man and his sons took up the banjo and harmonica, and some of the more country folks did dancing. I knew none of these people, but it warmed my heart.

  “Won’t you dance?” I asked my husband excitedly.

  He gave a short laugh. “This is some low-class foolery, Minnie. You’re too good for that.”

  I hid my disappointment. I didn’t think I was too good for dancing; Mama had enjoyed it plenty, dragging a reluctant Papa in with her. I remembered one night on the prairie...

  “Are you tired?” said John in my ear. His breath smelled strongly of rum. I had hardly drank anything.

  “No. I could stay on.”

  “Well I’m sore sick. There’s bugs and flies all about.”

  He swatted at his face. For a moment I had an unkind thought.

  “They came all the way out here for us, didn’t they?”

  “The flies? Seems like it.”

  “No, the people.”

  He said loudly, “These no-count negroes would swim to China if they could drink and eat on someone else’s dime.”

  But no one heard him.

  I got a new look at my husband. As though the little upward tick at the ends of his mouth hadn’t been there before. That little sarcastic, cruel smirk. But no, I realized, that was there all the time.

  He looked older, too. Rubbing his belly which, I saw now, pushed out a little bit over his belt. A vision of Jake’s flat stomach jumped violently into my head. He had been hard as a leather cord, but supple. John Miller would be all soft, like an uncooked roll of dough.

  As for his sniffing, sniveling look. He looked the way white folks looked. Like he had better places to be.

  “Dirty,” he said, to no one in particular.

  I had the sudden urge to flee back in the house, hide in some closet and escape the consequences of the day. His slippery eyes caught me sliding off the chair. Sensing he’d annoyed me, he snatched for my hand and kissed it. A sinking feeling lodged at the bottom of my stomach.

  “I have a headache,” I told John. “I’ll go lie down.”

  He smiled. “I’ll come with you.”

  Fear. That’s what it was. As if I’d landed back in the glade with Jim Henley pressing me up against a tree.

  “No,” I said. “It’s alright. Stay on with the guests.”

  My tone came out too sharp. He recognized the rejection.

  “We’re married now, Minnie,” he reminded me.

  Till death do us part. What had I done?

  “I know,” I said. I kissed his forehead, tasting sweat. The stiff curls at his hairline smelled like oil. For a moment his hands lingered on my waist. Shoving them off was no longer an option. I had pledged myself to him, body and soul.

  The interior of my Uncle’s house swallowed me. The hallway pitched as I felt my way down. I lit the lamp. My bridal chamber was laid out with clean water and soap and fresh bedding. A new quilt. Waiting to be violated and bloodied. It was sickening. I fought the feeling that the corners of the walls were shrinking towards me. I took a sip of water, wishing it was Papa’s whiskey.

  The mirror against the wall seemed to me like a window to the truth. I lurched towards it. My reflection flickered back. Minnie. Minnie Sampson, now Minnie Miller. I am a good girl. You’re a good girl, Minnie. I had done the right thing and married a smart and wealthy man. Mama would be proud. Papa would know I wasn’t dishonored. I’d be happy and content and bear my new husband lots and lots of babies.

  Loud voices came from the window. I picked out my uncle’s gravelly tones.

  “You think cheese wouldn’t choke you,” he barked. “Let me tell you somethin’, Miller.”

  “Shut it,” said Miller, a little fearfully. Once roused, no one knew what my Uncle’s mouth would do.

  “I’ll say what I want in my house, boy. You can act tough and puff up your chest, but you always gonna be a toad. As long as you stay in my house you got someone to answer to. Sugar-baby.”

  “Watch your mouth,” my husband snarled, unconvincingly. “Before I come and fix it for you.”

  My uncle guffawed. “I could lick you with this busted leg and two hands behind my back. Only thing you ever fought with was your cracker mama’s titty.”

  “Y’all playin’ the dozens tonight,” someone gasped.

  “Ain’t nobody playin’ nothin’,” said my uncle. “This is grown man stuff.”

  I heard a bottle smash.

  “Hey now,” my uncle taunted. “Don’t take it out on the bottle when my face right here.”

  There was a scuffle, and my aunt shrieked.

  “I’ll cut your nuts off!” Miller shouted.

  “They ain’t gonna replace yours,” my uncle fired back. “Somebody get this drunk idiot off my porch.”

  I drew back from the window. A couple men grabbed John, who was thrashing like a madman to get at my uncle. Uncle Sam hadn’t moved from his chair. They got John through the front door. I realized they would bring him to my room, safely out of the way, and then he would become my problem. On instinct I raced to the door and propped a chair under the handle. I drew the bolt fast.

  Knock knock, a minute later.

  “Minnie?”

  Pretend to be asleep? Jump out the window? Open up and deal with his wrath?

  I doused the light and stayed quiet. The knocking grew louder, and John began to curse.

  “What’s wrong, Miller?” my Uncle called. “She lock you out?”

  The men were in stitches. The sound of their laughter cut through my aunt’s indignant cries. John swore again and began to pound the door. But the harder he knocked the more the men laughed. Then, silence. My weeping aunt stormed inside. I heard her cussing all the way through the kitchen, cussing my uncle, cussing me, cussing black people in general. I pictured her crying, stroking the portrait of her white ancestress, wondering why she’d been cursed with the worst of Negrokind.

  “Why am I here?” I wondered aloud.

  I got the smell of tobacco pipes, and heard John’s small feet shuffling away. The danger had passed.

  I let out a long, ragged breath. The next morning I woke up in the bed, alone. Dawn had come clear and cold through the window. There was dew on the sill. Outside everything opened up green and new.

  It was the first day of the rest of my life. A married woman. I was a married woman.

  I opened the door. I half expected to see John curled up in front of it. Maybe then my heart would have been moved and I would have fallen on him with kisses and apologies. But he was not there.

  I found him on the porch, awake. He looked on me with red-rimmed eyes. Without his glasses he seemed cold and frightening.

  “John,” I said timidly.

  “What?”

  Like a child, I should have faked innocence. Oh John, I locked the door without knowing. I fell asleep. I didn’t hear your knock. I’m so sorry. Let me take you back and show you what you missed.

  “I guess you thought it was pretty funny,” he snapped. “Makin’ all of them laugh at me.”

  “I’m sorry. You were drunk. I got scared.”

  “Scared,” he repeated.

  Something about his hangdog expression bothered me. I regretted having lied to spare his feelings. No one I knew would have been sniffling like that, looking for pity. What kind of man was this?

  I was about to find out.

  “You got away with it last night,” he said. “But don’t think you’ll do it again.”

  I backed away from him. He stepped towards me and shot his hand out, pinching my cheeks together. He was stronger than he looked. But his hands were soft.

  I struggled. He kissed me violently.

  “Come,” he said. “We’ll see if I’m your husband or not.”

  He pushed past me, expecting me to follow like a dog. I felt a strange emotion. Rage. I could pick up Uncle’s chair and bash it over his head. Who did he think he was? Ordering me like an animal?

  “Minnie!” he barked.

  I turned and walked off the porch.

  The most dangerous thing a woman can do is try to live up to someone else’s expectations. I kept walking through my Uncle’s fields. Maybe I’d walk back across the state to Mama’s house. I’d tell her where she could put her expectations.

  But it wasn’t Mama’s fault. It was mine.

  “Minnie, come here!”

  His tone disgusted me. I didn’t turn around. The sinking pit in my stomach now felt heavy as a chuck wagon.

  Before, in my life, I’d been given lots of second chances. If I messed up, Mama would tell me to try again. Papa would tell me stop fussing.

  When I made a mistake, I never doubted I could go back and redo it. Eventually you learn there are some chances that won’t stop and wait for you. Some mistakes that can never be ripped out, only lived with. Some choices that you can’t reverse. When you figure that out, you become a woman.

  It seemed to me that being a woman was an awful thing.

  *

  A week after my wedding, I wrote to Mama asking if I could come home. I gave the letter to my aunt as she left for town. Then I followed her.

  When she thought she was safely out of sight, Aunt Thelma stopped and opened the letter. She read it over twice. Then she tore it into little, little pieces.

  So I knew the first letter I’d written had never made it to Mama.

  I was trapped.

  After that I was resolved not to let John Miller in my bedroom. All day I kept from the house, and at night I found other ways to avoid him. My uncle thought it the funniest thing in the world.

  “A cold bed for John tonight,” he said one night, through mouthfuls of cornbread. “Maybe he’ll take his high yellow ass back to Boston now.”

  “Not without my wife,” said John tersely.

  “Some women don’t know how good they got it,” sniffed my aunt.

  “I want to borrow a horse,” I told my uncle.

  “To ride home? Well, I need Tramp for the plantin’ and he’s the only one I got. Ask your man if he’ll lend you his.” He giggled and crumbled up more cornbread.

  I couldn’t get back to Mama’s without a horse. I had no money; my aunt had taken it from my glove box and given it to John. I could do nothing about that. By law, everything I owned was rightfully “his”.

  The next day I decided to go to town and mail a letter to Mama myself. I wrote it all out carefully, sparing no detail. Then I got my hat, shoes and bag and made off down the road.

  It was cold, the air dry, with butter-yellow sun casting on all the dying wildflowers and the scraggly brown soil. A beauty I could not enjoy. Soon the weather would turn and freeze up the flowers. They would fall into rot. Enjoyed by no one, never noticed.

  I walked a good ways. The sound of a horse picked up behind me. I turned. John Miller was coming forward on his old, old gelding. I quickly checked: no one behind him on the path, no one coming the other way. And another mile to go before I hit the town.

  “Minnie.”

  I walked faster. Stupid. You can’t out-walk a horse. John was a bad horseman, but he knew how to make the beast move. He cut into its sides.

  “Stop, woman, or I’ll ride you down.”

  I stopped.

  He brought the horse to bear next to me, clumsily. The animal’s flanks were streaked with red from his spurs. He had pulled the bit too tight. White saliva bubbled together with red blood against the horse’s cheek. Papa always said to treat a horse like a dog, or a child. The sight of John Miller’s horse enraged me. It was the last nail of proof I needed.

  “Get on up,” snapped John. “You’re coming back.”

  “I’m just fine down here, John,” I said.

  “Your Aunt needs you.”

  “I’m a free woman,” I said. “I’ll go to town if I want to.”

  He trembled. His hair had grown out a little, coming off his forehead. He sweated behind his glasses.

  “Get on this horse,” he gritted.

  I backed away. “Or what?”

  He began to get down. I had a sudden vision of him knocking me to the ground and forcing me to do what I’d been refusing him for the last two weeks. There would be no running away now.

  “You’ll get on with me,” he cried, his voice high, “Or I’ll knock your teeth in.”

  I knelt. My hands found a stone; I flung it hard as I could. It missed clean but took his horse in the jaw. The beast reared and shrieked. John cussed. Panicking, I fled up the road to the house.

  I should have gone to the town. Maybe someone would have helped me there. But I guess in some ways I was still like a child. Running home, expecting the grown-ups to fix everything.

  When John came back a half hour later, leading the exhausted horse behind him, my uncle laughed fit to split his gut.

  John barked, “Where’s your rifle, Sam?”

  “Rifle?” wheezed my uncle. “What you gonna do with my rifle? You couldn’t hit a bull’s ass with a handful of banjos. I seen your aim.”

  John stamped towards my uncle’s shed.

  “Is he gonna shoot me?” I said. I felt for the porch railing to support myself. Too frozen up to run. My uncle sucked his teeth.

  “He got bad aim. You safe.”

  John came back with the rifle. My aunt burst from the house, screaming. “They’ll hang you! They’ll hang you!”

  We watched John struggle to load the gun. I shrank back. Uncle Sam reached behind his little porch chair. Then, quietly, he got his pistol and laid it across his lap.

  John had the rifle loaded.

  “You gonna let him shoot me?” I said faintly.

  John aimed at the horse, and fired.

  It didn’t die at once; he’d hit it in the jaw. The animal made a horrible sound. He shot it twice more before it hit the ground. Then, breathing hard, he put the rifle down and sat down in a heap.

  “That’s ten cents a bullet, Johnny,” my uncle called calmly. But John couldn’t hear him. The shots had made him deaf.

  “And I hope you got a plan to take that beast away.”

  John got up and staggered away. My uncle put the pistol back.

  “I got to leave,” I said, my voice verging on hysterics. “I’m going home. You got to take me home.”

  “Leave?” my uncle laughed.

  Papa wouldn’t be returning for another five months.

  Stuck. S-T-U-C-K. Trapped, imprisoned, restrained.

  My uncle sucked his teeth and shook his head. “You be careful with him, now. When he gets his ears back he might take a notion to kill you.”

  “Who? John?”

  “No, the horse.”

  “Wouldn’t you stop him?”

  “No stoppin’ a mad dog.”

  “I wished you had told me that before I wed him.”