The Crying Bride

They tell me: If you see a slave sleeping, do not wake him Lest he be dreaming of freedom. I tell them: If you see a slave dreaming, Wake him and explain to him freedom.

—Kahil Gibran, The Wisdom of Gibran

Overture: she whispers

Wish I was free. Wish I was a man. Wish I could save myself with this song

At the start of 1893, nothing exciting seemed possible for someone like me in Marvel, Kansas. Blue sky, white clouds, glaze of frozen dew on a strip of overturned brown earth. There was no beginning and no end to the weight of that winter sky on my shoulders. I was a simple girl, a good Christian who sang for the glory of God, obeyed her parents and all the commandments. That’s all I knew about love. My only sin was wishing away hours reserved for prayer. For sixteen years I was a “dusky negress,” a girl called Winter Grace Prophet, born with a white patch of hair above her right temple, with eyes too big for her face. A brown-skinned, small-waisted, busty girl with a voice even white people came from as far away as Ash City to hear. When I was sixteen years old it seemed to me that God stopped listening to me. All I had was faith in myself and no one could take that away. Over time I would not leave a single commandment unbroken.

Act One: she weeps

It was, as I remember it, like this, Mama wanted me to marry a stranger. Nathan Fitzpatrick was not a true stranger, I had known him all my life. I was the only girl Nathan spoke to without stuttering every word. We had not spoken to each other for almost two years. Hearing Nathan’s voice beside me walking home from church that Sunday woke something up in me. He was acting strange. It was as if he wanted to say something, but that something was caught on his tongue. He seemed much taller and his chest more filled out than the last time we were so close. He stood in front of me in his black suit, starched white shirt and white embroidered tie with his big hands fidgeting at his sides, his head hung to his chest. He couldn’t have been more handsome. His black hair was waved and parted on the side. His broad face and square jaw made a nice golden brown frame for his thick, black brows, almond shaped eyes, broad nose, the high round cheeks of his mother’s people and thick dark pink lips of his father’s. The suit fit his new frame well. I didn’t appreciate his good looks too long before I was fired up again over how long he had stopped speaking to me, stopped even looking at me since we had broken the fourth commandment.

“Something you want to say?” I snapped.

Nathan didn’t say nothing for a few minutes. He kept making tracks in the dirt with the toe of his boot.

“Papa wants me to get married,” he finally said.

“What?” I thought I had heard him wrong. Nathan was only two years older than I was. The picture of him, still a boy, married to anyone we knew seemed ridiculous. Maybe his mother had ordered him a bride from one of her catalogs.

“Papa, he wants me to get married,” he said a bit louder.

“What you telling me for?” I yelled back, feeling a kind of pain in my chest that must have been jealousy, but it didn’t last long.

“You the only one I know to ask,” his voiced dragged.

“You want me to sing at your wedding? Nathan Fitzpatrick you bolder than a runaway slave.”

“I want you to be the b-b-b-bride,” he stammered out.

“What?”

“B-b-bride.” he stammered.

It was the middle of May and so hot I’d unbuttoned the neck of my navy blue dress. I felt sticky and my dress was stained with sweat. Nathan’s face remained fixed. After he had gotten...