Back Fields, 1849
Rent from DeepDyve- Back Fields, 1849
Of the one hundred fifty-one fugitive women advertised for in the 1850 New Orleans newspapers, none was listed as having run away without her children.
deborah gray white
“After the rains, Del,” said Abraham. “After the rains,we gone.” She makes a noise to let him knowshe heard. “We gon’ leave the lil’ thingwith Gray Momma, and we gone. Can’twatch you die, Del. Can’t stand the sting.”
In the high cane with both of them bent to chopnear the root, they can be alone in their ownway. She moves slower since the baby—hips never set back right, but he groansand doubles his stack quick to make up her time.
She makes another noise, feels a swellof something rotten in her throat. She won’t say no,but knows she can never go. Knows she’ll have to seethe back of Abraham, still her boy-faced love.She won’t tell him, though. Won’t make him stay.
He holds his big hands out for her stackand hefts it all back to the wagon. He holdsher hand. She won’t tell him till that night,that night he’ll wake her late, all hands and hurry,all packed already. She’ll wait till then. [End Page 25]
She’ll kiss him, slide the dried flowershe wooed him with into his fist, reach up to kisshis crooked mouth, give him all the breadshe’s laid aside, turn him out into the nightand crawl in beside the little thing, and cry. [End Page 26]
Katie Bickham earned her mfa from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine and currently teaches creative writing at Bossier Parish Community College. Her first book of poems, The Belle Mar, won the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Poetry Prize and is forthcoming from Pleiades and lsu Press. She has also won the Missouri Review Editor’s Prize, and her poems have appeared in Pleiades, Missouri Review, Deep South Magazine, and elsewhere. Katie lives with her husband in Shreveport, Louisiana, in a very old house.
