Libertie by Kaitlyn Greenidge (best short novels .txt) 📗

understood that they had been born enslaved, and that they were not prepared to tell me who or what they’d fought with to end up here, singing beauty in a cabin in the fields.

    Willkommen,

             lieber

                    schöner Mai,

            Dir tönt der Vögel

            Lobgesang

was what they sang in a round that first afternoon by the river.

And then, when they combined their voices, it was another thing altogether. I believed that to attempt to sing with them in harmony would be like pouring bacon grease into a vat of water.

But Louisa said, “I cannot trust you if you do not sing. Why are you around the two of us? Just to listen?”

“I’m not very good,” I said.

Experience shrugged impatiently. “That’s not possible.”

“Not as good as you,” I said.

Louisa sighed. “False modesty wins you no friends, you know.”

So I took a breath in. And I did it.

When I sang with Experience and Louisa, it was as if my very self merged with them. I was, I learned, a mezzo-soprano, and they each took pains to teach me how to make my voice stronger.

“You draw in air here,” Louisa said, pointing.

When I sang with them, my whole history fell away. There was no past, no promised future, only the present of one sustained note. When we sang together, we three stood in a round so that we could see one another’s faces—and it was almost unbearable, to sing a song and watch Louisa’s face change slightly and Experience’s voice respond, and then my own, struggling for just a minute to reach theirs.

When I sang with them, I entered something greater than my sorry, bitter self.

I thought that anyone with a voice as powerful as that could teach me how to bend my anger to my will. I sat on that riverbank, and I thought that I had finally found my ambition. It was not to set bones right or to become my mother’s double. It was to befriend the both of them, to make them love me and sing to me for the rest of my life. I knew this was a silly wish, but in my discombobulation at Cunningham College, I did not stop to question it. I knew enough to keep it quiet, to not speak it outright—not to Experience or Louisa, whom I did not wish to scare away, and not to Mrs. Grady, and certainly not to Mama. I spent the rest of the semester doing the bare minimum of work so I would not fail out of class and so I could keep meeting the two girls and have them sing to me.

Mama had told me freedom would come by following her, and I had known it was not true for a long time. Now I had someone else to follow, I was sure, and the thrill of having a new direction filled me up, blushed my cheeks, almost made me like the place. I put away my sticky journal to my imagined woman in the water and delighted in these real women, in front of me, made flesh.

“I wish my mama could hear you,” I said one afternoon. “I wish she could hear how fine you are.”

“I bet you wish your mama could do it,” Experience said, and though she was smiling slightly when she said it, I felt the sting in her words and I saw the bitterness in her eyes. I turned away, ashamed. I had said something wrong again.

Louisa took my arm in hers and walked with me a little farther down the riverbank. “You sure do talk about your mama a lot,” she said.

“Do I?”

“Yes.”

I looked down at my shoes. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“It’s not something you should mind,” Louisa said. “It is hard for Experience because she lost hers. She doesn’t know where she is.”

“Oh.”

My rage burnt for an affront that was far less than hers. And here were the two of them not even hot, not even warm, just righteously cool in their voices. I had hoped that there would be a place where I found other burning bushes like me, willing to make the world anew with riotous anger. The fact that they had none unnerved me.

“But you do talk about your mother a lot, you do know?” Louisa gently chided. “It is always what your mama would think or what she would say or what she would like to say. Sometimes, I think your mama’s here with us on this riverbank.”

I walked on, in silence, ashamed again, until we heard a loud, rude croak from a frog ahead of us, more like a belch.

“See,” Louisa said. “There she go,” and I swatted her arm in laughter.

Dear Mama,

I have met the two most extraordinary girls, whose voices

Dear Libertie,

Today we had an interesting case: a young Hebrew serving girl

I believe can lead us to a kind of promised land. I know that sounds like a

with inflammation of the uvula and palate and an inclination to swallow

fancy and like a dream, but that’s what their singing is like to me. Together,

during the night.

they could be the greatest singers our world has yet heard.

What would you prescribe, Libertie?

Dear Mama,

Do you remember, Mama, when there was the bad fever a few years ago? And the churches took to pealing bells to count the dead? Two tolls for a man, three tolls for a woman, one for a child. And how at night you would hear each ring of the bell, and wait, wait, wait for the next ring—whose life were you hearing called out? Whose life was coming to you through the dark? The Graces’ singing is like that. Except you’re waiting to hear about life beginning, not ending. And it is marvelous.

PS. I would prescribe, I think, Cimicifuga.

Dear Libertie,

I remember that, of course, Libertie, but I’m not sure what you mean by the rest. I am glad you are finding amusement there, but please do not forget your purpose.

Yesterday, a woman came to me with a toothache, caused by the damp night air. What would you prescribe?

Mama—

Nux m.,