REYNOLDS, GEORGIA

JUNE 1940

Reynolds, Georgia, is a rural town bisected by train tracks, about sixty miles south of Atlanta as the crow flies. In 1940, it had a largely African American population of 871 people, many employed by its rail yard. On the seventh of June, the last of the white blossoms littered the ground beneath the magnolia trees, their delicate white edges curling in on themselves, turning transparent and brown, the air around them redolent with the sweet smell of rot.

Malcolm X’s father, Earl Little Sr., was famously born in Reynolds in 1890 but had long since fled by the time his young cousin Bessie Mae Little lay dying in an unpainted shotgun shack on the south side of town as twilight turned the sky to bruised shades of purple. Bessie Mae’s grandmother Josephine Little stood at the foot of the same four-poster bed in which sixteen years before, she had watched the blood drain from her own beloved teenage daughter. At the time, she had cradled newborn Bessie Mae in her arms and promised her dying daughter that this baby girl would not suffer her same fate.

There she stood. For yet another in the countless times in her life as a midwife, blood was smeared across Josephine’s forearms, her face, the kerchief that covered her hair. In spite of her impassioned nightly prayers; in spite of the sense of purpose that had buoyed her through the many years of toil, poverty, and hardship; in spite of the strict upbringing she had visited upon the girl: the admonishments, the curfews, the warnings. Still, she found herself again between the shaking, bloodied legs of a teenager in labor.

Josephine blamed her own ice-blue eyes—she’d always been told they were a curse on her family. A white devil’s eyes, a slaveowner’s eyes, an ocean of rape and pain. The sins of the father visited upon the sons. Except it wasn’t the sons, was it? They got cut down like so much sugarcane. Or they ran. It was the daughters who lived to take the brunt of it.

Josephine was in her late fifties and had been midwifing consistently since she was just a girl herself and her aunts had taught her to use her delicate nine-year-old hands for the tricky work. All that time, she had never seen a baby the size of the one inside her granddaughter. It would take nothing short of a miracle to save the girl. Josephine made a split-second decision. She would bring this thing into the light of day if it killed all of them.

“One more try, child.”

Bessie Mae lay there bleeding out, her skin ashen, her eyes fluttering closed.

Josephine reached both arms into her granddaughter’s birth canal, seized the baby by the shoulders, braced her foot on the bed frame, and leaned backward.

Moments later, she had toweled the blood and slime off the twelve-pound infant and looked down at him. He was white as paper, the largest newborn she had ever laid eyes on. Staring up at her were the wolf-blue eyes she hated in her own face, and in a boy, no less.

“Eatin’ chalk,” Josephine said, meaning Bessie Mae had been eating the chalk found in the ground in those parts. It was what they said about Black babies born looking white.

For this thing, Bessie Mae had ruined her grandmother’s carefully laid plans for her young life.

Josephine leaned her face in close to the chalk boy, looked into those familiar eyes, and whispered, “I curse you.”

She then laid him on her dying granddaughter’s breast for what she imagined would be the last time. Maybe Josephine would be lucky and poor Bessie Mae would at least take him with her into the next life.

It was not to be. The boy suckled immediately.

“Greedy bastard,” said Josephine. “He had a twin up in there and he gobbled him up what happened.”

But Bessie Mae eventually recovered, and the baby boy grew strong. Josephine did not recover. She would not allow the boy to be named, would not touch him, rarely looked at him.

About six months later, Josephine returned home late from her job as a maid. It was a rainy night with barely a sliver of moon in the sky. She found Bessie Mae with her head lolled back on the couch, the monstrous little beast on her breast, as he always was, looking like some kind of vampire, sucking the life from her. As he thrived, Bessie Mae grew weaker and more shriveled. She was only sixteen but looked forty-five.

Josephine and her sisters had tried to kill the child when he was still unborn, but Bessie Mae had been weak. They’d tied a rope around her belly and pulled until she screamed for them to stop. They’d knocked her down the stairs as a last-ditch effort before they let go of the rope. The next day, they had sat her down at the kitchen table and placed a glass of turpentine in front of her, but she hadn’t been able to drink it. She gagged and complained until they finally gave up. No sense in that girl. It would only be harder now.

Though it pained Josephine to do it, it was time. Maybe there was still a chance.

“You are a disgrace, Bessie Mae Little. You are no longer welcome in this house.”

“But, Mama…”

“I am no such thing to you. You killed your own mama. And for what?”

“What am I going to do?”

“It’s a rainy night, child. It’s a quick kind of thing. Just lie him down peaceful, eyes to God. Take no effort at all.”

“I can’t.”

“You want to act like a slut, go walk the streets like one. And take that chalk-eating beast with you.”

“What, now? We’ll die out there.”

“If you’re lucky. Now get. You have a bed to come back to. If you come back alone.”

Josephine turned and walked toward the kitchen, limping slightly on her arthritic hip. She shoveled coal into the stove, the rattle not quite drowning out Bessie Mae’s pitiful sobs.

“Hush your mouth,” she called. “Or I’ll put you out with no shoes on.”

It wasn’t long before she heard the front door shut with a quiet click that might as well have been a gunshot. Josephine sank to her knees.

Old witch, thought Bessie Mae. Vicious cow. She’s just jealous. No man would touch her dried-up pussy with someone else’s dick.

Bessie Mae carried no bag. She wore her one good wool coat, half covering the boy, but it was soaked through. She had stuffed her pockets with extra swaddling cloths, little more than wet rags. She wore thick stockings, a green dress that had been mended too many times, and a pair of men’s shoes inherited from some other uncle or other.

She had exhausted her tears. They felt extraneous next to the rivulets of rainwater running down her face. She made slow progress in her ill-fitting shoes that stuck to the mud with every step, like a mouse trying to escape a glue trap.

She thought about Paul. Paul with eyes that flashed green-blue fire, cheekbones that could have cut stone, smooth carney patter. You were the star of a movie when he took your face in his hands. It had happened in a cemetery in Reynolds, on a little bench, next to the chapel. When it was over, she looked into the darkness and realized there were no cameras after all.

She learned later she had been part of a game. Paul and his friend had a contest going—how many of the local girls they could seduce. There were actual scorecards, bets placed. She wondered how much she had won him. When he saw her again, he looked through her like a glass figurine.

She trudged on. She might not have been clever or beautiful or serious—or any of the things her grandmother had wanted for her—but she knew one thing. Whether or not she had been a fool, she loved this baby with a white-hot passion. He needed her like no one ever had, and the depth of his need was a thing to behold. She was finally special to someone, and she knew this was a formidable someone.

He was a strange baby. He rarely slept, was the size of some two-year-olds, had grown-up eyes, like he was about to recite the Declaration of Independence, and ate with the ferocity of a starving tiger. There was not enough milk in all of Georgia to sate this baby. She was shriveling into a rotten lemon even trying.

Bessie Mae had no particular destination. No one wanted another mouth to feed, much less two. Her uncle Otis had already tried to kill the boy. She caught him holding a pillow over his face. Why everyone was so intent on murdering her son, she didn’t know. But she knew she couldn’t protect him from her family. She couldn’t even protect him from the rain.

The dense foliage of the oak trees obscured what little moonlight illuminated Bessie Mae’s path. When she turned a corner and saw a row of houses on stilts, she had reached the river. She could walk no longer. With one arm, she held the boy, and with the other, she supported them as she dropped to her knees and crawled under the first house in the row.

The cold from the ground soaked into her back. Her body trembled.

She lay there for what felt like three minutes, or a day, or a life, waiting for the river to take them both. She drifted off, and when she woke, a different kind of chill rose slowly from her toes. She had gone plenty cold in this life but had felt this particular sensation only once before, when the baby now at her breast had been wedged in her pelvis. She was dying.

“Jesus,” she said. “I can’t protect this child. I give him to you. If it be your will to let him live, Lord, save him. Or take us both home.”

With her last ounce of strength, Bessie Mae crawled to the side of the road, lay her baby down in the mud, eyes to God, and crawled back under the house. She didn’t bother to roll onto her back. She had prayed, sure. How many prayers went unanswered? There were those who had prayed for her, even, and look at her now. She fell asleep with her face on the wet ground, not wanting to watch.

An hour later, in a modest but well-kept white A-frame on the west side of the railroad tracks, Fanny McDowell served a late dinner of biscuits and gravy to her husband, Henry, whom she called Big ’Un, because he was. He’d come home later than usual, what with the rail yards mired in mud. Usually there were more people around the house, but that night was quiet, with her friend Mrs. Ballard drinking a sweet tea at the counter and her daughter, Jeminah, already tucked into her attic bedroom, looking at magazines she and her friends probably boosted from the drugstore. They weren’t bad girls, but you got to worry when they’re that pretty. Henry Jr. was holed up somewhere, wondering whether to check his ass or scratch his watch, no sense at all.

Who knew where Paul was running around. He was the prettiest of them all, but you don’t worry about boys in that way. The both of them getting ready to ship off. Days now.

Mrs. Ballard called from the pantry, “Want I should make a batch of cornbread for tomorrow?”

“Nah, you go ahead and rest now. Better warm anyway,” said Fanny. She poured a finger of whiskey each into two rose-patterned teacups and handed one to her behind Big ’Un’s back with a wink.

“You got the devil in you sometimes, Fanny.”

“Devil never did come and offer me a thing. I’m still waiting.”

“Bite your tongue. The mouth on you.”

A knock interrupted.

Mrs. Ballard opened the door and didn’t see anything. She squinted into the darkness.

Must have been the storm.

“Ma’am…” A voice startled her. She looked down and was surprised to see Mr. Quint, a familiar face around Reynolds. Quint was a peddler of pretty much anything you could want or need. He had no legs and shuffled himself around on muscled arms and calloused knuckles. He swung himself up every day onto a cart pulled by a goat. The cart had tall wheels that navigated the dirt roads of Reynolds, mud or no mud.

“Mr. Quint!”

The legless peddler held an infant in his arms. She called for Fanny, who found herself in a rare condition of speechlessness.

“Mrs. Fanny, this is Paul’s boy. Take one look at him, you’ll know that to be true. I found him by the side of the road.”

Fanny took that one look at the boy and knew he was right. No way to prove such a thing though. She weighed her options.

Her own children were grown. Who needed another mouth to feed? Mrs. Ballard waited. Even Big ’Un stood up from his biscuits and hovered in the kitchen doorway, the shadow of his frame darkening the room.

Fanny held out her arms and took the child. She gave Mr. Quint a biscuit, a sip of whiskey, and sent him back out to his cart. They cleaned and dried the baby, wrapped him in a blanket, found him some milk.

“He’s a gift from God. We’ll call him Samuel,” said Mrs. Ballard. “Samuel the prophet. I just learned in my Bible study. It means ‘heard by God.’”

“Samuel,” said Big ’Un. He gave the boy’s head a stroke with one thumb. Loved him straight off. “I’ll call him Sam.”

Fanny stared down into the boy’s eyes.

“He’s lucky he’s a boy and not a girl. Girl—I would have had the cripple throw him in the river.”

“Of course.” Mrs. Ballard patted her friend’s shoulder. “No one needs that.”