The Bernice L. McFadden Collection. Bernice L. McFadden

hell you can’t!” The unmistakable voice boomed behind Easter causing her heart to lurch in her chest. Slocum turned around, an annoyed smirk resting on his lips. “Bennie like to kill me with his cooking, we need a feminine touch. I’m tired of eating lumpy grits and undercooked eggs. Besides, I need someone to attend to me,” Rain barked.

      “Aww, come on, Rain,” Slocum whined, “she just a child—”

      “Shut up, she looks pretty grown to me.”

      Easter was shaking like a leaf.

      “Turn around, sugar, lemme get a look at you.”

      Easter turned around. Rain was standing outside of her tent; the silk robe she wore flapped open revealing her naked body. Easter dropped her eyes.

      Rain waltzed over and caught her by the chin. “What’s your name, girl?” Her fingers felt like fire against Easter’s skin.

      “Easter, ma’am,” she quaked in a timid voice.

      Rain’s eyes sparkled. “Easter? That’s a real old-timey name. Had a great-aunt named Easter.” She cackled and released Easter’s chin. “And I ain’t no ma’am.” She spat, then, “You say you cook and clean?”

      “Yes m—I mean yes.”

      Slocum stepped between the women, wagging his finger in Rain’s face. “We ain’t pulling in enough money to pay and feed another soul, Rain!”

      Rain eyed him menacingly. “Nigger, if you don’t get outta my face …” Her words trailed off, but the threat hung heavy in the air.

      Slocum’s hand floated back down to his waist and he stepped cautiously to one side.

      “I’ll pay her myself, don’t you worry about it, you cheap bastard!” Rain snapped, and then turned and started back toward her tent. Easter just stood there, frozen, watching Rain’s hips sway beneath the fabric of the robe.

      “I done told her ’bout talking to me like that,” Slocum grumbled to himself as he kicked at the dirt. “Well what you waiting for, sun-up? Go on, git!”

      Easter jumped to life and double-timed to Rain’s tent.

      “I want you to know right now that I likes women,” Rain said as she shrugged her robe off and tossed it onto the cot.

      Easter’s face unfolded and her stomach clenched. “Not to worry, sugar,” Rain laughed, walking over to Easter and pinching her cheek, “you too young for Mama Rain. I like ’em seasoned and you just out of the shell.” She laughed again and glided to the opposite side of the tent where she squatted daintily over a cream-colored chamber pot and relieved herself. “You still a virgin?” she asked in a non-chalant tone.

      As embarrassed as Easter was by the question, she was more than a little disappointed that Rain wouldn’t even consider her as a lover, and then she became angry with herself for wanting such a thing. Easter remained silent.

      “Figures.” Rain chuckled, gave her bottom a quick shake, and then stood. “Dump it before this entire tent is rank with the stink of piss.” She pointed to the pot and after a moment’s hesitation Easter hurried to fetch it.

      Rain sighed and began to untwine the feather boa from her neck, exposing the keloid scar that looped from one collarbone to the next, resembling a string of brown pearls. Easter’s mouth dropped open and then clamped shut again when Rain turned smoldering eyes on her.

      “Well what you gonna do, stand there all night holding my piss?”

      “Uhm, no ma’am—I mean no,” she stammered as she backed out of the tent.

      Outside Easter moved quickly and recklessly, causing the piss to slosh over the sides, wetting her hands. She was disgusted and intrigued. She looked cautiously around her, and when she saw that no one was watching, she brought her finger to her nose and sniffed. Rain’s piss smelled like gardenias.

      Easter would learn that Rain didn’t much like men or the snake that grew down between their legs. It had never been sweet to her, not from the time she was someone’s sweet little girl, with pigtails, living in Louisiana and singing in the choir, just eleven years old when her brother’s best friend cornered her in the outhouse and pressed his forearm against her throat as he rammed himself inside her, all the while whispering in her ear that she had it coming. “This is what happens to cock teasers,” he’d said. Afterwards, he called her a “yella heifer,” while he used his shirttail to wipe her blood from his penis.

      Nothing but trouble followed the men that came later and Hemp Jackson was trouble with a capital T. As mean and black as the day was long, Hemp had the body of a bulldog and his right eye was a cloud of cotton. He chose not to wear an eye patch; he liked the hideous look that damaged eye graced him with and the fear it struck in the hearts of men. He claimed that Rain was the only woman he’d ever loved and gave her a feathered boa to prove it, which turned out to be a poor substitute for an apology, since he was the one who’d sliced her neck in the first place. After that there had been a period of gentleness from a soft-spoken man with kind eyes. That relationship had produced a son who after two months Rain had wrapped in a blanket, placed in a basket, and left on the front porch for the soft-spoken man’s wife to raise. Then she walked right out of that life without even so much as a goodbye to her parents.

      Rain didn’t like men, which made it easy for her to shake her ass and roll her hips for them. It was the women she loved.

      At night, Mama Rain would stretch herself out on her cot, naked except for the boa, and she’d smoke and sip from her flask of white lightning and talk about all the good and bad that had been done to her, the whole while absentmindedly stroking the hairs of the triangle of black hair between her legs. When she caught Easter staring, which was often, she would snort, “This here my cat, I got a right to pet it.” And then she would laugh, long and hard, until the laughter became a chuckle and the chuckle became a snore and the empty flask fell down to the sawdust floor.

      Show after show and night after night, through downpour and drought, snow and clover, Easter’s thirst for Rain swelled and so she reached for her Bible and plunged herself into Scripture, and when that didn’t work she turned to her own words. But words—anointed or not—offered no solace and absolutely no quench.

       CHAPTER 4

      What you got there, gal?”

      Before Easter could answer, Mama Rain snatched the notebook from her hands and held it high above her head. “Some type of diary?”

      Easter tried desperately to grab the book, but Rain was tall and easily kept it out of Easter’s reach. “Give it here!”

      Rain laughed, bringing the book toward Easter and then snatching it away again. “Give it here,” Rain mocked. “You always scribbling in this book. What you writing?”

      “It’s my business!” Easter snapped as she made yet another futile leap for the book. “Goddamnit, Rain, you evil bitch, give it back!”

      Rain’s palm came across Easter’s cheek with so much force that Easter stumbled backwards until she lost her footing and fell over, hitting the ground with a hard thud.

      “You watch your tongue, you hear?” Rain’s voice was even, her green eyes narrowed to slits. “You don’t ever call me outta my name.”

      Easter rubbed her stinging cheek. Rain spent a few more seconds glaring at her before she returned her attention to the book. Easter watched as she flipped through the thin pages, pausing every so often to stare intently at some word or phrase that had caught her eye. Easter watched and waited for Rain to see herself in those words in the pages and pages of passages. It was all about Rain, and about the smoldering love Easter had for her. The thirst was there too, blatant and screaming, aching and throbbing. She’d written about it in bold, dark letters. She would have written it in blood if she