The Cherokee Rose. Tiya Miles
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listed in two studies. The authors disagreed about whether the girl’s mother or father had been black and whether her black parent had been enslaved or free. But the authors, like Jinx, agreed that Battis chose to remain with the missionaries while her Indian family suffered the trial of compulsory removal. It was the only conclusion that could be reached from the documentary record. There was nothing new here—nothing Jinx could see.
She closed the file on Chief Isparhecher, opened the top drawer of her great-aunt’s metal filing cabinet, and slid the folder back inside. Then she opened the second drawer to put the Battis folder in place. Jinx looked from drawer to drawer, realizing for the first time that these files were not in alphabetical, chronological, or even thematic order. She slung open every drawer then, running her fingers along the razor-edged folders like a blind person speed-reading Braille. Could it be that her great-aunt’s biographical files were organized by race, full-bloods positioned at the top, mixed-bloods placed in the back, and black Creeks stuffed into a segregated second-tier drawer? Could it be that Jinx with her almost-Ph.D. had come along two generations later and maintained the same color-coded filing system? Deb Tom’s accusations against her great-aunt—against her—rang in Jinx’s head.
“Holy smokes,” Jinx said to no one. She abandoned the study, snapping off the painted floral lamp. She brushed her teeth in the subway-tiled bathroom and pulled on a pair of boxer shorts. Her bedroom—her great-aunt’s bedroom—was shadowy and still. And then a cool breeze floated through a window, tangling with the flat interior air. Jinx turned in surprise. It was early September in Oklahoma, where even nighttime breezes were sticky and warm. The curtains fluttered as she watched. Jinx had never taken those curtains down, never washed them or dusted the rods. She reached out, gently touching a lace-edged hemline that left a faint trail of dust on her fingertip.
c
When Jinx walked into Deb’s Diner early the next morning with her messenger bag slung over her shoulder, Deb just looked at her for ten still seconds. “Sit,” Deb finally said, gesturing toward the counter.
She set a glass of Coke beside Jinx, along with a napkin and fork. Sam Sells was having sausage and biscuits smothered in gravy. He nodded a silent greeting at Jinx from beneath the rim of his John Deere baseball cap. Jinx breathed in relief.
“Nobody talks about Mary Ann Battis much these days, among the freedmen descendants,” Deb said. “There’s some pain there, I guess, pain still felt from a story long forgotten. Mary Ann’s daddy—they called him Battis—was a black man who took his own freedom. I always heard he came through Alabama Creek country on a forged government passport back in the 1790s. And her mama, well, she lost touch with the girl once the family came out here to Indian Territory. Her mama got one letter and never heard tell of poor Mary Ann after that.”
“That’s some story, Deb,” Jinx said. “Sad.”
“That’s only part of the story. The rest of it, we don’t know. But you could find out for all of us. You could head back east. Go to Alabama, where Mary was from. Find her grave. Sit with her for a spell. Get your information from the real source instead of some book.”
Jinx didn’t dare cut into the fluffy blueberry pancakes that Sadie, one of the waitresses, had delivered to the counter. Deb was looking at her too intensely, waiting to see if Jinx would accept her assignment. Communing with the dead to corroborate a loose oral story was not one of Jinx’s usual research methods. But there was that plantation for sale in Georgia, and there were those hypothetical house-museum documents.
“Wait here,” Deb said, having made some mysterious decision. “I might have something for you.”
Jinx was left to worry and wonder while she packed in mouthfuls of pancake.
When Deb returned, huffing and puffing from her exertions, Jinx was sure she had walked all the way back to her shotgun house down the alley from the restaurant. Deb was holding a wrinkled manila envelope twined shut with a thin red cord.
“What is it?”
Deb leaned forward on the counter, exposing cleavage in the deep V of her neckline. “This was part of my great-grandfather Cow Tom’s papers. The family kept them stashed away in a cardboard box all these years. I take them out from time to time and read them, share bits and pieces with the freedmen’s descendants groups. I never could make heads or tails of this letter. But I bet you could if you set your mind to it.” Deb paused. “It might just be the push you need to finish that dissertation.”
Jinx snapped her head up. “I didn’t finish because my great-aunt died. I had to come home.”
“No, baby. You didn’t finish because once things got tough out there, once those university folks challenged what you thought you knew, you tucked tail and ran. Your auntie’s death was hard on you, that’s true, but it was also a ready excuse for you to give up. You were born to study history, Jinx, born to write about it. You’ll soon find out that life’s too short not to chase your dreams. Here, hon, open it.” She handed the envelope to Jinx.
Stung by Deb’s blunt words, Jinx hesitated, but she couldn’t resist the call of that envelope. She untwined the thin cord and drew out a saffron page. The paper was cracked and brittle, flaking at her touch like the salted surface of a pretzel stick. She worried about the oil of her fingertips damaging the document. If this had been an archive, she would have been asked to wear white gloves before handling something so fragile. Down the counter, Sam Sells waved to Sadie for a refill of coffee. Behind the counter, Benny fried eggs and wiped his brow with a forearm. Jinx scanned the paper, taking in its prominent features: shape, texture, date, script. Antiquated cursive loops, beautiful in form, trailed across the page.
April 18, 1826
Dear Mother,
I pray this letter reaches you before much more time has passed, whether you be in the West or still here in the East. I hope it can be read to you, for when we last saw one another, neither of us could speak or read the English language. My mind turns to you on this tenth anniversary of the death of my godmother in Christ. I could not accept the loss of her then, as I could not, a lifetime ago, accept the loss of you.
I do not blame you, Mother. Do not blame yourself. You had no means to feed me. The mission school at the fort took me in and placed me among their pupils. At the tender age of eleven years, I was one of the eldest. I learned the ways of civilization and tried my best to be good, but ghosts haunted me at the school; ghouls grasped at me. They pulled my gown in the dark, split my braids in two, unfolded my insides, and stole me from myself. I had a child. She did not survive. What was I to do?
I set the place on fire and watched it burn. They would not let me return to you, would not let me see your face, even when you came to beg for my return, even when my uncle came dressed in white men’s clothing to strengthen your entreaties.
And so I was exiled to the Cherokee Rose and given the gift of a second family. I have lately heard the news from my godfather that our lands in Alabama will soon be claimed by that same ravenous horde who settled our lands within the borders of Georgia, and that more of our people will go west. I cannot come to you, Mother, despite my affection, which forever abides. I must remain here always, to do the Lord’s work and tend the graves of my other mothers. Even as I write you, I sit in my godmother’s chair, reading the pages of her Bible, worn from the tread of her finger: “Whither thou goest I will go, and whither thou lodgest I will lodge. Thou people shall be my people and thy God my God. Whither thou diest, I will die, and there will I be buried.”
I seek only to do the bidding of the Lord. I pray that you and my uncle are safe, that my brothers and sisters care for you even as I would have done. I pray that the new land in the West is fertile and rich and that a future may be possible for our people.
Yours forever in the wounds of Christ Jesus,
MAB
Jinx dragged her eyes from the page. MAB. Mary Ann Battis.
Deb Tom was watching her with that same intense stare. “We’ve been waiting over two hundred years to learn what became of our