The Three Muses of Bluefield

Abstract

The Three Muses of Bluefield* Jennifer Bartell (bio) I Before the houses were built here,there was nothing but woods. Wehunted huckleberries. Hauled bucketsof the dark fruit for tarts and jars. I can lookat that spot of lawn where my vegetablegarden was. It was a time whenwe planted veggies here: corn, butterbeans,tomatoes. That time is gone, I got a crook in my back,and those seeds are on a shelf.Recorded in their hulls are stepsof my life. But there is somebodywho will find those seeds,who will listen to what they have to say,who will put the seeds in hermind, and grow it and pick it up, and show it, shove itinto the mouths of the world:taste this fruit you have seen for yearsbut never tasted. Feel the grit of iton your tongue, the bitter [End Page 250] juice of this nourishmentthat comes from scraping by justfor scraps. Swallow it,do not gag: we have eatenthis for decades. My name is Golden.Golden Graham.I love my name.Folks call me Goldie. II.I was named after a auntie, my nameis Blanche but most folks call me Blanche, the e silent. Before we moved here, we livedin a house where it rained on the inside. We could see the hogs under the house,that was when we lived on the white folks’ land, before we came here. When we got this housewe thought we was rich. We had an outhouse: my Ma would go in there and it sounded like shewas crying, but she was praying. I can imagine the things you can tell God with peein your nostrils. Some Saturday evenings there’d be a picnic in the church yard,our legs carried us there, but our legs can’t carry us that far no more. We sangon Sundays. Sometimes our shoes had holes in ‘em, shoes the buckra done wornout and gave to us. Now we all ‘bout worn out. We fight so hard for this place.My name may be on it, but this place dons’t belongst to me. And I got one moreplace to go. [End Page 251] III She took in other folks’ laundry up in Connect-a-cut.Her and her husband, they left in search of fair wagesin a fair land. And after a time they came back. Backto this country living, to the life they were born toand wanted to die to. Back where the icehouse is underneath earth: A holein the ground, a block of ice wrapped in a sheet,sprinkled with fine sawdust and placed there on summerevenings. They would make tea in a water bucketchip a block offa the ice. Now that was iced tea! That tea would be so cold … so cold it would hurtyour teeth. As the eldest, she tried to pick upher words with a butterfly net but nothing came.Even when she came back from up North: She gotstories to tell but she won’t tell them. She will take them with her when she leaves. She plays possum, silencecomforts her, and it strokes the fine contours of her throat.The grave licks its lips and opens its mouth wide,she pauses, kicks its tongue, steps inside. It wasn’t warmlike those summer evenings, it was cold like the iced tea, but it didn’t hurt her teeth, no it didn’t hurt her teeth.When she took that step, she saw her sisters,and the whole expanse of their lives, what it all addedup to in the end. She knew what it meant, but she stillwouldn’t say. Their three housesform a triangle atthe entrance of Bluefield the lines now broken. [End Page 252] Jennifer Bartell JENNIFER BARTELL received the MFA in poetry from the University of South Carolina in 2014. Her poetry has been published in Callaloo, PLUCK!, Blackberry: a magazine, decomP, Fall Lines, and the museum americana, among others. She also has work forthcoming in The Raleigh Review and Kakalak...