Winter Prophet

Author’s Note

When I began Winter Prophet in 2001, I was living in New York City.On 9/11 my world changed dramatically. Words became an obstacle for me. The week before I had just begun teaching a room full of students at New York University in the Graduate Creative Writing Program. They all wanted to write the great American novel or some version of it. I began to question how important art was in this new context and every day had to convince myself and my students that art and writing is relevant, and important in a world that values money more than people and art even less. After September 11th, I wasn’t able to write for several months and began to paint for the first time since high school art class. The following year I was invited to spend a year as the John and Renee Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi where I created over a hundred paintings and drawings and I finished Winter Prophet.

Winter Prophet was inspired by the accomplished African American opera singer Sisseretta Jones who was born in 1869 and died in poverty in 1933. She was as popular in the early 1900’s as Aretha Franklin is today. A classically trained singer, she was married at the age of fourteen to a man who was also her manager. She studied at the New England Conservatory of music and by the age of eighteen she made a successful New York debut. Reviews of her voice compared her to the reigning Italian opera diva Adelina Patti. Journalists called her the Black Patti and the name stuck. Even with the great reviews she was denied roles in the prominent opera houses because she was black. She decided to form her own traveling company of performers, Black Patti’s Troubadors. The first half of the show was minstrel type comedy featuring dancing and singing acts. In the second half there were performances of fully costumed, staged excerpts from popular operas. I tried to imagine what it would have been like for a Black woman so soon after slavery to have such bold dreams and to realize them so beautifully. Sisseretta Jones toured nationally and internationally for over twenty years including Latin America, the Caribbean and Europe. I was excited about the idea of fusing my love of theater, my attraction to the drama in opera and my love of inventing stories. To understand how opera singers achieve those extraordinary high notes I took opera singing lessons and to my surprise I rediscovered how to breathe. I only sing in the shower now and sometimes entertain the books on my bookshelves with my version of karaoke opera.

– Shay Youngblood, 2012

Overture: she whispers

Wish I was free. Wish I was a man. Wish I could save myself with this song.

At the start of 1893, nothing exciting seemed possible for someone like me in Marvel, Kansas. Blue sky, white clouds, glaze of frozen dew on a strip of overturned brown earth. There was no beginning and no end to the weight of that winter sky on my shoulders. I was a simple girl, a good Christian who sang for the glory of God, obeyed her parents and all the commandments. That’s all I knew about love. My only sin was wishing away hours reserved for prayer. For sixteen years I was a dusky negress, a girl called Winter Grace Prophet, born with a white patch of hair above her right temple, with eyes too big for her face. A brown-skinned, small-waisted, busty girl with a voice even white people came from as far away as Ash City to hear. When I was sixteen years old it seemed to me that God stopped listening to me. All I had was faith in myself and no one could take that away. Over time I would not leave a single commandment unbroken.

Act One: she weeps

ONE

It was, as I remember it, like this, Mama wanted me to marry a stranger. Nathan Fitzpatrick was not a true stranger, I had known him all my life. I was the only girl Nathan spoke to without stuttering every word. We had not spoken to each other for almost two years. Hearing Nathan’s voice beside me walking home from church that Sunday woke something up in me. He was acting strange. It was as if he wanted to say something, but that something was caught on his tongue. He seemed much taller and his chest more filled out than the last time we were so close. He stood in front of me in his black suit, starched white shirt and white embroidered tie with his big hands fidgeting at his sides, his head hung to his chest. He couldn’t have been more handsome. His black hair was waved and parted on the side. His broad face and square jaw made a nice golden brown frame for his thick, black brows, almond shaped eyes, broad nose, the high round cheeks of his mother’s people and thick dark pink lips of his father’s. The suit fit his new frame well. I didn’t appreciate his good looks too long before I was fired up again over how long he had stopped speaking to me, stopped even looking at me since we had broken the fourth commandment.

Something you want to say? I snapped.

Nathan didn’t say nothing for a few minutes. He kept making tracks in the dirt with the toe of his boot.

Papa wants me to get married, he finally said.

What? I thought I had heard him wrong. Nathan was only two years older than I was. The picture of him, still a boy, married to anyone we knew seemed ridiculous. Maybe his mother had ordered him a bride from one of her catalogs.

Papa, he wants me to get married, he said a bit louder.

What you telling me for? I yelled back, feeling a kind of pain in my chest that must have been jealousy, but it didn’t last long.

You the only one I know to ask, his voiced dragged.

You want me to sing at your wedding? Nathan Fitzpatrick you bolder than a runaway slave.

I want you to be the b-b-b-bride, he stammered out.

What?

B-b-bride. he stammered.

It was the middle of May and so hot I’d unbuttoned the neck of my navy blue dress. I felt sticky and my dress was stained with sweat.Nathan’s face remained fixed. After he had gotten his proposal out he didn’t seemed bothered by the weather.I couldn’t believe he was serious. He didn’t blink.

What about Lizzie Harrison? I said.

She was a big boned girl who laughed at everything anybody said. When her mouth was at rest she looked at you with blank eyes. At eighteen she still wore big pink satin bows in her hair. Nathan shook his head and kicked at the dirt in the road.

Odessa Crawford might be persuaded to marry you, if you not scared.

Odessa was a small brick-colored woman in her twenties. We knew from churchyard gossip that her two husbands both died the week after she married them. Nathan almost smiled so I kept going.

I know the perfect woman for you.

He turned his face toward me raising an eyebrow.

The Widow Makepeace, I said, She would make a fine bride.

The Widow Makepeace, was older than his mother. She had never worn anything, but black mourning clothes from head to toe since before we were born. Her skin was so dark that if you saw her at night she would blend with the elements. If she dreamed about you, and she had dreamed about nearly everyone in the town, she would pull you aside and whisper wild predictions and vague visions of the future in your ear.

Plant pennies and gold will grow.

People with wings will learn to fly.

Something you found will lose its shine.

None of her predictions had ever come to pass as far as I knew, but the last suggestion brought a wide grin to Nathan’s lips. We both started laughing so hard tears came to our eyes. I hit him on his shoulder and he began throwing air punches at me like we were in a boxing ring.

We not married yet. Don’t go using me like a punching bag, he said swinging his massive fists.

I don’t have time to play with you Nathan. I’ve got to get home to practice.

What for? When we get married you can just sing the songs I like. You know the ones I like, he said surprised.

The traveling opera company looking for new singers.

A colored opera company?

I’ll be the first brown girl to sing with them. I hear they travel as far as Philadelphia, New York and Boston. My Aunt Kate lives in Boston.

How you gonna be married and be in a traveling opera company?

You’re the one getting married not me. Mark my words, I’ll be waving at you from a private train car the next time you see me, I waved at him and then did a little cakewalk as if I were holding an umbrella in one hand and lifting the hem of my satin gown with the other, but he didn’t crack a smile.

It’s you the one I want…want to marry.

If you want a wife you can’t just pick one like you choosing a crabapple.

I don’t want a wife, I got to have one. My daddy say I don’t choose, he choose for me. What would you do if you was me?

I thought you wanted to be a prize fighter.

I was dreaming, he said, but I didn’t believe him.

That’s all you ever used to talk about.

Now I’m talking about something else.

For two years you haven’t said more than good evening or good morning to me, now all of a sudden you want to marry me.

His eyes locked on mine then slowly washed over my body.

I never thought about nobody else but you since we lay down together.

I was remembering our last good time. My thoughts about that day wouldn’t leave my mouth, the memories fell south, down my throat past my heart lingering in my belly. It was the summer Nathan and I slipped away from the church picnic and went swimming in the river. When we were together rules were meant for other people. The sun was bright and harsh and the air was hot and thick. I pushed him into the water with all his clothes on. He dared me to come in after him. When I waded in the waist high water and stood next to him he looked as surprised as I did. He pushed my head under water and we splashed around for a while until we cooled off. Then we lay down on the dry grass looking up at the shapes of clouds. By then I’d seen a man and a woman naked through a keyhole and I wanted to see up close the physical things that made men different from women, the things that made me different from Nathan.

Dare you to let me see, I challenged. He looked confused. He hesitated, but when I dared him, it was as good as throwing dirt in his face. He followed me into the thick part of the woods where the leafy trees dimmed the light. Off came his shoes and silk socks, cuff links, leather suspenders, soggy shirt and pants and lastly his shorts. There was no turning back. He hung his clothes from tree branches close to him. I wanted to touch the whip marks, kiss each scar, heal the broken places. His athletic home training had muscled his arms, thighs and chest so he looked like a man from behind. I felt hot inside and out. I wasn’t scared but I didn’t want him to look at me so I came up behind him and made him close his eyes before I let my hands travel the length of his body. When I touched his smooth hairless chest he jumped slightly. I made sure his eyes were closed before continuing my investigation. When he began to grow under my touch I was scared I’d hurt him, but he held my hand to his privates moving my fingers back and forth until I made him cry. I knew in my heart what we were doing was a sin, but I couldn’t stop. I undressed with my back to him and spread my clothes on the grass before turning around. I stood in front of him and took his cool hands and put them to my face. He closed his eyes, as if it hurt to look at me, then blindly examined the features of my face and neck. When he reached my breasts he touched them shyly, covering the small, tender mounds of flesh with his big rough hands, slowly pressing against the tiny dark tips with his palms, moving them in circles as if he were wiping a foggy mirror. Small, animal sounds escaped from my throat. I looked up at the canopy of lime colored leaves above us. I felt a thick wave of heat as if we were standing in the middle of a pan of baked biscuits. He moved his hands away from the good feeling too soon. Then he was on his knees in front of me letting his fingers pass down my belly following the curve of my hips. His head leaned into my lap and took a deep breath of me. My body shivered in the heat. I held my hands in his damp hair. I seemed to disappear with him into another part of the world. I couldn’t tell if we were right side up or upside down. The good feeling unfolded, multiplied. When we finally separated, minutes or hours later, we lay on the grass looking at each other as if we had become strange new beasts. After that day, he avoided contact with me.He started working for his father so I only saw him on Sundays from my place in the choir. He sat with his father on the last pew, both of them looking like sad crows. His mother was a peacock. She sat between them dressed as if she had been invited to an English tea party. There were two white doves nesting on her enormous white hat, white lace gloves on her dainty hands and a shine to her eyes as if she could see the light. His sister Freeda’s sour face always spoiled my view.

After a while I pretended to consider Nathan’s proposal, to draw a picture of what this new arrangement would look like, in the same way we pretended as children that we were soldiers or boxers or cowboys riding horses in the rodeo. Neither of us led, neither of us had ever followed the rules.

I don’t think you or me was meant for marriage. You know what marriage means? You work, I cook and clean and sew. We go to church every Sunday. We make babies.

He got red in the face and was all of sudden interested in the high shine of his English riding boots.

Then what? More work, more cooking and cleaning and sewing, more babies and church on Sundays until we die.

I started walking toward my house with him following behind me like a lost dog. I stopped in the middle of the road.

I want more than that, I said stretching my arms out sweeping the flat Kansas prairie.

Let’s just go to the church on Sunday. Let’s see what happens next, he said.

Nathan had known for weeks. Our parents had hatched this plan between them and forced it on him.

It’ll all work out. Let’s just go along with it to start, he said.

All the houses we passed seemed to have eyes that knew our fate. When we came to the small brown gingerbread house I was born in we stood at the low, white fence lined with sleeping purple morning glories. Nathan passed through the gate and held it open for me, but I was rooted to the spot. Behind the white lace curtains my mother had stitched by hand, I could see her face melting behind the pane of glass. As we got closer to the house I could see my mother had been crying.

Well son? Nathan’s father’s voice boomed in the small front parlor.

She agrees, Nathan said looking to me for confirmation. We lowered our eyes to the wood floor and hid behind false smiles. The mothers cried, the fathers shook hands and raised glasses of mild black berry wine. The sister Freeda, a tall, thin, young woman who helped their father run the funeral business as an accountant, pressed her lips into a tight smile.

Congratulations brother. Perhaps you’ll fight less and work more. Now that you’ll have a family you can give up those silly ideas about boxing, Freeda said from her chair by the window.

Nathan gave her a hard look and she returned it by sticking out her tongue at him. The idea of Nathan marrying must have been hard for his sister who at twenty-four was fast becoming the age mother’s fear their daughter’s may never marry. Freeda was not unattractive, but she had a way of cutting down a person with a few choice words and used her skill to wound those around her at every opportunity.

The seven of us stood crowded around the dinner table with heads bowed as my father gave a small sermon of thanks for the two families coming together.

After the food was blessed my father lifted his eyes across the table and met my angry stare. He looked old and sad but my feelings were hard toward him. I knew I would soon have no hesitation breaking the fifth commandment.

My mother had prepared a simple