Ben

Day

Zee

Ben

Day

Zee

“That’s me,” he called over the din. “That there’s my name. And soon you will meet my Daisy, too.”

One of the children laughed. “Truly?” the child said.

“Truly,” he said. “Daisy came to me just the other day. I wish y’all could have seen her. She’s here right now, in fact. But she’s shy.”

Some people laughed louder, thinking he was playing.

“I tell you, she looks marvelous now. She’s got long curly hair all the way down her back, and she’s got a pink silk gown.”

“Oh really? Where’d she get that from?”

“She’s got a silk gown,” Ben Daisy continued. “It’s pink and white, like nothing you’ve ever seen. And on her finger, one diamond ring so bright. Oh, I can’t wait for y’all to see her.”

“So where is she now?” someone else called, giggling.

“She’s on her way. She came to visit me just last week, but she couldn’t stay. But she’s coming back, to live with me and mine. You hear that, Hannah?” Ben Daisy called. “You gonna have to make room for my Daisy.”

I turned to look for Miss Hannah in the crowd. She was listening, her face stricken.

“To Daisy,” he cried, holding up his hand in benediction, and the children chanted it back to him. I myself joined in, chanting and laughing till my voice was hoarse, even though I knew I should be scared.

So I made sure to whirl myself harder, dance faster, the rest of the night.

As night came, the old ones remembered Pinksters past: who was known for the freshest oysters and the sweetest bread, who could be counted on to stay awake the longest, who was the best dancer. They did not, of course, mention that they had celebrated all these feats while enslaved, that the whites had banished Pinkster and stopped observing it with them once they gained their freedom. The old ones spoke of it as its own day of release, as if it existed outside of time, and none of them mentioned how it used to end—with the men and women and children tearing down the grass huts and returning to their masters, saying goodbye to their loved ones owned by other men, with sometimes nothing but a blade of grass tucked away to remember them by, until they met again the following year, if they were lucky.

Miss Hannah came to Mama the next day, crying in her reception room. “You didn’t fix him,” she said. “He’s as bad as ever. He really thinks that dead heifer is coming to live with us.”

“He can’t believe that,” Mama said.

“He does. He really does,” Miss Hannah sobbed. “You’ve only made it worse.”

The next week, at church, Mama called to Ben Daisy, “How about you come and see me again.”

“I haven’t got time for that, Doctor,” he said. “I need to buy some things for Daisy, to make her comfortable.”