“What? You ain’t been wrong about nothing.”

“Taught you that you ain’t got no choice. Said I didn’t have no choice, neither. About being the butcher.”

“What’re you saying?”

“True, it’s our lineage—ain’t no denying that. My mama, her mama, her mama before. All them women, all those years of standing by the chair. Never asking a single question.”

Lady Mae wanted to ask her mother what she meant, what she was trying to say through the words that came rushing out like flooded waters. And none of it will save you, Mama. She felt herself barely able to breathe, to come up for air as she saw in her mother’s face a calm she had not seen before.

“But that’s not all that’s true, my girl.”

There were voices now, clear shouts and yells to come out, we just want to talk, you know the laws. Lady Mae’s mother gripped her daughter tight. They stood, facing each other, hands in hands, and Lady Mae saw out of the corner of her eye a Deputy light a torch. They were nearly at the door.

“We all got a choice. I had one, but I chose to ignore it. To bury it down and use the laws as my cover.”

“What kind of choice?”

Her mother’s hands were cool and soft in her own. Lady Mae felt the fierce squeeze, the fingertips on her knuckles, as though her mother was trying to memorize her daughter’s bones. The torchlight grew, and their shadows bounced off the wall of the living room, quivering, flickering.

“But I’d told you. That what I hear when they’re in the chair, well, they ain’t wrong. Comes from a deep place, not one I reckon the Deputies could even know about.”

There was the sound of a fist on wood. One two three it rapped, knocked, banged on the door. The planks on the shack’s porch creaked under the weight of the Deputies. Their boots clacked, their tall hats illuminated by the torchlight. Lady Mae’s mother grabbed her daughter and pulled her into the kitchen.

“We just want to talk,” called a Deputy through the thin wood of the door. “Just got a few questions we’d like you to answer.”

“Mama? They just want to talk. I don’t think—”

“Lady Mae: if we all started forgiving one another, then what would be the purpose of the Deputies? If there weren’t no crimes for the law to uphold?”

“We going to give you to the count of three to open this door,” a Deputy called from outside. “No need to make this difficult.”

Lady Mae heard three more pounds on the door. Then there was an axe through the door and the splitting of wood and the voices of the men. The first one to enter was Deputy Daniels, and he held the torch above his head. The shadows danced on his aged face. The light bore into Lady Mae’s eyes as she struggled to get the words what you done and don’t go Mama out of her mouth. But they were too sticky and thick to jump from her tongue. The three other Deputies of the settlement snaked in around Lady Mae’s mother and encircled her, behind them a new, unfamiliar Deputy. He walked in slowly, in his hands a club, and sucked his teeth. His skin glistened, his stomach hung low over his belt. This was the one from Settlement Six—the one her mother had said was on his way months ago—but he did not seem to be in charge. No, although each Deputy held in hands a rope or a club or a chain, they waited for Deputy Daniels to speak.