Page 19 of The Wondrous Life and Loves of Nella Carter
We laugh and the tension breaks. Not quite belief, but a tendril of faith stretches between us.
“So, Death saves you from ... death—I’m still wrapping my head around that—and wants what?”
“I told him I could show him the beauty of humanity. I’d find evidence that humans are worth saving.”
“So, all of your writing was to please Death—and allow you to live?” I sense him wrestling with the reality of my story, lingering on the cusp of belief.
“Me, yes, but also you. Everyone.”
“I’m going to need a little more than that.”
“He wants to end the world. He will if I don’t continue to win our argument.”
“And how long will this go on?”
“Until I can’t do it anymore.”
He cocks his head, examining me. “And this is not a joke? I’m not on some show getting punked?Dopeople still do that?” He sounds more inquisitive than repelled.
I shake my head as the emotion of the truth floods me. He can finally see it.
“You’ve been alive ... all this time?”
I grab the photo album from the trunk with shaky fingers. He helps me open it between us. “See for yourself.”
He flips through it again, his jaw dropping with each turn as his brain makes sense of what he’s seeing. I edge closer, experiencing the album through his eyes.
The past smiles up at us. Kerchiefs and hats give way to a 1920s flapper bob, 1940s Hollywood waves, and a picked-out Afro from theheight of the 1970s. Though my hairstyle and clothes change, my face and the heart-shaped birthmark on my collarbone remain the same. The woman in the photos is, unquestionably, me.
“These images are from their period. Ambrotype, tintype, celluloid, Polaroid. And it is you,” he breathes, flipping faster. “It’s all you.” He points to one from 1973. “Your birthmark.” The album remains open in his hands. He’s frozen that way, absorbing the impossibility of all this. The seconds feel like an eternity. Then, all at once, he jumps to his feet, animated, pacing again. “God, the things you must have witnessed! When were you born again? What were the conditions like? How have you managed to escape notice all this time?” He sits again, turns a page, and freezes, his eyes on one picture. “I knew it. I knew I’d seen your face before.” He shakes his head in disbelief. “YouwereJimi Ireland? All the stuff I said in the lecture ... that wasyou?” He scrutinizes me, his mouth a beautiful wry smile. “You arguing with me. It was all ...”
I delight at his expression, like a kid’s at Christmas, or, more accurately, as if all his Christmases have come at once.
“I’m sorry, I’m just so ... excited. You are living history.” He gazes at me, eyes clear, no hint of repulsion, just intense curiosity. “I must be going crazy, but it all makes sense. The languages, the travel, the history?” He laughs to himself and leans back on the couch. “My God. All you’ve truly seen ...”
I close my eyes for a moment. Time has trickled by, adding up like grains in a sandglass, and I’ve withstood it all, faithfully recording my travels. The album in Sebastian’s lap tells the tale—a picture of me at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair listening to a speech by Frederick Douglass, and me in the front row at the Savoy, watching Ella Fitzgerald perform ... dozens of images of me drifting through history. All those people gone now, with only me left to truly remember.
“Will you tell your story one day?”
“I want to tell you.”
“And I want to hear it.”
I gaze at the window as if Death stands there watching me invite someone else into our game. The repercussions and consequences of telling Sebastian every single detail crash inside me, a storm I’m unable to escape on the horizon. It will anger him. He will come.
“I need to say the whole thing out loud one time. I need to remember it all.” I close my eyes for a brief moment. Death has given me a gift many have dreamed of—a long life free of disease and physical pain, unchanged appearance, the gift of tongues—as long as I can please him. But the true cost sits between Sebastian and me, thickening in the silence. The devastating reality is that if I fall in love with him, I will lose him. There will be nothing either of us can do about it. Do I want to do this again? Living as long as I have, I now know it’s a curse to want to live forever. A long life isn’t, as Sebastian thinks, about all you’ve seen. “I believe you could understand the most.”
“I’m honored.” His face is somber and sincere. He puts his hand in mine. “So, how should we start?”
“Record it.” I steady my voice, calm but certain. “I want to hear it when all is said and done.”
“Give me one second. Don’t go anywhere.”
I’d askwhereI would go, except I’ve already run out on him once.
Sebastian dashes out the door to his car. It’s only a minute before he’s back, out of breath. He sets the recorder on the table as quietly as possible, the steady red light staring at me. The glare a warning beacon. A rule broken. Unlike the words in my notebook that could be cast off as the ramblings of a lonely, unwell person.
But this old-fashioned device makes it feel real, capturing my story like Zora Neale Hurston did inBarracoonor as Ernest Gaines did for the fictional Miss Jane Pittman. Something tangible left of me when I’ve spent my life as a ghost. Something Death said I would never have.
