Good Dirt

It is the year 2000. The next-door neighbors, who are in their garden, run to the Freeman home when they hear gunshots. They see the children’s bicycles in the yard and enter the house to hear Ebby crying. It is a “sound that could shatter a person’s heart” (8).

It is the year 2018. Ed and Soh Freeman are hopeful and touched as they wait for their daughter Ebby’s wedding to begin. They know that potential social challenges may await their daughter because she has chosen to marry Henry Pepper, a white man, but Ed hopes that, with Ebby’s family history, background, education, and other advantages, she will be well-equipped for success. Soh savors the details of the moment. She knows that Ebby plans to walk down the aisle while holding a picture of her brother, Baz, who would now be 33 if he had lived. They wonder why Henry and the rest of the Pepper family have not yet arrived.

In the aftermath of Henry’s failure to turn up at his own wedding, Ebby is glad that at least there are no wedding gifts to return; their guests donated to a charity. She doesn’t remember much after canceling her wedding until she returns to her own place, stunned.

Eight months later, Ebby looks forward to her trip to France, where she will no longer be the subject of media scrutiny. “Ebby’s identity has been stamped by the award-winning photo of her at age ten” (13) and her image has been defined by Baz’s murder. Now she is also known as the woman who was jilted on her wedding day. Ebby is proud of her family’s long history as African Americans in New England, and she had been looking forward to traveling with Henry after their wedding. The night before her wedding, she woke up again to the nightmare of hearing the jar fall to the floor: an event that happened when her brother was killed. A therapist spoke to her once about the issues associated with complicated grief, and Ebby wonders if grief is ever uncomplicated.

The jar was part of the Freeman family for six generations; they called it “Old Mo” because of the initials, “MO,” that were carved on it. Baz loved hearing stories of how their grandparents’ home in Massachusetts became a refuge for those fleeing enslavement. Gramps Freeman said the jar glowed with the colors of the earth it was made from and had its own spirit. The jar fell and broke when Baz was shot, and Ebby, who was 10 at the time, “understood that along with that piece of pottery, something else in her life was splitting apart” (18).

Ebby has never been far from her parents before and feels guilty leaving for France. She recalls going clamming with her father along the shore. Her parents are elegant and beautiful, but Ebby sees that they “are clinging to each other like two people trying to keep their footing on a bobbing life raft” (20). She boards the plane to France, relieved to be running away.

Ebby, gardening at the house where she is staying in France, has no premonition of what is coming. She is tending the guesthouse for her friend, Hannah, a colleague from Ebby’s work. Ebby enjoys the solitude of this French village because “she’s never been able to shake the feeling of being observed by others” (23). Now that she is grown, people seem interested in her looks. For a while, she looked forward to a future with Henry. There are some things she hasn’t confided to her mother because she “didn’t want to burden her any further” (25). Abby’s friend Ashleigh told Ebby not to cut herself off or think of herself as a victim, but for the moment, Ebby just wants to feel invisible.

Ebby first sees the woman who has arrived at the guesthouse, then realizes that the man accompanying her is Henry. Shocked, she slips and falls into the river.

Henry recognizes Ebby just as she falls into the water.

It is the year 1999. Baz and Ebby play in the backyard at Grandma Bliss’s house. The house is often visited by tourists because of the family’s prominence. Their grandmother’s grandmother was one of the first African American female physicians in Massachusetts, and their grandmother belongs to the oldest Black sorority. Their grandfather, Lemuel Bliss, had served with the Tuskegee Airmen in World War II. Ebby and Baz have always been instructed to “watch their mouths and mind their manners” (32) because their family on both sides are known in Massachusetts. As a well-to-do family, they stand out in Connecticut as well. Ebby is the only African American in her class.

Back in 2019, the smell of the river reminds Ebby of Grandma Freeman’s house; “[g]ood dirt,” her grandmother called it (34). Henry helps Ebby out of the river, and she is embarrassed to face him.

It is the year 1803. In an African village, Kandia is one of the special women who makes pottery. When the people-hunters come, they kill Kandia’s husband, Mansa, and kidnap Kandia and her mother and sisters. Kandia wishes that she had the power to protect her people, but she focuses instead on protecting her growing child.

Back in 2019, Ebby faces Henry and his companion, Avery, who is attractive and confident. Ebby shows them the guesthouse and remains polite. When she returns to the house, she ignores the ringing phone and tries to gather her composure.

Avery is interested in psychology and knows about Ebby’s past. She wonders if Ebby, who currently has cherry-red hair, has been changing her hair color as a way to process her emotions. Avery has had a long-standing crush on Henry and knows that she will have to deal with his past with Ebby. She realizes that she will have to get Henry away from here.

Henry realizes that none of the qualities that attracted him to Ebby have changed. He recalls meeting her at a party and remembers how she charmed him. He was not initially aware of her traumatic past. He liked “that way she had of looking past everyone, as though she had something more interesting on her mind” (48). Later, he learned that her mother was a corporate attorney and that her father was an engineer who sold several patents; he also learned that nothing like the tragedy of her brother’s murder had ever before happened in their Connecticut town. Henry wasn’t prepared for how “thorny” life with Ebby would become, or for the degree to which the tragedy of Baz’s death marked her. Nowadays, Henry finds that Avery is far easier to be around than Ebby ever was.

Dating Henry pulled Ebby back into the spotlight and made her realize that she “could not escape the mantle of misfortune that had settled over her” (52). After Henry failed to show up for their wedding, he texted her, asking if he could explain. Ebby ignored him and dyed her hair with cobalt blue tips. Hannah thinks that Ebby is better off because she didn’t marry Henry. In France, Ebby “could be someone else yet, somehow, still herself” (55). Grandma Bliss always taught her to hold the moment—to be aware of a beautiful moment as it is happening.

It is the year 1999. Grandma Bliss scolds Baz for saying “uh-huh” instead of “yes.” She reminds him that, as a young African American man, “[p]eople are always going to look for excuses to question [his] capacity to do things” (57). The Freeman children are instructed to speak “better,” walk straighter, be smarter, and be kinder. Grandma Bliss encourages them to write down one thing from each day of their visit that they want to remember. They would magnet these moments to the fridge.

Grandma Bliss was one of the few people who would talk about Baz to Ebby after he was killed. Ebby remembers how they planted a young maple in their yard the year before Grandpa Bliss and Baz both died. The tree grew, “and every autumn, its leaves still turned bright orange. Then the leaves would fall away, and the tree would seal off its branches to protect itself from the onslaught of winter” (61).