No Eye Can See Read Online Free

hostage,” Seth said. “Make you think you cant change. California, that's a place that welcomes change with open arms, says ‘step right up and see what you can do you never thought you could.’ Look at me, leading a train of women. Is that a risky gamble or just good luck?”
    Zilah's eyes furrowed with the stream of words. She knew neither Mohawks nor Virginia slaves. She did know stories of cruelty. And women with little say in their own destinies.
    Uncertain of what waited for them in “the States,” as the Seth man called California, Zilah had voted for the plan to head to Shasta City. In her history, she had never been asked such a question, where she wanted to go. Even coming west had not been her choice, but a way to save face, to send money to her brother-in-law who had taken a worthless girl into his home and fed her to keep her alive. Yet in this new land, next to a dusty wagon, someone asked her desire, and she had nodded her head and said, “I go Noble's.”
    Then everything changed. Another death—Betha—this one not the cholera that took most of the men. This one leaving four small children needing more tending and new paths to walk. Her heart raced again.
    No, no.
    That death and the others had happened before the Seth man arrived to lead them from the river, hadn't it? Yes, she was sure now. An aunt returned to care for the four motherless children. Ruth Martin. Yes, the woman with the whip who rode horses. She wore mens clothes, with mens pants covering her legs, just as Zilah now did.
    But that was before, weeks before. She pressed her fingers against her temples. Zilah's head felt full of webs, mixed up her thinking. Was that when her throat began to hurt, her eyes start their watering? She shook her head. She'd forgotten her straw hat.
    Everything different here, like rice paper once wrapped around treasure that now crinkles, never smooth again.
    She squinted at the morning sun. Seth closed in on her, where she stood beside the wagon. Her heart raced. He walked close enough to touch her, leading a pair of oxen. He tipped his hat, then stopped the oxen in front of Suzanne's wagon, talking and working them back on either side of the wagon tongue. His white hat shaded one of the animal's heads as he leaned to the oxbow. The man ran his hands along the oxen's backs, disrupting flies as he drew the chains to the wagon tongue.
    The noise of the oxen shaking their heads at flies and the chain being strung startled Zilah. Her ears hurt, and her eyes ran water like snow melting from high mountains in spring.
    Why crying?
    She did not feel like crying, and yet the water came. She fisted her eyes, wished she could make the noise stop. It was the fault of the sounds and the sand and the heat.
    “Make too much noise,” Zilah said. Seth stood at her words, lifted his fingers to the brim of his hat. “Why you look at me?” she asked. “Too loud, too loud!” She put her hands to her ears.
    “You're shaking,” Seth said, reaching out his hand to her elbow.
    Zilah found his words cunning, like a fox. She jerked away.
    “Zilah? Something wrong?”
    “Who Zilah?” she said, her shrill voice hurting even her own ears. “Name Chou-Jou. Who tell you my name Zilah?”
    “Why, you did. And Sister Esther,” he said.
    “Who Sister Esther?”
    Seth shook his head. “You know who that is, she's your…the woman who manages the marriage contracts, why you're heading to California. Maybe it would be good if you stepped over to her tent. Here, let me help you.” He reached out.
    Maybe he steady me. Maybe he strike me.
    She couldn't be sure so she struck first, her fingernails leaving a track of red welts on the back of his gloveless hand.
    “Hey!” he said, jerking away.
    She could see by the look in his blue eyes that she startled him, but she couldn't think why. He was being thick, making a game of her. She had to defend.
    “Looks like you're running a fever Zi—I mean Chou-Jou, is it?”
    “You make fun