Good Dirt

Back in 2019, Avery tries to remain upbeat about this disruption of her dream vacation. Before bed, she looks at properties for sale in the area. She likes to imagine being in a place “where she is so unknown to those around her that no one has any expectations of her. Where no one would think she is being any more or less herself when she is simply being Avery” (65). In those new places, she can imagine having a different life.

For the first time, Ebby’s brother appears in the recurring nightmare that she has of the attack. Henry, awake next door, recalls that his mother was always cool to Ebby, and that he felt that he was always walking on eggshells, never knowing what might trigger Ebby. He wonders, “How much of yourself do you have to renounce in order to have the life you think you want?” (68).

Ed Freeman can tell that something is wrong when Ebby calls, but he doesn’t know what. He and his wife Soh feel anxious for Ebby. They went to a hotel on the night of Baz’s death and never returned to that home, instead moving further down the coast. He now hopes that “they taught their daughter to keep going, no matter what” (71). Ed knows that Ebby enjoys her work as an editor. His concern is that she will always be safe. Hearing Ebby and Soh laugh, “[i]t never fails to amaze Ed how his heart can soar, even as he still feels the hole that’s been blown right through the middle of it by the loss of his son” (73). He has something that he has never shared with his daughter or wife.

Ed regrets that the last thing Baz saw in his life was the jar, Old Mo, breaking. Old Mo had been a promise to his son, as a young Black man, that lives could change. The last thing that Baz said to Ebby when she found him was that the intruders “broke Old Mo” (75). The children loved hearing stories about Old Mo, especially the one about how the jar helped their parents to fall in love.

It is the year 2000. Ed tells the children the story of how he met Soh. Old Mo is dressed in the baseball cap and mustache that Baz has taped onto “him.”

Ed and Soh grew up together, and he loved her from their first kiss in a tree. When Soh visited during Ed’s time at law school, Ed showed her the jar with the inscription MO, which the family believes to be the signature of the potter, Moses. Soh knew that the jar had historical value, but more importantly, it was a family heirloom. Soh asked to touch the jar, calling it Old Mo, and the name stuck. Ed showed her the words inscribed on the bottom panel.

Back in 2019, Soh knows there is something her husband is not telling her. She feels as if he has lost ground since Henry abandoned Ebby at the altar. Ed has been spending more time alone. Soh spoke with her mother, who reminded her of their family’s history of helping other families find freedom. Her mother questioned why Soh and Ed chose to live in predominantly white areas. Soh had worried that Henry might not have the commitment to go through life with her daughter. Soh knows that after Baz’s death, everyone questioned what the family had done to deserve such a terrible thing to happen to them. This question is asked again when Henry runs off. Conscious of her background, her standing, and her heritage, Soh knows that she could never slap Henry Pepper in the face. She knows that there are people “who believe that her history is not their history, too” (88).

It is the year 1806. Kandia is sold to a sugarcane plantation where the men make the pottery. When she is given surplus clay to make into bowls and jugs, she feels her pain ease. She makes Moses a toy in the shape of a goat and wishes that she could mold a different future for him.

Back in 2019, Ebby plugs in her brother’s clock radio, which she has kept for 19 years. Henry thought it morbid that she kept it. Ebby never told Henry she was pregnant, and she never told anyone when she experienced pregnancy loss afterward. She has learned from her parents to persevere. Listening to the clock radio, thinking of Baz’s voice, Ebby reflects, “She is no stranger to keeping time by what she has lost” (94).

Avery watches Ebby dig in the garden. She has read about traumatic bereavement and its consequences on the life of a survivor. She decides that she cannot let Henry see Ebby vulnerable.

Henry, who is out taking photographs, reflects on how he ruined his relationship with Ebby.

Henry was sitting in on his father’s bridge group when one of the players remarked that Ebby’s family’s heirloom jar was broken during the robbery in which Baz Freeman was killed. The jar was never mentioned in media accounts, so Henry wonders how this man knew about it. He didn’t have the courage to discuss the issue with Ebby because of her sensitivity about Baz’s death. Instead, Henry began to wonder, “Why did her brother’s memory always have to be there in the middle of things?” (201). At two o’clock in the morning on the day he was supposed to be married, Henry grabbed his things and drove out of Connecticut.

It is the year 1847. Moses writes something into the clay disk that he is making.

The narrative shifts to a moment 20 years earlier from Chapter 30. As Moses and Kandia travel by ship to the US from Barbados, his mother tells him of how she crossed the Atlantic from the land of the Mandé. She is pregnant, but she dies of the sickness aboard ship. Moses loses his clay goat. The man who claims to buy him gives Moses to a woman named Auntie, who raises him. Her husband, Uncle, teaches Moses how to read and write. The man they call “Master Oldham” allows this even though it is illegal to teach enslaved people to read or write. Moses goes to work in the pottery, which reminds him of his mother. He inscribes the initials MO on each jar. He knows that “Master Oldham was just like other men. Quick to look away when there was something that he did not wish to see” (108).

Moses is given permission to marry Flora, and Uncle records their names in the Bible that he keeps hidden. Flora’s younger brother, Willis, assists Moses at the pottery.

It is the year 1984. Soh’s wedding day is sunny and not too hot. Ed’s parents give them the jar as a wedding gift.

The narrative relates that Ed and Soh moved to the coast of Connecticut when Baz was five. Soh pursued her career as a corporate lawyer, and Ed had sold some engineering patents. Soh’s family is very nearly New England royalty; an ancestor of hers had owned property, even while enslaved, and the family went on to accumulate more wealth. Both Ed and Soh have experienced microaggressions from their white colleagues, whom Ed’s mother calls “bad-mannered people” (115). One of Ed’s colleagues, Tucker, was impressed with the historical value of the jar but kept calling it a “jug,” which irritated another friend, Harris. Tucker disappeared during the terror attacks on September 11, 2001.