Gullah Secrets

by Susan Gabriel

  “Worse-case scenario, downtown Savannah could get six to eight feet of water,” Jack says. “Dolphin Island even more.”

  A sharp pain shoots through Violet’s shoulder, putting to rest the concern she had about losing her sensitivity. Her thoughts immediately turn to preparations for the storm.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Queenie

  Queenie stacks several wedding gifts in the top of her closet to deal with later, along with the thank-you notes.

  “You’ve got nerve messing with my honeymoon,” Queenie says to her deceased half sister. She looks up at the closet light to see if it flickers with Iris’s answer.

  When still alive, Iris Temple was known for her revenge tactics, and for all Queenie knows she has ordered this hurricane from the grave. According to Spud, they are under a hurricane watch. It is still far away, a Category 3 storm and growing. Knowing Iris, she will settle for nothing less than top tier, a Category 5.

  When Queenie lived in the Temple mansion there were daily hauntings by various dead Temples, Iris being the last of the Temple spirit legacy. Cold air rushed down hallways or rattled dishes and glasses when no one was in the kitchen. Plants tipped over for no reason. Ancient perfumes and scents lingered in bedrooms. As far as she knows, however, all the Temple spirits were destroyed along with the mansion, along with Edward, who died in the fire.

  Of course, Queenie knows that a hurricane named Iris and the woman who made her life miserable for over three decades are not the same. Or are they? Unexplained mysteries happen all the time. Like the fact that she loathed Iris, yet still misses her. Queenie is a perfect example of what occurs when you combine Gullah folk magic and an old Savannah family. All her life she has struggled to find her place in the world—she, herself, is a mystery. Since Iris died and Queenie is no longer her personal assistant, she hasn’t known what to do with herself. Until recently, her entire life revolved around Iris’s needs, not her own.

  Spud told her they must take this storm seriously, and Queenie is doing just that. She checks on Old Sally, who is busy making a smelly concoction on the stove. It is not unusual to smell strange substances brewing. Things that don’t, in Queenie’s opinion, belong in a cooking pot. Gnarled roots, parts of frogs and chicken bones, human hair and sometimes fingernails. Along with the ever-present graveyard dirt kept in an old metal canister at the top of the kitchen cabinet over the sink. A canister Queenie remembers from when she was a girl, the flour label already faded with age.

  Long ago Queenie stopped asking what these ingredients were for. Lately, Violet has been brewing things with Old Sally, writing complicated recipes down in her notebook while standing alongside the stove, though not today.

  Queenie has never been interested in spells. It never made sense to her how the bark of one tree and the mud from a certain Georgia swamp could heal or prevent something bad from happening. It also never made sense to her that putting a favorite cereal bowl at someone’s gravesite will keep the spirit happy forever. Do people eat Cocoa Puffs in the Afterlife? She hopes not. She hopes there are better options. Like croissants from a heavenly bakery, covered with real butter and homemade raspberry jam. Her mouth waters.

  “What are you cooking up?” Queenie asks Old Sally, not really wanting to know, but she is suddenly hungry.

  “A protection spell.” Old Sally seems more thoughtful than usual. She gets this way when something is going on between worlds, as she calls it. Evidently, there are two worlds instead of one. The visible one that Queenie is standing in here in the kitchen and the invisible one her ancestors live in, and where everyone who dies crosses over to.

  Queenie has never understood the Gullah ways. The only time in her life she took an interest in folk magic was when she asked her mama to make her a love potion for a boy she had a crush on in the fourth grade. Her request did not go over well. Gullah magic was not to be used to manipulate matters of the heart, she was told, so Queenie never asked her to do it again.

  She knows that if she had somehow managed to marry before now, it would not have been the right man for her. Her eyes tear up, and it’s not from what is cooking on the stove. She cannot believe how much she loves Spud Grainger.

  Well, not his bow ties, she tells herself. I could spend the rest of my life without those. But he doesn’t wear them much anymore since he has retired.

  Queenie never dreamed someone would treat her so well. Bringing her socks to put on in bed if her feet are cold. Putting a Hershey’s Kiss on her pillow every night, even though she has recently brushed her teeth. Giving her a neck rub if she has the least bit of a pain. Iris was an idiot to end her affair with Spud Grainger all those many years ago.

  With Old Sally stirring smelly stuff on the stove, Queenie wonders if her mama has ever loved someone as much as she loves Spud. Queenie’s father was Edward Temple, and Old Sally’s only husband had already died before Queenie was born. Old Sally had Queenie when she was in her early forties, having long before planned to not have any more children. But life, it seems, rarely goes as planned.

  “Mama, who was the love of your life?” Queenie asks. She doesn’t usually speak of intimate things with her mama like some daughters do, but she is genuinely curious. She takes a seat to wait for the answer.

  “A man named Everett Moses,” Old Sally says, without hesitation. “But everybody called him Fiddle. He was said to be the best fiddle player east of the Mississippi.”

  “Everett Moses?” Queenie pauses. She has never heard that name before. “Why haven’t you ever told me about him?”

  “It was a long, long time ago.” Old Sally gives the pot another stir.

  “Well, how did you meet him? What was he like?”

  Old Sally stops stirring and looks up, surprised by Queenie’s interest. But then she returns to it, this time like she is stirring her memories.

  “Everett was from Charleston,” Old Sally begins. “We met at a revival my family took me to over at Edisto.”

  “I’ve never heard this story,” Queenie says.

  “I never told anybody before.” Old Sally chuckles when she sees Queenie’s face. “Nice to know I can still surprise you,” she says.

  “I’ll stir. You talk.” Queenie takes the spoon and motions for her mama to sit in one of the chairs. “I need to hear what happened between you and Fiddle.”

  The smell coming from the pot makes Queenie want to gag. But it is the price she is willing to pay to hear her mama’s story. This concoction smells strong enough to ward off anything. Iris the hurricane and Iris the ghost.

  “Fiddle be eighteen, with me two years younger,” Old Sally begins. “He was playing at a three-night revival. A gorgeous man if ever you saw one. Black as a moonless night, with beautiful eyes and straight white teeth. He could smile at you and weaken your knees.”

  Queenie stops stirring. Her mama looks suddenly younger. Her eyes sparkling with the memory.

  “The first night, he watched me,” Old Sally continues. “On the second night, we talked before and after the service. By the third night, Fiddle and I snuck away from the tent and talked the night away under a live oak with a full moon watching over us. My family thought I was spending the night with a girlfriend,” she continues, “but I was spending the night with Fiddle under the stars. Then the next week he drove over from Charleston and tried to talk me into eloping with him. But I didn’t want to hurt my mama by moving so far away.”

  “Charleston was too far away?” Queenie asks, thinking it is a two-hour drive if that.

  “It seemed far away back then,” she says.

  Old Sally looks out the window, as though looking into her past. The sparkle in her eyes begins to fade.

  “That night, I snuck out and met him at the lighthouse. Most wonderful night of my life.” Old Sally lowers her head, as well as her voice. “On the way back to Charleston the next morning, he died in a car accident. A bus hit his car straight on.”

  Queenie gasps mid-stir. “Oh, Mama, I’m so sorry
.” She walks over and hugs her, being careful not to embrace her too tightly. She seems so fragile these days. “I can’t imagine losing Spud so soon after we found each other. I’m not sure I would ever get over it.”

  “I’m not sure I ever did.”

  Old Sally pauses for what feels like a long time.

  “A baby girl came out of that night at the lighthouse,” she begins again, her voice even softer. “A baby girl who died at six days old. Broke my heart into tiny pieces.”

  Queenie’s eyes fill with tears. She can’t imagine losing Violet, either, even if she didn’t officially claim her for over four decades.

  “Is that why you walk to that lighthouse all the time?”

  Old Sally nods. “Life be full of heartache, daughter,” she continues, emotion choking the words. “That’s why when love comes you got to celebrate it as big and loud as you can.”

  Queenie gets them both tissues.

  “I wish you had told me sooner,” Queenie says.

  “Sometimes we lock hurtful things away, just so we can carry on,” Old Sally says.

  Queenie thinks of the secret she kept for so many years. Maybe she locked that away so she could carry on, too.

  “What was the little girl’s name who died at six days old?” Queenie asks.

  “Annabelle,” Old Sally says. “She looked like Fiddle, too. Dark and sweet as sunlight.”

  “Annabelle,” Queenie repeats. She realizes now that she’s had two half sisters: one black and one white.

  “He came to me in a dream the other night,” Old Sally says.

  “Fiddle did?”

  Old Sally nods. “At first I only heard him play. But then I saw him, and he had so much love in his eyes I woke up crying.”

  “You missed him so much,” Queenie says.

  “No. I be crying because I get to see Fiddle soon.”

  Queenie puts a hand to her heart. For years now, her mama has been ready to go. But it doesn’t mean a daughter wants it to happen. Violet will be the one to help Old Sally transition to the next world since Queenie knows so little about the Gullah tradition. But she does see the importance of death rituals on the Gullah side of her family.

  “I need to lay down for a minute,” Old Sally says.

  Queenie asks her if she’s okay, knowing that nothing can make losing a child okay, no matter how long ago it was.

  “I be fine,” she says, though she doesn’t look fine. Queenie turns off the stove and follows her into the bedroom. She helps her take off her sandals and lie on the bed.

  “It’s been a big weekend,” Old Sally says. “More excitement than I’ve had in a long time. I just need a quick nap, and I’ll be fine.”

  Queenie closes Old Sally’s door and returns to the living room. She goes over to the collection of objects near her mama’s chair and finds a small black-and-white photograph, worn with age, of a dark man playing a fiddle. Next to it sits a small square of pink fabric with an A embroidered on it. Almost threadbare, it is as if someone held this piece of cloth every day for over eighty years. How many times has Queenie passed this table and never taken in how each object is a story in her mama’s life? Not a shallow connection. Not a collection of ghosts. But an assortment of living memories of the people she continues to love.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Old Sally

  Sally, honey, wake up.

  Her grandmother Sadie bustles around the room, a stooped-over Gullah woman.

  What is it, Granny? What are you doing? Sally asks.

  It be time to light the courage fires, girl. The driftwood be already piled high on the beach. Your grandpa piled it up this morning.

  But I don’t have anything to light it with, Sally says.

  Yes, you do. You be the only one who has the light. If you don’t light it now, everyone will be lost.

  As a girl, her grandmother expected Sally to know things that she had no way of knowing.

  What time the tide be, girl? she would ask. If you don’t know, we all be sunk.

  Sally’s mother was tired before her time. Her grandmother was a different story. She had the energy of three people and expected Sally did, too.

  Old Sally floats in and out of the dream like she is time traveling. One minute she is young Sally searching for matches, the next she is Old Sally watching everything unfold.

  Her grandmother looks under the bed and all around the room, repeating that she must find the light, or everyone will be lost. She repeats it until Sally covers her ears and can’t hear it anymore. She wants to go back to sleep. The island school doesn’t start for another three hours. The sun isn’t even up yet.

  Then her grandmother grabs her by the shoulders and lifts her from the bed.

  This be serious, girl. Go to the lighthouse. The water’s coming. Get up those stairs!

  Old Sally wakes with a start, gasping for air as if coming up from a giant wave. Fully awake, she sits up, her heartbeat echoing in her ears.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Rose

  Rose decides to stay and help Violet at the tea shop, her time at the bank still on her mind and in her nose. The smell of musty old ledgers has seeped into her clothes. Her purse hangs on a hook in the back room of the tea shop. When she has a chance, she wants to look through it. If this is the original Book of Secrets, she can’t imagine anything it contains is pertinent today. But the question remains of why Edward would have gone to the bank to try to find it. And why is Heather in Savannah hanging out in the wings like that crazy storm?

  “You seem distracted,” Violet says to Rose between customers.

  “I’m still thinking about that trip to the bank,” Rose says. “I barely scratched the surface. There were receipts, deeds, and accounts from the last two hundred years. Most of it useless, I imagine.”

  “Might as well check it out just in case,” Violet says.

  “Might as well,” Rose repeats.

  “I wonder what my Gullah ancestors would have kept in a bank vault,” Violet says. “Recipes, maybe. Spells or different folk magic remedies. Maybe a few special roots.” She smiles.

  Rose doesn’t tell Violet about the lists of dozens of her Gullah ancestors who were slaves owned by Rose’s family. If the situation were reversed, she imagines Violet would feel a similar shame. But the situation isn’t reversed. A long line of Temples owned people. Lots of people, it seems like. People forced to run not only the mansion but a Charleston plantation as well.

  To keep an eye on the storm, Rose suggested last night that Violet bring in a small television from home to sit on top of a filing cabinet in the back. Violet, Jack, Rose, and Max gather in front of the local weather report. It reminds Rose of when they watched the towers go down on 9/11. Like the dust of the buildings that fell that day, a profound sense of helplessness fell over Rose. But this isn’t a terrorist attack. It’s a hurricane. A hurricane spinning wildly out in the Atlantic Ocean, due to turn further inland any minute, where it will collide with a low-pressure system and determine their fate.

  Minutes later Rose’s fear is confirmed when the weatherman reports that the hurricane watch has just been upgraded to a hurricane warning. Their fate sealed, they exchange looks revealing their surprise. The hurricane is heading this way.

  The news report now includes information on how to prepare for the storm. Stocking up on bottled water is recommended, as well as canned goods and batteries. Jack tells them about driving up to Charleston to help some cousins clean up after Hurricane Hugo hit in 1989.

  “I’ve never witnessed anything so destructive,” he says, shaking his head.

  The word “evacuation” flashes across the television screen. Rose feels a knot in her stomach. She doesn’t want to evacuate her new home. Her life has seen enough upheaval lately. Half of the people she talks to are skeptical the storm will even hit. People keep saying how many storm paths predicted for Savannah don’t materialize.

  Meanwhile, possible evacuation routes are shown on the screen.
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  “I think you should close early,” Jack says to Violet.

  “I do, too,” Rose says.

  Heather walks into the back of the shop and startles Rose, who is standing closest to the door.

  “I didn’t hear you walk up,” Rose says.

  “I’m wondering if I should go back to Atlanta,” she says to Rose.

  “That’s up to you,” Rose says. Her distrust of Heather nags at her again. When Regina first talked about Heather on the telephone, she practically called her a con artist, and she implied birth certificates could be forged.

  “Do you mind if I come back after this storm has blown over?” Heather asks her. She looks back at her friend standing at the door.

  Rose says she doesn’t mind, which isn’t the truth. The truth is she wishes Heather had never shown up in the first place. She would prefer to not deal with this hurricane, either. Or the mystery of whatever is in that old bank vault. Rose wants a peaceful life. One without drama. But at this moment, that seems an impossible request.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Violet

  While Violet makes out Sunday’s bank deposit, Max and Jack nail plywood over the large tea shop front windows to protect them from breaking during heavy winds. They also get everything off the floor, since the street Violet’s shop is on floods during a hard rain. Before they leave they stack sandbags in front of the door to keep high water from coming in.

  When Violet locks the door from the outside for the day, she offers a silent prayer that her tea shop is here when she returns. She wishes now she had brought some of Old Sally’s graveyard dirt from home to spread around the shop to protect it. Violet is not someone who enjoys starting over. Who does? But she will if she must.

  On the drive home, Jack and the girls are in their other car somewhere in front of her. Weatherwise, it has been a perfect day in Savannah, though hot, and the thought of a hurricane bearing down on them is hard to imagine. The sunset in her rearview mirror is a masterpiece of yellow and orange. Despite the hurricane warning, forecasters say there are still other paths the storm could take. Hitting their island is only one of them. She finds comfort in the possibility that the hurricane may veer north at the last minute and amount to nothing.