Sea Change

by Karen White

  I picked up my own purse and followed her out the door, locking it behind me. I paused, watching Tish’s retreating back. “Why do John and his parents think Matthew had anything to do with Adrienne’s death? It was a car accident.”

  She turned back to me, her eyebrows raised. “I thought you knew.”

  I wanted to duck back inside the house to hold back the question, but I remained where I was. “Knew what?”

  “It was a car accident in the middle of the night. She’d been heading north on Highway Seventeen in South Carolina, and her family said the only reason any of that made sense was because she must have been running away from something. They were grieving and looking for reasons. Regardless of why, somehow her car swerved off the road over a bridge and into the marsh.”

  “How did she die?” My words were breathless, forced between my lips.

  “She drowned.”

  I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing so I wouldn’t forget to fill my lungs with air. Footsteps approached, and Tish’s arm went around my shoulders. “Are you all right?”

  I wasn’t, but I nodded anyway. “I will be. Really. It’s just…a shock.” She drowned.

  “You don’t look all right. Look, we don’t have to go to the cemetery today. The project will take weeks, so starting today or tomorrow won’t matter. I’ve got plenty of help at the shop, and you don’t start your new job for a week, so we can go another time.”

  I shook my head. “No. I’m fine. Let’s go. Please.” I was eager to refocus my thoughts, even if it meant studying old graves. Anything but the image of Matthew’s first wife trapped inside a car underwater.

  Tish released me with reluctance and I followed her to the car, my footsteps suddenly uncertain, as if the ground beneath my feet had turned to water, and I had no choice but to allow myself to be swallowed.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Pamela

  ST. SIMONS ISLAND, GEORGIA

  DECEMBER 1806

  The shrieks from the hog shed seemed to crowd out the light and all other senses from the kitchen house where I stood with Leda and Jemma, stirring great pots of pig fat to make lard. The heat from the blazing kitchen hearth nearly consumed us as sweat poured down our faces despite the frigid chill in the air outside. We squinted through the steam and tried to think beyond the slaughter to the bacon and ham we would have all winter.

  Sweet potatoes roasted on the fire while Leda stirred the pigskin in oil for crackling. Nothing would be wasted. From the hogs’ hairs to make brushes or the entrails for chitterlings, all the meat from the snout to the tail would be used in some fashion. I had learned that to be wasteful is to do without, and I thought back with some shame and longing to my grandmother’s Savannah dining room, where I would push my plate away with food still upon it.

  I turned to say something to Jemma and stabs of sharp pain gripped me, folding me over my distended belly. A small hand smoothed the fabric of my apron as if trying to brush away the pain, and I looked down at Jemma, whose face tilted up to mine. Still silent, still scarred, but healed in most other ways. Her months of silent sobbing had finally eased enough that Leda had finally welcomed the girl into her kitchen, where Jemma shone in the light from Leda’s smile. I thought that in the two of them they would each find the mother and daughter they both longed for. And although they had formed a strong bond, when I was near it was to my skirts Jemma clung in her wordless affection.

  “Thank you, Jemma. It is only the first pain. I think we will have plenty of time.” I could only hope that my words were true. There was still so much to be done.

  Jemma’s brow puckered in concentration as she closed her good eye and began slowly moving her hands over my belly, tracing the outline of the child within. I did not know how much of her knowledge came from her mother’s instruction and how much was intuition. Regardless, she had quickly become an invaluable assistant to me, always knowing when it was time to push and when it was time to stop. And which mothers needed sterner coaxing and which ones only comfort.

  I peered toward the open door, wanting the fresh air deep in my lungs. I needed to find Geoffrey, to let him know it was time. We had lost a stillborn boy in February, so tiny he had hardly appeared human. He had been born in the chamber pot, and it was Jemma who had taken him and prepared him for burial beside his brother, Jamie. I had bled a great deal, and Leda had told Geoffrey that he should prepare himself to let me go. He had not left my side, holding my hand as if to push his own life force into my veins. And he had.

  Geoffrey had been barely able to look at my swelling body as soon as I had confirmed my condition. I prayed daily that my body would not betray me, that I would deliver a healthy baby so that I could still his fears. But for both of us the fear of separation was a touchable thing, a fist of ice that settled in the blanket with us at night, and joined us at the table in the morning.

  Giving Jemma a reassuring pat on the shoulder, I stepped out into the cold December air, rubbing my hands on my arms to warm them. I searched for Geoffrey, his tall and broad-shouldered form usually easy to spot towering over most of the field hands and the neighbors who had shown up to help, just as we would reciprocate at their farms. Instead, my gaze caught that of Nathaniel Smith. I had not seen him since I had helped his two field hands deliver healthy boys not too long after Jemma had come to live with us the previous fall, but was not surprised to see him today. The skies hung low and gray, pregnant with moisture, and we all feared that it was cold enough for rain to turn into a rare snowfall. Geoffrey wanted to get the hogs slaughtered, their meat hanging in the smokehouse, before the first flake fell.

  I dipped my head in greeting, then realized Nathaniel was no longer looking at me. I turned my head to see Georgina walking slowly from the farmhouse to the kitchen, dressed as if heading to church, and knew she’d be no help in the kitchen today. Since our father’s death the past summer, she had moved in with Geoffrey and me, into the bedroom across the hall from us that had once been Jamie’s. But she looked lovely, her cheeks pink with the cold, her dark green cape setting off her eyes. I looked with surprise at her red leather gloves, recognizing them as the ones Geoffrey had given me for my birthday the previous month. He had seen them on a trip to Savannah, and even though we could scarce afford them, he had purchased them because red was my favorite color.

  The child stirred again just as another pain sliced through me, sharp as broken glass, its jagged edges tearing at my insides. My knees buckled, and I barely grasped the stair railing to keep myself from pitching forward down the steps. I heard Georgina cry out, and then strong arms lifted me into the air until I found my face pressed against the hard wool of a man’s coat.

  “Geoffrey?” I cried out in a haze of pain that glowed red around the edges.

  It was not his voice that answered. “It is Nathaniel. Geoffrey went to the Sinclair farm to seek more help before the weather sets in. Tell me where to bring you, and then I will ride as fast as I can to go fetch him.”

  “Thank you,” I whispered, unable to catch a breath between the waves of agony that had seized me in their heavy arms.

  “We have a birthing room set up behind the parlor,” I heard Georgina say, and then I closed my eyes and prayed for unconsciousness to release the pain.

  I opened them again and found myself on the bed in the little room that Jemma and I had set up for when my time came. I tried not to think how I was three weeks early, or that my pain was constant now instead of in slow waves. I would not be able to bear it should it last as long as my labor with Jamie had. I needed Geoffrey, and I called out for him again.

  “I will go fetch him.” Georgina’s hand touched my forehead, and I felt the leather of the red gloves slide across my skin.

  “No.” It was Nathaniel’s voice, and even I could recognize the tone of his voice that brooked no resistance. “I will get Geoffrey.”

  I looked into his eyes for the first time and saw that they were the color of the ocean during a storm, gray with blue
around the edges. They were also kind eyes, full of concern, and I remembered his young, delicate wife, whom he’d brought from Boston and who had lasted only two summers on St. Simons before dying in childbed. They said his friends had feared for him, that he had taken to walking the beach during storms as if waiting for fate to intervene and take him to see her again. He squeezed my hand, and I knew that I could trust this man, because he knew how to love deeply.

  He turned to Georgina. “Stay here and comfort your sister. But first go send for Jemma.” His heavy boots marked his departure from the room.

  “Jemma,” I called out, but the word was cut off by a scream coming up from inside my womb. I reached for my sister, who sat calmly in a chair at my side. “Get Jemma,” I whispered.

  She was slowly slipping off the gloves, one finger at a time. “I will. But I want to make sure you are comfortable first. Should I take off your skirts? Or get water?”

  My head thrashed from side to side on the pillow, the pain nearly blinding me. “Jemma!” I croaked. And then I heard the door of the room bang open and felt her small, sure hands on me, and I knew that everything would be all right.

  I slid from wakefulness to unconsciousness as easily as a pelican diving under the ocean’s waves. But I forced my eyes open when I felt Jemma’s warm breath on my face, her hands on my shoulders. This was how she always let me know when she had to say something to me, and I did my best now to listen.

  Her one good eye flickered with concern, her face beaded with sweat. Georgina stood behind her with a pitcher of water, her skin white, her hair now fallen around her shoulders in beautiful curls.

  “What is it?”

  Jemma held her hands where I could see them, cupped and facing each other about a foot apart, as if holding a watermelon on the top and bottom. Slowly, she moved her arms so that her hands were sideways, and despair cut through my agony like hot oil in water. “Is it breech?” I gasped out. I remembered the pain when I’d stepped from the kitchen house, and wondered whether that was when the child had flipped itself, sealing both our fates in the span of a single breath.

  I was about to tell Jemma not to worry, that as long as my water remained intact we still had a chance to hold the baby in, to keep it for another three weeks and hope and pray that it would move again. But before I could ease the words past my lips, Georgina pressed a wet rag against my mouth to moisten it, while at the same time I felt the trickle of water between my legs.

  The despair darkened my vision, a black shadow that clouded out the day. As if seeing the same shadow, Jemma brushed Georgina away and held my face in her small, capable hands and pressed hard. My gaze met hers, and a strange calm infused my spirit. She could move the baby. I had shown her how to do it myself, how to ignore the screams of the mother and to reach up and feel for the baby’s shoulders and head and to do what Mother Nature would not. And if I could withstand the pain, then I could survive it.

  The door opened and Geoffrey ran into the room smelling of wet wool, snowflakes sticking to his greatcoat like stars. I reached for him and he kissed me, but not before I saw the abject terror in his eyes.

  He nodded, his blue eyes nearly black with worry. Another pain roiled through me and I cried out, making Geoffrey wince. He placed his head down on the mattress beside me, his hand clutching mine. “Do not leave me, Pamela. There is no life without you.”

  I found the strength to place my hand on his cheek, the gold of my wedding band stark against the pallor of my skin. “Forever, remember?”

  He looked up, his face stricken. “Come back to me. Whatever happens, come back to me. Promise.”

  A new wave of pain rose and crested, stealing my breath.

  “Geoffrey, come.” I had not seen Nathaniel until he spoke and placed a hand on Geoffrey’s shoulder.

  Geoffrey kissed me on my cheek, his lips against my ear. “Promise me.”

  “I promise,” I whispered.

  I felt him leave, then gave myself over to the pain and the surety of Jemma’s guiding hands, and the hard pressure of the wet cloth as Georgina pressed it against my mouth as if trying to stifle the very breath I craved.

  Ava

  ST. SIMONS ISLAND, GEORGIA

  MAY 2011

  I’d biked or driven past Christ Church and its cemetery several times since I’d moved to St. Simons, but had never entered the gates. I would stop across the street from the main gate on a small dirt parking area and peer at the Queen Anne–styled church. It had been built in a cruciform design with a trussed Gothic roof, its grounds dressed in bright blooms and paternal oaks, accessorized with gray and white tombstones and mausoleums. But I had held back from going inside, not really sure why. I wasn’t afraid of cemeteries; they’d been a part of my childhood. It wasn’t fear at all that kept me from entering, but more of an expectation of a discovery—the discovery of something I wasn’t sure I wanted to see.

  Tish parked her car in the same spot where I usually stopped with my bike. After reaching into the backseat for two notebooks and a box of number two pencils, we exited the car and crossed the two-lane street. It was still fairly early, and the churchyard seemed deserted. But that didn’t mean it was empty. The weight of years hung in the air like moss, a pervading sense of events happening just beyond my peripheral vision.

  “The grounds are beautiful, aren’t they?” Tish asked as she led the way through the gate and up the brick path toward the church.

  “Yes. And huge. I didn’t expect it to be so big. A person could get lost in here.”

  “It’s been known to happen. Islanders have been buried in this churchyard for more than two hundred years. We’ve actually got quite a few famous people, too.”

  I nodded, listening with half an ear as I studied the massive trees around us. “These oaks must be a million years old,” I said, tilting my face upward.

  Tish laughed. “Not quite. There’s an old saying that live oaks take a hundred years to grow, a hundred years to live, and a hundred years to die. From old photographs and drawings of the church, the experts say that these trees are well over two hundred years old. There’s a lot these trees have seen.”

  She continued up the path, but I stopped, admiring the oaks and remembering the tree spirit of the dead sailor, and wondered whether the trunks of the oaks were darkened from absorbing the sadness of this place for over two centuries.

  Tish waited for me under the triangular portico. “You have to take a peek at the inside of the church before we tour the cemetery. It’s really lovely.”

  I followed eagerly, needing a sanctuary before facing the silent voices outside.

  Tish opened one of the white double doors and we stepped inside, the atmosphere heavy with the fragrance of flowers and muted air. The interior was all dark wood and sweeping support beams. Despite the darkness, the small Gothic stained-glass windows in the chancel area and the large one in the rear of the chapel depicting a biblical scene allowed the sunlight to trickle in, transforming it into a kaleidoscope of color as it settled on the walls and benches of the small church.

  Speaking in hushed tones, Tish said, “Although the families held services on this spot as early as the mid–eighteenth century, the parish wasn’t officially established until 1807.”

  I looked around at the Victorian architecture, recalling the Gothic roof outside. “It doesn’t seem that old,” I said, wincing at Tish’s admonishing look as I realized I’d forgotten to lower my voice.

  Tish continued. “They didn’t actually have a church building until 1820. Unfortunately, the Yankees destroyed it during the Civil War, and desecrated the cemetery while they were at it.” She frowned and narrowed her eyes, making me think the event was a lot more recent, and that she’d been personally affronted by the soldiers’ sacrilege.

  I craned my neck to see the soaring ceiling and to admire the stained-glass windows. “When did they rebuild it?”

  Tish smiled smugly, reminding me of the high school math teacher she had once been. “Anson Do
dge paid to have it rebuilt in the early eighteen eighties in memory of his dead wife, Ellen. She’s actually entombed under the altar.” She nodded in the direction of the chancel. “Of course, the church is relatively new compared to the cemetery. The oldest grave we’ve found is from 1803.”

  I closed my eyes for a moment, feeling the peace of this holy place, the warmth of the sun brushing my face in a rainbow of colors. If I could choose to be buried anywhere, it would be in the cemetery watched over by the steeple of this serene church. Facing Tish again, I said, “That seems like a lot of graves for us to document.”

  “The cemetery is pretty well documented already. Mostly, I thought our task today would be jotting down the family names, so that if we find another grave on the island with the same name, it will make cross-checking easier. Lucky for us, some of the graves found on the old plantations were reinterred here. But I’m afraid there might be more out there.”

  “Hasn’t anybody else looked before?”

  “Sure, and a lot of marked and unmarked graves have been found. But I think there are more we still haven’t found, and I put a proposal through that if I’m able to find proof of hidden cemeteries, the Georgia Archaeological Institute will let us use that new equipment that can see beneath the earth. Sort of like a portable X-ray machine, I guess.” She shrugged. “I don’t need to know how it works—just how to work it.”

  She motioned for me to follow, then headed back to the door. “A Civil War buff with a metal detector found the remains of those black Union soldiers on Folly Beach a year or so ago, which gave me the idea. I think the ground still holds secrets, and it just takes a determined woman—or two,” she said, indicating me with a jut of her jaw, “to discover them.”

  We walked down the aisle past wooden pews with hymnals stored neatly into pockets on the backs, our footsteps muted by the red carpet. I walked slowly, listening for the hidden sounds I imagined I could sometimes hear tucked behind ordinary life, but all was silent in this church. My peace was short-lived when I realized that Tish was leading us back to the door we’d come in, back out to the cemetery where the bright sunlight chose sides, illuminating only what it wanted to.