“What’s that smell?” Rose asks. She wipes her mouth with a napkin all proper, as if her mother might be watching.
“That be something your Old Sally conjuring up,” Old Sally says.
She walks over to the stove, her bad hip already stiff from a few moments sitting, and gives the root mixture on the back of the stove a stir with a wooden spoon. Then she spreads the roots on towels on the kitchen counter and pours the black brew into a brown bottle with a stopper. The spell will be complete when she goes back to the Temple house and adds some of Iris Temple’s hair to the mixture pulled from Iris’s hairbrush while cleaning her bathroom later on this afternoon. This is one of Old Sally’s most potent protection spells. Without this protection, Iris Temple will do more damage than she already has. She is worse than the Temple men when it comes to forcing her way. In fact, she has all of Savannah scared of her for one reason or another. Mostly because of that Book of Secrets the different Temples have kept for over a century.
If I had my way, I’d destroy that old book, she thinks. Then the Temple reign over Savannah could end. But she doesn’t have her way. Without work at the Temple’s, she couldn’t survive.
“Grandma’s spells get rid of evil spirits,” Violet says to Rose. Her eyes widen as she says ‘evil spirits.’ Then she shakes her head to get her beaded braids to agree.
Old Sally gets a saltine cracker tin from the cabinet that is now filled with homemade oatmeal cookies. She gives the girls two each and Queenie three.
“Mama’s medicines help people get rid of ailments and such,” Queenie says to Rose. She wraps her cookies in a napkin and puts them in the pocket of her dress. “Back in the old days, illnesses were cured with roots, herbs and teas,” she adds.
Queenie looks at her mother like she’s proud of how much she knows. What she doesn’t say is that illnesses caused by hexes or spells can only be cured by magic. And in the Sea Islands, those islands and coastal regions along the Georgia and South Carolina coast, magical medicines are created using feathers, bones, fingernails, hair clippings and sometimes blood. Materials that are mixed with other natural elements such as roots, sand and leaves. Since the white slave owners feared the use of Gullah magic, these conjuring practices were kept secret, although Old Sally has never kept anything hidden from Rose. Old Sally doesn’t believe in secrets. They just give the darkness something to feed on. She’ll tell anybody anything they want to know.
Violet puts her plate and glass in the sink and Rose follows.
“Can we go back to our sandcastles?” Violet asks Old Sally. “We still have work to do.” The girls exchange a look as if their ‘work’ is of the top-secret variety.
Old Sally nods, and Violet challenges Rose to a race, the finish line being their sandcastles. It is inevitable that Violet will lose. She is a foot shorter than Rose. Yet the two girls throw their towels across the porch railing and make a mad dash through the dunes as if equally paired.
While the girls play, Old Sally and Queenie sit on the top step together looking out over the Atlantic Ocean. The sun is just beyond the house and the porch is shady now. It feels good to rest a minute before Old Sally has to get ironing again.
Violet and Rose build a new sandcastle in the distance right next to the old one. If not for the differences in the color of their skin, they might pass as sisters.
“They call themselves the sea gypsies,” Queenie says. “They’ve decided they want to live together when they grow up.”
Old Sally laughs. “Imagination, it be a powerful thing,” she says.
“I get to be their Queen,” Queenie adds, rolling her eyes.
Old Sally puts an arm around her daughter and squeezes a dose of love into her. “You be a queen to me, too.”
Queenie lowers her head. Her hair is clipped short, otherwise it will take over her entire head. She wears colorful headbands that Old Sally makes from fabric she finds. Today’s is bright yellow. The color of a shiny ripe lemon. Queenie has always liked bold colors. The bolder the better. Old Sally gives her another squeeze like the lemons she uses to make lemonade.
“So what be on your mind, baby?” Old Sally asks. “Not like you to be so quiet.”
Queenie’s brow furrows, like whatever she’s thinking about has steered her into deep waters that she’s not so sure she can navigate.
“I need to make a decision, Mama. Mister Oscar wants me to move into the house and be Iris’s companion.”
Now Old Sally is the quiet one. Mister Oscar has other reasons for wanting Queenie there. But she can’t think about that right now. Sheets are waiting on her, and her memories of Maya are weighing her down today.
“You have to make a living some way, baby, and since he be offering room and board.” Old Sally’s voice trails off.
Queenie huffs and pulls away. No one in their right mind would want to be a companion to Iris Temple. Old Sally can barely stand working for her as it is. But Queenie hasn’t found work yet, and Old Sally barely makes enough to support Queenie, Violet and herself.
Silence stretches in front of them like the long stretch of beach along the coastline. Old Sally searches for the truth inside her. When she thinks she has found the words to say, she takes a deep breath and her words come out soft.
“Daughter, I be a strong woman in many ways,” Old Sally begins. “I be good at cooking, cleaning and raising children. And I be especially good in the invisible arts of our people.”
Old Sally pauses, asking for courage from her ancestors to keep going. The truth isn’t always an easy thing to see, much less speak. Queenie, patient in her waiting, stares out at the ocean that is so quiet it looks like a sheet of dark blue glass.
Old Sally takes another deep breath and wrings her hands together to calm herself.
“Something else be true, though,” she begins again. “I still be just a colored woman whose whole life been spent taking care of white people and their children just like my mama did and her mama before her.” She pauses, thinking through what she’ll say next. “Sometimes history and the times be bigger than a single person,” she continues, her voice softer. “And I think this be one of those times. Honey, I don’t know how to tell you to do anything different than I did with my own life. I wish it weren’t so, but it is, and I’m sorry I can’t do better.”
Queenie is the daughter of Iris Temple’s father, Edward Temple, III. The fact that she has a different father than her older siblings has never been a secret to Queenie. Edward Temple was a powerful man and used to getting whatever he wanted—this included Old Sally. No love involved. Old Sally needed to keep her job so she could support her family since her husband was long gone.
Children fathered by landowners and servants was not that unusual in those days and in some ways the old days are still going on. The Temple blood has been mixing with Old Sally’s ancestors for centuries now. Her grandmother, Sadie, carried and raised a Temple child, too, although this secret was swept into the shadows because he was a boy child. This is what Old Sally means when she tries to explain to Queenie about fighting the tides of history. Sometimes those currents just run too deep and too strong. And sometimes those tides even have an undertow.
Yet Old Sally has been getting the message for a while now that something is about to change. She’s not sure when. She’s not sure how. But change is coming. The tea leaves say it. The wind whispers it. And the voices of her ancestors confirm it.
When Old Sally opens her eyes, the scene fades. She goes inside to get a shawl and pauses in front of her large picture window. A worn, comfortable chair sits next to her front window overlooking the sea. Old Sally spends more and more time in this old chair praying over the collection of souls that are hers to look out for. Usually they are people who have been handed a challenging life, like Rose. The sensitive and creative ones often need her most.
Every object on Old Sally’s large window seat stands in for one of these people. Pieces of coral sit next to eyeglasses, alongside two blue robin’s egg
s, as well as other things. Each object has a story.
At the center of the window seat sits the most special object of all: a small sculpture of a sandcastle. Old Sally thinks of Rose as she holds it. Rose is one of her special cases that could have gone either way. The dark side wanted her just as much as the light. Every day of Rose’s life, Iris Temple sent a message to that child that she wished she had never been born. Nothing you can do to a person is worse than cursing their existence.
The vibration grows stronger in Old Sally’s chest. “I waiting for you, baby. It won’t be long now,” she says to Rose.
Old Sally shivers and pulls her shawl close. Earlier that day, her ancestors told her that Rose is in danger again. Her return to Savannah has made her vulnerable. Old Sally’s work is not yet finished. She walks out onto the porch again. These days she feels every single one of her hundred years. Her bones creak and talk to each other like they are saying, Can you believe this old woman still be alive? Old Sally talks back to her old bones sometimes and tells them to hang on, that it won’t be long now, that they still have work to do. Thankfully, her old body and the good lord have listened.
Old Sally smiles and taps the center of her chest as the hum grows louder. The salty air fills her lungs with whispers from the sea. The night is clear. The moon will be full as Iris Temple makes her passage. That means the dark forces will be at their strongest. She must prepare for what’s coming. The change she predicted thirty-five years before is finally here.
“Whenever a cycle begins or ends, it be a powerful thing,” she says to the ocean breeze. “I must stay awake to what be next and not be lulled to sleep.”
In the distance, two figures approach the house. She has lived a long, rich life and when her time comes she will be ready to go. But first she must finish what she set out to do for Rose, as well as protect Queenie and Violet during the transition to come. Then Old Sally’s work will be complete. Then she, too, will get to rest.
CHAPTER TEN
Rose
A warm breeze pushes Rose and Queenie down the path. The beach lays out her sandy skirt in front of them. Rose stops in the middle of the path to greet the landscape. It will be dusk soon and the sky takes on brilliant shades of orange and red to the southwest. Rose wishes she had her paints with her. Something this beautiful begs to be captured. She and Queenie walk arm in arm and the wind playfully whips at their clothes. It is high tide. The ocean crashes on the shore a hundred feet away. Water birds squawk and run along the front edges of the waves, like small winged children daring the water to catch them.
Rose and Queenie take the walkway through the dunes. Rose has spent many happy hours on this stretch of coastline. It feels like an old friend she hasn’t seen in twenty-five years. A flood of memories come with her reunion, of entire days spent by the shore.
Salt spray hits her face. Moisture. Something the dry air in Wyoming doesn’t possess. A substance prayed for during years of drought, given freely here. Her skin tingles, as if thanking her for coming back to her moist homeland.
Even though she feels like rushing, she stops to take in the scene. The horizon stretches into the distance joining the sky with a thin gray line. Sea gulls hover close like beggars asking for coins. Four pelicans soar on the breeze, away from the setting sun, their wings nearly touching. Why has she waited this long to return? She could have always come here without her mother’s knowledge. Or perhaps she knew the effect it would have on her to be here again.
Queenie squeezes Rose’s arm, as if to remind her who awaits. It was good to laugh with her in the car. The whole of Savannah seems tense, including Queenie. It can’t be easy to deal with the uproar those secrets have caused. She can’t imagine what good could come from collecting secrets to begin with.
They continue up the path to the house. Unlike the reunion with her mother, the anticipation of seeing Old Sally again holds great sweetness. The grand woman sits in the corner of her front porch looking out over the ocean. She appears regal, an African goddess reigning over the sea. Goosebumps rise on Rose’s arms, confirmation that she is participating in something mysterious, perhaps even sacred, although Rose has rarely thought in those terms for the last twenty-five years.
Meanwhile, nothing about Old Sally seems tense. If anything, she is a messenger of calm. Rose wishes she could be more like her. This trip home has been difficult. Nothing having to do with her mother is ever easy.
Wearing a cotton dress the color of sand dollars, Old Sally stands as they approach. Creases of age flow like soft rivers down a brown landscape. Her skin is taut as the finest leather and she is barefoot. For some reason this makes Rose smile. She wouldn’t dream of not wearing shoes in the West. The parched earth of the high plains produces plants with prickly spines. Not to mention rattlesnakes. Yet in this setting, Rose wants to toss her shoes in the dunes and feel the sand between her toes. Instead, she hesitates with the awareness that she is only passing through. She will need these shoes again.
Despite the fact that all the other small houses on this stretch of coast have been bought up by developers and replaced by multimillion dollar properties, Old Sally’s house has not changed. It is just as Rose remembers it: a small, old, yet spirited force, just like its owner. Over a decade ago she tried painting it from memory and couldn’t capture it.
What must it be like to live on the edge of the sea, she wonders, instead of on the edge of the Great Plains. She imagines all the storms Old Sally has seen and that this little house has weathered. Old Sally has probably weathered personal storms, as well. Although in that moment Rose realizes just how little she knows about her.
A momentary shame colors Rose’s face. She should know more about this woman who took care of her the first twenty years of her life. Her wishes. Her dreams. Her challenges.
I’ve done what every little rich white girl has done, she thinks. She’s taken Old Sally’s care for granted. Never giving a thought to the fact that she was a woman with a family of her own that she went home to every evening. A woman with needs and sorrows, as well as joys. If she were going to be there for more than a couple of days, she would make the effort to get to know her better.
After climbing the dozen or so steps to the house, Rose pauses at the top. Every window of the house is open to let in the sea breezes. Three large windows reveal a living space filled with things brought in from the outside: driftwood, large shells, roots left drying on the ample window sills, as well as the eclectic collection of objects on the window seat that have grown in number since the last time Rose was here. Objects she studied with fascination as a girl. Rose recognizes the small sandcastle sculpture she gave Old Sally before she left for college.
Queenie walks over first and hugs her mother. Although keeping an eye on Rose, Old Sally exhales a laugh, as though seeing Queenie gives her immense pleasure.
“Oh, child, I do love them hugs,” Old Sally says to Queenie. Old Sally then turns her gaze to Queenie alone and holds her face between her hands while looking deep into her eyes. “How you be, child?” she whispers. “In your heart of hearts.”
“I’m well, Mama,” Queenie says, and then gives Rose a wink.
Old Sally looks into her eyes again, as if to confirm what Queenie says. “I guess you be telling the truth,” the old woman says. She kisses her daughter on both cheeks before returning her attention to Rose.
“I’ve missed you, girl,” Old Sally says and laughs like her happiness can’t be contained.
Rose’s face grows hot as they embrace and she receives a gift she’s not so sure she deserves. At the same time, Old Sally’s strength surprises her. She is thinner than Rose remembers, like her body has shed some weight intentionally to make it easier to carry.
As she did with Queenie, Old Sally holds Rose’s face in between her wrinkled hands that are soft and cool, despite the heat of the day. Rose looks away as Old Sally looks deep into her eyes. Although this loving attention is probably what Rose longs for the most, to receive it i
n such abundance causes her awkwardness to come out in a brief laugh. Not even Max looks at Rose with this level of intensity. He still notices when she makes an effort to look nice for him, and he seems appreciative of her body, but he has never looked into her eyes for any length of time. Nor, to be honest, has she looked into his.
“Oh my, child. You not be doing too well,” Old Sally says to Rose. “It be your mama, I think, haunting you again.” Then she whispers to Rose, “You be all right pretty soon, though. Just wait and see.”
Old Sally kisses Rose lightly on each cheek, as she did with Queenie. Rose can’t remember the last time she was kissed on the cheek. Perhaps it was the last time she saw Old Sally, when she was leaving Savannah to move to Wyoming. Old Sally’s lips are as cool and soft as her touch. Her gesture brings tears to Rose’s eyes. Returning to the Georgia coast has brought unexpected moisture into her life again.
“Good girl,” Old Sally says when she sees Rose’s tears. “Now don’t be brushing those away. I need to capture them.”
Old Sally reaches for a dark brown bottle sitting on a small wooden table bleached white by the wind and sand. She unscrews the top and uses the eye dropper to suck up the tears on Rose’s cheek and put them into the bottle. Having lived with Old Sally the first two decades of her life, Rose doesn’t question any of it. Back then, Old Sally was always gathering roots or collecting tears or strands of Rose’s hair to be used for one of her spells. Looking satisfied, Old Sally screws the cap back on the bottle and puts it in her pocket.
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