Where the River Runs

by Patti Callahan Henry

  “Aha, but bad children may not be thrown into the fire—your family must always let you come home.”

  “How are you, Tulu? How are your children?” I was suddenly ashamed that I didn’t remember Tulu’s children’s names. Had I always been so selfish that I only remembered what Tulu did for me?

  We entered the cramped living room, and the smells of mildew and Lysol washed over me. Nothing looked dirty, yet everything appeared worn down, cracked, faded.

  “My children? They’re all wonderful. Spread all over the place. I don’t get to see them as much as I’d like—but they’re out building their place in this wide world.”

  “Do they come very often?”

  “No, and it is hard for an old woman to travel, ahya? But I do talk to them all the time, and all their children. They bought me some fancy cell phone so that they can reach me whenever they want. . . .” She rolled her eyes. “Guess they got tired of me forgettin’ to pay the phone bill. Then they’d have to send Sheriff to check on me. Seaboro was about to start charging me for visits.” I followed Tulu to the kitchen table. She plopped down on a ladder-back chair that was missing three of its rungs up the back of the seat. “Here, sit, sit.” She patted her hand on a chair next to hers.

  These women from my childhood—Mother and Tulu—seemed so lonely. Was that what awaited me?

  I touched Tulu’s arm. “Mother told me about your husband passing. I’m sorry.”

  “Did she tell you how she almost fainted at the funeral?” Tulu laughed, a rich deep sound.

  “No. Please tell.”

  “Well, we have a tradition at Gullah funerals; we do pass the youngest baby back and forth over the grave so that the leaving spirit doesn’t come back to bother the child. I thought your mother was gonna leave us right there, on the spot, next to my husband’s grave. She began to sway and sweat—‘mist,’ she’d say—with strangled sounds I’d never done heard from her.”

  “Oh, I wish I could’ve seen that.” I laughed and hugged Tulu.

  “Now, what brings you to me?” Tulu leaned across the table, pushed a jelly jar glass toward me. “Would you like sweet or unsweetened tea?”

  “Sweet,” I said. “I’m here for the Gullah curriculum I told you about on the phone. Our son just graduated from high school. . . . Anyway, I thought you could help me. So”—I took a deep breath—“I’m here to write it and . . .”

  “Figure out what you want.”

  “No, I just need to do some research.”

  “You can’t lie to me.” Tulu stood, holding her hand to her back. “You can’t be telling me stories. I’ll be the one to tell the stories around here.” She opened a cupboard and reached in, pulled down a box and placed it on the table in front of me. “This is yours.”

  “Mine?” I touched the wooden box, ran my fingers along a dolphin etched in the top of the pine. “I don’t . . . remember this.” I looked up at Tulu.

  “You threw it away the morning you swam like you were headed to Tybee Island after that terrible fire. I found it in the trash behind the house—knew you needed to keep it, that someday you would come back for it.”

  A knifelike pain shot through my forehead. The box. Dear God, how could I have forgotten about the box? Tim had made it for me. It was filled with scraps of paper that Danny and I had written our dreams on. I placed a hand over my eyes. “Tulu, I forgot about the box.”

  “That, right here, is your problem, lil’ one. You’ve forgotten about it. . . .” Tulu lifted the box in the air and then placed it squarely on my lap. “I knew you’d come back here one day, come to see me. I didn’t know what would bring you, but I knew it wouldn’t be for the reasons you thought. You’re not here to write a curriculum. . . . You’re here to remember who you are.”

  “No . . .”

  “I’m afraid so, my dear. But if you’d like to say it’s the curriculum you’re seekin,’ then we’ll start talking about it now.”

  “Now. Yes, now would be good.” I shoved the box to the side of the table as if a serpent resided under the bottlenose dolphin.

  “I knew you wasn’t swimming into that sea to kill yourself, Meridy.”

  I leaned across the table. “How did you know that?”

  “Your spirit, little one. Your spirit—it shone brighter, longer and more shimmery than any one young soul I’d ever met.”

  “That’s not what Mother would have said.” I fingered the file folder in front of me, needing to talk about the history of the Gullah, but also needing to discover what shimmery soul Tulu could possibly be talking about.

  “You do what we all do—you only remember what you want, what serves your idea of who you are. And our mothers’ voices speak the loudest in our head. But you were a wild child, full of life and longing. I saw you going through life with your arms wide open. Laughter be pouring from your mouth. Love be swelling everywhere. Then I saw all that wither. . . . I knew it would come back one day.”

  I closed my eyes and tried to find the girl who was full of all Tulu had seen in her. But I couldn’t get past the fear and smoke that came after.

  I opened my eyes, pulled a pen from my bag, lifted my iced tea and drank the entire glass in one long swallow as if it were whiskey. “Tell me a little bit about the Gullah culture, Tulu. Where did it come from? And why? I’ll divide this into five days with a different subject each day.” I held out the paper I’d written the outline on.

  Day One: History and Proverbs

  Day Two: Stories/Songs/Parables

  Day Three: Folk Medicine

  Day Four: Sweetgrass Baskets

  Day Five: Burial Customs and Names

  “Yes.” Tulu nodded. “This is good. I’ll start with the history—because it is what makes us who we are. As we say, ‘If you don’t know where you are going, you should know where you came from.’ ” She winked and lifted her chin.

  “Okay, Tulu. I know your tricks by now. We are talking about this curriculum, not me.”

  “Ah.” She rolled her eyes. “No tricks here—you’re just hearing what you need to be hearing.”

  “The history, Tulu. The history, please.” I lifted my pen.

  Tulu took a deep breath, settled back in her chair. “The Gullah culture is still alive here. It is not just a history in the past. It is all over these here islands. I am a binyah—meaning I come from here, a descendant of the West Africans brought here to the Lowcountry to work as slaves. Sixth generation.” She nodded as if she saw the other five generations at the side door of her shack. “Visitors and new-comers are cumyahs. Our culture grew out of the West African culture. We farmed, worked the rice and cotton fields before we were freed and offered a chance to purchase the land. The way we’ve stayed here has let us keep our culture longer than any slave descendants in America. Everyone thinks it is just the language, but it is so much more than the Gullah language—it is the struggle, spirituality, perseverance and tradition. We keep our traditions—whether it is the sweetgrass baskets, casting the net for seafood, our stories, or music.”

  “Yes.” I leaned forward. “More . . .”

  “The language is a combination of all the languages brought from different communities on the rice coast of West Africa. To communicate, the slaves combined similar words and phrases from their own languages with the English to form the Gullah language.”

  As Tulu told me the history of her African culture for the next hour, the information added little to what I’d already read on the Internet or in history books, but her melodic voice with its authentic Gullah clip made what she was saying come alive and fed my hunger for her stories and songs.

  “Lil’ one, that is all for today. You can find a list of proverbs anywhere. I can tell you my favorites, though. . . .”

  “I bet I remember some.” I smiled.

  “Come back when you are ready for more.”

  “I’m ready now.”

  “No, you’re not. You have other things you need to attend to for a little while and I’m . . . tired
.”

  “Oh.” I stood. “I’m so sorry. I’ve exhausted you.” I glanced around the kitchen. Plywood shelves were lined with canned foods and exquisite sweetgrass baskets filled with vegetables, mail, sewing and other paraphernalia. I walked over, touched a basket. “These are amazing, Tulu. Did you make them?”

  “Aye.” She nodded.

  “These are worth a lot of money to the cumyahs, ya know?”

  She laughed. “I don’t make them for money. They keep my soul satisfied and my hands useful.” She walked over, picked up an empty basket. “Here, this one is for you.”

  The basket was larger than the others, woven in an intricate pattern. The design, I remembered, was called a “fanner”—a flat basket with a small slanting rim that was used to separate the chaff from the rice.

  “I can’t take your most beautiful fanner, Tulu.”

  “Oh, yes, you can. You go on now and get started on your own journey.”

  I held the basket, stretched, lifted my papers from the table. “Thank you so much. I’ll come back for more. At least I have an outline now. . . . I can begin to write and then we can go over each subject.”

  Tulu grinned. “You can find out any of this at the Penn Center in Beaufort.”

  “Not as good as finding it out from you.”

  “Use me. Then . . . use me as a reason to stay.”

  I waved my hand. “I don’t need a reason. . . . I’m . . .”

  Tulu reached over and hugged me. “I have one more piece of Gullah history for you today, little one.”

  “What’s that?”

  “In our culture, when you’re seeking the sacred, you know you’ve come out on the other side when someone gives you something in a dream.”

  “I’ll use that in the section on stories, songs and parables.” I bit my lower lip.

  “It’s not a story or a parable.”

  “I’m just seeking some history.” I smiled, hugged her again. “And you’re giving me information. Guess I’m all set.” I took in the broken house, the crippled chairs, and then Tulu reached under her chair and handed me the pine box.

  I shook my head. “I don’t need that.”

  Tulu placed it on the kitchen table and abruptly walked toward the front door. I picked up the box without looking directly at it and followed her outside. I hugged her good-bye and went to my car, where I dumped my papers in the trunk.

  The car ride home wound down dirt roads leading from Tulu’s neighborhood, through oak-shaded lanes of leaning shanties, over the bridge crossing the creek to my home ten minutes away. I drove by Lowcountry arts and crafts stores and sweetgrass basket stands, then past the stone and brick entry signs leading to River Oaks—my strip of land.

  Once the carved wooden box was shoved beneath my bed, and my files were stowed on the desk, I went downstairs to call Beau. The answering machine with my voice answered. “You’ve reached the Dresden home. We’re not here; leave a message.” Beau wouldn’t even check these messages—I was always the one to check the home machine. Home was my domain; anything important for him would go to the office and Elaine, his assistant. It was Sunday and no one would answer at his office. Instead of leaving a message, I pressed the pound button to enter my code. There was a voice mailbox full of reminders: the book club, Carol’s surgery—friends were organizing dinners for the family—Beth’s birthday luncheon.

  I hung up and stretched my neck. I was shirking my duties. Although I’d once cut high school classes for the thrill of watching an incoming storm raising the waves to record heights, I was a different woman now.

  The need to talk to my son filled me: I dialed B.J.’s number only to receive his voice mail also. Voice mail everywhere—I wanted a human.

  I ran up the stairs I had once thought I could fly down and changed into a sundress, slipped on the sandals with the tiny shells that matched the trim on the dress. I’d stop by Mother’s luncheon, maybe find more common ground between us. I clipped my hair into a barrette at the base of my neck just like Mother preferred.

  I wound my way among the tables until I found the neat knot of Mother’s hair. The women sat around a table in the Seaboro Tea-room—once a farmhouse saved by the diligent efforts of the Ladies of Seaboro Society. According to them, tearing down old buildings for further development was the eighth deadly sin.

  Ten faces turned and looked up at me as I touched her shoulder. “Hello, Mother. I finished my work early and thought I’d stop by.”

  She looked at me. “Well, hello there, darling. I thought you weren’t coming—and you’re twenty minutes late and there are no more seats.” Her face appeared slanted as if half of it wanted to welcome me and the other half disapproved. All of sudden I remembered once showing up at a tenth-birthday party in shorts and my favorite striped T-shirt, only to find all the other girls had worn taffeta party dresses—no one had told me it was a dress-up tea party. The same sinking realization of my own inadequacy came now.

  “I’m sorry.” My voice was tinny and hollow. “Thought I’d . . .”

  A woman stood, laughed. “Meridy Dresden, you sit right here while I go get the hostess for another chair. We haven’t even ordered food yet. It is so good to see you.” She walked around the table, hugged me.

  Who was she? I smiled at her. “Thank you.”

  “You don’t remember me, do you?” She lifted her eyebrows—eager.

  I smiled. “I know you. . . . I just forget how.”

  “LuAnn Martin, Danny’s aunt.” She threw her arms wide-open.

  I glanced around the table; all the women stared at me with their mouths open like they wanted to say something but couldn’t. Danny’s aunt—how humiliating that I hadn’t remembered. Somehow years of Southern etiquette reared a beautiful, polite head, and I hugged Mrs. Martin.

  I looked at Mother, her face blanched and closed, and I once again understood the disgrace I had brought to the McFadden family name. “Thanks, LuAnn . . . Mrs. Martin . . . I just wanted to stop by and say hello to Mother on my way to . . . Y’all go ahead and have a nice luncheon.”

  “No, dear, we insist that you stay.” Mrs. Martin grabbed my hand.

  Insisting was a nonnegotiable act of obligation. I smiled.

  “Meridy,” said a woman whose hair was more lavender than the white it was meant to be, “do you remember when you took cotillion and lost your white gloves six weeks in a row?” The woman laughed. “I bet you don’t even remember that.” It was Mrs. Hodge, the cotillion, dance and etiquette teacher.

  “Want to know a secret?” I asked, winking. “I didn’t lose them—I hid them every week, hoping you wouldn’t give me another pair. I will now officially apologize.”

  Laughter poured across the table. I sat on a chair Mrs. Martin had the hostess bring for me.

  “You don’t think I knew that, my dear? You were quite the adorable handful. I’m so glad to see you with such a nice life.”

  “Well, thank you, Mrs. Hodge. Yes, a nice life.”

  Conversation around the table turned to censored books in the library, to gossip about Seaboro names I didn’t recognize, until Charlotte Hamlon spoke of Tim. She was a pinched-faced woman, her face and mouth tight in an expression of disapproval she’d probably made her entire life. Red lipstick had bled into the lines around her mouth.

  “Well, I heard through the grapevine that Tim Oliver has agreed to pay the historical society the full amount for the renovation,” Charlotte said.

  You are the grapevine, I wanted to say but didn’t.

  Mrs. Martin lifted her sweet tea. “You sure about that, Charlotte?”

  “Oh, yes. I’m sure. I do believe the final straw was when we asked his mother to take just a small sabbatical from the society meetings.” Charlotte held her thumb and forefinger a millimeter apart to show her sarcasm for the length of the sabbatical.

  I gasped. “You what?”

  Charlotte turned to me and squinted her eyes as if she had never seen me show up. “Did you say something, dear?”r />
  I blushed, held both palms in the air.

  “Well,” Charlotte continued, “we can probably get started on the renovations as soon as next month, if this is the case.”

  Tim’s face, smiling and open as he walked through the maritime forest, came to me. I spoke before I knew what I was saying. “I have a better idea for raising money for the Keeper’s Cottage.”

  Mother’s hand fell on my knee, squeezed. I firmly slid her hand off my leg and continued. “Our private school at home always raises lots of money with an arts festival. Where are there more arts than here?” I glanced around the table. Forks were poised in midair, mouths were open, but no one spoke. Maybe no one ever crossed Charlotte Hamlon—but this was Tim we were talking about.

  I continued in a stream of flowing words I didn’t stop. “Anyway, even today when I was driving through Seaboro County, I saw stands and shops selling original artwork. Y’all are constantly trying to get the outside world to notice the merits, of which there are many, of Seaboro. Gathering artists from here to Savannah to Hilton Head to Charleston would bring that attention. Don’t you think bringing the arts here makes so much sense?”

  Charlotte took a long swallow of her tea. “Dear, that just wouldn’t work at all. Not one little bit. We could never raise the amount of money we need at a festival.”

  Everyone avoided my eyes and the talk shifted, awkward and stilted, to Mrs. Foster’s house and, oh, yes, how her son’s wild children had tipped the casket when they ran through the church parlor.

  I nibbled on my pecan chicken salad and listened to Mother: a woman who smiled and talked and offered warmth and support to everyone at the table—except me.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “It’s impossible to get straight wood from crooked timber.”

  —GULLAH PROVERB

  Sunlight fractured into arrows off the stern of the metal sloop. In the past few days I’d become accustomed to the quiet that was never really silent—the cry of a loon, the song of the marsh frog, the whisper of the tide rising or falling. I leaned into the filled silence. I didn’t even care where Tim took me as we rode over the waves. It had been so long, so damn long, since I’d been out on the water.