Lessons of a Lowcountry Summer

by Rochelle Alers

  “I didn’t grow up in southern California.”

  “Where did you grow up?”

  “In the Bay Area. I was born in Los Angeles. I was three weeks old when my mother left me with my grandmother to bond with her first grandchild. The bonding continued for the next thirty years.”

  “Are you saying your grandmother raised you?”

  “Yes.”

  Hope detected a hint of censure in his tone. “Are you still angry with your mother?”

  “She wasn’t my mother, Hope. She happened to have been the woman who gave birth to me. My grandmother was mother, father, and everything else in between.”

  Hope’s gaze filled with an emotion he did not want to feel: pity. The seconds ticked by until a full minute had elapsed.

  “Tell me, Hope,” he whispered softly, “what it is you’re thinking?”

  She blinked once. “What makes you think I’m thinking anything?”

  “You have a way of tilting your head slightly when you’re deep in thought.”

  “You noticed that?” It had been her mother who had first called her attention to that particular expression.

  “I’ve noticed a lot of things about you.”

  “Which are?”

  “You’re forthcoming when it comes to giving advice, but reluctant to talk about yourself.”

  “You forget that I’m paid to give advice.”

  “Here on McKinnon?”

  Her brow furrowed. “Touché, Theo.”

  He leaned closer so that her bare shoulder pressed against the sleeve of his shirt. “I’m not into tit for tat, so if I’ve insulted you, then please accept my apology.”

  She shook her head. “There’s nothing to apologize for.” Shifting slightly, she gave him a direct stare. She was entranced by the silent sadness in his eyes, and she longed to put her arms around his neck and hold him.

  Theo’s left arm came up and curved around her waist. Hope leaned into him. The motion was so natural, as if he had executed it hundreds of times before. Her right arm slipped around his waist, and they sat silently, motionlessly, and watched the tide come in and deposit its riches on the sand before it retreated. Somewhere between the time when the sun sank lower on the horizon and streaks of orange crisscrossed the sky, Hope trustingly laid her head on Theo’s shoulder, closed her eyes, and slept.

  Theo was still sitting on the sand with his arm around Hope when his siblings returned from the movies. Noelle walked over and sat down beside him. His free arm went around her shoulders.

  “How was the movie?” They had gone to see part three in The Lord of the Rings trilogy: The Return of the King.

  “Even better the second time. I think I want to read the books.”

  Theo stared down at Noelle smiling up at him. “Are you certain?” She nodded. “The next time we go into Savannah we’ll stop in a bookstore and buy them. I remember seeing them in a four-book slipcase.”

  “What’s the fourth book?” she asked.

  “The Hobbit. It’s the first book that sets up the trilogy.”

  “Do you think I can finish four books before we go back to California?”

  “I don’t know. Don’t put that kind of pressure on yourself, Noelle. It’s all right if you don’t finish them until after we return.” Theo knew his sister was anxious about the upcoming school year because she’d made the honor roll despite the upheaval going on in her young life. “You’re going to do all right, sweetheart.”

  Noelle giggled. “I’m not your sweetheart,” she said close to his ear.

  “If you’re not, then who is?”

  She cupped a hand over his ear. “Miss Hope.”

  Theo decided to play along with his sister. “But she didn’t say that she’d be my sweetheart.”

  “Did you ask her?”

  “No,” he whispered back.

  “Then, why don’t you ask her?”

  Lowering his head, he dropped a kiss on her braided head. “Maybe I will.”

  “Don’t take too long, big brother, or you’re going to lose her.”

  He chuckled softly. “When did you get so smart?”

  “I don’t know,” Noelle said, shrugging a slender shoulder. “You’re smart and Christian and Brandon are smart.”

  Hope felt like a voyeur listening to the conversation between Theo and his sister, but she was loathe to stir and end the easy camaraderie between the two. She had been hard-pressed not to laugh when Noelle had asked her brother if he had asked her to be his sweetheart, and that made her think about what if. What if Theo had been her lover instead of Kendall? Would he have deceived her with another woman? After all, his reputation for dating a lot of women was always fodder for the supermarket tabloids.

  Tiring of the subterfuge, she moaned softly and opened her eyes. Tilting her chin, she smiled up at Theo. “I’m sorry I used you for a pillow.”

  “There’s nothing to apologize for.”

  Noelle peered around Theo, smiling. “He’s a good pillow, isn’t he?”

  Hope returned her smile. “The best.”

  Theo dropped his arms, stood up in one graceful motion, and stretched. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m ready for dessert.” He pulled Hope and Noelle up with a minimum of effort, then bent over to pick up Hope’s shoes.

  “Race you back to the house,” Noelle called out as she sprinted up the hill toward the house.

  Hope looked at Theo then began running, with him only steps behind her. She gulped a lungful of air and put her head down, increasing her pace. She ran not to keep up but to win.

  Theo couldn’t believe Hope was outrunning him despite the fact that he had longer legs. She was not only shapely but she was also in shape. His competitive instincts kicked in, and he quickened his pace. He and Hope made it to the patio at the same time, Noelle several steps ahead of them.

  He dropped her shoes, curved an arm around Hope’s waist and lifted her high off her feet. He swung her around several times as she pleaded with him to put her down. He did, but not before he brushed his mouth over hers. The teasing stopped the instant they swallowed each other’s breath.

  Holding onto his neck, her head level with his, Hope stared at him. “Please.” Her breasts were crushed against his chest, the nipples hardening within seconds. His gaze shifted downward as he complied, her body still in contact with his. Her bare feet touched the still warm concrete. She felt every muscle, curve and dip in his physique. Electricity snaked through her body with a shiver of wanting.

  “Please what, Hope?”

  Her gaze never wavered. She was certain he could feel her heartbeat drumming against the expanse of his chest. “Let me go.”

  “I will even though I don’t want to.” He dropped his arms, bent over and picked up her shoes. His fingers caught her right ankle and he put the shoe on her foot, forcing her to place a hand on his shoulder to keep her balance. He repeated the motion with the left shoe. Theo straightened, smiling. “By golly, they fit,” he teased in a very proper British accent.

  Resting her head on his chest, Hope laughed until her eyes filled with tears. “You know you’re a little crazy?”

  “Aren’t we all a little crazy, Dr. Sutton?”

  She sighed and nodded. “You’re right about that.”

  “Let’s go inside before Chris and Brandon get jealous.”

  “What do they have to be jealous about?”

  His expression stilled, becoming serious. “I’m the one with the smart, pretty girl.”

  “Would it make a difference if I wasn’t smart or pretty?”

  “No, Hope. It’s not outside that matters, but in here.” He pointed to her heart.

  A warning voice whispered in her head that she had to stop him. Now. “What is it you want from me, Theo?”

  “Anything and everything you’re willing to give me.”

  “And what do I get in return?”

  “Anything and everything you want.”

  “What if I want something you’re un
able to give me?”

  “I wouldn’t know what that something is until you tell me.”

  “I can’t tell you, because I’m not certain whether it is what I really want or need.”

  “Try me,” he said, challenging her.

  “Later,” she countered softly.

  “When?”

  She smiled up at him, and for the first time he noticed the slight dimple in her chin. “At the end of the summer.”

  Theo pushed out his lower lip, the expression reminding her of a petulant little boy, even though there was no trace of a boy in the very adult Theodore Howell. “I’ll be leaving before the end of the summer.”

  Hope affected a seductive moue. “Then I’ll tell you before you leave.”

  “I never thought you’d be a tease.”

  “I’m not, but what I am is honest. The day before you leave McKinnon Island, I will tell you what it is I want.”

  “I’m going to hold you to that promise.”

  Reaching for her hand, he held it in a firm grip, leading her into the house.

  Eighteen

  And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings.

  —W. B. Yeats

  Ezra Smith watched the play of emotions cross the face of the woman sitting at the opposite end of the rowboat. He had known Rebecca Owens a week and was completely enchanted with her. At first he’d thought it was her delicate beauty, but after spending several days together he realized it was her enthusiasm, her thirst for knowledge, her intense need to know more and more.

  She had come to his sister-in-law to learn to weave baskets from dried sweetgrass and palmetto strips, and subsequently had become his companion and his friend. She pulled her fingers from the water, shaking them. Pinpoints of light piercing the thick overgrowth of trees glinted off the diamonds on her delicate left hand. The rings were a constant reminder that she was committed to another man.

  Rebecca opened her eyes at the sound of a loud crack. A flock of squawking birds flew overhead. The sound echoed loudly in the early morning quiet, then the area surrounding the swamp settled back to a shrouded eeriness punctuated by the slip-slap sound of oars slicing through the murky water.

  She spied a graceful white bird with a long neck and plumage perched on a fallen tree limb. “What’s that?”

  Ezra glanced over his shoulder. “A heron.”

  “Beautiful.”

  “Yes.”

  He was looking not at the bird but at Rebecca. She had chosen to wear a long-sleeved white linen shirt, jeans, and a pair of leather boots for their boat trip to an abandoned slave cemetery at the northernmost tip of the island, and he found her casual attire more provocative than if she’d worn a bikini. The denim fabric defined every curve of her compact body.

  Palmetto trees and ancient oak draped in Spanish moss, lined the bank of the swamp, closing in around them as the water narrowed until it was little more than a meandering stream. The elderly man who had given him directions had warned him to look out for snakes—water moccasins in particular—and for the earth that moved under his feet. It had taken several minutes for Ezra to interpret that to mean quicksand. Steering toward the bank, he pulled the oars into the boat, then jumped out.

  From the bottom of the boat he retrieved a large, ornately carved wooden cane, then he curved an arm around Rebecca’s waist and hoisted her out of the boat. The entwined serpents on the walking stick, also known as a “conjure stick,” symbolized the magic and religion coiled around every facet of life of the sea islanders. His conjure stick was for snakes and quicksand. He planned to tap the ground before he placed one foot in front of the other.

  “Stay behind me at all times,” he warned, as he turned and headed in an easterly direction.

  Rebecca stared at the back of Ezra’s head. At sixty-two, he still had all of his hair. Streaks of silver shimmered in a mane as pale as moonlight, the color incongruent against his deeply tanned brown skin. He wasn’t the type of man she would have found herself physically attracted to, except for his intelligence. He was a brilliant historian.

  “How far is it?” she asked after ten minutes.

  There was no road, only narrow foot trails where the forest had yet to reclaim the land. There came an occasional rustling in overhead trees and brushes, but except for the heron, she hadn’t caught a glimpse of any wildlife. The cloying smell of flowers mingled with decaying foliage and animal waste.

  Ezra stopped, pointing. “It’s just up ahead. See where the woods thin out a little.”

  She nodded. Massive oak trees formed a natural canopy, shutting out the rays of the hot sun. Ezra started up again, and she followed until they stood outside the rusty gates to a cemetery. There were gravestones covered with mold, moss and mildew. She was fascinated by the number of bottles, cups and shells around the graves.

  She waited outside while Ezra pulled a digital camera from the pocket on his denim shirt and began taking pictures. The longer she waited, the more uncomfortable she became. She hadn’t visited a cemetery since burying her sister. Her parents went back every year on the anniversary of their youngest daughter’s death, but she refused to join them.

  The sun rose higher, along with the heat and humidity, and forty minutes later Ezra was finished. He had seen and photographed enough. Some of the items left at the graves were interesting, most were familiar, but there were others he’d never seen before.

  He smiled at Rebecca. “Are you ready to go back?”

  She flashed a dimpled smile. “Yes.”

  “May I offer you breakfast before I take you back home?”

  Her smile widened until it was a full grin. “Yes, thank you.”

  The return trip to where they’d left the boat was accomplished in half the time it had taken to reach the cemetery. Rebecca got in and sat down while Ezra pushed off the bank and got in with a nimbleness that belied his age. By the time they were underway, the swamp was alive with movement and sound. A large water snake came within several feet of the rowboat, swimming in the direction from which they’d just come.

  “Why was the cemetery filled with so much litter?” She had to say something, anything to keep her mind off of what lurked under the slow-moving boat.

  Ezra smiled, steering the boat toward the opposite bank. “It’s not litter, it’s grave decorations. Broken bottles and other ornaments in an African-American cemetery are expressions of religion and magic. Offerings to the deceased are much like the ancient pharaohs, wherein the dead must be given whatever they may need for the next world, lest the spirit come back. And woe to one who steals anything from a grave, even a broken mirror, because bad luck will follow him.”

  “It sounds more like magic than religion.”

  “Gullahs practiced their West African beliefs in relative isolation until the 1840s. After that the Baptist religion dominated the culture. However, the abundance of Moslem practices on the Georgia coast in the 1930s indicate the importation of people from northern Nigeria or the Western Sudan. I interviewed a woman on Sapelo Island who told of the regular ritual prayers of her great-grandfather on his prayer rug. Despite Christianity, superstitions still govern the lives of sea island natives from birth to death.”

  Resting her elbows on her knees, Rebecca leaned forward. “What are some of them?”

  “The left eye jumping means bad news, the right one means good news. If someone wears a dime on their body, and it turns black, then it is a sure sign that one has been conjured or root-worked, and when you hear an owl hoot that means someone is going to die. You never sweep up and throw out your trash after dark, or someone will die. Never leave hair in your comb or brush. Burn it, because someone can use it to cast a spell on you. The same goes for nail clippings.”

  “That sounds ridiculous.”

  “It may sound ridiculous to you, but it is very real to some. I spoke to a woman who’d moved to Little Rock from Savannah to escape the evil influences t
hat she said would drive her crazy. To her the curse put on her by a jealous neighbor was so real that it defied Western psychiatric practices.

  “Dr. Ramsay Mallette, a former professor of psychiatry at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, trained his residents to perform root magic to reverse the hexes placed on patients whose fear of death was paralyzing. He showed a videotape of the healing procedure, complete with the instruments of conjure that produced recovery, as a demonstration of the power of belief.”

  Rebecca’s gaze did not waver. “What do you believe, Ezra?”

  “It has nothing to do with what I believe, Rebecca. I only report what I see and hear. A woman who’d had her hex reversed told me, ‘She wuk a root on me so strong dat she put a big snake in muh bed, and uh could feel tings moobin in tru muh body. I could feel duh snake runnin all tru me.’ ” His inflection was pure Gullah.

  “Hey, that was good.”

  Ezra wiggled his eyebrows, grinning. “You understood me?”

  “Yes.” There was no mistaking her delight.

  “Let’s see if you understand this: ‘Day clean broad.’ ”

  She shook her head. “I can’t figure that one out.”

  “Broad daylight. Placing an adjective after the noun it modifies is an example of word order that makes the Gullah language colorful and distinctive. For example: ‘a child bad,’ ‘tree high,’ or ‘I not see him.’ Opening a sentence with a subject and repeating it with a pronoun is attributed to African syntax. So is the frequent repetition of words or phrases. ‘I go,’ ‘I went,’ ‘I shall go’ may also be said in the same phrase. Suppose a woman tells her doctor, ‘I bees sick,’ she connotes both that she is, and has been, sick.”

  “Are the differences between sea island peoples that discriminating?”

  “Yes, but they are subtle. Although early rice planters along this coast were aware that Africans were as diverse as Europeans, they molded them into a cohesive workforce, ignoring ethnic differences and discouraging native customs. For survival, slaves had to repress differences and create a common Gullah culture.”