by Hite, Ann
“Faith?” And there stood Will on one of the shrimp boats.
“So you’re what brought the change in Shelly.”
“I guess I am. Except she’s not really happy to see me.” He walked to the rail of the boat.
“Sure she is. She’s just being Shelly.” I looked away. I didn’t want him to know it wasn’t Faith.
He laughed.
“You’ve been here all this time?” I said this more to myself than him.
He stood on the deck of the boat called Sweet Jesse. “Yes.”
“What about your mama? She nearly died of heartache. I know this. I seen—” I stopped, knowing I didn’t sound like Faith at all.
Will looked hard at me. “Something is different. What’s wrong with you, Faith?”
I turned away from his hot stare. There wasn’t no use in trying to fool him. “I’m Arleen. I came back to clean up what you left behind. I came to catch this story gone all wrong.”
“Arleen?” He looked at me like I’d lost my mind.
“She couldn’t handle all your truth-telling. You men are all the same when everything is said and done,” I said.
He was quiet. “Arleen? How can this be?”
“Easy enough. You should know that, seeing how your mama’s a conjure woman, or has your new life made you forget the important things?”
He studied me. “I don’t know what to say, Arleen. What happened to you was wrong.”
A screeching sound went off in my head. “I don’t want to talk to you now.” I began to walk away.
“Wait. I need to talk to you and Faith.”
“Not today.”
“How about meeting me tomorrow?”
I turned around. Faith’s heart slowed. It was dangerous. She wanted out to talk with him so bad. “Maybe.”
“Go to the dock close to the Tyson house in the morning at sunrise. I’ll meet you there. We’ll talk, Arleen. I’ll explain what happened to bring me here to live.” He sounded like he was telling the truth. “And you can tell me how you ended up being Faith.”
“Okay.”
He smiled.
THE NEXT MORNING I left out before Ada came pulling into the drive from town. The dirt road out to the dock was bumpy, and my driving wasn’t the best. Shoot, all I’d ever driven was Daddy’s old tractor in the field, but I managed ’cause there wasn’t a soul to be seen. Missus would be worried over Faith taking her car, but I’d settle that when I got back. As a strip of orange showed where the sun met the marsh and water, the putt, putt of Will’s boat let me know he wasn’t far off. The gray of morning was almost gone.
By the time he slid that boat up to the dock, I was standing there. The water lapped against the dock’s poles. “Now we talk, Arleen?”
“Okay.”
He sighed. “I had to leave. Faith knew that. Why are you stirred up? Why did you take Faith’s body? That doesn’t make sense. Faith knew the whole truth. I never lied to her. There was a lot more that caused me to leave besides what happened to you.”
“I got something in the car to show you.” I couldn’t help but smile. “I need to tell you what Faith was doing and why I took her body. I have to finish something and then I’ll let her back. I will.”
“If someone sees me with Faith, trouble will start.” He looked over at Sweet Jesse. “Why don’t you come on the boat and I’ll take you out for a while. We’ll ride.”
I looked at all that water and marsh. “I guess, but let me get something from the car.” If I had lived, I could have loved Will with my whole heart. I ran to the car and got my package.
Will held out his hand as I stepped onto the dock. “What have you got there, Arleen?” He helped me onto his boat.
“Something special I’ve been working on, the whole reason I’m here in the first place.” I kept the quilt against my chest. “So you live with Ada Lee Tine?”
“Yes.” He smiled.
“Lord, she truly hates me. I can tell by the way she watches me, so don’t deny it.”
He started the boat and began to pull it away from the dock. The floor rocked under my feet and the boat parted the water, spraying it up on my face.
“Hold on to the rail until you get your sea legs!” Will yelled over the engine. “Ada doesn’t hate anyone. She’s the kindest soul I know.” He nodded at my quilt wrapped in the old blanket. “She’s afraid of your charm quilt. Yes, I’ve heard all about it.” He smiled.
“What about your own mama, Will? Why did you leave her?”
He frowned. “It’s a long, long story, but sometimes mothers aren’t who they are supposed to be.”
I laughed. “Lord, Will, if I had lived, I’d be younger than you, and I know mamas aren’t perfect. Sometimes they be downright stupid, but everybody loves their own mama.”
“I love her, but well, lies have a way of driving people apart, Arleen. The bigger the lie, the further the distance.”
“Faith would love to have a mama like you have, and you just threw her away.”
“That’s not so.” His face became serious.
“This is why I took over Faith’s body.” I pulled up the skirt I was wearing and showed him Faith’s legs.
He looked away.
“It’s okay to look. You got to see what she did so you understand why I’m here.”
His face became still when he saw the scabs.
“This is what she started doing to herself. Ever since you left and told her all your truths, she lost her mind in bits and pieces.”
“Cover them.”
I dropped the skirt. “We both know how to twist and turn a story. Don’t we?” I laughed. “I had to catch it and turn it right. I had to think fast. See, I wanted to pay you back for helping me like you did. You stood up for me even after I was dead and gone. I wanted to take care of her for you.” I unfolded my quilt. “See, you be here. Right here in the hem.”
He looked over to where I pointed. “I don’t see anything.”
“Of course not. You’re hidden in there. It’s your goodness that helps give power to this charm.”
“Arleen, I want to talk to Faith.” He gave me his soft, serious look.
Faith stirred, but I was boss. “Did you know that Faith is a quilter? Her quilts are special. She started sewing when you left, and she stole the sewing basket from your mama’s cabin. The gravestones are what makes her quilts so important. She adds them to her work.”
Will looked at the quilt. “But Ada says this quilt is bad.”
“A death quilt is for protecting one who has been wronged. Lord help the person who did the hurting, though. She be right about that. See, I got to tell my story. Me and Faith are telling it through this here quilt. Then I’ll be through and I can leave.”
He watched the water as we bumped across. “If Faith understands what needs to be done, then let her come back.”
“She’s too good, Will. I have to make sure the rightful owner gets this death quilt. I thought you’d be glad to see me. You of all people.” I smiled at him.
He pushed that boat out to open water.
“Where are we going?” I touched his arm. A heat came into Faith’s fingers. I’d been real careful not to touch many humans, just the missus. For some reason she didn’t drain my power. Probably because her heart was the purest I’d seen, besides Mama’s. Not even Will could match Missus.
“Brunswick. Nobody knows you there.”
“You’re not going to make me let her go right now. It’s not time.”
He frowned. “I know what happened to you, Arleen, was unfair and hard, but taking Faith’s body hostage won’t change that.”
I laughed. I had to laugh. “I loved my life, hard or not. You and Faith get to walk around doing what you want. Not me. So don’t go telling me about unfair.”
“But Faith didn’t ask you to take over her body.”
“You’re wrong. She accepted my help. She had to ask me to come. That’s the rule.”
We were in the ocean water and th
e boat rocked and bumped. The air was so salty I could almost taste it. Maybe I could stay here. Missus was thinking she’d stay. She told me. I liked her, the new her out there in the marsh away from Pastor. Maybe she cared. I closed my eyes and allowed the wind and spray from the waves to move over me. What would happen to Faith? “Will, I already know why you left. I know the lies and the truths. There are no secrets where my spirit lives. Pastor Dobbins is not the only rotten apple in this big barrel of lies.”
Will looked over at me. “Maybe you do know.”
“Let ye not judge.” I closed my eyes again.
Faith struggled to the surface, but I pushed her down. The salt washed over my skin. “I know everything,” I whispered.
Ada Lee Tine
MISS LYDIA STOOD at the window. “That tree reminds me of an old woman.”
I looked out. There stood the old woman spirit in the backyard by the big twisted oak Miss Lydia was talking about. “Lots say that.”
“Where’s Shelly?”
“She’s changing the sheets on the beds, ma’am.”
Miss Lydia frowned. “Faith took the car early this morning. Has she come back?”
The wind was whipping the treetops. “No, ma’am.”
“Ada, I’ve never seen a quilt like the one she’s working on. Have you? I can’t imagine where she got the idea for this one. There doesn’t seem to be a real pattern.”
“Don’t need a pattern for that kind of quilt. You make it up as you go.”
“I would have to have a pattern.”
“Lots of women work better with a pattern to go by. We need some direction. Miss Faith strikes out on her own. That be both a good and bad thing.”
The old woman was still waiting.
“I’m going out for a walk before it rains.” Miss Lydia turned from the window. She left out the front door. Shelly bumped around upstairs. Girls now just didn’t move silent like they did in my day. The old woman hadn’t moved. I took off my apron and threw it on the chair. Enough was enough. I charged out the back door before I lost my nerve.
The old woman kept her sight on the upstairs windows and didn’t pay me no mind. Pure sadness mixed with a little anger showed on her face.
“We got to talk.”
She kept looking at the house. “I don’t like this house. It was too hard to live in.” She waited. “I ain’t here for you, girl.”
This flew all over me. “What do you mean too hard to live in?”
Still she watched the bedroom window that Shelly must have been in. “You don’t know me. You should. I be from the island a long time before you was born. I’ve been gone from this earth since the walk.”
“So you lived here,” I said.
“Yes, ma’am.” She still didn’t look at me.
“You need to listen to what I got to say to you. It’s been a long time coming. I’m sorry you was a slave and died away from home, but we got to settle what’s between us.”
This made her look at me. “I don’t reckon we could ever settle what’s between us, Ada Lee Tine.”
“You leave Shelly alone.”
“That’s what you had to tell me? That’s what was between us?” She cackled.
“You took the only thing that ever matter to me. Did you know that? Roger was mine, and I loved him with my whole heart. You hear? Part of me is missing and always will be ’cause of you.”
“I didn’t do nothing.”
“You caused him to die. You could have saved him. He was mine.”
“Girl, how could I save him?” She came closer.
“It was you messing with other people’s lives that caused this whole mess.”
“How you figure that, Ada Lee? I was here because of Mary Beth Clark, not him. She was and is tied to me ’cause I was close to the woman that helped raise her, Celestia Clark. Helped her real great-grandmama, Liza, out of a story. Celestia was like my sister. We was raised together. Close as two peas in a pod until Liza came along, but she turned out to be okay. It was you that caused him to die. He came looking for you, not her or me.” She laughed.
“I loved Roger.” My voice cracked.
“That’s what you say, but girl, why you never tell him that?” She waited a minute. “I’ll tell you why. ’Cause you thought you had the whole world in front of you, that you could be slow and settled. Life ain’t about being slow, girl. You dragged your feet and he left this world. Not by me. Folks leave when they are finished, when their job be done.”
“No. That ain’t so, ’cause he left me unfinished.” The tears was there. Tears I had held in for so, so long.
“Lordy, girl, he finished you. Can’t you see that? His job was not to be your man but to teach you how to reach out and love. He opened the door for the boy that came to you. Before him, you wouldn’t have been so trusting, so eager to love that boy.”
My heart cracked open out there by that big old oak tree.
“You can’t own something that’s not yours to have, girl. He wasn’t yours. He was the doorman.”
The marsh grass rustled in the wind. A storm was coming, but there was time before it hit. Maybe it would go around.
“Good and bad things happen in our lives. We can’t control either. Bad will come to you, girl. It always does. How you think you could outrun it? But here’s how it is, you walk right through.”
“I miss him.”
The old woman nodded. “He was a good soul. You come from good family. The Tines be caring, loving folks. I know. See, they be my family. Your granddaddy was my boy. I loved him with my whole heart and he lost me, Ada Lee. He lost me out there walking. My name be Emmaline.”
I shook my head. “Why you want Shelly?”
“You think you was part of that killing. You got it in your head because of your old auntie that you might have helped me. You thought I killed them two and you was part of it. You had it wrong. I used you to get here and left you at the door. You never stepped foot in the house. Lord, girl, they did that killing mess to themselves. Mr. Benton T. Horse of New York City was evil to the bone. Devil bound. You felt it. He killed Mary Beth Clark. He was so mad about her talking to Roger that he finished losing his mind. He killed Mary Beth before I could get to her. Mr. Benton T. Horse was standing over her with a knife. I just whispered in his ear, and he took his own life. He took Mary Beth out of this world before I could set her story straight.” The woman spirit was quiet a minute and then in a low voice she finished what she had to say. “Celestia and me had a long story full of lies told to protect. Those be the best kind of lies ’cause they aren’t mean and hateful. Celestia, me, and Liza was all friends. That be Liza Lolly. I don’t reckon I was always friends with Liza, but Celestia held us together. We was slaves on Sapelo. They was sold to Black Mountain, North Carolina. I was sold to Darien. Shelly is going to finish the story for my friends Liza and Celestia. She’s got to. Then they will all rest.”
“Leave Shelly alone. I don’t want her hurt.”
“You going to talk to me that way?” She gave me a mean look. “Your Roger was avenged when the man took his own life. That you owe me for.”
“I want Shelly to go home to her mama.”
The woman laughed. “I ain’t got no control over that. Death is a being that roams this earth. You got to take that up with him. We sure can’t control him. I’m here to finish a story. You go on, now. Take care. Remember what I said about Death. He be of his own mind.” She walked right into the house and left me standing there.
Shelly Parker
I WAS STRUGGLING with putting new sheets on Faith’s bed up in the small room at the top of the house. The roof slanted near the little bed, and I’d done bumped my head three times.
I looked up and saw Mary Beth Clark standing in the doorway. “The hot, steamy rain that falls at the end of June always lifted my spirits when I was alive,” she said.
“I like the rain on the mountain. It always cools the air,” I said.
“You know that horrid man killed me
, cut my throat from behind. I never even saw him coming.”
“Who was he?” I stopped what I was doing.
“A banker from New York. I hated him, but I was determined to have a better life.”
“How, with a man you hated?”
She laughed. “You have a lot to learn, little girl.”
“Maybe.”
“So you’re just stuck here because you was killed here?” I thought of Armetta’s book and how it just stopped, how she was tangled up with a bad white man too.
“You’re thinking about her. The girl who wrote the book you were reading the other day.”
“Yes.” I don’t reckon I would ever get used to a haint reading my every thought.
“I’m still here because of her.”
Now, this got my attention. “What do you mean? Armetta?”
“I never knew her name. Ma Clark didn’t talk about her, but she was my grandmother. I found out about her after Daddy and Ma Clark died.”
“She’s a right hateful ghost.”
“Really?” Mary Beth Clark thought on this a minute. “I got my own story, just like you.”
“Well, I don’t have a bit of time for listening.” I started back in on the sheets.
“I’ll finish before you’re through with this room.” She smiled.
I just huffed.
“My daddy was the prize of our family. It was easy to see why, because he was an only child who came to Ma Clark late in life. My mama always said Daddy couldn’t live up to Ma Clark’s expectations. And Mama also pointed out that Ma Clark’s whole story about Daddy’s birth was suspicious. See, Daddy had light skin like me. He could have passed. Ma Clark said that could come from way on back in the family, but like my mama, I had to wonder. Then one day Ma Clark looked at me out of the blue—this was after Mama passed from a blood disease—and let a truth slip. I was chopping onions for hushpuppies, and Ma Clark was simmering a gumbo. It was an old recipe she brought from her island.
