Gullah Secrets

by Susan Gabriel

  “Wait. It looks like she’s talking to somebody,” Queenie says, squinting her eyes behind her glasses.

  “Who would she be talking to?” Spud asks.

  Queenie leans over the small balcony. “Nobody I can see.”

  Old Sally is always doing peculiar things. Peculiar, at least, to someone who isn’t familiar with the Gullah ways.

  A chill climbs Queenie’s arms that feels wonderful after so much heat. She can’t shake the feeling that something big is about to happen. Big, as in life-changing. A plus-size adventure.

  “Let’s go back inside and go to bed,” Spud tells her.

  “Spud, honey, do you think we’ll be okay?” She turns to face him.

  “Yes, my dearest.”

  Dearest, she can handle. It’s all the food nicknames she has a hard time stomaching. Plus, they make her hungry.

  “Are you sure?” Queenie asks.

  He puts an arm around her. “In all probability, we’ll be fine,” he says.

  “In all probability?” Queenie doesn’t like the sound of that. “What do you mean by fine?”

  Spud looks confused.

  Voices rise from the kitchen. Their housemates must be gathering again, and it sounds like the television is on. Soon, Queenie will talk to her mama and get her inside, but first, she and Spud will join the others. Animated voices mean something is going on.

  Downstairs they watch the latest coordinates of Hurricane Iris, which are being given on the television screen. Iris has been upgraded to a Category 4 storm with the potential to be a Category 5, which could have catastrophic results. Hugo was a Category 4, and it took years for people to recover from the destruction. If they ever did.

  Graphics show the latest predictions of where Iris will come ashore. Bright red arrows point to her destination like a bull’s-eye on the map of the southeastern United States. Dolphin Island is ground zero.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Old Sally

  The storm makes Old Sally agitated. It has been impossible to sleep. She stands outside, her nightgown flapping in the wind. The waves crash against the shore in the darkness. The chaos from the sea churns inside her. She holds a hand over her heart and can feel it beating faster than usual. Forces are aligning that she has never experienced. This may be the type of storm that comes once a century. Or maybe once every two hundred years. Perhaps Old Sally’s ancestors never saw a storm like this in their lifetimes. But it is Old Sally who is called to witness it now.

  If the road leading off the island is clear, perhaps they should drive inland as quickly as they can, ignoring speed limits as they try to outrun Iris. Yet, at the same time, she realizes that everyone will be trying to do that. Best to be in a stronger structure. Old Sally has never felt safe in a car given how Fiddle died, as well as her daughter Maya who was killed here on the island.

  In the time Old Sally has been standing here, the wind has ratcheted up its power another notch. These aren’t the calm ocean breezes that air out a soul. These are winds that come to destroy. Not because it is angry, but because it is what nature does. It destroys and renews. Even the strongest Gullah folk magic must bow to nature.

  An owl hoots in the live oak next to the porch and Old Sally turns toward it with alarm.

  To the Gullah people, a hooting owl is a bad omen. A bad omen is the last thing they need on a night like this. Old Sally pulls from her memory what her grandmother taught her. If she is outside and barefoot, she can counteract the evil by pointing a finger at the owl to cancel out its power. Old Sally tosses off her sandals, doing as her grandmother taught her. With silent wings, the owl flies away. She relaxes her shoulders.

  Meanwhile, the sea smells different somehow. Saltier. A more pungent version of itself. Tiny particles of sand cling to Old Sally’s lips. The dune grasses begin to dance, while the clouds periodically reveal the stars and moon behind. Celestial witnesses to a tempest that from their perspective is a grain of sand. The wind lets out a low growl like a lion cub finding its voice. A voice with plenty of room to grow.

  When faced with a storm of this magnitude, her ancestors would have sought refuge on the other side of the island. The highest point is a rise near the cemetery where the old abandoned church sits, falling in on itself, among the live oaks. It is where their old village was before people left for the mainland. Not because of storms, but to find work and raise families because the island could no longer support them. The second highest point is the lighthouse.

  Ancestors clamor for Old Sally’s attention. Spirits, not ghosts. Never ghosts. Or hags. Hags possess you and don’t let you go. They are like the past that you can’t get rid of. Guilt and shame ride a body until it is tormented thoroughly. All used up.

  Spirits are good. Benevolent. Helpful. Old Sally could use help now. The others look to her for wisdom, though she doesn’t feel that wise.

  An ancient weariness comes over her. Exhaustion that comes from living a long time and being ready to go. Life is precious. Yes. But life isn’t all there is. The time spent with the ancestors is sacred, too. With death also comes renewal. A different part of the same journey.

  The past comes in like the tide. Old Sally remembers when she was a girl and sat by the deathbed of her Grandpa Joe, Granny Sadie’s husband. A roomful of relatives and friends waited by his side, singing softly, sending prayers to get heaven ready for him. It was high summer. With candles burning, it was stifling hot in Grandpa Joe’s room. This was in the house her grandmother used to live in before she moved in with Sally’s family.

  The night he died, everyone held paper fans that moved the air around to little good. Paper fans that to Sally looked like butterflies filling the room. Every now and again Sally would feel the wind from their wings. Her grandmother held a young Sally in her lap. Sweat mixed with tears rolled down her grandmother’s face. Sally traced their path and tasted their salty essence. Tears were nothing to be afraid of, her grandmother told her. Nor was grief. Grief meant you had loved well. Grief meant you were alive. Mourning was a regular part of living. A necessary part of being alive.

  A hand on her shoulder pulls Old Sally away from the past and back into the here and now. She turns to see Queenie’s new husband.

  “Queenie sent me to check on you,” Spud says, standing close enough to be heard. “Anything I can do for you?”

  Old Sally shakes her head no. “Tell my daughter not to worry.”

  “She’s worried about everything right now,” he says. “But mainly this storm.”

  His gray hair lifts with the wind like wings that might lift him into the night.

  “Tell her I’ll be right in,” she says, patting his arm.

  Spud nods and then leaves.

  People treat her like a child these days. Always checking in on her to make sure she’s okay. Checking to make sure she hasn’t fallen out of bed, or some such nonsense. Old Sally has been getting up and out of bed for over a hundred years. They need to trust that she has gotten the hang of it by now. Old age doesn’t make a person automatically senile. Though it does make a person frail when bones get this old. She understands their concern. But people get caught up in the number of years she’s been on this earth instead of their experience with her. They mean well, she knows. And with this storm coming she must admit she feels vulnerable, too. A strong wind could blow her over, that’s true. But if she is to leave this world by way of a hurricane, then so be it. She will move on any way she can.

  When her grandmother died, many years after Grandpa Joe, people said it was the most peaceful crossing they had ever witnessed. Like Old Sally, her grandmother was ancient and ready to go. In the last year of her life, she passed on everything she could to Old Sally.

  A tear rolls down her face, the wind catching it and tossing it away. Human tears are powerful in potions. But now isn’t the time for making spells. It is time to let life do as life does.

  Can you hear me, Grandmother? Old Sally asks.

  Goosebumps come. A sign th
at a spirit is near. A vision comes, too. Her grandmother stands in the dunes, untouched by the wind.

  Remember what I taught you, she says.

  Old Sally pauses. Is this real? Or maybe she hears what she wants to hear. Needs to hear. Her grandmother’s scars from the out-of-control fire in the Temple kitchen so long ago are illuminated by the moonlight. They look somehow beautiful.

  You taught me so much, Old Sally says. What part do you want me to remember?

  You be solid. It’s the ground that be shaky, her grandmother says.

  Old Sally narrows her eyes, reaching for understanding. Leave it to her grandmother to pose a riddle from the Afterlife.

  What do you mean? That makes no sense, Old Sally says.

  Her grandmother doesn’t answer, and in the seconds that follow, her image fades away. What is she to remember? Looking out over the dark landscape, Old Sally feels utterly alone.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Rose

  Though Rose hasn’t had a drink for over a decade, she wants one now. Perhaps a glass of red wine, or a vodka tonic with a slice of lime. It is hard to say what beverage is better suited for a hurricane. Perhaps both. One after the other. Instead, she goes into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. The digital clock says it is after midnight, 12:34 to be exact. Spud waves from the stairway as he returns to Queenie’s room. She imagines Queenie has sent him to check on Old Sally. Something they all do these days.

  They are opting to stay in the big house tonight instead of their cottage to keep everyone together. They are on the pull-out sofa, the dogs on the floor nearby. The house is quiet except for the sounds accompanying the storm. The wind is steady and slowly growing in power. Palm fronds beat against the side of the house like a drumroll announcing the main event. Every now and again Rose hears something hit the house. Things left unsecured on the island. A plastic bucket clatters through the back patio. When she looks out back, an aluminum lawn chair flies through the air, looking like something from the tornado scene in The Wizard of Oz. Will she see her mother riding a bicycle next, a basket on the back for when she steals Toto?

  In the past, Max has slept through blizzards and crackling thunderstorms that had Rose on her knees praying to the saints of her childhood. However, something is different with this hurricane. He is wide awake and wanting coffee, too.

  Rose pours two cups and retrieves the faded ledger from her purse, handing coffee to Max and then curling up in a side chair. With all the excitement of the storm and Katie’s false labor pains—at least they hope they are false—Rose hasn’t had time to further explore the old journal. The musty smell causes her to rub her nose and Ethel the dog sneezes. Rose opens the book somewhere in the middle and tries to read the ornate cursive writings from the 1820s, written by Rose’s great-great-grandfather, give or take a “great.” A portrait of him was at the end of the hallway near her room in the Temple mansion. A stern-looking patriarch if there ever was one, who had the Temple nose. In the portrait, he wore one of the swords Edward played Cowboys and Indians with when they were young. Not that cowboys carried swords usually, but to Edward, anything that let him have power over her was fair play.

  Rose thinks of Heather, who also possesses the Temple nose. The more Rose reflects, the more Heather showing up this weekend doesn’t seem like an accident. Like the storm, it feels like a convergence. Or in the case of the ledger, a kind of reckoning. A time to take stock of the Temple wreckage.

  Rose turns another page, reading a mystery set in the past. A more readable script follows. Lists of numbers. Notations about property deeds, including a rice plantation in Charleston and a property in Richmond, Virginia. Another page lists investments into tea farms in India. More numbers. More names of people who were property.

  Rose’s face turns warm, but already she is less shocked. Did no one think that slavery wasn’t a good thing? Or that in a hundred years or so it might be considered evil? These were her ancestors. Elite southerners. Owners of slaves. Who for whatever reason crossed a vast ocean to forge their way in a new world. And make money, she thinks. The Temples have always been good at making money and keeping money. Old money.

  When Rose left Savannah after marrying Max at twenty-one years of age, she didn’t want any part of the Temple money, and her mother was happy to oblige. At various times, Rose and Max struggled to keep their ranch in Wyoming going, and Rose had a certain amount of pride about their struggle. But in the end, it was her mother’s last will and testament that enabled them to come back to Savannah. Would she have ever returned otherwise?

  Rose closes the ledger. What exactly is she searching for? If the book contains more secrets, she hasn’t found them. To what good are the secrets of dead people, anyway? At some point, the scandals don’t matter anymore. Rose wonders now why she went to that old bank vault anyway. Then she remembers what Red told her. Edward was looking through these same papers a few days before he died. Why? What was he looking for? And what is the significance of Edward’s daughter showing up literally on their doorstep?

  Queenie enters the kitchen, looking wide awake. “I thought you were going to try to get some sleep like the others,” she says to Rose.

  “It didn’t work. You, either?”

  “Not a wink,” Queenie says. “And Spud is sawing logs like he works at a lumberyard.”

  “Coffee?” Rose asks.

  “No, thanks.” Queenie points to the journal. “What’s that?”

  “I thought it was another Book of Secrets,” Rose says. “But it appears to be a list of assets and property.”

  “Sounds like something that could help you sleep,” Queenie says.

  “You’d think,” Rose says, “but this storm has me wired.”

  “Me, too.” Queenie sits on a kitchen stool.

  “So, how’s married life?” Rose asks, giving her coffee another stir.

  “Too soon to tell,” Queenie says. “At least I haven’t killed him yet.”

  “Nothing like a hurricane to put stress on a new relationship,” Rose says.

  “No kidding,” Queenie says, her face serious.

  “What’s up?” Rose asks.

  Their dog Lucy has a fondness for Queenie and ambles over to greet her in the kitchen. At first, Queenie didn’t welcome her attention, but now she seems much more at ease. She bends down to pet her.

  “Have you ever noticed that I’ve never owned a dog or cat?”

  Rose pauses. Considering everything else going on, this seems an odd question. “You know, to be honest, it never occurred to me.”

  “Of course, your mother would have never allowed a pet, anyway,” Queenie says.

  Rose agrees. Her mother wasn’t fond of animals. It seemed she wasn’t fond of anything living. People tested her patience. Animals served no purpose except to be eaten. It wasn’t until Rose moved out of the house that she had her first cattle dog at the ranch. Lucy looks up at Rose, as if hearing her thoughts.

  “But even if I had wanted a pet,” Queenie begins again. “I could never get past knowing that I would probably lose them at some point. I didn’t think I could bear losing something that I loved.”

  “Is that what this is about? Are you afraid of losing Spud?”

  Queenie’s eyes fill with tears.

  Rose doesn’t expect such a robust show of emotion from Queenie and immediately stands and hugs her broad shoulders.

  “Oh, Queenie. It’s okay,” she says, thinking how interesting it is to know someone your entire life and never know them at all. Not the most vulnerable parts, anyway. “It’s better to love someone,” Rose says, “even with the risk of losing them. Honestly, it is.”

  Queenie pulls a clean tissue from her robe pocket. Her crying sounds a little like her laughter. Big, bold, and full-bodied. Rose keeps talking, despite not knowing what to say. “Sometimes I think simply living our lives fully is one of the bravest things we can do.”

  “You sound like Mama,” Queenie says. “And in case you haven’t notic
ed, I’m not a very brave person, Rose.” She lowers her eyes.

  Rose isn’t feeling that brave herself with a hurricane building outside. And she, too, has noticed how they are all beginning to sound a little like Old Sally.

  “I wish I could be like you,” Queenie says. “You’re the most courageous person I know.”

  “Don’t be silly.” Rose has never been called brave in her life. In fact, her mother reminded her on a consistent basis what a coward she was when she was growing up.

  “I’m serious,” Queenie says. “You moved out West when you got married after college, and then you moved back here. You stopped drinking when you realized it was becoming a problem. My God, that takes the heart of a lion. All that and you’ve been married to the same man all these years and raised a child.” Queenie pauses to think of more things, and Rose stops her.

  “I guess it’s a matter of perspective,” Rose says. “According to Mother, I was too lazy to ever reach anything close to my potential.”

  “Well, your mother was an ass,” Queenie says, “and I speak from personal experience. I knew her. Iris wasn’t even one-fourth the person you are, Rose Temple.”

  Now it is Rose’s turn to tear up. She thanks Queenie for saying that, even if she has trouble believing the last part.

  The lights flicker and then flicker again.

  “You think we made Mother mad?” Rose asks.

  Queenie cackles. “Well if we did, then Lord help us. Especially if she has anything to do with this storm.”

  In the next second, the lights go out with a clap, leaving Rose and Queenie in total darkness.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Violet

  Violet wakes suddenly when someone shakes her shoulder. Her first thought is of the old Temple ghosts who used to startle her on occasion when she worked at the Temple mansion. Her second thought is Old Sally. However, it is Tia standing next to the bed with a lit candle.