If Sons, Then Heirs: A Novel

by Lorene Cary

  Cast it far, drop it deep.

  Rayne blinked at this choral outburst and the talky aftermath. The landing smelled moist, both swampy and salty, and what had seemed like a lush green background now threatened. He scanned the surface, wishing there was something he could hold on to.

  “What’s she look like?” Rayne asked.

  Jones answered: “Well, it’s hard to tell how she’ll choose to appear… Probably come up greenish-brown like water with green-and-gold scales on the bottom, right under a smooth, bare belly that changes when the light hits ’er, like the inside of a seashell. Probably have green eyes can see right back to the day you was born. Hair’ll be thick and black, matted like the beard hanging out of the clam, with ancient money from pirate ships locked in it, catching the last rays of the sun.”

  “Like Ray’s hair,” someone said.

  “Lookit Ray’s face,” Bobo shouted. “Boy can see it now, can’t you?

  “Black nipples with sea water dripping from ’em like diamonds…” Bobo continued in his reverie, and although Rayne heard him, and would normally have enjoyed the scandal of his grandfather’s language, his attention was grabbed instead by the cousins who took up the teasing: that he had hair like a mermaid, like a nappy old girl, that the mermaids would think he was one of them and grab him in.

  “You need to cut your hair, little girl.”

  Rayne had gotten it into his mind that his mother must cut it, and that if he did so without her, he would jinx her return. So he had resisted, and Selma and Bobo had indulged him.

  Boy half-crazy, without a doubt, they said, but he got his reasons.

  Jones beckoned him with two fingers to encourage him to ignore the kids, but Rayne’s oldest cousin, a teenager, reached for the scissors out of the tackle box. Two other cousins tried to grab him and hold him down.

  Rayne lowered his head and charged the oldest boy, catching him under the chin while he was still laughing. The scissors clattered onto the rocks. Rayne caught them all off guard, so no one responded quickly, except the boy, who recovered himself enough to roll over when Rayne came at him again, and to let him slide off the landing and into the water.

  There was no stopping the bruising slide down until one foot wedged between rocks under a green-white pool of froth.

  The boy, Jesus, Jesus, Jones, ’s our boy.

  Water slammed Rayne’s head, flushed his ears, scoured his eyes. More than water. Force. Foaming, frothing force spinning, trying to roll him over and curl his head down into a carbonated death. The green tunnel roared. No light. Spinning tumbling pulling out to sea.

  Except for one wedged shoe.

  Suddenly, the force was gone, leaving green and white foam to slurp at Rayne’s waist and legs and stuck foot. He could not tell nose from mouth, could not breathe in air without water, mucus, choke.

  It came again, from behind his head. Oh, God, please, and then the slam and a grip hard, under his arms, a grinding wrenching of his foot, wedged in the rock, wedged as the rod had not been, Jones’s arms like trees next to his head, hammer-fingers wedged between his ribs, yanking, tugging, grabbing his thigh, leg, and the foot wouldn’t move, so he gave up, a willing sacrifice, and did not know what was him or Jones or ocean.

  They carried him to the bank and wrapped him in something rough. They prodded and squeezed him until it seemed that his belly and lungs had yielded up their seawater. He coughed and sputtered and cried. Selma rocked him hard. She was wet, too. She’d waded into the water behind Jones, ready to grab, pull, ready to swim out for him on the off chance that Jones had to let him go. Selma held Rayne’s body, already half as big as hers, so tightly in her arms that he could feel the vibration of her voice calling Jesus in his own body. Then: “What is wrong with you? What could possess you? What did you think would happen?”

  When his breathing was steady again, he answered, and Selma detected reproach in his swallowed syllables: “Nobody can make me cut my hair.”

  Selma stopped rocking. She’d suspected his secret superstition, and she had not wanted to take from him what she’d thought was a harmless hope. But he’d almost gotten himself killed.

  Rayne felt a change in her body.

  “You wanna know something, boy?” she asked him in deadly earnest and quiet. “Your mother is not comin back. I been soft-pedaling you, and I can see it ain’t no favor. She ain’t coming back. You hear me? She ain’t sending for you. You know what that means? You stayin here, boy. This gonna be home, and you gonna learn to get along.

  “Your foolishness today almost took my brother away from me. My one brother. I watched the water come up over his head, tryin’a get you out. And my brother is my heart. You hear me? We are not gonna have that.”

  ———

  There was nothing he wouldn’t have done now to get his mother back. Nothing. He would take back playing with her things. He would eat his every bad word. He would take back playing with the pilot light. He would stay awake all night like a soldier in the storybook and never pee in her bed ever ever again.

  “Jesus fuckin Christ, Lonnie. Not again.”

  No, never, ever again. It be okay if she left him with the lady next door for the afternoon and didn’t come back till tomorrow. He wouldn’t break her cigarettes, like he did her last one that she put on the table to save, because she wanted it later, and the man said he would leave his for her, but he didn’t. That’s what you get, Mommy, because you stayed out.

  It had taken her a long time to slap him, because she couldn’t believe it.

  He wouldn’t do that again, ever.

  ———

  Bobo had been watching, irritably. He grabbed Rayne from Selma’s lap, swaddled him tightly in the blanket, pinning his arms and legs, and flung him over his back. “I’ma get my belt for this little pussy.”

  “Bobo!” Selma tried to speak over his last words so that the children wouldn’t hear, but they did.

  “Well, what you gonna do?”

  Selma motioned for Bobo to come back. She took something from the tackle box. Jones and Lil Tootchie rounded up the other kids. Lil Tootchie said that Rayne was just like his mother, and Jones shushed her. JJ packed the fish and gear. Bobo’s massive arms clamped down and pulled Rayne’s face into his chest.

  “And stop cryin like a baby.”

  Rayne heard the scissors before he felt them. Jones’s sharp, stainless fillet scissors lay cold next to his scalp, and in a few minutes, his big, knotted Afro lay on the ground. Some of it blew into the estuary. He had stopped crying. His head felt cool and light. He smelled fishy like the blades of the scissors.

  ———

  Maybe she couldn’t find him now. Maybe he’d grow to be a man and find her himself. But he’d have to do without her and grow up. He told himself until he almost believed it that she loved him. He imagined her crying at night, alone, sorry that she ever let him go.

  ———

  That night, after he’d filleted and frozen the fish, Rayne slept uneasily on the less mildewy mattress in the old house. He gave Khalil asthma medicine just in case, and dreamt that Lillie was in bed with one of the football players she’d tattooed. He saw her lovemaking faces. He heard her sighs and laughs and grunts, and watched the other man’s hand holding, grabbing, rubbing handfuls of her hair and flesh, which shone from oil and sweat. They were in some expensive hotel. And she was loving every single, goddamned stroke.

  When he awoke with Khalil’s leg thrown over him, he was almost sick to his stomach. The image of her chiseled face and open mouth, open legs, full of betrayal and luxurious pleasure, stayed with him. So did the appalling fact that in the dream, he’d been waiting for her at home—her house—with his belt in his hand.

  It was nearly dawn. Rayne slid out of bed, into his clothes, and escaped the little bedroom in the little house. A mild chill braced the dark-blue air that promised a fruitful spring. He walked the edges of the land, tracing the boundaries, hoping that five or six miles, half walked, half run, would
restore him to himself.

  Rayne remembered that Bobo used to do this sometimes. He never should have stopped.

  CHAPTER 19

  Lillie sent him a text at 6:30 a.m. telling him that his appointment for the Center was scheduled for that afternoon at 3:00 p.m. The text said specifically: Bring all docs: deeds, wills, quitclaims(?) AND bring Nana. They say fam must be down. Period.

  But after a drive into Charleston for brunch and a stop to photocopy the documents in the strongbox, Selma did not want, as Rayne put it casually, “to stop in at the Center and see whether they could give us some tips.”

  She knew what they had to say, thank you very much, and she’d watched the video on television, and lots of people had seen to it that she attended the information session they gave at church. She did not want to be lectured again by young black lawyers, could be her grandchildren, who had never pulled a plow or strung a hand of tobacco in their lives. No, thank you.

  Rayne had expected resistance, but he hadn’t thought that she’d be so well acquainted with the Center. They’d done a good job of marketing, he thought. He tried saying that he’d stop in and get their material and have a brief talk with anyone who was there. Khalil added that he’d be willing to stay in the car with Selma.

  “Thanks, Lil Man, but I don’t need no babysitter. ’Specially not if my grandson will just take me home.

  “Look, Ray, you see it fixin to rain. I’d like, if possible, to keep from getting drenched and catchin my death. Besides, I been lookin forward to Maundy Thursday service. We go home now, I got time for a little nap to gather my strength to stay out late. That be nice.” Selma’s tone varied through her little speech from arch to piqued, to hurt, to pleading, to reasonable. “I do think Maundy Thursday really is my favorite service of the year. Look like every year something tries to keep me from enjoyin it.”

  Rayne sneaked a side look at the woman who had sat propped on Mermaid Landing the day before and caught two mullets and a small black drum fish, which she planned to fry tomorrow. Her hands, with their big knuckles and lone gold wedding band, were folded in her lap. Her bottom lip was drawn up in a tight line of determination. She looked directly ahead, taking notice of as many signs as she could see that told them they were going into North Charleston, instead of south and west toward home.

  In fact, she continued, if she’d known that Rayne had had ulterior motives, she would not have gone to brunch at all. She had food in her fridge. And she could have started on Easter dinner. Then he and Khalil could have come out on their own on their personal errands. At any rate, Selma wished that Rayne had talked to her if he was planning to make this move. Because she had things to tell him.

  He parked in one of the four spaces behind the tiny corner office building in a modest section of town.

  “If they such experts on real estate,” Selma wondered to no one in particular, “why couldn’t they manage better headquarters for themselves?”

  Rayne left the keys in the ignition, telling her to cut on the engine if she and Khalil got cold.

  “Oh, Lord, are you planning to stay in that long? Last year Maundy Thursday, JJ’s pesky truck broke down.”

  “No, last year Jones took you. I talked to him that night.”

  “Well, are we gonna have to go directly from here to the church? So we just rush in, like firemen?”

  “Nana, we got four hours!” Rayne said. He could not keep the exasperation out of his voice.

  “Old people take a long time to do everythin, honey. I’m sorry. I cant just zip here and there anymore.”

  “I’m sorry, Nana. This here won’t take more’n fifteen-twenty minutes.”

  As Rayne opened the door, Selma indicated to him to take his keys out of the ignition. “Keys hangin like that just make us a target for carjacks. And this ain’t Charleston. This right here is North Charleston. Yeah, he smash the window, jump in, drive off with us hollerin bloody murder, don’t make no difference… boy in the back. Here, gimme them keys. I’ll hol’ ’em.”

  Rayne could not think of anything to do in the moment to help Selma feel less hurt and threatened. He reached over and patted her hands that clasped the keys.

  “I’m going to take in the documents,” he said. “Just the copies, not the originals,” which sat behind her feet in the strongbox. Selma sniffed.

  Inside, the young receptionist gave Rayne their brochure, a DVD of the documentary Selma said she’d seen, and a Dixie cup of water. She herself had lived outside of Philadelphia. They talked mid-Atlantic landmarks until the Center’s director came through the little door in the thin wall that marked the waiting area, where Rayne felt like a hulking, too-large presence. He ducked his head in the doorway and followed her back to her office.

  The director greeted him with precise diction, wide experience, and total control of the facts. She checked Rayne out quickly, he could tell, with a fast scan of the dreadlocks, work boots, and eastern accent. She asked where he’d been to college and what he’d studied. Then she looked out the window at Selma, who sat staring straight ahead in the truck while Khalil played with his video game in the back. She smiled. “Your son?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  Then the director confirmed, in clearer language, just what the courthouse clerk had said. But she put the laws into context. William Tecumseh Sherman had given low-country land to ex-slaves. If the original owners bore eighteen live children, then the land was divided eighteen times, and each of those heirs’ children and grandchildren owned a proportional segment of their parents’ part. So the shares could become very small.

  Then, heir property’s vulnerability was this: any heir—or anyone who bought out an heir, say, a developer—could go to a judge and force a sale. The family had ten days in which to buy out the shareholder who wanted to sell, and then, if he would not sell, another month before a general sale. A poor extended family that was scraping by on the heir property would be up against the developer’s investors. Time and again, the investors offered more money than the family could match.

  “We see a lot of cases like your great-grandmother’s,” the director said, parting the blinds to look again at Selma’s implacable profile. “I mean, it’s human nature: one member or one branch of the family stays on the land, pays the taxes, keeps up the buildings and grounds, and will not bring in other heirs, because they cannot believe that these people a thousand miles away who never speak to them own as much of a share as they do…”

  “She says that both my great-grandfather’s brothers gave up their claims.”

  “Yeah,” she said, lips tight, eyes compassionate. She nodded, uninterested, Rayne was sure, in the many tiny, conflicting details he’d been compiling. “I don’t mean to diminish the uniqueness of your situation, but merely to let you know that many times what seem like insurmountable family dynamics actually can be problem-solved.”

  Rayne shook his head. Selma didn’t want to be “problem-solved.” She did not think that there was a problem or that she was it. Almost involuntarily he shook his head. “I don’t live here with my great-grandmother,” he said. “I live in Philadelphia. So do a lot of our family members. This family you talk about really hasn’t been close.”

  “Sure, sure,” she said. “That happens. But I can tell you, in some cases, where there is a family member willing to work, this has proved an amazing opportunity to transform, or even to rebuild, a family. Usually that change agent is the person who seeks us out.” She smiled at him. “Think about it.”

  “Lady, I am not your ‘change agent.’ You’re lookin at my great-grandmother. Look at that face. As far as Mrs. Selma Needham is concerned, she is the Little Red Hen. Nobody helped her cut the wheat or grind the flour or bake the bread…”

  “So no one else may eat the bread? But you can hear what that does, can’t you? Everyone goes hungry. Including her, and, correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s not really what she wants. I’m telling you, all you have to do is to be the catalyst. Often there are w
onderful human resources among the family that have been overlooked. In other words, your leadership is likely to be needed as a spark. You may not have to carry the whole burden alone, which is what it looks like, I know, from this side.

  “You say you studied business.”

  “Yeah, but I do construction now.”

  “Still business. Listen. Some families have formed limited liability partnerships so that anyone who wants to sell can only sell to the partnership,” she said cheerily, as if this made it easier.

  “One family created a partnership and then they themselves developed the hotel resort—and the whole family shares the profits.”

  “Like an Indian tribe.”

  “Exactly. The man who put that deal together is a great guy, and he loves to talk to other families about how to do it. I can get you his contact information if you’d like to talk to him.”

  “Thank you,” Rayne said, although he felt irritated to hear about this paragon of family organizing. He stood. He could see that the truck was idling outside. She must have turned on the heat, he thought. Or maybe she’d let Khalil do it. He was sitting behind the wheel pretending to drive. They were talking, which was a good sign.

  The director, meanwhile, had scanned Rayne’s documents and separated them into two piles. “What seems to have happened is that your great-great-grandfather left something that is written. I doubt it would pass the legal tests for a will. But it is pretty doggone close: your great-grandfather King Needham states that he and his brother Richard have paid their brother Amos for his third, and Amos has written a letter that gives up his claims to his portion. It’s not a proper quitclaim deed, but it does corroborate their statement. So far, so good.

  “What’s troubling: actually, a couple of things are troubling. One is that this document with a list of heirs is typically the kind of thing that developers create, that is, unless your family has been doing this research.”

  “No. I just got that from a girl at the county courthouse.”

  “Oh, dear. Well, you’ll notice that it lists someone named Pettiford, and the only reason that stuck out to me is that there’s a Pettiford who represents that district in the state legislature. I know that because he has worked to bring us in for workshops with his constituents. Are you all related?”