The Solace of Water

by Elizabeth Byler Younts

  While stories were retold and, I assumed, exaggerated for laughs, a small figure stepped toward me and was silhouetted in the brightness of the sunset. It wasn’t hard to see that the shape was Grannie Winnie. How she had slipped away from the center of the circle, I wasn’t sure.

  “Deedee, it’s so good to see you.”

  With my neck still craned up at her, I said, “Hey, Mrs.—”

  “Ah-ah,” she interrupted with a quick shake of her finger.

  “Grannie Winnie,” I corrected to please her and I couldn’t help smiling. Old ladies always did know how to squeeze something out of nothing. “Why ain’t you in the middle of your party?”

  “Come on, let’s go take a walk.” Her eyes twinkled.

  Laughter boomed from the group in the room, heightening the isolation I’d put myself in. I stood and followed the tiny woman out from the porch. I helped her old body down the stairs and it felt right nice to put my hands on someone in kindness.

  “It’s a nice house,” I said after a minute’s walk. “I ain’t never seen a colored family with a house like this.”

  “The house, the farm, all this land”—she made a wide swipe with her hand—“was Brother Leon’s granddaddy’s place.”

  We took a few steps forward heading toward the path between two wheat fields. The land stretched out in front of us with those perfect rolling hills I’d grown accustomed to since our move. I wondered if there was something wrong with my land because it wasn’t letting nothing grow yet. No little sprouts. Maybe what I’d sown and planted was grief so that was all I could harvest.

  “Don’t know any colored farmers in Montgomery—but one little old lady with a big garden outside of the city. My family was always stuck in the city.” I felt a bit of a rhythm happening in our conversation, and even though I wanted to fight it, I didn’t. The way she curled her shawl around her, reminding me so much of my own granny, wooed me some.

  “Brother Leon’s granddaddy was white.” She threw those words out, then giggled.

  “What? Why you laughing?”

  “Because the way Brother Leon tells the story about meeting his grandparents for the first time is just about as funny as they come. His granny thought her son brought home a maid with a child— but he was their grandson.”

  “They weren’t married, right?”

  “Not yet. But in Pennsylvania here, it was legal—but most folks don’t like it none—white or colored. But they eventually found a justice of the peace that agreed to marry them. And they lived out their years together in that little house right over there until Leon’s grandparents passed and they moved into the farmhouse.”

  “The town accepted that?”

  “You lost your mind?” She winked at me. “They made it hard for the family. The church. The local businesses. Everybody. But Leon’s grandparents just had the one son and Leon was the only grandkid.”

  “Never would’a guessed it.”

  Then we just kept walking. The wind pushed against my back and whispered in my ears to be thankful. The crunch of old dried-up stalks of wheat crackled under our shoes and they told me to stay angry. In the air, though, was all the peace. But it was thin and unreachable.

  We walked like that for three or four minutes before Grannie said, “When you dream about your boy, you need to hold him and kiss him and just give him that mama love you got buried inside. It helps then, when you wake up.”

  I stopped walking and turned around to walk back to the house. I wasn’t going to hear this talk. The crunching under my feet was loud—like a demon—and it egged on my anger.

  “Don’t you walk away. You gotta stop with all these walls. Ain’t nobody trying to hurt you. Some of us think we might like you if you talked. Some of us might even be able to help if you’d give us a chance.” Her voice had this proverb-floating-in-the-air feel to it. Couldn’t take much of it in all at once, but you knew you got to listen—didn’t want to though. This tone laced with age and wisdom was like sandpaper to my grief.

  “Give you a chance?” I spun around. “What chance I got? Malachi do all the talking at church. My Sparrow act like she got straw for brains and you just wanna spout your wisdom like you think everybody just need to hear it.”

  “Except for the part about Sparrow, that sounds about right.” She walked a few steps closer to me. “But I ain’t talking about her; I’m talking about you.”

  “Granny, just let me be. People always say they understand but they can’t. All those people in that perfect farmhouse don’t, people back home in Montgomery didn’t, and you don’t neither.”

  “You think nobody ever lost a child before? Probably feels that way. Like you’re alone. But you ain’t. None of that is true for real—and the more you believe it, the more you hurtin’ yourself and everybody around you. I think you just mad because nobody is telling you that it’s okay to shut out the rest of the world.”

  I couldn’t find my voice because she was right and was the only one brave enough to say so—even Malachi was softer about it. But I wasn’t wrong for shutting out the world. It was too hard to pretend to be okay.

  “You already lost one child. You want to lose the rest?”

  She didn’t give me a chance to respond but just kept walking and left me standing there in the middle of that fresh-turned soil.

  “How you know I dream about my boy?” My lips were shaking like all the feeling in my body living in them.

  She turned and looked at me and a tired smile crossed over her face.

  “’Cause I still dream about my baby sister and it’s been about eighty-five years.”

  “That’s not the same thing as losing a child.”

  The old lady pursed her lips and stared off into the distance. I didn’t press her. It was clear her memories were just on the other side of the thin veil of time, like looking through water. After a long minute she turned back to me.

  “I was the only mama that girl ever know’d.” She paused. “Mama died when she was just a babe and gave me Rosie as my own. I failed them both.”

  “But how old were you? Just a girl?”

  “Fifteen.” She smiled.

  I stiffened. But there was a big difference. I hadn’t asked Sparrow to raise Carver but just watch him. Just keep an eye on him and George. I hadn’t asked too much of her. My jaw clenched. “Do you think your mama ever forgave you?”

  “It would’ve been hard, but I think she would’ve if she’d been alive. But really it was about me forgiving myself. I just wanted to die.”

  Die.

  The word was so small but so big.

  SPARROW

  I could feel the water in the air as soon as I stepped out of my house. The sun wasn’t up yet. The moon sat low in the navy-blue sky and gave me some light as I walked toward the woods. Toward daybreak. Toward Johnny.

  Barely slept. Just thinking on Johnny. What would we talk about? Why did he want to meet me? I was just me.

  I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to kiss a white boy. Maybe it wasn’t no different. But why was I thinking about kissing? Last time I kissed a boy my brother died. And for all I knew I could meet up with Johnny and he could have a whole bunch of white boys there to hurt me. I heard of stuff like that all the time. I didn’t think he would do that though. I hoped not.

  I looked back at my house and because the moon was dim, it looked like a ghost house. Then there was the fog that hung in the air around me. Because of that I trusted myself to click on Daddy’s flashlight.

  It was easy to follow the trail I’d now taken a few times. The last time I was with Emma. My friend. My white friend. The night sounds were louder than before. Crickets and toads for certain, but I didn’t know what else was singing. I was used to hearing the sound of engines and police sirens in Montgomery.

  Once I crossed over the creek on them smooth stones, the way got even easier. I just had to follow the flow of water. The creek ain’t slept all night neither. It called to me as I walked alongside i
t so I started humming with it. Like the water and me were making music. But my voice didn’t blend well, so I quit. The water knew too much about me and knew my sins.

  Daddy always told me that all the water in the world was connected. So if something happened in one river, did it also happen to the ocean or a pond? He said it was because water traveled underground and in the air.

  I thought about how this made me happy and sad. When water brought life, all the water was happy, but when it wasn’t life—it was the other thing—did all the water know it? Did all the water rejoice and grieve together? Could it do both? If it could, then could people too? Did what happened to one person happen to everybody everywhere? People were everywhere like water—even underground and in the air.

  Halfway there a sliver of light slipped through the trees—but I still needed the flashlight. I rushed my steps because I didn’t want to miss him and make him think I hadn’t showed up. I just kept looking for the clearing by the creek.

  Then a burst of panic rushed through me. My breathing got heavy. My thoughts fought with each other. What if he never came or he did but we couldn’t find each other? Would he think I had lied about coming? But what was I thinking meeting a white boy in the woods? What if he strangled me dead? What if he did worse than that and raped me?

  I stopped walking. The trees around me looked so big and I felt so small. They hovered over me like I was just a little piece of nothing—which was true. The breeze through the leaves made a hissing sound. Hiss. Hiss.

  I didn’t turn around but I took a step backward. I couldn’t do this.

  A rustling brushed up against my ears and I wondered if I was too late to turn back. I imagined Johnny’s tall, slim body walking toward me. I couldn’t see well enough in the distance, so maybe the noise was somebody else and I’d be dead in a minute.

  Like a baby would suck on her thumb to calm down, I needed something too. But I didn’t know what. Daddy’s metal flashlight in my hand was damp with sweat.

  I should run back to the house and let Johnny think I’d never come at all.

  A thud on the ground near my feet made me realize that I’d dropped the flashlight. It was shining on all the weeds off the trail. It almost seemed like they were looking at me. I wanted to touch them. They wanted to touch me.

  In my hysteria I squatted down and touched those plants I saw. They were the stinging plants Emma had told me not to touch. My hands felt the burn—a good burn—and like they changed my color to red. But I looked and they were still brown.

  The stinging turned into tingling that was almost a tickle. My skin felt like it was sparkling and a bright coolness washed over me. I let out a deep breath that could’ve been Montgomery air I never did let go of ’til now ’cause it was so deep in me. I just kept staring at my hands as I held those ripped-up plants and rolled them in my palms.

  I eased the corners of my mouth into a smile. The earth wasn’t trying to hurt me, but it was giving me something new.

  “Drop those.” Johnny’s voice was urgent. I hadn’t even seen him coming. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”

  “It don’t hurt.” I lifted the plant from my hand to show him that my hands was just fine.

  The last few steps toward me were big, and when he yanked the green weeds out my hands, he winced. He tossed them away from us and took my hands.

  “See, it ain’t nothing. It just tickled a little.” My cheerful voice felt foreign to my ears. My heart skipped a beat. I felt like a bird. Light and ready to fly. I felt like the water running over them rocks in the creek. I felt like the easy breeze that made my hair puff up. I felt free. I felt alive. I felt.

  “You’re blistering already.” He had a tight grip around my wrists. I giggled when he pulled me toward the creek. My hands continued to feel cool and warm, like bird feathers were fluttering over the top of my skin. But I didn’t like him yanking me none. I didn’t want the feeling to end.

  My hands was in the coolness of the stream in a moment and Johnny used his hands to cup water and pour it over the growing blisters. He scooped up some of the heavy clay at the edges and layered it on my skin. The feather-like tingle went away because of the cold mud. I wanted to go back to how it felt before.

  “This don’t feel good.” I tried to pull my hands away.

  “The nettles have little needles.” He layered more mud on my hands. “The clay can help relieve the sting once it dries.”

  “But now it hurts.” My voice sounded whiny and I tried to pull away again.

  “I’ll wash it off.” He was panicking. He washed the clay off over and over. The blisters were hurting now and even though the clay was gone, he kept washing.

  “Stop. You washing me now.”

  He looked at me and then at my hand.

  “The clay gone. That’s me you washing now. That’s me, not the clay.”

  Maybe he didn’t know the clay was all washed off because it was the same color as me.

  His blue eyes took in my brown ones in big gulps. For about half a blink I thought he was leaning in toward me, like he gonna kiss me, but I was wrong. I was glad to be wrong. But I wasn’t glad about how he squeezed my hand like a tug-a-war rope. I already missed that good tingle and loosened my hand from his hold and dabbed my hands dry against my dress.

  My hands were covered in blisters. They didn’t feel good no more. How was I gonna explain this to Mama?

  We didn’t talk for a few moments. The sunrise had come and the dampness in the air was lifting up and sitting on the tree limbs above us. I imagined the little droplets in the air sitting next to the birds in the trees and looking down at us, sparkling like diamonds. The toads from earlier were quieter now, or maybe not. Maybe I just couldn’t hear them because Johnny was so close. Well, that’s how I felt anyhow. I didn’t know if that’s how he felt.

  After another few moments he rocked back from kneeling to sit on the ground. He rested his arms on his knees. I sat back also and made sure to keep my dress tucked under me and kept my knees together and down. If Mama ever found out I was out here, she would have my hide. But if she knew I wasn’t sitting like a lady, it would make everything worse.

  I was getting a little nervous that he wasn’t saying nothing. And I peeked over at him out of the sides of my eyes. The sun wound its way through the leaves and landed right on us. I saw how the sun didn’t shine off his skin the same way it did mine. I noticed how the sun would shine up hard against the chests and shoulders of colored boys when they took their shirts off to swim. I liked it.

  But Johnny was handsome in a different way. He made me think a little about them cowboys from books. Like he was one of the good ones, but because he got that devil-look in his eye, that made me think that he ain’t all good cowboy. There was a little something extra in there too.

  “Why were you holding the nettles?”

  I shrugged. “I just wanted to.”

  “Didn’t it hurt?”

  I shook my head. But right away I worried about what he thought of me. I remembered his mama telling me not to touch them because they would sting. But the sting felt nice. And the more the blisters were left alone, a little of that good tingle came back. I looked at my hands and the raised blisters now pulsed against my skin.

  “Where did you move from?”

  “Montgomery, Alabama. You ever been?”

  He shook his head and smiled. “I’ve never been anywhere.” He chuckled. “Well, I visited family in Ohio a few times, but that’s all. What’s Alabama like?”

  What was it like? It was my heart and a nightmare at the same time. I’d known of no other home my whole life until now. I dreamed of still living there with my friends and my old neighborhood where everyone lived so close together. I dreamed of Carver and him being alive there and him dying there.

  I shrugged again. “It’s all right. Real hot.”

  He nodded. “Why’d you move here?”

  “Are you your mama’s only kid?” I didn’t want him to know I was a mu
rderer.

  Johnny sat up a little and pulled up a single wide blade of grass. “I think she lost a baby once. But I don’t know anything more. So it’s just me.” He put the grass between the lengths of his thumbs and I thought about Emma losing a baby. I felt sad for her. I lost a baby too—just not the same way.

  “What happened there?” Johnny pointed at the big scar I had on my calf.

  I pulled my legs under the skirt of my dress. I didn’t want to talk about how I got that. It was an ugly scar too. Puffy and off-colored. And it marked something I didn’t like to think about but always did.

  I gave him a weak shrug and he left it alone. And a few moments later a shrill, thin wheeze came from Johnny blowing through that blade of grass between his thumbs.

  I jumped a little. “What you doing?”

  “You’ve never made grass whistle?”

  I shook my head.

  Then he sat next to me. He pulled another blade of grass and without hesitation waved for me to raise my hands. He positioned the grass and even though he took care to avoid my blisters, he wasn’t afraid to touch me.

  He didn’t touch my hands just to help me. He touched me because we was making friends. Or something like that.

  “Now blow.” He showed me with his own hands again.

  I tried and it worked. I laughed so hard I fell back into the morning grass and so did he. We watched the trees dance in a breeze as the sun kept getting higher. Johnny rested his hand next to mine, and it was warm.

  EMMA

  There was a hum in the air I had never heard before. I stood still and tried to find the source. My view landed on the whitesteepled church with its cross emblazoned in the citrus sunset. I listened. It was singing. But had a different sound from my church with slow-moving tones and long-held words. I always loved the portion of the service where we sang, though I never sang loudly. Just above a whisper. I loved the sound of togetherness and the unity.