The Gullah ways were taught to me by my grandmother, Sadie, a slave for the Temple family of Savannah. Today, I still work for this same family as their maid, housekeeper and nanny. For forty years I’ve worked for the current Temples. Iris Temple and Mister Oscar have two children: Edward, nearly grown and away at boarding schools most of the year, and Rose, ten years of age, handed over to my care when she was but minutes old.
Somewhere around the age of sixty, ‘old’ was added to my name and I’ve never complained. I’ll hear: “Old Sally, go and fetch the newspaper for me.” Or “Old Sally, get that child out of my sight.”
Some days I feel older than my years, having worked as a housekeeper all my life and raised three children of my own. My youngest, Ivy, still lives with me, even though she’s in her twenties now.
Although the Temples reside in downtown Savannah, I live twenty miles north on the South Carolina coast on land that my grandmother and mother owned before me. It is a place where Atlantic tides bathe the islands and coastland, where waterways work inland into pungent marshes, now home to shrimp and crab. Oysters grow in slick, gray colonies like necklaces along the scooped neck of the land. Osprey and cranes patrol the salt waters. Sea gulls squawk and hover above shrimp boats heading out to sea. Spanish moss graces live oaks like long silver earrings dangling on the ears of a beautiful woman. Coastal winters run chilly to mild, summers sticky to steamy.
My ancestors wove sweet-grass baskets. They made medicine of herbs and grew all their own food. When it came time to give birth, they delivered their own babies. They reaped the bounty of surrounding waters with fishing nets they knitted themselves. They lived off ocean and land with peaceful self-reliance. Yet that peace feels threatened now.
Today, I am grateful the Temples are traveling so I can bring the girls to my house on the beach. So as not to get behind, I take my ironing with me. In the kitchen, I refill a coke bottle with water and twist a metal cap on the top so I can sprinkle the sheets before ironing them. A portrait of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. shares a wall with photos of my children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.
I stir roots boiling on the stove, the water already black as the swamps where I collect them. I am conjuring up a new batch of protection spell for Rose. Protection spells were my mama’s specialty. She lived past the age of 90 as an independent woman, still chopping her own firewood, washing clothes in a tin tub and cooking on a cast-iron stove.
Through the large windows of my small house facing the sea, I keep an eye on the two children in my charge while they build a sand castle on the beach. One is brown, the other one white; one older and one younger.
Violet, the youngest girl, is six years old and the most beautiful child I have ever seen. She’s my granddaughter, who I have agreed to raise. It’s in my nature to raise up whoever needs rearing. It doesn’t matter if they are my own blood or not.
Earlier that morning, I wove Violet’s hair into several braids and added colored beads to the end of the tight rows. Despite her circumstances of coming into this world, Violet is a happy child. She often sings or hums, the beads in her braids keeping the beat as she moves her head with the melody. She makes up most of her songs. Often I’ll find her with her eyes closed, feet stomping and hands clapping as she sways with the music. It’s as if someone much older and wiser resides within her. Someone who has stories to tell.
Rose Temple, on the other hand, holds her music deep inside. If I live to be a hundred, I will never understand how somebody like Iris Temple—Rose’s mother—given so much in this world, can be so stingy with her love. It’s as though the ancestral line of Temple women suffered a drought of feeling that changed the landscape from the lush low country marsh into a desert. Time and again, Rose clings to me like I am the oasis she seeks.
Ivy, my grown daughter, her waist and hips already thick with good eating, helps the girls carry bucket loads of sea water to fill the moat around their sand castle. In many ways Ivy still seems like a girl herself, though grownup things have happened to her.
After turning off the roots boiling on the stove, I make egg salad sandwiches and sweet tea. I wave from the front porch, calling the girls to lunch. It is spring and the blowing sea breeze provides the perfect temperature. Something sweet is in the air; something blooming in the dunes. I close my eyes to identify the scent but it is gone before I can catch it. Dark clouds push in on my thoughts.
The girls run through the dunes and up the steps to my small beach house painted white with bright blue trim to scare off evil spirits. The girls are covered with sand. Ivy follows, her sleeveless cotton dress blowing in the breeze as she brushes sand off her brown arms and legs.
“Ivy, please wash off the girls before they come inside,” I say. “I don’t want to have to sweep again today.”
“Yes, mama.” Ivy grabs the green garden hose at the side of the house and rinses the sand off their arms and legs. The girls squeal in ecstasy as Ivy covers the end of the hose with her thumb and sends water spraying in all directions.
I return to my ironing. If I hurry I can get one more piece done before lunch. The sound of laughter makes me wonder if I’ve imagined the omens. But the truth nags at me like a headache that refuses to go away.
The two girls wrap themselves in clean towels hanging on the porch railings and come into the living room where I am ironing my fourth full sheet of the day. Only four more to go. I shake the sprinkler bottle across the wrinkled sheet. My iron sizzles as it hits the damp cloth. Steam rises. Sweat dots my brow.
Rose leans into my wide hip. Birthing hips, I call them; perfect for bringing children into the world. With my hand, I smooth Rose’s wet hair and notice again how thin she is.
“I’ve got to fatten you up, child.”
Yet Rose could eat chicken and dumplings every day of her life and stay skinny. She’s tall for her age, too, most all legs. Her mother keeps her hair styled and permed like a prize-winning poodle and Rose is always tugging at it to make it straight. I lean over and kiss her forehead, marking her with my love.
“Baptize me,” Rose says. She stands as tall as my shoulder and looks up at me, her eyes filled with playful pleading. She asks me to do this every time I iron, as if this is the food she needs most.
After I agree, Rose turns toward the sea and bows her head as though about to receive a sacred anointment. The water sprinkles on Rose’s head, and her laughter rides on the salty breeze sweeping through the house.
Violet begs to be next and I repeat my christening ritual. Then Violet and Rose collapse in giggles on the sofa. Ivy shakes her head, as if she is much too old for such nonsense, so I aim a few sprinkles in her direction. My daughter, who also seems much too serious these days, laughs a little.
The four of us move to the kitchen where I have already set out their lunch on my round wooden table. The girls and Ivy eat egg salad sandwiches cut into triangles like the finger sandwiches served at Iris Temple’s fancy parties. Slices of watermelon are piled high on a plate in the middle of the table and they devour these, too, collecting all the seeds in a bowl for me to plant. The thirsty girls drink glass after glass of sweet tea with a slice of lemon perched on the lip of each glass. Meanwhile, I reheat shrimp and grits from my dinner the night before and join them.
“What’s that smell?” Rose asks. She wipes her mouth with a napkin as if her mother might be watching.
“That be something I’m conjuring up.” I push back my chair and walk to the stove, my bad hip already stiff from a few moments sitting. With a wooden spoon, I give the root mixture a stir and then spread the roots on towels laid out on the kitchen counter. I pour the black brew into a brown bottle with a stopper. This mixture is stronger than my usual potions because what I’m guarding against seems to require it.
On the Sea Islands—those islands and coastal regions along the Georgia and South Carolina coast—magical medicines are created using feathers, bones, and sometimes blood, fingernails and hair clippings. These oddities wi
ll then be mixed with more natural materials such as roots, sand and leaves. Since the white slave owners feared the use of Gullah magic, conjuring practices were kept hidden and are held secret even today. I’ve not used one of the old spells in a long time, but whatever is coming feels very old.
“Grandma’s spells get rid of evil spirits,” Violet says to Rose, her eyes widening as she says ‘evil spirits.’ She shakes her head to get her beaded braids to agree and the girls giggle again.
I retrieve a Saltine cracker tin filled with homemade oatmeal cookies from the cabinet, and give the girls two each and Ivy three. Ivy wraps her cookies in a napkin and puts them in her dress pocket.
Violet carries her plate and glass to the sink and Rose follows. Though younger, Violet is always the leader.
“Can we go back out?” Violet asks me. “We still have work to do.” The girls exchange a look as if their ‘work’ is of the top-secret variety.
I nod. Violet challenges Rose to a race, the finish line being their sandcastles. It is inevitable that Violet will lose. She is a foot shorter than Rose and three years younger. Yet the two girls toss their towels across the porch railing and make a mad dash through the dunes as if equally paired.
Ivy and I reach the porch just as Rose throws up her arms in victory in the distance. Violet lags far behind swinging her head as she runs, as if enjoying the sound of the beads swaying in her hair and happy to let Rose win.
“I’m glad we came out today,” Ivy says.
“Me, too,” I say. “I much prefer the sea breezes to that stuffy old Temple house.”
Ivy drove us to the coast since I never learned to drive. Mister Oscar, Miss Temple’s husband, is good about letting Ivy use one of their cars if needed. He holds a fondness for Ivy that we never talk about.
Ivy and I sit on the top step looking out over the Atlantic Ocean. The sun is just beyond the house and the porch is in shadows now. It feels good to rest a bit before starting on the ironing again. Violet and Rose begin to build a new sandcastle next to the old one. If not for the differences in the color of their skin, they might pass as sisters.
“They call themselves the sea gypsies,” Ivy says. “It’s their secret society for girls.”
I laugh. “Imagination. It be a powerful thing.”
“They’ve appointed me their queen,” Ivy says, rolling her eyes.
I put an arm around Ivy and squeeze a dose of love into her. “You be a queen to me, too.”
Ivy lowers her head. Her hair is clipped short, and to tame it she wears colorful headbands I make from fabric I find. Today’s band is bright yellow, the color of a shiny ripe lemon. Ivy has always liked bold colors. The bolder the better. I give her another squeeze, pretending I’m making lemonade.
“So what be on your mind, baby?” I ask. “Not like you to be so quiet.”
Ivy’s brow furrows, as if whatever she’s pondering has steered her into deep waters she’s not sure she can navigate.
“I need to make a decision, Mama. Mister Oscar wants me to move into the house and be Iris’s companion.”
Now I am the quiet one. I’m certain Mister Oscar has other reasons for wanting Ivy there. Bad omens creak through my bones. Then the words come out of my mouth before I have time to stop them:
“You have to make a living some way, baby, and since he be offering room and board…” My voice trails off.
Ivy huffs and jerks away. No one in their right mind would want to be a companion to Iris Temple. I can barely stand working for her, myself. But Ivy hasn’t found steady work yet, and I barely make enough to support Ivy, Violet and myself.
Silence stretches in front of us like the yawning beach along the coastline. I hang my head. Though it is steamy hot, I shiver. I always swore I would never do to my daughter what my mother did to me. But here I’ve done it anyway. In contrast to the stormy feelings churning inside me, the ocean is so calm it looks like a sheet of dark blue glass.
Ivy has tears in her eyes, but isn’t making a sound. I search for words to say. Then I take a deep breath and my voice comes out soft, “Daughter, sometimes history and the times be bigger than a single person,” I begin. “And I think this be one of those times. I don’t know how to tell you to do anything different than what I did with my own life. I wish it weren’t so, but it is.”
Ivy is the daughter of Iris Temple’s father. The fact that she has a different father than her brothers has never been a secret to Ivy. Edward Temple was a powerful man. A man used to getting whatever he wanted, including me. No love involved. I needed my job because I had a family to support.
Children fathered by landowners and servants was not that unusual in those days and in some ways the old days are still going on. Temple blood has been mixing with my ancestors for centuries now. My grandmother, Sadie, carried and raised a Temple child, too, and now Mister Oscar has made his choice and wants Ivy.
For days, I have mixed an elixir to ward off the darkness I thought was coming from somewhere far away, but instead it lurked in my own bloodline. It doesn’t matter that I was the first in my family to finish high school, and that I harbor a room full of books that I’ve read, or that I know a hundred potions I can create. Sometimes the surge of history just runs too deep and too strong. Sometimes no matter how much you learn to read the ocean currents, you still get swept into the undertow.
Rose and Violet run up to the porch and collapse smiling into my arms. Their embrace is warm, sandy and sprinkled with sunlight. The delight of the two girls pulls me away from the past and back into the present moment. A new wave of certainty surges through me stronger than the undercurrent. Even though it looks like history is circling back to repeat itself with Ivy, something else is true, too. Change is coming. I’m not sure when. I’m not sure how. But it is coming as surely as the sun promises to rise tomorrow morning.
Country Obituary - #1
Cecil "Bluebird" Crawford died peacefully in his sleep early Sunday morning, December 7, 2014. He was 102 years old, which is not nearly old enough. Cause of death is oldness.
He was born in Jacob's Ridge and spent his entire life here except for 3 years in the Army fighting the Germans in World War II. He built houses, starting with big ones—all of which are still standing and some of you are living in—and ending with small ones, bird houses that are perched on porches and in trees all over the county, all gifts from Bluebird.
He is survived by his wife of eighty years, Margaret Annabeth Holston Crawford, ("Maggie") who he met in elementary school in the cafeteria line and they'd been friends ever since. He also leaves behind his daughters Muriel and Mary Beth and the twins: Cecil, Jr. "Junior" and Bill "Bubba" (Bubba preceded him to the Hereafter).
Grandchildren left behind are Brian, Cecil Jr., and Cynthia Winston; Kathryn Jensen Wyatt and Annabeth Mulberry. Tinker and Tucker Crawford; Elizabeth, Fran and Mitsy Crawford. (Mitsy died of cancer three years ago.) Great-grandchildren are Thomas, Chase, Jessica, Sheila, Abigail, Trevor and Roy-boy. Great-greats are Caleb and Harper (twins again) who he rocked in his lap the afternoon before he died.
Services will be held at Good River Baptist Church at 3 p.m. on Saturday, giving the family time to get here, as they are scattered all across the country.
Cards and letters of condolence can be sent to Maggie Crawford, # 7 County Rd., Jacob's Ridge, NC.
Bluebird will be remembered by everyone who knew him. For over forty years he drove the tractor pulling the Knights of Columbus float during our annual Christmas parade, and for the last twenty years he played Santa. Except for the extra padding needed, he bore a striking resemblance. He also had a beautiful tenor voice that could bring tears to your eyes, and that the Good River Baptist Church Choir will surely miss.
As one of the best bird-callers in the State of North Carolina, he could imitate not only southern birds, but also some of the ones that just passed through on their way to somewhere else. However, he will mostly be remembered for his walks along the river every day of his life—a
familiar sight, rain or shine—up until the day he died.
Bluebird had a smile and a kind word for everybody and if anybody ever needed anything, he was on your porch the next day delivering it. He said the hardest thing about growing old was seeing his friends go on before him, but he never complained a minute of his life. Bluebird was a true southern gentleman, and the world is a little less gentle without him in it. Be sure and get to the church early because there's bound to be a crowd.
Country Obituary - #2
Margaret Annabeth Holston Crawford, passed away late yesterday afternoon, March 15, 2015, three months after losing her beloved husband, Cecil "Bluebird" Crawford. She was 99 years of age. Cause of death is heart attack, but we all know it broke her heart when Bluebird died.
Known as "Maggie" to family and friends, Maggie Crawford taught school at Jacob's Ridge Elementary for forty years. A bunch of you probably had her in third grade and have beautiful cursive handwriting as a result. After she retired, Maggie volunteered for the adult literacy program, and was a founding member of the Jacob's Ridge Garden Club. Members of the Good River Baptist Church will remember her for the delicious candied yams and apple pies she brought to the potlucks.
She is survived by her daughters Muriel and Mary Beth, and one of the twins: Cecil, Jr. "Junior." The other twin, Bill "Bubba" Crawford preceded her in death.
Grandchildren left behind are Brian, Cecil Jr., and Cynthia Winston; Kathryn Jensen Wyatt and Annabeth Mulberry. Tinker and Tucker Crawford; Elizabeth, Fran and Mitsy Crawford (Mitsy is also deceased). Great-grandchildren are Thomas, Chase, Jessica, Sheila, Abigail, Trevor and Roy-boy. Great-greats are Caleb and Harper (twins), as well as newborn great-great grandson, Chester Cecil Wyatt.
Services will be held at Good River Baptist Church at 4 p.m. on Sunday, giving the family time to return from their homes in California, Illinois and Missouri.
Grace, Grits and Ghosts Page 4