by Nicole Seitz
Vesey is staring at the ceiling now. He sets his hat down on the bed and squints up, adjusting his glasses.
“Don’t tell me you can see it from here,” I say. “Heaven.”
“No . . .” Vesey looks around the room and grabs a chair at a little dresser I bought in Italy. He moves it to the center of the room, right next to the bed, and starts climbing on it.
“What are you doing? You’ll break your neck!” I move toward him and hold on to the backs of his legs. It’s a strange position and I feel slightly light-headed, feeling his strong, warm calves through his pants. He’s reaching up, here, there, then he comes back down.
“What is it?”
“I reckon it’s . . . putty.” Vesey is holding white blobs of stuff and rolling it around in his fingers.
“Putty?” I repeat. Vesey looks crestfallen. Then he smiles. “I guess maybe I solved your mystery. Looks like Doc Green stuck these up there on the ceiling before he died. Ain’t he had that big ol’ poster bed? All I can figure . . .”
“Why would he do a thing like that?” I try to picture Daddy, old and frail, standing wobbly and reaching up, sticking these notes up there. “Oh.” Tears spring to my face again and I sit down on the edge of the bed.
Vesey stands next to me, not sure what to do. He puts a hand on my shoulder and lets it rest there, warm heat. “Seems he wanted ’em to stay there long enough . . . just till after he was gone maybe . . .”
“Then they’d fall down ‘from heaven’ and I’d think he was really up there. Think it really exists.”
“It does exist.”
“How do you know?” I turn to him and realize it came out much harsher than I intended. I was really only thinking aloud, emotions all amuck. Vesey removes his hand from my shoulder. He puts his hat back on.
“Maybe I’ll leave you ’lone right now,” he says. “I can do the outside later.”
“No, Vesey, I’m sorry, I’m just . . .”
Vesey leaves me sitting there, a swollen shred of a woman, and turns his head sideways to say, “I know heaven’s there, Miss Ally, ’cause I believe it. I got to. I got family waitin’ on the other side.”
Then he’s gone and I am lying back on the bed, staring at white dots on the ceiling like a great constellation. How could I not see it before?
Why’d you go to all that trouble, Daddy? Why’d you have to lie? I’m a grown woman now. I should never have gotten out of bed this morning. I roll to my side, curl my legs up embryo-style, and, despite the coffee, when Kat settles into the backs of my knees, I melt into a deep sleep and dream of elephants and white birds.
TEN
At First Sight
Ally
THE FIRST TIME I LAID EYES ON VESEY WASHINGTON, A white bird had skimmed the top of my head with its wing and my eyes followed it as it glided over to the other side of the creek. There was a boy standing there that summer of 1957—just a dark speck on the other side of the river, almost like looking out and seeing my own shadow.
“Mama,” I hollered, “I see somebody over there. Somebody waving at me!” I ran down on the dock and stood on the edge of it, nearly falling off. I waved back as big and furious as I could, putting my whole body into it. I could see the small shape of a boy on the other side, a mess of cattails next to him and a fishing pole in his hand. He would throw it back over his shoulder and exaggerate, slowly casting his bait, then pull it in, making sure I was watching. I was, let me tell you. I ran back to the house. My mother was outside hanging clothes on the line. I tugged at her apron. “Can I go fishing?”
“Your daddy will be back after a while.”
“I can’t wait that long!”
“Why ever not? What’s got into you? Look like you’re about to wet your britches. Go on in, honey, before you have an accident.”
“I don’t have to!”
“Alicia . . .”
“But, Mama, there’s a boy on the other side of the river, and he’s fishing and I want to fish with him!”
A look came over Mama’s face like she smelled something not right with the laundry. She looked toward the river and her eyebrows rose. “A boy on the other side of the river?”
“Yeah, come look!” I pulled her by her wrist and dragged her to the dock. The little boy on the other side was still there, sitting on the bank with his knees up, rod out in the water. He saw us and stood up quick, but he didn’t wave. I did, though.
“You see? I told you! Can I go fishing?”
“Honey, that’s the colored side of the river. We can’t be—”
“But, Mama! Please!” I was about to cry, something I did quite well. My mother looked at me, softened a bit, and said, almost whispering, “I have an idea. How about if I let you get your fishing pole and sit here on our dock? That way you can fish and he can fish—”
“But why can’t we fish together?”
Mama made a funny sort of laughing, scoffing sound, but she also sounded baffled to me, like she did when she didn’t have a good answer for something. “It’s just . . . not done, honey. This is the best you’re gonna get. Take it or leave it.”
She was firm now, and about to get back to her business, so I told her I’d take it. We set me out on the end of the dock with my bamboo pole. I’d only caught a couple things on it before, a tiny bream and a small, ugly catfish, and honestly, Daddy was the one to put my worms and crickets on my hook, so I just sat there, baitless, line and feet in the water, with the dark boy on the other side. We fished that way a good couple hours, occasionally waving, occasionally pulling our poles out and dramatically casting them again, then, just as animated, reeling in pretend fish.
I felt a special connection with the boy on the other side. I could sense he was the same kind of lonely as me. And the distance between us only made me want to know him all the more.
By third grade I knew how to read and write in cursive and could recite whole sections of the Declaration of Independence. Daddy thought I was old enough to start learning some other things about the world. He didn’t say it in so many words; he just put me in the car and said he wanted me to ride along with him . . . to keep him company. Being a doctor in Charleston in 1958, Daddy made house calls. He didn’t work at a hospital or doctor’s office—that all came later. He spent his days entering people’s sanctuaries, their homes, their lives, at their most vulnerable moments.
The day he took me out to make his rounds was the last day of my sheltered life on Molasses Creek.
The first house we went to belonged to an old lady with a goiter on the side of her neck. I’d never seen anything like it, but when I could look her way, I noticed how her blue eyes sparkled at Daddy. The way he squeezed her hand and said she was looking “mighty purdy.” I suppose I knew my father to be a liar in those very moments, but in a way, I’d never admired him more. They both knew he was lying. It was his gentle way, his care, his laugh, that was true medicine.
The next house we visited was dark and smelled like old. I wanted so badly to pull the curtains back and let in some air, but after Daddy introduced me to an old man, he left me in the living room and followed the man to the back of the house. I looked on the walls and saw dingy photographs of children and family, some boat pictures, one of a man holding a large fish and smiling with crooked teeth. I imagined at one time there had been light in that house, but now only darkness fell. How did that happen? It made me want to run, to shake the darkness off of me, to run into the sunshine and just keep on running so that darkness and the smell of old could never settle on me.
Daddy came out, wiping his hands on a rag and looking the man in the eyes. He put his hand on his shoulder and spoke so softly I couldn’t hear him. The man stood still, old and slumped. Then we left. “Who was in there?” I asked him when we were safely in the car.
“His wife,” was all he told me. I sensed I needn’t ask more, that Daddy had told me all he could or wanted to. Maybe I didn’t want to know. Maybe I didn’t want to put words to the fact that darkness
had just shrouded the last light in that poor man’s life.
I hoped we were done for the day. Surely Daddy didn’t have to see more people, to go into anyone else’s house. I certainly didn’t want to and secretly planned to tell him I’d rather wait in the car at the next place. We traveled for a while along dirt roads, past fan palms and wild, natural Lowcountry drives, until I saw water glistening to the right of me. I watched as the sun danced on the river and it felt so familiar, although any waterway in the Lowcountry can feel like home for someone born here, even to those who weren’t. But no. There was more. Through the trees, I saw the back of the Cummingses’ house, our neighbors down the street. I knew it well—the playground that backed up almost to the dock, that three-swing swing set. And then, through a sliver of light as our car moved by, I recognized the back of our own house.
I looked at Daddy. We were on the other side of Molasses Creek. My heart pounded. It was as if I’d somehow dreamed it into existence. How many nights had I lain in bed, dreaming of the other side, the boy with his fishing boat, the clothes hanging on the line in the wind? How many times had I sat there on our dock, wondering what the lives of the people in that little house were like? And now we were here. Really here.
Chickens ran to the side of the car when we bumped along dirt in front of the house. It was simple, much smaller than our own, and painted mustard yellow with a rusted green tin roof. There were flowerpots to the sides of the crooked front steps made of oyster bins, round, with holes where roots and vines crawled through. A black woman in a handkerchief with a little boy on her hip came to the door and peeked out. Her face was dark and shone in the light when she stepped out. She smiled when she saw Daddy, then froze up when she noticed me.
“Althea, this is my daughter, Ally. She’s helping me make my rounds today.” The woman looked at me and, with stiff arms, welcomed us into her home. She looked behind her and yelled something to the people inside. There was shuffling, then quiet. A dog greeted us at the doorway, a smelly golden retriever who seemed to smile. Not having any pets, I tried to put my hand down to him, but the woman shooed him off and down the steps he ran. The door was left open.
Upon entering, my eyes tried to adjust to the light. It was dim, a single lamp glowing on a table next to the sofa. Two windows flanked either side of it, and I ducked and squinted to see if I could spy our house. I could. It seemed like a castle from here, off in the distance, white shards of sunlight making it sparkle. I longed to be there right that minute. The woman said something to my father that I couldn’t understand. It was as if she was speaking another language, foreign, but he understood. My blood stirred. My father moved toward the little kitchen and told me to stay put. I melted down into a wood chair up against the wall, staring at my house through the window, wishing the dog was still indoors so I wouldn’t be alone. Then I heard a voice, a young voice, say, “You de gal from d’otha side?”
I stared hard to where the voice was coming from. It was the sofa. With the bright light outdoors, the sofa was masked in darkness, and there, not one, but two children were sitting still like snakes, staring at me. I hadn’t seen them before.
“Oh, hey, I . . . Yes, I live over there. See that house?” I pointed and the children got up. A little girl stood and came closer to me. She must have been about four years old. She was wearing a dress with no shoes and had her hair in these braids that stuck up all over creation. She smiled and reached forward, touching my blond hair.
“Stop it, Marcie!” the boy chided. He looked out the window for the longest time, then he turned back around. “Yo’ daddy the doctor?”
I nodded.
“I gone be a doc too someday. Gonna have me a big bag to fix folk up.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing and the boy went on.
“My daddy catch oyster. Fish all the time. Smell like fish, but I don’t mind. I like the smell of ’em. You like fish?”
“Yes,” I managed. “I like fish.”
“I like to catch ’em. Catched this big ol’ sucker”—and he put his arms out wide to show me just how big it was—“jes’ last week. You ain’t never seen none bigger. We fry that thang up and mmm, mmm, it good. Best fish I ever eat.”
He was animated now, and I was feeling dizzy, as if I was far away from home, in a dream somehow, and needed to pinch myself to get back. At the same time, I felt like I could listen to this boy forever.
“My name’s Ally,” I said finally. “What’s yours?”
“Vesey my name,” he said. “Vesey, name after my daddy. He Vesey too. Name after Denmark Vesey, ol’ slave hero. I name after him too.”
“Nice to meet you, Vesey,” I said, trying to remember all those times my mother had taught me to be polite. If ever there was a time to use my manners, it seemed it was now. The moment felt important, eternal. I’d never met anyone named after a hero before.
My father came back through the kitchen with the woman, and the baby on her hip was crying now—not a screaming cry, more a whimper. Vesey said, “Rufus sick. He got da fevah. Rash.”
“Hush now,” said the woman and Vesey sat back like a statue, still on that sofa. Never uttered another word.
“Lots of liquids,” said Daddy, and he handed the woman something from his bag. “Two times every day, all right?”
The woman thanked him and I envied Daddy at the moment for having that woman’s respect. For some strange reason I longed to have that same respect from her. I understood Vesey in a deep way, I thought, right then. No wonder he wanted to be a doctor when he grew up. It was the way to his mama’s heart.
We went to two more houses on that same road across the river that day, but to be honest, my mind was stuck at Vesey’s house. I thought through every word he’d said to me. I remembered his cadence. I remembered the glow around his head and how I could hardly make out his features. I remembered the little girl’s hand as she touched my hair, as if I were the unusual one.
I kept waiting for Daddy to ask me what I’d learned that day as he took me on his rounds, but he never did. Somehow, we both knew I’d learned too much to ever put into words.
ELEVEN
Pot Roast Says I’m Sorry
Mount Pleasant
Ally
“RONNIE?” I ROLL OVER IN THE DARKNESS AND PRESS the receiver against my cheek.
“Hey, Al. You okay?”
“Not really.”
“You gonna make it?”
“I guess. I hate this. I don’t even have the energy . . . Let’s just say I chased off my only friend.”
“I thought I was your friend.”
“Yeah, but I could never chase you off. I even divorced you. You don’t leave.”
“That’s true. But how could I ever leave you?”
“I think I screwed up pretty big.”
“Saying sorry always works.”
“You know I’m not one for sorrys, Ronnie.”
“Yeah, I do know it. But don’t worry. He knows you’re upset about your daddy right now. You’re not legally obligated to anything that comes out of your mouth. At least for a while. I think that’s a rule of grieving somewhere.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
“I know I’m right. Listen, Al. Get out of bed. Make some coffee. Get out of the house. All right? You got to . . . you got to just go. Can’t wallow there in bed all day. That’s not you.”
I lie there with the silence and miles between us. I imagine the Lowcountry sunshine outside. The darkness and old in here have already started to settle on me in my grief and stiffen my bones. “Good advice,” I tell him. “I knew you were good for something, Ronnie.”
“I thought you said I was good for nothing.”
“Well, that too. Love you, though.”
“Love you too, Al. We both do.”
“Tell Marlene I’ll call y’all later, all right? Coffeepot’s a-calling.”
My hip is slowly getting back to normal. Thank goodness for small things. I make my way to th
e kitchen, but just barely, as Kat weaves in and out of my legs. “Watch out now! You want me to trip? Hold on.” Carefully, I bend over and pour him some food by the back door. I watch him hunch down and commence to munching. Acts as if he hasn’t eaten in a week. His striped fur glows white in the bright light reflecting off the creek and through the window. I rub my eyes, stretch, and wish I knew the name of a good masseuse in town. I make a mental note to locate a day spa today. Number one on my to-do list. Time to get this hip back into shape.
The coffee percolates and sputters and the aroma stirs me, soothes my soul. I reach for Daddy’s coffee mug and set it down before me with reverence. Daddy’s mug. Daddy’s not here, but his mug is. It’s hard to wrap my mind around. I walk past Kat and open the back door. I take my coffee down to the dock and feel the coolness of the morning air tinged with humidity. The grass is wet beneath my feet. I can tell it will be a pretty hot afternoon. Might as well get out now while the gettin’s good.
Vesey’s house. There it is, staring at me. If I squint, I see two shirts hanging on his clothesline with some smaller pieces I’m guessing are socks or drawers. I can’t see that far anymore. Age is lovely. The only good thing is I can’t see my own wrinkles very well. The closer I get to the mirror, the more out of focus I get. I’ll never invest in one of those high-powered magnifying mirrors, I guarantee it. More like torture devices if you ask me.
Vesey. My mind won’t leave him. What kind of a man still has a clothesline in this day and age?
I ought to do something nice for Vesey. I mean, he handled the furniture men and then moved it all himself. He’s been a true, loyal friend all these years, and me, I open my big mouth and offend him. So careless, not even considering his own loss . . .
It’s settled. I’ll go to the store, maybe that new Whole Foods, today and get something good and fresh. Maybe I can show him I’m sorry without having to say it. I do so hate to say I’m sorry.
What says sorry better . . . pot roast and macaroni or tandoori chicken with naan and jasmine rice? Knowing Vesey, I’d say the pot roast. He’s Lowcountry through and through. He wouldn’t know his tandoori from his naan. I chuckle to myself and after three sips of coffee, am beginning to feel human.