Beyond Molasses Creek

by Nicole Seitz

  Since I’ve come home, Daddy’s overgrown yard has become littered with stone statues of gods and goddesses. His Lowcountry retreat now resembles a graveyard. I’ve got to get Vesey to come back over and set these out better. It should feel like an artsy garden for contemplation and meditation, not a home for the dead. I pass a font with the head of the Greek god of wine on it, Dionysius. His mouth is wide open where the water—or wine—should flow. His eyes are still, stone cold, yet watching me. I back up and nearly trip over a statue of Atlas holding the world on his shoulders.

  How in the world did I acquire all these statues? Well, to be honest, they were cheap. For instance, in Greece, I bought a slew of stone gods for just a few dollars from a stone peddler. It’s how I fooled myself into paying the gargantuan shipping fees. I might as well have bought them at home. I’m sure I could have found similar . . . but the fact that they’re Greek gods and I found them in Greece, well, I like them . . . just not all jumbled the way they are now. It’s a bit creepy, if you ask me, white specters lurking about as if in a city of the dead. Creepy is not at all what I was going for. International, yes.

  Before I get in the car, my fairly new Chrysler LeBaron that I bought specifically because of its comfortable seats, I notice something perched against the side of the house. What is that? I move over and see it—something I’d completely forgotten I owned.

  When I was in Bali a few years ago, I wore nothing but these silk batik saris with the bright colors and designs. I fell in love with them, the way they covered my legs, the way they felt on my body, and the way my spirit felt when I was in them. There was a woman selling her wares in a little shop. She had the most intricate designs, and I purchased about a dozen pieces of fabric to wrap around my hips. Well, she had her batik-making equipment right there in the store, which was nothing more than a couple sawhorses, some stick pins to hold the silk in place, a slew of embossed metal patterns, and a wax melter/pen combination thingy. “Is this how you make them?” I marveled. Her eyes lit up and she showed me how to do it. It looked simple enough. You have the hot wax that you draw onto the silk or press on with your template, then later you use dyes to color it all. The wax resists the dyes, so you get these wonderful, intricate designs. I was so excited that I bought it all from her right there on the spot, imagining myself in some French château, perhaps, walking to the market for bread and fruit and wine, and then spending my afternoons making exotic batiks. Living the posh life of an artist abroad . . .

  Anyway, there it is—the sawhorses, the pins, the box containing the wax melter/pen apparatus, the jars of dyes, the patterns. Could I really do something like that? Make batiks? By hand? Be an artist? It’s been so long since I’ve drawn anything. Well, this is no French château, but the water does inspire me. I look back toward the creek and remember Vesey. I must keep going. Maybe he can help me find a nice spot for my batik studio when he helps me with these statues. If he ever forgives my rudeness.

  When I settle into the car seat, my rear end burns where my nerve is still pinched. I back down the old familiar drive and head out under a canopy of live oaks and Spanish moss into the town that I once called home.

  There is a new bridge that replaced the old Cooper River Bridge into Charleston now. I must say, it’s enormous. It could rival the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco or the Brooklyn Bridge in New York. It almost makes little old Mount Pleasant feel more cosmopolitan, but what I admire most is the walkway on one side for walkers and bikers. Whoever thought of that was genius. Can you imagine being able to walk the bridge all the way over to Charleston? How long would that take, anyway? I remember back in the fifties and sixties, the blacks having to wait on the side of the road for the bus to go into downtown Charleston and make a living. Imagine what this bridge accomplishes. For those with no motor vehicles, they are no longer dependent on public transportation. Sakes, they could walk to the other side on their very own now, not having to wait or depend on anyone. Freedom. My, how things change over time.

  I drive slowly through the intersection and watch the walkers and joggers. I need to be on that bridge with them. I need to conquer that bridge. I need to feel alive and get some exercise. I’m feeling older and flabbier every minute.

  Daddy once told me he tried to walk the bridge when it first went up in summer 2005, but he only got up to the first diamond tower. Seeing that tall white inverted V, I picture my aged father up there, struggling up that hill all by himself. Where was I? Europe? A pain shoots through my tear ducts and I turn away from the bridge and into the parking lot of the new organic grocer. Before I get out of the car, I let the engine run a minute while I shake the thoughts of Daddy on that bridge. I picture him in the sky on a cloud, writing letters to me and dropping them down like rain.

  Oh, Daddy.

  Daddy never did like this Whole Foods store. He didn’t know what to do with spelt or veggie sausages, not to mention the freshly made sushi and cheese section to die for with everything from five-year-old Gouda to Spanish Manchego. I love it though. I nibble on all the goodies they have set out, fresh cherries and bits of aged cheddar. By the time I’ve made it to the wine section, I’ve had a nice snack and can make more rational purchasing decisions, not ones based on raw hunger.

  In my cart, I’ve got a nice rump roast and fresh carrots to go along with the homemade macaroni I’ll be making. My secret is the cheese. I use four kinds. My mouth is watering just thinking about it coming out of the oven all bubbly. It used to be Ronnie’s favorite, and Marlene tries to make it, but she never quite will. You see, I gladly gave her the recipe, but with only two of the cheeses. Poor things. I love them both—I’m totally over Ronnie and so thankful that Marlene can stand to live with the man—but she’s already a better wife in any of a dozen ways than I ever was. My macaroni and cheese is all I have left. I can’t possibly allow her to show me up in that department too. I pick out a nice Spanish tempranillo-cabernet blend and beam, thinking, Now this is how you say you’re sorry, Ally. Vesey will forgive you one hundred percent before the gravy has a chance to settle on his plate.

  ’Course with a meal this good, he might just fall in love in the meantime.

  Banish the thought, Ally! Get ahold of yourself. You are not trying to seduce that man; you are simply putting forth an olive branch to an old friend whom you wronged.

  I really should see a doctor about these hormones. I declare, sometimes I feel more like a teenager than a sixty-year-old woman.

  I adore these smaller shopping carts. Now this is progress. As a single woman, who wants to push around an enormous cart so that everyone will see how alone you are? My cart would be empty, barren, if I were pushing around the big one, but no, this one is overflowing. Someone looking at me might think I’m shopping for myself and a lover, and that would be all right with me . . . except for the fact that I haven’t had a lover since the last presidential election, and only then it was because I was in Italy and feeling a wee bit homesick. I met an American in Rome in Trevi Square. We both enjoyed watching artists paint the fountain en plein air . . .

  I unload my little cart and then, feeling I’ve done my responsible duty by directing the cart to the designated area, I settle into the car and head for home—well, Daddy’s home, not mine, but not really his anymore, come to think of it.

  I turn right and head back toward the intersection. Instead of staring at the new bridge, I watch a rainbow-colored umbrella with a black man selling newspapers and magazines up ahead. How quaint. I can’t imagine standing in this heat, but he’s making a living. Everyone needs to do that, right? Somebody two cars ahead of me stops and hands him money out the passenger window. Do I need a paper? Perhaps I do. I guess if I’m here for a while I really should see what’s happening in the Post and Courier. Give this man an honest dollar. I reach into my purse and move up a little closer. I roll down my window, ready to stop, but instead, my heart stops.

  It’s him! Could it be? No, Vesey doesn’t sell newspapers and magazines on the
side of the road! Vesey is a, well, a farmer, a fisherman, a self-contained man. He fishes and grows his own food, for goodness’ sake! He, he . . . I dart my eyes away in case it is him and press my foot to the gas pedal. When I speed through the intersection, my car hits a bump in the road and I nearly go airborne.

  It can’t be Vesey, can it? Maybe some look-alike? Why would he need money? At his age, why in the world would he struggle like that working on the side of the road?

  My mind is scrambled. ’Course, there’s nothing wrong with making a living, Ally. ’Course, there’s nothing wrong with working on the side of the road. Don’t be such a snob. The sweetgrass basket makers do it every day, and there’s nothing wrong with hard work and selling your wares, is there?

  I look in the rearview mirror and see the man, perhaps Vesey, perhaps not, standing in what looks like army fatigues, in this heat, fishing hat pulled down over his head.

  Fishing hat. Vesey’s fishing hat.

  And his son was in Afghanistan. He didn’t come home.

  My goodness, Vesey is working on the side of the road, peddling fifty-cent newspapers in his son’s army uniform. I didn’t see this coming. I thought he was fairly well off living on Molasses Creek, dealing well with, well, everything better than this. Oh, why didn’t you ever leave this place for good, Vesey? You could have come with me. You could have. Should have.

  I’m not sure what’s up or down right now because guilt like quicksand’s pulling me down. Is it possible I don’t know this man at all anymore? Or is it possible he needs me even more than I imagined?

  I look in the mirror again but I can’t see him, only the rainbow-colored umbrella protecting him from the Lowcountry sun.

  TWELVE

  The Book of the Gods

  Kathmandu, Nepal

  Sunila

  I AM USING MY UMBRELLA AS A SHIELD AGAINST THE sheets of rain, but I am losing this battle. The spokes of metal twist and bend around me. The rainbow colors are faded, gray, and ripping in two places now. I am feeling faint and losing strength. How long have I been walking? How many days? Am I going in circles? All too likely I will not make it to my destination. My escape was desperate and not well planned. I will suffer at my own hands. I will die on the streets of Kathmandu and be swept up in the morning by downtrodden Dalit women with all the other garbage lining these streets.

  I think of Amaa’s face. I know she loves me. In her own way. I imagine her fears now, of me out here in the monsoon, drowning, weak. She will not want me to die here. She will want me to keep moving. I hold tight to my umbrella and lean against a building. I cannot stop now; I have come too far. I must reach the US Embassy, if not for me, for Amaa and for the person who once owned this book. My body hurts and my mind is racing. I open my mouth to scream in fear and triumph, but nothing will come out.

  I have nothing, but at least I still have this book.

  THIRTEEN

  The Sketchbook

  Ally

  WHEN I WAS ABOUT FOUR YEARS OLD I WAS GIVEN A notebook by my grandmother to chronicle the beauty of the world around me. It was my comfort, my oogie blanket. I carried it with me everywhere. Pages and pages of sketches, scribbled by a child’s hand, then progressing into more confident, more accomplished lines—Charleston gates and iron scrolls, palmetto trees and seashells etched in sand, statues of gods and angels adorning walkways and gardens. Nothing ever belonged to me, really. I just drew what I saw, copied the beauty others had created before me. I was not original with my art. A fake, if you want to view it that way. Yet they did have a certain quality . . .

  “Your drawings are coming along, Ally,” my mother would say as she wiped her hands on her apron. “If you keep that up, you might be downtown in a gallery someday. Can you imagine?”

  “Or she might illustrate one of my medical books,” Daddy would tell me.

  “Swell. So I can either peddle my work to tourists or watch boring operations and draw blood and gore and little metal instruments. Thanks, but no thanks.”

  My parents weren’t sure what to do with me by the time I hit puberty. It hit me hard and without much warning. My body began to grow and change and my heart would race, my blood itching to do something. Anytime Chubby Checker was on the radio, I’d twist and gyrate. When Pat Boone came on, I’d swoon and doodle his name. Mama and Daddy would look at each other and wring their hands. “Shame to let a talent like your drawing go to waste. After all, you have it in your blood.”

  Parents like to live their unrealized dreams through their children. My grandmother was an artist of sorts. She’d do some small oil paintings of stills: porcelain bowls and fruits and tablecloths. My father had always felt he’d let his mother down in that way. He had terrible handwriting and could hardly draw a stick figure. I did know it made him proud to see my drawings, my interpretations of the world. And no matter that I pretended not to care, I drew because I wanted to please him. To please them. Children so desire to make their parents happy. That’s why it’s devastating when the opposite happens, when the child brings shame and ruin to her family.

  By the time I turned twelve years old, I’d sit for long hours on the dock, drawing the birds as they preened in the sun, arms out wide in the marsh grass, soaking up rays and the vibrations of the water. I would lose myself in the top of my pencil or chalk or charcoal. I would lose myself—and only then would I feel at peace.

  I began to think about Vesey more and more. I began to think about the way his muscles were forming, his skin growing darker, his smile brighter. I began to draw his little house from my side of the river. When we’d steal away for short boat rides while Mama was at the store in town, I would take my sketchbook along with me. I began drawing Vesey as he stared off into the marsh. He’d giggle occasionally and I’d tell him to be quiet, to be still. He’d grow serious and my charcoal would capture the light as it hit his brow, the round of his cheeks, the depth of his eyes.

  I began hiding my sketches and lying to my parents when they’d ask to see what I’d drawn lately. I told them I’d misplaced it or some other excuse. I didn’t want them to see my drawings of Vesey. I thought they’d reprimand me, threaten me to stay away from him. Tell me how unbecoming it was for a young girl to be off with a boy of his age and of his color. What would the neighbors think? they might say. I didn’t want to hear any of it. I knew they would see in the care of my lines how important he’d become to me. He was the beauty I saw around me now, like the water and the trees and the wildlife, worthy to be drawn.

  But my friend Margaret saw my notebook. She was over at my house when we were in the seventh grade. She peeked under my bed and before I knew it, she was flipping through, looking at my drawings of buildings and gates and rivers and Vesey. She stopped flipping, and I grabbed the book away from her.

  “That’s mine,” I said.

  She reached to get it back. “But I can see it. I’m your friend.”

  “It’s private.”

  “Why, Ally Green, I didn’t know we had secrets from each other. I thought that’s what friends are.”

  I bit my lip and held on to the book, tight. Then her eyes glittered.

  “I saw a black boy in there. Since when do you know a black boy?”

  I couldn’t speak.

  “Since when do you know a black boy well enough to have him sit still and draw him? I want to meet him,” she said.

  I shook my head. “I can’t. He—let’s just go out and play. I want to go take a walk or—”

  “I’ll find out who he is, Ally. You’ll tell me. Or I’ll tell the whole school you’re sweet on a black boy. You think that would go over well? You’d be—”

  “I’m not sweet on him! He’s a friend. A neighbor. He lives there, across the creek. And you have to promise me you’ll never tell a soul about him. Please. It . . . it would get him in a heap of trouble.”

  “Not to mention you. So I can meet him?” Margaret pushed. I hated her in that moment.

  “Yeah. I guess. Sometime.”
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  “Soon,” she said. Then she smiled like the Cheshire cat, and my stomach sank to the floor.

  Part Two

  But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

  —C. S . LEWIS

  FOURTEEN

  Pinky Promises

  Ally

  1959. I WAS NINE YEARS OLD. IT WAS THE SUMMER OF wailing. Howls and deep-throated cries could be heard all hours of the night coming from the other side of the river. I’d lie in bed and wake from a dream, having incorporated the screams right into it. I’d be panting, heart racing, and walk out into the halls, into the living room, and peer through the darkness toward Vesey’s house where a light would be on. I would imagine her face, contorted. I’d send up a silent prayer, for there was nothing else I could do to comfort her. I was never convinced my prayers did anything at all because the wailing persevered.

  The wake and funeral had already taken place, but it seemed family members would still come over day after day, bringing food maybe or sitting with Vesey’s mother and father, helping to ease the pain by their presence. I could still remember when it first had happened and I couldn’t get the images to leave me—the boats, the men, the way her mouth opened but nothing came out. It was all fresh paint in my mind washing over and over again.

  Vesey’s little brother, Rufus, was the one who died. The same child who’d been sick in his mother’s arms when we’d gone to their house the summer before. But he hadn’t died from the sickness. He drowned in that river, the beautiful one that melted beneath my feet as I dangled them into the water, the one that glistened where fish jumped and birds dove down, beaks open to scoop up supper, the one that meant life to me. For Vesey’s family, Molasses Creek now meant death too.