Lowcountry Summer

by Dorothea Benton Frank

  “Yeah, she sure does. Linnie is a big problem. Big problem.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That Linnie is just a young girl feeling her oats for the first time. By and by, she’ll come around. You’ll see.” Millie sighed deeply and then said in a low voice, “No, she ain’t the big problem.”

  “Well then, what is?” Millie sank into a kitchen chair and patted the table. She meant for me to sit with her for a minute. “Let me just get this mixed and in the oven.”

  “All right. Okay. Look. I gone tell you something now and iffin you repeat it? I’m coming after you with my long scissors to snip out your tongue, you ’eah me?”

  I zipped my lip and crossed my heart. “What’s going on?”

  “This ain’t no joke.” Millie raised her chin in the air and set her jaw in a sorrowful and forbidding frown. “A blackbird got in my house this morning.”

  “Oh, no. Oh, Millie. Oh, no.”

  I stopped stirring my batter and looked at her. A cold chill came over me from the top of my head right down to the tips of my toes. Someone, some dark and fearsome thing, had walked over my own grave. I shivered again and as quickly as I could I sat in the chair opposite her.

  In the Gullah culture of the Lowcountry, a bird in the house was a terrible, terrible omen. It meant imminent death, death that was unexpected, or one that would befall someone long before their time. Here was the warning to prepare ourselves for a catastrophe, and because we had been given this information, there might be a price for us to pay as well. A piece of favorite jewelry would go missing for a while or money would disappear from your bank account. Or maybe you would catch the flu. We needed to pray for protection. Millie always said this kind of thing was the work of the Ajogun, evil spirits that roamed the earth on a mission to destroy human lives. I felt weak and sick inside.

  “Do you remember when your daddy passed? I had all them crows tapping on my windows?”

  “I remember.”

  “And when Miss Lavinia went to glory? Birds came down the chimneys. I had to chase the devil with a broom to get them out of my house.”

  “I know it. I remember.” I got up from nerves, needing to move to stop my own trembling. I poured the corn-bread batter into a pan and slid it into the oven. “What can we do, Millie?”

  “I think it’s time for me to do something big ’cause I got a bad feeling about this. Very bad. And I need you to help me.”

  “Millie?”

  “What?”

  “Who’s the target?”

  “I don’t know. I gots to ask Oya.”

  Oya was Millie’s favorite goddess of her African Ifa religion.

  We ate our soup and corn bread in relative silence, pausing now and then to add a detail to the plan. First, we had to pray for protection. We would go to Millie’s to begin all the old rituals. Then we had to keep praying. If a week or so went by and nothing horrible happened, we could hope it was just a crazy bird. But the odds on that weren’t very good. Once the bird was in the house, that was it.

  If you could be reluctant and anxious at the same time, that’s exactly what we were. We did a hasty cleanup of the kitchen, grabbed a few things we needed, and seconds later we were out the door, on Millie’s golf cart, and on our way to her house. I saw Millie pack a very small container of the soup and slip it into her pocket along with a spoon.

  As we bumped along the yard I said, “That’s for Daddy and Mother?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  It was going to be a long night. Millie’s profile was chiseled and resolute. My heart continued to palpitate, causing my breath to come in spurts. I was very fearful.

  Millie’s cottage was well tended by her and evidence of Mr. Jenkins’s talents was everywhere, too. Her porch was in perfect repair, her shutters glistened from a recent coat of paint, and tiny pink and white flowers tumbled from her flower boxes among the cascading ferns. The cushions of her rockers and porch swing were covered in a tropical print of large green leaves and exotic fuchsia blooms. It was very inviting and welcoming and completely betrayed the serious nature of what went on behind her closed doors. We went inside.

  “Wash your hands, too,” she said as she thoroughly scrubbed her own.

  Clean hands were an essential step in beginning the rituals for far more important reasons than cleanliness. In many cultures, water is the element that washes away sin, illness, and every kind of negative influence from the outside world. If you come into a friend’s house from traveling or shopping, you wash your hands before you sit down to eat. If you come into Millie Smoak’s house to convene with her African deities, you had better be sure your hands are clean and your heart and your mind. In my life I had seen more than enough proof—if you screwed with the deities, they’d screw with you. Millie’s brand of religion was a two-way street. Washing hands was a small sign of respect.

  Since my return to Tall Pines and my divorce from Richard, and most especially since my mother had gone on to her great reward, Millie and I had grown closer, particularly in matters relating to her spiritual practices. We talked about them all the time, referring to different spirits in the course of casual conversation as though we were talking about our good friends. I still wasn’t sure what or who I believed in, among her pageant of spirits, but the results from her prayers, trances, potions, and so forth were astounding. I always said, when Millie prayed, Millie got answers. Truthfully, we didn’t always get the answer we wanted, but we got an answer. Millie seemed unusually worried this time and so I was going to participate in her ceremony with all I had. My insides were roiling and I felt wobbly. What did the warning mean? Death for who? I strongly suspected that Millie already knew and I begged my God to protect my child. And then to protect us all.

  First, Millie threw a long white garment over her clothes that resembled a priest’s surplice. Next, she tied her red silk sash around her waist and opened the door to her residential place of worship.

  What would have been a closet filled with old trench coats and umbrellas in the front hallway of most people’s homes was an altar in Millie’s. There were tiers of shelves like steps that ran from the floor almost to the ceiling, all draped in white cloth. On the shelves were gourds decorated with feathers, cowrie shells strung like necklaces, bowls of herbs, dried flowers tied with ribbons, pictures of my family that were so old the edges were curled with age, candles of various colors that represented different deities, a standing crucifix, and statues of different Christian and Catholic saints. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were there in various configurations and Saint Anthony, of course, was alongside Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Christopher—another holy triumvirate. In between them were small clay statues of Ori, Obatala, Eshu, Oshun, Ogun, Shango, and the rest of the sixteen angels, and of course, a larger one of Oya, her favorite.

  When I was really little I had played house with them, pretending they were a family of dolls. Millie used to tell me stories about them all. Each one of the angels stood for a particular quality and their purpose was to remind us to always look for the highest potential and the godlike qualities in everything and everyone. Basically, it was the golden rule of treat others as you would like them to treat you. With respect. In general, that was a pretty good philosophy that would serve anyone well.

  I knew that Millie considered herself to be a devout Christian, but she gave equal weight to the angels or the orisha of her Yoruban religion of Ifa, in which Millie still reigned as high priestess. For all my life, people came around looking for Millie’s help to mend their broken hearts or to solve money problems, or for advice on finding a better job. Some people thought she could remove spells or plateye and that she could send the Hag to ride their enemies. I had no doubt she could do all those things and more because those same people came back time and again to see Millie Smoak. They brought her flowers, fresh fish, or a pecan pie but never money. Millie refused to take money, saying it was wrong and that her spirits would
be offended if she did, that it was wrong to take money for helping people through the angels.

  As a child, when I had trouble I would give that trouble over to Millie. She always made me feel better. More important, she made Trip and me feel loved when we probably weren’t. She had been on hand for every important event of our lives, celebrating with us, mourning with us, and taking pride in all our accomplishments. And when we got too big for our britches and needed a good talking-to? Millie was the only one who could make us feel remorse and get us back on the right path. We cared what she thought of us. So my affection, our affection, for her was lifelong and profound.

  For the very first time, Millie handed me a length of red silk and told me to tie it around my waist. I took this as an indication of the depth of her concern.

  “And stand by to light the candles, too,” she said in a low and serious voice.

  Did accepting the silk and wearing it mean that I was now a member of the Church of Millie Smoak (population two) or what? By Millie’s mood, I knew we needed all the help we could get, and the full support of Oya, the Wind, who could blow our worries away. I tied the sash around my waist as fast as I could. Whatever I could do to bring about protection and safety for our loved ones superseded any uncertainties or cynicism I felt.

  She sprinkled some water on the floor and lit the red candle, designated for the god Eshu Elegba. She called out, “Iba! Elegba esu lona!” It had been a while since I had attended one of Millie’s ceremonies but I remembered that Elegba was sort of the King of the Road into the spirit world. If you were trying to contact a female deity, it was best if you showed your respect for Elegba first. Then Millie went into a series of what might best be described as deep genuflections, except they were far more dramatic. Her right hip touched the floor, followed by her left shoulder, and then she reversed the process. This was to let the god know she was trying to contact a female and would he please tell the other male elders that she needed to gain entrance into their realm.

  Next, she lit a candle for Oya the Wind, the great warrior, who, in addition to all her other powers, had psychic abilities. She picked up a small, carved box of frankincense and spooned some of it onto several bricks of charcoal along with wood chips of cedar and dried acacia leaves. She lit them carefully with an almost inverted black candle, fanned the smoke into the air with a swirling motion, like a conductor of an orchestra trying to rouse the strings to a full crescendo. Next she took two gourds from the altar and handed me one. She called out in Yoruban to Oya, knelt on her prie-dieu, and closed her eyes. Every so often she would raise her gourd and rattle it, and when she did, I gave mine a good shake. Soon she was lost in a trance, eyelids fluttering, bouncing her jaw up and down, nodding emphatically as though she were in conversation with someone I could not see. Strange as this may seem, I could sense a real change in the atmosphere of the room, like there was someone else there with us. Someone or something. The air became very heavy as though a storm were coming. Oya was also the goddess of storms.

  I stood a few feet away, watching, waiting. Millie’s brow became knitted in seriousness, and perspiration ran down the sides of her face. I had never seen her perspire before and it frightened me. Suddenly and inexplicably, I did not have a single bone to support me. I felt myself sliding down the wall to the floor, where I sat in a puddle of disorientation and confusion. There was something wrong with my vision. Everything was covered in a cloudy mist, as opaque as any fog that ever washed the Lowcountry. I could feel tremendous pressure in my ears and my heart was racing faster and faster. Millie was shaking her gourd and I could not respond. I closed my eyes and then there was nothing. The next thing I knew, Millie was shaking my shoulder.

  “Wake up! Come on, Caroline! Let’s wake up!”

  “I’m up! What happened?” I scrambled to my feet and ran my hands through my hair. I must have been some sight.

  “You okay?”

  “Yes! I’m fine! What happened?”

  “Humph. You tell me!” Millie grabbed my jaw, squinted hard, and looked in my eyes. “Humph,” she said again. Then she felt my pulse. Deciding I was fine, she dropped my wrist. “You’s fine. Just fainted. Too much action for you. Come on, we got to get going now!”

  “Fine! Let’s go!”

  I untied the sash and handed it to her and she looped it around the neck of the hanger along with hers. I blew out the candles and she put a bowl over the charcoals to kill the last sputters of burning incense.

  “We need rusty nails, sumac root, and red pepper. And basil. Evil can’t go where basil was. And some bay-laurel leaves. And goofer dust.”

  “But goofer dust is killing powder, Millie. Isn’t it?”

  The word goofer comes from kufwa, which is a Congolese term meaning “to kill” and it was used in dark rituals to literally snuff out the candles of an enemy.

  “Not how I use ’em. You going against me?”

  “What? Heavens no! Not in a million years.”

  Yeah, sure, like I thought I knew more than Millie about this kind of thing? Even after all the years of witnessing what she did, you could still put all I knew in a thimble.

  “I’m spreading it on the road, to stop the evil from coming on our land. When it’s put together with them nails, the sumac, and red pepper, it becomes powerful cunja for protection. You remember that?”

  “I’ll never forget it.”

  As you might guess, cunja was the bastardized version of conjure, like the Hatfields and the McCoys, who were always conjuring up something to fight about. Over time the verb became a noun and popular usage altered the definition to mean “tool.” Millie knew every tool in her garden and shed.

  “And we gone leave bay leaves and basil on all our doorsteps. Iffin that don’t bring peace to our world, then I don’t know what.”

  We left the house by her back door with a flashlight, a jar of red pepper, a small sack of dried bay leaves, and a fistful of rusty nails that Millie kept in a coffee can in her pantry. We went straight to her garden so that she could gather the herbs she needed, and when we had them all tucked into a brown paper sack, we got back on the golf cart, heading for the family chapel and to pay Miss Lavinia and my deceased father, Mr. Nevil, a late-night visit.

  “You know why you fainted, don’t you?”

  “No. The last time I fainted was a million years ago.”

  “Well, we’re fighting some powerful evil, Caroline. I needed your energy to reach Oya. I wasn’t satisfied until I was sure I was in her presence and I borrowed a little juice from you. Only ’cause I had to.”

  “Nice.” Could she really do that? Glom onto my grid like a poacher with Southern Carolina Electric and Gas? Apparently.

  “I’m sorry but I’m getting on, you know. Pretty soon I need to be thinking ’bout retirement. Either you’re taking over or all I know goes with me.”

  “Ah, Millie. Can we talk about this another time? I mean, what happened to your training with Eric? For the longest time, I thought that you had him on the hook.”

  It was true that I was fascinated by Ifa and all that Millie did, but did she really think a white woman, a less than devout Episcopalian who owned a plantation in South Carolina, could carry on the root work and spells that began with her ancestors in Nigeria and then the Caribbean hundreds of years ago? I had serious doubts. And I couldn’t believe she didn’t.

  “Humph. Eric. Sweet boy. Had ’em and lost him. He got so interested in the world that he probably doesn’t remember the first thing I taught him.”

  “Which was?”

  “Iffin your nose be itching? Somebody gone fight with you.”

  I laughed then, remembering all those things Millie used to tell me when I was little—that you had better throw salt over your left shoulder on a new moon or else you’d see haints walking, or that if you dropped a fork, company was coming, or that a hat on the bed meant death, or that it was bad luck to bring fruit into the house in odd numbers. The exception, of course, was three. Three of anyth
ing was good. Trip and I had spent our childhoods looking for signs and full of wonder over the unseen world that existed all around us. And we found signs all the time because of the direction in which Millie had hurled our trajectories.

  We passed the old icehouse and windmill, mere curiosities now, as they had not been used in decades. Next we went by the barns where we once kept our horses and the kennels where Trip’s hunting dogs lived when they weren’t on the end of his bed. Finally the greenhouse came into view, where Millie nursed her herbs and Mr. Jenkins babied his Meyer lemon trees all winter long. We made the turn on a tiny road paved with broken oyster shells and hard-packed dirt. The slim cross over the family’s chapel came into view high on the crest of a bluff that reigned over the Edisto River. We were there. The small building’s Romanesque dusky-gray silhouette loomed large against the dark blue sky. I had to admit it was eerie, like something from an old episode of Dark Shadows. Our small family graveyard stood off to the side, built up with brick coping and surrounded by wrought-iron pickets and low brick columns to create an enclosure. It had a special charm of its own.

  When Trip and I were little, we played there like mad, absolutely convinced it was haunted, and even now I am certain it was and is. The creaking old chapel was our clubhouse until our mother ruined it with a renovation, restoring it to suit her purpose of making a supper club and concert hall for chamber ensembles. On her death I had changed it back into a chapel, supervising the reinstallation of the pews from their storage place in the barn after Mr. Jenkins refinished them. The stained-glass windows were repaired and polished to a sparkle. The heart-pine floors were waxed and waxed until you could nearly see your face in them. Everything received two fresh coats of paint. It was beautiful and I imagined it looked very much like it had generations ago.

  At the far end of the chapel was a small riser that had served as the altar so many years ago. The original altar had been removed aeons ago and now a round table with intricate inlay stood in its place with a beautiful Chinese blue-and-white vase. As often as time allowed, I filled it with branches of crepe myrtle, magnolia leaves, and roses. Always roses when they were in bloom, because Mother had loved them so. Then, with Millie’s advice and input from Miss Sweetie and Miss Nancy, we chose pictures of Mother by season and framed them in silver, changing them often. Crogan’s found a silversmith for us who engraved a beautiful plaque with her name and dates, and on the first anniversary of her death, we affixed it to the wall at eye level, next to the niche where her picture stood behind a beveled-glass door, smiling out at us. Every time I looked at her picture I was struck by her electric verve. She seemed alive even on paper. Our stunningly pretty mother had an unmatched zest for life and love and people, and she was full of more beans than they had in Boston. God, I missed her so. I missed her every single day and night and I always would.