Creola's Moonbeam

by McGraw Propst, Milam

  An Indian woman in a sari walked up and put her arm around Oscar.

  He politely introduced me, then I sent him on his way. “You must go ahead, ‘Dearest One,’ you have many guests to greet.”

  “I shall return to talk with you again, dear Honey. I promise you that.” With those words, Oscar was swept into a sea of Beatrice’s friends.

  The ceremony began amidst glorious music — exotic chants and quirky rhythms, a bit of opera, a bit of whimsical folk music.

  Beatrice would have delighted in the choir’s choices. Wait, silly woman, what was I thinking? Beatrice most assuredly orchestrated the service herself. A smile curled my lips.

  Next, people rose one-by-one to share marvelous “Miss Bea” stories.

  The traveling friends talked of journeys abroad with her, trips to China, to Australia, to Hawaii, and to her native England. There were tales of cruises, of raft trips, and of hot air balloon rides, of traveling on the Orient Express, and of boarding a camel on the occasion of our dearly departed’s seventy-fifth birthday.

  Her artist buddies spun yarns about work, exhibitions, triumphs, and about Beatrice’s sincere passion to encourage others.

  A handsome young man, one she had mentored, lamented, “Had Miss Bea not been so intent on helping all of us, she could have been better known for her own art and writing throughout the whole country. No, around the world. No! Miss Bea could have been a galactic success! But this grand woman, one whom we all adored, was singular in concern for those coming after her.”

  Every person in the church seated suddenly rose to his feet and burst into a spontaneous round of raucous applause. The walls of the old building shook from the thunder of our collective gratitude.

  An attractive woman in a bright-orange suit stood next. “Our family had its own Auntie Mame,” she said. “First of all, I must explain my outfit. When Aunt Beattie finally admitted her end was near, she made me promise to wear her favorite color. Bright orange. I argued, of course, but whoever won an argument with this woman?”

  The congregation, again seated, clapped in agreement.

  “In this sea of brilliant color, I actually appear rather drab. Apparently our aunt discussed what to wear with many among you. Let’s just agree, as always, our Beatrice has made her point!”

  I looked down at my staid blue suit and wished I’d worn orange, too.

  Oscar took to the podium. So overcome was he that he could not speak his well-prepared text. He disappeared for a moment, then returned carrying Beatrice’s drum. Slowly he pounded out a few pained sounds that seemed to match the sorrow of his own heartbeat. Afterwards, silence choked the congregation. A woman helped Oscar to his seat.

  One by one, tribute after tribute, each person shared something else that touched my soul. Even in her death, Beatrice exuded wonderment. But I found myself searching the room for the person Beatrice surely wanted to hear from most. Where was Jennings? Maybe, like Oscar, he was too grief-stricken to speak.

  At the conclusion of the service, I gathered my courage and approached the niece, the lady in orange.

  “Excuse me, please. I know you need to talk with many people, but, just briefly, my name is Honey Newberry and ...”

  “Yes, of course! I’m Cynthia. Certainly I know who you are, Mrs. Newberry. Or if I may, Honey?”

  “Honey, please.”

  You are my aunt’s friend from the beach, the author. It was your stories that kept our darling Aunt Beattie going for many more months than the doctors had allotted her. It is I who should thank you, Honey.”

  “I don’t deserve your compliments, Cynthia. I did nothing. It was Beatrice who did so much for me.”

  Sounding like her aunt, the young woman begged to differ. “Let’s just call it a draw!”

  “Cynthia, may I ask you one quick question?” Responding to her affirmative nod, I continued, “Where will I find Jennings?”

  “Who?”

  “Her son, your cousin Jennings.”

  “I’m, I’m sorry, I’m afraid I must tell you there is no Jennings. Aunt Beattie never had children.”

  My mouth dropped open.

  “My poor dear Honey, I’m afraid you were a partner to one of our Beatrice’s many charms. When my aunt wished hard enough for something, it became a reality for her.”

  I stood there silently. Shaking.

  “On the other hand, more often than not, her whims became reality for the rest of us, too,” Cynthia continued. “Such was the case with her art, with her adventures around the world, with her chosen friendships, with her Dear Ones, and with us, those fortunate enough to be members of her family. Honey, your book was just that, a dream she made come true. Beatrice willed it and it was so!”

  “I just don’t know what to say. Jennings was a real person to me!”

  Cynthia smiled. “Let him remain real to you. You know something? In an odd way, Honey, you may have replaced Aunt Beattie’s fictional son, in her mind, at least.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, toward the end, Aunt Beattie became a bit befuddled. From time to time, she’d talk to ‘my little girl, Honey’ or on occasion, there was another name. Let’s see. Oh, yes, she’d say, ‘Don’t be so self deprecating, Harriette!’ I figured Harriette and Honey could be one and the same? Yes?”

  “Yes. Your aunt worked hard to exorcise Miss Harriette from me. It’s a long story.”

  “I’d like to hear that story. Perhaps we can spend some time together?”

  “That would be nice.”

  I embraced the niece, thanked her, and promised that we would make plans to visit when she was ready. Dazed, I wandered out and got into my car.

  At the festival, I’d stuffed my autographed copy of Honey’s Beeswax into a tote bag. The bag had remained in the corner of my study ever since. I knew exactly where it was, too. I’d looked at it every single time I went into the room. Each time, the book called to me. Each time I chose to ignore its plea for attention.

  Why was I so reluctant to open the book Beatrice had lovingly created from my stories? Was this a testament to my own shortcomings? Given the discovery of my friend’s terminal illness, was it simply too painful for me to look at her artwork? My face reddened. Guilt swept over me like an ice cold wave.

  As I drove along the expressway, I began beating myself up for not visiting Beatrice before she died. Creola’s face came into my mind. I hadn’t visited my darling Crellie often enough, either.

  “Honey Newberry, you are so damned self-involved. Will you ever learn? You don’t deserve to be a called a ‘honey of a friend.’ Can you hear me, Beatrice? I am sincerely sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t visit you. I’m abundantly sorry that I can’t bring myself to look at the book you made for me.” Tears flooded my face. I could hardly see to drive.

  I pulled into a rest stop and sat there talking out loud some more. “I merely thumbed through your book, your drawings, your work; then simply ignored your fine accomplishment. How negligent I was! Forgive me, please, forgive me, my dear, dear friend.”

  I buried my head in my arms. Resting on the steering wheel, I sobbed, “I’m sorry.” Reaching for a tissue, I wiped my eyes and blew my nose. “I am so sorry. I’m even sorry that I’m sorry!”

  You sure do enjoy having an attack of ‘the sorry’s,’ Creola whispered.

  Indeed, Beatrice added. Dear girl, get over it.

  I started to smile.

  “All right, Beatrice. All right, Crellie.” I started my car and pulled back onto the highway. I vowed to myself that I would look at every page of Honey’s Beeswax. How I longed to relive the day of the book festival, the day Beatrice penned her dear message to me. The last day I was to see the extraordinary lady alive.

  Beau wasn’t home when I pulled in the garage. Walking inside, I put on some soothing music, prepared a cup of tea, took off my heels, and curled up into my soft, comfy chair.

  At Beatrice’s suggestion, I’d purchased the chair soon after returning from the beach. Even an ordin
ary chair now held special meaning for me. I sipped the tea as I munched on an English muffin. The muffin was fitting, in Beatrice’s honor. I spread on fig preserves, a favorite of Creola’s, and another appropriate choice for a day to be bathed in memory. Everything perfect, I opened Honey’s Beeswax and began to read the stories I had tried to throw away but Beatrice had rescued, just as she’d rescued me.

  Around me, my house came to life. I could see the stories unfolding as they occurred, in the kitchen and the family room and dining room. How well I remembered knocking out the pantry wall only to say, “Now what do we do, Beau?” Another whoops in the making?

  All those now-gone walls: the one between the kitchen and the den that Beau took down as war broke out, those walls appeared and disappeared with the blink of an eye as I reread my stories. Wallpapers, three different ones in the kitchen; paint colors, as many as six in the den, I could swap about in the pages on my lap.

  I laughed with gusto as I again envisioned Butlar’s legs dangling from the attic floor through the kitchen ceiling. Thankfully unharmed was our nine-year old boy, unhurt but for his bruised ego, as he enthusiastically tried to help his Daddy with the new insulation. Yet another example of an incident that was “funny after the fact.”

  The plastic, pink flamingo flock we’d once endured in the front yard, and white automobile tires filled with dead plants — both moving-in pranks from Beau’s office buddies — were once again there in the front yard, just as they appeared on the cover of Beatrice’s book.

  I turned around and looked out a window at the swimming pool which had been the longest ordeal and greatest fiasco of all. It made up an entire chapter in the book. We’d begun building it one spring, but our usual bad luck interfered to keep construction going through the entire summer. The pool wasn’t finished and filled with water until Halloween. Undaunted, our two children and every one of their neighborhood friends decided to inaugurate it.

  Wearing Halloween costumes, the squealing kids pinched their noses and cannon-balled into our brand new pool. Our soggy Spiderman and Wicked Witch, along with an assortment of other equally well-saturated monsters, vampires, and hobgoblins, climbed out of the water into awaiting beach towels. If not for the intervention of their parents, the cold, soggy Trick-or-Treaters would have hit the neighborhood for Halloween goodies. Of course, many had to go as ghosts — wearing sheets — because there was not time enough to dry their costumes!

  “Mom, this is soooo cool,” shouted Butlar as he scurried out the door in his quickly contrived hunchback (pillow and buckskin shirt) outfit. “We get to go swimming and Trick or Treating, all on the same day!”

  It was nothing short of a miracle that no one had caught pneumonia. But then, happy miracles do occur.

  I hugged the book to my chest, then opened it again to read more stories. For the first time, I noticed the title page just inside the cover.

  Honey’s Beeswax

  by Harriette Ophelia Butlar Newberry

  What had I seen?

  “By Harriette Ophelia Butlar Newberry.”

  I quickly checked the cover, peeling back the Autographed Copy sticker. Sure enough, hidden underneath was my full name. Not Honey Newberry, as on my other books, but Harriette Ophelia Butlar Newberry, an altogether different person!

  As if on cue, the doorbell rang. There stood the postman.

  “Sign here, ma’am.” He handed me a registered letter. I opened it.

  Dear Honey,

  You know all too well my beloved aunt, so you understand that you now have an important assignment. Aunt Beatrice and I wish you the best of luck in selling your newest book. She insists you have your publisher print thousands more copies.

  I’ll look forward to a glowing report from you at a future luncheon meeting.

  Sincerely, Cynthia

  Before I could catch my breath, the postman returned from his truck with not one, not two, but three cases of Honey’s Beeswax. He kindly took them down to the basement, where I stored them next to my stash of promotional copies for Creola’s Moonbeam.

  I looked at the stacked boxes, hands on hips. “You really got me this time, Beatrice! Dear lady, I do thank you with all my being. And I promise, yes, I’ll get the book out there for the world to enjoy. The books. Plural. Honey’s Beeswax and Creola’s Moonbeam. Our books. Yours, mine, and Crellie’s.”

  I knew what I had to do. I walked out into the middle of my front yard. A warm spring night had fallen. I looked up at the moon. To my delight, it was full. Then, without concern for what the neighbors might think, I turned not one, not two, but three cartwheels.

  “Thank you, Beatrice,” I shouted each time my feet fanned over my head. “Thank you, Crellie.”

  Falling back onto the grass, I gazed at the moon. There she was, Creola Moon, all light. Silhouetted against her face was a whimsical shadow, a woman doing a cartwheel. Beatrice. The woman of contradiction and mystery, Beatrice had merged with Creola.

  I understood. I would gather my own group of Dear Ones. I would entertain them with my tales, encourage and nurture their talents, and look on as their dreams come true.

  I would become their Beatrice, their Creola. I would invite their spirits to join in our circle.

  Perhaps, I would even pursue new dreams of my own.

  About Milam McGraw Propst

  Milam McGraw Propst has had careers as a newspaper reporter and feature writer and also in public relations with national companies as well as a variety of volunteer positions.

  Highlights for the last several years include the publication of her three books with Mercer University Press: A Flower Blooms on Charlotte Street, It May Not Leave a Scar, and Ociee on Her Own.

  Creola’s Moonbeam is her first novel for BelleBooks.

  Charlotte Street brought honors to Milam as Georgia Author of the Year for first novel and a nomination for the Townsend Prize for fiction, and nationally, it won the Parents’ Choice Fiction Recommendation. As well, the book was made into a motion picture, The Adventures of Ociee Nash, starring Mare Winningham, Keith Carradine and Ty Pennington. The film premiered at Atlanta’s Fox Theater on June 1, 2003.

  Produced and directed by Amy McGary and Kristen McGary, the film was released nationally in 2004, with the DVD now available. The film introduces Skyler Day as Ociee along with a number of noted Georgia stage actors, including Tom Key, Anthony Rodriquez, Janice Akers, and John Lawhorn.

  Milam’s short story “Nestle” was published in the March 2004 issue of Atlanta Magazine.

  Born in Memphis, Tennessee, Milam has also lived in Birmingham, New Orleans, Springfield, Massachusetts, and Atlanta. Married to Jamey Propst, her college sweetheart at the University of Alabama, she has been blessed with three children: Amanda, William, and Jay, and thanks to William and his wife, Abigail, two grandsons, Loftin and Emmett. Notably, the children and Milam were extras in the movie while Jamey netted a small role with some six lines.

  Milam currently enjoys public speaking about her books and the film. Contact her via BelleBooks at bellebooks@bellebooks.com.

  Acknowledgements

  This thanking folks can be tricky. Especially for me. My paralyzing fear of omitting the names of people supportive and dear kept me from including any acknowledgements whatsoever in my last book, “Ociee on Her Own.” That, I truly regret. So here goes.

  Many thanks to my fellow authors, Jerry Lee Davis, Jackie White, and Jackie Cooper, with kudos to Jackie Cooper for lining me up with BelleBooks, and with apologies to Jerry Lee for not listening when he made that same suggestion some two years prior!

  Thank you, Deb Smith, along with the other amazing women of BelleBooks for believing in Honey Newberry enough to invite me into your circle of authors. Thank you to Martha Crockett for designing ‘Creola’s’ lovely cover. Thank you to Haywood Smith, again to Jackie and Jackie, and to Charlene Ann Baumbich, Julie Cannon, and Joyce Dixon for your generous remarks about Honey and her fictional family and friends.

  Friends. Thi
s writer would still have a file full of unused ideas were it not for my real life friends who encouraged me to put words on paper. Thank you, Pam Weeks and Jackie Brown for your prayers, for proofreading “Creola’s Moonbeam” and my other three books, and for your years of faith-filled cheerleading.

  Thank you also to Betty Ann Colley and Betty George, and to Marc Jolley, Jeff Stives, Carol Lee Lorenzo, and Kristen McGary for always believing in me.

  Thank you, Mary and Marvin Brantley, for often introducing me (hope blooms eternal) as “The Margaret Mitchell of Cherrywood Lane” and to Sally Miller for recording, so beautifully, my stories for Books for the Blind.

  Thank you to the Marist Moms including Ave, Starr, Ginger, Mary Alyce, Ann, Judi, Linda, Sandy, Patty, Sarah, Jody, Marilyn, and Gail. Also there’s the Westfield Garden Club to note, the bridge club, Patty, Kay, Diane, Jean, and JoAnne, our Scripture study class, Clare, AND the ladies of the Artists Way, especially Beverly Key and Janet Wells.

  I surely cannot leave out Kristi Hyde, the Winstons, the Carrolls, the Mittigas, the Lynch or the Davis family, the Jannettas, the Whitmans or the Robnetts, or the Lundys, the Schweitzers . . . or the Birmingham loyal, the Elliotts, the Crums, the Whetstones, the Farrell family, or Diane and Barbara . . . or certainly not the Walthers or the Ekiss family. Oh dear, and there’s my beloved Aunt Martha McGraw. Thank you, each and everyone!

  With appreciation and love to Kate and Lou, my teachers, my dear ones, and Honey’s most ardent advocates.

  I conclude by expressing much love to my family, to Jamey, and to Jay, to Amanda, and to Abigail and William, with bunches of kisses for their two little boys, our precious grandsons, Loftin Alan, who’s a big brother now four, and for Emmett James, who’s grinning his way to age one.

  —Milam McGraw Propst