Wash (9 page)

I watched her lay those memories into that boy. Pale green light arching around him, a roaring going down into his bones and water pouring. He was quiet like her but I saw that slow smile break across his face as those white patterns of foam slid down his skinny sides. Pretty soon, he could swim on his own and hold his breath for a long time too. Worrying her and me both until he’d pop back up with a small round stone in his hand, beaming.

Wash

My mamma kept pulling me into deeper water, telling me it was safer there, but it was a long time before I’d believe her. Used to be, I’d stay right at the edge thinking I knew best. But that shorebreak knocked me round till I learned to take her word for it.

She’d watch me come staggering out and tilt her head, with one side of her mouth crooking down, trying not to smile. She was saying you can let me tell you or you can find out for yourself, either way. I’d lie down beside her till the sky stopped spinning. Enough of that and I’d head straight for the deep where she liked to stay.

We’d bob out there, watching the backs of the waves rise up as they rolled away from us to crash on the sand. She showed me the foam pulling into new shapes. Said that’s what happens in ceremony. All that swirling, that’s what spirit feels like when it gets to moving. Even in this quiet water out here, it’s rising and falling like breathing. You feel it tugging on you? That’s how spirit moves, once you learn to listen. And you can drown on dry land just as easy as you can drown in this ocean, so pay attention.

She made altars all over that island. The first one I barely remember. It was in a real hidden place where palmetto leaves brushed my face when I stepped through and saw two mud people, all worn down. Ancestors. They was us and we’ll be them was what she said as she sprinkled water and some ash then knelt there talking to em for a long time.

I was still small when we went one day and found em broke in half, kicked in the dust. She wrapped the broken pieces in a white cloth and took em to the water. Held em under till they melted, then rinsed the cloth out good. Looked out over the waves like she was saying go on home. Maybe it’s safer there.

After that, she always made her altars look like an accident. Just some junk so nobody else saw it for what it was. She made one in our loft but she left it real makeshift in case Thompson ever climbed up there. Just a small pile of stones laying on a bed of pine straw in the far corner.

And she made offerings too. Long curved seedpods for the life they carried. A faded turtle shell for patience laid inside the pale curved rib of a fox. A few scattered shark teeth sharp enough to cut. Wild pink roses from the bush beside the front porch steps just because she liked the smell.

She’d take each treasure and breathe on it, or else rub it against her throat or inside her elbow, then lay it down on the pine straw. Whenever it started to feel crowded, she’d nod at me to pick a few to take and bury at the foot of our favorite trees. Sometimes she’d take a pocketful of petals down to the beach and wade in the water to scatter em till they drifted in a bigger and bigger circle.

She’d talk about it some but told me watch out for words, no matter what tongue. Said she didn’t get time to learn everything for sure so she just tried to see with her heart.

Make some place to kneel and leave your offerings. It keeps you thankful
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Take your journeys in the spirit world first. Be sure you go all the way there and back in spirit before you even step out your own door. It’s easier for God to keep an eye on you, knowing what you have in mind. And make your piece. Keep that talisman strong and wear it till it’s done. Then lay it somewhere safe but not till after you make your next one.

She made my pieces for me when I was little, chewing a small patch of leather till it was soft enough while she gathered what she knew I needed, then stitching everything up tight inside. She’d wear it awhile before she strung it round my neck or else my waist. She never even told me what was in there.

Then one day it was time for me to make my own. She sent me to find my treasures. Told me bring back only what I needed the most, but I was about to turn seven so I came back with a shirttail full. Laid everything out, all proud. Then I looked up to see her holding my next piece of leather so small in her palm. I had so much too much, it hurt my throat.

She just folded her hand closed and sat there, tipping her head and waiting on me to do like she said and choose. That was the day when I learned how a shark tooth, a tiny piece of hair from those dark spidery tree roots and some pebbles worn almost back down to sand can be enough.

Thompson

The one time I caught Mena at her mojo, I was riding over the dune just as she was laying some animal bones in a shallow grave and covering them with sand. I pointed from her hands fluttering over the hole to my own chest and back, raising my eyebrows to ask if that was some version of me she was burying.

She shook her head no with some force. All I cared about was that it wasn’t me. Beyond that, I knew to stay out of it. I kicked my gelding on along, telling myself I’d best beef up my own prayers.

When she talked to Wash, Mena’s ribbony murmur sounded like a small creek running over stones. I remember wondering what stories she could possibly be telling him that went on and on like that. But I was glad she was bothering to teach him, glad to have enough slack to grant her some and more than glad that I knew enough by then to leave her well alone. Every time I heard them, I rode on past.

What Mena caught on to right at the beginning and never did let go of was the sun setting over the sound. She’d get everything done and ready for my supper, then she’d stand there, so still she was almost trembling, with her eyes fixed on me till I’d nod and then she’d be off. Drawn down there like a magnet, every day as urgent as the last, for as long as the light held. With that boy trailing right behind her, steady as a hound and taller every day.

It took me years of watching to see what she was doing, but even before I understood it, I let her go. She seemed centered on it somehow and she always had her work done. My supper laid out and everything else put away. I hate having someone hovering over me while I eat anyway. If I can’t ladle my own food, I might as well climb on into my bed, fold my hands across my chest and get ready to meet my maker.

It was not until I went riding after an early dinner one summer night and came across her showing Wash the sun setting over the sound that I understood the whole story. I watched her hands flutter in the air, making what looked like mountains running down to the water. Then she made a circle of sun with one hand and drew it down behind the flat floating line of ocean she made by holding her other palm out parallel to the ground, letting it rise and fall a little to show the waves.

That’s when I saw it. She’d found a sun that set over the water the way it must have done at home. The way it must have been doing when they stole her. What her hands did next, going around her own neck and making to drag her off, that’s when I knew how it had happened.

She’d gone down to watch the sunset like she always did, even though the trouble had long since started and her family told her not to go. I could tell when she wagged her finger at her boy, saying no, don’t you dare, she was being her parents talking to her younger self. She had nodded and smiled but kept going to the water. And that was when they caught her.

But here she is, and she’s found the sun setting into the water instead of rising from it, with Wash growing up straight and strong and not getting hit.

Wash

It was in the quiet of the sound where my mamma told me stories. Soon as we stepped into the trees, the roar of the waves fell away. Like the woods was one big mouth closing up with us inside it. Old pines leaning against each other with vines tangled between em and a bed of sea grass grown long like hair, all matted round their trunks.

Might have been spooky if we hadn’t known it so well. We knew to cross the swampy part close by the double sycamore instead of higher where the water stayed murky, full of jelly lilies. We knew the black snake with brown marks lived in that one log hollowed out from rot. We knew how to stick to the deep sandy paths and stay away from the wide hardpacked trails that other folks used. And we knew how to disappear whenever we heard somebody coming.

Horse might smell us and spook or snort a little, but most folks would kick him on past without looking too close. Said the place was haunted. Those thick woods gave them the willies so they either went round or else hurried on through. But most times, that bogey man was us. Just us.

We’d work our way through the woods, picking chinquapin nuts for the winter. Get to the sound by midmorning. So quiet with still water stretching as far as I could see. One big mirror making two of everything and shallow enough for me to walk way across that smooth floor of pure white sand, giving under each step I took and drifting like sugar behind me.

At the near end, there was a tiny curved beach between these two trees so old their wet black roots fanned in the air from the sand washed out underneath. Just like sitting in a circle of great big spiders, my mamma said as she settled us in. Made me think of how old man Thompson used to shake his head over her, muttering about how she wasn’t afraid of much.

But truth was, she had a whole different set of things to be scared of. Said it wasn’t so much the thing itself as being surprised by it. That’s why she told me everything. Said she wanted me to be ready, come what may. Wanted me to know whatever I needed to know, and since she had no idea what all that might be, she told me everything she could think of. Started this telling long before I ever understood her and there wasn’t nothing she didn’t tell me she thought I could use.

Sometimes all I got was the rhythm and the shape of the story, the rise and fall of her voice and the shapes she made in the air with her hands. Sometimes what happened in one of her stories didn’t come clear to me till much later. I’d find myself in the middle of some trouble, then I’d see her hands moving in my mind’s eye, the look on her face all those years ago. Then I’d say to myself, oh. Here it is. This right here is what she meant.

She never knew how much time she had with me out on that island under old man Thompson. We knew he’d die one day, and his boys stayed itching to get their hands on us, so she made sure I had hold of all my people and my places. She told it to me over and over like she was drawing pictures in wet sand. Feeding them feeds us was what she said. That’s how we watch over each other.

But I had to wait on her to get ready. And I knew not to ask questions. Best sit still and watch her hands move. Seemed like the telling was as much for her as for me. She was homesick and wanted to keep her people strong and bright in her mind’s eye.

Her mamma, round and sweet. Grabbing you close, making a game out of giving you some sugar. And her daddy, so serious he was scary. I know just how he was from watching her tell me about him. I’d seen her get just like that, drawing up inside herself and giving you that look. Made you think twice before bothering her.

She knew my daddy’s people too. My daddy’s daddy was soft and kind of nosy in a way, but most folks didn’t mind. When you went to him with trouble, he helped you if he could. And my daddy’s mamma was kind of standoffish, or maybe she just seemed that way next to her husband staying in everybody’s business. And my mamma’s brothers and sisters, all older than her, with children of their own. Her nieces and nephews. My cousins. She told me about every single cousin I had. How they were like and not like me.

I loved it when she talked about me. How I had my uncle’s eyes set so square in my face. Said I had my daddy’s wide hands and her narrow feet. Where these bony shoulders like bird wings came from she had no idea. She’d lean into my side, rubbing my back, making me smile.

Said she knew it might make it harder on me, having such a strong clear picture of how our life was before. But she was not about to have a child of hers walk through this world, no matter for how long, not knowing who he was and who his people were, both the living and the dead. Harder or easier, she was not going to have it.

Enough of my mamma’s stories and I could feel our people all round me, the littlest ones jostling and playing so close and the older ones darting through the clearing. I’d turn my head real quick, thinking I saw somebody at the edge of the woods, but I never could catch em with my eyes. I had to settle for their breath on the back of my neck and their hands steadying mine. I mighta been spooked by it but my mamma treated it so regular. Pointed to my goose bumps, then smiling and rubbing my back so calm, saying there they go, trying to get next to you.

It was luck, she said, finding the sound. A place where the sun fell down in the water like it did at home. She never thought she’d see that again ever. Day falling into night didn’t feel right to her here. Said the ocean looked like it felt left behind at dusk.

She never did get used to facing east. Made her uneasy. So she gave thanks every night for the sound, for the sun sliding down into the water, letting it shine that gold back to the sky, and sending the rest of the world falling into pink and gray and shadows. That was how it should be, she always said. That was right.

∞

It’s those times I think about when I get up on em. When Richardson sends me someplace and I have to get up on em, I think about all those hearts of mine, crowding so close beside that quiet sound. I keep my mind turned towards how I’m handing all my people some new bodies to live inside.