Cion (35 page)

I can hear Orpah and Mahlon clapping their hands and singing “The Song of Massa Blue Fly.” The singing is far from being wonderful. Neither singer seems to take their singing seriously. It is obvious that the song is being improvised on the spot and the singers mix it with laughter. I am hoping she will play the sitar but she never does.

Mahlon says, “Shhhhh,” and they are both silent.

He is very close to the window.

The blinds are suddenly yanked open and the light splashes all over me. Mahlon is smiling at me menacingly. Surely he is going to kill me this time. He opens the door and says, “Why not come in if you wanna hear right?”

I walk into Orpah’s mother-in-law room. The Marilyn Monroe cut-outs are stacked on one side to create more room. Orpah is sitting in a Buddha-like pose on the bed and is in the pirate’s costume she was wearing that first night, although tonight she is wearing a maroon Victorian bonnet. She does not look amused at all.

“He can’t come in,” she says. “He ain’t got no costume.”

“It don’t matter,” says Mahlon. “Let him stay. Let him see what he wanna see.”

“I promise I’ll be quiet,” I say. “I won’t utter a word.”

She does not address me. She’s not even looking at me but at her father when she says, still in a little girl’s voice: “Without costume he’s like naked. You don’t do them memories when you’re naked.”

She is surrounded by crayons on the comforter. She holds a sheet of paper on which there is a work-in-progress: stylized ghost orchids floating among stylized branches of ghost trees.

So this is how she creates her work.

“I knew the motherfucker was out there all the time,” says Mahlon as he ushers me to sit on the bed next to Orpah.

“He can’t take no part in our memories,” says Orpah.

“He won’t take no part,” says Mahlon. “But it don’t matter if he see them memories, little girl. He can’t change them no ways.”

“They’re not for seeing by nobody.”

“He’s seen some already.”

“He’s a fuckin’ spy,” she says. “He’s the one who’s gonna tell on the Abyssinian Queen.”

She still does not look at me. It is as if I am not there at all.

“I am not going to tell anything,” I protest.

“We’ll kill him if he tells on her,” says Mahlon.

He is a medium man. He gets his stories from the ghost trees. He transmits them to Orpah who then re-creates them.

Now I know why it is always winter in Orpah’s pictures; why her ghost trees are devoid of foliage: Mahlon’s midnight stories are set in wintry landscapes. His memory begins and ends with winter frolics, winter journeys and winter crossings. When Orpah’s obsessions force into the performances ghost orchids, which by nature bloom only in summer, they adapt to the season of Mahlon’s visions and float like snow flakes among the naked branches of ghost trees. They fall on the flowing garments of dancing celebrants where they gleam like misshapen stars on undulating skies.

Mahlon’s performances date back to the time when the children were children. And when Mahlon was still Mahlon. When his face was not marred by a permanent smile. When his hogs and cows were thriving. When his garden was blooming with flowers. He read bedtime stories to the children before they slept. They all shared the same bedroom at the time. Mahlon sat on the children’s bed and read them stories about little mermaids, mermaids that were headless, princesses and peas, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and many others. Stories set in faraway lands and written in bold letters and illustrated in colorful pictures in books that Mahlon brought from the Center and from used-book stores in Athens.

When he could not get more books he read the same stories over and over again. Until the children could complete the sentences. Until they were bored with them. Then he took to creating his own tall tales. These were not confined to bedtime. He told them after dinner at the kitchen table. Or on the porch during balmy summer evenings. He did not only tell them. He performed them.

Later he went to the forest to get more stories from the ghost trees. And from all sorts of other trees. Those that could bear witness to how things used to be. Those that sprouted from the seed that fell from those that saw and remembered. That is how stories became memories. That is how he became the medium man.

At first Ruth did not mind these stories. But the more she read the Bible and The Word was revealed to her, the more she felt uncomfortable with them. Stories about the sun that was lonely because nothing else had been created yet and about a black woman who flapped her wings and swooped down from ghost trees that were so high they touched the clouds were unchristian. She banned them from the house.

Her Mr. Quigley did not want to upset her. But he was too addicted to the performances to give them up. And so were the children. By this time Mahlon had sold his small farm and the family had moved to the present house. Mahlon took to performing his stories for Obed and Orpah in Orpah’s room. Soon the costumes were introduced. At about the same time Obed was gradually withdrawing from the performances because he had outgrown them. Orpah never outgrew them. Instead she became a co-creator of the stories. Mahlon would come up with only the beginning of a new tale, and between father and daughter a tandem story would develop. Or Orpah would complete the stories by painting them.

Ruth knew what was happening in Orpah’s room, but gave up on her Mr. Quigley. “One day God is gonna make him stop,” she said. God hasn’t made him stop yet. She never got to know that the pictures she relentlessly destroyed were inspired by the storytelling sessions. She still thinks Orpah draws them when she locks herself in her room all day long.

After piecing all this together from Obed and also from Orpah—who is reluctant to talk about it or even to acknowledge that I was present at one such session the other night—I decide I must make it up to Mahlon for having thought evil thoughts about him. Whether he knows or not that I hated him is not important. I know. And it gnaws at me. I think it is only proper that I assuage my guilt by doing something for him. Perhaps make an offering of a whole bunch of gnomes. Or better still, find his mother’s grave. That will have greater impact, I think. Ruth once told me that there will be peace in him only if he finds his mother’s grave and does what is right by her. She said even his fortunes would change. I had marveled at the time that these people’s beliefs about appeasing the dead were very much similar to ours. Yes, I am going to help Mahlon find that grave. I do not know yet how I will go about it. But I certainly will.

When I was at The Ridges on the night of the parade of creatures about ten months ago I noted that three or four of the graves had tombstones with inscriptions on them. Some of the relatives were able to locate and identify the exact graves where their loved ones were sleeping. I must find out how that was done and proceed to locate the grave. It may take a lot of detective work, but it is the least I can do for Mahlon, and for Ruth. It may not mean anything to Orpah and Obed. Especially to Obed, who seemed to find the discussion embarrassing at that first dinner with the family.

I pay Ruth a surprise visit to suggest the idea of searching for the grave. She is at the clothesline near her vegetable patch airing her pre–Civil War quilts. I can see the Turin-like image of the first Quigley on one of them. The one the “kids” claim is nothing but a urine stain.

“We don’t see you no more,” she says by way of returning my greeting.

She is right. Throughout the summer months I have only had a few glimpses of her from a distance—one of the dark figures on the luxuriant green of Kilvert.

“But I hear you come like a thief at night for Mr. Quigley’s silly memories,” she adds.

This is not quite accurate, but I don’t say that to her. I did come, yes, but only that one time Mahlon caught me eavesdropping at the window. The night he invited me in despite Orpah’s protestations. That was weeks ago. And that performance had bombed as soon as I got seated on her bed. It was no longer carefree and smooth-flowing as before. It lacked the abandon I had seen through the window. Mahlon seemed to be self-conscious. He tried to glide as I saw him do, but his movements were wooden. He kept giving me a sideways glance. When he introduced a song to the story of how the sun shed one big tear that rolled downhill and broke into many tears that in turn became children, his voice was hesitant. When he came to the part where the sun farted out a giraffe and a character called Divided, Orpah’s response to Mahlon’s chants tried to be as spirited as before, but soon she gave up in exasperation because Mahlon’s calls had gone limp. Her hand did not move with ease on the page. She was not happy with the result and tore the pictures in frustration. Then she glared at me accusingly. Mahlon ushered me out mumbling: “You son of a bitch, you messed up our memories.” I stood outside for a moment and listened while Orpah accused her father of allowing me into their secret world of memories. Then Mahlon made an unceremonious exit. Though he saw me standing there he ignored me and marched like a defeated soldier—sword sheathed—into the house using the kitchen door.

Orpah came to my RV the next morning and behaved as if nothing had happened. Instead she gave me a new picture, presumably created the previous night before I spoiled the performances. It was truly an inspired piece and in my view would be even more beautiful if reinterpreted into a quilt. To my surprise Orpah did not object to the idea. If there was anyone who could make this into a quilt it would be me since I was the only one, to her knowledge, who had ever expressed an appreciation of her work. Ruth destroyed it and Obed ignored it. Mahlon did sympathize with her but never came out openly to challenge Ruth. Even though he was part of its creation since it was inspired by the memories he performed, he thought that the destruction did not matter that much because Orpah would always produce new work as long as the stories continued. For him the destruction meant the continuation of the performances. I was the only one who had defended this work publicly and had even challenged her mother about its destruction. Now that I have learned how to quilt she would allow me to render her work in fabric and found objects, provided I thought I had acquired enough skill to do so.

“Maybe now you won’t mind if I attend more of Mahlon’s performances,” I said. “That may help me understand the inspiration of your work.”

“No,” she screamed, as if I had suggested we engage in some abominable act. Her face was mapped with disgust. “They’re our memories…me and Daddy’s.”

“They must be shared, Orpah,” I pleaded. “They are too beautiful not to be shared.”

“They are our memories. They belong to me and Daddy…and to Obed when he still loved them. They don’t belong to no stranger.”

As far as she was concerned that was the end of it. But I continued to raise the matter occasionally. She was adamant that she did not want me to “mess with” their memories. I gave up, and after every few days I accepted new works from her. At least now I know where they come from and what inspires their creation.

Ruth, however, thinks I am a regular at the storytelling sessions.

“You’ve been washing the quilts?” I ask.

“I don’t wash them no more,” she says. “I just air them.”

She tells me that she used to wash the quilts using buttermilk as bleach. But now the fabrics have become too delicate. It is best to hang them on the clothesline occasionally to cut down moisture so as to preserve them for her grandchildren, which she doubts she will ever have since her children don’t seem to be prepared to settle down and be responsible family people. The children will surely be the death of her, she adds.

She stands back to admire the quilts.

“Them old-timers knew what they was doing,” she says.

Unlike the quilts that Orpah tried to make from her silly sketches, these have profound meaning. They speak a secret language. I do not want to upset her by defending Orpah’s work. I do not tell her that though I may not understand what Orpah is trying to tell the world her work is powerful enough to invoke in me strong emotions. For me that is enough.

Of course the quilts on the clothesline move me too. In a different way. Whether or not one believes that the geography of freedom is mapped on the quilts, one cannot but be moved by them, especially when they are spread out like this in the sun. Even if the Drunkard’s Path did not—according to skeptics—map out a specific zigzag path, there is no reason it would not serve as a general reminder to the escapees of the wisdom of indirect and circuitous routes. It does not matter if the codes did or did not contain specific instructions to be followed to the letter for specific escapes, and if they did not conceal actual signposts marking actual routes. It should be enough even for people like Brother Michael that these wonderful patterns, designs, stitches and knots were at one time used as celebration of escapes, or even as records of stories of escape. They were a source of inspiration for future escapes. After all, memory is what you make of it. If Ruth believes this is how it happened, then it is how it happened. Whether there is historical evidence or not that the likes of Abdenego and Nicodemus used the quilts to escape from slavery is not important. What matters is that their descendants believe that they did, and therefore they did. We all construct our past as we go along.

As for the image of the first Quigley, Lord have mercy on him, it remained intact even when she used buttermilk to wash the quilt. Even when the “old-timers” used lye soap the first Quigley stubbornly stayed where he belonged. Doesn’t that convince me that the first Quigley, Lord have mercy on him, was a man of God? He was a great prophet who used to read the future from a red scroll. He was able to decipher figures and symbols that revealed the lives of future generations. The life of the family as it unfolded was all written in the Quigley scroll. Unfortunately the scroll was buried with him.

“And no one knew a darn thing about nothing since then,” she says.

“But since we discovered his grave surely we can dig the scroll out,” I say. Of course, I am just bullshitting the dear heart.

She is greatly alarmed by my suggested sacrilege. It is unheard of to disturb the dead from their rest or to rob their graves. Her people do not behave like what she refers to as my people, the Egyptians, who have allowed wholesale robberies of the dead pharaohs. Digging out the scroll would enrage the first Quigley. He is not totally happy with the family, as it is.

“Like now he ain’t too pleased I don’t go to church no more,” she adds ruefully. “But he understands. The first Quigley, Lord have mercy on him, understands.”

“Maybe you should forgive Brother Michael and go to church,” I say. “You’re not going there for him, after all. He doesn’t own the church.”

She says she is determined to stand her ground. Brother Michael would think he has won if she went to that church. In the meantime her soul is nourished by televangelists. There are so many wonderful programs screened these days no soul needs to starve. Her favorite is one Pat Robertson. She has followed his sermons for years, even when she was still a regular at the chocolate church. What she likes most about the holy man is that he looks after the good people of America. A few days ago the holy man spoke of the wrath of God against a man called Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. She is not quite sure what this Chávez has done but Mr. Robertson has declared that he must be killed.

“He done something,” says Ruth. “Pat Robertson is a man of God. He don’t wanna kill you if you don’t do nothing bad.”

I chuckle a bit, but stop myself when Ruth looks at me disapprovingly. I don’t want her to think I am beyond redemption, but her story reminds me of a fatwa that was once issued by a powerful ayatollah for the death of a writer whose novel he did not like. Ruth’s land is the land of powerful Christian ayatollahs. Old Testament fundamentalists who serve a wrathful and vengeful God. And like all ayatollahs of the world they get their instructions directly from Him. I do not know though if anyone will carry out Mr. Robertson’s fatwa since he can’t dangle seventy-two virgins in front of the eyes of prospective executioners. His religion lacks such juicy incentives. But at a secular level oil is juicy enough.

Ruth contemplates Quigley’s image on the quilt and says, “Oh, yeah, he was a man of God. Them children are full-blooded Quigleys ’cause both me and Mr. Quigley are descendants of the first Quigley, Lord have mercy on him. But God only knows why they don’t have none of his strength, his faith, his goodness. And they don’t have none of the strength and goodness of me and Mr. Quigley neither.”