“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 anything 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.
This was our shrine of remembrance for her and it certainly did the job. I loved to come here with flowers, to change her pictures or to buff her plaque. I’d take a seat in a pew to meditate and just think about life. As much as I loved to hang around the dock, I think I did so mainly because of its proximity to the house. The fact was that there was no spot on our property so imposing as the bluffs that held the crypts of my great-great-great-grandparents and every relative who had gone on before us. But the crypts occupied the prime real estate. My first ancestors to be laid to rest in this country were positioned to catch the breathtaking sunsets and the breezes from the river. They could smell the breath of Oya, who hummed to them, sweet songs with easy words to help them rest.
On many afternoons I had come here with Eric to share an apple and a story about our past. We would climb right on top of the enormous cement crypts and discuss the legacy of those brave soldiers from all the wars underneath the elaborate headstones or the babies in the tiny graves who had died from yellow fever or smallpox. When we ran out of facts, mindful of our southern heritage, we just made things up and entertained each other with whatever kind of fabrication we could invent.
But there was no fabricating anything that night. Millie and I were there for a specific reason. We rolled the golf cart to a stop and sat there for a few moments.
“I really should put some foundation lighting out here,” I said. “It’s as black as pitch.”
“Yeah? How often you come out here at night?”
“Almost never.”
“Well then, save your money. Come on. Let’s go now.”
“Well, you sure are snippy tonight!”
“Humph.”
Millie, who was the greatest stoic I have ever known, was unusually nervous.
We approached the graveyard carefully, as the ground was very uneven. Millie and I held on to each other’s arm as we climbed the three steps to the gate, and I reached forward to push it open. It was stuck and moving it required me to put my weight against it. The stalwart gate, was so furious for the disturbance that it howled and screeched like a thousand owls from hell as I pushed it open wide enough for us to pass through.
Great, I thought, they’re coming to get us.
“I’ll remind Mr. Jenkins to oil this thing,” Millie said.
“Yeah,” I said, “it needs it.”
I wondered if an oiling would make the screech disappear. Around here, things had a way of howling when they felt like it. Inanimate objects were believed to have a spirit just as the warm-blooded creatures did. Part of the deceased continued to hover, meddling in your daily affairs when they saw a need or had an urge.
We tiptoed around to my father’s grave, where Millie and I sat down on the brick wall surrounding it and read the headstone.
James Nevil Wimbley II
1927
–
1974
Beloved Husband and Father
“Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea.”
—Tennyson
“Your daddy always did love Mr. Tennyson. He surely did. And he loved my cooking.” Millie was choked up with emotion, or maybe her emotions, combined with worry and fatigue, were getting the better of her. The hour was growing late. She took a tissue from her pocket, blew her nose, and returned the tissue to the same pocket. She pulled a small conch shell from her other pocket and dug a little hole from the place on Daddy’s grave we imagined would be over his heart and she emptied the okra soup there, covering it up and patting down the dirt. “All right, Mr. Nevil, I’m taking a little dirt for a good cause and I hope that’s okay with you.” Then she scooped up some dirt with the conch shell and dumped it in a baggie.
I could smell the river, plants rotting at their roots, fish decomposing, salt, and the smells of the water itself. Millie was drawn to it as I was, as surely as a magnet has to point north. We walked toward the old crypts together and stopped to have a look. Once we were out from under the umbrella shade of the live oaks, the light changed. The moonlight reflected on the water combined with all the stars made it seem like early evening. It was spectacular. Despite the great beauty all around us, Millie continued to fret.
“I think we might be too late, Caroline.”
“Too late to protect ourselves? Don’t you think Daddy is still looking out for us, too?”
“Yeah, I do. Of course I do. But sometimes, when the wheels are already set in motion, you can’t stop ’em. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes. Can’t we enlist all these cousins and aunts and uncles buried here?”
Millie looked at me and her face was forlorn and defeated. She knew something I did not and was not going to say it because we shared a superstition that verbalizing the terrible thought might bring it to pass. She turned back to the graveyard and held her arms open wide.
“O Heavenly Father! O Mother of the World! All of you risen in the light of the Lord, hear my prayers! Have mercy on us now and forever and keep us safe from harm! Keep all of us, family and friends, safe from harm! Amen! Amen!”
“Amen,” I said with a sense of dread and hope, my feelings wavering toward dread.
Millie was obviously feeling very down, as though she believed that she had been unable to accomplish what she had set out to do. And beyond offering my company and moral support, I did not think that I had been particularly useful either.
We decided to go into the chapel for a moment, just to check on Mother’s place. I used the flashlight, fumbling with my keys to unlock the door. We stepped inside and flipped the light switch that lit the brass chandelier that hung overhead in the middle of the chapel. It would not be right to come the whole way out here and not pay a little respect to Miss Lavinia. We were both surprised and unnerved to find her picture frame turned over behind the glass door. Maybe there had been a tremor or a strong wind, or maybe the arm on the back of the frame wasn’t that sturdy. I opened the glass door, picked it up, and was surprised to see that the picture was gone.
“What in the world?” I said to Millie. “Who would take Mother’s picture?”
“Humph. Door was locked. Nobody been in here since I came last week to sweep and dust. Maybe that picture done walk out of here all by she self.”
“Oh, Millie! Honestly.” How ridiculous, I thought. I took the frame, tucking it under my arm, intending to replace the picture with another.
“Time to go,” she said. “Still got herbs to place and nails to drop and goofer dust to spread on the road.”
We did all that with Millie muttering her prayers and then we walked away as though all our efforts were already tainted with futility. But we had done our best and we would have to wait and see what the morning and the forthcoming days would bring.
Millie dropped me off, and to be honest, I hardly remember locking up the house that night except that I peeked into Eric’s room and he was there fast asleep, snoring like a cub. As long as Eric was there and sleeping, I could rest, too.
Then in the morning the phone rang very early. I reached one arm out from under my covers to answer it while my face was still buried in the mattress. It was Rusty.
“Hey! Do you still want to go down to Beaufort with me to get the puppy?”
After last night with Millie, I had completely forgotten that I had promised her I would go. I groaned and said, “Oh Lord, Rusty! I’m still sleeping. Can I beg off?”
“Sure! I’ll call you when I get back! I’m off to change Chloe’s life! It’s Mother’s Day, you know.”
I smiled to myself and hung up, rolling back over to sleep. But you know how it is. The phone rings. You’re startled and unfortunately reenter the world by speaking. You lie back on your pillows. Your mind starts racing and you’re awake. That’s it. You’re as wide-awake as you can be, so you give in and get up, stretch, and look at the clock. It was only eight. On most days I would have already done ten sun salutations (all that was left of my once-vigorous yoga habits) to stretch out my bones, showered and dressed, and eight o’clock would find me in the kitchen reading the paper and drinking coffee. It was almost nine-thirty when I finally got downstairs, only to see Matthew’s patrol car pulling up in the yard. I knew right then something was dreadfully wrong.