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theofitzgeraldsing · 5 years ago

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The Road - Chapter Two

AUNT EASY

"Sister needs somebody to go by and see about her. She's not feeling well today. I made her some cat shit and some chicken soup. I told her I'd send you by this evening to go on and see how she's doing, see if she needs anything. Tell her I'll be by in the morning." Mama loaded me down with the medicine that she called, "cat shit", and the soup and sent me to my auntie's, Miss Easy. Down the dirt road a piece I ran into a neighbor family on their way to town and they started to ask me a whole lotta questions and started telling me a whole lotta this and a whole lotta that, that nobody gave a care about anyway, and I cared even less but had to stand there and smile and nod my head like I was told and taught to do. By the time they were done nosing into my business and chided their mule to move on down the road I almost forgot where I was going but looked at the bundle in my arms, remembered and kept it moving to Aunt Easy's.

Aunt Easy laid motionless on her feather bed and whispered for me to, "come on in," after I knocked twice on the wooden door. She tried to follow my movements in the room with her eyes but would loose track of me as I moved out of her limited peripheral vision. I wet a cloth to wipe auntie's forehead and give her some comfort and relief from the fever that had caught her and the sweat beads that had collected on her brow. "Can you sit up?" I asked and auntie shook her head. "I can try. Seems like I got some kinder buggety bug." "Well, you definitely feel a little feverish and breaking a sweat. Let's get some of this Mama D sent in you. You look a little piqued around the edges too." Although they was sisters Aunt Easy was real light skinned, tall and big boned. If her hair was covered under a hat or pulled back real tight so the edges didn't show and the kink was pulled out of it, sometimes folks in town addressed her as "mam," or "miss," then got real embarrassed when they realized she was colored. It didn't make much sense cause these same folks would be real nice one minute and the next minute they were like something or someone brand new. Like in a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde schizophrenic kind of way. I ladled out the "cat shit" and Auntie took it like a champ. She didn't hold her nose, like I did, or wince and poke her lips out. She swallowed it in one gulp and turned the corners of her lips up in a half sort of smile like I had just given her a spoonful of honey or blackstrap molasses. The soup was still warm but I put a little more heat under it to be sure it was comforting and would do the job it was intended to do. I had been with Auntie and Mama D enough times tending the sick and ailing among our neighbors, and sometimes white folks, to know how it was supposed to be. "How's your granny doing," Auntie asked. Always concerned and looking out for each other, sisters indeed. "She's fine. She been out in the shack working on something." "Oh yeah?" Aunt Easy cocked her head. She was looking better already. "What's she working on?" "I don't know, but whatever it is, it 'shole must be important. She spending more time and working more angles and lighting more candles than usual." "Well, whatever it is I reckon we'll know about soon enough. You, me, and everybody else that's for sure." Auntie was right. Mama D's workings always showed their proof in the passage of time. The delivery of truth and the balm to soothe a worrying mind or the sick at heart is what Mama D was good at. Mama D was a miracle worker for sure. I'd seen it too many times how she used her energy and power, like casting a spell and weaving magic.

Auntie's house was at the opposite edge of our property, on a few rolling hills, closer to the edge of town. You could just about see the whole town from auntie's front porch, the few little buildings, a post office, a bank, and Jakes Dry Goods. Not much more than that except a blacksmith and a livery barn made up the rest of the businesses. The one hundred acres, the land given to my Grandpa Tom and Granny Pearl by the foreigner, Erwin Palmer, the place I called home, the only place I've ever known, divided the town between east and west. It had been so for quite some time. An act of kindness, neighborliness, and community urged my great grandparents to continue to allow the road, the dirt and gravel and ruts where wagon wheels had worn it through, to pass right through their land and give access to each and everyone. Auntie's shack had been built by Grandpa Tom and placed and situated on a small mound to give a view of the land and of the town in a way that was not like a sentry or lookout but a beacon, a light on a hill. "Who was that I saw you talking to up the road a piece?" Auntie asked like it wasn't a question but it was. "Now what was you doing out of the bed looking up the road? How you 'spossed to get better if you don't rest and take it easy? No wonder you was sweating like a mule when I came in here." "Don't worry about what I was doing out the bed for. Who was it?" They say a hard head makes a soft behind. Well, Auntie's head was about as hard as a rock and the only one I know whose head could have been harder was Mama D's or mine. It runs in the family I guess. "It was Miss Rose wanting to know everythang about everybody like she always do. "How was you doing? How was Mama D?' Why they couldn't just stop in and find out for they self since they was passing right on by is beyond me but..." Auntie cut me off! "Little Lady, don't never begrudge your neighbors and get on like you don't have time to give a howdy do. They was just being friendly and neighborly. That's how we do." "And nosy," I added. "Well yes, and nosy." "They was asking about the road coming through and what we thought about it." "Road? What road?" Auntie's curiosity piqued and she sat up in the bed and if you didn't know any better you wouldn't have known she was ailing, sick, and wasn't feeling good. She looked toward the window and asked again, "What road child?" "I don't know. They said something about a new road being made right over the top of the old one and some kinda papers at the court house and everybody in town was talking about it, but I told them we didn't know nothing about no road and that she was crazy cause the only reason we was letting folks use this road in the first place is cause we was trying to be good neighbors and that's all I know." "Your grandma didn't know about the road?" Aunt Easy quizzed me. "Not that I know of." Aunt Easy looked perplexed and puzzled and sprang from the bed like she was a young girl and she wasn't sick no more and had been done healed. I told you Mama D's soup and "cat shit" would work a miracle. I don't know how, but it does. Miss Easy was agitated now as she looked for her boots and hat. "Don't nobody know nothing about nothing around here! We can't just sit around and wait for them to come and build a road right on top of the old one right through our land. This ain't no time to be lounging around! We got to get to gettin'!" Miss Easy was out the door leaving it wide open, and down the road a piece before I came out behind her. This, apparently, was serious. If I had known what I know I would have been told it and she could have rested a little easy, but it's too late for that now.

We was on Mama D's porch and Auntie knocked twice and just went on in. Mama D was by the fire reading and looked up a little surprised, but calm as she laid the book in her lap, smoothed the pages, shut it, and put it on the table. "Sister did you know about this here road they talking about putting across our land?" "Louise sit down." Mama called Auntie by her Christian name and Auntie took a seat in front of the fire. "I knew about it, and I'm working on it. No need in you getting worked up and bothered about something that ain't coming to pass and ain't going to be. Not long as I got breath in my body." "Little Lady said she talked to Rose Jackson on the road and they said they got papers from the court and petitions and all this and that. This ain't no time to be lounging around." Mama D looked straight at Aunt Easy and then back at the fire. She looked up and her lips parted and she said, "Now as long as you've known me and as long as we've been sisters, that's a long time, you ain't never known me to just sit still, be lounging around, and not be moved when called. I've got things under control, trust me. And besides that you know as well as I do not to be setting store by nothing Rose Jackson has to say." They shared a laugh together. Aunt Easy realized her folly. "Ain't that the truth? I guess that fever had me all sixes and sevens. You right. But just the though of it." "Well think no more on it," Mama D replied matter of fact and plain. "I got this under control."

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theofitzgeraldsing · 5 years ago

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The Road Chapter One Augusta, Georgia MAMA D Mama D called on all the ancestral spirits from before slavery time and way back before Africa was Africa, and the world had a name. She called back using her strongest meileke, oils, and herbs, reaching into the dark recesses of her spirit, something she didn’t often do, turning her insides out, and offering them to the ancestors in return for their intervention. Grey clouds swarmed above Mama D’s cabin as she prepared her poultice of mustard seed and High John the Conqueror root. Dogs howled and scratched at her door, possessed and curious all at once. Something was going on, something that compelled all of Augusta to sniff, snort, and acquiesce to the powers of the ancestors. Swallowing up towns, and gobbling down mountains, angry fog rolled over Georgia like a plague or wildfire. This was serious. It rolled on like thunder and made a sound like a rushing river crashing over rocks, knocking down trees to the stump and pulling the Earth. This was no time to be lounging around. Mama D's old alley cat Simon was slinking about scurrying at shadows, hoping to catch a mouse, or a mole, or a spider. Mama D was always going behind, cleaning up messes, and righting wrongs. When a husband abused his wife it was Mama who stared down centuries of pent up anger, rage, and male domination. Mama said, "somebody was always trying to get somebody else under the heel of they shoe," and that she was the "leveler of wrong doing." Folks knew Mama was real in her walk and real in her talk, she didn’t mix business with pleasure, and she didn’t cotton to ignorance or suffer fools. “Just be straight with me and we’ll be alright.” That’s what Mama always says. Everyone near Augusta, or far from it, knew Mama was the person to see and who could help when no one else could. Mama could heal the sick, locate lost loved ones, or mend family feuds and quarrels. "Sometimes folks don't know what's good for 'em, and have trouble getting out of their own way, so you have to lead 'em in the right direction like a horse to water. Just like a horse they have to realize that they are thirsty for themselves." Now Mama D wasn’t really my mama. She is my grandma and Miss Easy, Mama D’s sister, is my great auntie. I've been with them since I was born. Miss Easy and Mama D say I was a blessing sent on account of He knew He was gonna take my real mama away. Don’t ask me about my daddy. My mama wouldn’t tell who it was and Mama D says she has no idea who my daddy is. Now I look in the face of every man I meet on the road, or in town, for some resemblance, but it seem like they all favor me and I get confused. So, I just stopped looking. Mama D said that was probably best cause if my daddy wanted to know where I was he would of found me by now, and ain't no sense running behind, looking for something that ain't looking for you. Once I thought Reverend Prichart was my father but then I saw him pick his nose and eat a bugger, right then I decided even if he was my daddy I didn’t want to know about it. Soon after that is when I quite looking altogether cause you don’t know if you gonna meet up with a fool or a saint. I decided to just mind my own business and let well enough alone. It’s better that way. Mama's current mission was a secret to me. Sometimes I could tell, by the ingredients she used in her potions, or the posture of her body as she mixed the concoctions. If she was making a love potion or trying to bring back a lover that had strayed, undo what was thought to be a curse, a hex, or fix money problems. This was something different. Everything was laid out on a large bench in Mama's place but it was laid out in an organized manner and Mama kept going over it like she was taking inventory and she'd make a note in her book. She carefully measured the roots and the liquids from the hundreds of bottles that lined the walls and stacks of crates in the corner. Mama went to her shelf and took down her bible, the large one with the gold letters and the foreign language on the front that Mama said was Latin and Hebrew, looked like chicken scratch to me, but it must of been what she said it was cause she took care of it like it was a new born pup or an ailing kitten. She placed it on the bench and thumbed through the pages adjusting her glasses on her nose to be sure she was reading the right verse and on the right page. Then Mama D did something that in all my times spying, and peeping, and sneaking around I had never seen her do before. She took an envelope off the shelf, took out a piece of paper, unfolded it and threw it on the ground. Next, my mouth stood wide open, I couldn't believe what I was seeing, but Mama stood over the paper, lifted her skirt, squatted, and peed right there on top of it. The stream of urine continued, so it seemed, until a minute or two passed. A large puddle, with the paper in the middle, sat in the corner and Mama spit on it after she adjusted her skirt and then sprinkled it with what looked like sage, but could have been anything. It was green and leafy. After that Mama dripped candle wax, blew out the candle, and headed for the door before I knew it. I crouched behind an old barrel as Mama headed up the crooked, well worn path to the house, briefly pausing and cocking her head like she heard a whisper in the distance or a far off howl. She headed into the kitchen to the washbasin and called my name at the same time. "Lady!" My feet stood still and a wave of fever flashed across my forehead. What should I do? Go in the front door? Pretend I didn't hear? "Lady!" The front door seemed the only option. Mama opened the door before I could. "What are you doing sneaking around out here?" "I'm not sneaking Mama. I saw a doodle bug back by the privy and I was trying to catch it before it went deep in the woods." Mama cocked her head looking into my face. "Girl what did I tell you about running behind doodle bugs, and salamanders, and what not playing around by that Johnny house! You gonna find out what I'm talking about soon enough. Keep on you hear." I was hearing Mama but I wasn't listening. It was as if I was having an out of body experience and could see the wheels turning in Mama's head and see what she could see in her eyes. She was looking straight through me. She knew the truth and knew I wasn't out chasing doodle bugs behind the Johnny house but peeping into her business, not minding my own. The ringing in my ears met up with a cacophony of horns, drums, and bells like the complete opposite of a Chinese water torture, not subtle but bold and brazen until it felt like something reached down in my throat and just pulled the words out, "I'm sorry Mama I was outside spying through the window looking at you in your shack and watching what you did with the paper and squatted and did your business on top of it, that's what I was doing Mama!" Mama starred at me unchanged, just like she could see again all that I was thinking and not saying. "Well I hope you learned something," Mama said. "It's a fool that don't smell his own self and thinks his tail don't point straight down to the ground just like everybody else's." When Mama said that instead of slapping the taste out of my mouth, I knew God answers prayer, I had learned my lesson for the moment. My curiosity was still high and my mind would not let me turn loose the thoughts, visions, or imagining that invaded my mind like termites invade the fallen branch of a tree. What, or who, was Mama fixing? I was feeling guilty for sneaking around and nosing about, but I still wanted to know. Why was she still closed mouthed and secretive? Mama was born right here in Augusta, right here in what is now her place we call her shack. Her mother and father were escaping the mud of Mississippi and all of the memories it held. My great grandparents, Tom and Pearl, were slaves on the Percy plantation, had been born there, lived most of their lives there, until a war declared that they could come and go as they pleased and they pleased to get up and leave from there as soon as they could. The old master looked hurt and surprised that they didn't want to stay, "After all I've done for you? Fed and clothed you, took care of you when you was sick." He failed to remember the part about, "I beat you when it suited me and worked you from cain't see in the morning to cain't see at night. Raped your friends and neighbors, was father to many of your relatives and sold them for a profit when I felt like it and just because I forgot all about that part doesn't mean that you did, and never mind that it may not have been Christian, but justified in my mind because I said it was so and I had the bible to back me up." He had a very selective memory. He never stopped to consider all of the things he had received in return, or the countless number of times he had been nursed on his sick bed, cleaned, and bathed, and fed, and fawned over, his children nursed at the breast of a slave, suckled, while the slave's children cried from hunger and the absence of its own mother's touch. No mention of his fields that were planted and harvested, his home cleaned, floor boards polished, silver shined or brass brushed and rubbed so they could gleam in the candlelight to impress the guest that came from as far away as Mobile and nearer than Natchez. No mention of his wealth that came from cotton raised on the bended and broken backs of slaves. Fertilized with their blood, sweat, tears, and marrow of their bones. None of that was ever considered. Only what he had done for them, and how they were ungrateful and with their thanks and gratitude. Most of the slaves left quicker than the bat of an eyelash, or the strike of an overseer's lash. Mama's parents packed their belongings, a ragged quilt, one spoon, one plate, one saucer, a cup, the things they shared between them, a milking stool, an iron pan, and a bible. Their belongings were tied in small bundles, strapped to their backs or loaded in the creaky, rickety wagon that was pulled alternatively among them. They walked and walked and occasionally hitched a ride from strangers passing by, going the same direction, splitting off and going their own way, or when they felt a need to part. They walked nearly all the way from Mississippi to Georgia and found this spot that a recent immigrant, Erwin Palmer, from somewhere over in Europe had decided was better than where he came from and tried to tame the land, tilling it, and farming it. Having never been a farmer or ever lived on a farm, milked a cow, or shoed a horse, this presented a challenge for him. Luck, opportunity, and providence met when my great grandparents arrived. Grandpa Tom showed the man how to sow in the spring and harvest in the fall. He showed him how to shoe a horse and milk a cow. Granny Pearl worked right along with them knowing a thing or two about using a hoe and a shovel to till the soil. They shucked corn and snapped peas together during the harvest, working from sun up 'til sun down, eating together, sleeping together in the one room shack that was now Mama's work shack with the raggedy quilt they brought from Mississippi hung across a rope used to divide the space and provide a teeny weeny bit of privacy. This went on for nearly two years until the man from Europe stepped on a nail that went through his foot and into his heel bone. By the time the doctor came in from town to look at it, it was too late and the man had to have his leg cut off near up to the knee. Grampa Tom and Granny Pearl nursed and cared for him until he started hobbling along on a wooden leg but his spirit was broken and he spent most of his days looking at the wall reminding Granny more of a lost bird or a wounded lamb. "You know it's a sin to rebuke what the Lord has given you. You're still of this life, you have to live in it. Don't look and see what you lost, look at what you still got." Granny tried to lift his spirits. "What have I got? A tree stump for a leg, that's what I got!" He started to drink distilled spirits, and cussed, and mostly felt sorry for himself until Gramps and Granny sent a telegram to somebody over in someplace called Germany or Austria or Prussia or somewhere, and told them that the man was in poor shape and needed some help. After the telegram, a telegram arrived with some money saying a ticket had been purchased on a ship to England and to get him on it quickly. Grampa Tom could only get Mr. Palmer to the depot to catch a train up north. He wasn't too happy about going and he let Grampa Tom and Granny Pearl know it. "What the hell did you think I came here for? If I wanted to go back to Scotland I could have damn well stayed there! I don't need a black son of a bitch like you getting in my business." They knew it was only the man's anger and feeling sorry for himself that made him talk the way he did. His insults were ignored as they did what they knew they had to, to keep their friend alive, to keep him from harming himself. They said their goodbyes at the train station and when he handed Grampa Tom an envelope and told him to do what he wanted with the land, Grampa Tom was confused, unable to read Grampa Tom put the envelope in the bible for safe keeping. Grampa Tom, Erwin Palmer, and Granny Pearl never saw each other again but every now and then a card or a letter would arrive addressed to Mister Tom and Miss Pearl. Gramps and Granny, both being illiterate, had to ask the postal clerk to read it to 'em and tell 'em what it said. The clerk read the letter but bristled at reading and addressing them as Mister and Miss, however being a show off he wanted to read as best he could and so he did. It was about a year after the man left that the first letter came and it said, "Dear Mister Tom and Miss Pearl, I've arrived here in Scotland at my brother's poor excuse of a farm and it is even drearier and grayer than the place I tried to escape when I met you in America. My brother and his wife, bless their souls, have tried to make a life as best they can by raising sheep on a patch of land that seems to be nothing but jagged rocks, desolate gravel, and dirt not fit to grow potatoes. When I left Georgia I was heavy in heart, and I'm sorry for all of the mean and unkind things I said. I am also sorry that I stole the rabbit foot that use to hang by the door of the cabin, but I had to take with me something to remind me that I had once been a man of independence and courage with hopes and dreams of independence and freedom. Free from things, some of which I have forgotten and abandoned. I've never stolen a thing in my life but I hope that you will forgive me. The train ride to New York was difficult, being on my own without the kindness of friends or the family that I considered you two to be. I experienced the cruelty of one human being to another and I never hope to see again. I met a man traveling to New York to meet a banker to discuss the sale of some property. On the passage across the Atlantic we were met with rough seas and by the time we docked in Liverpool I looked and smelled like the beggar and pauper that I was. Standing was trouble enough and the seas knocked what semblance of balance I had out of me for nearly the first day until I got my sea legs. My brother met me at the dock and although he didn't say it, I could see in his eyes the pity he had for a man that wasn't a whole man anymore in spirit, or in body, but a troubled soul lost, tortured, and broken. I'm telling you this, but you already know it is true. If it hadn't been for the kindness, love, and caring of the two of you I could not be writing this letter today. For two years I lived in my own self pity and I will say that I have been twice blessed, and a lucky human being to have a loving brother with a kind wife and a gentle soul to love me when I didn't love myself. When I first returned if I wasn't at the local pub drinking the fine Scotch whiskey this country is known for, wishing my sorrows away, or laying in the bed looking at the wall, I was feeling sorry for myself, hating the world and everyone in it. Scotland, for all its dreariness and confined thinking, I was able to see some beauty in it. My brother, an adventurous soul, I guess it runs in the family, decided to try his hand at breeding horses in a way that only a Scotsman can do, insisted that I help out in the barn and in the corrals. "Get your arse out of the bed right this instant,” snarled only the way that a brother could snarl at a brother. I felt no brotherly love of my own and much more pity for myself. "Kiss my ass! I'll do what I damn please and get out of the damn bed when I damn well feel like it." My brother lived up to his promise as I underestimated the strength of a man that labored from sun up to sun down, whatever the weather or whatever his state of mind or physical condition healthy or no. With one swoop I could feel the plank floorboards under my back as I felt the knuckles of his hands, hard as stone and cold as ice, connect with my flesh and bones. After his encouragement and the exchange of words that any man should be ashamed to call his own brother, negating the legitimacy of his birth and my own, his children's birth, and the chastity of his wife that has shown me nothing but kindness and patience, I felt the shame of my actions and my own self pity. A wave of shame also crosses my face when I think of the unkind way that I spoke to you Mister Tom and treated Miss Pearl before I left. I hope that you will find it in your hearts to forgive a man that had forgotten his manners. I can't thank you enough for showing me the kindness and affection I didn't show you. My only hope is that the gift of the one hundred acres can express my gratitude and allow you to forgive me in your hearts. I'll never forget the time I spent sweating in the Georgia sun and enjoying the kindness of two loving souls. If I never see you again know you are forever in my prayers. Your brother in life and forever, Erwin Palmer.

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