Plantation

  “Yes, it is! Yanh’s to you and Eric coming home!”

  I took a long drink and looked at her. She was rubbing a generous palmful of cream on her hands and arms up to her elbows. The lotion gave her skin the radiance of a young woman’s. Her beauty was amazing, even at her age to seem so vital.

  “Millie?”

  “What’s on your mind?”

  “Like you don’t already know,” I said. “It’s Richard. It’s me. Even though he’s a screwball, I love Richard, you know? God, that’s embarrassing to admit.”

  “You should never apologize for loving somebody, girl. Even if they’s crazy as hell. There’s a lid for every pot. There was a time you saw something in him that was worth your heart. Don’t be sorry for that.”

  “I don’t know. I keep trying to figure out what was the thing that made him so desirable. I mean, he’s smart. You know I’ve always been a sucker for a guy with brains.”

  “I don’t like men without good brains either. Ever since my Samuel ran off with that fool woman from Augusta, I ain’t been sure about any man and whether they got sense at all!”

  It was the first time Millie had ever admitted to me that her husband had abandoned her. I was so surprised by it that I let it slide, thinking we would get to Mr. Samuel and his departure in due course.

  “Yeah, that’s the truth. I mean, I look at Trip. What kind of marriage is his? You can almost pick up his contempt for Frances Mae and carry it outta the room! I don’t want a marriage like that. And Mother and Daddy? The main thing they had in common was that they both loved Lavinia! I don’t want a marriage like that either!”

  “Didn’t I tell you not to talk about your mother?”

  “I don’t mean it to sound that way. I mean, I thought at one time that I had something with Richard that was so spectacular, so unique I didn’t need anybody else in my life. And, when Eric came along, I was absolutely positive my world was full. I just believed in it so hard. How could I have been so wrong?”

  Millie reached across the table and patted my hand. “That’s all right now. You want some apple?”

  “Sure. You know what this is about, don’t you?”

  I watched her cross the room, rinse the apple, and tear off a paper towel to hold the peelings. She sat again and began to peel the apple around and around, choosing her words carefully. “I don’t know why they wax these things—I ain’t eating no wax! Last I heard, wax ain’t food.” She looked up at me finally and said, “Sure I know what it’s about. He’s weird in the sex department. Am I right?”

  “Yeah, but the good thing is that he’s not weird with me. The bad thing is he’s weird with Lois.”

  Her eyebrows narrowed and she leaned on her elbow toward me. “You think that’s good? You lost your mind or what?”

  “Pretty pathetic, right?”

  “Girl? Didn’t I teach you better? I don’t know what kind of weird you talking about, and I don’t want to know either. People tell too much nowadays! You see them damn fools on the television? Whatever happened to people and self-respect? World gone crazy, that’s what.”

  “Yeah, it’s true, but I wasn’t gonna give you the details, Millie. I’m not that indiscreet.” I was embarrassed then because it was bad enough that I had my trouble. The nature of my trouble was humiliating. Yes, that was it. I was humiliated and embarrassed and I had come home in defeat.

  Millie sat back in her chair, tapping her fingertips on the table, reading my mind.

  “I smell wood burning,” she said.

  It was what we said to each other when one was lost in thought. “I don’t know, Millie. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Caroline? You have already done what you should do. You took yourself and your son out of a nasty situation.” She looked at me and caught my eyes, holding them long enough to read my soul. “You still love him, don’t you.”

  It wasn’t a question but a statement of fact.

  “Of course I do.”

  Millie could see I was on the verge of tears. “Get up,” she said. “Come with me.”

  Like a good dog, I followed her outside. We walked across the lawn in silence, down by the river, along the path to her cottage. Every hair stood up on my body in premonition of what would follow. Millie opened her door and turned to me on the porch where I stood.

  “I’m gonna teach you a lesson,” she said. She smiled as she said it. For a moment I had thought she meant to discipline me for moping and complaining.

  “What did I do?” I said, in perfect ignorance.

  “No, girl, it ain’t what you did, it’s what you can’t do. That’s what I’m gonna teach you—how to take care of yourself.”

  “You mean . . . ?”

  “Yes, ma’am! Pay attention! Welcome to Millie Smoak’s School of Magic!”

  MISS LAVINIA’S JOURNAL

  Does anybody want to hear what I think? Well, someday, when this is read, they will all know what I know.That Frances Mae could not tell she was about to give birth is further testimony to her complete stupidity and bullheadedness at ignoring the signs! Dear God in heaven, now I have seen it all! A Wimbley child comes into the world on the side of the road! Is there no end to the indignities this horrible woman can heap on the reputation of my ancestors? Glory be to God! If Nevil were alive, we’d surely be crying in our cocktails! And Caroline and Millie? They keep running off to her cottage—I know what they’re doing too! Playing with fire, that’s what!

  I think I’ll just go get my Eric and play a computer game with him. Or maybe that Sony PlayStation thing he’s got. I do so like that Super Mario game!

  Thirty-one

  Voodoo 101

  MY life was poised for another drastic change, but I didn’t know it that day. It wasn’t enough that I had discovered my husband was a pervert and that I had come back to South Carolina, tail between my legs, to mull it over. No, routine was a stranger and normal had a new face.

  It was Millie, the only person here who seemed sane to me, who would be the next catalyst. I had grown up on a steady diet of Millie’s point of view, and it—along with her advice—had always served me well. I was to learn that those opinions and predictions were a mere toothpick in her vast forest of knowledge.

  I found myself in Millie’s kitchen and the subject, once again, was magic. She poured us two fresh glasses of tea, put them on the table, and took two small bottles from the shelf behind the kitchen curtain where she kept all the herbs. With an eyedropper from the drawer in hand, she came to my side, pulled a chair around, and sat.

  “All right,” she said, “look yanh. This is clematis water and this is white chestnut. These are undiluted. We gonna put two drops of each in your tea. The white chestnut is to make you stop worrying and to strengthen your mind. The clematis is to make you focus on your situation and not be distracted.”

  “Are you serious?” All I could think was Oh, God; I’m not in the mood for this.

  “As serious as I can be. In addition to my herbs that I grow and gather, I use flowers and bark of some trees. People come to me for all kind of things, Caroline. When I’m gone, they gone come to you. Then you teach somebody else and they do the same when they time come.”

  Her face was so serious she startled me. “Millie? Oh, my god! You’re thinking you’re gonna die! Jesus!”

  “What?” Millie started to laugh and that laugh came the whole way from her toes and wiggled its way through her whole body and she threw back her head and cackled like I’d never seen her do. She got up, slapped her thighs and shuffled her feet across the kitchen, laughing, saying, “Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!” Then, I lost it and started laughing too. “She thinks I know the Lord’s plan! Too funny! Too funny!” she said.

  “You mean, you don’t?” I could feel a Gullah session of working the jaw coming on any second.

  Her laughter then was like rolling thunder. So much noise from such a small person! Finally, she leaned against her sink, held her side, and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. ??
?Honey?” she said, between breaths of Oooh! Oooh! “If I knew the mind of God, you think I’d be yanh talking to a knucklehead like you? Shoot! Ain’t nobody got the right to claim they know God’s mind! Iffin they tell you that, it’s blaspheme! God ain’t taking me anyplace till I pass on what I know!”

  She always broke into Gullah when amused or upset.

  “Millie, I always thought you knew everything!”

  “Bad news, girl! I don’t! No, I sure don’t. Whew! That was so good! Cleared my soul!” She took a notebook and pencil from her drawer, handing them to me. “Now, we need to get a few things straight. That’s your notebook. Don’t lose it. Don’t give to anybody to read. Understand me?”

  “Understood.” How had I gotten myself into this?

  “Number one, you are an apprentice and an apprentice means you are learning. What Millie is gone teach you, if you can pay attention and not make her fall on the floor laughing, is how to use nature to heal yourself and others. You gone discover what the good Lord is trying to tell you through rituals. You gone talk to the Almighty God through the ancestors and, most of all, you gone dedicate your life to only do good.”

  “I guess that scratches your teaching me a spell to make Richard crawl down the Interstate from New York to Tall Pines, begging my forgiveness, huh? You’re really serious, aren’t you?”

  “Ain’t never been more serious in my life. Drink that tea and don’t fret over Richard.”

  “Sure, I’ll just throw him out of my heart. Just like that.” I snapped my fingers for emphasis.

  “That’s not what I mean. I mean that, by and by, if you pay attention to all I teach you to see, the answer to your trouble with Richard will be as plain as day.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “I’m right.”

  Millie sat across from me then, looking hard at my face. Seemed that she was trying to decide if I was worth the effort required. But, she had no children and I was her best bet. She sighed long and hard. In that moment she had given me, the reluctant one, a sign that she knew, once again, exactly what I was thinking and that she agreed.

  “Caroline? Gone be a year, maybe two, before a lot of this makes any sense to you. Tell me what you believe.”

  “And it looks like I’m gonna be yanh for a while. As to what I believe? Well, Millie, that’s a loaded question. I mean, I believe in God, if that’s what you’re asking me.”

  “That’s what I’m asking. But tell me why.”

  “Gosh.” I sucked in one corner of my mouth and tried to organize my thoughts. “Well, first of all, man is the most highly developed being we know of.”

  “Maybe.”

  “We can’t be the end of the line, Millie. I mean, wouldn’t it be the height of all arrogance to think we were? And how did the cosmos form itself? I guess I’ve always thought that there was something mysterious, something greater, something else, you know? When I was in school I studied world religions. Big ones, but little obscure ones too. What people hold sacred is fascinating, don’t you think?”

  “There ain’t nothing more fascinating!”

  She sat across from me now. The smallest relief combined with the greatest of hope was all over her face. All Millie had to give in this life to survive her was what she knew. She was willing to give it to me. While I recognized her lifetime of discovery to be an enormous gift, I had great reservations about taking it. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be the new voodoo-herbalist-whatever it was she wanted of me, and I mean I wasn’t so sure at all. I just felt that out of respect I had to hear her through. If something came up that I didn’t believe or understand I’d just say so. The problem with the conversation was that she wanted me to ask her to teach me. She wanted me to want to learn. So far, I was barely passing the test.

  All my life, her Ife gods and goddesses had been absolutely enthralling to me, but I accepted them as her religion. I had no need of rituals in my life. I tried to find God in other people and in myself. I wasn’t descended from African roots. I was as white as I could be. How could I perform the rituals? I’d feel like a jerk. A phony. And, looking at her, I knew she knew I felt that way. It was the hurdle we had to jump.

  “Caroline? I can see what you’re thinking.”

  “I hate that,” I said.

  Millie chuckled and continued. “Listen, I’ve lived a good many years more than you and maybe it’s because of this place that I’ve been able to come to understand certain things, to know certain things.”

  “Yeah, this part of the world has that way of teaching you things.”

  “Well, one of the most important things I have learned in my life is this: People get sick when they fail to recognize things. People, all of us, are a part of a great and all-powerful God. When men and women are prideful or mean, hateful or self-centered or greedy, they get sick. Can you see that all those mistakes are about being self-absorbed?”

  “Yeah, self-love is all those things, but I’m not so sure they make you sick.”

  “All right. For the sake of this argument, let’s assume that it is. Just for a few minutes, okay?”

  I must’ve looked reasonably agreeable to that, because she went on. I pushed my chair back and leaned against the wall to listen.

  “Look, if there’s a God, then you have to ask yourself why are we on this earth in the first place, right?”

  “Good question!” I wagged my finger at her.

  “Well, yanh’s the million-dollar answer. Your soul is a part of God, right? The God in you, right?”

  “Yeah, I’ll buy that.”

  “And your intuition tells you that there’s more to life than just this life, right?”

  “Yes. Definitely. Take one look at the night sky when the lights are off. Makes you feel like a peanut.”

  “Exactly. Our soul, or the God in us, knows what we need. So He puts us where we land on the earth to get the experiences and knowledge we need to work toward being part of Him in paradise. Isn’t that communion? Being one with God?”

  “Well, I think I have always believed that everything happens for a reason anyway.”

  “That’s just what I’m saying. Trouble comes when we separate ourselves from what the good Lord wants us to do. The Lord guides us by that little voice in us we call our conscience.”

  “Okay, for the sake of this argument, I’ll buy that.”

  “Fine! You ain’t supposed to jump headlong into something like this. You have to arrive to the conclusion in your own way. Think of it this way: God’s got His plan for us. We go off all willy-nilly, half-cocked, loving only ourselves. Time pass and something’s gonna come along to make you unhappy you did that, right?”

  “It sure seems like the universe throws me a roadblock when I get too cocky.”

  “Or a cold in your head, yanh? When you get sick, you have to rest. When you rest, you have to think. When you are forced to think about what you’ve been doing, you realize you been working against what God wants for you. See what I mean? Going off the path eventually brings unhappiness.”

  “So what are you saying exactly? I mean, I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said, really I don’t.”

  “What I’m saying, Caroline, is that this life was given us to serve God, not ourselves. By serving others through compassion, with love, with forethought—that by listening to our conscience we serve our souls, and God. In a nutshell, life is about service. That’s all there is for us to do.”

  “Would learning your work help me help Eric?”

  “Of course it would.” Millie reached across the table and covered my hand with hers. “Of course it would,” she said again. “And children of other mothers, and people who worry, folks who mourn, old people who are scared—on and on the list goes! That list is as long as my hair! Mostly what I do is help people heal themselves.”

  “Jesus! An herbal shrink! Wait till Richard yanh about this! Don’t you have something in your war chest to do something with Frances Mae?”

  “That’s the one p
roblem. People got to want to improve!”

  “And she’s the happiest sicko I’ve ever known.” I took another drink of tea and it occurred to me that I couldn’t taste anything different about it. The drops hadn’t changed the taste. “Millie? Did you make the drops in the tea?”

  “Heavens to Betsy, no. I ain’t got time for that fool! They ain’t nothing but the Bach Flower Remedies!”

  “The who?”

  Millie rolled her eyes up to heaven and shook her head. “Ain’t you never been in a health food store?”

  “Sure! I’m in them all the time!” I must really look like an idiot, I thought.

  “Well, they got these little racks, like spice racks. In them are thirty-eight little bottles of essences of flowers, most of them from flowers.”

  “What do they do? I mean, some flowers are poison, aren’t they?”

  “Oh, Lord, girl? All right. We can start with the Bach Remedies. There’s so much to tell you!” Millie got up and pulled back the curtain again, revealing all the little bottles lined up. “Each one has a different purpose. When somebody’s sick, you got to look to the mind first. You have to decide what their mental state is. That’s what you treat. These work on people’s emotions and spirits.”

  “Aren’t there more than thirty-eight different states of mind?”

  “Ahhhhhh! Ah, yes! That’s my girl!” She came to me and patted me on the shoulder. “That’s ab-so-lute-ly correct! So, you have to learn to combine them!”

  “Okay.” I was feeling slightly more pleased with myself, but I still couldn’t see people lined up at my door for a cure. I got up to look at them. “How do they make these?”

  “Simple. Take the flower; put it in a clean bowl of water in the sun. The water begins to take on the essence of the flower; evaporation condenses the essence. You put the liquid in a bottle with a drop of brandy to preserve it. Then you use a dropper and put it in a liquid and drink it. Works like a miracle.”

  “Humph,” I said.

  “Now you sound like me!”

  Several hours passed as Millie explained the various benefits of each essence and I took notes.