Chapter 5
He was tall. Way too tall for me. (Delete)
He was much too tall for a woman my height. (Delete, Delete, Delete)
How did I ever write a book? I was terrible at this. I tilted my head to the side, hoping words would slip from my brain,
fall out of my ear, and jump into the Word document.
“Hmm,” I grunted and typed.
I preferred men who didn’t tower over me.
Better.
I looked at the empty bowl I’d filled with potato chips. Orange peels were next to it, and I’d finished off an iced coffee
with a mountain of whipped cream. I didn’t have a solid paragraph yet, and all my snacks were gone.
My phone pinged with a text.
Trish: How’s the writing?
Me: You mean the typing and deleting?
Trish: Still?
Me: I could cry every day. Do I even want to be a writer anymore?
Trish: You’ll always be a writer, even if you aren’t writing.
Trish: You have nature all around you. Go for a walk.
Me: Maybe you can come hang out here.
Trish: Can’t. You know I have those sessions with my trainer in the morning. You’re too far.
That was true. Charleston’s traffic would have her wanting to jump off one of the bridges.
Trish: Get some fresh air and come back to it.
She was right. I could use a break. I called the office and made a tour reservation with the woman who answered the phone.
According to the property map, it was almost a mile trek from my front door. A little exercise would help. I could spend the
time thinking about my characters.
As I approached, I watched a woman cross the street from a cottage to the museum. She stopped outside of a tall iron gate
that enclosed the museum. She had warm brown skin, deep-set eyes full of quiet wisdom, and a navy headwrap that tucked back
a crown of silver hair. Her cotton dress was simple, but her presence was not. She was Gullah. They had a way about them,
and I recognized it.
I stepped closer and held out my hand. After walking in the heat, I could barely catch my breath. “I’m Alexandra. I’m staying
in one of the cabins.”
“Not just staying. You’re the new teacher.”
I reached for the water bottle I’d clipped to my waist belt. “Yes. Temporarily.”
“Maybe.” She smiled, and I saw kindness in her eyes. “I’m Kate McDowell. We spoke on the phone. People mostly call me Ms. Kate. Nice fa see who Gabriel pick fa the children.” Her voice wrapped around me like warm ocean water. “He say you’re a writer too. That oona has published a lot of books.”
“Yes, smaller ones. Not anything like Gabe’s book.”
“Why yuh say it that way? Smaller like it’s a bad thing?”
“I was just saying we write . . .” I shut my mouth. I could tell by the way she was looking at me that the word small was the problem.
“Dere aren’t any books like Gabriel’s and none like yours. You all write your own stories your own way.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Her approval instantly mattered, but she was already showing herself to be the kind of person I needed in my
life. I looked across the road. “Is that your cottage?” It was pretty, painted white with haint blue trim and surrounded by
flowers.
Ms. Kate nodded. “And de gardens all along the path behind dere. All mine.”
Impressed, I said, “The garden is big.”
“A third acre.” She was proud of that.
“Seems like a lot of work.” It was hard to pin down her age, but I guessed she was over sixty, so what I was really saying
was that it looked like a lot for someone her age.
Ms. Kate shrugged. “I can’ help it. Gullah grow, and when we grow too much, we give.”
I nodded, understanding. That was a beautiful aspect of their culture. Giving in that way was lost in the falling away of
community over time, but they’d preserved it. It was one of the admirable hallmarks of the Gullah. Giving. Sharing. Taking
care of each other.
I raised my hand to shade my eyes as I looked out over the adjacent lake. “This is so close to the swamp. Are you afraid of
alligators?”
“I stay out of the water. That’s dere home. They stay out of my yard. It’s my home.” She smiled like she knew her response had been smart, and added, “I grew up along the water and the marsh. We inherited the know-how to keep safe from the ancestors.” She tapped her temple.
“There’s a name for that. I researched it for a book once.”
Ms. Kate stood, waiting for me to go on.
I said, “Epigenetics of enslavement. It’s the study of intergenerational trauma.”
Ms. Kate bunched her lips and folded her arms. “Me know ’bout it.”
I felt silly for assuming she didn’t already know. “It was interesting research . . . the DNA part.”
“Did oona write de book?”
“I didn’t.”
She shrugged and dropped her arms. “Too bad. Maybe I would read dat one.”
Ms. Kate used a key to turn the massive lock on the gate and then entered a code to open a second lock. “Let’s get you started
here.”
The museum was inside of a Gullah Geechee praise house. The plaque in front of the steps read: Established 1847. Site of the
Underground Railroad and the Stono Rebellion of 1739.
“Come on,” Ms. Kate said. She had already unlocked the door to the building. I followed her in.
The shift in the air pricked my skin. It was cooler but also quiet and reverent. Older Black history museums had a spiritual
energy. I had the same emotional response every time I stepped into a sacred place where our ancestors dwelled. Our history
carried weight. Struggle, loss, and injustice were heavy.
The gallery was small but thoughtfully arranged. Photographs, sketches, and artifacts lined the white walls.
“This land we call Caw Caw be sacred,” Ms. Kate started.
“It’s sacred to different people for different reasons.
Although where we standin’, the center, cabin, and grounds are privately owned by a foundation; our neighbor, the Interpretive Center, is owned by the Charleston Parks Department.
It was originally Laurel Hill Plantation.
Three hundred fifty acre ’nem farm by Angolan enslave persons to grow rice.
” Ms. Kate looked up at the ceiling and around the walls.
“This house was one of the quarters the enslaved used as a clinic. The reason they needed a clinic here was because them snakes and alligators and other wild animals be plenty. It was dangerous and a lot die, so rather them lose all the injured them own, the planters let a doctress to keep her herbs and tonics in different locations all ’bout the plantation.
But when the weather was unfair, the enslaved gather in this building for church. ”
I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, wondering if I’d be bawling by the time I left this building.
Ms. Kate continued, “The tour is self-guided and in compliance with ADA laws ’nem.”
Those words came out practiced, and I suppressed a little smile.
“In front of each of de pictures and artifact dere’s a button for push for audio.” She pointed. “Down the stairs is a safe
room dat was used for the Underground Railroad. Oona should watch the film.”
I said, “I’m looking forward to it.”
“I be in the room back dere. In the art gallery. Come see it before oona leave.” Leaving me, she walked in that direction.
The museum included a comprehensive collection of items. One of the larger displays was of the Stono Rebellion. I read, “1739.
One of the largest uprisings of the enslaved in colonial America.” I pushed the button and watched a short film.
No matter how many times I read this story, my soul ached for the enslaved who were captured and had their heads cut off. If only they would have made it to Florida. Who might they have been and what might they have done if they were free to be? It was all so horrible and shameful.
I finished the level I was at and then went down the stairs to what was marked The Waiting Room for the Enslaved. The entire
place was quiet, but down here it was quieter, warmer, and darker. I pressed the button and watched the brief presentation.
It was a reenactment of a family climbing down a ladder to hide. The sequence included a scene where food was sent down in
a cloth tied to a rope. It also showed how they slept huddled together. Like much of the history in this area, it was hauntingly
sad.
I stepped farther into the room and inspected more. There wasn’t much to it. A carving in one of the concrete walls of a star.
Two pallets made of straw with pieces of muslin stretched across them and stairs that led to a trapdoor. I tried to imagine
what it was like to be waiting in this small space, wanting to leave, praying not to get caught, remembering the stories that
traveled throughout the South about the runaways who’d been beaten or killed. Stories were kept alive to keep the enslaved
in line. I was sure there was no shortage of them. The heaviness in this space confirmed it.
“I’m sorry about what happened to you. I may not know your names, but you’re not forgotten,” I said. “Rest in paradise.”
I left the room and climbed the stairs to the main level.
I met Ms. Kate where she said she’d be. The door was marked Caw Caw Gullah Art Gallery. Ms. Kate was sitting on a bench in
the center of the room. All around the perimeter hung paintings on the wall. Some were also displayed on stands on the floor.
Ms. Kate stood. “I can give the tour here.”
She showed me a few small paintings by a local Gullah artist from Edisto. All three were paintings of people outside and inside
of praise houses.
I moved on to another set of larger canvases. The first included rows of women in bright headscarves bending low in a marsh, their skirts belling in the wind, their hands deep in the mud as they picked oysters.
There was another tender piece of a grandmother shelling peas on a porch, her lap covered by an apron the color of indigo.
Behind her, Spanish moss hung from the oak branches. I could almost smell the salt in the air.
I stared at it for a long time. I could feel the palm tree leaf and smell the marsh. Like the tickle of a leaf on my neck.
The earthy scent of the marsh and then the hand slipping—
“Wha goin’ on? Oona face is like stone,” Ms. Kate asked, interrupting my thoughts.
I shook off the mental load of the memory. “Nothing. I’m fine.”
“You be lost in it.”
“I think I was. It’s beautiful.” As I stepped to each painting, I enjoyed the next more than the last. “Who is this artist?”
Ms. Kate didn’t answer right away. Her jaw clenched, and I noticed how tightly she gripped the sides of her shift. Finally,
she said, “This collection be mine.”
My eyes darted from the painting to Ms. Kate’s face. “Wait—these are yours?”
“Yes,” Ms. Kate said, straightening a canvas that wasn’t crooked.
Something in my chest shifted, the way it always did when I realized I was standing in the presence of real talent. “They’re
beautiful.”
Ms. Kate accepted my words without ceremony, saying a simple “Thank you.”
“They’re unsigned.” I’d stated the obvious. My curious mind wanted to know why.
“I prefer it dat way. I only told oona they were mine because oona werk here, but I don’t talk ’bout my art wit odders.” She walked farther down to another collection. Her movements slowed, her eyes scanning the walls like she was walking through memory.
We stopped in front of a painting that stole my breath. It was a portrait of a young boy seated on a tree stump, a book in
one hand and a rice plant in the other. He faced forward, his cocoa-brown eyes extending beyond the canvas, settling into
mine.
The brushwork was even more astounding. Beck taught me some about painting, mostly for a writing project. Instinctively, I
knew that this was a different artist. These layers took more patience. “Who painted this one?”
“My son, Erik,” Ms. Kate answered softly, her voice barely above a whisper.
I stepped closer, inspecting the use of color and light. I didn’t know much about painting, but these were exceptional. At
the very bottom of the canvas, it was signed E. Scott. “He’s so talented.”
She didn’t say anything, but I felt her thank-you.
“Does he still paint?”
“I think so,” she said.
She wasn’t sure? I didn’t know what else to say. The silence that followed stretched thin and aching.
“All of the paintings on this wall are his.”
I stepped farther into the alcove she’d created for his work. Each painting was a depiction of a Gullah child, the faces textured
and real, the eyes transportive. “I’ve never seen work that jumped off the canvas in this way, and I went to a lot of museums
when I was growing up. Who taught him to paint?”
“Him a natural, but he attend Savannah Art Institute. He learn well dere.”
“I can see that.”
“When he came home, he taught me the tings he learned, so we were students together.”
“That’s beautiful.”
“I prefer werkin’ wit water. Erik, acrylic.” She smiled like it was a sweet memory.
“Is he your only child?”
“Dere be only Erik, and now since me husband pass, dere be only me.”
I took a deep breath and released it as quietly as I could. I didn’t want to sigh on her words, but I also didn’t understand
their meaning. “Dere be only me.” I didn’t know what she meant by that. Maybe it was a Gullah phrase.
I had more questions, but the weight in her expression made me stop asking. Some stories weren’t meant to be told all at once.
So I stood beside her, and I looked. And I let the art speak what she couldn’t yet bring herself to say.