Chapter 36
I was nearly done with the book. It was rapidly coming to a happy, loving conclusion that I was not ready to write. But the
good news, the truth I held in my heart, was that I could write. I was no longer blocked. I was no longer confused about what I wanted to write. I was telling the kind of story I’d
been born to tell. But I couldn’t bear to stay in my cabin one more minute. I needed a break. I needed to be fed—physically
and spiritually—something other than pizza and tears. I got in the car and drove to Ms. Kate’s. I told myself those were my
reasons for showing up at her door. The truth was, I wanted absolution. Gabe’s loss was her loss. The land my father stole
had been hers too.
Ms. Kate opened the door. She wiped her hands on a kitchen towel and let me in. “You have good timin’. My dinner is near done.”
She didn’t need to tell me that. I could smell it along with something baked.
Maybe homemade bread, the scent yeasty and rich, like warmth had its own fragrance.
This woman was a balm to my soul. Ms. Kate walked the short distance to the kitchen, with me following.
My mouth was watering. Somewhere under the blanket of dough and butter, I caught notes of rosemary and honey.
“You know, I was just thinking about you. I might make a book of recipes. I don’t have anyone to pass them down to.” She removed
the lid from a pot, stirred the contents, and closed it again. She continued, “When the children, mostly nephews, were young,
we didn’t let them help with nothing but shellin’ peas, you know. We tell them, chillun do chillun things and adults do the
cooking.”
Piles of vegetables sat on the small island. There was work to be done, so I washed my hands to prepare for it. “My mother
did the same thing.”
Ms. Kate grunted. “Little ones . . . dem make a mess in the kitchen.”
“My mother didn’t want to put responsibility on me. She had a lot of guilt,” I said, seeing flashes of Beck in my mind. Guilt
was her constant companion. Now I understood why.
Ms. Kate grunted again. “Mothers carry guilt. It takes over dem spirit.” Sadness fell into the folds of her face. “Every mother
does her best.”
Before I knew it, I was nodding and agreeing. “She was a good mother.”
“Is,” Ms. Kate added.
A small, sad smile made its way to my lips. “What can I do?”
“I have chowder and bread for dinner.” She waved her hand over the island. “All this is for tomorrow. For a funeral repast.
Okra soup, collards, and Limpin’ Susan rice.”
I chuckled. “Limpin’ Susan as opposed to Hoppin’ John?”
“Susan is like most women. She doesn’t get the attention she deserves.” Ms. Kate laughed heartily. “It’s rice with seafood
in it. John don’t have no seafood. Not if it’s made Gullah. I’ll show you.”
She instructed me to fill two large pots with water so they could come to a rolling boil while we chopped vegetables: onions, garlic, carrots, tomatoes, and okra. Lots of okra for the rice and the stew. Ms. Kate had frozen corn and collards from her early spring harvest already prepped.
My eyes drifted to her Gullah cookbook collection. Ms. Kate had books by Sallie Ann Robinson, Kardea Brown, and of course
Edisto’s own Ms. Emily. I couldn’t imagine that she used these. Beck collected cookbooks, mostly old classics, but she had
all of these too. She was a tried-and-true one-pot cook—the Gullah way. I realized I’d been connected to my culture even when
I hadn’t known it. I opened the Mama Doonk book and glanced at the pictures. “What’s your favorite thing to cook?”
Ms. Kate didn’t hesitate to answer. “Crab cakes. My late husband loved fa see me pull them from the oven. Gabe too.”
A penetrating ache gripped my insides at the mention of his name. I didn’t know how I would get over him.
Her voice broke through my thoughts. “I make chowder most Sundays. I spend time with my memories of Erik.”
It wasn’t my place to point out to her that she spent time with his memories nearly every day, because maybe her Sunday ritual
was different.
“We should make some cracklin’ corn bread. Gabe likes it. Although he mostly makes it for himself. That young man loves corn
bread.”
I stuck the cookbook back in place. I was aware that she kept mentioning Gabe’s name. She didn’t usually do that. I wondered
if she knew we were in a bad place.
She raised a knife and shook it for emphasis. “I taught him from young.”
“Were you close to his mother?”
Ms. Kate stopped chopping to reflect with a full smile. “She was my niece. The only girl in a family full of male children. We poured into her. We all taught her everything we knew.”
“It must have been hard to lose her.”
“It was. Hardest for Gabe. He was so young. He doesn’t remember her as well anymore. I think that’s what hurts him the most.
Forgetting her voice.”
I closed my eyes to the memory of my father’s hand gripping mine. “We have that in common. Not remembering parents.”
“Memories are a blessing, but a curse too. You know too much of what you don’t have.” Her lips bunched up. She unlocked them
and added, “I miss the noise a family makes. A husband snoring, asking for things all the time. They can’t find nothing.”
She chuckled as she dumped the vegetables into a pot of boiling water. “Opening and closing the fridge and cupboard doors.
It was constant. Children talking, fighting, running through. Without them, it’s so quiet. I think that’s why I moved here.
My house was too quiet. At the center, people talk. The animals and birds in these woods—they make noise.”
Her reflection was heartbreaking. She was going somewhere with it because she always did. But she seemed different today.
I suspected she knew everything, so I said, “We share a history.”
Suddenly, I didn’t feel like I belonged here. I opened the door for a hard conversation, and now I didn’t want to have it.
I wanted to leave.
Ms. Kate chuckled wryly. “Not one worth talkin’ ’bout.” She walked to the table and put bowls of chowder and slices of bread
at our place settings before returning to the refrigerator. “Tea or lemonade?”
“I’m not hungry,” I lied. I’d come for the comfort of her food, but now, as I fought to keep my whole soul from collapsing,
I realized I didn’t deserve anything from her.
“This is my house, and I offered you a meal. It’s rude not to accept.”
Tears rose to my eyes. In an instant, they were streaming down my face. “Why didn’t you tell me that you knew who I was?”
Ms. Kate hiked an eyebrow. “At first I didn’t know.”
“Gabe knew.”
“We didn’t discuss nothing ’bout it,” she said, shaking her head.
“Until you did,” I said. The familiar prickle of irritation rose, but I pushed it down. I couldn’t be annoyed with Ms. Kate.
“Tea or lemonade?” she insisted. “You need the soothin’.”
“Tea, ma’am.”
Her lips bunched, and her movements showed tension in her body as she poured. I didn’t mean to upset her. She already carried
so much.
I took both glasses and placed them on the table. Ms. Kate looked at me, compassion heavy in her eyes.
“I’m sorry.” My voice cracked.
“Oona have nothing to be sorry about. But I’m hungry even if you’re not. I like my food hot. Let’s eat.”
We sat, and Ms. Kate said grace. I stuck my spoon into a bowl of crab chowder and nearly cried again. The way it made me feel—the
warmth it offered me—was undeniably needed. I plowed through all the food, gathering everything it had to offer, and took
soothing sips of tea in between bites. Soul food was comfort food.
When we were done, I joined Ms. Kate on the screened porch. As usual, she refused to let me help with the dishes. She picked
up her sweetgrass and began weaving.
“Do you know how many children don’t know who der daddy is?
How many mamas lie ’bout fathers because dem no good or dem is married or the neighbor or the preacher?
” She clicked her teeth. “Daddies be secrets all over the world. And I don’t say that to excuse what your mada did.
I say it because oona is not by yourself and you don’t have the shame here. ”
Her words made sense, but still . . . I wasn’t everybody. This was my life, and it was all that mattered right now.
I fought tears, but I couldn’t keep the brokenness out of my voice. “My mother let me come south for college. When I told
her I wanted to stay down here, she encouraged it. When I purchased the house, she packed her things and left New Jersey to
come live with me. Why would she do all of that? If she wanted her secrets to stay buried, she could have tried to keep me
up north.”
With eyes overflowing with compassion, Ms. Kate said, “Because she Gullah and this land on these shores be her home.” A long
breath escaped her lungs, clearing the air for more of her thoughts. “And the truth is always trying to find the place it
belongs, even when we fight it.”
I was sitting with those words for a second, trying to understand them at a deeper level, when my phone rang. I didn’t have
to look at it to know it was Gabe. I pressed Ignore.
“You should talk to him,” Ms. Kate said. “Trust him. He’s mature, you know.”
I did know, but this had nothing to do with maturity. “What my father did cost his family everything . . . his father’s life.
The rest of the family’s land.”
“Me know—I’m part of that family. But you can’t run. Let him choose to see how he see you, in the same way you should have
been allowed to choose what you think of your fada.”
With a shake of my head, I said, “I don’t know.”
“You don’t have to. Alex, this information is new to you.
You can’t expect to have your emotions sorted.
But I’m telling you to choose love. Don’t let it slip through your fingers because you don’t know how to fight for it.
” She released a heavy breath. “Gabe will bring noise into your life. Oona don’t want to go through a whole life with no one’s noise but your own. ”
She was pleading with me. Begging me to hear her heart.
“I can’t even think about Gabe. My head is not in the right place. I’m angry with my mother.”
Ms. Kate kept braiding. “And anger is a thing that has its place. But it’s not like truth. Ya can’t let it stay for very long.
If it stays, it becomes a new thing—bitterness. And that one settles in around the heart. It’s hard to get rid of.”
I didn’t say anything, just kept watching her move her fingers as she weaved the sweetgrass in and out and around. It was
oddly calming, calming enough for me to want to do it again.
“Can I be honest with you?” Ms. Kate asked, not waiting for my answer. “You are not a mother. And because of that, you cannot
understand the hard choices most mothers have to make.”
I started to interrupt, but she raised her hand. “Let me finish. I’m not patronizing oona when I say what I have to say.”
I physically shrank in my seat and waited for her to go on, but I held on to my protest.
Ms. Kate said, “It’s easier to tell the truth when you don’t have anything important to lie about, when nothing horrible has
happened to you that has caused the kind of shame your mother felt. She experienced rejection even before your father did
what he did. She was already in New Jersey because of . . .”
“Me,” I inserted.
“Because she got pregnant with no husband in a community that shun that. The Gullah have ceremonies for repentance after shunnin’,
you know.” She sucked her teeth like she’d seen it too many times and didn’t like it.
“And then the father turns out to be a thief. She was not more than a teenager when it happened.”
“I know, but . . .” I paused, picturing Beck, young, unsure of herself in the same way that fifty-four-year-old Beck struggled.
Ms. Kate filled my head with more thoughts. “Your mother may have intended to tell you, but the further away we get from the
truth, the harder it becomes to find it again. Secrets are their own kind of trauma, Alex. And trauma”—she wagged a finger—“it’s
the enemy. Trauma pushes itself down into our bellies, our heart, and other muscles. It eventually reaches our bones. The
ache comes from everywhere. Not only does it ache; it eats away at us, at families, for generations.”
She reached for her glass, took a sip, and closed her eyes. Her own words were visibly stirring her emotions. She rocked for
a long time, sipping and rocking and sipping and rocking as if she was revving an engine. She had more to say. I pushed her
to get it out. “What’s troubling you, Ms. Kate?”
After taking a long breath, she said, “Erik. He called me twice. The day him get killed. I was disappointed in him because
I didn’t like the girl he was planning to ask for her hand, so I did not take his calls. Even when a nagging feeling in my
gut urged me to answer him.” She pinched her lips shut and then unpinched them again to continue. “I ignored it. And then
he left here. Gone with my disappointment ushering him out of this life. No one, not even Gabe, knows what I been carrying.”
Lord, this was heavy. I had nothing for that kind of grief. “But it’s not your fault. He was in an accident.”
“See, that’s what I’m saying. You don’t know your mother’s why. You don’t know what transpired between her and your father.
You don’t know what she’s carrying. So, although you say you wanted to know and maybe you should have been told, you don’t
know that that’s true.”
I swallowed my emotions, my disappointment, my protest. There was nothing I could say to her when she had confessed something so sad.
I understood more now—why she mourned so deeply.
Why she no longer painted. The past had taken everything from her.
All she had was this cabin, the paintings, food, and her memories.
I watched as a tear ran down her face and over her chin before it disappeared.
She had no peace, and my heart broke for her.
I stepped out of Ms. Kate’s cabin full of food and wisdom, which I was still trying to process as the sun set on her words.
I went back to my cabin, climbed into bed, and pulled the blankets over my head. I lay there in the quiet space with only
the sound of crickets chirping in the woods. Ms. Kate’s words came back to me: “Choose love, Alex. Don’t let it slip through your fingers because you don’t know how to fight for it.”
But I could not escape the feeling that he and I were not meant to be. That my perfect match was a man I had too messy a connection
to.
A tear slipped down the side of my face. I just didn’t know. I didn’t know if I would ever have love. I didn’t know if I would
ever have the kind of noise love makes.