Low Country (38 page)

have to decide one way or another right now, but I do

think the company wants to move pretty quickly on it,

so I guess I’ll go on and let you talk. Maybe Ezra can

come and tell me when you’ve made some decision.

I’ll let the…right people know. And I’ll answer any

questions you have right now, if I can.”

Low Country / 341

I waited again. Nothing. Only still black faces,

looking at me.

“Anybody?”

“I think everybody pretty much agrees that it’s up to

you, Caro. Not us,” Ezra Upchurch said. His voice was

as soft as the breath of a sleeping tiger, but it was still

a tiger’s breath.

“Oh, no,” I said, distressed. “Of course it’s not up

to me. It’s up to all of you; that’s the whole point. I’m

only relaying the message. It’s entirely up to you all.…”

“Ain’t us owns this island,” a cracked old voice said.

I did not know whose it was.

“I know that, but I’d never go against your wishes.

You must know that. I promised my grandfather…I

never would.…I only thought that this new thing might

make things better for some of you. I know how hard

it is to get good medical and dental care sometimes,

and how much plumbing costs, and heating.…”

But I did not know those things and fell silent. I

should not have come. I should not have come. I

should not have let Hayes talk me into this. He had

used my fallen husband to get me to do this; I saw that

now. I took a deep breath and started to speak, but

then Toby Jackson spoke. I had not seen him join the

group on the porch. I supposed that his old wife must

have guided him up the road.

“Miss Caro, is people gon’ come over here and pay

to look at us?” he said.

342 / Anne Rivers Siddons

Something cold and rock-hard around my heart

cracked and broke open. I almost stumbled with the

release of it.

“No, they are not,” I said as clearly as I could pitch

my trembling voice. “They are not going to do that

because I am not going to turn this land over to the

Peacock Island Plantation Company. Not now and not

ever. I’m sorry I even let them talk me into telling you

about it, and we will not speak of it again unless you

all bring it up.”

I waited a while, my breath coming fast and shallow,

to see what they would say. A few of them nodded,

and one or two smiled a little at me, as they always

did, but still no one spoke, and I wondered if I had

made myself clear. I started to speak again, and then

did not. I stood a minute longer.

“Thank you for your time,” I said idiotically, and

turned to go.

“Wait a minute,” Sophia called after me. “If you’ll

give me a ride back it’ll save Ezra a trip.”

“Of course,” I said automatically. My ears were

ringing with the silence of the people of Dayclear.

She left to get her things together and call Mark from

the backyard of the store, where he and Lita were

chasing a platoon of squawking Domineckers.

Luis Cassells came down off the porch and fell into

step beside me. He did not speak, either,

Low Country / 343

until we had reached the Cherokee. I got in and he put

his hand on the rim of the lowered window and looked

in at me.

“How are you feeling about all this? It was a tough

thing to do and a brave one,” he said.

“It was a stupid thing to do,” I said. “I never should

even have mentioned it. It should not have come up.

Luis, do you think they understand that I mean to keep

the island? That they’re okay; they’re safe?”

“They understand everything,” he said. “They’re

grateful to you, even if they aren’t ready to show it yet.

You don’t have to worry about that. They’ve always

known where your heart was, Caro. They just haven’t

been sure whether you would follow it.”

“I’ve tried to do that,” I said tremulously. I wanted

to cry, to howl aloud. I had just doomed my husband’s

company.

I said as much to Luis Cassells.

“It was the right choice,” he said.

“I just did in my husband’s entire future,” I said,

trying to smile. “You’ll excuse me if I can’t feel too

confident about my choice.”

He shook his tangled dark head. “Your decision

about Dayclear isn’t the agent of your husband’s fu-

ture’s tailspin, Caro, much as people might like you

to think it is. And it’s not the only one for him. He

could have others that don’t cost so much. You could,

too…”

344 / Anne Rivers Siddons

“No,” I said. “Not Clay. For him, I think the com-

pany has been the only one.”

“Then you don’t know anything,
carita
,” he said,

and pulled his head out of my window and went back

down the hill. It was not until Sophia and Mark were

in the car and we were headed back down the road

toward the bridge that I realized he had said not
Carita

but
querida
.

The Spanish for “dear.”

We were across the bridge and back on Peacock’s be-

fore we spoke. Sophia sat in the front seat beside me,

her feet propped up on the Cherokee’s dashboard, her

head thrown far back against the seat. The sinews in

her long feet stood out as she wedged them for sup-

port, and her eyes were closed. She still wore the

headwrap. Her feet were dirty; somehow I liked that.

In the backseat, Mark’s sleepy grizzling had subsided

into the real thing.

Finally I said, “I know you’ll have to tell Clay about

this, but I wish you’d wait until after I do, okay? He’s

not in good shape. It didn’t go well in Puerto Rico.”

“I’m not going to tell him,” she said, eyes still closed.

“Sophia…where are you on all this?”

She opened her eyes and looked over at me.

“I don’t know. I just…don’t know. You going to

turn me in to headquarters, Caro?”

Low Country / 345

I laughed.

“For what? Disloyalty? I’m really the one to do that,

aren’t I?”

“‘Then there’s a pair of us! Don’t tell! they’d advert-

ise—you know!’” she said, and her voice had a rich

hill of laughter in it.

“When I first read that, in junior high, I thought it

might have been written for me,” I said, laughing at

her laughter. “It was just the way I felt. ‘I’m Nobody!

Who are you?…’”

“‘Are you—Nobody—too?’ God, if you thought that

was you, just imagine who I thought it was. A little

black girl in Brooklyn Heights with a rich mama and

daddy who raised her white…I didn’t fit in anywhere.

They left it up to me to decide which world I would

live in. As it turned out, neither one wanted me very

much.”

“And which did you?” I asked. It seemed suddenly

that I could ask her anything. We had been through a

great deal together, Sophia Bridges and I, whether we

had perceived it like that or not. We had both lived

for a time with one foot in a near-alternate universe.

“Oh, white,” she said. “You get lots more stuff white,

and you get it easier and faster. I couldn’t really pass

myself; I know I don’t look white. Just real classy black.

But I rammed my way into the white world at school.

And I married white. You probably guessed that. You

can

346 / Anne Rivers Siddons

also probably guess it didn’t last long. After the novelty

wears off, white really wants white.”

“Are you bitter about that?” She did not sound so,

particularly. Not now.

“I was, certainly. When I got down here I was bitter

about almost everything that smacked of either really,

really white or really, really black. I can just imagine

the message I was giving Mark.”

“Why
did
you come? The Lowcountry…under the

surface, it’s about the blackest place I know,” I said.

“You surely must have had a world of choices about a

career and where you would live.”

“I had plenty,” she said matter-of-factly. “The thing

is…my people come from here, Caro. I didn’t know

that; I had no idea where our family originated. If my

parents did, they never said. I think, in their minds,

they just sort of invented themselves and me. But when

I started in cultural anthropology one of the first

courses I had involved the Gullahs of the Southeastern

Lowcountry. I felt an immediate…I don’t know, a

connection, I guess you’d say…and I started sort of

surreptitiously researching names. I know my father’s

family’s was McKay. Eventually I found what looked

like a link to some Mackeys on Edisto. Peacock’s was

mentioned. All this time I was either pretending none

of it existed or that I was merely doing fascinating re-

search. I never told Chris…my husband…what I was

study

Low Country / 347

ing. He loved telling his little liberal white law partners

that his wife was a cultural anthropologist. I don’t

think he would have loved telling them she was a

Gullah Negro whose ancestors came over in the hold

of a slave ship from Angola. Come to that, I had a fine

time pretending mine didn’t, either. Christ, I don’t

know where I thought they came from. Certainly not

on the
Mayflower
.”

She looked over at me obliquely.

“You could special-order us, did you know that? I

didn’t. But you could. A lot of the Charleston and

Edisto planters did. Our people were known to be

good agriculturists, and we were so ancestor and family

besotted that we weren’t likely to run away and leave

our families over here. Made to order to the rice and

cotton fields, wouldn’t you say? You could specify

how many of us, and what sex and what age, even

what height and weight. I wouldn’t have made a good

field worker, but I would have done well as a house

nigger. Skinny; not a big eater. Presentable enough for

the front rooms. Light enough so if the massa knocked

me up the kid could probably pass…”

I made a soft sound of pain, and she shook her head

impatiently.

“I’m not trying to lay a guilt trip on you,” she said.

“I know you’re one of the good ones. It’s just that…it’s

my first experience with black

348 / Anne Rivers Siddons

ness. I don’t know how I feel about it yet. I don’t know

what it’s going to mean to Mark. I don’t know where

the next step will take me, or what it will be. I don’t

know if I can make being black work; I was white too

long. And I don’t know if white will ever work for me

again. I don’t even know what’s important in the long

run, in the big picture. Except that I know that is, over

there.” She gestured back toward the island. “I know

that somehow that’s awfully important. I know that

it…needs to stay whole, over there, whether or not I

ever set foot there again.”

“So, are you a double agent or what?” I grinned.

“Or what, I guess,” she said peacefully. “I don’t seem

to be in any hurry to make lifetime decisions. I don’t

feel like I have to, right now. It’s been a great month

or so, just
being
…just teasing along on the moment.”

“Ezra’s good company,” I said.

“Ezra’s a pain in the ass.” She smiled. “But he’s sure

a whole piece of cloth, isn’t he? I never met anybody

like him. He’s more things in one skin than I thought

was possible.”

“Maybe that’s what we’re all meant to be,” I said.

“Maybe. Who knows? I guess it will emerge. For

now I’m going to just let it carry me. You know, Caro,

I guess I was waiting to hear what’s going to happen

to Dayclear, waiting to see…

Low Country / 349

what Clay will do. If he goes ahead with it, I know

now that I’ll have to resign. If not…well, I’m not likely

to get another job that lets me write my own ticket in

my specialty and pays me like Clay does. It’s the kind

of job that makes a reputation early, and that means

big bucks. I want Mark to have the kind of education

I did. He’s no more apt to want to live in Dayclear

than I do, even if his ancestors’ names are on those

grave-stones, but he needs to be able to walk back and

forth between worlds as easily as he crosses a street in

Manhattan. Or as easily as you go back to…wherever

it is you go back to.”

“I haven’t been back to my hometown in twenty-five

years,” I said. “But I see your point. There’s nothing

stopping me if I wanted to. I always meant to; my

daughter, Kylie, always wanted to go so she could hear

the garbage trucks in the morning. To her, that was

about as exotic as you can get.”

She put her hand over mine briefly. It was cold and

rough with the dried mud of her ancestors’ resting

place. I rather hoped some of it stayed under the perfect

ovals of her nails.

“You’ve never mentioned her name,” she said.

“It’s hard to talk about her,” I said. “I’m trying to

learn to make her a normal part of my life now. I think

maybe I’ve enshrined her too long.”

“I cannot even imagine what would happen

350 / Anne Rivers Siddons

to me without Mark,” she said. “I cannot imagine who