runner up: short short story contest

the tobacco dancer of the black river

by sharon oxendine

I have no mother story to tell you,
no stories of being held close or soothed
and nurtured,
no stories of family gathered around the table
talking from their hearts.
I have no words to pass on to you
to understand the pain that keeps a family
bound and locked together even
when it causes sickness and grief.
I do have dreams of a dark river at night
flooded with moon light through
patches of tall pine allowing enough light
to make the river appear clear, shining and effervescent.
I have memories of dark fertile earth
that would cling to your feet and forever
leave a trace and a taste for warm mineral life
grown from the banks of that dark river.
I have memories of nights I could not sleep,
watching her practice medicine
with grandmothers who knew the land so well
they could create food and water in a drought,
hold off disease and loneliness and heal the soul
with the elements of the earth.

(letter to my daughter)

Dear Jessica,

As I begin to write this poem about your great-grandmother, I realize I have never told you her story. Your great-grandmother introduced me to the Black River, now known as the Lumbee River, which runs through Lumberton, N.C.

Our ancestors originated there, so I want you to know about this place and person who helped shape who I am.
When I was a child, my parents would take my two brothers and me to Lumberton for the summer to help our grandparents crop tobacco. Grandpa Chesley and Grandma Mary Bell were the parents of sixteen children. Grandpa Chesley was a meek, mild Baptist minister with a soft, loving manner.

Grandma Mary Bell or Ms. Maybell as she was called by most of her friends and church community, was stern, hard, and ruled the roost. Most of us children were afraid of her. At times I was ashamed because she was backwards, without tact and used food stamps. I hoped no one I knew would see that pitiful transaction taking place. She wore an old worn out cotton dress with an apron that had pockets that held a silver can of Peach brand snuff. She always looked worn out from keeping her own house going, cleaning house for white people and actively working in Grandpa Chesley’s church.
Those summers became the foundation of my existence. I now know I was not just learning how to work and be responsible, but was part of a community. Most days we had fun, although the work of cropping tobacco was hard and tireless. I found comfort in being a part of this extended family of grandparents and cousins since my home was not a comforting place for me. My parents drank too much and were not emotionally supportive. My mother was cold and blaming. Although my grandparents’ farm was stripped of material luxuries, it felt like a home. My grandmother was strict and stern but my grandfather was loving and nurturing, balancing out the caretaking with my cousins and me in an attentive, supportive way.
As an adult, I realized I had been observing an authentic medicine woman in my grandmother. People came from all around Lumberton to get her medicine. They came to that rickety frame house and left with a mixture of ingredients in a mason jar.

Grandmother usually had fifteen to twenty people at her table. She served homemade biscuits, grits and eggs for breakfast. Hearty lunches consisted of squash, fried pork chops, sticky rice, collards and cornbread. Sunday lunch included chicken and “paster” which was like chicken and dumplings except thicker. Sweet potato pone, made like mashed potatoes with vanilla and molasses, spread thin and baked in the over with a crispy crust, was my favorite.
Grandma called me “Sherlin Faye” although my name was Sharon Faye. All my cousins had double names like Darrell Lyn, Michael Ray and Eula Mae.

Grandmother did not hesitate to shriek your name out into the yard if she needed you to do a chore. This woman was not a nurturing, sweet grandmother, but a hard, mean-mouthed, in charge, warrior woman. She did not play with us, but there was a definite comforting feeling being around her. She treated us fairly, seeing that everyone received the same amount of food and chores.
One summer when I was twelve years old, I began to realize that Ms. Maybell was the tobacco dancer. I looked like all teeth, nose and ears and felt so isolated attending a school in Columbia, S.C. where segregation was still practiced. I felt like a misfit because no one looked like me. In Lumberton it was so good to be part of a community of people who had similar physical characteristics and color.

Most of my cousins in Lumberton went to Indian schools where almost everyone was Indian and many had the same last names, such as Oxendine, Locklear or Hunt.

We would work from early morning until dark cropping tobacco. Sometimes I would walk behind the tractor to pick up the leaves that dropped. In the early mornings before the heat came, there was glistening dew and soft soil between my toes and a feeling of belonging. Tobacco leaves feel prickly and sticky. It was so hot that we would drip with sweat and wish for bottles of ice cold sun drop that would sometimes appear in the afternoon in big washtubs of ice. Once the tobacco was cropped and tied on long sticks, it was then placed in the barn to cure. This is when I loved the sweet aroma of the golden yellow leaves and the dark, luscious feel of the barn.

Laughter and joking were exchanged as we ate breakfast, lunch and dinner together. Grandma did not work in the fields but cooked meals from meat and vegetables they raised. I still long for her sweet, dark iced tea. Some days she would have my cousins and me stay inside to help her with the meal. Grandma was too bossy and demanding, so I preferred to work with the tobacco.

One evening after a day in the tobacco fields, I went to bed dead dog tired wearing only underwear, and the oppressive heat continued to wear me down.

The big fans just swirled the heat around. We were sleeping three to a bed. I got up for a drink of water, walking across mismatched linoleum and uneven floors in the kitchen where the refrigerator sounded like a lawn mower. I looked out the window across the field and saw my grandmother in her red slip, walking around in circles saying something I could not understand. I leaned into the window closer noticing that she had her hair down. She looked like a Rubinesque figure with her curvy legs and her brown arms waving above her head. I felt slightly uneasy about seeing her this way. She usually was dressed with her waist length hair pinned back and funny little black square frame glasses on her somber face. Watching her for a while, I noticed after she danced in small circles, she leaned over and poured out a liquid around some tobacco plants I could see shining in the moon light. She stopped and looked towards the house. I thought she saw me, so I hurried back to bed.
The next morning I studied my grandmother closely to see if anything was different, but she seemed like her mean old self, hollering at us all to clean up and get ready for church. I always wondered what she meant by “clean up” since he house was always a mess and cleaning up didn’t make much difference to that old run down sharecropper’s house. We piled into my grandpa’s old plymouth heading to church, traveling past tobacco fields and the Lumbee River with its smell of heated water.

Grandpa delivered a message from the pulpit in sweet, loving tones. Grandma sat on the front pew constantly fanning. On the ride home from church, grandma told grandpa to stop by the river. She took a mason jar with her down to the water. I wanted to go with her but grandpa wouldn’t let me. Grandpa said, “The Black River ain’t no place to be playing around.” Grandma came back to the car with a jar full of dark, brown liquid. When we got home, she took the liquid to the shed and came back to the house to finish cooking Sunday dinner.

Cautiously I sneaked into the shed where bags of feed and mash for the chicken and hogs lay among the yard tools. At the back of the shed I saw jars of the river water like the one she brought back this morning. Small bunches of tobacco leaves were hanging from the rafters, but they were nothing like the tobacco curing in Mr. Jones’ barn that we share cropped for. There were also small bags of cornmeal, a couple of oil lamps along with some small burlap bags tied with twine. The shed smelled like earth, leaves and water, a familiar, sweet kind of musky smell. I wanted to examine and touch everything, but I was afraid. I heard grandma calling us to come to dinner.

Later that day as we all sat in the shade of the pecan tree, a car drove up. Grandma said, “Here comes Hattie Mae.” Grandma got up, went into the shed, and came out holding a brown paper bag. Grandma and Ms. Hattie disappeared into the house with the bag.

the bag. Everyone around the tree went back to their banter, but I announced that I was going to the outhouse. Instead I sneaked around to the front of the house and could overhear grandma saying to Ms. Hattie, “ Just rub a little of this on his forehead each night.” My cousins came around the house to enlist me to play hide and seek, so off I went.

Before I fell asleep that night, I noticed there was a full moon. I dreamed about walking beside the Black River in the dark. I felt afraid until I saw three women including one who looked like my grandma. I ran toward her, but she would not acknowledge me. She was speaking in a strange language that sounded like the speaking in tongues they did at grandpa’s church. The other two women held hands around a circle of jars which appeared to contain river water. When my grandma turned and looked at me, it seemed she looked right through me, continuing to speak that strange language. I awoke with a start with sweat running down my face. Getting up quickly to go to the kitchen to get water, I looked outside and thought I was still dreaming. My grandma and two other women were in a circle dancing. My grandma’s hair was down and she was moving and swaying. I could make out some sounds, but not the actual words.

I wanted to see more, so I went out onto the porch and stood for a long time watching the flames from their lanterns create long shadows of their images. I heard grandma say, “Sherlin Faye, what are you doing up?” They all stopped dancing as I stood there on that old falling down porch wanting so badly for her to call me to her. She only said, “You need to get back to bed, girl.” I overheard one of the women whisper, “Maybell, she has the gift, you know. She could come…” My grandma cut her off, “No, not yet, maybe later.” She looked toward me and said, “Get on.” I was very hurt. That other woman had said I had a gift. I wanted to do what they did. I wanted to be part of their secret.

I did not return to Lumberton for a couple of summers. I had found new friends, boys, music, and even some activities not so healthy, but welcome diversions from a home that never fed my soul. I would return to grandma’s for short visits after I was married. I began to piece together who my grandma was in spirit.

She said “Indun” for Indian, and lectured me and my girl cousins on two things, “Don’t ever cut your hair and only marry an Indun man,” both of which I ignored.

Grandpa died of a stroke at fifty-eight, and grandma never remarried. I knew she had lost her soulmate, so she lived on with a little less spunk. I loved my grandpa because he was gentle and kind. My grandma was strong medicine, and you had to know her spirit to love her. It has taken me all my life to understand her. Even in her later years she was always taking in someone’s child and cooking three meals a day.

When she died in the fall of l990, she was nearly ninety years old. I had come to love and respect what she had done with her life. As we rode to her burial, the horses and cattle came from every farm to stand close to the procession for this medicine woman. I remembered thinking that they knew she was leaving. I knew, too, that I had let her slip away without learning all she knew. She knew I had the gift, but she had said, “later”. We had never spoken of that night that I saw her dance with the other women. I had never told anyone.

Now I know that she was right. I was not ready at that time. It would have been too much for me to take on. My grandma also knew it would never be too late because she could work between the two worlds when she was alive and she would continue to do so after her death on this plane. She comes to me in spirit and says, “Cook some sweet potato pone. It would be healing right now,” or she comes to me in dreams and shows me how to work medicine in some situation in my life that needs a strength that I don’t possess in this earthly body.

Today at forty-five my life feels big and bountiful. I have meaningful work and life with the love of my life. We work together encouraging each other’s creativity, and have friends who share our path. My life feels full of color, a cacophony of sweetness and sorrow tempered by the knowledge of a direct connection to my heritage. Some days in the spring when I drive through the valley to my home in the mountains, I can see the beginnings of the burley tobacco. Grandma always comes to me then. I can see a girl with long, brown legs and big, brown eyes listening for the sound of her grandmother who calls her home to another place, another time. I am always reminded of the tobacco dancer of the Black River. She is still with me.

 

Sharon Oxendine has been published in several anthologies, has published a chap book and performs private ceremonies for the community. She lives in Weaverville and hopes to continue the stories about her grandmother.