Wisteria: Swamp Country

Story Time

63 StoryTime For you, love was the story you told in the soft evenings, your body remembering old contours of embrace, the warmth of a man in the midnight hour, the smell of his armpit, soil in his fingers, carbolic on his skin. You told of the seamstress, tall, long-headed daughter of slaves whose fingers would feed in whispers cotton and silks into the slow chewing singer, her heel-and-toe action on the pedal, as expert as the planting of rice seeds in the thick mud of the st. Helena where paddies spread green against blue; making garments for only the monied gentry. that woman who would sing her solos in the fenced-in altar of the a.M.e. church like she was alone in this world, making the songs new, stitching along a pattern dreamt up at nights, 64 making those old songs something else, those old blood-stained songs. You told of the white blacksmith, burly man with whispy corn hair and eyes so far into themselves that you could only see sorrow when he turned them on you like some speechless beast—cow, horse, sheep, goat, or passive pig waiting stupidly to be slaughtered; and you would tell how you always knew that some white folks knew the blues, too. You would tell this with tears, this story of the man leaving the gaol of his conjugal bed; for sometimes, you said those white folks married for nothing but money and blood; and his wife, a sickly thing, weary of the world, hated him for being a fool who never traveled, never wanted to travel, never read a book, 65 just wanted to stay in the face of a furnace till his face got all black like a slave; she would call him a beast to his face, an uncouth thing good for only one thing, to root his way into her tender body which was not made for carrying babies. and he would walk soft through sumter nights, crossing the shining tracks into the darkened belly of the other city to find the seamstress, fingering her needles, making magic with those bolts of cloth that caught the lamplight and shimmered. You could name all the fabrics, love fabrics you called them, crinoline, silk, chiffon, cotton, burlap, khaki, corduroy, linen . . . . in that closet of hues, they would whisper love; he would offer the sorrow of his days, calling back the tender memory of a Nanny, long swollen by sugar and dead, calling back the comforts of nurture milk in this seamstress’s voice, loving her 66 like that gentle way that only white folks know, you said. and how one day they up and left for Florence, how he lived with her before the gaze of the town, and they made the prettiest babies you had ever laid eyes on: tall, nice hair light water in their eyes. and i would watch your eyes tear with love for this man, this memory, telegraphing the tragedy, evidence of a world not right. the jealous, evil-eyed, bad-minded black folk went whispering to his family in sumter, and that wife come to find her voice, too scared now that he might marry the seamstress; and just like that, the world came down on him heavy; his people talking about how he’d be cut off from all that was his by blood. You tell of the day he rode back to sumter, his seamstress standing stonefaced, silent. time could heal lots of things, you say, but time couldn’t make right what’s gone so wrong. 67 the poor man turned to nothing in his soul, turned in on himself and it killed him. But he was a good man, a sweet man always minding that seamstress and the boys. Mama, you told the story, telling me that fair-skin doctor was one of the sons, a credit to his race, evidence of love, for a child conceived in true love could only turn out good, real good. and with my Daddy gone, you taught me much those day, Mama; and with your Daddy not leaving a cent, much-less love, denying everything springing that way from his roving cock, i learnt something those days, Mama. Your parable of integration, best of both worlds, you call it; but you are just...