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In 1942 it was still uncommon for a black woman to live in her own home without a gentleman present. I do believe the house belonged, formally, to the Parsons family, the owners of the island. But the woman who lived in the house was not, to my knowledge, related to the Parsons family in any way. My mother taught me all about her, and said that she came from a place very far away. I do not know how she came to live in Georgia, or when, but I do know that when I went to see her that day she looked one hundred years old.
The house was a single-story cottage, white washed with clean windows. You might think it was sinking into the swamp from the way it leaned. I knocked on the front door three times in rapid succession.
A young black girl answered. I remembered her, but I do not believe she recognized me at all. Her eyebrows, carefully maintained, rose up as she looked at me. “Who’re you?”
“I am Carolyn Cooper. I’m here to see Mother Yewande.”
The girl nodded. She stepped aside and opened the door wider to let me in. “I’ll let her know you’re here.”
I stepped inside, taking off my hat as I entered the mud room. An empty coat rack so old it was like to fall over stood on my left, and a shelf of muddy boots and shoes hung from the wall on my right. The girl, whose name I remembered as Joanna, moved into the next room.
Upon her beckoning, I followed her down the hall and into a parlor. The windows were covered, but there were shelves and tables covered in lit candles, mostly white but a few green and some yellow; they gave the room a warm, flickering glow. The room was almost exactly as I remembered it. The room was timeless.
And so was the woman sitting on the couch. Her years had lined her face, and turned her hair to a brilliant silver color, but she did not look any older than the last time I had seen her several years before. She was a large woman, finely dressed in an ankle-length skirt and a white blouse.
“Mother Yewande,” I said, smiling a little. “How have you been?”
“Just fine, girl, fine. How ’bout some tea?” She stood up, ponderously and slowly, and wandered across the room to where the incense burned in a stone holder shaped like a lily. Mother Yewande pinched the burning tip of the incense until it ceased to burn, then returned to the couch, which had a large divot in the middle from her many years of occupying that space. She smiled at me. She was an incredibly warm presence; still, I was afraid of her, and all she was capable of.
“I bet you aren’t here just for a visit, right? Sit a spell and tell me ’bout your troubles.”
I sat down in the rocking chair, the same one I had sat in a few years previous. Apparently, she remembered me.
I waited until Joanna had served us both mugs of steaming hot jasmine tea. I cupped mine with both hands and let it warm up my frozen fingers.
“Mother Yewande, I need your help. I know you’ve helped me once, and I am very grateful for that. But I hoped you might find it in yourself to help me again.”
When her eyes met mine, I shrunk back in my seat and looked at my tea, which was murky brown. Though the incense no longer burned, its scent wafted in the air, ghostlike.
“Girl, you have a husband, a home, and a pretty face. What else do you need?”
I hesitated. Then: “A baby.”
Mother Yewande looked away from me, chuckled, and waved her hand. I could see her fingernails, broken and uneven, dirty and cracked. Her hands were lined and old as her face. “You wasting my time, girl.”
“Please, I remember you said I couldn’t, but—”
“But nothin’. We had a deal. Now get.”
I did not move. I do believe I was frozen in my seat, and would have stayed there eternally if not for Mother Yewande’s grunt. “Besides, girl, what you want a baby for? Nothin’ but trouble. Get on home.”
I stood up. I do not know what gave me the strength to do it, but I did. I set down my teacup among the burning candles, smoothed out the back of my dress, rammed my hat back on my head, and left that old black woman on her sofa. Tears stung at my eyes but I wiped them away as I passed through the hall. Joanna stood by the door, staring at me.
“Excuse me,” I snapped, reaching for the door. “Some root doctor she is.”
Joanna shook her head, and I paused. “Mother Yewande’s no doctor. You want a doctor? Go see Doctor Buzzard. Jimbo’s on the Waters. He been known to help white folks now and then. Be careful, ma’am.”
She shut the door behind me. The rain was just starting up again, and little droplets of it began to collect on the brim of my hat as I stood there, wondering. My hands shook as I walked back. Mother Yewande, I was sure, could help me, yet she refused over a simple deal she had arranged with me — it seemed to me, at that time, a thing of certain cruelty to deny me what I desired.
I found the black boy waiting on the shore with his boat, and I asked him to take me to the marina. The ride back was upstream, and rougher than our ride to the island, and as a result my face was nearly green when I stepped onto dry land once again. I thanked the boy without any enthusiasm and paid him what I’d promised, though the adventure had not been the least bit fruitful.
About Katherine L.P. King
