Sight
By Ann Hite
Mama always said I had the sight, ever since I was two and saw Daddy, Hark Parker, standing behind our cabin, smiling real big. He died two weeks before I was born, selling corn whiskey for Hobbs Pritchard the meanest white man on Black Mountain. Hobbs shot Daddy in the stomach for stealing. He had dern near bleed to death by the time he made it home and died in Mama’s arms.
I never gave spooks and such much thought until the summer 1944. The war threw mountain into the real world. Mama and me we just did what the Dobbins told us too. Mama had worked for them since she was old enough to help her own mama make beds. I started even earlier because Elizabeth Dobbins—the only child of Pastor Dobbins and his wife—took a liking to me as a baby. Elizabeth turned six the month I was born and she used me for just another of her play toys. Mama was right proud because she could get more work done. That girl was everywhere Mama took me, so I didn’t even notice the change from the doll-baby to personal maid. I just fell into caring for Elizabeth real natural: washing her clothes, making her bed, and later when we was grown and she was off at college, I readied her room real nice when she visited.
Miss Elizabeth came home that summer moaning and groaning about how all her friends were on vacation. She wanted her a vacation too. Mrs. Dobbins reminded her that the war was serious and it just wasn’t the proper time to have fun. Pastor Dobbins preached at Black Mountain Baptist Church. I never heard him preach because we were colored and it just wouldn’t be proper for us to attend their church. But it was okay for me to wash their underclothes. Mama had her own beliefs. They came from way on back when her and her family lived in Louisiana. Oh we read the Bible every night, but Mama was known for her conjuring.
I just had me a time trying to imagine Pastor Dobbins’ sermons. He seemed to be God’s personal friend the way he talked to him under his breath all the time. Somehow I just heard those sermons in my mind as dray as three day old bread with hard crusts. It’s those hard crusts that could break a soul’s tooth. Anyway, there was just something about Miss Elizabeth that made that man bend over backwards. I couldn’t figure it out. If I talked to Mama the way Miss Elizabeth did him, she would have jerked a knot on my head.
So, I wasn’t a bit surprised when he decided to take the family on a vacation to the coast of Georgia. Some friend of his had a beach house. I took all this talk in from my perch in the kitchen where I chopped greens and radishes for a salad.
“I will die of boredom there. Who is the world goes to Darien, Georgia? I’ll be the laughing stock of school.”
“It’s settled, Elizabeth. We’re going to have a nice family vacation.” Mrs. Dobbins sounded so sweet, but she had this edge to her words that took the skin right off the listener’s ear.
I just sat there snickering and tossing my greens.
“Shelly Parker, you know not to use your bare hands on Mrs. Dobbins’ food. She’d faint over dead.” Mama named her Shelly because she always wanted to leave the mountain and go back to the ocean.
“Don’t it bother you none, Mama?” I had just turned fifteen that month and questioned ever rule forced on me, especially the ones that were stupid.
“What?” Mama’s voice grew tired like an old tractor that won’t turn over because of a bad battery.
“The way Mrs. Dobbins won’t let us touch her food or sue the same linens and plates as her family. I mean you’ve worked for them all your life. I’ve been here all my life. You’d think we could eat off the same plates.”
Mama opened her mouth to fuss, but the voices from the dining room caught our attention. “I have to take Shelly.” Elizabeth whined. Of course she did. Who would clean her clothes and fold down her bed?
“Oh no, dear. We can’t do that. The church would think we were uppity, not only taking a vacation, but taking our help along. It’s important in times like these we look like one of them”
Did that woman think any soul on the mountain thought her family was one of them? It was plain as the sunrise in the east that Pastor Dobbins didn’t depend on the land for a living. He didn’t want for nothing. All his money was family money.”
“We’ll take Shelly to keep you ladies company. I just can’t imagine you two looking after yourselves. Besides, it will do her good to leave this mountain. The house is quite large so she’ll need some extra help. I will be back here on the mountain most of the time.”
“I thought this was a family vacation.” Mrs. Dobbins sounded down right pitiful, and I felt kind of sorry for her. It was plain as the stars in the sky that Pastor Dobbins didn’t hanker after his wife too much.
We left for the coast of Georgia on the twenty-first of June. Mama stood on the front porch of the main house, a dishtowel in one hand and three wrinkles carved into her forehead. When I came close, she pulled me close. The smell of Mama’s bosom, even at my age, brought me peace and comfort.
“You behave, girl.” She spoke in a whisper. As I tried to pull away, Mama pinched my arm. “Do it all Shelly. See the ocean for me. And, don’t you forget to bring me back my shells.”
A dread washed over me and my mind turned inside out like some child woke from a deep sleep by night monsters. There I stood, nearly a grown woman, with a big sloppy sob pressing against my ribs, cutting my breathe in half. I climbed of the car.
Mama stood on the porch, stiff, straight, but soft as the color blue. Folks on Black Mountain had a saying: Any soul who left the mountain never truly came home. Their spirit wandered the earth searching for more.
All them pine trees on the mountain just continued on down the road with us until the sight just put me right to sleep. When I woke, my face was stuck to the car seat. Drool ran from the side of my mouth. I swiped at it looking at Elizabeth, who read a book so thick she had to put her knee under it to hold it up. This exposed her thigh.
“It’s hotter than hell in Georgia.” She kept her stare on the book.
“Please Elizabeth, let’s stay decent.” Mrs. Dobbins looked over her shoulder at Elizabeth’s bare leg.
“God Mother!”
“I’ll not listen to that talk. Is that what college teaches you?”
“Really dear, it is hot and we’re all losing our tempers.” Pastor Dobbins spoke to his wife like some people speak to a worn out animal used way beyond its useful years.
The hot wind rushed in the windows and the scenery rushed past, brittle, brown, and flat.
After Atlanta with its tall buildings, cars, and busy streets, the road turned lonely and long. Me, I thought I would pop if I didn’t pee and wanted to hug Pastor Dobbins when he pulled into a service station. A neat lettered sign read: Whites Only. My bladder ached as I watched Elizabeth and Mrs. Dobbins leave. I spied a group of trees behind the store. I scooted into those woods without a soul noticing. I hiked up my skirt and pulled down my panties, dancing a little to hold back. Flies and mosquitoes buzzed around me, but I relaxed into relief.
“You! You!”
I cut that stream of pee off just like a water faucet and yanked my panties up.
“You! What are you doing there?”
I searched for a face that went with the voice. “I’m sorry. I had to go to the bathroom.”
A colored woman, leaning on a cane, hobbled out from behind a tree. Her clothes seemed old fashioned. “You know what them white folks in that store will do if they catch you out here? They’ll beat you dead.”
“I had to go. I couldn’t take it no more.”
“You get back to them folks you came with and be careful, girl. Things are never what they seem.” The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as the woman moved closer. I thought for a second I could see through her. “Just when you think you’re safe, something comes at you sideways. Remember my warning, child.” She turned and hobbled away.
“What are you doing out here, anyway?”
The old woman just shook her head and kept moving. “The child don’t even know what her own eyes tells her.” When I looked again, the woman was gone, just vanished into thin air.
I was sitting in the car when Mrs. Dobbins and Elizabeth came out of the store with cokes. It was a good thing they didn’t buy me one—even though I wanted one so bad I would’ve given my right arm for a taste—because it would have caused me trouble before we made it to the beach house.
The first thing I saw that was different was the clouds building in the sky, dark and light gray stacking one on top of another. On the mountain, clouds sat on us, foggy blankets. The air turned salty, fishy. The ground went from red clay to sand and long wispy hair-like plants hung from the twisted oak trees. I thought of the woman leaning on her cane, how people looked like trees and flowers sometimes. Mama looked like bluebells sprinkled through a garden. Elizabeth reminded me of a tall bright orange gladiola, bursting into bloom. Mrs. Dobbins wavered like a colorful tulip, beautiful one day, a stem the next. Mr. Dobbins twisted around people like a vine with beautiful green leaves, which hid sharp thorns. And me, I was a silly daffodil, smiling on a windy spring day. I took a deep breath, silly, silly, thoughts.
My home for the summer was a giant house sitting on four posts high off the ground, but close to the beach. I hung back while the others went inside. The beach stretched in both directions. Large twisted trees leaned in toward the house like tired soldiers. The water roared into the sand and pulled out, leaving foam behind.
“Shelly, get those suitcases and bring them in.” Mrs. Dobbins stood behind the screen door. “I just don’t think I can take this heat. You could cut the air with a knife.”
A breeze washed over my sweaty arms. The ocean was the reward for any heat. I grabbed a couple of suitcases and left.
The first I laid eyes on Ada Charles a cold chill walked across my head. She stood at the kitchen sink preparing crabs for steaming. Some misguided part of me thought she saw bad in me. The way she looked at me with her stone cold eyes.
“Ada, this is Shelly, who has been with us since she was born.”
Ada just stared, a big blue crab in her hand.
“She’s here to help you. Is there a room out back for her?”
Pastor Dobbins smiled, but Ada stared him down.
“No sir, there’s no servant quarters here. You’ll see we don’t have much use for such in these parts. She’ll have to stay in the house.” Ada said the words fast running them one into the other, but the challenge riding the current in her look was plain. Pastor Dobbins missed the whole scene by staring across the top of her head.
“Oh that just won’t do. It’s entirely inappropriate.” He looked around the kitchen as if it held a solution, like a box in the corner for a pet. “Shelly, you may have to return home with me.”
Ada lowered the blue crab into the steaming water. “I just love crab, don’t you?” A hissing cry came from the pot. She looked at me and went on speaking to Pastor Dobbins. “The girl can come home with me. I have a spare room. I live on Sapelo Island. I told you. We have to leave on time each afternoon to catch the ferry.” The dark muscular woman turned a cold look on the pastor.
“I don’t know. The ladies might need help in the night.”
Ada shrugged. “Suit yourself.” The words clipped the air like a pair of sharpened shears cutting through thick cloth.
Pastor Dobbins looked at me as if I were a ham hanging in the smokehouse. I cooked the man’s meals, washed his clothes, breathed the same air as him, and he just couldn’t bring himself to allow me to sleep in one of the many vacant rooms.
“I’ll stay with her. No reason for me to go home.”
“Hmph.” Ada looked less angry. “We’ll leave at four-thirty to catch the ferry.”
I nodded. “What can I do to help with supper?” It felt real good to make a decision for myself without waiting for Pastor Dobbins’ reply.
We left the food covered in the kitchen and took out at four-thirty. We didn’t have to walk far before we reached the ferry dock. Colored folks stood on the walk, waiting to load onto the boat. A rough looking man with a gray beard checked some ropes on deck. “I don’t know about you folks but I’m ready to go home for the day.”
The crowd pushed into the boat. Ada stopped in front of the captain. “This here is Shelly. She came with the preacher’s family. She’ll be staying with me for the summer. There ain’t no servants quarters at the Buck house.”
I took his outstretched callused hand. “Nice to meet you, sir.”
“Your mama taught you manners. That’s a good sign. Just be careful out at the Buck place. It’s got all sorts of haints. Ask Ada. She’s met them often.”
“John, don’t frightened the girl to start.” Ada laughed, which transformed her face into a carefree woman.
“I mean it. There’s spirits walking all through that house. Some not so good.”
I wanted to ask him what he meant, but he moved to the ship’s cabin. Ada turned to face the ocean. “He knows what I seen in you.”
“What?”
“You got the touch, the sight. I seen it when you walked in the backdoor. You stirred that house something bad.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
She shook her head. “You just refusing to see. That’s bad because one day you going to have to see them. You got three spirits following you. One you picked up on the way down here. She’s old with a cane. One’s a man, young maybe your father.” She stood looking at the sky. “The last is too hard to tell. It’s a woman. You don’t know her, but she’s waiting for you.” She pointed at the island as the boat bobbed through the waves. “Back in history there was more slaves on that island than owners. It’s ours. No one but us wants it now. And, we’re all leaving one by one. One day all that will be left is the spirits.”
I couldn’t utter a word. The ocean breeze cooled my sticky face.
“I got the sight too, girl. It’s a curse not a gift.” Now I knew ghosts were just some soul’s imagination, but Ada’s conviction almost convinced me.
Her home was clean and her food was good. Things went along as normal until one day a couple of weeks later. Pastor Dobbins had left, and Mrs. Dobbins took to laying on her bed every afternoon with a cold washrag on her forehead.
“Shelly, Shelly,” She’d whine. “Come up here and give me a fresh rag.”
“I’d like to take a cool rag and stuff it down the woman’s throat!” Ada fried chicken and I sliced peaches for a pie. She looked at me. “You best go get her one.”
As I walked up the staircase, a fancy looking colored woman stood on the top step. She wore a right smart black suit and carried a little box purse. She disappeared when I came closer. Now that shook me up enough to send me back to the kitchen.
“Shelly, Shelly!” Then I heard her footstep stomp across the hall to the bathroom.
Ada watched me. “What’d you see?”
I described the woman.
“That’s the third spirit following you. Just watch her. I don’t know what she’s up to.”
On the ferry ride, I found the nerve to speak. “I don’t believe in ghosts.”
Ada just laughed, “But, they believe in you child.”
That night Ada and I ate shrimp over an open fire in her yard. Her friends came with food too.
One of her neighbors brought his fiddle and played lonesome tunes. I ate my food, keeping to myself. A boy not much older than me came to sit on my log. He was the color of night, tall, with a soft face.
“You’re staying with Ada.” He watched Ada laughing and eating shrimp. “She’s one woman. She must like you a lot.”
I shrugged.
“She ain’t never let anyone stay with her. She’s a real loner.”
“I don’t think she likes me much.”
“Ah, she’s just like that. Don’t worry. She likes you.” He looked around. “You’re here with a white family?”
“Yes. I come from Black Mountain, North Carolina. I work for Pastor Dobbins and his family, always have.”
“I ain’t never heard of Black Mountain, but I ain’t never been anywhere but this island and right around it. To be something I have to leave this place. This island is going to die. All I can do is go to the mainland and work for white people or work on a shrimp boat for some white man. My life will be working for whites. I’ll never own a thing except some little chunk of marsh and that will never get me anywhere. I want to be a doctor ever since I was little.”
“That’s good.”
“What do you want?”
Now no one had ever taken the time to ask me this question. I had never asked myself this question. “I like stories. I wouldn’t mind writing stories. But most of all I want to own the main house.”
“Now there you go!” He held out his hand. “My name is Samuel, Samuel Morgan.”
I took his warm hand in mine. “I’m Shelly Parker.”
“Would you like to take a walk on the beach, Shelly?’
“Why not.”
The moon shown in the sky and the wind made it hard to hear. So we walked together. Samuel placed his hand in mine. We walked until Samuel stopped and picked up a shell from the sand.
“This is for you. The ocean is inside and you can hear it anytime.” He pulled me to him and gave me my first kiss. I wanted to stay there the rest of my life.
It was probably that puppy love feeling that dulled my senses and made me forget the ghost in the beach house the next day. Mrs. Dobbins and Elizabeth left for some shopping. Ada went to the seafood market. I cleaned the house.
Pastor Dobbins must have woke early that morning, maybe even during the night and decided to make a surprise trip. Maybe he just decided to outrun some evil after him. Anyhow he found me in Mrs. Dobbins’s room, where I was admiring some jewelry, thinking on Samuel. The ghost woman appeared in the mirror. Fear twisted her face into a scary mask. I stood still, waiting for the ghost to disappear. Pastor Dobbins’ face replaced the ghost. He looked ragged, worn, strained around the eyes. He smelled sour like whiskey.
“What are you doing with Mrs. Dobbins’s jewelry?”
“I’m putting it away.”
He moved close behind her. “You’ve no right to handle her things.”
A little voice inside me warned of danger, but it was too late. Pastor Dobbins touched my breasts. I was so shocked I just watched, frozen. He pushed close to me, pinning me against the dressing table. I struggled, but he grabbed and pushed me on the bed, wrapping my dress around my head. He touched me in places that just wasn’t right.
“I’m going to show you like I did you’re mama.” He pushed his hard thing into me splitting my soul into a million pieces. After that, I just saw light flashes in front of my eyes. I screamed and screamed until my voice grew horse, but he pumped up and down until the pain turned numb and I thought my spirit died. Then, I heard stomping on the steps.
“You son of a bitch!” The words split through the air almost inhuman.
He stopped pumping. I realized I had thrown up inside my dress. He pulled away and I pushed the dress away from my face. The ghost stood beside Ada, who held the fireplace poker up above her head. She hit Pastor Dobbins in the side of the head before he could move. She continued to hammer him long after he lay still in a growing puddle of blood. And, I was glad. God forgive me, but I was glad.
After what seemed like forever, I moved. “Ada, Ada!” I grabbed her arm.
She turned a face full of rage, distorted, to look at me.
“Enough. We got to do something. Mrs. Dobbins we’ll be back. We ain’t dying for the likes of him.” I saw the devil himself on the floor.
Ada’s eyes cleared, but she still gripped the poker. “The bastard got what was coming to him. He can’t just do what he wants and hide behind God.”
Ada was in a whole other time and place. I could see it in her face. “Ada, we have to get out of here. They kill people for less than this. You killed a preacher and ain’t nobody going to listen to your reasons.
Ada marched from the room still gripping the poker. The blood, Pastor Dobbins’s blood, seeped into the rug with the bright rose pattern. The roses began to run together. I followed Ada onto the front porch. “Ada, your apron is covered with blood.”
In one smooth action, she yanked it from around her, using her free hand and balled it around the end of the poker, wiping. “Fingerprints.” The stains on her dress didn’t look so bad.
I nodded.
“Get my basket from the seafood market.”
Ada dropped the poker and apron down an old abandoned well near an empty house on the way to the seafood market. She tied the apron around the poker, closed her eyes, and dropped it into oblivion. Seconds later we heard a small splash. At the seafood market, we strolled like gentry, making double sure many saw me and her together. Nobody cared that we looked all wrinkled and messy. I hopped Mrs. Dobbins and Elizabeth made it back before us.
An hour or so later, we started home with the crab. It had begun to smell, but neither of us spoke. We just walked our death march. I thought of Samuel and how I would never see him again. I was thinking about Pastor Dobbins and how he smelled of whiskey, how he spoke of Mama. I was thinking on how folks hide behind carefully created masks that work to their own selfish advantage. I thought on how Ada was just true to the core of her soul. But, she didn’t save me from Pastor Dobbins. He already got what he wanted in the most horrible way, but it gave me revenge. He never lived long enough to enjoy what he did to me. She ended his destruction. God understood that. He wouldn’t let her die.
The sheriff’s car sat out front right next to Pastor Dobbins’s car and the ambulance. Mrs. Dobbins’s wails filled the house and spilled into the yard. I broke into a run. It seemed natural as if someone else worked my actions. I ran into the house with Ada right behind.
“Hold on there! What you doing?” The sheriff threw up an arm, blocking the entrance to the living room where Mrs. Dobbins and Elizabeth sat. I seen Miss Elizabeth real clear, not a tear in her eye. She just looked at me as if she knew my soul. We shared more than we knew.
I looked the sheriff dead in the eye. “I’m checking on my missus. Is she hurt?” I cried.
“Me and Shelly’s been buying supper at the market. We got carried away looking around and stayed longer than we planned. What’s happened Mr. Paul?”
The sheriff relaxed. “Hi there Ada. The missus says thanks for the birthday cake. It was mighty tasty. Take this child on out of here. There’s a mess upstairs. There’s something about this house, Ada. It was ten years ago this summer when that fancy colored woman was killed in the same room by that white man, both of them from New York. Now that was a mess too, trying to explain to his family why he was staying with a colored in this house. He never did a bit of time. It seems our good Pastor got his though. His pants was down around his ankles. You just can’t tell about folks nowadays. We ain’t telling his wife that part. We’ll try to find the killer, but they didn’t leave nothing to go on just a bloody mess.”
Ada pushed me out of the house. I turned to look at the bedroom. In the window stood the woman, looking down at me, holding the lace curtain in her long fingers.
The last I saw Ada was that afternoon when she got on the ferry. I grabbed her hand. “I love you Ada. I’ll never forget you.”
“Now, you hush that mess. It’s best we forget each other and this day.”
“Tell Samuel to be a doctor.”
She nodded and her eyes latched onto mine. “Shelly, you are a good one. You raise that child you’re carrying. He can’t help how he came into this world.”
I just prayed she was wrong.
When I laid eyes on Black Mountain, I thanked God. Mama was standing on the porch of the main house as if she never moved the whole month. I was home. I handed her the seashell Samuel gave me and showed her how to hear the ocean. I was scared to look into the house. I was scared I’d see him all bloody, but he never showed himself and eventually I relaxed.
In late spring of the next year, Ada appeared to me. I was working Mama’s vegetable garden. I knew Ada was a spirit by the way she smiled, all the hardness gone. She reached out and touched my large stomach. “You take care of that boy, now. I’ll always be with you.”
I tried to put some store in her words as I turned that hard cold ground.
Copyright C. 2007 Ann Hite