Isle of Palms Read Online Free PDF Page A

he in there? Oh! My God! What about Momma? Where was she? Where were they? Where were they?
    Out of nowhere my daddy appeared by my side and lifted me up. He was breathing so hard I started getting hysterical. I couldn’t understand what was happening but I knew it was a catastrophe.
    “Momma is . . . Momma’s had a terrible heart attack,” he said. “I’m so sorry, Anna.” Did that mean she was dead? He shook and gulped while he held on to me. Then he coughed, pulled out his handkerchief and blew his nose, hard. “Oh! Dear God! Why? How could I let this happen?”
    I couldn’t talk; I could scarcely breathe. Did he have something to do with it? I could only watch. Momma was dead? It just didn’t seem possible to me. The rescue workers had disappeared inside the house. Shortly, they came back out with a body on a stretcher. It was Momma. She was covered in a sheet. The ambulance attendants zipped a bag around her. A few minutes later, the police reappeared with a man. His shirt was unbuttoned. From where I stood he seemed to be in handcuffs. Was he? I started screaming. What did he do to my momma?
    “Hush!”
    The hush came from our neighbor, Miss Mavis, who broke through the crowd and grabbed me by the arm. It seemed she wanted to take me to her house on the next block.
    “This child doesn’t need to see all of this, Douglas! Have you lost your mind? Someone should have brought her to me right away. Come on, baby!”
    She started to lead me away with Daddy bringing up the rear. My mother had not spoken to Miss Mavis for a long time. They’d had an argument about something so I thought it was a little peculiar for her to jump into the middle of this. Momma said she had a tongue as long as a telephone wire and that she was going to hell for gossiping. But since Daddy was coming along with me and Miss Mavis, I went without arguing. It was no time to resist adult decisions.
    Miss Mavis had a house worthy of a full-scale investigation, but I would not have wanted to live there. I think because she had multitudinous cats, she thought it was necessary to stick one of those deodorant frogs or shells on every table and potpourri in bowls all over the place. It smelled seriously sickening to me. On the occasions I would stop by for a cookie with some kids from the neighborhood, we would always hold our noses. The minute we got out of there we hollered Phew! and laughed about it, making gagging noises for the rest of the afternoon.
    Her house was divided in two, upstairs and downstairs. She lived on top and could see the ocean, and Miss Angel, who worked for her, lived downstairs. Miss Angel was much more interesting than Miss Mavis. She could trace her ancestors back to slavery. She was also a master basket weaver. She had so many stories, her stories had stories.
    We would always see Miss Angel sitting in the backyard, weaving sweetgrass, sewing it around and around with a strip of palmetto, or on other days shucking corn or stringing beans. If we were too tired or hot to run around anymore, we would wander into her shadow, asking her what she was doing.
    “Ain’ you chillrun have nothing better to do than come around ’eah bothering Angel?”
    She would stare us up and down, one by one.
    “No, ma’am,” we would say.
    “Well, then I expect y’all want something to drink?”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    She would sigh, put down whatever she was doing, and, like ducks, we would follow her into her kitchen. Then the storytelling would start.
    “When I was a girl, we had to pump our water . . .”
    When she got warmed up she would go on and on.
    “Tha’s right! My daddy, he say to me, ‘Angel?—be my angel and go fill this ’eah bucket like a good girl. Lawd! That girl is strong like two bull ox!’ Tha’s fuh true, ’eah? You chillrun don’t know what hard times is! I hope y’all helps your momma when she call. Do you?”
    “Oh! Yes, ma’am!” we would all say, lying through our teeth.
    “All right, then.