Dead Eyes in Late Summer

MOMMA SORROW

“We must go see Momma Sorrow.” Delia took Adelyn by the wrist and headed toward a dirt path packed hard with at least a hundred years of travelers. The path took them near the bottom fields and a small, neat house painted light yellow with dark green shutters. A fence made of wrought iron surrounded the house and its little patch of grass on all sides.

All the while Adelyn’s senses of hearing and smell expanded, heightened. She missed not one iota of the route they took nor of the house when they came to it, and all the crops and animals in between. It all looked more, more intense, more magical, yet more real somehow, than the everyday and familiar.

“Now tell me, 'cause I know I’m supposed to remember her. Is she your neighbor?”

Adelyn said it to be polite and maybe somewhat teasing. She knew the Howard family property and farms had no neighbors living within it.

“Don’t be foolish. You know Momma and her little store out back where she processes her herbs.” Delia swung open the wrought-iron gate and they passed through.

Adelyn swore the gate swung shut of itself. Magic permeated the day and everything in it. She remembered Momma now: though a young girl at the time, Adelyn recalled her mother taking her to Momma for some potion to ease her menstrual cramps. Momma also fixed a tincture of something for her mother, which her mother called her ‘headache powder.’ Now a woman of twenty-eight, Adelyn knew the potion had eased her mother’s hot flashes, and whatever else it could do for her remained unthought-of and unsaid.

Delia’s knuckles beat a sharp tap-tap on the door, which looked freshly painted. Adelyn surveyed the front yard of just-cut grass and the tang of it brought back memories of boys and girls, Garnett and her, too, running in summer along the railroad tracks or climbing trees and being shouted at by scolding neighbors for doing so. Garnett and me as children, I’d forgotten. She heard some movement inside, light steps, and the door opened. A woman of medium brown skin greeted them. Adelyn reckoned her to be at least sixty or even more, though her skin looked lustrous and young. Momma Sorrow raised one brow high up surveying Adelyn because, of course, she already knew she, not Delia, came to see her, the one with a need to know.

Adelyn stood perfectly still as Momma lightly touched her shoulder to guide her into the cool and darkened room. A single small lamp lit the round table on which it sat and Momma conducted the two young women to the table. Delia finally interrupted the silence.

“Momma, this is Adelyn Jackson from over Tulip Junction.” In her haste to move things along, Delia had forgotten to add the Crawford name that stuck to Adelyn like so much honey stuck to her fingers and only hot water and soap washed it off.

“Crawford. My married name is Crawford.” Adelyn looked around the room and up close at some of the portraits lining the walls and fireplace, photos next to much older paintings. Even these looked like a camera had caught the solemn or the sad look in the eyes of the man or woman or child. All young people, most in their twenties and a few maybe mid-thirties. Adelyn knew right away they had lived well but had all died. They were white and black and some looked like Chinese, and a few Indians, mostly sleek, black-haired Seminole.

“That may be.” Momma said, reading Adelyn’s thoughts. She settled her cool fingers on Adelyn’s pulse. She smiled sweetly, a knowing in her eyes not easily ignored. Adelyn observed this woman surmised more about her than Adelyn supposed about herself. “You have been visited and love came of it.”

Adelyn blushed. “How could you know?” To her own surprise, she began to cry. “I wish it to be more than a dream.”

“Now, chère, don’t be wasting wishes on what you already have.” Momma Sorrow gently rubbed Adelyn’s back, which had gone, all stiff and rigid from nerves. “Sit down now and let me do the telling, not all, mind you, just what you need to know.” Momma fussed with a pitcher of sweetened tea and poured three glasses onto ice. The cubes floated up against the sides of the glass.

Adelyn sensed everything in this house carried with it a message of a soothing nature. Smells of fresh bread just baked, cooling in the kitchen, mingled with lavender on pillowcases in, she guessed, an upstairs bedroom. Then she smelled something different but not unknown.

“That is his favorite scent, French cologne, blended with your powder.” Momma Sorrow referred to the light lilac-scented dusting powder Adelyn had used after the hasty bath she took after Innis made love to her on the hammock.

“No, he is not here.” She answered Adelyn’s question before it had fully formed in her own mind. “For now.”

“Let’s begin.” Momma Sorrow sipped her sweet tea with the two young women. She held them with her eyes, and then closed them; her lips began to murmur a soft prayer. “We first acknowledge Him who stands over all, and ask for guidance.”

A fan softly whirring in front of a block of ice cooled the otherwise quiet room.

“We ask for one to come forward, or if not in a presence, that he come in spirit and fill me with his thoughts. You have shown yourself to this loved one. Once more, tell us what you want. Tell us how we can help you.”

A deeper quiet descended on them. Adelyn could see the white flouncy curtains rustle with the fanning breeze, and then a shadow came across her vision, passing the window, now inside the house and the room. Try as she might, Momma’s sultry voice no longer relaxed her. Adelyn felt almost a dread. Something white approached and floated in front of her, not physically, it floated mentally. She could never explain to herself or anyone. Only when she recognized Innis again did her fear leave her.

“Tell us.” Momma incanted again.

Words flew into Adelyn’s mind, words like images, and they conjured strong emotions. She felt deep sadness, and then she laughed—then smiled. She felt a flirtation; she saw a silly dance in a circle—heard voices in song. In the middle of it she sensed Innis, from as far back as she could remember him. It all went on for so long, like a lifetime, surprising her when she saw Momma and Delia looking intently at her.

Delia took her hand and gently squeezed it.

“Are you all right, Sugar? You had us worried, or maybe just me; Momma’s used to having people here with spells on them. Isn’t that so, Momma?”

“I went there, went back.” Adelyn sipped some of her tea, the ice still solid in the glass. All this happened in a moment. “I thought it all took hours. We went back in time. Innis tugging my curls, teasing me at Christmastime when I was sixteen, then whispering to me, what he always did from that time till now.”

Delia fanned herself with her open hand. “What did he whisper, can you remember?” Adelyn went back into the images for a second, to prolong the memories.

“He whispered to me, ‘I love you, Adelyn. I’m coming back so you’ll be mine.’” Adelyn saw Momma’s face lighten. Please tell me what all this means to you. Can you? Adelyn thought but could not speak.

Momma drew into herself; her face conveyed a bit of the sorrow that gave her her name.

“You can know some things now, others later, when you’re ready. Innis Crawford’s soul drifts in time. He lives still but in a sideways world, one next to this, not Heaven or Hell. He has unfinished business here. So do you, so do we all, as long as we live.” She exhaled slowly and continued. “You have pledged yourself to another, a brother, and there has been some trouble. Innis knows this. It gives him strength to come back and finish, and this part will not be forgotten. He wants to come all the way back.”

Adelyn could sense she had more to tell her but decorum dictated that she would share more for her ears only.

Everything got quiet as the séance ended. Momma Sorrow got up from the table to replenish their tea. She reached for a mortar bowl and pestle.

Momma’s strength of presence fascinated Adelyn. She fills the room with herself. Momma looked up at her as she listened to Adelyn’s mind. Adelyn wanted to but could not ask much outright; instead she subtly hinted at her history. “Momma Sorrow, I hear a French lilt in your accent. Très jolie.”

Momma stopped in her gathering herbs for a sleeping potion to help Adelyn rest better. Leaning onto the pestle, she crushed the herbs, saying “Ma chère, I have forgotten my native tongue of pure French. Comes from living in the Quarter all those years.” She rolled up the herbs into a tight square packet and continued, “I learned my English from the servants at my uncle’s home as much as from my cousins.”

She handed the packet to Adelyn. “Now you take one pinch in a cool glass of water, but let it dissolve first. Do this just before you set your head against your pillow or you will find yourself on the floor.”

Adelyn’s expression of shock and perhaps some dismay at the potency of the herb caused Momma to rush on to explain. “No need to worry. You will sleep deeply, some say they dream, others complain they do not dream at all, but those that complain have no poetry in their souls and wouldn’t know a dream if it snuck up on them in daylight.”

Knowing their curiosity, Momma continued to share some of her life.

“My mother taught me medicine passed from her family. She was better at healing than those doctors nosing around with dishes to open veins and bleed people. That procedure only benefits those with thick blood pressure the doctors call hypertension. Then it can save a life. Otherwise, those savages imagine healing begins by opening a vein on someone with a fever. Already weak.” She shook her head, and Adelyn admired the perfect shape of it, easily seen as Momma wore her hair cropped in soft curls. Her high cheek bones drew the eye to her finely sculpted bone structure, her beauty undiminished by age.

The two young women listened intently as Momma brought another time and place to life before their eyes.

Later, Delia would say, “She brought her stories to life, almost like watching them on the movie screen down in Savannah.”

No one knew for sure Momma Sorrow’s age, or how she got her name, except the Howards. Most in Savannah and the Junction preferred wild conjectures about her. Delia’s family knew the most about the mysteries surrounding her. Adelyn’s friendship with Delia, then, gave her the chance to reach out to Innis through Momma.

Delia told Adelyn that her father, Jacob Montroy Howard, knew Momma as Monique Du Pré from his connection with her family in New Orleans. The two young women walked back to Delia’s house ruminating over their visit with Momma.

“She spoke about her family in Paris.” Adelyn noticed Delia’s eyes always widened when she had something important to relate.

“Paris?” It was Adelyn’s turn to be surprised. “Who would have thought? Yet I heard her speak perfect French, not Cajun brand.”

“Her daddy was white, her mother either Creole or from Spanish Moors.” Delia had a patina of moist excitement all about her freckled arms and wrists, which she patted to no avail as she continued her story.

“Momma once said she moved with her mother to New Orleans, to live with her father’s cousins after her father died. The cousins owned a sugar plantation.” Delia stopped to pick up a thin branch and switched it back and forth as they walked.

Adelyn’s thoughts strayed again back to Innis, still fresh in her mind; her heart swelled, she loved him. The fires between her and Innis had barely cooled when she took up with Garnett; mixing the two brothers in her mind caused her considerable consternation.

“Penny for those thoughts, Addie.” Delia probed her friend’s heart.

“Just thinking, Garnett kept me fascinated for such a time that I almost clean forgot my first….” She stopped short of saying it.

“Everyone knows you loved Innis first. That doesn’t take away from your feelings for Garnett.”

Delia’s approval and sage remark comforted Adelyn. She agreed with her friend’s sense of her. The last I saw him, Garnett left for New York, barely said good-bye. I’ll see him Friday and make it right again.

Adelyn’s thoughts stalled after meeting Momma. “Thank you for bringing me to her.”

“Don’t thank me, Addie; I wouldn’t have missed hearing what she had to say. She knew Innis. I hoped for her to call Innis all the way back.” Delia said. “Course, you brought him back yourself.”

Adelyn pushed Delia’s comment away as they neared the front porch. “How did she happen up this way?”

“Her mother died when she was eighteen and Momma told how she couldn’t abide her boy cousins sniffing around. No one protected her. She met my daddy when he did some business with her uncle Étienne. Daddy heard she could nurse the sick. Thank goodness, too, just think on when the influenza began killing all those young people. She couldn’t stop it once it landed on someone, but she kept a lot more people away from the sick ones. You wouldn’t remember, but your mother got some of Momma Sorrow’s potion when you got so sick.” 

At the mention of it, a memory of heaviness flooded into Adelyn of barely breathing, and a coffin, her arms pinned to her sides. A chill ran through her and she turned to ask Delia more, but Delia’s father stood on the porch as they approached.

Mr. Howard had been a handsome young man; Adelyn could easily see that; his dark hair framed a face that had to be part Indian, his brown eyes flashing a great energy. Delia reached up to peck him a kiss on his cheek.

“Been out seeing Momma Sorrow,” she told him now. Mr. Howard blew cigar smoke out and the wind caught it in such a way to prevent it from falling around the two young women.

“She sure has the healing art,” he said as he puffed again, “but there’s some of the magic in her, too.” Neither young woman refuted nor added to his remark.

Mr. Howard continued, “She always has a special way of knowing, turning up at a cottage where a sick child might be coughing from God knows what. And after Momma’s brand of nursing, the child’s eyes would be back down from burning fever.”

He looked closely at her. “Adelyn, you be sure to come over here for a proper visit when Garnett gets home for good. And bring those boys with you. I’ll hardly know either of them walking down the square in Tulip Junction.” Mr. Howard and Delia hugged her good-bye.

Adelyn turned out onto the two-lane road, past the live oaks and stately elms all dressed up in their Spanish moss wraps, as the sun peeked through them, leaving long shadows across her car’s hood this late in the day. Innis didn’t grace her with his lovely smile, and so her thoughts moved to Garnett as she turned her fickle heart toward her husband. She had laid out her plan a week ago. She would be standing there on that dusty platform when he stepped off the train that brought him back home from the north. She packed her little bag and tucked it behind the mess in the trunk of the car so no one would find it.

Adelyn saddened, trying to make sense of her marriage. In Garnett’s presence, the sun shone down extra hard on their love. No one could make her feel as special as he did. Her life, gone stale, she blamed it on that. And Paris, no, don’t forget Paris. 

A julep or two and she would be blaming him in a hot rage of recriminations for sins she half imagined. Well, she told herself, right now and sober, she had Innis back. She stopped the car at that sudden thought, held her face in her hands, and cried.

“Let me make a list of all the reasons he’s not here.” She started the car and wiped her eyes, and revisited Momma Sorrow’s words about Innis and Adelyn.

“You and Innis share something special. You possess an old soul and so does he.”

“But what does that mean?” Adelyn asked the mysterious woman.

“You have been here before, chère. Some appear here newly born, never been on the earth before. They shine hard and bright on the world. They can become repeat visitors. But you and your Innis have lived here many times, and the heat coming from you all, well, most likely you both lived here together before, too.”

Was Momma talking about reincarnation? Adelyn and Delia both read and shared books on the subject, scary yet enticing all at the same time. But Innis said that he wasn’t a vampire, meaning undead. He said ‘yet,’ like something could come. She shook her head free of all the thoughts swirling like a giant tornado gathering greater and greater power and momentum. She whispered the vampire part to Momma because she didn’t want to worry Delia further. Momma assured her she needn’t trouble herself on that account. And she believed her.

“Mama, Trey says I have big ugly freckles.” Tyler’s expression was pouty and contrived when Adelyn took his chin in her hand, and he began to laugh.

“You know perfectly well you don’t give a fig about your brother’s taunts.”

Trey held up one of his mother’s dresses, something very white, linen also, with green leaves. Adelyn took the dress and appraised its line, the gored skirt, the whisper-thin cotton fabric.

“Why, thank you, darling, this will be the one.” Trey always knows ahead of me, sometimes, what I want most. She winked at Trey who smiled and came to hug her as well. “Now, you both move back or you’ll crush your old Mama to pieces.”