Plantation (40 page)

All my life, her Ife gods and goddesses had been absolutely enthralling to me, but I accepted them as
her
religion. I had no need of rituals in my life. I tried to find God in other people and in myself. I wasn’t descended from African roots. I was as white as I could be. How could I perform the rituals? I’d feel like a jerk. A phony. And, looking at her, I knew she knew I felt that way. It was the hurdle we had to jump.

“Caroline? I can see what you’re thinking.”

“I hate that,” I said.

Millie chuckled and continued. “Listen, I’ve lived a good P l a n t a t i o n

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many years more than you and maybe it’s because of this place that I’ve been able to come to understand certain things, to know certain things.”

“Yeah, this part of the world has that way of teaching you things.”

“Well, one of the most important things I have learned in my life is this: People get sick when they fail to recognize things. People, all of us, are a part of a great and all-powerful God. When men and women are prideful or mean, hateful or self-centered or greedy, they get sick. Can you see that all those mistakes are about being self-absorbed?”

“Yeah, self-love is all those things, but I’m not so sure they make you sick.”

“All right. For the sake of this argument, let’s assume that it is.

Just for a few minutes, okay?”

I must’ve looked reasonably agreeable to that, because she went on. I pushed my chair back and leaned against the wall to listen.

“Look, if there’s a God, then you have to ask yourself why are we on this earth in the first place, right?”

“Good question!” I wagged my finger at her.

“Well, yanh’s the million-dollar answer. Your soul is a part of God, right? The God in you, right?”

“Yeah, I’ll buy that.”

“And your intuition tells you that there’s more to life than just this life, right?”

“Yes. Definitely. Take one look at the night sky when the lights are off. Makes you feel like a peanut.”

“Exactly. Our soul, or the God in us,
knows
what we need. So He
puts
us where we land on the earth to get the experiences and knowledge we need to work toward being part of Him in paradise.

Isn’t that communion? Being one with God?”

“Well, I think I have always believed that everything happens for a reason anyway.”

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D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k

“That’s just what I’m saying. Trouble comes when we separate ourselves from what the good Lord wants us to do. The Lord guides us by that little voice in us we call our conscience.”

“Okay, for the sake of this argument, I’ll buy that.”

“Fine! You ain’t supposed to jump headlong into something like this. You have to arrive to the conclusion in your own way.

Think of it this way: God’s got His plan for us. We go off all willy-nilly, half-cocked, loving only ourselves. Time pass and something’s gonna come along to make you unhappy you did that, right?”

“It sure
seems
like the universe throws me a roadblock when I get too cocky.”

“Or a cold in your head, yanh? When you get sick, you have to rest. When you rest, you have to think. When you are forced to think about what you’ve been doing, you realize you been working against what God wants for you. See what I mean? Going off the path eventually brings unhappiness.”

“So what are you saying exactly? I mean, I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said, really I don’t.”

“What I’m saying, Caroline, is that this life was given us to serve God, not ourselves. By serving others through compassion, with love, with forethought—that by listening to our conscience we serve our souls, and God. In a nutshell, life is about service.

That’s all there is for us to do.”

“Would learning your work help me help Eric?”

“Of course it would.” Millie reached across the table and covered my hand with hers. “Of course it would,” she said again.

“And children of other mothers, and people who worry, folks who mourn, old people who are scared—on and on the list goes! That list is as long as my hair! Mostly what I do is help people heal themselves.”

“Jesus! An herbal shrink! Wait till Richard yanh about this!

Don’t you have something in your war chest to do something with Frances Mae?”

“That’s the one problem. People got to
want
to improve!”

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“And she’s the happiest sicko I’ve ever known.” I took another drink of tea and it occurred to me that I couldn’t taste anything different about it. The drops hadn’t changed the taste. “Millie? Did you make the drops in the tea?”

“Heavens to Betsy, no. I ain’t got time for that fool! They ain’t nothing but the Bach Flower Remedies!”

“The who?”

Millie rolled her eyes up to heaven and shook her head. “Ain’t you never been in a health food store?”

“Sure! I’m in them all the time!” I must really look like an idiot, I thought.

“Well, they got these little racks, like spice racks. In them are thirty-eight little bottles of essences of flowers, most of them from flowers.”

“What do they do? I mean, some flowers are poison, aren’t they?”

“Oh, Lord, girl? All right. We can start with the Bach Remedies. There’s so much to tell you!” Millie got up and pulled back the curtain again, revealing all the little bottles lined up. “Each one has a different purpose. When somebody’s sick, you got to look to the mind first. You have to decide what their mental state is. That’s what you treat. These work on people’s emotions and spirits.”

“Aren’t there more than thirty-eight different states of mind?”

“Ahhhhhh! Ah, yes! That’s my girl!” She came to me and patted me on the shoulder. “That’s ab-so-lute-ly correct! So, you have to learn to
combine
them!”

“Okay.” I was feeling slightly more pleased with myself, but I still couldn’t see people lined up at my door for a cure. I got up to look at them. “How do they make these?”

“Simple. Take the flower; put it in a clean bowl of water in the sun. The water begins to take on the essence of the flower; evapo-ration condenses the essence. You put the liquid in a bottle with a drop of brandy to preserve it. Then you use a dropper and put it in a liquid and drink it. Works like a miracle.”

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D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k

“Humph,” I said.

“Now you sound like me!”

Several hours passed as Millie explained the various benefits of each essence and I took notes.

“You can order them on the Internet if you don’t feel like gone to the store,” she said, and gave me the Web site.

She opened each bottle for me to smell, handling each one like a religious artifact. Some were sweet, some were vaguely medicinal; I suspected that if Millie owned them, all were potent.

All along the way, she told me stories of various cures. One woman had anxiety for no good reason. Three drops of aspen essence in her orange juice, three drops in her afternoon tea, and three drops in water before bed washed away her fear.

“Millie?”

She was putting away all the bottles, and making note of those that needed to be replaced.

“Need some water violet,” she said. “What?”

“Remember when Daddy died?”

She stopped and turned to me. Her face was solemn. “How could I forget?”

“Remember how Mother changed overnight—how she was so mean to Trip and me? How she ignored us? How she was so critical of everything?”

“She couldn’t help it, Caroline, you know that.”

“Then remember when Trip and I went away to school, remember how she went wild?”

“That was my fault.” A grin covered her face. “Oh, God! I was giving her enough Saint-John’s-wort to drive ten women wild!”

“Oh, God! Millie! Even I know that acts like Prozac! And you knew it in nineteen seventy-four? That’s amazing! No wonder!”

“Shoot, I knew it in the fifties! But, yeah, it was terrible. I didn’t figure it out until I caught her in bed with the UPS man!

Don’t you say I told you that either, or I’ll call you a liar!”

“The UPS man! Millie! God in heaven!”

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“Yeah, God! They were just going to town! She was happy as a lark, but I cut back her dosage after that.”

“Well, it’s a good thing you did! I can’t believe you overdosed Mother!” My face was scarlet. Jesus!

“Listen, she had fun and I ain’t perfect.”

“You crazy old woman! I gotta go—Mother’s gonna think I ran away again.”

“I’ll be along directly,” Millie said.

I walked home along the banks of the river, watching the afternoon sun sparkle and dance on its surface. Lost in thought, I wandered down to the dock and leaned over the railing. The water moved with such resolute purpose. It knew exactly what its mission was—swift and sure, never looking over its shoulder.

I toyed with and then decided that perhaps I would trail Millie’s footsteps for a while and see where they led. It would be almost impossible to work as a decorator out in the country, where people prided themselves on the age of their chintz and the baggi-ness of their faded upholstery. No. My decorating days were over, unless I moved to Charleston. So far, aside from the one conversation with Miss Nancy, I’d not thought about being anywhere but Tall Pines. I was willingly in her grip, as comfortable as a swaddled baby in her cradle. I had a halfhearted thought that we’d homeschool Eric and move for the fall. Summer at Tall Pines was the best time of year anyway. No reason to go right away.

If I wasn’t running down to Charleston to establish my independence, I knew I needed something to occupy my time once we were settled. I didn’t need money, beyond what Richard had promised to provide. For the first time in my life I had no expenses! This could be very interesting, I thought.

All my life I had compared Millie to the witches in
Macbeth.

Double, double, toil and trouble . . .
it wasn’t true. She was basically a homeopath. Okay, not just a homeopath, but so far there wasn’t anything really bizarre about what she had told me. It wasn’t like I had to drink rat blood or something. And who knew? Over time, I 3 2 4

D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k might be able to settle into her faith. I didn’t know enough about it to make a judgment yet.

Homeopathy. Better for Eric than Ritalin if I could make it work. Much better. Besides helping Eric focus and concentrate, maybe I could straighten out a few family members. God knows, they needed it. Then I chided myself for the critical thought.

Hadn’t I, minutes before, bristled from the memory of Mother’s criticism? How much of her
was
in me? How many of the traits I loathed in her could I finger in my
own
behavior?

And what Millie said about life being all about service to others. That was heavy. Very heavy indeed. It would freak her right out of her mind to feel the blast of the prevailing winds of self-centered frenzy that blew down the canyons of New York City—

the ruthless deals on Wall Street, the cutthroat competition on Madison Avenue, the Seventh Avenue circle of deceit. And the monstrous law firms that defended them against each other—a virtual war between billable hours and integrity. All of it about money, status, and power. Not exactly Woodstock.

No, I had found plenty to mull over. Away from the glare and tumult of New York, the veils of denial lifted. In my heart, I knew Manhattan was no place for a boy like Eric. Sure, the museums were great, but I could take him there a couple of times a year.

Charleston did have an airport, after all.

Here I could concentrate on him, make him well rounded, and teach him to do all the things unique to Lowcountry living. Even Mother and Trip had demonstrated their desire to let Eric know he belonged. Taking him fishing, showering him with breathtaking generosity.

And Richard? I would always love him in spite of everything.

I wished things were different but it wasn’t in my power to change them. He had given me Eric. I could never hate him. I just didn’t want to be his wife and live his life of hedonism. Wasn’t I entitled to pursue happiness?

Just what would make me happy? I wondered.

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I had existed in my marriage like a gerbil on a wheel—every day the same repetition of activities; this didn’t serve anyone well, including myself. Or Eric. All that running, running. Where? I had a lot to think about. I had not taken enough care in the way I’d allowed my life to unfold. Maybe that was the problem—that I’d been standing by on the sidelines of my own life too long: not really living, belonging nowhere and to no one. Hiding behind Eric. Trying not to be my mother.

The sky was turning red and I was feeling blue.
Jesus, Caroline,
you sound like bad country music,
I said to myself.
What would your
father say?
I stood at the rail a few minutes longer watching the sun slip behind the trees on the bank opposite me. I’d never felt so alone and began to examine my conscience to understand why.

What kind of a daughter
had
I been to Mother? Passable. Sister to Trip? Fair. Never mind what kind of aunt to my nieces or what level of sister-in-law to the whore from hell. Not so hot. No, I’d been hiding behind motherhood all snug and cozy seven hundred miles away. I’d drop in from time to time and judge them. Surely I could do better than the vapid and shapeless life I’d left behind.

Millie was right. If I embraced my duty to my family and to myself, maybe I’d find happiness and purpose. Food for thought.

Correction. Buffet for thought.

Thirty-two

Square One

}

Tuesday

T one o’clock sharp the next day the doorbell rang. It was the math and science tutor, Ruth APerretti.

“Hi! Come on in!” I said, holding the door open for her.

“You must be Mrs. Levine?” she said and extended her hand.

“Yes, call me Caroline, please.”

We shook hands and on the way into the living room, I got a good look at her. She was gorgeous, and I don’t mean maybe. She must have stood five ten, if an inch. Her red hair was swept up with a clamp. She wore khakis, a blue shirt, and a white sweater tied around her shoulders. Thirty? Maybe.