Meeting in The Mangroves

The return this season felt familiar. I shadowed my Lala in the kitchen in the morning fore-day the island and the rest of the family came to gather. The crows and coos of the cocks and doves filled the air before dawn. A beat, a breath, the birds, a cast iron pan on the stove heating up leftover supper filets—snappers from the mangroves—the figs from Lala’s tree, a loaf of bread just baked.

 

“The opportunity to tend to your roots, to tend with us. This is your first. You’ve reached that point, that space where your time is our time. Do you understand?” She paused and looked me over. I nodded. I was ready but maybe not in her way, their way. 

She poured a cup of hot water and dropped in three pieces of ginger. How she liked it. “You traveled all this way to pack lunch for the lot of us, Willa?” 

 

Lala said my name just like a breeze hitting leaves. It came as a question, but I sensed she already had the answer. Someone had to do it. Everyone served their purpose.

I looked up and into her wrinkles and took a breath. The thoughts swirled in my mind, churning like a storm gathering over the sea.

“I see you. I see the whole of it. This is my way. Senses say so.” I shivered with certainty belonging to more than myself. I waited for a response within reach of what was already known. Lala felt as much. 

 

The pan sizzled and the butter popped beneath the flaky flesh. Lala sent me to the stove to remove the fish and the figs from the fire. The heat seared through my hand. I quickly set the pan on the pine block. The rooster doodled outside the counter window, his feathers fluffed and mingling with easterly wind. Lala handed me the wicker basket.

 

Travel from the mainland to the island took a ferry in open water past bridges to two planted feet at the front door of the place I would call home for the summers. The voices of doubt mixed with those of reassurance and knowing. The stories I would hear Lala and her sisters tell on porches—sometimes hers, sometimes theirs—would come to life; piece themselves back together into a version of the tales I knew for myself. I stood in awe of the work. Whatever was would transpire, some believed. Lala inspired reverent interference; she believed what her sisters believed. There was a knowing. There was an understanding. Things could change. 

As they spent their days tending to one another in their ways, it felt natural enough to evolve at my own pace. The sisters gathered for prayers for their people. The sisters gathered with seeds to sow. The sisters gathered to mourn and celebrate. The sisters gathered to release and clear. Today was one of those days. 

 

I had been a witness. I had a prayer. I knew what it meant to hold up what was sacred. I had my sisters, too, they whom soul-spirit brought me to. We shared the throughlines. The memories, the stories, the will to resurrect. We all had pasts that connected us to these futures. 

 

Choice meant a type of evolution to take responsibility for, she’d say, Miracles will manifest with the support of the village.

 

I could always return. I could always come back. I could learn from the elders. I was here witnessing their work. Preparing them lunch. It was clear I had made my decision. This would be my beginning. 

 

The heated basil, acid, and oils came to rest in the pan as the heat subsided—the smell brought me back to the fish to wrap up. I nestled the filets, wrapped in parchment, in the wicker basket for the sisters to eat toward the end of the clearing. The sisters would sustain at the end of the ritual. Grape wine for celebration. 

 She handed me a candle and a deck of cards. The heat in the air mixed with the castor oil Lala had applied on my scalp last night. Any breeze was heaven-sent. I wiped back sweat from my forehead.

 

“Take those for now. We will be working the land. Working with the rock, the overgrown limbs ready for clearing, for letting go. It will not be long before you will have to make the same decision, even if coming from a different path.”

 

There was no need to explain what to do with the items handed to me. I had seen her work with them before.

 

The porch’s screen door slammed shut behind the two of us. The breeze picked up and rustled the palm leaves. I would follow her foot to foot to the docks. She would tell me the clearing kept inventory of what could be offered from mind to heart to root. All would be reckoned and set in motion. She carried her own machete. The seven of them did, at the hip, beneath skirts purple, white, and yellow.

 

She got in the boat, one joint after the other. Six of her sisters sat ready to go.

 

I watched them take off, reach the ocean, then the cay. I carried myself slowly toward the house. My feet stepped on a piece of coral small enough to fit in my pocket. I picked it up. I carried on.

I opened my mind’s eye to a time and place that meant porch and waiting. It was a Saturday like this one, many summers before, maybe some summers after. I would end up on the cay through her words. I could smell the salt sea in the wind and feel the work in Lala’s hands. The decades of stories sowed and sorrows released and cleared. It was where the words and the wind mingled and built a foundation for memories and wisdom to carry on.

I took the coral piece out of my pocket and set it down on the wooden table in my room, just off the kitchen. I pulled out a feather I had found, too. Then there were the palm leaves. I grabbed the candle and deck. I went back to the kitchen for a cup of water and some bread. I cast a circle only I could see with the rock on the wooden table. Feather to the north, water to the west, fronds to the east, and the rock at the circle’s south. Manna and the water cup set center. The rites had begun.

 

Smoke blankets filled the air and covered me as memory sent me back to the pier under the sky, full moon sitting high. The visions had caught up to me. Twilight settled above the horizon. The sisters had worked through the day into dusk.

 

My body went limp—relaxed in front of the altar. More and more I felt the vapors rising. My chest swelling then sinking with the movement sensed so far away. My heart raced: quickened then quivered. I felt the thickness of the air, the combusted materials swirling just above the engine melded with the dewy night. It was right before the rainy season, when the clouds chose which days to be fair. A day she told me everything came together. Healing could happen. So. The thick-rooted mangroves, soggy from rain, gave way to carved pathways. This is the work some were called to do. Circle of sisters met circle of stone to clear the way for the village. 

 

I said a prayer and lit the candle in honor of the journey completed—they made it to the cay as far as I could see. The smoke from flames signaling the work had just begun.