Beyond Molasses Creek by Nicole Seitz

could still remember when it first had happened and I couldn’t get the images to leave me—the boats, the men, the way her mouth opened but nothing came out. It was all fresh paint in my mind washing over and over again.
    Vesey’s little brother, Rufus, was the one who died. The same child who’d been sick in his mother’s arms when we’d gone to their house the summer before. But he hadn’t died from the sickness. He drowned in that river, the beautiful one that melted beneath my feet as I dangled them into the water, the one that glistened where fish jumped and birds dove down, beaks open to scoop up supper, the one that meant life to me. For Vesey’s family, Molasses Creek now meant death too.
    The child had not been able to swim; it was as simple as that. It was nobody’s fault. He’d simply gotten up early one morning before anyone was awake. They found him on the bank in some cattails with a fishing rod, Vesey’s fishing rod, near him.
    I’d sit on our dock against my mother’s admonitions and watch as the police brought their boats in and searched for evidence, of which there was none. I watched Vesey on the other side, sitting on the bank, arms covering his head between his knees as he rocked and rocked the pain away.
    I cried for Vesey. For some reason, the wails I heard from his mother didn’t shake my bones nearly as much as seeing Vesey, head down, rocking.
    Later, when things had quieted a little and sadness and helplessness had calmed the cries from the other side, I saw him there, getting into his father’s johnboat. And he saw me too, Vesey did. We’d not spoken yet, not even waved to one another that summer. But it was time.
    Vesey looked directly into my eyes. He didn’t smile. He’d gotten older, taller, his face more defined. Something around his lips had changed, perhaps from not smiling anymore. I itched to make him smile again and almost felt it as a great divine purpose. I would make him smile again.
    â€œWhere you goin’?” I hollered over.
    He made a quick motion with his hand toward the main waterway. “Out there,” he said.
    â€œCan I come?”
    It was brazen, and I knew the second it came out of my lips that my mother and father would not approve, finding some vague excuse why I should not go out fishing with this boy. I could almost see the look on Vesey’s mother’s face if she were to know a white girl was in the same boat as her son. I knew the dangers. I said it again a different way. “Want me to come with you?”
    I’d put the ball in his court.
    â€œMy folks won’t like it,” he said truthfully.
    I was only nine, mind you, but becoming bolder by the moment. “But do you want me to come, was my question. I won’t be any trouble. I’d like to see the waterway.”
    Vesey didn’t look like he had any fight left in him when it came to me and my questions, so without a word, he brought the boat closer, humming alongside my dock. He looked over his shoulder and up to my house. “Yo’ folks gone be mad?” It was more of a statement. We both knew the answer.
    â€œMaybe,” I said. A look passed between us as I reached my hand out for him to help me into the boat. We were crossing a line that day, all sorts of lines. I’m not sure we understood the depth of it at nine years old, but strangely, it felt good and right to cross those lines. Defiance seemed a natural progression for me, for a good girl with no siblings, living home alone with her parents, always working hard to do whatever they said. I can’t speak for Vesey, but I imagine he was ready to defy all the natural laws that existed as well. His brother had died and in anybody’s natural world, it wasn’t fair, and what could make sense after that?
    The wind was in my face as we wound around the creek bends, careful not to make a wake and disturb nature. We looked back