Beyond Molasses Creek by Nicole Seitz Page A

at our houses to be sure no one had seen us go. They hadn’t. We were free.
    I watched the houses that dotted the river, the marsh grass that waved as we passed by. The smells were even better out here with the ocean air mixing with pluff mud, salty spray hitting my hand as it clutched the edge of the boat.
    Vesey looked straight ahead as he steered behind me at the motor. When I’d turn around to look at him, he’d stare off to the sides of me, out into the marsh, avoiding my gaze. We drove in silence until we came to the mouth of the waterway. Vesey cut the engine and pointed to a large cluster of oysters that covered an entire bank. It reminded me of a sea in wartime we’d studied in school, with mines dotting the water, waiting for some battleship to pass by and blow it to smithereens.
    â€œMy daddy find good oyster up in here.” He pointed and swept his hand out over this oyster kingdom of his. “All dat. I help him sometime. Got cut up pretty good . . .” He lifted his forearm out to show me a jagged scar near his elbow and then his legs, a network of tiny, dark, jagged scars. “But he say oyster gettin’ ain’ for no sissy. I reckon I ain’ no sissy.”
    I stared at his dark legs, taking in the rich color, and then off into the oyster beds. A flock of birds overhead prompted me to say what I’d been feeling all summer. “I’m real sorry ’bout your brother.”
    The sound of water lapping along the sides of the boat, and Vesey’s silence, sent shivers up my back.
    I watched his face. Something around his eyes changed, as if he was no longer looking at the oysters and marsh but had drifted to some other place entirely. He never looked at me, just down into the water. I detected a slight nod in his reflection, an acknowledgment of my condolence. It was the one and only time we ever mentioned Vesey’s brother dying. Soon after, we vowed to continue our secret trysts with a pinky promise and a spit on the dock. As Vesey put it, being with me was “better than bein’ all ’lone.” To me, it was more than that.
    Secretly, I looked forward to our boat rides with their quiet adventures and our conversations. And I hoped to save Vesey from the grief he had at home by getting out beyond Molasses Creek. I held the belief that in simply getting away, he could leave his troubles behind and start anew. Looking back, I recognize it for what it was. I saw leaving home as some sort of salvation for Vesey—or possibly for myself.
    Yes, definitely for myself.

FIFTEEN
Delivering the News
    Ally
    T HERE ARE SOME THINGS ONE CAN ONLY DO IN THE COM pany of others—telling bad news, for instance. Very bad news. News, as in, Ronnie, I want a divorce . Those words were delivered in 1995 at a Chinese restaurant in Atlanta just after the pu pu platter but right before the pineapple desert. There were throngs of people around us on a Friday night, sitting at red-cloth-covered tables, happily eating away, chopsticks clumsily hashing around. Even Ronnie wouldn’t want to make a scene there, but I made sure to remove his chopsticks first, lest he get any strange ideas. And we didn’t have a scene at all. It was very civilized, in fact— until we got back home and Ronnie had had time to digest his pu pu platter, and my news. I don’t hold it against him.
    There are other things one can only discuss while in a moving vehicle, with something else to look at and distract you from the meat of what is being served to you. My father used to speak to me while driving in the car. Staring straight ahead, not having to look in my eyes at all, he would deliver soliloquies on sticky subjects—the birds and the bees, the proper way to treat people who are different from us, and later, the reasons why a reputable Charleston doctor cannot continue gathering his daughter from the county jail after being collected from a naked love-in protest.
    So this