I touched the drawing of the little girl in the porch chair. “I wonder who she was —Christina, maybe?” Was this Isabelle’s daughter, who was born sickly and died so young?
Paul shook his head. “That’s not Christina. That’s the Mulberry Girl, the one who’s mentioned at the end of so many of the later letters. She doesn’t show up until the box from 1986 —the glass box. The only reason I remember that is because the box was different, being stained glass, and it was the only box out of order. For some reason, it was on the top shelf, at the very end of the line. That spot should have had the newest box, but it didn’t.”
“That’s strange.” I traced a fingertip along the outline of the girl, then thought about the box and how close I’d come to toppling it on my head when I’d tried to reach it with the short ladder and the broom handle.
“She came here to visit, and she had to stay outside on the porch because she had mulberry stains on her feet,” Paul offered. “I don’t remember the whole story, but I remember that part. To tell you the truth, by then I was skimming —just looking for stuff that would help us at the commissioners’ court.”
“Mulberry stains on her feet . . .” Something was happening in my mind. There was a reaching and straining, a grasping at threads. I closed my eyes, tried to pull them closer.
Paul’s voice came from outside the rush of thought. “Yeah, I guess nobody told her you can get rid of the stains if you take the berries that aren’t ripe yet, the —”
“The white berries and rub them on the stains.” I pressed my hands to my mouth, drew in a breath, heard the words again in my mind.
Honey, just take the white berries and rub them on the stains. There’s an old mulberry tree right out back. You can go on and pick some. It’s all right.
A hand patted mine.
I pulled away. . . .
The snatch of memory was gone as quickly as it came.
“Paul, where’s the box? The glass box?” I grabbed my head, feeling like it might explode. “The glass box, where is it?”
He drew back, frowning. “It’s safe. I packed it myself.” His eyes looked for mine, but I couldn’t focus. “Tandi . . . you all right?”
“The box, Paul. I need to see the glass box.” What was there? What was there in the shadows, just beyond what I could pull from memory? It wasn’t even a memory, really. Just a scrap. A few words . . . a voice . . . the touch of a hand.
“Okay. All right, hang on a minute.” Paul shifted the clipboard, flipped the page. “Container B7. It’s on the front porch already. I carried those down a while ago. I thought I’d take them in my pickup instead of putting them in the moving van. It seemed like the prayer boxes should get special treatment until we figure out what to do with them, you know?” His fingers cupped my elbow. “Tandi, what’s going on? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I have,” I whispered. “I think I have.” I spun around and ran for the door, with Paul calling after me.
My footsteps echoed through the house as I dashed past the nursery room, down the stairs, past the volunteers who were already bringing in dollies, talking about how to move the furniture, turning over tables so as to carefully remove the heavy bases. The noise, the activity seemed far away as I bolted onto the porch.
Startled, the cat sat up in the weathered rocker where he’d been sleeping. He arched and stretched, yawning and watching me curiously as I searched the containers on the porch, found the one with the right number, tugged the edge of the tape to pull it open.
“We’re supposed to be putting stuff in, not taking it out!” the UPS driver joked as he passed by, wearing his civilian clothes today.
I didn’t answer, just threw wads of newsprint out . . . until, nestled between four decorated shoe boxes, I found it, the tag from Sandy’s Seashell Shop still visible through the stained-glass lid. Was this the box Iola had brought for repair when the shop first opened —the one that had helped to inspire so many of Sandy’s creations?
I was lifting it out when Paul reached the porch. “See? The box is fine. I told you it was.”
I moved to the old swing beside the cat’s favorite chair, then opened the lid, checked one letter, then another, then another, until I found the one with the drawing of the Mulberry Girl.
There on the next page was her story.
. . . the little girl, Father. The one who sits outside while her grandfather works upstairs, inspecting the damage done by the tree that’s fallen into the second-floor balcony.
“She doesn’t seem very happy today,” I say to the man as he comes down with his notepad in hand. Outside, the cat is rubbing round the girl’s little mulberry-stained feet. “I tried to interest her in some of my beignets, but she would have none of it. I’ve packed a few in a napkin for her. Maybe they will cheer her on the drive home. There’s no need to fret over the mulberry stains. They come clean if you rub them with the white berries —the ones that aren’t yet ripe. I told her that.”
The grandfather sighs, gazing outward in a way that is troubled yet kind. “The stains aren’t the problem, I’m afraid,” he says. “Child’s seen too much of life for her age. Been dropped off again by her mama, no telling for how long. It’s always hardest the first few days. Children don’t understand. They’re sure they did somethin’ to deserve it. I never thought any daughter of mine would treat her babies like this.” He sighs again and looks down at his hands, the weathered hands of a workingman. “You a prayin’ woman, Mrs. Poole?”
“Why, yes. Yes, I am,” I say.
“I thought so.” He pauses as the church bells ring next door, the sound drifting across the field. “I’d appreciate it if you’d mention my granddaughters when you’re talking to the Almighty. It’s hard to know what to do when the parents won’t take care of them, but they won’t give them up, either.” He holds away his emotions and swallows hard, then pulls the ticket from his pad. “Didn’t mean to burden you. I’ll get the report in to the insurance company so your railin’ can be fixed. Until then, better stay off that balcony.”
“Certainly.” I fold the paper between my fingers, walk to the door with him. “It’s no burden,” I say, then give the beignets to him as he opens the door to leave. “I will keep your granddaughters in my prayers, especially this little one. Do let me know if things change for the better. It’s hard for a child to be away from home.”
“Yes, it is.” He wipes the moisture around his eye, and then he gathers the girl and is gone.
I never thought to ask her name, Father, but you know the little mulberry girl as you know each sparrow of the field.
You are the white berry that removes the stain.
Be with her, as you have been with me.
Your loving daughter,
Iola Anne
“That was me,” I whispered, looking from the letter to Paul. “I came here with my grandfather when I was six. I don’t even . . . remember it . . . except, someone’s hand, someone’s voice. Her voice. I didn’t go inside because I had stains on my feet from hiding in the mulberry orchard when my mama left us.” The memory was all around me now. Scraps of fear and comfort, loneliness and love, darkness and light. The quilt of who I had become.
Beside me, Paul frowned, cocked his head, and looked at the letter, an understanding slowly dawning as he studied the little girl in the sketch. “That was you?”
“It was.” Joy filled me, sweet, overwhelming, rushing like a tide. Iola and I were not strangers. She had kept me in her boxes all these years. In her prayer letters. “I was the Mulberry Girl.”
Paul’s hand slipped over mine, our fingers intertwining as we fell silent in the knowledge, in the secret. No words can encompass the miracles of God.
None can contain the magnificence of a wave kissing sand or the perfect spiral of a shell drying translucent in the sun or the fire of morning rising over endless water.
Or the beauty of a hummingbird as it hovers just an arm’s length away, mysteriously out of season on the day before Thanksgiving, its wings stroking air, rapid, invisible, powerful. Frozen in time for only an instant.
And then it flies away, growing smaller and smaller and smaller against the blue of an endless sky.
Until finally it disappears into heaven.
CHAPTER 1
This is the magic hour. This is the place the magic happens.
The thought fell soundlessly into place, like a photographer’s backdrop unfurling behind the subject of a portrait. Its shimmering folds caught my attention, bringing to mind a bit of advice from Wilda Culp, the person without whom I would’ve ended up somewhere completely different. Someplace tragic.
It’s strange how one person and a handful of stories can alter a life.
The trick, Jennabeth Gibson, is to turn your face to the magic hours as they come. I heard it again, her deep-raspy tidewater drawl playing the unexpected music of a bygone day. The saddest thing in life is to see the magic hours only as they float away.