Chapter 1
The
Garden of Eden
Thunder
rattled the window- panes two stories high and lightning split the sky; it was
as if the whole world was in turmoil that night. My nerves were keyed up as
tight as piano strings, and in a sudden moment of stillness and silence it felt
as though my heartbeat was amplified ten times over. He was over a hundred
pounds greater than I, nearly a foot taller, and I knew he could move his
muscled body into unbelievable sprints.
Rain started falling in torrents, while the storm raged outside. I was
not afraid of the storms of nature; it was the storm inside this night that I
knew I might not survive.
Anticipation was so great that I wanted to
scream at him to get it over with, and true to my expectation he lunged for me,
and my body did not disappoint me, I flew down the stairs two at a time in my
bare-feet. He stalled for mere seconds to enjoy his pronouncement of a death
sentence upon me:
“I AM GOING TO KILL YOU—YOU GOOD FOR
NOTHING BITCH—STONE DEAD!!!!!!!” He
screamed.
That was the night that I disappeared into a
February rainstorm with five children and no place to go. I was twenty-nine
years old.
Many people asked of me since that day,
many ‘whys’ and I gave many answers. It takes a lot of ‘why’s’ to make a life,
mine being no exception. Maya Angelou said ‘you can’t know who I am until you
know where I have been’; until you know the circumstances and people who
contributed to the making of me, you cannot know me. We all are complicated
mixes of many other people and life events. We are all of everything that has
ever happened to us. If we suddenly got amnesia, we would cease to exist as who
we were, except in the memory of others. My pain is me, and thus my life
that once was, is what made me now. I am the hungry little girl who sat
in the sand over forty years ago waiting to be rescued by an ancient old man, I
am Sara Niles and this is my story.
I was born
in the bowels of the South where willow trees hang low over ponds and creeks
surrounded by the lush growth of woody fern. My beginnings were in a place
where knotted old oaks twisted their knurled boughs upwards, their majestic
leafage allowing slithers of light to penetrate the shadowy forest floors to
lend peeks upon the backs of huge Diamondback rattlesnakes; their gargantuan
size owing to seldom meeting the sight of the eyes of man, if ever at all. I was born where the bottomland hoarded teems
of wild boars known to rip hunting dogs open from end to end, and where the
narrow little graveled roads twisted and wound their way past humble mail
boxes, usually the only evidence of the habitations miles into the forest.
These humble country homes were usually only accessible by traveling down dirt,
tire-rutted roads with strips of grass ribbon-ed down the middle. This was oil country, so oil wells were
scattered every few miles, their slow prehistoric movements signaling that the
owners were receiving money. Neighbors
lived far apart on beautiful little farms or in ragged shacks, with a Cadillac
and a television, or neither plumbing nor electric power lines. Depending upon which neighbor you were, you
had plenty or nothing at all.
My mother had nothing at all, except seven
hungry mouths to feed. She was by
everyone’s opinion an exceptionally beautiful woman. Her mother before her was a French white
woman from New York, and her father was a black and Indian man; born, bred and
still living in the same area. I never
met my maternal grandmother, I strongly suspected that she mated with my
grandfather on a purely business level.
A business that is considered to be one the oldest vices, the one I have
to thank for my very existence. My
mother was a prostitute. I was an
accident she had with a client, a rich white oilman who found her little shack
a convenient stop on his trips from town, and she found in him food for her
children. Things may have been different
for my mother, if a white man, living in a racist time, had not shot her first
husband in the back for the unforgivable crime of stealing gas- gas that he
swore to pay for that evening when he left the billet woods. It was a time when racism ruled, a ‘cold
war’ between blacks and whites established the climate, and therefore no trial
ever took place.
It was nineteen fifty-seven, the Little Rock
Nine were escorted to school by Federal troops under the order of President
Eisenhower to counteract the attempt of Arkansas Governor Faubus to prevent it.
Southern racial tensions produced a supreme irony: Federal troops against the
National Guard. This visible strife
between state and nation was one of the evidences of the racial turmoil of the
times. The line of demarcation between blacks and whites was decided by color,
and I was born on the centerline. My
bright light skin marked me as a product of the enemy, the white man in the black
community. Black women drawled sweetly
to my mother that my long wavy brown hair was so pretty in tones meant to be a
reproof to her. I was unacceptable, too
white to be black… too black to be white.
We lived in what our relatives fondly
called ‘the old homestead’. It was the
home built by my great- grandparents, a newly freed slave by the name of Henry
Howell and his wife, a full-blooded Crow Indian bearing the European name
Charlotte. Henry and Charlotte had
twelve children, each born in the front room of this now dilapidated old house. Great old cottonwoods rattled their leaves
noisily in the wind in front of the house and massive oaks guarded the back,
dwarfing the little outhouse with its pitiful croker-sack door. The exterior of the house bore the aged gray
look of hardwood that had never been painted in its century of withstanding the
pelting rains and the great extremes of heat and cold. It was a tough, neglected old house,
abandoned to my mother to house us in rent-free. She could ill afford to care for the ancient
structure that needed attention so badly, or us. The job of watching and caring for us fell to
my oldest sister, Francine. She was
thirteen years old at my earliest remembrance of her, my brother was twelve,
and the rest of our ages ran closely behind.
I was four years old.
The house had three entrances. The front and back doors we children were
allowed to use freely, but the side door facing the setting sun was off limits
to us. It was the ‘business’ door, the door that the strange men used; some
used it so often they even knew our names.
On a rare occasion when my mother was absent, I was molested by one of
these men while the noon-ish sun shone through the window. I knew nothing of what he was doing, he
sounded friendly. Something was wrong, I
felt some odd shame and my heart pounded with relief when my tigress of a
sister burst through the door demanding that the ‘no good son of a dog’ take his filthy hands
off me in a voice strong with authority and rage that was strange to hear in
the voice of a child. He unhanded me without a word and fled as all my siblings
ran up to flank her in the ranks. I
remembered that incident, though I never once mentioned it again until three
decades passed. I merely held my head
self-consciously tilted to one side when I walked.
Nothing
stood out in my early childhood worth remembering until the fateful day when
the world kindly changed for me. My
great uncle and aunt lived on a farm a mile’s walk through a wooded trail. Robert Howell was born in eighteen
eighty-three to Henry and Charlotte Howell in the very same curtain-less room
that my siblings and I slept in, on the pallets and old mattresses. Although my mother was treated as an outcast
in the family - never visited and quietly talked about by the conventional ones
who may have feared their heavenly reservations may have been cancelled if they
dared come near her- my uncle Robert visited us daily. He cared little for convention and hated
hypocrisy; he would not permit either to stifle his compassion for us. We looked for uncle’s visits just as
faithfully as we expected the sun to rise, and just as faithfully, he always
came. I never remember his coming
unheralded by our squeals of delight because we knew he had candy or fruit, if
not both. Our yard’s stingy spattering
of trampled grass wore a distinct trail that led to the east corner where a
roof covered water well crested the top of a steep red clay hill. Uncle Robert’s head would always appear
first, and on hot days his hatless bald
head would bloom at the top of that hill prettier to us than any flower,
because he not only brought us gifts, he luxuriated us in his time by talking
with each one of us. We loved Uncle
Robert dearly, and any one of us would have been glad to have been taken home
by him. I was selected.
The monotony of our lives made the
mentioning of the names of days unnecessary, so I don’t know what day it was
when my uncle took me home, just that it was sunny and warm. I was sitting in front of the east steps in a
pile of cream-colored sand pouring it’s warmness across my legs when Uncle
Robert came.
“I’m coming to take you home with me little
Sara. Just let me talk with your mama
for a minute. You’re going to be me and
Mollie’s little girl” my uncle soothingly promised.
I felt something
that must have been excitement, although I had heard him say he would take me
home before, somehow I knew this time was different. My brother and sisters gathered around the
front door trying to overhear the conversation from within. We could hear the muffled conversation
getting louder as my mother and uncle walked down the hall to the front porch.
“I’ll find her birth certificate later Uncle
Robert. You just take her on home now”,
and as an afterthought she added “Tell Aunt Mollie hello for me”.
And just like that, as easily as one changes
shoes, I was given away unceremoniously without tears or protest from my
mother. She never hugged me good-bye,
nor did she come outside to watch me leave. My brother and sisters gathered
around me looking sad, their bubbly excitement dying, as they followed us down
the steep hill, all the way to the ravine.
They yelled ‘good –byes’ until we were out of sight. My uncle let me climb upon a stump so I could
ride astride his neck, since I had no shoes.
Uncle Robert talked excitedly, gesturing with his hat in his free hand
while holding one of my ankles with the other.
I was holding his baldhead with both my thin, dirty arms. I don’t remember much of what he said, only
something about how happy my aunt Mollie would be, and all of the things they
would buy me. These golden promises meant nothing to me yet, since I had no
prior means of comparison and I was too distracted by apprehension mixed with
unformed expectations.
I knew we had almost arrived when we reached
the water spring at the bottom of the hill. The spring bubbled up fresh water
continually, with the overflow creating a running stream of branch water that
was covered over by a long plank bridge. Two thick, smoky black water moccasins
raised their ugly heads up from the water and opened their cottony mouths in
silent threat. I tightened my grip on Uncle Robert’s head. The roof of the
house appeared first as we ascended the long incline. A large grayish brown
farmhouse, surrounded by bright flowers, arose into view. My senses became
acute, recording every minor detail, while the smells of flowers and fruit
trees enchanted me, as my uncle stooped to unlatch a peg lock on the back gate.
My heart was beating faster and faster,
and my blood raced through my veins with such force that I became dizzy,
my hearing muted and time slowed.
Fear ran through me as two large silky black
Labradors ran toward us barking hysterically, the barking giving way to tail
wagging and happy howls of joy at seeing my uncle. I could see an immense
expanse of ordered property. There were pastures and barns, cows and a
big-eared mule, chickens scattering across a fenced yard and New Guinea fowl
shrieking in tropical song. There were huge yellow and gray-striped Tabby
tomcats sitting calmly upon fence posts. I was bedazzled. While my head whirled
in excitement, I was gently stood upon the grounds on legs almost too weak to
hold me. It was incomprehensible to my dazed senses that all of the commotion
was over me.
My uncle yelled to my aunt to hurry out and
see what he had, and in an instant my aunt ran across the back yard with a
spatula in one hand wearing a white apron across the front of the prettiest
flowered dress I had ever seen. I was being smothered in hugs while my uncle
and aunt both talked at once. The animals sensed the excitement and were
howling in unison. I tried to see everything at once, such as the number three
bathtubs hanging outside against the back porch wall, animals, a smokehouse and
old farm buildings. I thought I had entered a new world when I smelled the most
wonderful aroma of foods floating upon the breeze; my senses were overwhelmed,
as the hunger awakened in me, compelled me to cry. I was fed while still caked with grime and
dirt.
“Robert, I’m
afraid she’ll get sick. Don’t you think
we should stop her from eating now?” Aunt Mollie asked uncertainly.
“Nah.
This child probably has never eaten her fill. Let her eat till she bursts.” He answered glad heartedly before they both
melted into joyous laughter. For the
first time in my life, I was home.
I was scrubbed in sudsy lather and wrapped
in a towel. My only dress was so dirty
that it was discarded. I stood behind my
aunt holding the back of her chair while she sewed dresses and matching bloomers
out of floral, cotton flour sacks. She
sang and talked as she wheedled her Singer treadle sewing machine. I said nothing. I was happier than I had ever
been. On Saturday, I remember because
every day I was told to just wait until ‘Saturday’ and we will go to town. On
Saturday, we went to town. My aunt
bought shoes, dresses, ‘britches’, baubles, and toys, and everything that a
little girl who had nothing, would need.
I remember the things I didn’t need, the candies and soda pops of all
varieties and colors. All of downtown
was comprised of one street covering a couple of blocks, so in a town of that
size everyone knew Aunt Mollie. My aunt told every listening ear, both White
and Black, that she and Uncle Robert were like Sarah and Abraham, blessed with
a child in their old age.
Relatives were notified, they came by the
carloads to see me, and brought and sent gifts.
My Aunt Fannie from California sent two huge packages of clothing and
toys from J.C. Penny, a habit she continued for the duration of my early
years. Physically, I went from nothing
to everything in one week. From no
attention to being squabbled over; my emotions knew no precedent, therefore I
was overwhelmed in joy. I began to talk
incessantly, ‘like a jaybird’ as Uncle Robert said. There was so much to see and do, to taste and
touch. I was experiencing the tastes of new foods almost daily. I became a whirlwind as I tried to enjoy
everything at once in a frenzy of ecstasy.
My uncle took me with him to visit my
brother and sisters each day, they were always so happy to see us, only now I
knew that they did not have the good things I did. I used to ask Uncle Robert and Aunt Mollie to
bring them home to live with us; I was too young to know what their sad faces
revealed. It was impossible; they could
only save one, the child most likely to suffer harm. My mother moved away when I was five years
old without a word. We went for our
daily visit and the house was vacant. A
feeling of loss pervaded my happiness as we stood staring in disbelief. Years would pass between brief glimpses of
any of them.
Nothing good was withheld from me, even
moral guidance was provided as my uncle read to me nightly out of a King James
red-letter edition Bible. “Them’s the Good Lord’s words in red,” he would say
reverently. These lessons installed in
me a sense of moral propriety and spiritual obligation that I would later
misconstrue to my own detriment. The
strength of character I gleamed from them would enable me to survive myself and
all lesser foes.
For the next half decade, I lived on the
‘flower bed of Eden’ as Cousin Andrew called it. The days were never long enough; perhaps that
is why I hated to sleep. Seasons came
and went in a panorama of delight. The
record ice storm of the early sixties was a great memory to me as I watched
through steam fogged windows, warm and snug, as the loud popping of snapping
pine trees screamed with the howling winds. Nothing caused me to fear those
years, I felt perfectly safe as I expected I always would.
Those days will be forever frozen in my
mind. I can still see my uncle and aunt standing among the prized garden
vegetables, amid four-foot tall collard greens reaching my aunts shoulders. I
can see the tanned sinewy frame of my uncle stretching his short frame proudly
towards the sky as he brags on the size of his watermelons. I can hear their laughter coming from lungs
almost a century old, and I can see the twinkle in Uncle Robert’s one good eye.
I could never imagine him killing the man who gouged out his eye with a pool
stick so many years before, though the relatives said that he did. I only knew that the blue glass-eye looked
odd with his one brown one, set against his tawny gold skin, his head crowned
with a semi-circle of silky white hair with a matching heavy white
mustache. I can see the bright flash of
his red plaid shirt through the school bus window years later as he walks
hurriedly to the highway to escort me home, on the cold November day the house
burned to the ground. Dirt and smut on
his sad face. I can still see them. I will always be able to see them in the
vivid imagery of my mind.
I used to wish with a fervor that I could
have held on to the past and preserved all that was good about it, that I could
have prevented my aunt the years of suffering as she lay dying, bedridden with
cancer. I used to wish that all the good
years would have never ended; time cured the wishing as I realized that the
fairy tale had to end. It was gone; I
would never get it back. The sun would
still rise, the seasons would still come, life would continue. I was thankful to have been a part of it; I
would take the memories and savor them for the life ahead. I had been given the components that would
comprise the fate of my destiny; they had aged into my soul, so that part of
the past would always remain with me.
They would be there for me to draw strength from, on days in my future
when death would seem a triumph and life too hard to live any more.
It is strange how intricately life hangs in
the scales, and how unrelated events and single decisions alter the
outcomes. Some remote land ten thousand
miles from me, some land unfamiliar to me, held the key to my future. A foreign land of war, a land besieged by
helicopters, machine gunfire, and mortars, held a young man prisoner to its
boundaries. A man I would never have met
if my uncle had not become sick.
My uncle became acutely ill when I was
fifteen years old and he asked a young family that he was fond of, to adopt
me. Life had changed course for me
again, and the changes were becoming less kind as time wore on. I was about to be thrust into a situation
where my lack of experience would affect my judgment and cause a permanent
change in the person I would become. My future would become as uncertain and
unstable as a howling wind in a wasteland.
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