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Moonshine

AuthorHouse

Chapter One

Up highway eighteen, then turn right on Sugar Hill. The area hadn't changed much. Magnolia trees with huge white flowers lined the road. Even the burned out juke joint—called by the same name—was still there. At the beginning of a long driveway, a sign read: Claremont Community Center. To the right of the sign behind two small white columns stood a one story building made of deep red brick with green shutters bordering all the windows—a wrought iron fence circling the entire place making the place look warm and inviting.

Inside down the hall on the left pass the nurses' station, was room 22 the numbers on the door were made of brass, bronze nails held them there like two tiny eyes peering into the hallway. Like the numbers, everything on the other side of the door was in pairs; two beds, two bureaus, two nightstands,—both made out of fabricated wood, two wheel chairs and two call buttons, but only one occupant, occupied the eight by ten room.

Teresa Monroe sighed, she felt like a prisoner as she sat in her wheelchair staring at the sterile walls. There were no pictures on the walls because she had hoped that one day she would be able to leave but her knees frozen from the rheumatism invading her body like a parasite told her different. She shifted as the pain came. Sighing again, her gaze taking in the room she had come to know well, living in such a small space suddenly made her think of a quote she had heard a long time ago. "I am the master of my fate I am the captain of my soul." Teresa smiled. "Whoever said that didn't have to live here."

It was 2010, ten years into the new millennium, ten years, and Teresa was still alive. Born in 1915, Teresa was the oldest and the last of twelve, all girls. Rubbing her knees as she leaned forward trying to get comfortable she tilted her head as if listening to the past. She could almost hear the growing frustration of her papa as he watched yet another girl scream into the world. She felt sorry for him back then because she saw both joy and disappointment knit his brow. She chuckled to herself remembering all the trouble the twelve of them got into when they were together. All born two years apart; how her mother timed it she would never know. When Teresa and her sisters walked down the street on Friday nights, people would stare and whisper, "Here come those Monroe girls." Their faces, high yellow, caramel, deep chocolate—a rainbow of a different color; earth tones against a cloudless sky. They were close, a closeness which gave them strength. After all it was the early 1900's. A time when being colored and being raised in the South meant you were disposable.

Falling like leaves in autumn, one by one Teresa watched those same sisters pass this life. In 1986 when her youngest sister Sarah died at fifty two from acute asthma she was devastated but she barely had time to grieve because two other sisters died the following year, one of a heart attack and the other from ovarian cancer. There was something to be said about everything happing in threes. And just this past Thanksgiving, her sister Belinda left this world leaving Teresa alone. Teresa had outlived them all. As she sat there, waiting for her chance at heaven, because all she could do was to wait, she pictured all eleven sisters perched on the fence of the pearly gates wondering why heaven didn't have a juke joint that sold moonshine. She laughed despite the tears that fell down her cheeks. She missed them so much. Teresa shook her head. She should be the one turning in her grave, many times over.

By the time Teresa's sister Sarah was born, Teresa had become a fully-fledged midwife at the age of fifteen. Back then 15 was not considered young most people were married and some even had children. You didn't need some kind of fancy license to practice like women need today. You just needed the skills and the love to do what Teresa had done for almost seventy years in Matlin, a rural community along the Mississippi River where Teresa had lived all her life. Also back then there were no doctors for colored folks. A midwife was all they had.

Being a midwife ensured Teresa that she would always be busy. Colored folks knew how to have babies and babies they had as her mother could attest to. Teresa had only stopped long enough to get married and soon after to become a mother. Surprisingly Teresa had only one child, Michaela. When Michaela came Teresa thought she had everything, a job she loved and a daughter she loved beyond measure. That is until her only child had two girls of her own. When her granddaughters came into the world, Teresa knew she had been blessed.

Teresa looked down at her hands, calloused now, and rubbed them as the memories kept coming. She had begun as a midwife's assistant traveling around the countryside along with two other midwives, Meira and Melana. Teresa had spent most of her life with those two old ladies. Both women had been in Matlin Mississippi for as long as Teresa could remember.

She hadn't thought about them in forever until several days ago. Teresa had begun to dream of yesterdays; memories once trapped now came unbidden, reminding her of what she was told all those years, what she needed to do. She was afraid at first which was a first for her, thinking it was all just a dream, but she knew better.

No one in Matlin knew what really transpired as she, Melana, and Meira did what was ordained. No one knew what the three midwives held. Something that had been locked in Teresa's subconscious until recently. Why had God spared her? It wasn't a question, not really, she knew the reason. Could she do it? Time was not her friend. Unconsciously touching her heart as if trying to erase something only visible to her, Teresa straightened her shoulders when she heard the knock at the door it begins. "Come in," she said.

Peeking around the door was her youngest granddaughter, Kayamia. Teresa shook her head. She still couldn't get over the names people gave their children these days. Everybody called her granddaughter Kay. At least it came off her tongue without causing Teresa to twist herself in a knot trying to remember the pronunciation.

* * *

As always Kay was astonished as she walked through the door. Her grandmother was beautiful. You had to look hard to find wrinkles in her face. Even after 96 years, time had not stamped those lines on Teresa. The long gray hair cascaded down her shoulders like a waterfall shadowed in moonlight with its brilliance. Kay was sure Miss Clairol had something to do with the way it looked, but to her knowledge she had never seen her grandmother's hair any different. Kay's mother told her once, "Mother would go to her grave with the secret." Although her grandmother could no longer get around without her wheelchair, she was very healthy. Kay hesitated when she saw the familiar melancholy look on her grandmother's face. The look told Kay that her grandmother had been thinking about her great aunts. But when she stepped all the way into the room, Kay was startled the look she saw now was one of urgency. "Hi, Granny," Kay said as she bent down to kiss the cheeks of her beloved. When she raised her head the look of urgency was still there. "Granny, what is it?"

When her grandmother didn't answer right away Kay got worried and started to say something but before she could she watched as Teresa reached into the drawer by her bed and to Kay's astonishment, pulled out a tape recorder. What was...