Sweetgrass. Mary Monroe Alice
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“Now, Mary June, you don’t need to buy no basket.”
“But I want to. I see your style has changed a bit. Look at that one with the popcorn along the edges,” she said, pointing to a small capped basket. “That is a beauty. I’d like to have that one in my collection of your work or it wouldn’t be complete. How much is it?”
Nona lifted the intricate basket and slowly ran her fingers around its edges, considering. “This one didn’t take much time and there are some mistakes in it,” she replied. “Eighty dollars.”
Mama June took the basket in her hands and brought it close. “There’s not a mistake on this basket and you know it. And it took a considerable amount of time to make. It’s a bargain at a hundred.”
She reached into her pocketbook and tugged out two fifty-dollar bills. Each dollar was measured these days. She’d intended to go to the market on the way home, but this stop just cleaned out her wallet. She handed the bills to Nona.
“Thank you,” Nona said, pocketing the bills in her skirt without a glance.
“It was wonderful seeing you again. Morgan was asking after you.”
Nona’s brows rose high, creasing her broad forehead. “Morgan is back home?”
Mama June’s face eased into a grin. “Yes! At last! You could have knocked me over with a feather.” At the mention of Morgan, a child beloved by both women, the earlier tension fled as quickly as the traffic passing on the highway, and the words flowed more easily.
“What brought that rapscallion back home after all this time?”
“His father’s illness, of course.”
“Oh, Lord, of course. Well, he’s a fine boy to come to his father’s aid. I always said he was a fine boy.”
“Yes, you did. And he is. I just wish he knew that. I don’t know what I’d have done if he hadn’t returned when he did. I’ve been quite beside myself with worry. Not only about Preston but about what to do with Sweetgrass.”
“Come again? What do you mean about Sweetgrass?”
“There’s a lot to be decided, now that Preston’s taken sick. Adele has strong opinions on the matter, of course.”
Nona grunted, crossing her arms akimbo. “That woman only has one kind of opinion and that’s strong. What’s she got to say about this? It’s not her home no more.”
Mama June shrugged lightly. “It will always be her home, in some way. It’s where she grew up. It’s her heritage. She’d argue it’s more hers than mine. You know that better than anyone.”
Adele and Nona had been raised together at Sweetgrass, where Nona’s mother had been the housekeeper, as was her mother before her, and so on for generations. The two girls had always been oil and water, wise to each other’s tricks and wiles. Both Nona and Adele were formidable women, neither the least cowed by the other.
“I know that Adele sees Sweetgrass not so much as her home but as her property, if you catch my meaning.”
“That old chestnut…” Mama June shook her head. “Adele’s a wealthy woman in her own right. Why would she have any designs on poor ol’ Sweetgrass?”
Nona narrowed her eyes. “Money’s only money. What Adele wants is something else besides that.”
“She doesn’t want Sweetgrass at all. In fact, she wants me to sell it.”
“Sell it!” Nona’s hand flew back to her chest. “You can’t be meaning to up and sell Sweetgrass? Why, it’s family land.”
“I know!” Mama June echoed with feeling. “That’s why I’m bringing Preston home. He’s the one who ought to be making this decision. He’s the one who took care of the land, not me.”
Nona’s brown eyes fixed upon her as she mulled this over. “That may be so,” she said at length. “But seems to me, if Mr. Preston can’t talk, then like it or no, it’s going to be you making the decision.”
A wave of anxiety washed through her, and Mama June could taste the salty rush in her throat as she choked back words. She clutched her pocketbook tighter to her chest.
As if she understood what she was feeling, Nona stepped forward and gently placed one of her strong hands on Mama June’s shoulder. “We’ll pray on it,” she said. “God will not push you harder than you can bear. Jesus takes up for you when you need Him.”
She knew Nona was trying to be supportive, but the weight of her dilemma weighed heavily on her shoulder.
“I best be off. I have more stops to make today than hours to make them. But I thank you for your prayers. I’ll need them.”
Sell Sweetgrass?
So many memories came flooding back to Nona at the mention of Sweetgrass. Lots of them good memories, some of them not so good, all of them springing from her life spent there. But good or bad, they made up a lot of years and she had to acknowledge them all, for pieced together, they made up the quilt of her life.
When she returned home a short while later, she found her daughter, Maize, already at the house to pick up the children. Nona knew better than to mention Mary June’s visit, but she couldn’t help herself. She just couldn’t keep the words in, having to tell someone. Now she’d have to suffer the consequences.
“You can tell her we don’t work for her family anymore.” Maize’s face was flushed and she stood ramrod straight, her hands firmly planted on her slim hips.
Nona let out a long, ragged sigh. “She didn’t ask me to come back to work.”
“Good!”
Maize was just like a bantam rooster, pacing on the balls of her feet, shaking her head, eager for a fight. Anything at all to do with Sweetgrass or the Blakelys or her mother doing housework usually sent Maize off on a tirade that was more about Maize’s raw feelings about race relations than anything else. Nona knew her daughter wrestled with the devil on these issues—always had. Edwin and Earl, her boys, had the same fire in their bellies, but they just up and left to join their uncles in the north. Maize was her baby, however, and the cord was strong between them. Maize had married a local boy, a teacher at a local high school, and settled here in Charleston, giving Nona two of the prettiest grandbabies she ever could have wanted. They were happy, but there’d been sharp, painful words about Sweetgrass between them.
Though she would never admit this to Maize, since it would be like pouring kerosene on an open fire, Nona had felt a stiffening of the spine when Mary June hinted at her coming back to work. She didn’t know why, exactly. She was fond of Mary June, and working at Sweetgrass was just the way things had always been for her. She’d grown up into the job and was proud of the quality of her work.
Nona recollected how Preston’s mother, old Margaret Blakely, could make a statement sound cool and polite, but it was always understood that she was giving an order. Nona, the shutters in the front room need dusting today. It wasn’t the order that rankled. After all, Mrs. Blakely was her employer. It was the way she said it, without a smile or without even looking her in the eye that had made Nona feel less about her work. Adele had been like her mother, even as a young girl.
Mary June Clark, though, was different. She was born to land, too, but never took on the airs. Courtesy for her was the same as kindness. She’d always asked Nona’s opinions about what did and did not need doing, and she listened. The respect made the difference between them.
“You calm yourself down,” Nona said to her daughter. “Mary June just found herself in a bind, is all. It’s a shame about Preston Blakely. That poor family! Haven’t they seen enough trouble? I don’t know what they’ll do now.”
“It’s no trouble for us.”
Nona drew herself back. “Why, the Blakelys have been my friends