MOZELLA

By Eileen Lauren

With love for my beloved Charles Edward Eaton

June 25, 1916-March 23, 2006 

     You at peace? Mozella asked me amid the lavender.

     I frowned.

     "If you wuz, you'd know it," she went on gathering the pale blue, purple flowers.

     "I suppose," was all I said.

     The early light began to reflect off her old blue-black face making it look like a Roman soldier, hard and ready for battle.  She was wearing a saffron-yellow apron over a date brown shift dress. A dusty blue bonnet with a single red rose topped her silver head of hair. She carried a hump of sorts in the middle of her back as if it were a newborn baby. And a bronze coloured scarf was tied in three rings around her neck like a trinity wedding band.     

     "How long you been gathering the lavender in for the Reynolds' Mercantile?" I asked her.

     "Ever since Moeris sang his last song."

     "Oh."

     I had heard that her old man had died long ago and I didn't want to cause her any remembering pain if I could help it, so I kept silent. 

     "Ain't you going to ask me when that was?" she asked me. 

     "I wasn't planning on it," I told her.

     She beamed. 

     I smiled, watching her little pinched face take on more of the early light like a Monet painting, but still, I didn't speak. Instead, I shrugged my shoulders and brushed the lavender with my right hand feeling some of the morning's dew lick my finger tips.

     "I been getting up pretty near 4:30 every morning for thirty year or more to get in the lavender when it be the season. You know what I think about here lately?"

     "No."

     "I think about my Poppadaddy back in 1875 when he worked in a cantaloupe field in due season then he brung in the cotton in Laurel, Mississippi, at Shorty Stringer's Plantation with summers as hot as fire."

     "Oh."

     "Poppadaddy was good to me and Momma—he especially like to build things—you know what I mean?"

     I nodded.

     "When I was a young girl—slim and trim—," Mozella grinned, patting her big behind then dropping some lavender.

     I laughed.

     She reached for the flowers and a whiff of purple sweetness ran beneath my nose.

     "I used to dream and dream and dream looking into my doll house. Oh, Myra Boone, it was so fine! Momma and me made our own little furniture with bark from a quince tree. And sometimes, we used olive wood if we could find a smooth branch. We painted the house yellow to match the sun's glow and the furniture all sorts of bright, glowing colors we made from the flowers and such."

     I nodded.

     "Poppadaddy called me his Wonder-child," she told me then added, "Because I measured big by little things." She tapped her breast once.

     Really?

     She chaffed her lips on a blade of green grass. 

     "I did. And he would come in on a Friday night with a pocket full of change tinkling like crystal and pennies then say to me,  'Mozella, if you guess how much money I got in my britches pocket, it's yours!' "

     "One-cent," I'd guess.

     A penny?

      She laughed. "I was never right. And rightly so—I wouldn't have taken his money for the world so I never even tried to guess right!"

     "You funny!"

     "You thank?"

     "I do."

     She beamed. "Would you like some soup?"

     "For breakfast?"

     "Why not?"

     "Well, I don't know . . ."

     I looked up and a marigold sun was just before spinning against a sad Mississippi blue sky. The green pines were not going to offer us enough shadows to shade us from the flaming heat that followed every early light. So, I said, "Sure, Mozella, some soup would be nice."

     "I have some with me—in a snuff jar."

     I frowned, surprised.

     "Let's go to the graveyard and visit Moeris and we can share the goods," she told me, holding up a little jar she'd had in her pocket that contained a cloudy liquid of sorts.

     "All right then." 

     "Oh good! I brewed up some pounded garlic and just a smidgen of wild-thyme with lamb broth. And I got a pone of oven baked bread—we can share, hear?"

     "That sounds real nice. Yes, real nice, Mozella," I told her.

     "It should be right pretty in the cemetery right about now—peaceful."

     "I suppose."

     "Let's go," she told me, tying up her lavender. She walked over and hid it in the Piney Woods. 

     "Is it safe there?" I asked her.

     "Why Myra Boone, you can't ask for nary thang better in this old world than the woods—don't you know?"

     I shrugged.

     We walked on for about three miles until we came to the oldest graveyard I'd ever laid my eyes on. Entering through its gates of sleep, I saw that some of the headstones had pale garnets imbedded in them with free-roaming ivy gracing the strangest names I'd ever seen like Purple Thankful, Ebenezer Dickinson, Roxanna Davis, Maces Dove, Emeline and Abigail and Lucy.     

     I looked over at Mozella and she was heading for the middle of the graveyard. She stopped directly under an elm, looking up to see a turtledove cooing in its branches. 

     "My happy one!" she yelled, scaring the dove away. 

     An early morning breeze began to sing, gently.  I felt my heart jump but not yet wearied by the beginning of a promising, scorching hot day and our long walk. I saw one grave that had a basket full of lilies and pale irises on it, and strangely enough, there was a plum tree growing in the center of another grave.  And there was a weighed down bush of blue roses beside an old oak tree. 

     "My heart is heavy laden—here," she told me then added,  With madness.

     Mozella won't hurt me? I thought, actually wondering.

     "Excuse me?" 

     "Moeris treated me with such contempt—and the love he give to me still burns me slam up!" 

     "Mercy!"

     "It do.  I was as modest as any body could be—I swear I was," she began.

     "Let's eat the soup . . ." I suggested.

     "Like yellow and rose—I was hungry for the rain—but it never came as long as I was with him," she mumbled before softly adding, "I choose to be hard of hearing . . . " She stopped talking, reached into her front pocket and brought back the snuff jar and unscrewed its lid, but not before walking over to a small grave and plopping down on it.

     I watched her close.

     "I learnt to praise the man—I learnt it because he used to say to me, 'Mozella, all I want is peace—peace. Can't you give me peace? ' I tried and I tried, but for the strength of me, I could not! Like a trader will forsake his sea, one cold spring Monday morning I up and left the man who held my heart, heading straight for Goodlife simply because I'd heard I could get me a job gathering in the lavender and such along the Way. Mind you, I didn't even take my best goat with me . . ."

     I motioned for the snuff jar.

     She gave it to me.

     I drank.

     She turned and looked into the headstone which was carved in shape of a diamond. Her body took on the shape of a willow tree and a south wind came up, strong and fast, causing her saffron apron to stir and whisper against her legs. 

     "He was so like a God to me yet powerful like a wild boar."  She took the last swallow of soup.

     I listened.

     "One day, he began to call up spirits from deep down in the earth and his peace left him. And, he blamed me."

     I felt very thirsty from the soup, but didn't mention it.

     She sighed.

     Suddenly, without thinking, I asked, "Mozella, don't you have anyone to love you?"

     Her eyes widened and welled-up with silver tears before she said, "God loves me and that's enough."

     Really?

     She considered then said, "Who do you thank give me the courage to go on? To hold my head up after he came here to take me back with him to New Orleans?"

     I wiped my mouth with the tips of my fingers and a whiff of lavender took my breath.

     "Only Him!" She reached into her pocket and brought out a pone of corn bread, tears streaming down her cheeks.

     "Oh."

     She reached, and one by one, untied the three rings of the bronze scarf. She slowly turned towards me lifting her neck as if to offer me a smile and I saw the most awful scar across her throat. It was thick, silvered purple yet a pinkish-white and showy.

     "Mozella, what in the world happened to your neck?"

     "Like I said, Moeris come to Goodlife to carry me back to New Orleans . . . I wouldn't give in and go--I was strong. But like a trusting fool, I let him spend the night with me. The moon was full, gold and glorious against a black powerful sky. I heard him get up--to get the can to pee, I thought. Then, when he come back to me, he got on top of this lone Negro woman and commenced to beg me to go back with him . . . I screamed out and as best as I can guess, he'd brung a razor from the bureau that I used to cut the thread when I hemmed my dresses and such . . . " She put the pone back into her pocket. 

     I closed my eyes. And when I opened them, I could see that her neck still was holding a vicious scar that ran from ear-to-ear.

     I gasped.

     "Moeris told me, 'Mozella--I had you First--you shan't betray me for no one!' Then, he slit my throat." She lightly traced the silvered scar, setting her eyes straight on a headstone that read Emeline and Abigail, Born April 4, 1900." Them were my girls--I delivered them myself one bright winter's night, but no one ever knowed--,"

     I didn't speak.

     ". . . when I come to, one of Ed Reynolds’ doctoring friends had done gone and sewed up my throat. I believe he said it took one-hundredth-and-eighty-three stitches . . . ," she told me.

     I looked away at a maroon crape myrtle tree that was in full bloom.

     " . . . what ought I to have done, then?" she asked me.

     Prayed? I replied.

     "Myra Boone—you don't nor will you ever know jud'st how many times I prayed but Moeris' feet were firm and I wasn't able to stand my ground as he had the entire neighbourhood on his side—nymphs, shepherds, lads, and sprites . . ."

     "Oh."

     "I ain't denying that I may or may not have (what he thought) betrayed him meant for beings my mind got silly girlish notions and fancy pictures in it from time-to-time . . ."

     I stood up.

     "Like the Bible says . . . Whatever a man thinkith in his heart so is he—and you know how Ed Reynolds be!"

     I frowned and walked over to trace the headstone with the pale garnets in it when I spotted a fluffy, (almost warm) gray squirrel. The squirrel scurried towards me in a starved way which made me feel like I was about to fall short because of my lack. Out of habit, I thrust my hands into my pockets, but they came back empty. Mozella searched hers and pulled out the pone of corn bread we'd forgotten to eat.

     "Here," she offered me.

     The squirrel didn't move a hair. I took the bread and broke off a quarter of it before she reached into her back pocket and brought out a little cowhide Bible.

     "A hand,"  he said, waving it at me.

     I took it and put a quarter of the corn bread on top of the Bible and offered it on out to the gray squirrel.

     Mozella smiled to herself and reached for her bronze scarf.

     The squirrel may have been as hungry as Cooter Brown, but he backed away from the good book—spooked.

     "Put it down on the Earth and let him take it for himself."

     "All right then," I said and did as I was told.

     We waited.

     The turtledove flew over our heads and settled in the plum tree and cooed soft and low. The gray squirrel boldly walked over and took his taste of bread. Then it ran back across the graveyard, sat up on its haunches in front of an old oak tree and proceeded to enjoy his find in Nature's way—in solitude—right next to the blue roses.

     Mozella said, "You still ain't said one word 'bout my neck."

     "What to say?"

     "Do I look scary or naked without my scarf?"

     I thought a moment then said, "No Mozella—you don't scare me none . . ."

     She smiled, lips rosy yet moist from the soup that had stayed with them.  She got excited and interrupted me with,  "How do I look then?"

     I starred into her face and could plainly see how enduring a soul she was. Then bells began to fill the air—seven in all—like a clear warning for me to keep my mouth shut. I looked down at my feet before my eyes settled back onto my ugly, scarred hands.

     "Well?" she asked me, eyeing a nearby church.

     I lifted up my head and looked around the graveyard and saw all shapes and sizes of trees that made lonely silhouettes like silent but seeing people against the blue domed Goodlife sky that was still holding tight to the marigold sun that had finally begun to spin and spray us with the morning's new golden light.

     Again, she asked, Well?

     I took a long look into her face which, strangely enough, reminded me of a timber wolf.

     She pierced her top lip with her eye teeth. 

     "At peace Mozella—you look at peace . . ."

     She grinned like a god, reached into the bosom of her dress and brought out a little wood carving of a water pitcher that was painted silver. She eyed it with loving eyes, close and trusting and sure. She kissed it then said, "For you—from me and Poppadaddy . . ."

     I shook my head, no.

     She said, "Go on—take it."

     "No."

     "You must—Poppadaddy always told me that if I ever should find a friend that I was to pass it along . . ."

     I took the little silver water pitcher that was carved from an olive branch and held it up in the air against the big blue domed sky and turned it playfully against all the lonely trees. And as I admired it, it began to twinkle like a star of grace amid the secrets of the air. 

     Suddenly, Mozella reached up and took the red rose from her dusty blue bonnet and blissfully took a whiff. Then, she twirled it over and over until it broke in half hanging upside down like Nero's words.

     I reached down and picked up her Bible, shook the bread crumbs from its cover and handed it back to her.

     And, we headed on back to Goodlife, Mississippi, walking on the rays of a beautiful sun to gather in our lavender from its safe place in the woods.