Miss ya Soph. Lisa doesn’t play the solo in quite the same way.
Sophie smiled as she dropped her phone into her bag. Zach was a shy one but quite persistent. Looking around the restaurant, she regretted that she had to miss the Fall concert to come back to this place.
Yesterday, she dragged herself to the morning flight from Boston to Raleigh to stay with her cousins Ewin and Ida before the ceremony. Ida had prepared her homemade sweet bread, and Ewin brought out the old family albums that they usually went through whenever she came to visit. This time, Sophie was feeling deeply grateful for the fact that at least a small contingent of her family had chosen to be educators. Ida’s Spanish was not much to show for itself despite having taught the language for a few decades and making the drastic move, for Azalea’s standards, of hosting two Chilean foreign exchange students in the seventies. Ewin was a self-proclaimed “eccentric” by way of having maintained an active passion for American history that he had passed along to generations of students, although it was unclear, at least to Sophie, whether his extensive collection of Civil War memorabilia was the result of eccentricity or some hangover of a misplaced nostalgia for the Old South. Nevertheless, they genuinely believed education was a public good and used words like “minority” and “feminism,” and she loved it when Ida occasionally threw in a “sys-temic bias” or two.
“Well you know Faye,” Leland said, bringing Sophie back to the table. He dug his knife into the oversized country-fried steak on his plate, and leaned into Linda and added, “She never did shy away from calling her mother a bitch!” as Linda chuckled under her breath.
“I reckon she wasn’t the last one to either!” Ewin responded from a few seats down, winking and looking at the rest of the family for hints of approval. Although no one found him as humorous as his brother, Ewin certainly aimed to please. The golden caps on his back molars showed just enough as he smiled and Sophie realized he must have undergone several dental procedures before they left Azalea.
“I mean Lila Mae was kind of a bitch, wasn’t she?” Stella commented, looking up from her plate. The nearness of truth in her words lingered on the table as everyone there had, at some point, been scolded by the aforementioned Lila Mae, and feared that she might hover too heavily upon them should they breach the known decorum. After all, Stella was one of the few at the table who did not belong to the family by blood.
“Oh well… bless her heart,” Linda said, returning the nudge back to Leland as he laughed and everyone let the moment pass. They had other things to worry about that day besides arousing the specter of Lila Mae. The waitress brought their check, setting off the ritual battle between Leland and Ewin over male seniority, while Linda politely extended her hand.
“This ain’t a check for Linda Jones!” Leland shouted as he slapped his credit card inside the billfold.
“Linda… Jones?” Sophie asked, looking at her mother inquisitively.
“Oh yea,” Linda answered. She glanced around, hoping that one of her cousins would save her the explanation. Getting no hint of movement, she sighed and added, “They had our reservation under Linda Jones for some reason. I don’t know… they always use my maiden name here.”
Sophie could see that her mother was beginning to get uncomfortable, so she decided silence was the best response, shrugged, and rested her arm on the back of her mother’s chair. It struck her as odd that they would do this in front of her father, but then again he too generally opted for silence whenever they were in Azalea. That at least kept the get-outta-here-you-damn-yankee jokes more light-hearted than spiteful in tone. In any case, Sophie knew that it was going to be a long day.
It felt so familiar being back there even though she hadn’t come for almost five years. After her grandmother permanently relocated to the coast, there hadn’t been much of a reason for her to frequent her mother’s hometown. She had come once with her high school boyfriend just out of curiosity on their way to the mountains, paying her respects to the bleachers behind Azalea High School, but otherwise just occasionally when visiting her grandmother. The town always had fascinated her, however, because it still seemed remarkably remote – there was no Walmart, Starbucks, and most people still preferred shopping at the country store instead of driving to the Piggly Wiggly one town over. Her grandmother always talked about how after the arrival of the interstate in the 50s the town got “more traffic,” but to Sophie that did not seem to mean much more than the extra gas station. Returning was always a bit of a letdown though, especially since she had begun to embrace these roots as something that distinguished her from every other well-intentioned and decently well-off white person at Harvard. Azalea, however, felt distant from the bluegrass feeling of Appalachia (never mind that politically it was certainly closer to Fort Bragg than to Asheville), and whatever blues culture it actually had certainly did not belong to her family.
Slowly the whole family trickled out of the Azalea Restaurant and into the parking lot, whereupon another battle ensued over who would drive her to the funeral home. Standing in the parking lot, Leland and Ewin repeatedly insisted that she ride in their respective cars in yet another gesture to be the primary provider.
“I’ll ride with Leland and Stella,” Sophie announced, feeling adventurous. Why not? she figured. It was only about once every five years that she came to Azalea, and she might as well get the authentic experience. Leland at least listened to Nina Simone and Etta Baker, and maybe she could learn another song or two from him.
Sophie climbed into the backseat of their beige mini-van and buckled her seatbelt as Stella turned on the radio. “Well now how’s school going for you up there?” she asked.
“Um… it’s going. Yea it’s pretty good.”
“You almost finished?”
“Well, I would be finishing next Spring, but I am going to China in the fall to study abroad and I’m not sure yet how those credits will transfer,” Sophie added.
“China!” Leland exclaimed. “You gonna be speakin with a buncha Chi-nese?”
“Leland, be nice,” Stella added with a nervous laugh that swallowed the ensuing tension. Stella was Leland’s second wife, and everyone in the family always agreed that she was much better than the first, which usually just made Sophie curious about the first.
“Yea, well, I’m minoring in Chinese so I thought it would be good for me to live there for a while,” she responded. She was about to add that although she had been studying Mandarin for a number of years, she was hoping to pick up some Cantonese in the next few months given that Harvard’s program was in Hong Kong, but she quickly sensed that neither of them were that interested in pursuing the topic further and instead opted for silence.
Looking out the window, she realized that she had been on this road before. There were tall white windmills lining both sides of the road and in the distance on the right-hand side she could see a large wooden barn with what appeared to be a few medium-sized tan and tawny horses grazing behind it. She sank down into her seat and shut her eyes trying to remember from where and when she knew this place. Yes, she had been there. How old was she? Her brother was there, and they were playing tag in the wide meadow behind the barn with those horses. Horses. She was wearing corduroy overalls with a big yellow bow that her mom had put in her hair so everyone would know she was a girl. And she was laughing, reaching up, as the horse let out a strange gasp through its moist whiskers and shook its head. And then the smell hit.
“Oh my god, what is that?” Sophie asked, clasping her hand over her nose and mouth.
“What? Oh, the smell? Well you know Hurricane Nancy just hit the coast a few weeks back so we had a lot of floodin out here. Probly knocked out 90% of that hog farm out east of I-40,” Leland responded.
“I’m… I think I might get sick.”
“You want us to pull over?”
“No… god, no don’t open a window. Do you just have like a bag or something?” Sophie said, holding a hand over her nose and mouth. Stella reached into her oversized orange leather purse and pulled out the grocery bag in which she kept Leland’s heart medication. Emptying it, she passed it back to Sophie, who clutched it with concentration as she managed to overcome her nausea. Eventually, as they passed beyond the reaches of the interstate and turned down a narrow gravel road towards the cemetery, the dead animal smell became less pungent and Sophie started to remember where they were again.
“Doesn’t Bessy live off this road?” she asked.
“Well you got a mighty fine memory, donchya?” Leland said. “All them Hargroves live down this way.” Sophie recognized the name as soon as he said it, the Hargroves, whom she knew as the main black family of Azalea. Bessy Hargrove was her grandmother’s best friend, and the last time Sophie was in Azalea they attended her ninety-eighth birthday party in the Azalea Baptist Church. They had been the only white people there, occupying one table in the back near the buffet tables, yet Sophie distinctly remembered they were ordered to take their food first.
“How is Bessy? She must be at least a hundred years old by now!” Sophie added.
“Yea, yea she’s still kickin. Mostly in bed though sometimes I hear the family say she still tries to do chores round the house. Terrance says when he sees her up and movin’ like that he’s scared she could be a haint!” Leland exclaimed, snickering.
“A… what?”
“A haint!” Leland said, glancing at Sophie in the rear-view mirror, “Yea, well I guess a haint is one of them Azalea words. That’s what black folk call ghosts. Back when my daddy was running the store, Bessy and Faye would come in from the blueberry fields in the morning shoutin’, ‘Papa! Papa! We saw a haint in the field last night!’ and you know he’d just laugh and tell them they shouldn’t be playing out there at night.”
“Huh.”
“Yea, I reckon they don’t have a word for that in Chinese!” Leland said as he let out a laugh, pleased with himself. They slowly approached the dead end of the paved highway where there was a wooden sign with the words ‘Azalea cemetery’ painted in white with an arrow beneath it pointing left. They turned left, drove for ten minutes through a dense patch of pine trees on a narrow gravel road until they reached a clearing that served as the cemetery’s parking lot. Ida, Ewin, and Linda had already arrived and they were standing near the few rows of chairs socializing. Sophie felt a buzzing in her pocket. Zach again.
How’s it going Soph? We just finished and are about to head to Charlie’s for drinks. I’ll get an old fashioned for ya 😉
It’s all good! She typed quickly. Just learned of some good old Blues records from the cousins.
She got out of the car and looked around. When her grandfather passed away several years ago Sophie had learned of the family cemetery. At that time, her grandmother, in typically sardonic fashion, had gone ahead and bought herself a gravestone as well (“a two-for-one deal!”). Before she could walk over to examine her family’s lot, Ida rushed up to her, wide-eyed and whispering loudly, “Oh good heavens, he actually came!,” as she grabbed Sophie by the shoulder.
“Who?” she responded absentmindedly. She was simultaneously trying to close DuoLingo on her phone, thankful for the fact that she was still picking up a signal.
“Your uncle!”
She instantly dropped her phone into her bag and looked around. Sure enough, there he was, and there were those two red-headed little girls playing tag right in the middle of the cemetery, each with a different colored lollypop dangling from their mouths. And that woman standing with her uncle… who even was she? Yes, she was the mother of those two red-headed little girls, despite the fact that everyone knew Uncle Johnny was still married to his “ex-wife.” Sophie knew these facts for a reason she couldn’t explain given that she had stopped coming to North Carolina years ago after her grandmother’s memory went.
The grave-side service was not much more than a blessing and mumbled Lord’s prayer, and then everyone was on their feet again. This was in accordance with Linda’s design who kept insisting that the day was to be a “celebration of life” rather than a “funeral,” which either stemmed from her desire for a more joyous form of spirituality not typical of her race or simply that she did not want to be caught in any sort of vulnerable state around her brother Johnny at their mother’s funeral. As the family continued mingling after the service, the two red-headed little girls grabbed at Sophie’s dress until she agreed to join them in a game of tag. Ida, Ewin, Leland and Stella stayed huddled together in a pack in a way that seemed pre-meditated by the women of their group to prevent any interactions between Leland and Johnny. No one, after all, needed to see a brawl unfold over Faye’s grave.
Sophie ran off into the parking lot in an attempt to bring the game of tag away from stomping over their relatives. The two red headed little girls seemed elated to be getting so much attention, and one offered her a lollypop from her pocket. Butterscotch. Not her favorite flavor but she took it. Wasn’t that the flavor that she got stuck in her hair on the way home from… what was that? Was it here? No, she would not have been here in the middle of the summer and the air was saltier when that happened. Must have been near her grandmother’s house at the beach. She looked up and saw that her mother had been left alone talking with Johnny and his girlfriend by the chairs. “Here, you take this,” she said, re-gifting the lollypop to Anna and walked over towards them.
“Yea, you know, the girls have been out of school for near two weeks because of the floodin from Hurricane Nancy,” Johnny’s girlfriend was saying to Linda as she approached.
“That’s a shame, it’s really difficult to make up that kind of time,” Linda answered empathetically.
“I’m not thinkin they will because the district can’t afford to keep the lectricity and water on in the summertime.”
“Can you send them to another school district temporarily?”
“Whole damn state is flooded,” Johnny interjected, pulling up his pants that were in need of a belt. “Ain’t nowhere to go that don’t got mold comin through the walls.”
“The smell out near I-40 is pretty bad – I almost puked coming here,” Sophie added in an attempt to appeal to common experience. She knew her mother did not need the guilt traditionally put on her for making a life for herself outside of Azalea, today of all days.
“Yes, those hog farms were really wiped out,” Linda said.
“Hogs’ll be back. Jerry keeps a few of em safe every time them canes come through,” Johnny responded. “You gettin the grand tour of Azalea, Soph?”
“Um… some. Just what Ewin and Ida pointed out on the way here.” After a few beats of silence, she added, “We haven’t visited the world’s largest frying pan yet!” as she laughed nervously and looked around. As Azalea’s claim to fame, the frying pan was Sophie’s main point of reference for the town she barely remembered.
“Uh huh,” Johnny murmured. “Well why don’t I take you to the service, and we can ride out and see the old family lanes.”
Sophie and Linda locked eyes for a second before she hesitatingly agreed. She did not have much of a desire to spend more time with her uncle, but then again, she would do just about anything to keep him away from her mother and her mother’s desire for today’s celebration of life.
The family slowly returned to their cars, and Sophie hugged the red headed little girls goodbye before she went and sat in the front seat of Johnny’s small gray pick-up truck. The red-headed girls and their mother had their own vehicle, and it was obviously pre-meditated that they would not be attending the actual funeral service with the rest of the family. Johnny quickly backed out of the makeshift parking lot, through the dense patch of pine trees, whereupon he turned right down a two-lane road that was unfamiliar to her. They rode for almost twenty minutes in silence until she noticed that they were now at a point where blueberry fields dotted either side of the road. In the distance she could see three or four small wooden houses that looked all but abandoned except for an orange couch in front of one in the center where a man was smoking a cigarette. Then, the buzzing again.
That’s cool. Maybe we could adapt them for the Spring concert.
Well I’d actually have to learn those, Sophie thought, dropping the phone back into her bag. “Where are we?” she asked.
“Bout to ride past the Hargroves, then I’ll show you your grandaddy’s lane,” Johnny replied. He started to slow down and rolled down his window pointing, “See? That there is Bobby Lee Lane, your grandaddy. Next is Teachey Lane, after good ol Edward Teach.”
She leaned over and looked out his window, and sure enough that’s what was written on the street sign. “Neat,” she said, really not sure what to make of the whole thing. That’s where the Hargroves live, and that’s where our property is? Great. Might as well package the whole thing up and sell it as ‘southern culture’ to her friends in the orchestra back at Harvard. Johnny pulled off onto Teachey Lane, reversed, and returned back on the same road they came from towards the Baptist church where the service was being held. As they passed back through the blueberry fields, Sophie decided that she would try to make conversation. “Uncle Johnny, have you ever heard of a haint?”
Johnny chuckled. “A haint? Where’d you hear bout that?”
“Leland mentioned it on our way to the burial. He said Faye and Bessy used to talk ⸺about haints in the blueberry fields.”
“Yea, well, that’s what n—–s call ghosts,” Johnny said. “I dunno how momma got all messed up in that.”
She blinked as she broke eye contact with him, unsure of how to react. Thoughts began to flash rapidly through her mind – how could he just say that? Still? Didn’t he, like her mother have memories of their high school being integrated? Of how her mother talked about the protests of the high school prom? Or what about “that year” when the annual fry fest was taken over by the Klan? Swallowing her spit, Sophie felt again the odd sense of intrigue and disgust that came over her whenever she came back to this place. This place that she was somehow always bound to, whose authenticity was revolting but somehow rawer than her neighborhood in Cambridge.
“People don’t really say that anymore,” she muttered, and turned toward her window. She stared into the blueberry fields as they rode the rest of the way in silence.
When they arrived, Sophie was glad that the church was far enough away from the interstate that only a faint scent of dead swine lingered in the air. The rest of the family were milling about in the foyer filled with people. There was a guest book next to a collage of pictures of Faye while in the background one of Bessy’s sons played gospel music on the piano. Sophie was frankly amazed at how crowded it was, and it seemed like almost all of the Hargroves had come. Linda was standing at the entrance of the sanctuary graciously attending to all who entered, and Sophie thought it best to take up a position next to her mother. She shook hands with everyone who kept saying it was so good to see her! which she returned, despite not recalling any of their names. Suddenly another group of Bessy’s children and grandchildren entered, and she recognized several of their faces from Bessy’s nighty-eighth birthday party. Terrance, Bessy’s oldest son, hugged her upon arrival and said, “Hey there Soph, real sorry for your loss. We all been thinkin of you. You know Bessy wanted to be here today.”
“Thank you very much,” Sophie responded. “And how is Bessy?”
“She alright, just tired. Probly from workin them damn blueberry fields for so many years. But you know… she ain’t worked em as hard as her momma,” he said to Sophie knowingly, though she had no idea what he was talking about.
“Right…”
“Yea, yea you know ol Byron worked her momma hard out there too!” added a tall man with a cane who was standing close behind Terrance.
“Sorry?” Sophie asked, confused by the mention of her great-grandfather.
“Tay-ronce, my man!” Leland interjected, approaching the three of them. “What you doin in here lookin like a black klansman?”
“Yea, yea, I know you ain’t been seein that movie though!” Terrance exclaimed back as they laughed and hugged one another. Wrapping arms around each other’s shoulders, they moved into the sanctuary together while the music was quieting. Sophie decided to examine the guestbook and add her name as she had about reached capacity on the number of family interactions she could handle for the day. Linda appeared and told her it was time for them to enter, so Sophie linked arms with her mother as they walked down the aisle of the sanctuary to the front row.
The pianist hit the final chords of “May the Circle Be Unbroken” as everyone took their seats. Sophie recognized this song from when her grandmother used to wake her up by singing into her room early in the morning whenever she came to visit. Linda approached the front of the sanctuary and thanked everyone for being there, declaring, once more, that it was to be a celebration of life. Leland and Ewin had both prepared remarks, and for the first time ever Sophie saw the two brothers embrace after Leland recalled the many Christmases the family had spent together at Faye’s place near the beach. Without Faye, it seemed neither of those things could be the same, Christmas or the beach, and everyone knew it. Sophie had known it since Faye’s memory went, and she knew that even then Faye knew it as she continued to hold up the pretense of living at the beach while moving through escalating stages of assisted living. It was a good thing Leland’s words brought them all back to the beach, back to when things were better, more shared. Linda for her part seemed satisfied with the overall level of celebrating life when she stood up at the end of the service and announced, “If anyone else has anything to add, please feel free, otherwise we’ll head to the reception.”
“I just want to say something real quick for Ms. Faye,” a short woman in a red blouse towards the back of the sanctuary said, raising one finger in the air as she stood up. Sophie recognized her as one of Bessy’s daughters, but could not remember her name. “Ms. Faye, you know she was real good to me, and to all us Hargroves. She always brought me to the beach and let me stay with her and her family, and she was always very generous.” All of the family sitting in the first few rows turned their heads to look at the woman as she continued, “You know how Ms. Faye was, always buying new clothes. She would buy a new summer wardrobe every year down at the beach! Then she’d give whatever she didn’t want to me and momma!” Bits of laughter could now be heard around the sanctuary as the woman placed a hand on her chest and added, “Well I just felt I had to say something for Ms. Faye. She really was like a second mother to me.”
With that, Linda thanked them all again for being there and commenced the reception. Sophie returned to shaking hands with people she didn’t know who asked her how cold it was in Boston, or New York, or wherever it was that she was exactly. Johnny murmured something about getting home to the red-headed little girls, and Ida and Ewin said they were going to go by Azalea High School where they both taught for generations and asked Sophie if she wanted to come along.
“No, thanks,” Sophie responded. “Think I better stay with mom.” Linda was gathering the guest book, photo collage, and a few candles into a box and Sophie offered to take it out to the car. Once in the parking lot, she saw that Leland and Stella were waiting for them.
“Guess it’s bout time I get myself a drink,” Leland said as she approached. “You’re twenty-one by now right Soph?”
“Twenty-two.”
“Well I’ll be damned. Why don’t you and your momma come meet me and Stella at the hotel bar?”
“Sure, that sounds great,” she responded, in need of a drink after the smells and swells of the day. “We’ll head there after we load up these boxes.” She pulled out her phone absentmindedly and noticed she had missed another message from Zach.
Ok Soph I’m headed to bed. Hope everything is still going ok. Maybe next time I can come to Carolina with ya
She sighed. Ha, ha – you must’ve had a few drinks tonight ;)… sweet dreams
Linda brought out one more box to the car, they hugged, and set off. Sophie noticed her mother was distracted so they rode in silence until they reached the Marriot, which served all three surrounding towns and advertised the best cocktail lounge of all of Eastern North Carolina. Leland and Stella had already ordered gin and tonics by the time Linda and Sophie arrived at the lounge, and Linda requested an old fashioned.
“Guess I better go for hard liquor as well,” Sophie said as everyone laughed.
“I still can’t believe he showed up,” Linda said, twirling the straw around the maraschino cherries that had been added to her old fashioned.
“Who?” Leland asked.
“Who? You know who!”
“Oh, Johnny?” Leland added as Linda nodded. “Yea well, we don’t need to talk bout that. It was a good day for Faye today.”
“So many people showed up!” Stella added enthusiastically.
“I liked what you had to say about the beach, Leland,” Linda said. “Brought back goodF memories.”
“Yea, well I was usually drinkin gin and tonics back then too!” Leland added laughing. They all continued drinking and reminiscing about those Christmases before Faye’s memory went, before Johnny stole all of that money, and when there used to be a separate table entirely dedicated to the desserts. Leland started telling stories about all the gag gifts he had procured for various family members over the years. Linda laughed and ordered another old fashioned, this time with extra maraschino cherries. Stella and Sophie mostly listened, Sophie being too young to relive much beyond the feeling of those Christmases and Stella being Leland’s second wife had only been there part of the time.
“Hey, Leland, tell them the story of when you delivered Coca-Colas out in Keninsville,” Stella interjected, having gotten bored with the Azalea repertoire after a while.
“They don’t wanna hear that!” Leland said.
“Sure they do, I bet Sophie does,” Stella said, nudging Sophie with her foot under the table.
“What? Oh, right, what’s that one about?” Sophie asked, playing along.
“Oh… alright,” Leland said, looking over at Stella. “Well you know how I used to work for Coca-Cola? Well back when they had me runnin the delivery truck I used to go out to all those towns near Wilmington… you know, Wrightsboro, Lizabethtown, Burgaw…” He looked around to make sure that they were paying attention and they all nodded in acknowledgement. “Well, one day I was making the rounds out in Burgaw when I noticed there was an order for forty coke cases by a guy called Bill Teachey.”
“Oh, you know those Teachey’s… spread out all over Eastern North Carolina!” Linda exclaimed and started coughing, having choked down the last drops of her remaining old-fashioned.
“Well, gets better than that,” Leland said. “So I’m goin to drop off this order and turns out the address takes me to a trailer park. I get there and there’s this black dude out front of the trailer grillin chicken and I say, ‘Hey there, you know where I can find Bill Teachey?’ And he says, ‘I’m Bill Teachey.’ So I say, ‘Ok well I got a lotta cokes for ya!’ And you know we hit it off like that, me askin him why he ordered so many cokes and all. He said his daddy owned a restaurant in the area and they were havin an event that night and they needed some extra cokes. Well, you know me, I got curious and said, ‘What’s your daddy’s name?’”
“Oh yea, course you did,” said Linda.
“Yea, yea, and he said, ‘Booker.’ I said, ‘Well I don’t know any Booker Teacheys, and I know a few!’ Anyhow, I went on about how I’m a Teachey and we’re from Azalea and yada yada. And you know what he said? He said his granddaddy was from Azalea, and his grandaddy was white!”
“Well!” said Linda laughing as she seemed prepared to do no matter what the ending of the story was at that point. Stella, who had initially requested the story, seemed once again bored of her husband’s chatter and began playing pong on her flip phone. Sophie stared at Leland for a moment, blinked, and then looked to her mother. Why had she never heard about this? Was Leland even remembering this correctly? He was a few drinks in after all and had a tendency to, as the family always said, elaborate. And what was that woman saying at her grandmother’s funeral? Clothes, her grandmother gave her clothes? And that man with the cane… didn’t he say something about working hard in the blueberry fields with Bessy, or… wait, her mother? Why did he mention grandpop Byron? Oh. No… no, it can’t be.
The hotel’s doorbell rang as an older couple entered the lounge, and the smell of dead swine wafted through the opened door. “Hey, Soph, you alright?” Leland added. “Look like you’ve seen a haint!”
Allison Kanner-Botan is a writer and PhD student in the Divinity School and the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. Her work has been published in Memoryhouse Magazine. Originally from Atlanta, she now lives in Chicago with her partner, Xelef.
