Low tide

Her whole life was lived between high tide and low tide, moments of giggling grandeur and moments of sheer emptiness. She stood in the shell-pocked sand that would normally be underwater and looked across the sound to the island. There, at the island, people laughed. There, a man touched a woman’s arm, his glove whispering across her sleeve, whole books of communication in the touch, almost obscured by the wind. There, a girl tugged the sleeve of her mother, and the woman’s hazel eyes fell with a smile on the face of her daughter. There was where people belonged.

She was barefoot; her toes slipped on the fungus that blanketed the shells like moss. How many creatures was she killing just by existing, by standing on the shore? A seagull lighted on the sand just out of the water and began to search for food. It was merely a silhouette in the gloaming. Was that all she was, just a being in search of sustenance? But no, seagulls culled the population of their prey, didn’t they, served a purpose. She had no purpose, except to stand on the shore and wonder about the people on the faraway island.

She stretched her arms wide. Her loneliness could not be contained in the gesture. She shut her eyes as tight as they could close. She screamed silently, her mouth agape in a perfect O.

The mansion

They call it Mount Pleasant, but to Joseph, it’s anything but pleasant. The stifling heat of the outbuildings, the occasional beatings, the hands rubbed raw from hours of scrubbing, none of it is in the way of pleasant. The whites call it the Grand Dame of the houses in the area, something about how pretty the house is, a mixture of Scottish and Georgian style, he overhears. But no Grand Dame harbors such wanton cruelty in her house. Surely not.

The people who hold the tours never talk about Joseph, hardly mention the slaves that live in this house. Joseph resents being ignored, forgotten. No one remembers them this far north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Oh, he’s heard the abolitionists, after his time, talk in these halls. He’s heard the modern folk talk idly about how terrible slavery was, before moving on to exhort the lovely architecture or the mysterious door that goes nowhere, set in the wall just for symmetry.

But when it gets dark and the tours are all done and the shutters have been secured against the night, Joseph makes sure the Grand Dame remembers her past. He waits until the uniformed people check the halls with flashlights at intervals; then he sends things crashing through the upstairs hallway, and he remembers the sound of a scream, a footstep, a fallen pot of soup for which he is beaten.

The security guards refuse to face Joseph alone. They either neglect their duty to check the building at night, or they come in pairs, never venturing upstairs, even if they see a light on. They, at least, know the Grand Dame’s secrets. Joseph lives to make sure someone remembers. Joseph is of his time, and this time, and all times. Joseph is past, present, and future. Joseph is here, always.