The Land of Mango Sunsets by Dorothea Benton Frank Read Free Book Online Page B

somehow impolite.
    “Mother? Hi, it’s Miriam. Just wanted to chat. Call me when you have a moment, okay?”
    I hung up and looked at the phone, feeling lonely for her company. A visit to Sullivans Island was long overdue. The Land of Mango Sunsets. I craved it.
    How mysterious and dreamy the Lowcountry was in the winter! For as hot and sultry as it was in the summer, the wet rolling fogs of January and February covered the islands in thick mist so dense you could imagine ghosts slipping in and out of it, whispering their histories in your ear.
    When I was a young girl, we would have family gatherings at our Sullivans Island beach home all summer long, but it was the winter ones I loved most. The house was uninsulated and sometimes it was so cold indoors you could see your breath. I couldn’t recall ever being bothered by the cold then, but I remembered the older people complaining and someone would always say, well then, why don’t you put on a sweater? In those days you didn’t demand the perfect temperature, you ate leftovers—another incarnation of yesterday’s dinner and indication that the world was a perfectly wonderful place. After an early supper of maybe black-eyed peas over rice and a thick slice of baked ham, fried with canned pineapple, my grandmother would take the binoculars and go out on the back porch that faced the marsh. She would sit in her favorite ancient wicker rocking chair to watch the birds and the sunset. In retrospect, I imagine what she had been truly seeking was a little well-earned peace and quiet. She could have had it, that is, until I showed up. I would crawl all over her and beg for a story.
    “Let’s settle down, sweetheart,” she would say.
    Once I stopped wiggling, my grandmother would tuck me in against her side with an old afghan to block the chilly air of the evening. I would snuggle and relive the same tales her mother had told her long ago. Her voice was so soothing and musical, and most of all, the stories she told were fantastic.
    I would close my eyes and be transported to the Isle of Palms as it was hundreds of years ago. Native American women from the Seewee tribe were cooking venison over an open fire or whole fish on bamboo skewers. I could almost hear their babies gurgling and laughing, hanging from tree limbs, tightly and lovingly laced in their deerskin cradle boards. The women would suspend them from a branch while they performed whatever chore was at hand—gathering berries or firewood. My grandmother would get to the part of the story where she talked about the ingenious opening in the bottom of the cradle boards that allowed the baby’s natural business to drop to the ground without the baby being soiled. I would dissolve in a fit of snickers and she would narrow her eyes at me in mock horror that made me giggle even more. Like most children of my day, I thought talking about babies swinging from trees and watering the ground was very naughty business.
    In later years, my mother had told the same stories and others to my sons—stories of black bears lumbering through the shallow waters looking for fish, of the shining eyes of wild jaguars that would eat you alive, and of drunken pirates, their crazed gunfights and buried treasure. Those tales gave the boys nightmares. But then she would tell of the adventuresof soldiers and their bravery and of Edgar Allan Poe, who wrote “The Gold Bug” when he was stationed at Fort Moultrie. Those yarns gave the boys imaginary games to play for hours on end.
    In the summers, my sons would run shirtless and free all over the island, climbing the forts and picking wild blackberries. They would arrive home filthy, knees skinned, faces freckled and sunburned. I would swear to this day that the light of their exuberant smiles actually brightened all the rooms. Of course, I would march them straight to a good scrub. After baths, I would make thick tomato sandwiches slathered with my mother’s homemade mayonnaise because it