It wasn’t what my granddad said that changed me. It was what I heard.
We sat on the wide back porch, thick Georgia air clinging to our skin like warm silk. Everything felt heavy and slow here. It was good to have a physical reason for the weight on my shoulders. Blame it on the midsummer Georgia air. Even the tall blades of Bahiagrass bent their weary heads.
I watched my granddad. His face seemed sculpted out of wood or clay, deep crevasses carving out his story in the wrinkles of his eyes, the turn of his mouth, the furrow of his brow. He was born when there were separate drinking fountains for blacks and whites, when the color of your skin was a justification for moral judgment. Sometimes, in Georgia, folks still thought it was.
I watched him rock his old chair, slowly back and forth. Back and forth. He pulled out a red bandana from inside his shirt pocket and wiped the sweat beading on his forehead. I turned to look out over the field, down to the pond and the carefully tilled vegetable garden. Even the scarecrow looked sleepy, propped on his pole in the middle of lush green tomato plants and wide-leafed zucchini.
I had asked Granddad a question. With just him and me, sitting there in the quiet, nothing but the chirping of katydids and the rhythmic creak of his rocker against the porch wood, I felt as though he could read my thoughts anyway. I waited so long for his response that I began to wonder if I had even asked him the question at all.
Finally, he closed his eyes. He stopped rocking and sat very still. I pulled myself to the edge of my seat.
“Listen.”
His voice was soft and strong at the same time, a tone only cultivated by experience and wisdom. I waited. That was all he said. Listen. Then he sat there, still, the faintest hint of a smile turning up the corners of his mouth. I took a deep breath, and the hot silk air filled my lungs.
I stood and took the three steps off the porch in one stride. My feet sunk into the soft earth. I needed to move, to walk, to think. I headed out into the field, down toward the pond. As I walked, I ran my hand through the tall grasses. They felt like warm waves lapping my fingertips.
I had a hard choice to make.
I am the third son of a decorated Marine. My father died serving our country in Iraq. I thought about my oldest brother, Lucas, stationed over in Afghanistan… still, even though people say the war is over, they sent him anyway. Lucas was happy to go. He always wanted to follow in Dad’s footsteps. We were all expected to, but Lucas really wanted to, ever since he was little.
Lionel went into the Army because Momma didn’t think he had much choice. The Army would give him an opportunity to straighten up and support himself. The Army would make him a man.
That left me. Jade. The baby. Seventeen and that’s what they all still call me… my baby, baby brother, little man. How am I supposed to grow up when everyone keeps calling me a baby?
But that’s not what this was about. That’s not what had me up at this old farmhouse, walking in the same fields where my mother had spent countless muggy summer afternoons as a black girl growing up in the south. I could almost imagine her here. Younger. Maybe happier. It’s just that… I wasn’t sure that I wanted to go into the service. In fact, I was pretty damn sure I didn’t. Georgia Tech, that’s what I wanted.
I grasped a hand full of grass and yanked it. The tearing sounded brutal, muted and slow. I felt the burning rage rising up from my belly. I threw the grass as hard as I possibly could, and the blades seemed suspended in the dense air for a moment before falling back into the depths of a million still grasses.
I shouldn’t have to feel this kind of pressure. I shouldn’t have to decide between my family’s pride and my desires. I should be allowed the freedom to choose my own path.
I reached the edge of the pond. The shallow water was warm after soaking in the day’s sunshine. I walked out to the end of the rickety little dock and sat down, dangled my feet in. The water was cool. A couple of fireflies chased each other across the surface. It was getting close to dusk. I looked out to the wooden raft anchored in the middle of the pond. My brothers and I used to play king on the mountain out there when we were kids… once I got up the nerve to swim out.
I was seven. Lucas was fourteen, and Lionel twelve.
“No!” I had screamed, shaking from cold and maybe a little bit from anger. “YOU can’t MAKE ME!”
My brothers had sat on the edge of the raft with their jaws open and all their stupid white teeth showing. They had laughed at me. They were laughing at me as the raft tipped up on one end under their weight.
“C’mon, little man,” Lionel had shouted. His biceps flexed as he waved his hand, beckoning me out. I was always in awe of him, and afraid of him. My momma said he had fire in his eyes, and I believed her because I saw it myself.
My teeth had chattered. I crossed my arms and shook my head. No way.
I may have been small, but maybe that’s why I was so resolute. I grew my strength out of necessity, survival. I planted my feet in the sand.
Lucas had slid off the raft into the water. I couldn’t see him for a few seconds, then he emerged just feet away from me and rose out of the pond like Poseidon. He smiled, water dripping down his face, and I knew his smile was just for me. He took my small hand in his big, strong one. I walked out into the water.
Ten years later, I saw myself out on that raft. It looked so much closer now. Why had I been so afraid? I sat on the bank and saw little seven-year-old Jade, shivering in the milky twilight all alone on the raft. My brothers had left me there, because after spending all day jumping and diving, I had refused to come in. I made it! Why on earth would I go back in? What if I’d never be able to swim out there again?
I pulled off my t-shirt and stood at the end of the dock. The moon reflected heavy on the water. I dove into it. The deep water was cool as it washed over me. With each stroke, I felt my anxiety melt away into the darkness. I pulled myself onto the raft. It tilted into my weight.
That night when I was seven, I had curled up in the middle of the raft, bathed in the strange light that washes over everything on southern Georgia summer evenings. I had stayed there until I heard my momma calling me in. Her voice was sweet and rich, pushing through the thick air like an angel’s voice dipped in honey. She sang me home with Amazing Grace.
Now, nearly a man, I looked out over the field. The wind danced gently across the Bahiagrass, which rippled silver and gray beneath the big star-speckled sky. Granddad lit his pipe. I knew because I could see its orange glow. I smelled the sweet pipe smoke from way down there at the pond.
Listen. What had he meant? I closed my eyes, and took a deep breath. I could hear the gentle breeze, the occasional zipping of a dragonfly, the chirps of frogs and cicadas. The soft ripples in the pond lapped against the raft.
I sat for so long. The water had nearly all evaporated from my skin by the time I heard what I didn’t yet know I was listening for. It started somewhere deep inside of my gut, I think. It worked its way up, filling my chest, gripping my throat and then bursting into my head like the first note of a symphony. Loud. Unexpected. Beautiful. My scalp tingled and an electric energy moved through my body, propelling me to my feet. The raft rocked under my shifting weight, and then steadied itself again.
I knew. I listened and what I heard was my own strength. Poised on the edge of the old wooden raft, anchored there in the pond where it always had been and always would be, I was ready to dive into the dark water. I knew that I could swim. Alone, I could swim.
Then, before I left the raft, I heard another sound. Low and sweet and slow. It was the sound of my momma’s voice, singing her baby home.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: A poet and fiction writer since she was a child, Melinda K. Bryce has always felt the power of the written word. After studying English Literature and creative writing at Western Michigan and Oakland Universities, she is now a freelance writer living outside of Detroit. She is published in various online magazines and is working on her first novel.