Scott Fagan's Mem.wa?

Book 3. Sula, The Mountain Dove

I had an unusually enjoyable visit with Sula  this morning, I put three of my last six dollars in the tank so that I could go up to see her. It was a beautiful morning and the views round this that and the next corner were crystal clear. The” surf was up” outside Hull Bay, Tortola, Jos Van Dyke and islands of the Thatch Key archipelago were a majestic blue in the distance, and the”Plums were up” in Sulas “Hog Plum” tree too. The shutters are flung open in her little wooden house and the voices of the choir at the Cathedral of Saints. Peter and Paul come pouring out of her little radio, each utterance aspiring to sanctity and  sounding like they are hitting awfully close to the mark, to me.

I have come to love the shaky but sincere leads and rough harmonies of one singer after the next and one  Choir after the other. Sula’s  sister the long departed “Tantan Bertha’s” son, Ashford is in the other room, with his radio also tuned to WSTA and he is playing his alto saxophone along with the music. He plays in the old “Quelbay” style, a high wavering vibrato, a full beautiful tone. He is one of the very best but does not play in public, he is very shy and is waiting until he becomes a better player. He is really very good already, and I very much delight in listening to him play.

Ashford and I connect through the music and we have interesting music related conversations just about every Sunday. Conversations about music books that he orders through the mail, scales and intervals, theory and improvisations. He honors me by presenting thoughtful questions about these things as though I were (because I am a recording artist) a  knowledgeable maestro. God bless him, I’ve actually been able to answer a few of his questions and even add a little info on top of that, but it’s  a fluke,  small bits of knowledge I’ve picked up by osmosis. My storehouse/library of academic information in this area is embarrassingly sketchy, my own musical gifts are more like a wild rolling eyed confidence, married to a series of semi spontaneous heartfelt polyphonic outbursts through an instrument that continually surprises (among others) me, with it’s power and purdyness.

What the heck that has to do with knowing anything, is a great mystery. But if Ashford (or anyone else) wishes to be kind to me because of it, I’ll take it and try my best to return the same. 

The music of sincere people in reverential worship fills Sulas world every Sunday and it is a beautiful thing

 Sula’s Hog Plum Tree is weighed down with golden-yellow and  soo very sweet plums. She was hoping that I would be able to pick a bag full for her “other” boy friend Desooka” (really Desouza but Sula has decided to call him Desooka and so it is)

 My first question to Sula is always “Sula have you been behaving your self?” and she answers sweetly in a proper lilting creole, “Yes Scott, I am always well-behaved” My second question is “But Sula, how can a woman who has not one or two or even three or four but maybe five or six or more boyfriends at the same time, claim to be behaving herself?” And she will throw her head back and laugh out loud..

I ask her if she has gotten all dressed up for me this morning, because she looks so sharp.. She denys it, but her dress was especially pretty, a royal blue with little heart wreaths filled with flowers all over. She looked very pretty and I told her so. She had a red kerchief on, but took it off to re-tie, as she did I noticed her hair, a wild confusion of snow-white curls with perfect little plaits and braids. I said “Sula, don’t you ever leave the kerchief off? Your hair looks so pretty and the kerchief must be so hot.

To my surprise she did leave it off..she looked great and comfortable and cool.

 Breaking into a more colloquial calypso accent, she said, “Scott, Ah wan yu tu git me ting dem frum de box dare fo me, ah want a candy, because my mout is soo dry, an ah wan yu put me oy drop dem in me oy”

I teasingly say “Sula yu wan me put yu oy drop dem in yu oy? In yu oy? She laughed at my exaggeration of oy,  then I said “but Sula yu have tu open yu oy so I cou put in de drops” She said “But, What do yu mean? I thought they were wide open already? Yu know yu poor girlfren is as bline as a bat, de poor ol girl kee-an see a ting!

 “Scott yu know what I heard on de radio? Some boys who went to college  say that there is no God, Who de hell dey tink made the heavens and de Eart, de moon and de stars? Dey mus-ee tink red pea soup could cook it self. How de hell dey could tink there is no God?

Sula then spoke a loud the sequence of the angel of the lord visiting a young virgin Mary and God placing his only begotten son in her womb, to grow there like every one else. She recounted the angel of the lord coming to Joseph in his sleep to explain what was happening with Mary, and she noted that in those days for a young man to be engaged to be married and discovering that his young bride to be was having a baby, was a difficult thing, but Joseph over came that and they had the little baby Jesus. And the little boy grew up playing and going to school just like all the rest, but then gave himself so that the rest of us could have life everlasting, could be relieved of our sins..”Oh yes!” she said “I know there is a God and I know my God is a good God.”

 “Didn’t God save me when I was only twelve years old and I had the Typhoid Fever? Scott, Doctor Knud Hansen was right here, he was white yu know, and He told Mama Lovie (Sula’s Mother) that he was going, and coming back that afternoon. Then he told Old Uncle George (one of the original of the three Moolenar brothers), he told him that he didn’t believe that it would be possible for me to live out the day, and George came down and told Mama Lovie what the Doctor had said”. “Sula” I asked, “Were you in the hospital in town whe you had typhoid fever or were you out here?” “Right here” she said “I was right here, and Knud Hansen called me his little girl and took care of me” “Sula” I said, “How did Knud Hansen come out? Did he ride on a horse or a carrage”? “No, Scott, No,” she said “Knud Hansen walked, he walked all the way from town. Knud Hansen came out here ten times to see me, and when he came back that afternoon and saw that I was still alive..he said it was a miracle. He told Mama Lovie that if he could, he would give her a Gold Star for how extra specially good she took care of me. It was God that saved me, my God is a good God. How else could I have lived when I gave birth two different times, to two little dead babies?”

 “Knud Hansen took care of me then too you know, even though I was a big and old and grown up woman, he still called me his little girl, and said that he would never let anything happen to me”. “How big where you then Sula”, I asked “any bigger than you are now?  I don’t think you were ever big Sula, I don’t think you were ever  any bigger than a Mountain Dove. And Sula, tell me, how old were you then?” “I was tutty one, tutty-two, tutty-three,” ” Wow Sula” I said, “all things considered that doesn’t sound very old either. Big and old?” She laughed..”You’re right, anyway, How can they think there is no God when God has always been so good to me?”

 As she spoke..I thought to my self, just listen Scott.. she doesn’t need, nor will she benefit from hearing your cockamamie comments on the old or new testaments, or you recounting current  theories on self-organization. you don’t really know any more than she does, or Knud Hansen did, about what came before or lies beyond the stars..you don’t need to show off how smart you are, at the expense of her comfort and beliefs, you don’t need to upset her and make her sad. She’s a good soul and a wonder in the world. Just dig it and be present..listen to the love in her and in the music all around.

I asked her if she knew my friend PK Hansen, (related to the Christiansens, a family that she has mentioned often) she ruminated a bit searching through a vast net of  direct and tangentialy connected names and relations, and then said..”But Scott, our friend  Jowers said he was going to bring Noreen to see me, but Alric says the house is too old and run down for visitors, that we should paint it first.

I said “Sula, we all love your old wood house, it doesn’t need to be painted before anyone comes to see you, we all expect to see, we want to see, we love to see the old house just the way it is, it’s like a national historic site, and you, Sula, you are a national treasure”

 Her face always lights up when I remind her of these things, her eldest son Alric has just moved back to the island after spending fifty-five years in the states, working mostly as a prison guard. He is a good and decent fellow, but he’s impacted by a stateside mentality that has not yet been recalibrated to the local culture. Further, he would prefer that Sula left her old house and moved into his brand new house, with he and his wife Florence,  on the other side of Crown.

Perhaps enough people expressed their shock and dismay with that idea, voicing their opinion that that would be the end of Sula, to have gotten his attention. However, He is still unfortunately quite verbal in his disapproval of her “old-time” environment as it is. at 107, Sula really is a national treasure. The shame is that more people are not aware of her, and have the opportunity to spend time in her home and company. She is a National Treasure is every way imaginable.