Beyond Molasses Creek Read Online Free

saddens me to watch it, the two of them getting nowhere.
    And then there is this great white bird that flies down and lands on the back of the first elephant. With this bird on his back, somehow the elephant is different. He doesn’t feel the need to pull back anymore. Against his nature, he allows himself to be pulled for the first time and, lo and behold, crosses over that river.
    The strangest thing is how that white bird sits so calmly on the elephant’s back, not flapping its wings or pecking or pestering it at all. Instead, it is majestic in its great white stillness, and just by being there somehow soothes the animal, coaxes it silently to the other side.
    I wonder what that means. Probably means you’ve lost it, Al .
    What time is it, anyway? Kat hops up on the bed and walks across my legs, purring. He’s excited or agitated, fuzzy tail flicking. He comes all the way up to my face and, standing on my chest, sniffs me. His eyes are huge with a squiggly green line going all the way around his pupils. One should never be this close to a cat this large.
    â€œOkay,” I say, sitting up. “You hungry? That it?” He jumps down off the bed and prances toward the kitchen. Spoiled cat. But he misses his daddy. “I miss him too, you know. I miss him too.”
    Morning comes in on the breeze through the window screens, and the dingy yellow curtains my mother hung thirty years ago blow and flutter. How strange to be back in this house without them here. I can still feel my parents everywhere, in the curtains, in the old tin can that holds coffee grounds, in the vinyl covering the kitchen floor.
    I make my coffee and drink it black from an old mug I brought my parents from Istanbul when I was twentysomething. It was my father’s favorite, and it’s covered with a web of brown lines after nearly forty years of use, no doubt harboring all sorts of bacteria. I hold it to my nose and breathe in the deep rich coffee. When one travels, one gets used to not using cream or sugar because these are luxuries hard to come by. Plus, I like my coffee dark, strong, and potent . . . like my men.
    I can feel my father’s hand where mine is now. With my eyes closed, I pretend to be him for a moment, or maybe I do become him, I’m not sure. I open my eyes and head out for the dock where the water is clear and calm like glass. I imagine Daddy did this very thing.
    There are white birds flying toward the sun, over my head and behind the gray wood-sided house. The sun highlights the green tips of trees across the waterway, the green tips of marsh grass, the green tip of Vesey’s tin roof. I sit Indian-style at the end of the dock and sip my coffee while the breeze carries my hair around my shoulders and the warm sun heats my back.
    Is Vesey awake? Maybe he’s already had his coffee. Or maybe he doesn’t need any coffee. Needs nothing but the promise of a new day to get him up out of bed, probably before sunrise. He’s something else. Natural. I try to be like that. I try to sit here and be one with nature, one with the universe, but truth be told, I still feel like an outsider. I always have. I set my coffee to the side and stretch my legs, stretch the stiffness of sleeping in Daddy’s old lumpy bed out of my joints. I work myself through some yoga poses, and by the time I hit downward dog, I feel self-conscious, the exact opposite of what yoga is supposed to be doing for me. Suppose Vesey is watching from his window.
    I remember sitting on this very dock when I was a little girl, hanging my bare feet over the edge into the cool water. I would look to the right and see the creek winding through marsh grass. It would call me, the water would. It would tell me there was adventure to be found if I would just follow it around the bend. Vesey would come over to my side of the river in his fishing boat, and the two of us would head out in the morning air and catch fish for our mothers to