Free Beyond Molasses Creek by Nicole Seitz Page A

see him, only the rainbow-colored umbrella protecting him from the Lowcountry sun.

TWELVE
The Book of the Gods
    Kathmandu, Nepal
Sunila
    I AM USING MY UMBRELLA AS A SHIELD AGAINST THE sheets of rain, but I am losing this battle. The spokes of metal twist and bend around me. The rainbow colors are faded, gray, and ripping in two places now. I am feeling faint and losing strength. How long have I been walking? How many days? Am I going in circles? All too likely I will not make it to my destination. My escape was desperate and not well planned. I will suffer at my own hands. I will die on the streets of Kathmandu and be swept up in the morning by downtrodden Dalit women with all the other garbage lining these streets.
    I think of Amaa’s face. I know she loves me. In her own way. I imagine her fears now, of me out here in the monsoon, drowning, weak. She will not want me to die here. She will want me to keep moving. I hold tight to my umbrella and lean against a building. I cannot stop now; I have come too far. I must reach the US Embassy, if not for me, for Amaa and for the person who once owned this book. My body hurts and my mind is racing. I open my mouth to scream in fear and triumph, but nothing will come out.
    I have nothing, but at least I still have this book.

THIRTEEN
The Sketchbook
    Ally
    W HEN I WAS ABOUT FOUR YEARS OLD I WAS GIVEN A notebook by my grandmother to chronicle the beauty of the world around me. It was my comfort, my oogie blanket. I carried it with me everywhere. Pages and pages of sketches, scribbled by a child’s hand, then progressing into more confident, more accomplished lines—Charleston gates and iron scrolls, palmetto trees and seashells etched in sand, statues of gods and angels adorning walkways and gardens. Nothing ever belonged to me, really. I just drew what I saw, copied the beauty others had created before me. I was not original with my art. A fake, if you want to view it that way. Yet they did have a certain quality . . .
    â€œYour drawings are coming along, Ally,” my mother would say as she wiped her hands on her apron. “If you keep that up, you might be downtown in a gallery someday. Can you imagine?”
    â€œOr she might illustrate one of my medical books,” Daddy would tell me.
    â€œSwell. So I can either peddle my work to tourists or watch boring operations and draw blood and gore and little metal instruments. Thanks, but no thanks.”
    My parents weren’t sure what to do with me by the time I hit puberty. It hit me hard and without much warning. My body began to grow and change and my heart would race, my blood itching to do something. Anytime Chubby Checker was on the radio, I’d twist and gyrate. When Pat Boone came on, I’d swoon and doodle his name. Mama and Daddy would look at each other and wring their hands. “Shame to let a talent like your drawing go to waste. After all, you have it in your blood.”
    Parents like to live their unrealized dreams through their children. My grandmother was an artist of sorts. She’d do some small oil paintings of stills: porcelain bowls and fruits and tablecloths. My father had always felt he’d let his mother down in that way. He had terrible handwriting and could hardly draw a stick figure. I did know it made him proud to see my drawings, my interpretations of the world. And no matter that I pretended not to care, I drew because I wanted to please him. To please them. Children so desire to make their parents happy. That’s why it’s devastating when the opposite happens, when the child brings shame and ruin to her family.
    By the time I turned twelve years old, I’d sit for long hours on the dock, drawing the birds as they preened in the sun, arms out wide in the marsh grass, soaking up rays and the vibrations of the water. I would lose myself in the top of my pencil or chalk or charcoal. I would lose myself—and only then would I feel at peace.
    I began to