The Prayer Box, page 31
For a moment, I saw only Paul, heard only his voice. “When you get your turn to talk, don’t think about the commissioners. Just tell me the story, like you did last night when we practiced at Iola’s house. Now remember, they’ll go through all the people who signed up earlier on the agenda first, so there will be a bunch of talk about different issues. Then Geneva comes up and then you. Geneva will prep the court with the list of complaints she’s gathered about more borrow pits and a holding pond going in, and then it’s you. You show them, Tandi. Show them what they’re talking about destroying so that they can dig sand and drain water to save houses that’ve been built where they shouldn’t have been in the first place. Houses that likely won’t survive another storm or two. You ask those commissioners, and the audience, which house has the right to be here—the ones that are sliding off into the water or the one that has made it through every storm? You show them who Iola was and what that house meant and everything she did for the Banks.”
Which house has the right to be here . . .
I heard my grandfather’s voice. What do they think—the storms will never come? You build a house on the sand, the sand shifts eventually, Tandi Jo. You remember that.
I heard Isabelle. Fear builds walls instead of bridges. I want a life of bridges, not walls.
Swallowing the pulsating lump in my chest, I pulled in air, nodded because I couldn’t find my voice, and let Paul lead me forward. Geneva, Bink, Zoey, J.T., and Brother Guilbeau were sitting in a row near the middle. I recognized many of the faces around them. The fishermen of Fairhope had turned out in force.
Zoey and J.T. wiggled out of a single seat by the aisle.
“Here,” J.T. offered, grabbing his jacket from the back of the chair. “We saved you a seat.”
Zoey nodded, her face filled with tenderness and something else I’d never seen in her before, or at least not in a long time. Admiration. “Go get ’em, Mama.” She hugged me, then pressed the mermaid’s tear necklace into my palm.
I closed my fingers around it and let her faith seep into me. We’d been brought here, back to these islands, for a reason. For so many reasons that I was only now beginning to see.
“I will,” I promised, holding the necklace as I slipped into my seat. “I will, Zoey. Don’t worry.”
J.T. folded himself into the space in front of my chair, sitting on my feet, while Zoey moved to the back to stand by the wall where Sandy and the girls had staked out a corner. Paul sat beside me on the floor, holding the poster boards on his crossed legs as the meeting came to order with all the normal proceedings—announcements, prayer, Pledge of Allegiance. I tried to take in air and let it out, to still the trembling in my hands. I needed to appear confident when it was my turn to speak. I had to be convincing. I had to be worthy.
After the court’s opening program, the agenda moved on with a short ceremony, giving several county workers their five- and ten-year service pins. In spite of the routine proceedings, the room was filled with tension and expectation, with a sense that everyone was waiting for what would come later.
I closed my eyes and turned a page in my head, imagined this moment as if it had already passed, as if I were reading it in one of Iola’s prayer letters. How would she write this? What would she say? What would she ask for just before those closing words, Your loving daughter?
Wisdom? Strength? A steady voice?
The presentation of the pins concluded, and the opening of the podium was announced. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is the time that has been set aside for public comments. If you have a public comment this evening and you have not signed up, in a moment, please raise your hand, and I will recognize you. When I do, please go to the podium, state your name, and tell us where you are from. Please limit your comments to three minutes. There’s a green light on the podium that will come on when your time begins. A yellow light will come on when you have about thirty seconds left, and a red light will come on when you need to conclude your comments.”
Three minutes. Just three minutes. So short a time. How could I possibly make them see?
I opened the notebook, looked down at it, but the words were a jumble in my mind. At the podium, a man was talking about a change in the regulation of lot sizes in Manteo and how it would lead to overdevelopment. From behind the marble counter, the county commissioners watched, polite yet emotionless, giving no hints as to what they were thinking.
Would they even hear me? Who was I to talk to them? I’d only been here a few months. The man petitioning the court right now had lived here twenty-seven years, and no one had protected him when a developer bought the land next door and made plans to stack it full of condos and retail shops.
Why would anyone care about Iola’s story?
Movement on the opposite end of the room caught my attention. Someone was threading a path through the crowded side aisle. Slick blonde hair swayed over the shoulders of a tight red dress.
“Gina,” I whispered. Paul looked up, then turned a wary look my way.
Another familiar face towered over the crowd behind her. Ross.
“Oh no,” I whispered. If Gina was here, it was a given that she knew about our plan and had come to derail it if she could. I should’ve known she wouldn’t quietly disappear after our confrontation in Iola’s house. Anytime shots were fired, Gina made sure she won the war, whether she really cared about the spoils or not. Just the fight was motivation enough.
“Steady now.” Paul winked at me.
I focused on the podium again, staring straight ahead as one speaker and then another came and went, airing grievances and concerns having to do with everything from school funding to noise control ordinances. Everyone had problems and needs, and every need seemed important. A building contractor spoke about the cost-effectiveness of having borrow pits nearby, to provide fill for construction and sand for waterfront homes. A couple whose life savings were tied up in a beach house that now had runoff sitting underneath it pleaded for new measures in flood control and storm-water retention.
My head was spinning by the time Geneva’s name was finally called and she walked calmly to the podium. I could feel Gina’s laser focus from across the room as Geneva talked about the community of Fairhope and the fact that the town and its residents were already struggling to recover from the effects of multiple storms. “And we in Fairhope are no strangers to the experience of living next door to borrow pits. In the past, many of us have lived with trucks rumbling in and out at all hours, and dust and fumes, as well as the noise of draglines and dredging equipment endlessly removing sand and fill dirt so that it can be used to satisfy the needs of others. But I would like to tell you that in Fairhope, we love our community. We don’t want it to be pillaged.” She punctuated with a nod and a pause, and in the room, murmurs of agreement went up.
Audience members shifted forward in their seats as Geneva continued. “My mother-in-law is eighty-seven years old. She has lived in Fairhope all her life. Her greatest joy at this advanced age is sitting on her screened porch with her coffee and watching her birds. If the proposed property, the Benoit estate, is used as has been suggested, she will have a mining operation less than thirty yards from her back door. Our daughter’s house is next to hers, on property that has been in our family for over one hundred years. If these pits go in, trucks and equipment will be rolling past, literally feet from where her children play. Now I ask you, close your eyes for a minute and picture that it’s your mother, your daughter, your grandchildren, your house. Fairhope is a community, a place where fishermen have raised their families since before the Civil War. Like every community, it has flaws, but it is our community.”
Geneva glanced down at the podium as the warning light went on. “I know my time is almost up, and I know there are others who wish to speak to this issue, so I’m going to stop here and trust that you on the commissioners’ court will do what is just and fair. If other towns need sand or fill or retention sites for storm water, let them truck in their fill dirt or find the space in their own communities. We should not, because we are a small community tucked back in the maritime woods, be railroaded by moneyed interests seeking to condemn a historic property. I’d like to request that, before any digging can take place in Fairhope, a public hearing be held to discuss a moratorium on borrow pits of any kind until the community can look at zoning changes to prevent such activity in the future.”
Cheers erupted around the room as she left the podium and walked down the aisle. Patting my shoulder, she leaned close to me. “Go get ’em, tiger. You tell them what Iola would think of them dozing her house under and digging a hole in her woods.”
“The next person I have is Tandi Reese.” The man with the clipboard looked expectantly toward the gallery, and every eye in the room turned my way as I stood. My heart pounded wildly in my chest. The aisle seemed impossibly long, like the distance to Iola’s house in my dream, when my legs wouldn’t carry me. The room, the voices, the people shifting forward in their chairs, Paul passing the poster boards down the row, the commissioners shuffling papers on the dais, the air conditioner kicking on overhead . . .
Everything seemed far away. As I set the notebook on the podium, opened it, shuffled the pages, there was a strange silence in my mind. Please help me do this, I whispered into it. Please help me be good enough.
“My name is . . .” My voice cracked and the microphone squealed, getting feedback from somewhere. In the periphery of my vision, Gina scoffed, pushing off the wall and tossing her hair, then slipping her hand over Ross’s bicep and whispering something in his ear.
The green light on the podium blinked on, and I started again. “My name is Tandi Reese. I live in the cottage at Benoit House in Fairhope.” The voice seemed to come from outside me, but it was strong and clear. I heard the words as if they were someone else’s. “I’ve been caring for the place since the death of Iola Anne Poole, the longtime owner of the property.”
Gina coughed and one of the commissioners glanced her way. I straightened my shoulders and went on. For once, I would not let my sister or anyone beat me down. I wasn’t that little girl hiding behind the sofa anymore, trying to keep myself hidden to survive. I was a woman ready to finally make her own life.
“I’m just across the salt meadow and through the woods from Bink’s store. The back portion of the Benoit estate is the property in question for the borrow pits, and the historic home under threat of condemnation lies directly west of my cottage. My grandfather was an insurance adjuster who many times assessed storm damage to homes here on the Outer Banks, and my father ran his own construction company for years. I often helped with his jobs as I was growing up, and I recently completed repairs to water-damaged areas of Sandy’s Seashell Shop, so I do know a bit about storm damage and structural renovation.”
Gina sighed loudly, and my thoughts jumped.
Taking a breath, I focused on the notebook again. Somewhere on the dais, a pencil scratched against a piece of paper. Who was writing and what?
I closed my eyes, opened them again. “Benoit House can be saved. It deserves to be saved. Many of you have heard of the house. It’s one of a few original Victorian-style homes remaining on Hatteras. If you know the Outer Banks well, you probably know of it. Before you consider condemning Benoit House, you should understand what you will really be tearing down.”
“That house is a wreck, and she knows it is!” Gina moved from the wall, stepping toward the podium. “She’s been trying to keep people out so they won’t see that, but I was inside the place just the other day, and there were buckets full of water everywhere, the ceilings are falling in upstairs, and—”
“Sit down!” someone yelled from the gallery.
The judge hammered his gavel, attempting to bring order to the room. “Ma’am, you have not been recognized by this court.” He pointed the gavel at Gina. “If you would like to speak, you may raise your hand when we ask if there are any more comments, and at that time you will be recognized by the court; however, if there are any further outbursts, I will ask that you be forcibly removed from the room.”
Gina’s nostrils flared and she bolted her arms, sulking against Ross.
At the dais, the commissioners leaned away cautiously, now fully sensing what a contentious issue we were dealing with. Where a moment ago they had seemed receptive, now they appeared reserved, careful.
I fumbled through my notes, trying to find my place again. How much time had gone by? How much did I have left?
A page of information about the current damage to Benoit House and the details of its historic value drifted to the floor. I didn’t retrieve it.
“I’d like to read something to you,” I said instead, taking one of Iola’s letters from the side pocket of the notebook. “This was written by the owner of the house, Iola Anne Poole, who, though it was never widely known, was a blood relation of Girard Benoit. She was the child of his eldest son and a housekeeper of Creole heritage. Over the course of her life, she not only cared for the members of the Benoit family, but she served this country in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps in World War II. She traveled the world, yet this island was the place closest to her heart. She documented her life in letters that she kept in boxes. They were her prayer boxes—her letters to God—but they should speak to all of us.”
Closing the notebook, I unfolded the letter. “She wrote this just after the famous Ash Wednesday storm lashed the eastern coast for three days in 1962. The nor’easter came without warning on the night of March 7, and by the time it was over, it had killed forty people on the Eastern Seaboard and injured over a thousand. At that time, Iola was struggling to care for her biological grandfather, Girard Benoit, who was bedridden and stricken with dementia. She had also suffered the recent loss of Isabelle, who by blood relation was her aunt, but whom she loved as a sister. Here is what she wrote in the aftermath of that terrible storm:
“Homes lie toppled in the sea. Power poles lean against wires that hang twisted like thread. Boats sit upended and piled on shore. The road has been lifted and broken. The storm has cut an inlet through the island between Buxton and Avon, separating the south from the north. It seems as though our lives here will never be whole again. There is too much devastation to face.
“Yet we of this island slowly come forth from the wreckage. There is no other way for us, Father.
“Dawn comes after the darkness, and with it the promise that what has been torn by the sea is not lost. All of life is breaking and mending, clipping and stitching, gathering tatters and sewing seams. All of life is quilted from the scraps of what once was and is no more—the places we have been, the memories we have made, the people we have known, that which has been long loved but has grown threadbare over time and can be worn no longer. We keep only pieces. All colors, all shapes, all sizes.
“All waiting to be stitched into the pattern only you can see.
“In the quiet after the storm, I hear you whisper, ‘Daughter, do not linger where you are. Take up your needle and your thread, and go see to the mending. . . .’”
I stopped reading there, looked at the men and women on the dais, the people with the power to save or condemn Benoit House, the power to finally validate the hidden work of Iola’s life.
On the podium, the yellow light blinked on. “A week after this letter was written, an original Remington bronze worth $900,000 was donated to a relief fund created to help rebuild the island and to close or bridge the new inlet. At the time, residents were so desperate to reunite the north and south ends of the island that they were dumping junk cars in the inlet, hoping to close it. The donation of the statue was made anonymously—you can see a newspaper article about it on the poster boards that are being held up in the back of the room.
“In fact, you can see a number of articles and photos and letters there. They tell the story of this island, but they also tell the story of a woman few people really knew. She devoted herself—her resources, her energy, her efforts, her prayers—to the Outer Banks and the people who live here, many of whom were strangers to her. She gave almost everything she had, and when this last storm came, when water began trickling through the roof of the home she had loved most of her life, instead of asking her neighbors to pick up their mending threads and help her save her house . . . instead, at ninety-one years old, frail in her body and alone in her home, she put buckets and pots and pans under the drops, and she served her neighbors. The Tiffany Magnolia lamp that caused such a stir, that created the fund to aid families displaced by the recent storms, came from the upstairs bedroom in Benoit House—the last untouched place in the house. The room where Iola Anne Poole died.”
The red light came on. No one in the chamber moved. On the dais, the commissioners were gazing past me, looking at the posters, finally meeting the small, quiet woman so few people understood.
I finished with the last paragraph of what Paul and I had written. “By the world’s standards, she might not have been a person who really mattered, who was noteworthy. But by all the standards that matter most, she was an incredible human being. She touched the lives of people who never knew her. She asked for nothing in return—no press coverage, no name on a plaque, no TV interviews, no thank-you notes. We have the chance to honor her with this one final act of gratitude. We can save her house—the house she intended to leave in the hands of the church so that it would be cared for and used for something good. I hope . . . I pray that you who sit on this court, and all of you who are in this room today, will feel, as I do, that this is a cause worth fighting for.”
Gathering my papers, I turned to leave. Behind me, members of the gallery were slowly rising to their feet. Near the back door, Gina threaded her way through the crowd, making a hasty exit with Ross in tow.
A man, a stranger with the ruddy look of a seaman, began to clap, the noise shattering the silence. Another set of hands joined, and another and another, the applause slowly growing as Iola’s neighbors came out to meet her for the very first time.
