Zola and Otulke

Since childhood, when Otulke was thirteen and Zola was five, they knew each other. He would stand away’s back and watch her play, as her little brown feet, covered in dust, would run and skip in a circle with the other Seminole and Slave children. Unbeknownst to her, he would smile sweetly, shyly, marveling at her unbridled joy as her little chicklet shaped white teeth gleamed in the sunshine. Her giggle carried no burdens, no weight, a lightness he could not fathom. Only in the shadows did he allow himself to partake of such joy.

Seminole slavery was unlike that of the European American kind. Many slaves on plantations in Georgia and the Carolinas would head south to Florida in the early centuries when it was still under Spanish rule. You could become a citizen if you converted to Catholicism. If you lived amongst the indigenous tribes such as Creeks, you would live separate but near the village and grow crops and give tribute to the chief. A chance many Africans were willing to take to avoid the whip and lash of this unfamiliar, hostile and unholy land.

It is under these circumstances that Otulke and Zola lived. They had a special place, away from the swamps and saw palmetto, high on a hill where they would meet in secret. Sometimes no words were exchanged and they would sit and wait for the day’s sun to fall into sunset. Or she would poke his forearm and implore him to teach her a Seminole word. He would hold up two fingers and say “Toklan” for the number two. She would hit her tongue against the roof of her mouth and say “Tooklam.” He would laugh and repeat it and sometimes poke her in the ribs until she got it right.

He was good with his hands and would often carve pieces of wood as she whistled a tune or braided blades of grass into bracelets. One day he presented her with a perfectly carved panther. She delighted in the curve of its upturned tail and stroked its smooth, sinewy back. “I am clan panther” he explained with much solemnity. “We have the knowledge for making laws and the medicines to heal.” She nodded with the understanding that this was not just a toy, but a piece of him somehow. For this she gently rewarded him by slipping a braided grass bracelet onto his wrist.

They came of age as many seasons of green corn ceremonies and tributes passed. She fifteen, he twenty-three. She had made up her mind, they were ready for what she had always felt in her heart, and sent word that they should meet in their special place.

The tribeswomen even went along and prepared her as best they could, dressing her in the colorful wraparound palmetto skirt, mantle and moccasins that Seminole women wore.

Her chest could barely contain the excited beat of her heart as she climbed the hill and sat in anticipation. But the sun sunk to sunset and the stars came out to play and he never came. And her heart shattered into a million pieces like dried crushed brown leaves.

She stayed on, for it was the only place that felt like home. She took a husband named John and they had a child, a little girl. She knew he was kind and he loved her but her heart was forlorn.

Otulke fared no better, for though he had a wife, he had a ritual of remembering Zola. He had carved a beautiful piece of brown wood and wrapped it in red cloth and rubbed cinnamon, sandalwood and vanilla into its grain. And late at night, when he lay in bed, his back to his wife, he would look to the dark sky and cradle the piece of wood in his arms.

Again, many seasons of green corn ceremonies and tributes had passed and Zola decided it was time to leave. John had already gone, knowing his love was never enough. There was nothing to keep her here and she was ready to go but could not find her daughter.

Through the village and around she looked until she came upon that special place of long and far ago. And there sat her daughter with the man she always loved, laughing as they warmed their hands by the fire.

He looked up as if she already knew what had been hidden from her. He led Zola to his dwelling away from her daughter’s gaze.

“How long have you been meeting?” She wailed. “I always make my morning sofkee for two,” he said. And at that she lunged at him and struck him with the force of a banshee. He let her pummel him for he knew he deserved far worse.

“So angry,” she hissed as she slapped him clear across the face as tears rolled down her cheeks. “Angry because you chose hopelessness instead of me!”

“I am sorry my love,” Otulke said as he wiped her tears and stared into her eyes. He took her into his arms and kissed her with a fierceness she knew to be there all along.

“Will you still go?” he asked. “Will you come?” She asked. For love is not always in the hands of fate but in each other.

The End