VINES OF MUSCADINES, AN EXCERPT

BY: BRITTANY CARROLL

Uncle Donald Ray. He had my daddy’s nose. And so did all seven of my uncles. Uncle Allen. Uncle Preacher. Uncle Robert. Uncle PG. Uncle Bite. Uncle Bobba-Lee, not Bobby Lee. Wide and shiny. A true nigga nose if you ever see it. Almost as if God started molding the nose before the rest of the face. They all looked like my grandpa Solon. He died before I was born. 1984.

There’s a picture of him that rest among all the family photos scattered around my grandma Rachel’s house. He’s standing in a field wearing overalls with suspenders and a ragged poor-boy’s hat. He’s never held me, but I’ve met him eight times. When I first met my Uncle Donald Ray, he looked like a skinny version of my father. He didn’t just walk. He trekked. Like he was always looking for something or someone.

He had a blue ring around his iris like my Daddy. I discovered this blue iris when I was younger. I used to climb on top of my daddy while he was sleeping on the couch and push his eyelids open. He always would try to swat me away. But one time, when he was probably too exhausted, he barely budged when I inspected his face. I was always curious like that. I needed to know. Always.

Who ever heard of dark-skinned black people with blue eyes?

I was convinced that my family was special. The exception. A family full of dark black bodies with blue eyes. I discovered my uncle Donald Ray had a blue ring around his iris, too. Uncle PG, uncle Robert, and Uncle Bite had already passed away before my curiosity beckoned. But every family reunion, I would discover another uncle with a blue ring iris. My aunt Emma had a grey ring. I was content with knowing that if my nose spread wide like my daddy and the rest of them, at least the tradeoff would be that I too would develop this pronounced blue ring around my brown iris.

Uncle Donald Ray was our wild card. Unconventional. But beloved. My first memories of him were during family reunions. His youngest daughter, Kiara, was just around the same age as me. We would run up and down the dirt road that sat between the Happy House and Uncle Donald Ray’s and grandma Rachel’s trailer. The ‘Happy House’ was and still is sacred. A small country shack with only one bedroom and a small back room housed my father, at least seven of his siblings, and his parents. Two exposed light bulbs and a small lamp barely lit the small shack. But it was lit just enough to see the smashed-up beer cans and peanut shells scattered along dusted floors.

When I was younger, the house sat slightly above the ground. It always smelled like sweat and outdoors on the inside. When you walked in, you were standing in a relatively small space that was once the combined kitchen, dining and living room. When I was smaller, you could peak into the back room and see my grandparents’ original bed frame. Somehow the room filled up with too much stuff and you could only tilt your head and peak behind the door that never could fully open. The floorboards moved when you walked. Sometimes I could see slivers of light between the floorboards. It never seemed to bother my uncles, so it didn’t bother me. There were all types of weird gadgets, dirtied buckets, rusted metal pieces tucked in various corners. An old fire stove from antebellum times rusted beyond belief that it could still be used was firmly planted on the left side of

the kitchen-dining-living room. Soot splattered around the curve of the exhaust.

“Yes, sir-ree. This baby still works,” my Uncle Donald Ray would say with a grin.

Uncle Donald Ray had made this shack into a man cave. By the time you finished looking down and around you would be completely overwhelmed when you looked up. My head used to spin after I finished looking up at the edges of the ceiling. Deer heads lined the walls from the front entrance of the door all the way round the house. It was beyond impressive and terrifying at the same time. My eyes would widen, mouth agape trying to count them all. And then I would occasionally glance at the stuffed squirrels ghastly perched on top of stacks of outdated newspapers. A string of furry tails strung together was nailed into the side of the wall. I was mesmerized and horrified at the same time.

My uncle Donald Ray did all of this?

All the uncles would gather inside this barely lit shack. Sometimes, I would walk in and they all would be sitting on an old church pew bench, folding chairs, or buckets flipped upside down--- all of which was probably salvaged from the Salvation Army or church throw away pile. Those eyes would stare into the barely lit shack, pensive, but happy. They were home. It felt like a council. A tradition. An ancestral rite. The male elders would converge into this little shack to talk about the state of the family and sometimes the world. Lineages of Ife, Bassa, Fulani, Mende, and Yoruba with southern accents. My curiosity was intruding on this sacred moment. But I was a child ripe with curiosity. My intrusion was uninvited but welcomed. My questions stroked their egos because they could teach me something. Show me something. Uncle Donald Ray would take that string of furry tails off the nail in the wall and let me feel it.

“Go on. Touch it. Tell me what animal it is.”