Robbie-Lee left the next morning for New York City. I watched him walk down Mrs. Bailey
White’s long dirt driveway toward the Tamiami Trail until he disappeared from sight. An hour later I
was dressed and heading to the fishing shack. I told myself little tales as I began my walk. I could turn
around at any time. I don’t have to go. I wasn’t really going to see her. I was just going for a walk in
the swamplands, by the river. . . . I carried a copy of the Naples Star with a headline that screamed,
SWAMP QUEEN PREVAILS IN COURT. So much had happened. The river and the land
surrounding it were safe from development. I was adopted. And this strange woman named Bunny
Ann Mc Intyre, of all the women in the world, was my mother. Once Robbie-Lee had stopped asking
me to see her, I thought it through and I knew that nothing would feel settled until I did. But it had to
be my idea—my choice. I wondered if I got this stubbornness from her? Pride and stubbornness,
Robbie-Lee had said. Oh dear. That sounded mighty familiar. I stopped and drank from a canteen that
Mrs. Bailey White had given me. The water was hot and metallic tasting, and I spat it out. I was
suddenly angry at Robbie-Lee and I wasn’t sure why. I should have gone with him yesterday to see
her. I could have let him do all the talking. I could have . . . But I couldn’t go back in time. It would
have been nice if there was a way to run away, to reject all this new information, these inconvenient
facts. It was a burden. I had been forced to rewrite the story line of my own life.
And yet I had to do it. I told myself: Sometimes the hurricane hits south of you, and sometimes
north, and once in a while, the dang thing smacks you headon. Well, Dora, this is your hurricane. And
if you hang on for dear life, you just might make it through. I didn’t know what to expect when I got
there. I thought she might be sitting in her favorite spot on the dock, maybe whittling as she had that
first day when I responded to her telegram and she’d said, “It’s about time you got here.” It made me
laugh to think about that now. In retrospect it sounded like something a mother might say to a
daughter. I had no idea what I would say to her. A few things went through my mind, but none of
them were right. I’d just have to pray that the right words would come to me. I hoped to ke ep it brief
and, well, manageable. Tidy. Just a few words for now. I’d tell her that I had to go back to Mississippi
for a spell but that I’d be back. No promises. Just an acknowledgment of what had occurred between
us. But that’s not how it worked out. I arrived to find her in full uproar. Something—something
terrible—had happened. I mean it had just happened, seconds before. She was wailing and carryin’ on
like somebody had up and died. When she spied me, she reacted as if I was any old person, no one
special. I could have been anyone. “Look, look what happened!” she cried out. She was pointing up at
the tree where the night heron had been ke eping her nest. Apparently sometime during the night the
nest had been disturbed—a bobcat, maybe even a panther. The nest was hanging at a sickening angle;
part of it appeared to be missing altogether. Bunny must have just woken up, come outside, and found
it that way. “Peggy Sue is gone!” she hollered, and I didn’t know if she meant dead or flown away. As
I walked toward her she turned her back to me to hide her we eping. She was crying so hard she had to
gulp for air, which scared me to pieces. After all, it was just a bird. And then I thought, No. It’s not
just a bird. It’s not “just” a bird any more than Norma Jean, my Everglades snapper, is “just” a turtle.
Once you love something, it owns a smidgen of your heart. That’s the price we pay for giving our love
away.
I took her arm, but she yanked it away. I watched as she sat down on the dock with her back to
me. I could see her shoulders heaving with sobs. I examined the nest, or what was left of it. I found no
sign of Peggy Sue. There weren’t even any scattered feathers, so hopefully she’d been able to fly
away. I poked at the debris and jumped back when something moved. At first I assumed it was a snake
or some other swamp critter. But then I realized I was looking at something wonderful. I was nose to
beak with two helpless chicks. I had never been so happy in my life. “Hey!” I shouted. “Lookee here,
two babies!” Bunny stopped wailing. She was by my side so fast it spooked me. So there we were, me
and my mother, peering anxiously at the tiny chicks, which, bless their little avian hearts, were the
ugliest things God ever put on this earth. We named them Lamar (after a skinny-necked guy who
sometimes worked at the Esso station) and Liz (after Elizabeth Taylor, of course). We took them into
the fishing shack and spent the next hour arguing about the best way to feed them and ke ep them
warm. Once we got them situated, Bunny poured herself a small glass of gin. “Want some?” she
asked. I shook my head. “Robbie-Lee’s gone; now even Peggy Sue is gone,” she said bluntly. “And if
these little babies don’t make it, I won’t have nothin’ at all.” “Well,” I said finally. “You’ve got me.”
• • •
AND SO I BEGAN TO acc ept that I had two mothers—the one I called Mama, who had raised
me, and who had died; and the one who had given birth to me, who was standing before me, puffing
on a small cigar and fussing over two baby night herons—the heiress of the river. “I don’t suppose
you’ll want to call me ‘Mama,’ ” she said, loosened up by the gin. “Well,” I said slowly, “the fact is, I
won’t call you Mama, because I had a person in my life who will always be Mama.”
She flinched ever-so-slightly. “Well, Robbie-Lee has decided to start calling me Mom because
that’s what he always wanted to call me,” she said. “You know, I always insisted he call me Dolores.”
She started to say something more but stopped. “I guess you can call me whatever you want.” “I need
to think about it,” I said. “Maybe just Bunny.” I felt like I was being a little snippy but, mercy, I’d
been through enough. At least I could think this over. “I just have one thing I want to say,” she said,
slurring her words a bit. “I want you to know that I admired your mama as a person very much, and I
think she done a durned good job raisin’ you, if I may say so myself. I couldn’t have done nearly as
good.” “Well, you did a good job with Robbie-Lee,” I said. And it was true. “If you don’t ever want to
call me Mom or Mother or nothin’ like that, I understand,” she continued solemnly, as if she had
practiced these words. “And I agree you have only one ‘Mama.’ She may be gone, but she’ll always
be your mama.” I felt tears stinging my eyes and blinked them away. “Thank you,” I mumbled. “And
if you don’t want folks to know about me, or you don’t want to be part of my life, I will git used to the
idea,” she said, with a sniffle that might have been for dramatic purposes but I couldn’t be sure. She
added, “You have that right.” That’s how we left things. I wasn’t about to make any promises, exc ept
for one: “I’ll be back,” I told her. “I’m leaving for Mississippi for a spell. But I’ll be back. And I hope
these little critters”—I pointed to Liz and Lamar —“are big and strong by then.” As I hiked back to
the main road, all I could think of was getting back to my little cottage and seeing my turtles. I
understood Bunny’s attachment to Peggy Sue; herons, like turtles, don’t talk back. They just listen.
Whether I ever really got to know Bunny or not, I was determined that it would have to be on my
terms as well as hers. I would take my time. This situation was going to require a whole lot of thinking
and forgiveness, which was not going to happen overnight. I’d have to forgive Mama for her secrets,
and I’d have to forgive Bunny for being who she was, and for giving me away.
On a much lesser scale, I was annoyed—just a bit—at Robbie-Lee for not telling me long before
that he knew, or suspected, that he was my brother. But then that thought led to another: I have a little
brother! This was a dream come true. And while our mother was, well, a lot to handle, at least we
could handle her together. As I came near the end of my hike, it began to rain. I didn’t care that I
would get wet—soaked to the bone, even. This made me almost as happy as discovering those fragile
baby herons. I k ept moving but I listened. The rain, making its way through the thick tree canopy,
made its distinctive sound like an audience applauding—first a few claps, then growing to a
thunderous roar. And I thought, That is Mama, speaking to me from the Spirit World. For the first
time I realized something important—crucial, even. As a nurse, Mama had always seemed to find
room in her heart for damaged souls. She didn’t fault people for their mistakes. She recognized that
we were all worthy human beings. Bunny Ann Mc Intyre was precisely the type of person Mama
would have been kind to. And she would have expected me to do the same.