QUEEN OF SALT
Some call me Altamaha-ha, after the brackish river I haunt. Others call me Mama Tunde, imagining me as some sea-dwelling surrogate mother to call to when their earthly mama falls short. Some call me the Queen of Salt, for they have heard that I’m only drawn to the surface when tears hit my waters. I’ve been called a mermaid, a naiad, a sea witch, a hag, a siren. If someone were to ask, though no one does, I prefer to be called Yetunde.
My river separates Fort Frederica from the Swamp King’s island, where a wealthy duke came and built a huge plantation with many fields and many slaves. But the duke and his family couldn’t stand the heat, the smell, or the mosquitos. The duke’s daughters fell ill, his wife fled to the city, and finally the duke left a slave in charge of the plantation and returned to his faraway land, content to receive notice of the sugar, rice, and tobacco grown on his estate. And the profits. That slave was then free, and he freed the other workers at the plantation as well. He paid them wages before reporting anything to the duke, who did not have the intellect to match his wealth. The former slave became the Swamp King, the richest man in all of Frederica.
When the girl’s tears landed on the surface of the Atamaha, I tasted them immediately. She stood on the beach among the broom grass, the air around her scented with palmetto and pine. Her hair was the colour of spring bark and she wore a
