"Keeper of the Roots"

“Keeper of the Roots”

Ms. Kwan Perkins

Word Count: 1909

Élise Noire was born at twilight when the Mississippi River rose higher than it had in years, swollen with light from the full moon and secrets. The midwife swore she heard the river call the baby’s name before her mother ever spoke it. Folks in Tremé said that meant something — a child claimed by water, a child the land itself would watch over. But Élise didn’t know any of that growing up. She only knew she felt things other people didn’t. The hum beneath her feet when she walked barefoot in the yard. The way the bayou wind whispered her name. The way the soil warmed under her palms like a living thing. Her mother, a Louisiana Créole, used to tell her, “Tifi mwen, the earth talks to ya because it knows ya. Lis’en close.” However, her mother died too young, and her father — an African-American from Texas, grieving and practical — shut the old ways away like fragile heirlooms he couldn’t bear to look at. “No spirits,” he said. “No altars. No rootwork. We survive by forgetting.” So, Élise learned to forget. She forgot the taste of her mother’s tea cakes. She forgot the hymns sung at dawn. She forgot the way the earth used to hum beneath her feet. But the earth…it did not forget her.

As she grew, her father worked tirelessly to cut the old ways out of their lives, sealing every doorway where her mother’s memory might slip through like light under a closed door. He loved his daughter with a fierce, trembling devotion, but fear lived in him like a second heartbeat — fear that the same spirits who claimed his wife would one day reach for his child. So, whenever Élise’s hands warmed the soil or she paused, listening to something he could not hear, he snapped at her, sharp and desperate, trying to smother anything that smelled of rootwork or river magic. Little by little, she folded the brightest parts of herself inward, tucking her gift into the quietest corners of her being. But the hiding hollowed her. It left her moving through the world with a soft emptiness in her chest, as if she were living only half a life, missing a piece of her own soul she could no longer name. By the time she reached twenty‑six, she had become a woman shaped by silence — one whose beginnings lay dormant even as the earth awaited, patiently and knowingly, for her return.

Élise was twenty‑six when the river called to her again. She had been walking barefoot along the levee after a long shift at the clinic, her mind heavy with other people’s pain. The sun was sinking, turning the sky into a remnant of her past experiences at L.S.U.-- love purple and live gold, she thought to herself. Pausing, she breathed in the heavy scent of river mud and tangy Spanish moss. She felt it — the vibration beneath her feet, soft but insistent. Boom… boom… boom. A heartbeat. Her heartbeat. The earth’s heartbeat. “Élise,” the river murmured, though no one else heard it. “Tounen lakay. Come home.” She stumbled back, tears welling; breath caught in her throat. “Ma mère?” she whispered, though she knew better. Her mother was gone but the river, lapping at the bank, was as patient as an elder waiting for a child to remember her manners.

Over the next few days, Élise found herself roaming restlessly through the French Quarter. On one particular day, she found herself standing before a small shop in the Quarter she had never noticed before — though she was sure she had walked past it a hundred times. La Maison des Racines. The House of Roots. Inside, the air was thick with sage, myrrh, and the faint sweetness of dried hibiscus. Shelves overflowed with jars of herbs, oils, and roots. Candles flickered like tiny spirits dancing. Behind the counter stood a woman with silver locs wrapped in indigo cloth. “I been waitin’ fah ya,” the woman said. Élise blinked. “Do I know you?” “Not yet.” The woman smiled, revealing a gold tooth that glinted like the sun. “I be Mambo Célestine. And you, Élise Noire, have been called.” Élise’s breath caught. “How do you know my name? Called to what?” “Tah remember.”

Something shifted the moment Élise stepped deeper into the shop, as if the room itself exhaled in recognition. The jars along the walls rattled softly, herbs rustling like they were greeting an old friend. A bowl of river stones warmed beneath her passing, and the bundles of dried roots seemed to lean toward her, reaching for the touch they had been denied for years. Célestine watched her with the knowing gaze of who had seen this kind of calling before — a gift pressed down so long it had begun to starve. “See?” she murmured, nodding toward the trembling shelves. “Dey remember ya, even if ya don’t.” And Élise felt it — a faint stirring in her chest, a loosening of something she had kept bound since childhood. For the first time in years, the hollow place inside her flickered with warmth, as if the earth itself were waking up beneath her skin. “Teach me?”, Élise asked softly.

They only had 5 days before the full moon waned; they didn’t have time for complex rootwork at this time. Célestine started with the simplest lessons — not teaching so much as uncovering what had been buried. She told Élise that nursing had never taken her away from the old ways; it had only disguised them. “Healing is healing, chér,” she said, guiding Élise’s hands over bowls of soil and bundles of roots. “Ya been touchin’ life this whole time. Ya gift ain’t gone — its jus’ been whisperin’.” And as Élise moved through the shop, the tools responded to her like loyal things starved for her touch: mortars humming faintly beneath her palms, dried herbs releasing their scent the moment she neared, jars trembling with the soft clink of glass as if greeting her. Célestine watched her with quiet satisfaction, placing a small bundle of basil, hyssop, and angelica in her hands, showing her how to grind them in slow circles, how to breathe intention into the mixture, how to listen for the earth’s reply. Each motion felt less like learning and more like remembering — a muscle long unused waking from sleep. At the end of the 5 days, when the moon was full and at its highest, Célestine finally nodded toward a black door that was in the back of the shop. With lantern in hand, Élise, along with Celestine, felt the pull of something ancient and familiar rising in her chest, guiding them toward Bayou St. John.

As Célestine led Élise into Bayou St. John, the moon hung low, swollen and pure white. The air smelled of cypress, wet moss, and the metallic tang of river silt. Célestine drew Ayizan’s vèvè in the dirt. Élise felt the ground vibrate beneath her, warm and alive. “Take ya shoes off,” Célestine said. Élise stepped barefoot into the silt. It was cool, silky, and familiar. Celestine lit sage and myrrh, the smoke curling around Élise like a shawl woven from memory. “Breathe.” Élise inhaled deeply. The scent filled her lungs, her blood, her bones. Célestine began to chant in Kreyòl. The bayou answered — frogs croaking, water lapping, trees rustling like they were leaning in to listen. “Put ya hands in the soil, chér,” Célestine said. Élise knelt. And the earth opened. Not physically — spiritually. A rush of images flooded her mind: her mother grinding herbs; her grandmother singing to the river; her great‑grandmother dancing barefoot in cane fields; generations of women whose names she never learned but whose blood lived in her. She felt their hands on her shoulders. Their breath in her ear. Their strength in her spine. “Élise,” they whispered. “Ya ours, tifi mwen. And we been here.”

Time, chér, waits for no soul — man or woman — it just keeps on movin’, same as the river. Nevertheless, Elise continued her training with Célestine and she blossomed. Over the years, her father noticed subtle changes in her look and demeanor but remained silent. And when he grew old and frail, Elise cared for him too, bathing his trembling hands in Florida water and feeding him chicken feet broth. During many long nights, Élise would crush the herbs the way Célestine taught her, slow circles in the mortar until the scent rose warm and sharp: hyssop for cleansing, eucalyptus for breath, thyme for strength, peppermint to cool the lungs, and a pinch of salt to draw out the heaviness. Élise rubbed his chest with a poultice when breath came hard for her father. In those final days, he wept into her palms and asked forgiveness for the fear that made him shut her mother’s world away — for dimming her light in the name of love. He whispered, voice thin as paper, “Tifi mwen… forgive me.” Élise forgave him with a tenderness that surprised them both, telling him he had only tried to keep her safe. He died with her hand over his heart, the same heart that had once beat in terror for her. After he passed, the house felt much quieter, but something inside her loosened, as if a long‑closed door had finally fully opened.

After her father’s passing and retirement from nursing, Élise continued to live as a healer, a rootworker, a bridge between worlds. At the age of 79, she still tended gardens that grew stronger under her touch. She still mixed teas that soothed grief. She still whispered prayers that made the sick breathe easier. People came to her from all over New Orleans — for blessings, for healing, for truth. She married once, briefly. Loved deeply. Lost gently. She aged gracefully, her hair silvering like river foam, her hands mapped with the soft creases of years spent tending soil. And slowly, quietly, memory began to slip. At first it was small things — the name of a plant she’d used her whole life, the steps of a ritual she’d performed a hundred times. Then it was bigger things — faces, songs, stories. Some mornings she woke and didn’t remember her mother’s voice. Some evenings she forgot the prayers she once whispered with ease. Some nights Élise couldn’t recall the names of the ancestors who walked with her. She would sit on her porch overlooking the bayou, the air thick with moss and old stories, and try to hold on to the pieces of herself time kept stealing. But the years were greedy. They took without asking.

One twilight, when the sky was the color of bruised peaches and the cicadas sang their ancient chorus, Élise knelt in her garden. The soil was cool beneath her palms, soft as breath. She closed her eyes, trying to remember the prayer she used to say before harvesting roots — but the words would not come. A tremor moved through the ground. Gentle. Patient. Familiar. The earth rose to meet her touch, warm as an old friend’s hand. And in that moment — that tender, trembling moment — she felt everything she had lost return in a single, steady pulse. The river’s voice. The bayou’s breath. The footsteps of her foremothers walking behind her. The songs. The names. The knowing. All of it. THE EARTH REMEMBERS WHAT WE FORGET— And Élise Noire, child of river, daughter of bayou, keeper of roots, in that one moment, for the last time---remembered everything.