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Maggie Green: Cleaning Fish

One day, I woke up in 2001 and said, “I need to visit the Gullah.” I was embarking on a spiritual journey and it felt good. By that afternoon, with the help of the Penn Center on St. Helena Island, in South Carolina, I was paired up with Maggie Green, who lived in a house at the end of town, on a winding stretch of road called ‘No Man Land Road.’ Her parental presence formed a parallel in my life. You see, Maggie was a Scorpio, born in the same year and month as my mother, with only a day’s difference.

Maggie was a kind woman, mother of several children. She spoke Geechee and many times I didn’t understand what she was saying but “A smile can go a long way.” She knew I was photographing around the island because a couple of times she had to cover my back when residents were wondering what I was doing on their part of the island. St. Helena is a small community where everyone knows each other. So, one day she said, “Let’s take some pictures.”

She had just finished washing. Her linens and clothes were hanging on the line to dry. You see, the Gullah-Geechee people can trace their African heritage directly to Sierra Leone, with fish, shrimp and rice being a staple diet of that region. She settled down at her usual place inside a shed to clean fish for tonight’s dinner and wallah, my stella photograph,  “Maggie Green: Cleaning Fish” was born.

No matter what time I came in, there was always a plate of rice and shrimp on the stove. A few years ago, her daughter Corrine called and informed me Maggie had passed. She was up in years and natural causes had taken their toll. To me, ‘she will always be thought of as my mother on St. Helena Island.’