The salt in our protection work comes off the coast of West Africa. Where it comes from, what that water holds, and how this house works it.
Our salt comes off the coast of West Africa. Ghana.
That is the coast where some of our people were taken across the water in bondage, and it is the same coast where some chose the sea instead of remaining captive. Both things happened in that water. I am not going to soften either one to make this easier to read.
The salt was there before the ships
Salt has been made on that coast far longer than the trade was on it. The lagoons take the tide in, the sun pulls the water back off, and what stays behind gets lifted by hand. It moved inland on the old roads and it was worth carrying. The ships did not begin that coast and they did not finish it. The salt is still coming up out of that water today and the people are still there bringing it up.
So when I say sea salt, I want you to know whose water I mean.
What I came up under
My grandmother came up out of Charleston in 1959 and set the Lowcountry down in a Queens apartment. She passed when I was thirteen. She never once sat me down to explain a thing. I got it from being underfoot, watching her hands move, hearing what she said while she was saying it to somebody else. There was salt by her stove and it did not only go in the pot.
In the houses I come from, salt went at the door and nobody debated it. You kept it where the house opened onto everything else.
How this house works it
I am the one working now, and I have grown daughters of my own. Salt goes where something has to hold. It goes in the water I wash my floors with, and it goes into the work I fix for protection before the prayer is finished. That is what it does in this house. I am not telling you how to use it. I am telling you what it is.
Where you will find it
Three things we make carry this salt. My Grandmama Prayed For Me, the candle. Don't Try Me, the melts. Wash It Off, the bath. It is named on those listings because it is the one thing in our work I will say out loud. Everything else that goes in stays in this house.
There are people who never came up out of that water. Some were carried into it and some walked. We are still here, and we still put their salt at our doors.