Perfectly Preventable Deaths

by Deirdre Sullivan

  I put my hands hard against my eyes and press them deep towards my brain, my skull. There is a tension welling in my head. I feel it humming like a coming swarm.

  The entrance to Mamó’s house in front of me. The hard door cold on my knuckles. Three harsh times I knock. The door clicks open.

  ‘Madeline. Hello.’

  ‘I’ve come about your offer …’ I tell her. ‘I want to …’

  She looks at me. I’m not wearing a jacket. It is cold.

  ‘Come and help me in the garden,’ she says. ‘First we’ll work and then we’ll have a talk.’

  She goes out the back door to the physic garden. It’s bigger than the courtyard one. None of the herbs are labelled.

  ‘What’s this?’ she asks.

  ‘Sage?’ I venture.

  ‘And what’s sage for?’

  I scan my brain.

  ‘Look at it,’ she snaps. ‘Touch it. Smell it.’

  I take the sprig, give a sniff and try my best to remember what I know.

  ‘Um … For guidance?’ Maybe I should have said for when you’re worried your sister is in love with the wrong man. Brought it up organically, like a smooth detective.

  ‘Depends on the kind of sage. This one here is green. And this –’ she gestures to another plant – ‘is marshmallow. Wild garlic. Lady’s finger. Honeysuckle. Mint.’

  ‘We’re here for mint,’ I tell her.

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘I feel it.’

  She says nothing, but she steps aside. I pluck eighteen separate mint leaves. Stack them one on top of the other. Roll them into a cylinder. The moon is bright. She hands me a little jar. Her dress is neat and brown and she is wearing Birkenstocks with socks. Her hair is loose. Normally she wears it braided back. It hangs down to her shoulders and it suits her. She glares at me. I twist the jar tight shut and hand it back.

  She’s after me. She wants to be my boss. It is a weird dynamic, being headhunted for witchcraft by an in-law.

  ‘Caw,’ I hear, and turn. The raven on a branch beside her. Mamó takes a slab of juicy-looking meat out of her pocket, feeds it to him. He eats it and she murmurs things along. He’s very big. His beak is thick and cruel. This is too much witch for me. I snort. He flaps. She glares.

  ‘Wait in there.’ She gestures to her house.

  ‘What, so you can discuss things with a blackbird?’ Nervousness is making me prickly, I can feel resentment building up. Why am I here? Why do I have to do this? Why the raven?

  ‘Baaaaaaab is no blackbird.’

  ‘It’s pronounced Bob. Ugh,’ I snap.

  She glares at me, I stomp towards the flat. A raven always wants to eat a carcass, and they’ll eat any carcass. Owl or fox or goat. Even human. I think of his stern beak. The downturned opening. They eat our dead.

  The eyes from little lambs.

  This is her pet?

  Or her familiar.

  The creaking rasp behind me meets Mamó’s voice. There is a music to it. I push the door. It opens slowly, like there is a force that’s pushing back. Is that a spell as well? I wonder. It’s cold inside. I poke the fire.

  Beaks on carrion. Claws that grasp until the flesh gives way. The beak was black and pink inside. A little tongue. It had a little tongue. I cannot handle this. I want my life right back the way it was. I want my sister safe. My world arranged.

  Mamó’s voice breaks the silence. ‘So. You’ve thought about my offer?’

  ‘Yes. At length.’ I swallow.

  ‘And what have you decided?’ Her voice is even.

  God, I hate this. I’m terrified that whatever I say will be the wrong thing. That I’ll regret deciding either way. I think of her finger, pointing me back to the house. I think of Brian and his little chat. I think of Mam, quietly removing salt from floors. Knowing what I did and saying nothing. She hates the bit of me that Mamó wants.

  She wants an answer. I don’t have an answer.

  This place is like a tick upon a dog. It’s sucking all the certainty from me.

  ‘I want to know some more about Lon,’ I say.

  ‘What does that little rip have to do with this?’ she asks me, her voice harsh.

  A little rip, I think. A tear in something. The writing I saw before, on the wall.

  ‘Is he dangerous?’ I ask. ‘I had this dream …’

  ‘What did it feel like?’ Her face is very sharp, her eyes pierce through me.

  ‘Warm and muggy, kind of like …’

  ‘Like what?’

  Like I would do anything that he asked of me. That I would have to, unless I fought myself.

  ‘I don’t know. Strange. It wasn’t like a normal dream. I had a feeling, just like with the fox?’

  ‘Just like?’

  ‘A little different.’

  She sighs, as though I am a toddler who will not eat her dinner. I feel like one; I’m getting cranky now. All these questions about my instinct. Can she not use her own?

  She looks at me, and tuts. She literally tuts. I want to kick something. Her hands reach into cupboards, grabbing jars and mixing things together. She puts a little kettle on the range and turns back to me.

  ‘You need to tell me if that boy is dangerous. Catlin is –’

  ‘I do not need to do anything. I choose to ask you here. To share the things I know. In my own time.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘You have instincts, Madeline. Use them. Draw upon them.’

  ‘I can’t live life on instinct.’

  ‘No. You can’t.’

  I sigh.

  ‘Mamó. I don’t know what I want.’

  ‘Your eyes are opening, Madeline,’ she tells me.

  ‘I always wanted things, and I still want them. To go to college. Learn. To have a life.’

  ‘This will be better.’ Her mouth twists. Is she smiling? ‘Not in terms of fun or anything, but if you want to help. To work and help. That’s what you’ll learn to do. It’s what I’ll teach you.’

  ‘I have enough,’ I say. ‘Without giving up everything, I want to hear what you have to say. To work and help at whatever it is you do for people. You’re talking about leaving behind the parts of myself that nourish me, and nourishing the ones that make me sad.’

  She looks at me, and superimposed on her eyes I see Mam’s ones, the disappointment there. If she knew where I was, what I was thinking. Brian’s voice inside my head along with hers. And Catlin – if I’m off learning witchcraft, she’ll be alone more often, more and more. And Lon will leach in everywhere, around her. I want my twin to know she has a person. I want her to know that she is loved. And not the kind of love that wants to own her. The blood-thick love. The kind that doesn’t stop.

  My thoughts are racing and her eyes still scan my face. I think she can see me deciding that this is all too much right now.

  ‘I think –’

  ‘But it’s a waste of talent not to –’ she begins, and I interrupt her, which is probably a stupid move, but she interrupted me first.

  There are so many things I feel like I’ve been keeping in, it’s almost cleansing to just let it rip. A sort of power, in this place where everyone is constantly reminding me how little I know, how little I can do. How little what I want even matters.

  ‘Everyone has talents they don’t develop. I could be really good at playing ukulele, but I’ll never know. Because I could give a shit about the ukulele.’

  ‘What we do … isn’t the ukulele,’ she almost spits at me. I glare at her, riding the wave of my anger towards the door.

  ‘It is in this analogy. I am trying to explain,’ I say. ‘This. Decision. It’s twisting all the things I knew around, and that is not a sudden process. I need time. And if I don’t have that, then it’s a no. It has to be a no.’

  ‘Time can be a curse,’ she says. ‘I have heard you, Madeline. Now, sit. I’ll give you tea to ward off dreams.’

  ‘And Catlin?’ I ask.

  ‘I’ve been doing my best fo
r your sister,’ Mamó tells me. ‘The tea I gave her was similar to this.’ She opens several jars and begins mixing.

  ‘What should I do,’ I ask, ‘to keep her safe?’

  ‘I don’t know that you can, Madeline,’ Mamó says me. ‘There are things in life we have to lose.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ I ask.

  She sighs and stirs. ‘Madeline. You’ve turned down my offer, but here you are, still asking questions. There are journeys we take. And ones we don’t. If you won’t do the work, it’s not my job to educate you. Ask your stepfather about that boy. If he’s any sort of human, he’ll do something. And in the meantime, get that down your throat.’ She thrusts it at me, in a thick earthenware mug. I take a sip, and gag.

  Seawater, and nettle and rose and … fennel? And little white stones, small and shaped like teeth in the bottom, underneath the sludge.

  ‘Drink it all down,’ she tells me. ‘It’ll sort you.’

  I do. And maybe it does. I do feel calmer. Colder. Or maybe it’s the thing crossed off my list. Next step is to do something for Catlin, I reckon. Telling Oona how I feel is scarier than Lon, so I reckon I’ll save that for last.

  ‘Goodbye, Mamó,’ I say to her.

  I try the door, but it won’t open. She calmly reaches over, turns the latch the other way, inclines her head.

  ‘Off with you. You know where I am, Madeline. When you need me. And you will need me.’ She says it like it is a certainty, perhaps a threat.

  ‘We’ll see,’ I say, and as the door clicks behind me, I hear her voice saying, ‘We will,’ behind me. She might be a wise woman, but she is also a petty one.

  The raven caws, perched on a windowsill above my head. It’s holding something small inside its mouth. A shiny pebble, round and solid. I feel hairs rising on my skin. I crush the urge to reach my hand right out, and keep on walking.

  27

  Mustard Seed

  (to warm the body up)

  I haven’t heard from Oona since that night. She hasn’t been at school. I’m trying not to send her any more messages. I don’t want to pressure her. Scare her off me. I want to make it easy for her to be with me.

  Like at the lake.

  I traipse up the stairs, smelling dinner, ignoring it. I cannot cope with people wanting things from me right now. I thought that I would get a straight answer from Mamó, about Lon. I thought that maybe she would try a little harder to convince me.

  I want to be wanted, and I want to be left alone.

  Things that are impossible together. Witchcraft and a normal, happy life.

  I spoke in anger, but my words were true, I think. I need to kill that part of me. I remember when Mam started going to church every Sunday. It was when we were about seven or eight. We all went, until I was thirteen, and then she let me make the choice myself.

  I think of the driftwood woman, on the altar, surrounded by candles. The shadows dancing on her wooden flesh. That’s the sort of strange that people tolerate. Charms and spells to keep God on your side. It could be magic too, but not for me. It makes me feel uneasy. Helpless. Small.

  I don’t want Mam to light candles for my mental health and worry as I drift away from her. I don’t want her to lose another person that she loves to something strange. I think of my father, burnt inside a glade. I close my eyes and almost smell the tang of something in the air. Leaves on the forest floor. Charred body, verdant trees. There is a puzzle there, if I could solve it.

  So many things around me feel so … paused. On hold, until my life is normal life again.

  I’ve still been keeping things inside, not telling anyone. I’m not ashamed of how I feel or anything. Or only a little. It’s not that I have fallen for a girl, but that I’ve fallen so hard for someone who doesn’t care about me. I don’t want Mam and Catlin to know I’ve been rejected.

  And I don’t want to be her second best.

  I think of the story of the forest devil. You take a living thing to certain crossroads. Something full of innocence is best. You bring a sharp knife and a steel resolve and you take the thing and plunge the dagger in. And you can play with it, if that’s your thing. It makes the call you’re sending ring a little louder.

  The devil listens to the sharpest hurts. The little death is like a signal flare. A statement of your need. But something else as well.

  Permission.

  And if he comes, you have more work to do. Lay out a bargain. Offer him your soul. He can say yes or no. Or even maybe. But if he listens, you can do big things.

  Before you die.

  I think of what myself and Mamó silenced. The Ask, she called it. A sort of prayer, Brian said.

  What did whoever hurt that little creature intend?

  I wonder what I’d sacrifice for Oona. I couldn’t kill a thing to get me her. But it wouldn’t be real then. It mightn’t work. I wonder, when the fox was sliced apart, was it for love, or health, or power? Or if it’s just a story in a book, upon a tongue. Putting sense upon things with no reason. I think of all the stories in Dad’s book. They ended well, more or less. You can thwart almost anything, as long as you know the rules. It’s just I’m not familiar with them yet.

  And there are rules. And there are rules for everything. No one tells you what they even are – you pick them up by getting things all wrong, and then when you’ve made sense of them, they break, and turn to something new.

  It makes no sense.

  At night I dream of my father, his face above me, mouth shaped into something like a prayer. The tang of lemongrass. The hum of bay.

  Small white stones pitted in the bottom of a mug.

  Small white crosses rising from the ground.

  My heart is racing.

  Everything is still.

  I gasp awake.

  28

  Mullein

  (influenza, gout, aches of the head)

  This morning in the bathroom, there was a bruise on the nape of Catlin’s neck. She whacked it on the edge of the sink, she said. When she was doing something with her hair. It was the size of a two-euro coin. The shape of an egg. An angry purple-blue.

  I noticed others, clustering her arms. Green, yellow, brown. The size and shape of little pebbles. Fingerprints. I opened up my mouth to start to ask. Before I drew a breath she started speaking.

  ‘It’s nothing. I’m clumsier than usual here. Maybe because my brain is taken up with all this love. It can’t be good for me, being so adored.’ She did a swishy arm movement, like she’s a goddess in the middle of a fountain, a bride on top of a cake. More like herself again, the marks aside.

  I smiled at her and nodded. But.

  Bruising’s when you bleed beneath the skin. Dappled skin, like algal bloom on water. Underneath the surface, she’s been hurt.

  Helen Groarke.

  I can’t ignore the past. Not any more.

  I look at Mam across the kitchen table, wondering how best to bring it up. A time when I could get her on her own.

  The three of us are by ourselves here now. Brian is away on business again.

  ‘What exactly is his business?’ Catlin asks, biting into a slice of toast. ‘You think he’d be able to stick around more, seeing as he’s rich and things.’

  ‘Rich people have to stay rich,’ I tell her. ‘This castle is a pricey place to live.’

  ‘I think he could afford to cut back on the heating a little. It’s almost too warm. I keep kicking the blanket off me during the night.’

  ‘Me too,’ I say.

  Mam looks at us. ‘What are ye talking about, girls? It’s freezing here. If I didn’t have three hot water bottles and Brian in the bed, I’d get frostbite.’

  ‘You should take my bed tonight, Mam,’ I say. ‘Like, I can hop in with Catlin. She won’t mind.’

  ‘I could mind,’ says Catlin. ‘I don’t. But I could.’

  ‘You could do anything you want to do,’ I tell her. ‘I believe in you. God Bless America.’

  She snorts. ‘Why does no on
e ever say God Bless Ireland?’

  ‘Because America sounds more dramatic. And also, God has spent too much time here already, getting nuns to sell babies and whatnot.’

  ‘The church is not God’s fault, Madeline.’

  ‘Then whose fault is it?’

  ‘Yours.’ Catlin glares at me. ‘And I think we’re all overdue an apology.’

  ‘I’m so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so sorry,’ I tell her, holding my hand to my heart and crying pretend tears. ‘I didn’t know that I was the secret pope.’

  ‘Well, you do now. So start wearing impressive hats.’

  Mam looks at the two of us, her face confused. ‘What are ye on about?’

  ‘Were you not listening to our interesting and important conversation, Mam?’

  ‘No, Mad. I was somewhere else. Thinking about Brian. There’s something …’ Her face gets a strange look, like she’s trying to do a quadratic equation without any paper to write it down on.

  ‘Wife in the attic,’ says Catlin, very matter-of-factly. ‘It’s always a wife in the attic when lads have castles.’

  ‘I wish he did have a wife in the attic,’ Mam says. ‘She might tell me what was going on.’ She pauses, taking a long slug of tea. ‘I get the sense he doesn’t want to worry me. But if there’s a reason to be worried, I’d rather worry about what it is than about all the potential things it could be, you know? I mean, the castle costs a lot to run. There’s huge pressure on him, and I’m not earning now.’

  I feel my throat clamming up. I know more than either of them does. But if I told them … what would I say exactly? Brian knows things. Mamó is a witch, and there are sacrifices in the forest. I don’t think it would comfort anyone to hear that stuff. He did say that he’d tell her, in the kitchen. And he will. He’ll have to. I swallow.

  She trails off.

  ‘That’s probably it. The money thing. I’m just being silly. Every relationship is different. And your father did have secrets too.’

  I think of my father’s hands enveloping my small ones – his nails stained with yellow, green and blue. Strange colours for a man or for a garden. Any maybe it’s just flashes in my brain. Something in me filling in the gaps. Colouring in the spaces that he left with bits of people.