Touchstone

by Mette Ivie Harrison

  Except for the kitchen. Mama’s kitchen with its huge iron stove and ice box, had been unwrapped from its wooden packaging, but seemed unharmed.

  Jessie, I thought. Had Mama known she would die? Had she left this for Jessie? What about for me?

  “You’re lucky I didn’t strangle you.” It was Mr. Martin, standing over me.

  I could not get to my feet. I felt blood in my mouth, spat it out at him, and missed him by a long way.

  He laughed.

  Then he came closer, within arm’s reach. “Try it again,” he threatened me.

  But I had lost my taste for revenge. It did not matter. He did not matter.

  Mama was dead. There was nothing left to fight for.

  “Where is she?” demanded Mr. Martin, coming close enough now that I could smell the alcohol on his breath. Bought from the outside, for it couldn’t have come from Zicker.

  “Where is my daughter?” Mr. Martin asked, again, as if I hadn’t understood the first time.

  I shook my head.

  He hit me again, in nearly the same place he had caught me before. I teetered on the edge of falling unconscious again. I wished that I had. Instead he pulled me up sharp against his chest and began to twist my arm back.

  The pain was more than I could have imagined, and I had always thought my imagination was immense. No dream could hurt like this.

  “Tell me where she is and I will let you go.”

  “No,” I said through clenched teeth.

  He twisted harder. I couldn’t hear if he said anything then, but I kept shaking my head to make it clear I would not give him what he wanted, what he had already killed for, three times over.

  It wasn’t until he let go of me, disgusted, that I fell with my face to the dirt.

  When Mr. Martin went away, and I saw a few other men cross between me and the restaurant with him, I dared to crawl towards the fire once more. I just had to go there, see what it was. Something about knowing the truth so that I could tell it.

  The roof was still falling in flakes with the light wind. It felt like fall as I walked through the door. The sunlight streamed through overhead, as though I were in a clearing in a forest.

  Mama’s body was in the doorway, on her back, her eyes up to the sky.

  “No!” I cried out. “No!” I fell over her and wept. Her body was still warm, but warm from the fire, not from her own life.

  I thought of all the moments that I would never share again with Mama. Seeing her in the kitchen with her hair askew, and oblivious because she was with her bread. Mama in her beekeeper’s outfit, with honey dripping from the combs. Mama picking crabapples, and peaches, covered with fruit and sugar from the jam.

  Mama holding me in bed when I was sick, giving me drinks though I threw them back up. Mama telling me of her touchstone day, and assuring me that I would have mine, one day.

  Well, it had come. Mama knew what I was, and the touchstone day stew hadn’t mattered then.

  Mama would have wanted to hear my stories the rest of my life. I knew that. She would have been proud of me. She would not have understood me anymore than she understood Tristan and his songs, but she would have stepped back and applauded for me. She would have—

  But she would not.

  I felt the sobs rising up in my chest. My throat ached and my head felt heavy and as filled with fire as the restaurant had been that morning. I let one sob go, but I held the rest. I saved them. For the story.

  Mama’s story.

  Then I turned and went back the way I had come.

  The stairs crumbled beneath my feet as I moved down them. I went outside to the river, to drink and cool my face. Then I went back to the tree where I had left Jessie and told her to come down.

  “It’s time for a judgment,” I said. And together we walked towards the other end of town, knocking on doors and calling for a judgment. I was afraid of the outcome, but it was our way. And Mr. Martin was only one man. He had not had so many with him as I had imagined. Only a few. The rest were just afraid.

  But they came when we called. They came because of what they saw in our faces, and because of what many of them had seen that morning, the streak of fire above the restaurant. And they came for Mama.

  #

  I found Mr. and Mrs. Johnson and made sure Jessie was safe with them. Then I moved through the rest of the crowd, answering questions if they were asked, and assuring people that the judgment would soon begin. No one had had time to bring food to this judgment. It seemed to me a kind of memorial to Mama, that we would all go hungry. But it was also a reminder that this was not like any other judgment.

  It was close to noon when I saw Mr. Martin being pushed forward, towards the now cold and lifeless restaurant. One of the men who held him had been here this morning. He had changed sides quickly, I thought. Perhaps there would be a judgment for him later, and the others. But not now.

  Mr. Martin sneered at me, pretending he did not care about the judgment. “The accused speaks first,” he reminded me.

  “Speak, then,” I said. I did not let myself feel fear. I had not told the story well at Jacob Wright’s judgment, but I had learned since then. I knew who I was. And I knew who he was.

  It would be different this time. This time my story would win.

  Mr. Martin spoke loudly, as if to me, though I knew he was speaking to everyone gathered. Those who were trying to pull him closer to the restaurant stopped. We were by Mama’s shed. If I opened the door, I thought, and let the bees come out—but no, that would not be punishment enough for him.

  “Your mother took my daughter away from me,” said Mr. Martin. “I knew she wouldn’t let me speak to her. I was terrified for her and for the lies that your mother poured into her ears. Everyone knew what she was saying, but they didn’t believe it. They know me too well.”

  I nodded, not bothering to interrupt. He would have his chance and I would have mine.

  Mr. Martin’s face was very dark and he wiped frequently at the trickles of sweat running down his face. “I came this morning to ask once more if I could see her, but she met me at the door and began to shout at me. She threw herself at me.” He gestured at a scar on his face.

  This was his story, I thought. It was not a poor one, as far as stories go. There was emotion in it, and he tried to make his listeners feel for him. But Mr. Martin did not understand that the story might have had more power if it had its own life. He tried to keep it too firmly attached to himself.

  I thought again about the story I had told at Jacob’s judgment. It was when I had been afraid and tried to force the words that it had gone so wrong. I had wanted it to say what I wanted it to say, and you had to trust the story to do that, to come out of yourself and be part of you. If you did not, then it never could do what it was meant to do. It could not change anyone.

  “Then we went up the stairs because I could hear sounds up there. I was sure Jessie was there. I knew she would want to see me, her own father. But the door was locked against me.” He looked around, his eyes trying to find another pair to anchor on. But they kept slipping away. Too light for the load.

  “I kicked the door down at last, and I saw two beds inside. Jessie had been there, but she was gone. I asked the woman where my daughter was, but she would not answer me. I asked her again. I shook her.” Now he was the one shaking. “But she would not say.

  “Then I thought I saw movement outside, on the ground. I moved to the window. I meant only to smash out the glass. But she stepped in my way. The hammer struck her in the face.” He winced at this, but I had seen my mother’s body already. I knew where he had hit her.

  “I did not mean to kill her. I swear it. I will give whatever reparations are judged necessary, to her daughter.” He swallowed, as if he really cared. “But I did it all for my daughter’s sake.” His voice had drifted away.

  He did not know that endings are the most important of all. Or perhaps he did, and found no way to twist it the way he wanted, in the end.


  Perhaps there was no way to twist a lie to sound like truth for long.

  I waited until he had given up, and then I took my place, feet firmly apart, directly below the window where my mother had been killed. I looked out into the faces that I had known every day of my life, and they waited for me to tell my story.

  They knew it, too, I thought. They knew I was a storyteller. It did not matter what the touchstone said. They could see it in me, a calling as sure as any other.

  I told about Mama, about her cooking. Her bread. Her barbecued pork. Her hot chocolate and berry pies. Her biscuits dripping with hot butter. Her sugared tea with cream. Her fried okra and her greens with bacon. Her twice baked potatoes and gingerbread.

  Then I told about her and my daddy, about how much she’d loved him and he’d loved her. How he’d died in the river and she’d had to come home to tell me. And to go on with her life, because she believed that it was still worth living. Because she loved me, yes, but also because she loved herself. And the restaurant. And the two of Zicker itself.

  I told about how I asked her often about her calling by the touchstone, and why I hadn’t been called yet. I tried to make my voice sound like hers when she spoke gently to me, reassuringly. “There’s time yet for that.”

  I pointed at Jessie and said that Mama hadn’t known taking her in would end in her death. “But if she had, she’d have done it just the same. Because she was always the kind of person who knew what was right. She didn’t need anyone to tell her what was right. Just like she didn’t need the touchstone to tell me I wasn’t meant to be a cook, or that I wasn’t meant to be a singer like Daddy.”

  Only I was like Daddy, more than I’d ever understood. I didn’t have the music he had, or at least not the pleasantness of it. But there was music in my story, in the rhythm of the flow and the way that my voice changed and grew louder or softer, more strident, or more harsh.

  “She wasn’t the one who told me that there are too many people who go to the touchstone and call themselves to what they want, but I think she knew it. She loved Zicker more than she loved that stone up on the hill. She loved all of you. As much as she loved me, I think.” That was what helped accept her death, the idea that she had died to make Zicker live on.

  “We don’t need a stone to tell us who we are. We should be telling the stone, all of us, and not pretending about it. In the end, don’t we all call ourselves? If we didn’t, we’d be miserable. It’s time for us to choose our own futures, and not make excuses anymore.”

  I knew there was a danger in this. Jessie’s father wasn’t the only one who’d try to force his child to accept a calling that wasn’t in their heart. But it was time for us to stop assuming that we only ever received one call, or that we couldn’t have two calls at once, as Jacob had. One that was for others, for Zicker, and one that was for ourselves.

  “Do you understand?” I asked.

  I looked into their eyes, and I knew. I’d found my own calling. I’d given it to myself. This was it. I spoke, and others listened. Call it storytelling. Call it music. Call it changing people’s hearts or inventing a new future. This was who I was.

  “Come with me!” I cried, and led them up the mountain to the touchstone, to return our callings to it. It would never have power over us again, if we all stood before it and took our power back.

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  Copyright 2019 Mette Ivie Harrison

  Mette Ivie Harrison writes The Bishop's Wife mystery series for Soho Press and has written many YA fantasies, including The Princess and the Hound. She holds a PhD in Germanic Languages and Literatures from Princeton University, is an All-American triathlete, and is working on several autism positive books.

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  Giganotosaurus is published monthly by Late Cretaceous and edited by LaShawn M. Wanak.

  http://giganotosaurus.org