Messenger

by Carol Lynch Williams

  “Wait”—I pulled on Aunt Odie’s caftan—“is that . . . is that a man’s voice?”

  “Yes, it is,” he said. The door opened wide, and a man as big and tall as the doorway stood before us. “Unusual, right? A male medium who happens to be the size of a giant.”

  “Umm,” I said.

  Aunt Odie offered her hand to him. “Paulie,” she said. “He is a jack-of-all-trades. Has a Gift that shames most.”

  “Odie, don’t!” Paulie said, but I could see he loved her bragging on him.

  “I was thinking . . .” My voice was drowned out by the rain on the tin roof.

  “What everyone thinks,” Paulie said. “I should be a woman with kohl eyes wearing a frock like this.” He eyed Aunt Odie up and down. She beamed. Petted her dress.

  Past Paulie, the room was like a hole. Maybe even darker because of the morning outside. The blue of the OPEN sign made the furniture look like monsters—or monsters like the furniture. A high-backed sofa. Three chairs. Was that a bear in the corner or a hutch? Would this medium turn on a light or what?

  “Have a seat,” Paulie said when we crowded into the foyer. He gestured to two chairs, then moved himself faster than I thought someone his size could, to his own chair, where he plopped with a sigh behind a small table. I could hardly see him, it was so dark. I could hardly see Aunt Odie, who was close enough to touch.

  We sat. Pulled in tighter.

  Outside it sounded like the storm stood right over us. When lightning split the sky, it was as if someone had flashed an old-fashioned camera in the room. Then slammed a fist onto the roof.

  The smell of rain almost covered the smell of cinnamon.

  “Those are for later,” Paulie said.

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  “Let me hold your hand.”

  Aunt Odie giggled.

  She extended her fingers to him.

  Did she . . . did Aunt Odie have a crush on Paulie? I looked from my aunt to Paulie to Aunt Odie again. Did they? Like each other?

  “Not you, Odie. Evie,” Paulie said. “I need to see her hand if you want any help here. I’ve already looked at yours.” In the darkness they stared at each other. Smiling.

  “Of course,” Aunt Odie said. She sounded like a movie actress.

  Just like that I thought about Buddy. His hair black as this room. Eyes too brown to look at. Would he ever smile at me the way these two smiled at each other? Did I want him to? Was I too young for a serious sixteen-year-old boyfriend?

  “So there’s someone you’re interested in?” Paulie’s touch was like electricity.

  “Not really,” I said. My face burned, and not because I’d lied. I hadn’t. I wasn’t sure how I felt about Buddy.

  Except I wanted him to kiss me.

  But I didn’t let him.

  Maybe I never would.

  Who knew?

  “Pay attention,” Paulie said. “You’re thinking of everything but what we’re supposed to be doing here.”

  I tried to focus.

  Aunt Odie shifted in her seat. Thunder shook the walls around us. The line of pictures hanging there chattered. “It’s her birthday, Paulie,” Aunt Odie said. “Her special birthday.”

  “I know that, Odie,” Paulie said, like the news wasn’t fabulous or news at all. “Let’s see.” He bowed his head. Fingered the silk of the tablecloth.

  How could he see anything, my palm included, in this gloom?

  “Sometimes I know things,” I said, trying to be helpful when Paulie didn’t speak at once. “Or I dream stuff.”

  “You don’t need to tell me anything.” In the near darkness he peered into my eyes. His skin seemed to glow.

  I blinked.

  “Besides, everyone can do that,” he said, “if they pay attention. Nothing unique about knowing or dreaming.”

  Lightning hit the house then. For a moment I was stone deaf.

  Aunt Odie let out a scream, but I almost couldn’t hear her. For sure I saw her mouth go wide.

  My fingers tingled like the electricity had traveled through my body.

  The room lit up bright as day. I saw us all in there, like a photograph. Like I stared at a picture of the room instead of participated.

  Paulie and I gripped hands, and he stared in that bright light, right into my eyes. Into my brain and heart and maybe into my blood vessels.

  His mouth dropped open. His fingers squeezed mine.

  “Ouch,” I said.

  All that in less than the blink of an eye.

  Paulie stood then, without warning. Knocked his chair to the floor behind him. Stumbled. “Wow. Whoa. No. Nonono.”

  “What?” Aunt Odie said.

  “Nothing,” he said. He turned from us, took a couple of steps toward a darkened doorway. “I see nothing special about her as far as a Gift.” His voice was two octaves higher, at least.

  Aunt Odie didn’t speak.

  Neither did I. Had some ancestor heard me wonder about not wanting the family Gift?

  Then Aunt Odie said, “Well.”

  My heart fluttered.

  “So.”

  I was . . . what? Embarrassed? “I didn’t really think . . . ,” I said, whispering.

  “I see.”

  I was an oddball. A Messenger oddball. In the darkness I accepted the fact. There’s an oddball in every family. Sometimes two. Aunt Odie said so.

  Now she stood. “Are you sure, Paulie? She seems different from the others.” She worried at the hibiscus she’d stuck behind her ear. Mine, I noticed, was in full bloom, open-throated, on the table.

  “You have to go.” Paulie waved a hand around. “I mean, I have to go. There are cinnamon rolls on the kitchen counter. I made them for you. From one of your mixes. You know the way, Odie.”

  He reached behind him and seemed to pull a raincoat from thin air. Then he was gone.

  I swallowed.

  I hadn’t wanted the Gift.

  Not really.

  Ask anyone. The Gift’s trouble with a capital T. Or maybe I should say a capital G.

  Still, a bit of disappointment settled in my stomach, right near the over-medium egg. It squiggled around in the yolk, then rested in the hash browns.

  You think all your life you’re going to be something. Have a talent. Be able to, I don’t know, get rid of warts by buying them for a few pennies (Great-Grandmother Price) or make people fat using a turnip and a little candle wax (Mary, my cousin twice removed).

  You think you’re going to be a Messenger woman when you turn fifteen, and even if you sorta want to be like your friends at school, you accept there’s a part of yourself that’s different.

  But no.

  I wished it and I got it.

  I was an oddball.

  6

  Me and Aunt Odie stood on the porch a long minute.

  The blue OPEN light went out.

  Overhead, the storm eased up. The sun tried to push through but couldn’t make a break past the clouds. I smelled wood rot.

  I stepped into the yard as Aunt Odie said, “I don’t think so,” and plowed on back into Paulie’s house. Not even knocking, mind you.

  “He’s gone,” I said. “He took that raincoat—”

  “Like hell he is.”

  The door slammed behind Aunt Odie.

  A breeze rushed past. Tugged at my curls. Swirled. Twisted. Tried to pull me with it.

  Then, “Now, Odie,” I heard Paulie say. His voice was a whine.

  “You saw something,” she said. “I saw you see it. The lightning. That blast. I saw you see!”

  I was a tree rooted to the porch. Listening in. Mist swirled around. Crawled up my legs. Fog rose from the earth. Tangled with the breeze.

  “You know I didn’t.”

  “I know you did.”
r />   There was a shuffling sound and I heard whispering, but I couldn’t make out what was being said. I leaned closer to the open window. The curtains from inside strained against the screen to get to where I stood.

  “What?” Aunt Odie said. The sound of her voice stilled my blood. “What? Are you kidding?”

  The door slammed open, bouncing off the wall, and my aunt hightailed it outta that place, like someone had set her afire.

  Just in case Beelzebub had been revealed to her, I followed Aunt Odie lickety-split.

  7

  Water stood high in the streets.

  Aunt Odie drove faster than a bat outta hell. Whatever Paulie had told her had scared her good.

  Scared me, too, though I had no idea what I was afraid of. A fist beat at the inside of my throat.

  Seeing the whole town of soothsayers, palm readers, and fortune-tellers is only a mile long, we were out of Cassadaga in less than forty seconds. Water sprayed from each side of the car like waves.

  “Hope you don’t get us trapped here,” I said. “Hope you don’t stall out the motor.” The trees reached for the car. “This is one scary place. Especially when it’s storming.” I wanted to ask my own what? Say my own Tell me. But I didn’t. Instead I just warned her.

  But Aunt Odie didn’t slow down.

  “You could stall out the motor. You could hydroplane.”

  There was a dead armadillo looking a lot like a half-­inflated soccer ball floating on our side of the road.

  “We could end up like him.”

  Not a word.

  Palm fronds edged closer to the asphalt.

  At long last I sat back in my seat after mentioning every possible car problem—none of which Aunt Odie took to heart, and that made it seem maybe I didn’t have the gift of seeing car misfortunes—and held on for dear life.

  “Not so sure”—Aunt Odie mumbled under her breath and gripped the steering wheel with one hand—“I have given you the best birthday present after all.”

  Those words scared me even more.

  She’s been waiting to give me this gift for 364 days. Since the day after I turned fourteen. (She got me three biddies last year. They lay eggs now that they’re grown, pale-pink eggs, every day for the last six months. They follow me around the yard when I go out back of my aunt’s house, where they have a miniature home that looks like Aunt Odie’s, including a long, screened-in porch area. We stir up the Aunt Carolina mixes with those eggs. And plain fry them too. I love all three of my chickens, though I must admit Nina is my favorite, with Santa Maria and Pinta both coming in a close second. Of course, I would never tell any of them how I feel.)

  “Now what? Now what?”

  “Now what what?” I said.

  Then I knew. I saw it on her face.

  “It was the storm,” I said. My words came out a whisper filled with gravel. “Wasn’t it? The storm had something to do with my birthday.”

  Aunt Odie took in a breath.

  “I never did tell you about my old auntie Doris, did I?”

  I swallowed. Shook my head.

  “Didn’t think so.” Aunt Odie took in another deep breath. “Sure wish I knew how to do the sign of the cross, but we Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t do that.”

  Jehovah’s Witnesses also don’t celebrate birthdays, either, but I said nothing.

  “Well?” I said after a couple of miles.

  Aunt Odie looked over at me with one eye. “Well what?”

  “You gonna tell me about her?”

  “Who?”

  “Auntie Doris?” Ahead of us the sky was as bright as a jewel. All the clouds, dark as a witch, traveled toward the gulf.

  Aunt Odie sort of crossed herself in an odd diamond shape, adding in a few extra swipes at her chest. “To be safe,” she said.

  Then she looked at me with both eyeballs.

  “Not till tonight.”

  “Of course.”

  Aunt Odie pulled over on the side of the road, right close to a ditch where water ran fast toward the ocean.

  “I am gonna tell you something, though.”

  She shut the engine off.

  “All right.”

  “It is high time I told you,” Aunt Odie said, “what my Gift is.”

  8

  Aunt Odie leaned close. She whispered at me. Her breath smelled like honey. It always smells like honey.

  “I get my recipes from dreams.”

  “I know that.”

  She sat back in the car seat. Her hand rested on the steering wheel.

  “From the dead.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “Written out on three-by-five recipe cards.”

  I blinked, nodded all slow. That I did not know.

  “Longhand. In my head. That’s my Gift. The recipes aren’t my own, but given to me.” She closed her eyes. Patted at her forehead, then spread her hands out like maybe I should take something from her.

  “This is how the Gift works for us. It helps us. Or helps us help others.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “I make a pretty penny selling these mixes, which benefits the entire family.”

  This is true.

  Aunt Odie helped me and Momma for a good long time. Let us stay with her all my life while Momma took care of me and worked off hours at the 5 & Dime.

  Then she met JimDaddy, who is a wealthy contractor. And here we all are.

  “My mixes,” Aunt Odie said with reverence, “help other­wise cooking-challenged women please their families with tasty dishes that taste homemade.”

  Like the commercials on TV say, I thought, but I said, “Yes, they do.”

  “What?”

  “Taste homemade. And help.”

  My aunt nodded. “I know. It’s part of the Gift.”

  “Should we git on home?”

  “Sometimes,” Aunt Odie said, “these Gifts are not what we expect. Or hope. Sometimes we have to make them what they become.”

  I faced front in the car. Stared out the steamy window. “Why’re you telling me this? We both saw what happened with your friend Paulie. There’s nothing here.”

  Aunt Odie didn’t say another word. Just started the car and drove us on home.

  9

  Momma, JimDaddy, and Baby Lucy were right there, on the porch, waiting for us.

  All smiles.

  “Well?” Momma said, eyebrows raised.

  “Didn’t go so great,” I said.

  “Later,” Aunt Odie said.

  “Now hold on,” Momma said. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” I said, “Paulie didn’t see nothing.”

  JimDaddy watched us with an almost interest. Baby Lucy teethed on a wrapped present.

  “And I said later,” Aunt Odie said.

  “Nothing?” Momma said.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “This is talk for when we are alone.” Aunt Odie said the words all serious and Momma didn’t question again. Instead, she hesitated then grabbed me in a hug. Smiled bright enough to light up a room. “Now don’t you worry.”

  “I’m not.” Oddball. Though I was. Aunt Odie seemed near to having a conniption.

  Momma kissed the side of my head. “Now lookit. Not everyone gets this.”

  “The Messenger women do,” I said. “That’s why we don’t change our names at marriage.”

  What could Momma say to that?

  Or JimDaddy, who didn’t argue even a second when Momma told him our family rules.

  What would Buddy say about that? I let out a nervous giggle at that random thought.

  “This. Is. A. Conversation. For. Later. On.”

  But Momma, who loves Aunt Odie more than I do, said, “We knew she wasn’t getting any signs something was coming.” Momma w
hispered like I wasn’t standing right there. “Not like the rest of us.”

  Aunt Odie flopped in an Adirondack and set to fanning herself with the skirt of her dress. “What does it matter what I say?”

  “So,” JimDaddy said. “Let’s get on with this.” He thrust Baby Lucy, her hair hanging in tiny curls though she isn’t even nine months old, into my arms. “She’s been waiting on you, Evie.”

  “See what she got you,” Momma said, her arm still around my shoulder.

  I grinned. “Okay.”

  Aunt Odie was three shades paler. Sweating, too. (Even though she is a big girl, my aunt never sweats. Not even on a baking day when you could roast meat outside. Or in.)

  “You okay?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  “Then my present,” JimDaddy said.

  Gift. Shmift. Ffift.

  He placed a kiss on my forehead. His hands shook and his lips were dry. Momma patted at my arm.

  Had they slept right through that storm?

  Water stood in the front yard. The petunias looked soggy.

  Across the street at Buddy’s place, there wasn’t anyone even moving. Not that I could see, I mean.

  Momma, her face changing from worried to excited, said, “Mine last of all.”

  Baby Lucy held a cell phone and JimDaddy had two cases for me plus a gift card to Wet Seal.

  Momma jumped a little, bursting to give me her news. “A party.” She danced me around in a tight circle on the porch. JimDaddy stared off across the yard. His hair caught the sun, making it look more blond than normal. Baby Lucy bounced around in my arms. I pulled a bit of damp cardboard from her mouth. She grinned at me. Would she be an oddball too? Or keep red ants and other pests far from our yards and homes?

  I said, “A party?” What I wanted to say was, Who will I invite? when Momma said, “I done sent everything out. Plus got back the RSVPs. You have five people visiting this evening, so I thought we could get you over to Aunt Carol’s place and let her give you a makeover.”

  Momma folded her hands under her chin like she had finished praying.

  “But Momma,” I said, ’cause she and I hadn’t been here long enough for me to have one friend, much less five. Me and Momma moved in with JimDaddy right before Baby Lucy was born. This change of venue shoved me to a brand-new high school. Left my old friends behind. Another scary reason to back off higher education. Who could be coming? My stomach frumphed at the thought.