Betty

by Tiffany McDaniel

  I ran back out, but he caught me in the yard and told me to calm down.

  “I hate you.” I banged my tiny fists against him.

  “It’s okay.” He pulled me into him.

  I buried my face into his shoulder and cried. “They said I have a tail. But I don’t have a tail. I don’t.”

  “Of course you don’t, Little Indian.”

  He coaxed me to raise my face from his shoulder. He pinched the tears from my cheek like he was pinching off deer ticks.

  “I was goin’ in the woods to get me some ginseng,” he said. “Wanna come along?”

  I wiped my nose on his shirtsleeve before nodding.

  “Let me get my bag.” He stepped into the garage to grab his drawstring bag full of beads he had made out of twigs and branches.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  He held out his hand and together we walked into the woods. He pointed out trees as we passed.

  “That one there is a blackhaw shrub, Betty. It’s an Ohio native. The birds will eat the berries in the summer. And that’s an eastern red cedar. Notice how the bark has been scratched. It means a buck has been by here, rubbin’ its antlers. When you harvest bark—now remember this, Betty—you always peel it from where?”

  “The side the sun hits,” I said.

  “That’s right. And what roots should you always harvest?”

  “The ones that path to the east.”

  “Very good.”

  “See? I know everything. I don’t need to go back to school. Say I don’t have to go back, Dad.” I tugged on his hand. “Please.”

  “Ah, here we are.” He broke away and walked ahead to the pawpaw trees, where the ginseng liked to grow.

  Passing the immature plants at the bottom of the hill, Dad climbed up the steep side to the older plants, ready to be harvested.

  “Help me find a ginseng that has three prongs,” he said to me. “So we know this is not its first season.”

  I searched through the plants until I found three prongs. I made sure to count them aloud.

  “That’s right,” Dad said. “You’re a true ginseng hunter.”

  Despite the stiffening pain in his right leg, he lowered himself to his knees because this is what he felt was required of him. It was all part of his ritual in asking the ginseng its permission before he could dig it up. I dropped to my knees beside him as he closed his eyes and started silently moving his lips. I studied him as he did this. His brows were tightly drawn together, his concentration informing the way he bowed his head toward the earth rather than up to the sky. I wondered if I could ever speak to nature as deeply as he could.

  Copying him, I closed my eyes and laid my hands on the ground. I didn’t know what to say at first, so I let myself feel instead. The soft dirt pushing up between my fingers. The sun’s warm light on my shoulders. The plants blowing in the wind and brushing against the sides of my legs. I became overcome by the feeling it was possible for my fingers to lengthen and turn into rivers and for my body to lay so still, it could become a mountain. My lips had started to move before I was even aware of it. I was asking the earth where it came from and telling it where I did. All of this circled back around to the ginseng, whose blessing I asked just before opening my eyes.

  I found Dad staring at me with a smile.

  “Let’s begin, Betty,” he said.

  He first picked the red berries off the plant, dropping them into my hand. Using the screwdriver from his pocket, he dug around the roots until they were loosened, making sure to keep all the little hairs intact as he pulled the ginseng up. From out of his bag, he chose a bead. He squeezed it before dropping it into the hole.

  “All right, Little Indian.” He turned to me. “Put your seed in now.”

  Just as he had squeezed the bead, I gently did the same to the ginseng berries before dropping them into the hole. The berries would keep the ginseng population steady. The bead was Dad’s payment for Mother Nature’s blessing.

  “We have thanked the earth,” he said, filling in the hole.

  On the walk back home with our harvest, Dad tore a small strip of bark off a tulip tree. We returned to the garage, which he had been converting into his plant workshop. He already had a counter space constructed and an additional shelving unit on the far wall. In the corner was a small wood fire cookstove he had put in and on which he would boil his harvests for a tea or a decoction that he would then store in one of the jars lining the countertop.

  “I gotta get my tooth.” He reached for the tin toward the back of the counter. Inside it was the tooth he had removed from the rattlesnake that had bit him as he was taking it out of my crib when I was an infant.

  “The spirit of the rattlesnake is in this tooth,” Dad said. “A spirit that almost killed me when the rattlesnake’s fang pierced my flesh. That spirit is great power. Hiss, hiss.” He spoke like the rattlesnake.

  I shook his gourd rattle while he filled a pot with river water out of the bucket on the floor.

  “Always water from the river,” he said. “Remember that, Betty.”

  He moved the rattler’s tooth around in his mouth, hanging it out over his lip until I laughed. Then he carried the pot of water to the woodstove.

  “To get as hot as the sun,” he said.

  As he put more logs in the stove to build the fire, I laid down the gourd rattle to pick up a pine branch. I dipped it into the water, dusting the droplets upon my forehead.

  “Always water from the river,” he said again as he ground ginseng root with his hammer. He dropped the root and leaves, along with the piece of tulip bark, into the water to boil, adding torn ginseng leaves to float on top.

  From out of a tin can, he grabbed two dried pods from a honey locust tree. He released the pods into the boiling water. They would make the liquid sweeter. I figured he must be making the drink for someone who could not stomach a bitter taste. As he stirred the mixture, he continued his teaching.

  “For chills, Prunis virginiana is good.”

  “Prune…knees…” I did my best repeating the name.

  “Common name is the chokecherry.”

  “Good for chills,” I said, to which he nodded.

  “For fever,” he added, “use Castanea pumila.”

  “Cat a…”

  “Castanea pumila. Common name, dwarf chestnut.”

  He paused to look up at the spiderweb in the corner.

  “You know you can use spiderweb to stop a wound from bleedin’?” he asked. “Remember all of this, Betty.”

  He stepped away from the boiling water to grab a tin of arrowheads. He chose one the color of the sandstone and dropped it into the pot.

  “So the strength of the arrowhead will be given to the liquid,” he said.

  I listened to the arrowhead continuously clack against the bottom of the pan in the boiling water.

  “I learn more from you, Dad,” I said, “than I do from some stupid school.”

  He ladled the boiling mixture into a wooden cup and set it on the counter to cool.

  “If you don’t go to school, they win, Betty,” he said. “They win like the war was just so damn easy all they had to do was push you down.”

  He removed the rattlesnake tooth out of his mouth and held it between us.

  “It’s like when I was bit by the rattlesnake,” he said. “I thought I was beat, but what had bit me made me stronger. You’re bein’ bitten right now.”

  He took my hand in his and pricked my palm with the fang.

  “Ow.” I jerked back.

  “You have to survive it, Betty.”

  “Can’t.” I rubbed my palm. “Ain’t strong like you.”

  “You are strong. You just have to remind yourself.” He picked up the wooden cup. “That’s why I made ya this.”

  “It’s only ginseng.”<
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  “And an arrowhead,” he said. “That makes it the drink of a warrior.”

  He handed me the cup, still warm on the sides. I looked into the brown liquid and squinted my eyes from the steam.

  “It’ll burn my mouth,” I said.

  “It’s cool enough.”

  Staring into the liquid, I watched it swirl before lifting the cup to my lips and slowly sipping the hot liquid. I drank until only the arrowhead and the piece of bark remained.

  “You feel the spirit in ya?” Dad asked.

  “I feel dirt in my teeth.” I licked them as I set the cup down.

  “But do you feel the spirit, Little Indian?”

  “I don’t know.” I looked deep into his eyes. “How can I be sure?”

  “I’ll show you.” He grabbed my hand and, mindful of his bad leg, started to jump. He laughed as if he had never before had so much fun. “If you just stand still, Betty, you’ll miss somethin’ extraordinary.”

  I jumped only a little at first, but my father’s great big smile sent me higher and higher off the ground until we were jumping together like we could touch the sky.

  “Do you feel it?” he asked. “Do you feel the spirit?”

  “I feel somethin’,” I said, feeling the thud of the landing.

  “You’ve got to feel it all.” He pulled me after him to run laps inside the garage.

  “Do you feel it now?” He looked back at me.

  “I feel more of it.”

  “You’ve got to feel it all,” he said again as he broke us out of the garage. Still holding tight to my hand, he led us running into the field.

  “Where we runnin’ to?” I asked.

  “To somethin’ wonderful,” he said.

  Our feet beat in rhythm until we were moving so fast, I was certain I had lifted off the ground.

  “I feel it,” I said. “I feel it all.”

  And I did. Like something pouring into me, I saw colors streaking by. Blue, yellow, green. The sky, the sun, the grass. My school experience had put knots on my soul I was now able to run out to pasture. I felt a sudden affection for each thing around me, bucking back at the loneliness that had nearly overwhelmed me on the playground. Ruthis and the others were somewhere else. I was certain I could hold the heaviest things in the world. Not stone or iron, but rather whorls and all the things that spiral and spin.

  I was running so fast, I was passing Dad, and he was letting me, my hand slipping out of his. I circled the field before turning back to my father, who stood there with his arms open to me. I realized then that what we’d been running to was each other. I jumped up into his arms.

  “My little warrior,” he said, nuzzling his face into mine.

  7

  And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and the dragons in their pleasant palaces.

  —ISAIAH 13:22

  Lint had the face of a child. He had the face of a child with the eyes of an old man. He had the face of a child with the eyes of an old man who was restless.

  “September will soothe him,” Dad said. “And all of Lint’s fears will go before him like a fox runnin’ off into the night.”

  Dad said this each new month as if the flip of the calendar’s page was akin to opening a door. But when September arrived, slender enough to slip in between the tree branches, Lint came down with what Dad called the beetle shakes because of the way Lint shook like larvae.

  “The boy is only four,” Dad said. “Just a child. And children don’t always believe they’re seen unless they move. That’s all he’s doin’. Just movin’ so we remember to see him. So we know that in this home, he is here with us.”

  As Lint continued to shake, Dad carried him outside to a fire he’d made in the field. By the fire’s bright, orange flames, Dad warmed his hands. Then he laid them on Lint.

  “I see ya, son,” Dad said as he pressed his hands on Lint’s chest. “I see you.”

  The shaking stopped first in Lint’s right arm, then in his left.

  “I see you.”

  It stopped in his legs before it stopped in his head.

  “I see you.”

  When Lint was as still as the grass around them, Dad said, “Thatta boy. I see you.”

  Lint sat up and smiled. Perhaps Dad thought his son would be fine enough to move forward without ailment. That he would hold reason and that his laughter would say at least this much is true. But come Sunday, Lint had started to complain about animals inside of him.

  “Under m-m-my skin,” he said to Dad. “Movin’ around. It itches and h-h-hurts. I feel deer antlers s-s-stickin’, Daddy, stickin’ in my back. A s-s-squirrel on my arm. A possum in my f-f-foot. Coyote st-st-standin’ on my knee.”

  Wherever Lint would say there was an animal inside of him, Dad would blow on that part of Lint’s body while mimicking the creature’s call. When Lint told Dad there was a wolf in his elbow, Dad howled. When Lint said there was a tiger running up his back, Dad growled and bared his teeth. After Dad made the screeching sound of a hawk, Lint said that was the last animal.

  Dad knew then that in loving Lint, there would be bridges to cross and they would not always be easy. In preparing for this, Dad said we were not to talk about our brother with outsiders.

  “They’ll only send him away,” Dad told us when Lint was in the field foraging for rocks.

  “Where would they send him?” I asked, unsure of who “they” were.

  “To dwell in a house of scorpions,” Dad said. “These scorpions will sting him until he forgets how to talk. More than that, they’ll try to fix him, but all they’ll really do is chase him out of this world.”

  Whenever Lint said he was sick with imaginary symptoms like sore eyelashes or spiders in his ears, Dad would treat him with remedies as if the illnesses were real.

  “Promise you w-w-won’t let the demons get me, Daddy.”

  Nights became increasingly difficult for Lint. He feared evil spirits were within five feet of him at any given time. Trustin oftentimes slept on the sofa downstairs because of Lint’s chatter. Teas no longer helped ease his nerves, so Dad switched to coffee.

  “Can’t s-s-sleep,” Lint said. “D-d-demons.”

  “You can’t sleep,” Dad told him, “because when you were born, I washed your eyes in water I had soaked a robin’s feather in for three days. I wanted to make you an early riser, but I let the feather soak too long. Now you want to rise so early, you don’t even lay down to begin with. There are no demons, son.”

  Still Lint cried out and reached for Dad.

  “Daddy?” Lint asked. “Will you always b-b-be Daddy?”

  “Of course,” Dad answered with a nod.

  “Will Mommy always be M-m-mommy?”

  “Always.”

  “Don’t wanna g-g-grow up. Don’t wanna be a-a-alone.” Lint clung tight to Dad. “I want to be with Mommy and Daddy f-f-forever.”

  We struggled to understand Lint. One minute he could be happy. The next, a shadow seemed to cross his face. Dad said it was something none of us could understand, but something we all needed to try to.

  “It’s not his fault if he cries or says things that are a little peculiar,” Dad told us. “Dust enters into his ears and makes a great racket in his head. A racket we can’t understand because we don’t have to suffer it like he does. But he’s still your baby brother. His feet still run to us. It’s his mind that runs somewhere else. We have to be respectful of him. We have to understand that the things we do and say will affect him.”

  “Dad’s right,” Fraya said.

  “We have to be a family for Lint,” Dad continued. “I don’t want any of you leavin’ him by himself. He ain’t gonna grow out of whatever it is that has ahold of him, if you don’t spend time with him. If he’s left alone, silence will feed his demons.”


  So we didn’t leave Lint alone, but rather took him with us to places like the river.

  “H-h-hell,” he’d say, pointing toward the deep end. So he sat on the bank, splashing his small feet.

  He enjoyed watching Trustin dive, so Trustin would climb up a tree, walk out onto a branch, and call to Lint, “Lookee at me, Lint. Lookee at me.”

  Lint always clapped as Trustin crowed like a rooster before narrowing his gaze on the water. Though Trustin was only five at the time, my brother was no more serious than when he was about to dive. The branch would slightly bounce under his weight as he propelled into the air. His legs perfectly together. His toes pointed as if he’d never been flat-footed in all his life. His body would be a straight line, directed by his arms and hands pressed together as if he were praying as he entered the water.

  He would emerge on the bank where he’d shake his long black hair like a dog. The fray of his wet jean shorts clung to his thin thighs as he strutted along the bank, the sand pushing up between his toes.

  “Man, that was a good dive.” He’d congratulate himself. “Y’all see that?”

  “Meh.” Flossie would shrug. “I’ve seen better.”

  “It was good, Trustin,” Fraya would be quick to say.

  “Bigger splash,” Lint always requested. “Make b-b-big splash, Trustin.”

  Trustin would climb the tree again, this time performing a cannonball. But even these were works of art. His arms carefully wrapping his legs as the sun appeared over the curvature of his spine. From the bank, Lint would clap and laugh each time the water splashed onto him.

  Trustin would do this over and over again. Coming out of the river, his feet wet as he climbed the tree, each time saying, “This’ll be my best dive yet. Wait and see.”

  “Yay.” Lint would quack like a duck from the bank. “Big s-s-splash.”

  One particularly sunny afternoon, with Lint cheering him on, Trustin climbed higher than he ever had before. As he was about to crow like a rooster, his wet foot slipped.

  His dives had been perfectly planned falls. But as he dropped through the air, the art of those dives was quickly replaced. His arms flailed as his legs kicked the air and his body contorted just before he hit the hard ground.