THE HOUSE INSIDE ME

by Camelia Wheatley

  “No,” Aunt Raven blurted. Susannah was taken aback by her abrupt answer. “I’ve seen it before, remember?”

  “Yeah.” Susannah was sad. Concerned. It made her wonder what happened between her mother and Aunt Raven. She was about to ask when a letter arrived.

  “What is it, Aunt Raven?” A horrible feeling came upon her as she watched her aunt’s face turn a shade of green.

  “Child,” Aunt Raven said. pulling off her tiny round glasses. “Earlene has written and said your father has passed. He fell ill with a chest cough and never recovered. He was buried last week at Tremolt Cemetery in Garrison Falls. It’s a town about four hours from here. She sent this letter…and there’s a picture.”

  Aunt Raven dropped the picture at Susannah’s lap. Her father’s brown eyes stared up from the curled edges of the image. Standing beside him was Earlene. Susannah was stunned. Angry. The air felt sucked up into another vortex of place and she couldn’t catch her breath. The feelings of being abandoned by her father surged and her hatred for the woman who took him away inflamed her. Her face turned hot. She grabbed the picture and ripped it in half and threw it across the room. “I hate him. I hate her. I’m glad he’s dead. I wish she was dead too.”

  Susannah stormed out of the house and into the garden and dropped down at the edge of the large rosemary bush near the fence line. The death of her father brought to memory her mother and the times they had together as a family, before Earlene, before her mother died. How she wished she could return. It was hours before Aunt Raven found her. “Come, child. It’s time for a ceremony. Pluck a stem of rosemary before you come.” Susannah looked at her, confused and tearful. “No questions now, just do it.”

  Susannah plucked a long stem and following behind her, head slumped and grieving. Along the garden path, Aunt Raven stopped at the section of lush roses and wildflowers. “Now…did your mother tell you about the Petal People?”

  Susannah sniffled. “No…what people?”

  “Figures. I should have known as much. Well…this will not do. Let’s get on with it, shall we?” Susannah stood motionless, grieving and confused as to what Aunt Raven was saying.

  “So, you mean to tell me you don’t have a rose for your mother, for when she died?”

  “No,” Susannah answered, a little more confused. She tried to remember the stories her mother spoke of, but it was hard to remember a time and place of sorrow after she left. It was blocked from memory.

  “All right then. Get to it.”

  “Get to what?” Susannah questioned.

  Aunt Raven huffed. “Oh, for Pete’s sake. Your mother was always a tenderfoot and could never buck up when it came to doing the hard stuff, always had to have others do it for her. She had more of Simon in her than she did Brue, but no, neither one of them understood. They had it all backwards and I’m the only one who saw it.” Aunt Raven spun around and picked up her gardening shears. “Here. Cut you a flower that reminds you of your mother. Think hard. Don’t just willy-nilly it. It’s important. This flower shall represent your mother to you in memory for the rest of your life. Do you understand?”

  Susannah tried to understand, but her memory of those times with her mother was lost somewhere in her broken mind, only coming in bits and pieces. She lifted the shears to one flower and then hesitated and looked to another one, and then another, and finally stopped and looked up at Aunt Raven in tears. “Mama used to have some rosewater that made me lovesick when I held her. I can almost smell it now. It’s like some witchery of a plant has besieged me terribly. I cannot remember the name.”

  “Hmmm…” Aunt Raven looked at her with a peculiar expression. “And what color was this rosewater, was it tinted?”

  “Yes, it was. It was a tea rose, from what I can remember, velvet.”

  “Awww, yes. Velvet. Perhaps your memory is better than you think.” She spun Susannah around to face the most beautiful rosebush she had ever seen. It was the hybrid violet tea rose. Her mother’s favorite. Susannah buried her nose in the thick velvety petals and for a moment it felt as if she was in her mother’s arms again.

  “Are you going to cut a stem before it gets dark, or do I need to start a fire?”

  Susannah smiled and cut the rose. “Now, you’ll need to find one for your father as well.”

  “But he left me. For Earlene.” Susannah said, spiteful.

  “It doesn’t matter none, Susannah; he is still your father. We all do stupid, terrible things, especially to the ones we love the most, mostly, and more so.” Her eyes drifted away, sad and sorrowful. “You did have some memorable times together with your parents, and you need to honor this.”

  Susannah was angry and grieving for her losses. Every inch of her was crippled in loss, her mind, her mother’s illness, her death, left behind by her father, now his death. Loss seemed bigger than she could face but she was willing to try.

  “Fine.” She walked toward a wild rosebush with pale yellow roses and clipped it off. “Will this do?”

  “That will do, now follow me.” Susannah trailed behind Aunt Raven’s long flurried skirt with the bells dangling and clanging, while she held her mother in one hand, velvet and fragrant, and her father in the other. He always smelled like paper, the smell of books and old leather, and she often thought of him while reading. The last time she could remember seeing him, he smelled of strong ale and there was no rose for that.

  At dusk, Aunt Raven had a strong fire built at the other end of the property where the moss dangled from low hanging limbs and the winds howled a peculiar strange sound and made the fire crackle and pop. This was where Susannah learned of the ceremonies held for the dead, the long-held tradition of the Petal People, the roses. The Everlastings Immortelles Poem was read, written by Sessa, the second-born sister. She began to remember some of the stories her mother shared when she was young, and they began to make sense. Aunt Raven handed Susannah the torn picture of her father and the other half was Earlene. She motioned with her head toward the fire.

  Susannah held her father’s image close and threw Earlene’s in the fire and watched her burn. Her mind was ravaged with horrible thoughts she couldn’t control. The anger was still there and she didn’t know what to do with it. She tried to look at her father’s picture and grieve, but she was too mad at him. Still…for what he did to her. But Aunt Raven told her the story of looking into the gaze of God and forgiving him, accepting only the good she remembered. Susannah learned that love looks. Even if you’re mad. Even if they hurt you terribly, if you’ve ever loved them—you must look. Love always looks. Accepts. Goes on.

  After the rose petal fire ceremony of burying the dead, Aunt Raven showed her how to place the flowers in a mason jar to keep forever. She explained how the rose petals transform over time to the faces of the loved ones, and how the Immortelles Everlastings take our grief, so we don’t have to bear it.

  Susannah tried to pull herself together in the coming months, but dealing with the death of her father, the anger and her mother’s death all over again did her in. It took her to a dark, dark place. It was a trying time in Susannah’s life, but every day she managed to get out of bed and attempt to make a life for herself despite her great loss. Aunt Raven helped her in her weird ways. Finally, over time, Susannah was alight again. She was able to read and focus and smile.

  One morning after reading A Far Country by Winston Churchill, she skipped inside the oversized den with a book in hand and mind full of questions. She found Aunt Raven asleep in her chair. It was normal for her to take small catnaps during the day, but she’d always wake up intermittently. Susannah tiptoed closer, but with each step her vision changed. A dark, ominous cloud hovered and grew in size above Aunt Raven’s tight black bun. It was like stirred-up gnats. It hit her. Before it could confirm itself, sink from her mind to her heart, she knew the horrible, the terrible had happened. Fear consumed her in seconds, and within the gnat cloud a face formed itself. It was her mother reminding her of loss. Susannah’s thick t
humbs gripped the pages of the book and ripped through the pages. Her mind went to the place of the dead. She moved closer, hoping against hope what she saw was only a bad dream, and Aunt Raven was still alive. She’d raise her hand, or rock her chair or blink her eyes. But in the place of the dead, no one moves, no one stirs but the shadows.

  Aunt Raven sat stiff and lifeless in the same position she was in the last night when Susannah told her goodnight. Aunt Raven had replied with a smile, as usual, and then Susannah would do what she always did: grab the ends of the green silk scarf and rub it between her fingers. Aunt Raven had never been the touchy-feely type to begin with, but when Susannah first came to live with her, her clingy nature was a bit overbearing to Aunt Raven. She could not lend herself to affection of this kind, so instead she offered up her silky scarf, which was the next best thing.

  Realizing her aunt was dead, Susannah collapsed. Her fingers kneaded the scarf while she wept. She rubbed the silk scarf until it felt like sandpaper and rats clawing and scratching at her brain, trying to get out. It was hours, or days later, she did not know. Time was simply lost—fading in and out into the dark of the house, into the dark of her mind. The abyss of thoughts put her in a catatonic state of being, without feeling, numb to all. Her fingers were raw and left holes in the scarf, but she could not let go, so she unwrapped the scarf from Aunt Raven’s hair to keep it for herself. She swiveled it around her neck and for a moment felt it tighten like a noose and then loosen.

  “I will take my hug with me, Aunt Raven.” Her voice cracked. “Goodbye, Auntie. You’ve been good to me. I will miss you.” Tears streamed down her face. She rode into town to find the delivery boy she had come to know when he made his monthly deliveries. She paid him well and asked he find a few men to give a proper burial.

  Susannah watched four men put her aunt in the ground and something inside her broke. After the men left, she gave Aunt Raven her ceremonial dues. She built a fire, and sheared a rose from one of her aunt’s favored rose bushes. She wanted her aunt to be proud of what she had taught her to do. She gazed upwards as the flames rose to the sky and knew Aunt Raven was close, because soaring overhead was a white raven.

  Weeks later, Susannah realized the desperation of her circumstance. She was seventeen and alone. Alone again. The house and property were willed to her, so she stayed on and tried to live as Aunt Raven did, but she was not the solitary type. It was not her gift at all. Weeks dragged by like a slow death. The desolation of aloneness drove her mad. The silence drove her insane.

  Within a few months, Susannah retrieved her favorite books from the library and packed what little belongings she had in a large trunk. She collected Aunt Raven’s mirror bin and her own. Along with her treasured Mason jar of Petal People. Inside, the red velvet rose of her mother, the pale placid yellow rose of her father and the robust pink rose of Aunt Raven. She passed through the kitchen and collected the stash of money Aunt Raven kept for emergencies inside a tin container. She walked out the door and into the garden to bid her home farewell. She passed by all the rosebushes grown by Aunt Raven, the lush landscaped garden of bliss she had occupied for the last few years, and she gave a long, mournful cry. She sat down her belongings and lifted her hands into the air toward the heavens as Aunt Raven taught her. She prayed a silent prayer of gratitude for all she had done for her. She was walking away from this home—but she would not break tradition. She would pass it on. As painful as it was to go forward into the unknown, it was better than being alone, so she took one step and then another until she reached the end of the driveway. The new owners arrived. When she turned over the keys and smiled, Susannah slung the green scarf around her neck and never looked back. It was 1922 and in a few months she’d be eighteen and the money Aunt Raven left her would be turned over to her legally, since she did not have a guardian.

  She rented a small bedroom above a storefront a few towns away, close to people and places, noises and activities. For a time, it was just what Susannah needed. A change, noise, and people. Months later, fate intervened with its curses and gifts. Days came and went without recognition, simply vanishing into thin air. The rose which sat stoic inside the Mason jar became some sort of ghostly figurine, taking a rather ghastly appearance of Aunt Raven in its petals, and shortly afterwards, the rose of her mother, Joseymae, and her father did as well. It was different than before. What used to bring her comfort, now brought her madness. Petal People talked to her in her dreams. Time warped and swirled.

  And then, she woke up inside a hospital ward with no recollection of how she got there. Doctors at the clinic told her she checked herself in. Once she was cleared to leave, her frame of mind seemed more at peace. The doctors put her on medications to help her mind wanderings, but they also silenced the visions and the voices. A woman at the clinic helped her find a job at a sewing factory, so she could keep herself busy. She enjoyed walking to work every day since it was only a few blocks away.

  One evening after work, on her usual route, she crashed into a star. A heavenly meeting of two bodies on the corner of Third and Bryant Street. Jefferson Starbuck Adams was love-struck with Susannah and had every intention of marrying her. Though she played hard to get, he came stubbornly to the same corner every day to crash into her again, and again, until she said yes.

  Susannah was happier than she ever knew she could be, but most importantly, she wasn’t alone. She had found the love of her life. He brought out the best of who she was and she loved him dearly. While he was around, her mind was stable and at peace. The first year was more than she dreamed a marriage could be. Next came a house full of children and six years of blissful love and family, but in the beginning of the seventh year, a terrible fate would render its curse upon the family, and Susannah’s mind. Jefferson Starbuck Adams died of pneumonia. Susannah’s heart froze as hard as the ice forming on the gutters. At first, she was in denial, the depression, then anger. Somehow, what used to represent wholeness and spirituality in the number of seven, her past, her present, her future, was now ripped away in the seventh year. It should have been a good year, but it was the opposite. She began to doubt all the things she had been taught. What used to represent wholeness and oneness was now nothing but loss. Great loss of the only man she had ever truly loved, with her whole heart. Having him in her life gave her stability and purpose and now the madness returned to eat her soul. She was never quite the same again. Not as a person. Not as a mother. Not as anything. The mirror bin heirloom was a reminder of what was—and what would never be. It would not let up on its requirements, even with her losses. It continued to demand of her, things she could not give. The bin was part of the bloodline. The voices, the visions, the mind wanderings returned full force, and Susannah simply went into a dark, wounded core of herself. Living but not alive. Taking air but not breathing. Broken by life. Mourning of love lost.

  When Maw Sue told me this part of the story—I broke too. It was then I understood her more than ever. And what it meant for me.

  17

  Cassidy’s Birth Story 1963

  Numbers are the highest degree of knowledge.

  Numbers are the highest degree of knowledge. It is knowledge itself.

  ~Plato

  I shall now tell you the story of my birth, a story I have heard as much as Maw Sue’s story, so much that they intertwine, connect and converge. Or that’s what Maw Sue says.

  It was 1963. John F. Kennedy was president, Beatlemania had hit America like a storm and the first episode of Bonanza hit the airwaves of television. And I was about to make my appearance known in a rather unusual way.

  Click. Click. Click. Maw Sue’s tiny heels announced her entrance to the third floor, across the shiny buffed hallway of the hospital. There were strong smells. Her nose twitched. Her heart beat in raps, filling in the space between the clicking of her shoes. She didn’t like coming here because the smells, the sounds and the closed doors reminded her of places she’d rather not return to. Castle Pines was much worse than the ho
spital, but the familiarity was too close; yet she knew she had to go, for the newborn child. It was her duty as a Seventh Tribe member and a great-grandmother.

  She knew even though the bloodline had skipped a few generations, the child born this day, October 31, 1963 at 3:33 AM would be gifted. It was in all the signs. When she turned to face the door, she noticed something she hadn’t before. Her eyes blinked in disbelief. How—could—she—have—missed—it? In bold black numbers it read, #333, and underneath it on a piece of paper slipped inside a gold bracket was the name, Collard.

  Her mind shuffled through the memories of the past few months. A foretelling of what was to come. Like the day she went to the chicken coop to gather eggs. She put one egg aside for her breakfast with some bacon and biscuits. But when she cracked the egg against the pan, it spilt out a triple yolk, something she had never seen. At first, it sent a racking spell of shivers down her spine and she almost threw it out, but she didn’t want to waste an egg so she looked past her silly notions. After all, she had put away the serious, superstitious side of herself long ago. Days later, she went to pick up a tablecloth at the catalog counter of Sears and Roebuck. The clerk handed her a ticket while he went to the back to find her package. She glanced down at the ticket and it said, 333. Her heart literally jumped into her throat. The clerk came back and handed her the packet and she just stood there besieged by an unknown. Finally, after the third time, he said, “Ma’am…are you okay?” She quickly regained focus and left. Once again, she ignored it as a fluke. A week later, though, things got strange. Her alarm, although she sat it for six AM every morning, instead went off radically at three o’clock, scaring the bejesus out of her. Then just as she got settled in again, it went off at 3:13, and then again at 3:33. She did not sleep after the third ringing. She made some coffee and pondered what strange things were happening. But as Maw Sue did, she put those things away, tucked them back into the folds of her broken mind where they would not do their damage, as they had done in the earlier years. But later in the week, the Brickery Grocery receipt was exactly thirty-three dollars and thirty-three cents. She was breathless but at this point her mind was overloaded with worry and stirrings of the past, and she did not want to return to Castle Pines because of something as silly as multiple threes. So, she put it away. But regardless, it returned, over and over again, until the birth of the child. The longer Maw Sue stood at the door, the more she realized it did not happen by chance: she was given advanced notice in preparation of the child’s birth. Her mother had taught her everything, especially that numbers pointed to something—a message was there if you looked hard enough.