The Witch of Belladonna Bay

by Suzanne Palmieri

  My father was never this insistent about anything. He was hiding something. Carter, too.

  “If it’s about my daddy, my ears are wide-open, Jackson,” Byrd said.

  I was quiet for a moment.

  “He didn’t do it. I know he didn’t. And I’ve only been home, what? Six hours? It’s a damn shame that I already know more about this case than any of you.”

  “Of course he didn’t do it,” said Minerva with conviction.

  “Look, Wyn, we don’t believe he did it, but we can’t forget he confessed,” continued Jackson.

  “Then why’s he in prison?” I asked, barreling on.

  “Lord, Wyn, you can be thick sometimes,” said Jackson.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Look, girl. I did everything I could for that boy. I made sure he had the best lawyers. He fired them. The only thing he’d accept from me was my petition to keep him close. He’s up there at Angola. He hasn’t let us visit yet, though. Well, Carter. He’ll see Carter.” There was some bitterness there. But Jackson had to understand by now that he wasn’t ever going to win a Father of the Year award.

  “See, sugar,” he continued, “I think he wants to be there.”

  “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” I said. “Why on earth would he want to be in prison?”

  “Maybe you should ask him,” Carter interrupted, his voice booming over mine.

  If we were up north, I’d be able to speak my mind. Stop everyone and make sure I was heard. But down here? There’s a different rhythm to conversations entirely and that extends to declarations.

  “Stick rang me up,” continued Carter, quieter this time. “Said you were goin’ up to Angola. Maybe Paddy’ll listen to you. And until then, it seems to me that there ain’t nothin’ more to discuss.”

  I liked and didn’t like that he felt so comfortable with me. And I had to remind myself that he was more of a member of the family than I was. It had been my choice to leave.

  The clouds grew dark as the thunder rolled in low and the breeze fell on us in cool waves. The magnolia and oak leaves rustled together, making a sound so loud you couldn’t tell where the whispering leaves left off and the now pouring rain began.

  Byrd mimicked Jackson, walking behind him as he went to draw down the bamboo shades so we could continue our drinking on the porch.

  “Ain’t gonna be too bad,” said Jackson. “And we sure do need the rain, don’t we, Carter?”

  “Sure do,” he replied.

  These early evening summer storms always reminded me of Grant. Grant had been the most handsome boy in Magnolia Creek, with his dark hair and deep blue eyes, different than Charlotte’s and different than mine. Almost violet. “Indigo eyes,” I used to call them.

  Everyone always sort of figured Grant and I would end up together, and we did. Me and Grant. Paddy and Charlotte.

  We’d all drive up and down the Alabama coast in Grant’s beat-up pickup truck that he’d souped up so it went extra fast. And we’d feel free. I’d sit up front next to Grant, with Paddy and Charlotte wilding in the flatbed. They’d stand against the wind, yelling at other cars and falling into each other’s arms when we’d hit a pothole. Then they’d make out until Grant and I made jokes about them running out of air.

  All Grant and I wanted was to go faster.

  My bare feet on the dashboard, his hand on my thigh.

  Faster, I’d whisper into the wind, and Grant, who found my death wish so sexy, would grip my thigh as he drove faster and faster until I thought we might break the sound barrier.

  We’d always end up three hours west, in New Orleans. Or at the Beer Cave in Gulf Shores. Stir up trouble and laugh all the way home. One time we made a five-hour drive to the Florida panhandle, ending up in Apalachicola and eating oysters by the dozens. There was nothing better. Nothing felt more real or alive than the ocean in our mouths, and the silver sun setting low. I’d forgotten.

  How could things have gone so far off track for all the people I loved?

  I’d go see Paddy in prison and ask him for myself. And he’d tell me the truth. He’d tell me everything.

  My broken family talked until the rain stopped and the velvet night descended. We talked about Jackson’s new hydroponic farm. About Ben, and how we met. About Minerva’s marriage. About Byrd’s premonitions. And then, when the crickets and cicadas got so loud we could barely hear each other talk, Byrd pointed up into the sky.

  “Look, Jackson, there it is again!”

  A sort of aurora borealis hovered over the entire island of Belladonna Bay.

  “Maybe it’s sulfur,” I said.

  “Don’t know what it is, damn miasma. Always making something happen this way or that,” said Jackson.

  “Had some specialists come by to look at it, but no one wants to cross that damn mist. Tried payin’ a fortune to no avail,” said Carter.

  “It started the night of the murder. The night my Jamie went missing,” Byrd added.

  Jackson slapped both his knees and got up. “I ain’t in no kind of mood to go back over any of that. You ready to git on back home, Byrd?”

  “Look at him,” said Minerva, “Just assuming we’d be ready to go at the exact same moment he is … the nerve.”

  They laughed together. It was nice, watching them. They were like two peas in a pod. When I was little the two got along, but they always fought over Naomi. What was better for her, what she should or shouldn’t be doing.

  They all walked off the porch together. Jackson, weaving a bit from too much bourbon, was held solidly between Carter and Minerva. But Byrd hid behind me.

  “You coming with us, Byrd?” called Minerva as they left.

  “Can I stay with you?” she whispered to me, tugging on my dress.

  “Of course!” I said, thrilled.

  “I ain’t going nowhere with you old coots. I’m stayin’ here with my aunt,” Byrd cried out after them. That aunt came out sounding like “ant” and made me want to hug my brother. Byrd was so much like him in so many ways, but it was her voice, her accent that was just like his. The little girl version.

  “Suit yourself, missy,” said Jackson as all three disappeared into the night.

  Me and Byrd stayed there, quiet, looking up at the night sky.

  “I like the dark,” she said. “Ain’t it just like a big blue blanket wrappin’ us up with comfort?”

  “That’s something my mama used to say,” I said.

  “I’d like to hear her voice. She’s pretty. Was her voice pretty, too?”

  My heart broke a little, trying to conjure up Naomi’s voice.

  “Sure was,” I said.

  “You don’t mind, right? If I stay?” asked Byrd.

  We both knew she meant for as long as I was there.

  “Of course I don’t mind. It feels right,” I said, and I walked her into the house. “How about a bath?” I asked her.

  “No way!” she shouted. I was a little drunk and too tired to fight. So I did the best I could to wash her face and let her use my toothbrush (which she looked at as if it were an artifact from another world), and then tucked her in to my bed. She quickly fell asleep while I read to her from The Little Prince.

  I wondered, as I drifted off to sleep, why I hadn’t tried to get a hold of Stick by any means possible to tell him about the message on Lottie’s machine. Or why I hadn’t told Jackson.

  Ben always talked about the eightfold path. How the first path was all about uncovering what was real, peeling back the layers of yourself to discover your truth. I could have forced the conversation, but I didn’t. Because in my heart I didn’t want it to be Grant, either. God, I didn’t want him to be the killer. How many sins was I supposed to carry on my shoulders?

  That night, with a guilty heart, I had the first of what would be three dreams of Charlotte. It started like a memory but ended with a secret.

  * * *

  The last time I saw Charlotte was the day I left. The same day I watched my mo
ther get lowered into the ground. She didn’t come to Naomi’s funeral, so I stopped by on my way out of town.

  I knew why she stayed away. Because if there was one person I knew better than anyone else, it was Charlotte.

  She couldn’t say goodbye to Naomi because she loved her. And she couldn’t see Paddy cry because she loved him and couldn’t bear to see him weak. Weakness was a problem for Charlotte. When we were small, if we’d find a wounded bird, she’d suffocate it with her own hands. Not out of meanness, out of mercy.

  My first night home, all snuggled up to my wild and wonderful niece, it all came back to me long after I had already fallen asleep.

  Charlotte and me driving down the back roads of Magnolia Creek, with the top down on my convertible. She was leaning forward, trying to light two cigarettes against the wind. We were laughing about Paddy. We stopped by the beach and smoked.

  “You and my brother should just get married and have babies,” I said.

  “Ain’t never gonna happen, Wyn,”

  “Why not?”

  “’Cause even though I love him to pieces, there’s someone I love even more.”

  She put on her devilish smile, and I remember she’d just got her hair cut short, pixielike, and it was dark and shining and modern under the city lights by the bay. She reached in the backseat to get the bottle we’d stolen from Jackson. She opened it, took a swig, and gave it to me.

  “Who?” I asked, my mouth full of bourbon.

  “Shh,” she said. “It’s a secret.”

  “Come on, spill,” I said. “You ain’t got no secrets from me,” I said.

  “Not this. This is like, scandalous. Like … bad. A sin, even. I don’t know. But it makes me shiver on the inside like nothin’ ever has.”

  “Are you in love with the pastor?” I asked, half joking and lighting another cigarette.

  “No! Not like that. Anyway, he’s married. The pastor, not the one I love … I’ve loved him forever, you know. Forever and ever. And now? I’m thinking I might have a chance.”

  “Okay, Lottie. Now you have to tell me who it is,”

  But then she got serious and wanted to go home. I think I even called her a “moody bitch,” but that was the person I was then. Part princess, part viper.

  And she never did tell me who it was. But right there in my dream I suddenly knew.

  She’d been in love with Grant.

  Crazy fuckall.

  Diggin’ Up Dirt

  Everyone has a dark side. This is pure fact. I can see it like a shadow behind them all the time.

  —Byrd, age eleven

  10

  Byrd

  In the face of an overpowering mystery, you don’t dare disobey.

  —The Little Prince

  When the morning sun came sparklin’ across my eyelids, I snuck out of Aunt Wyn’s cottage. I was confused, see, because I hadn’t been prepared to love her. So I left real early before she woke up.

  The day before, when I held her hand, I knew I was a goner for sure. It wasn’t any ordinary glow that happened. It was even stronger than the one I had when Jamie and I first met. It surprised me, and I don’t like bein’ surprised. That extra bit of glow? I knew it meant we had a bond.

  So, I also knew I didn’t have a lot of time. Because the deeper I started to love her, the less of her I’d be able to see. Between lovin’ her, and her own strange ways growin’ … there’d be no way to read her mind or any of that stuff.

  The night before, she was the kindest person I’d ever known. She just put me in her big bed without a second thought. She didn’t even make me take a bath.

  I think she looks like an angel. All golden tan.

  All it took was one day walkin’ through town, and her skin was already brownin’ up. It’s a wonder she don’t burn bein’ so pale. But she looked like an angel, tryin’ like crazy to talk about important things on the porch, and no one wantin’ to listen to her. I wanted to count her freckles.

  Before I left her sleepin’ there, I kissed her forehead. Firstly, because it looked so damn pretty. And second, because I wanted to get a peek at what she’d found out. Since it was getting’ harder to “read” her, kissin’ sort of helped that along.

  And boy, what I found out … she’d discovered something out about Grant! And you know somethin’? I hadn’t even considered that possibility. Boy, did I feel good, but confused. Aunt Wyn was wakin’ up so many things inside and around me, too. My family, my heart … and worst of all, hope. Hope can hurt.

  So I did the only thing that made sense. I reached next to her, stole her set of tarot cards I’d been eye’n since she unpacked them. (What? I was gonna give ’em back.) Then I crept out of Aunt Wyn’s little cottage (I did a mighty fine job on that, if I don’t say so myself) and went on over to the Big House to visit with my friend, Mary.

  She always helps me get my crazy fuckall thoughts back in a straight line. It’s her best quality, really.

  I like walking into the Big House through the kitchen. That way I get to go through Naomi’s garden. My garden now. My mama’s garden for the time she lived here.

  It’s where I plant and take care of all the herbs I learn about in Naomi’s book.

  I add some, now and again, to the earth and the book. My mama, Stella, planted new things there, too. She had a little spot all her own that my daddy dug up for her. It’s my favorite part of the garden. She must have been a real witch, because she planted things like belladonna, rue, mandrake, and foxglove all tangled up with wild, wild roses.

  I know what all those herbs do, and I know how to mix them up. Or, if need be, keep ’em separate. Like rosemary shouldn’t grow next to lavender. You can mix those up before they blossom … and one means remembrance, while the other means sorrow. That’s not somethin’ you want to get wrong.

  Anyway, that morning I was downright sick with confusion over these feelings I had, and taking a stroll though my garden on the way to visit Mary was just the thing to cheer me up. She’s right about my age, Mary, and sometimes a girl just needs a friend her own age to talk to.

  I pushed open the screen door, and yep! there she was, stirring the gumbo. I had to make Dolores wait outside, because Mary won’t show herself if the dog’s there.

  I’ve told her time and again that she’s a ghost and that a dog can’t bite a ghost, but she said I have to respect her ways ’cause she’s dead and I’m not. I suppose she has a point.

  She’s pretty, Mary. She’s got the darkest skin I’ve ever seen, and her hair sticks out this way and that, tied up in pieces of white cotton. And she’s always wearin’ this flowered apron, only it fits her. Not like mine. I guess they made aprons that fit little girls back then. I don’t know how I feel about that. It’s one thing to want to work in a kitchen, but another thing altogether if you’re forced to work there.

  So I’m standing there next to Mary, who’s stirring her spirit gumbo, and I ask her what I should do.

  “Ifn’ you love someone, you love ’em. Can’t do nothin’ ’bout it,” she said.

  “Can’t I put a spell on myself not to love her? A voodoo spell or somethin’?

  “Sure, ain’t nothing dat can’t be fixed or muddled wit juju. But you gotta be careful wit it. Mayhaps you find you fix yourself one way and then can’t never love no one again? Dat be okay wit you?”

  I thought on it for a bit.

  There’d be a lot less missin’ of folks who die or leave or just disappoint a person if I couldn’t feel love. But I thought I’d start missin’ love, sooner or later.

  “Nah. Seems like too much work.” I said, getting off the chair. “Hey, Mary, that gumbo almost done? It’s time for you to cross over you now.”

  “Dat light be waiting for me, Miss Byrd. Pay me no mind. Gumbo got to be just right. Just riiiiight.”

  “Can I have a little taste?” I asked.

  “You knows betta dan dat, Miss Byrdie. You taste the spirit gumbo, you join us. What you want to do dat fo’?”

&nb
sp; I was just about to tell her that she was raised around way too much juju herself and that things like that never really happened, but she was gone. I have to tell you, I really wanted to taste that gumbo. It must have been a mighty fine recipe for her to want to stir it for eternity.

  I decided to take some time to think in the very best thinking place of all.

  Naomi’s outdoor bathroom. Safely hidden there with Dolores, I watched my aunt walk up the path to the Big House. She was lookin’ for me. But I wanted to look at her without her knowin’. So’s I could get a real picture of who she was when nobody was lookin’.

  Her hair was down, and she musta been feelin’ right at home ’cause she was still wearin’ her nightie. She was barefoot, too. No fancy-pants Yankee clothes, not that day.

  Man, I hope I grow up to look like her. She don’t even know she’s fine. She thinks she needs to be darker. Darker hair, darker skin. Don’t she realize she’s like the sun?

  As I watched her look for me, I realized right away I’d lost her thoughts altogether. It was hopeless. I loved her too much to unravel her mysteries now.

  So I sat there, in Naomi’s outdoor tub (empty, ’cause me and Dolores don’t like takin’ real baths), petting Dolores just like she loves. I like motherin’ her. I thought maybe I’d like Aunt Wyn for a mother if I couldn’t look like her or even read her thoughts.

  But maybe not. It seemed to me, mothers could do more damage than tornados. And they didn’t even have to say a word.

  Or maybe that’s just some mothers. Maybe others do the opposite. I get sad when I think about mamas. Especially my own. Makes me start to think that havin’ magic is useless if you can’t help your own self figure out the simplest things.

  * * *

  You’d think I’d be able to shut my eyes real tight and see the things I need to see. But that ain’t the way my strange ways work. Don’t seem fair, does it?

  So I watched my pretty aunt look for me up and down and everywhere. Then I saw her go into the kitchen. She peeked in through the window first, which made me love her even more. Then when she opened the door, she was gone for a long, long time.