The Witch of Belladonna Bay

by Suzanne Palmieri

  “I sure do.”

  “She used the yes or no, didn’t she? She would have. She’s still a child. Impulsive.”

  “Yes, but it was an interesting combination.”

  “Come sit with me,” she said.

  We went through French doors that opened up into a private porch, Naomi’s library. The couch there was covered in soft cushions. Her own private heaven.

  Naomi would move from one part of her rooms to the other, so each room was an extension of her. But even that was an effort for her by the end.

  Minerva and I sat on the cozy cushions.

  “These are very easy to read, Wyn,” said Minerva, after I explained. “The nine states yes because Byrd probably knows more than she’s telling us. Or more than she thinks she knows. And perhaps she even feels like she did it, which is a terrible weight she’s been carrying. Unless—”

  “No, Minerva.”

  “You’re right, of course. She’s too small, anyway. Patrick, though … that makes sense on the one hand. We all know he didn’t do it. But the death card? Now, that’s an interesting thing. Does he know more? Was he somehow responsible for it? I’d never thought of that,” she mused.

  “This keeps getting worse doesn’t it, Minerva?”

  “Most things do. The less we know, the harder they get. We keep trying to learn lessons, and if we don’t, they come right back around again, even harder to figure out. I worry so much that Naomi and I coming here all those years ago was a mistake.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Minerva reached into her apron pocket and pulled out a soft pack of Pall Mall cigarettes. She tapped the pack on her hand and one slid right out.

  “Still smoking, Min?”

  “Now and again—it’s hard around here not to have some kind of addiction. Anyway.” She sat back with her lit cigarette.

  “Have I ever told you about my own great-aunt? Your mother’s great-great-aunt? How she was the reason, long after her death, that no one would accept Naomi?”

  “I think you might have told me some watered-down version when I was little.”

  “Well then, you need the grown-up version. Get comfortable. My great-aunt, Faith Green, was famous, or infamous. She was the one whose history affected all of us. Still does.”

  “What did she do?”

  “It was her legacy, more than any one thing. She’d had the strongest ‘sight and talents’ any of the Greens had seen in generations. They called themselves witches, you know. Still do. Naomi didn’t like that, so I never used that term with you children. But if you and Byrd lived there, even today, they’d call you witches, too.”

  “Nice … we’re witches. With caretakers. Go on.”

  “Well, Faith’s talents caused harm. To her and to our family eventually. But at first she was helpful and everyone loved her. The entire community. She was the most respected woman in Fairview. But when she lost both her children to a tragic twist of fate, everything changed.

  “What happened to her children?”

  “Her children were my great cousins, Ephraim and Margaret. Ephraim was lured across the sea to our own veiled island. And he was never found. Drowned they said.

  “With that, Great-aunt Faith lost her ability to speak and her ability to help the town as well. The problem was, the town had come to count on her. Her healing ways. Her weather predictions. Her sight. She was loved and feared. But mostly? She was needed. Like a drug. And when she locked herself up in that asylum, the people of Fairview suffered a terrible withdrawal.

  “Then Margaret, her other child, she ran. Like you. Ran fast and far. Married some Italian. His last name was Amore, like Stella’s. Part of the reason Stella came here was to research her past, and one of those family trees led her to us. Anyway, Margaret had to hide away her own ‘talents’ which brought havoc to her own family. We all started to think the magic would bring more harm than good. Think of it like an aversion. And your mother, Naomi Green, was the first child born with abilities as strong as Faith’s. Do you understand?”

  “More than you can ever know. Is this ‘aversion’ the reason Mama hid her magic?”

  “Yes and no. She had a chance … a choice. She was given two paths. One was to use her gifts and win back a ‘taste’ for our ways. The other was to hide them. She did try that first path, Bronwyn. She tried to make those around us understand. Then she gave up. But there were other reasons she chose to hide it.

  “She was plagued with visions about you and Paddy. That damn opium hid all that for her. If you do have the magic growing inside of you, Bronwyn, all I can ask is that you don’t make the same mistake. Embrace it.”

  It was then that I decided I’d tell her about the glow when I’d held Byrd’s hand, because when I was little, Minerva used her magic more than Naomi liked. I’d find her out on one of our wide second-floor porches late at night, staring up at the moon as if in prayer. Then she would rub her hands together and clap. Just once. And after, her hands would glow, ever so slightly, like phosphorus creeping out from between her palms.

  I asked her about it once. I’d had the flu and she’d done the same thing. Rubbed her hands together and clapped. Only then she placed her hands on my forehead and stomach. I recovered quickly after that.

  “Does the glow heal people, Minny?” I’d asked.

  “Sometimes,” she’d answered.

  “You love Mama, right?”

  “More than you’ll ever know.”

  “Why can’t you make the glow heal her?”

  “Bronwyn, it’s important that you understand, deep in your heart what I’m going to say to you right now. You can’t heal someone who doesn’t want to get well. You just can’t.”

  “Have you ever even tried?”

  “Every day since the day she was born,” she answered, and her sadness echoed through me. I never questioned her about it again.

  But now, it was time for questions and answers.

  “How bright was the glow?” she asked when I told her.

  “Bright.”

  “Well, then. Get ready.”

  “Get ready for what?”

  “The magic … who knows, maybe you can bring it back.”

  “Well, it seems like I can’t stop it, Min.”

  “No, not that … maybe you can bring back the wonder, the glorious curiosity that should always accompany unexplainable things. Faith Green lost that for us, the wonder. And replaced it with fear. Witches without wonder are dark creatures.”

  “I’ll do my best, Min,” I said.

  “I know you will, honey. I know you will.”

  12

  Naomi

  Diaspora. The migration of a people from their homeland. The word has haunted me since I was old enough to know what home meant and realized I didn’t have one.

  When I got to Magnolia Creek, I thought maybe I’d found it though. Or something that resembled it at least. Those first few years were the best of my life

  Jackson, he was so bright, like the sun itself, but darkness closed him down, so he couldn’t ever get mean or mad or even sad. All those things are vital parts of families. Jackson couldn’t handle anything but sunshine. He disappeared every time I really needed him. Especially when our babies came.

  I suppose most new mothers go through what I did. Fear, excitement, trepidation, worry. But all of that was heightened inside of me because of my sight.

  My mind played nasty tricks on me. Made me hold my belly and see the future for my babies. Terrible. Black. Hopeless. Blood. I saw bullies and broken legs. Heartbreak and death.

  The images wouldn’t stop. Jackson wouldn’t listen to me. He wanted to hear more mermaid stories. “Life isn’t a fucking fairy tale, Jackson!” I’d yelled, the last night we shared a bed.

  He didn’t get mad. He said, “It is if I want it to be, and I want it to be. Good night, darlin’,” and that was that.

  So I turned to Minerva. I remember one talk we had in the garden. Bronwyn toddled all about, just beginn
ing to walk. I was pregnant with Paddy at the time.

  “It’s happening again, Min, only this time it’s worse,” I said, trimming back a seedling that was getting too leggy, while Minerva potted geraniums. Red. Always red. A favorite of ours.

  “Naomi, now you listen, and you listen good, you know you can’t see the right kind of things when you look into the future of the ones you love. It gets all mixed up in worry.”

  But those premonitions, first with Bronwyn, then with Paddy, slowly broke me.

  Still, I tried. Susan was a good friend to me. We were both outsiders, of sorts. She was so brave. I knew the moment I touched her, in the kitchen of the Big House, the day I first arrived, that she’d die of cancer. A kind I couldn’t heal. A destined death … and still, I loved her.

  It was Susan who taught me about bows. We were sitting on the porch, and she was fixing a big red bow in Bronwyn’s hair.

  “The bigger the bow, the better the mama!” she said.

  So, from then on, I’d put big bows in Bronwyn’s hair. And she’d laugh and clap. How my darling baby loved pretty things.

  Susan talked to me about Jackson. She was the one who noticed his overuse of alcohol first.

  “It’ll kill him, Naomi,” she said.

  “Pirates don’t drown,” I answered.

  We were so alike, Jackson and I. He was light and I was dark, but really we were just the same.

  I was horrible to Susan before she died.

  I fired her from the Big House, even though she’d been my friend and had counted on that job years before I even arrived. I fired her knowing she was sick. I hated her by then.

  I was convinced that, as my children grew older, Susan wasn’t a friend at all. That she was conspiring to steal my babies. Stealing them with her delicious food, the aroma of garlic and sweet basil drawing them from my rooms and into the kitchen; stealing them with her generous smiles that never seemed to get tired; and stealing my children with the joy she owned. Those kids grew up so close. The opium swirled these lies into my head, speaking much louder than an increasingly faint truth. So I pushed Susan away when she needed us all the most. That was the last straw for my own children. They gave their hearts to her fully then. I don’t blame them … anymore.

  When Susan died she went straight into the light. I hope Charlotte gets to her soon. It’s hard for mothers and daughters to be separated.

  I should know.

  If I’d had a mother who stayed, who wanted to teach me things, maybe I would have understood how to control the magic on my own. Or maybe I was too weak for the gifts I’d been given.

  When Bronwyn was born, Dr. Henry gave me morphine for pain.

  And that first dose was when I knew. I’d found a cure for magic.

  When Dr. Henry didn’t want to give it to me anymore, I went to Jackson. I explained how wonderful I felt, how normal.

  Jackson wanted peace, so he found a way to substitute the morphine: opium.

  It made me happy. It let me mother my children without an ounce of hesitation. I was a good friend, a good mother. For a few years, before the drug took over, I was the person I always wanted to be.

  Until I wasn’t.

  13

  Bronwyn

  I left the house secretly. Using the passage from Naomi’s room to the ballroom and creeping out through the kitchen like a criminal. I didn’t want to see Jackson. Too stubborn to apologize, I guess.

  The Big House passages aren’t the type you’d think about on a dark and dreary night. They’re more like inner hallways. Pretty, even.

  It’s so funny … people think that in order for something to be frightening, it has to be dark, musty, and full of cobwebs and secrets.

  That’s a lie of mythic proportion. The scariest, most unexplainable things in the world happen in the bright light of day. And just when you least expect.

  Like what happened next.

  As soon as I wandered outside, I realized where Byrd must have gone and slapped my forehead for not thinking of it sooner.

  Naomi’s outdoor bathroom.

  I could barely see it from the garden, but I could feel that she was there. I used to hide there when I was little, too. But as I headed in her direction, Esther stopped me short.

  Her grand old boughs hovered over Naomi and Minerva’s magic garden, stoic and bent with age. But Esther was determined to live forever. A plank board swing large enough for two people at once hung off one of her limbs. Jackson had it checked every year, but it’d been around in some incarnation since the very first Whalens lived on the grounds.

  The scent of lavender and bitter nettle hit me and I breathed in deep. Walking through the garden to get to Byrd, I gathered a small bunch of lavender and let the scent linger inside me. When I had a nice bouquet, I gazed at Esther. The air was hot. Heavy. Humid. Not a hint of breeze.

  But the swing, dangling there, was swaying. Back and forth, back and forth.

  So I looked at it, straight on, with my hands on my hips and my chin squared.

  “You’ll stop,” I said out loud.

  Only the swing didn’t stop.

  It swung higher.

  Then I heard her for the first time. Ben is coming, Esther said.

  Well, shit.

  * * *

  Byrd. I had to focus on her. She’d become the most important thing to me in a single day. And I didn’t care if she’d cast some spell, because I’d fallen in love with my little niece. Ben was on his way, and I had to tell him I wasn’t going to leave her. And I had to find out why he’d lied and what it meant.

  When I reached the outdoor bathroom, there they were. Byrd and Dolores in an empty tub.

  Naomi’s outdoor bathroom is a splendid thing.

  Jackson created it when she first moved in. She’d been taking a basin full of water out to the side yard under an old live oak, its mythical branches creating a natural room of sorts. And she’d wash out there. Only out there.

  “What’re you doin’, darlin’?” he’d asked her all those years ago.

  “I like to bathe outside. It’s from … home. I know it’s odd, but we always bathe in the sea. Always.”

  “Even in the winter?” he’d asked.

  “No, silly. But as soon as it’s warm, until the day the crickets stop singing their songs, it’s in the sea that we bathe.”

  “Why not bathe in the river?”

  “It’s a different kind of water. Too warm and placid. I already tried. I was going to try the creek, but it’s too shallow.”

  Naomi said “creek” and that was all Jackson needed.

  “Look. Let me have some fellas come over here today and build you a proper outdoor bath, okay? Just don’t go near the creek.”

  And at the end of the day her magical retreat was done. He had builders hang paned windows from the branches with beautiful ironwork chains and an old copper claw-foot tub placed in the center of the space. A mosquito net hung over the tub to protect her while she bathed. There was even a wicker chair and a table to hold a vase of flowers or a book.

  Soon, the grass grew over the trenches that were dug from the Big House to the little paradise, so it seemed that when you turned on the faucets the water came out of nowhere. Like magic.

  Byrd sat in that very same tub, fully clothed and without any water. The bathroom was just as I remembered it. Only some of the panes of glass were broken. It made it prettier somehow.

  Dolores was in the tub with her. And as that beautiful, regal shepherd watched over her, Byrd tucked little pointy leaves in her collar.

  “There you are,” I said, softly so as not to startle them. I knelt down and tried to push her hair back from her face.

  “I didn’t want you to find me,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t rightly know. But now that you found me, I’m glad. You’re so pretty.”

  She reached up, winding one of my curls in her tiny finger. It sprung back as she let go.

  “These are for you,” I sai
d, handing her the flowers.

  “Thank you! But can you just put them on the ground for a sec? I have to finish this up, see?” she said.

  “What are you doing there?”

  “These here are beautyberry leaves, and if I put them all around her collar they keep the bugs away. ’Specially those damn gnats. Don’t you hate those? But you already know about beautyberry leaves.”

  I smiled. Minerva used to pound the leaves up and slather me with the oils before we went out to play on the nights when the gnats were thick like storm clouds.

  “I like the way they make her look regal, all sticking up like that,” I said, helping her tuck a few in.

  “Me, too. But I think she looks more like a joker than a queen. Maybe next year I can make her a crown. We’re getting ready.”

  “Ready for what?”

  “For the parade! It’s the Fourth of July, silly. Don’t you remember the parade?”

  “I do. But I think I must have lost track of days … that’s today?”

  “It sure is!”

  I did remember the parade in all its Technicolor glory. One of the best days to be a resident of Magnolia Creek was parade day. And we held it on the Fourth no matter what day of the week it was. Not like other big cities I’d lived in where they had to accommodate all the other towns. We take care of our own.

  “How about we get Dolores out of the tub, and I give you a real bath? Does the water still work out here?”

  “’Course it does. But I don’t like baths.”

  “That, Princess Byrd, is obvious.”

  “I ain’t no princess, I am a queen,” she said haughtily.

  “Okay, I promise to never call you princess again if you let me have the honor of bathing you, Your Highness.”

  She laughed wildly, with her eyes closed and her mouth open. A full throttle sort of sound.

  “Deal,” she said, as they both got out of the tub.

  Byrd got undressed without any shyness, and I couldn’t get over how quickly she’d grown to trust me.

  I ran the water. A little rust came out at first, but then it ran clean.

  Byrd motioned for Dolores to get in the tub, too. But the dog and I both shook our heads. Byrd got in when the water was ankle deep and sat down. The dirt started to come off immediately.