The Killing Tree

by Rachel Keener

  “Mercy?” he whispered.

  I lifted my shirt. I lifted it high, exposing my roundness and my heavy breasts. I took his hand and laid it on my belly. His eyes wrinkled again, into little slits. I shook my head yes. He pulled his hand away and sat back on his heels.

  “When?” he whispered.

  “Late spring, I think.”

  “Is it the mat—” he began.

  “Yes. It’s his.”

  He sat there looking dumbfounded. Shaking his head no.

  “What are you gonna do?” I asked him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What are you gonna do now? Now that you know?”

  He sat quiet. Looking at me. Looking at my belly.

  “Well, I’m gonna take you home,” he said calmly.

  He didn’t open the truck door for me, the way he normally did. But he did ask if I was cold. And he turned his heater vents in my direction, to help warm me. We sat in silence the whole drive home. When he pulled up to my house, I started to speak.

  “Russ, I . . .”

  “Just run along inside now. Just go on inside,” he said lowly, without looking at me. I walked inside and packed a bag. I emptied my jelly jar into it. I had to be ready to run for my life in case he told Father Heron.

  Two days later as I slept in, trying to avoid seeing Father Heron, he called through the door.

  “Mercy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Saw Rusty in town yesterday.”

  My feet hit the floor. I reached under my bed for my getaway bag.

  “Good thing you’re spending time with him. He’s a good one.”

  He hadn’t told. Even after I had used him. Even after he learned I could never be his. His goodness made me seem bad. I had imagined that Rusty was almost as evil as Father Heron. But the truth was that Rusty was good to me. He was kind to me. The reason Crooktop called him decent and respectable was because he was. And he was still being good to me. He was still letting Father Heron think that I couldn’t be out whoring myself because I was with Crooktop’s best. And I don’t know why. He owed me nothing. And I found myself owing him a lot.

  I felt guilty, but I didn’t regret it. Because dating Rusty was the only thing I did that was good for my baby. I didn’t protect myself from the cold. I didn’t let myself feel the hunger. And I couldn’t stop the flow of grief and hate. Mamma Rutha had told me to, but she hadn’t told me how. And it was everywhere in me. It flowed from my heart to my belly. Nothing could survive it. My belly was the reservoir of everything miserable. The place where my baby eventually drowned.

  Chapter XXXIV

  It was a wild winter night, with snow and ice and cutting winds. I lay in my bed touching the expanse of my belly. A firm round growth. I was thankful it was winter. I could walk to the valley with my big puffy coat on, zipped up and covering my middle.

  I hadn’t seen Father Heron in over a week. I would spend entire days in my room to avoid having to see him. I would pee in a jar beneath my bed, so that I wouldn’t have to open my door to go to the bathroom. At night while he slept, I would sneak to the kitchen. Steal scraps of food and fill a thermos with water, just enough to last another day in hiding. I didn’t even go to church anymore. And he hadn’t tried to make me. He was content to leave my redemption to Rusty.

  But with the snow and the ice, Father Heron would be trapped inside. So I hid in my room and prayed for the snow to stop. But the weather wasn’t my only worry that night. I touched my belly with more than curiosity. I touched it with worry. The baby hadn’t moved in so long.

  “Just give me a little kick,” I asked it. “Will you squirm just a little for me?”

  But there was nothing. For hours I lay there begging it to move. I scolded it. “Don’t worry your momma like this. That’s not a nice thing to do.” I bribed it. “If you’ll move, I’ll make biscuits and gravy for breakfast.” I begged it. “Please move. I haven’t felt you in days. Please let me know you’re there.”

  I waited and waited, but nothing came. I had drowned it. It wasn’t Father Heron that had killed it. It was me with my bitterness, hate, and grief.

  “No,” I sobbed into my pillow. “No. No. No. Not this, God. I can’t take this. Just let me have my baby.”

  I cried into the night. My sobs covered by the winds that whipped around the house. Tears shaking my body as the weather shook the house. There was no life in my belly and no rest for me. I didn’t think there would ever be again.

  At some point in the night, as I lay crying and moaning to my baby, begging it to move, Mamma Rutha came in and stretched her hands over my belly.

  “Something’s wrong,” she said with worried eyes.

  “I killed it. Not Father Heron. I fed it my grief and I killed my baby,” I cried.

  “Put your coat on,” she said in a low stern voice. “Get out of that bed and put your shoes and coat on now!”

  “I can’t move, Mamma Rutha. I killed my baby. Don’t make me move,” I sobbed.

  Her rough hands jerked me up.

  “Mercy baby, you listen to me. You put your shoes and coat on now. Now!” she screamed, her eyes glowing.

  She had never spoken to me that way before. She wasn’t asking or pleading. She was ordering.

  As I pulled my socks on I told her that a doctor was no use because I could feel its dead body, floating lifeless within me.

  “You do as I say now. You’re right. Ain’t no doctor that can fix this. But you just do as I say,” she said, helping me put my shoes on.

  She dragged me out into a night of bitter, stinging snow. The flakes weren’t big and soft like in Christmas movies. They were small, scaly bits that blinded me.

  “Hold my hand,” she commanded as she pulled me into the woods.

  We walked straight up the mountain. Up and up and up. Until I collapsed on the ground.

  “I can’t go no further, Mamma Rutha. I can’t even feel my feet I’m so cold,” I cried.

  Mamma Rutha took off her socks and pulled them over my shoes. “That should help some,” she said, pulling me up.

  We walked until I forgot that we were walking. I was being pulled through a dark stinging woods, but I didn’t know it. The cold, the exhaustion, the grief, had eaten me alive. When I awoke I was lying on a dirt floor.

  “Drink this,” Mamma Rutha said as she poured something hot into my mouth.

  I blinked the melted snow out of my eyes and looked around. I was in a one-room shack, but it was sturdily built, keeping most of the bitter wind outside.

  “Where am I?” I asked.

  “You’re at the top of the mountain, Mercy baby, the very top.”

  “This is where you go?”

  She smiled.

  “Are there other people here? The rumors in the valley, are they true?” I asked.

  “You can’t ever tell anybody that you were up here. Promise me,” she said solemnly.

  I nodded my head.

  A tall woman walked in the shack.

  “This is her,” Mamma Rutha said to the woman. “She needs his help.”

  The woman eyed me suspiciously. “She from the valley?”

  “No. She’s from me. My granddaughter. I’d be indebted to you for his help,” Mamma Rutha said.

  The woman nodded and walked out of the cabin.

  “You rest here,” Mamma Rutha said as she pulled off my shoes and began to rub my feet. “Just close your eyes and rest now. Mamma Rutha’s gonna take good care of you.”

  When I opened my eyes again, there was a man standing over me. He had long gray hair and a clean-shaven face. He smelled like Christmas. Like pine trees and candle wax.

  “She needs your help,” Mamma Rutha said to him.

  He nodded his head and knelt by me. He was staring at my belly. His eyes peering and intense. He pulled my coat back and he lifted up my shirt. My skin glowed in the firelight. He stared deep and hard. Did he see my baby, hanging lifelessly inside of me? He leaned over my belly and whispered to it
, then sat back up and watched. Waiting for something. He leaned over again to whisper. And then he nodded. Had it answered him?

  He spit into his hands and rubbed them together. Then he held his palms open, over my belly. I felt a strange warmth from them. Like I was standing with my naked belly near a fire. His hands moved closer, and the heat grew. And then closer. Until it was burning me. I began to whimper in pain. And felt rough hands hold me down. The open palms were burning me up. Inches from my skin. Then they touched me. His wet palms laid flat across my stomach.

  I screamed as I felt my flesh melt and the heat pierce through my body. It was as though I had swallowed hot coals. And then my baby leapt. Filled with the heat it squirmed and kicked.

  He smiled at me. A full, toothless smile. “Your baby good now.”

  I held my stomach with both hands. “You came back,” I whispered to it. “You came back to me.”

  I was crying and laughing. Crazy joy had taken over me.

  “Sleep now,” Mamma Rutha told me. “Your baby needs you to sleep now.”

  I obeyed. I slept deep and hard until my baby woke me. Wriggling its little body. Still feeling warm. I knew then that it hadn’t been a dream. Life stirred again within me.

  I was ravenous. I hadn’t felt the hunger of most women during my pregnancy. So much of me had been trapped in the cage of my heart, unconnected to my body. But my baby had escaped the cage, and was reminding me of its hunger.

  I rummaged around for food, but I didn’t find any. I walked outside and squatted on the ground, my round belly sticking out as I stuffed my face with snow. A girl, almost my age, stood watching me.

  She looked like me too. Dark brown hair and black eyes. But she was younger, and happier.

  “Hi,” I said.

  She smiled, her shy eyes darting away from me.

  “My name’s Mercy.”

  She smiled. “You came with her, the Song Lady.”

  I nodded. The Song Lady, that was certainly Mamma Rutha.

  “She brought you to the seventh son,” she said.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “The healer.”

  “What?”

  “The gift of the seventh son is the healing gift. It only happens when there are seven sons, and then the seventh son himself has seven sons.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Well, the first seventh son, he doesn’t have the gift. He just has the ability to pass it on. But if he has seven sons, then his seventh son will have the gift. That man you saw last night, he was the seventh son of a man that was a seventh son. So he had the gift. Lucky for your baby too.”

  “What’s it mean, the gift of healing?”

  “You know.” She smiled. “You had it last night. You know what it means.”

  It meant life. It meant a squirming baby that demanded that I feed it snow.

  “Yeah, I do.” I smiled back at her.

  “It’s like the Song Lady. She’s a seventh daughter, you know. But her healing power is different. She soothes the spirit with her songs. When my daddy died and my momma about lost her mind over it, somehow the Song Lady knew. Nobody knew where my momma had run off to, and nobody went to tell the Song Lady. Somehow she still knew, though. She found her, carried her back here, and sang to her ’til she was feeling better.”

  Mamma Rutha, a seventh daughter? I remembered how rough hands and bitter herbs had carried me back from my plastic death.

  “Only bad thing is they can’t heal themselves. Their gifts don’t work on them,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “Don’t know. But the seventh son, we take good care of him, ’cause he can’t heal himself. The Song Lady, though, your people didn’t take care of her. She has a soul hurt she can’t heal.”

  “Do you know what her soul hurt is?”

  “No, but she spends days trying to heal it. She’ll be in the heart of the mountain, naked no matter what season it is, pouring out her hurt. Her song is long and strange, about two dead children. One of them dies because they can’t walk through a door. The Song Lady tries to heal its soul hurt, but she can’t. We don’t know why the other one dies. But we know that one’s name. It was Naomi.”

  I shivered.

  “Do you know what killed Naomi?” she asked.

  I shook my head.

  “I thought you might since you’re from the Song Lady. Sad that she had two children killed. Well you better go inside before your baby gets too cold.”

  Two children killed? Me and my momma? In a way, the girl was right. When my momma died, she took everything that was supposed to be me with her. She took a child that would have always known it was loved. She took a child that would have looked at the world with curiosity and not fear. She took Naomi with her. And left me, traded down Mercy Heron. Lord have mercy on the bastard child. Call her Mercy, that’s what she’ll need.

  As I walked home with Mamma Rutha, I saw it. She wasn’t just a crazy old woman singing strange songs. She was a seventh daughter. A soul healer. And all of nature knew it, and loved her for it. I asked her about herself, what it meant to be a healer. We walked in silence for a great distance, until she spoke.

  “When I was a little girl, my momma told me to sing. She said, ‘Sing Rutha.’ And so I do,” she said. “I send out the gift and it’s soaked up to heal. Except for one place. Look under the apple tree, and see the pool of wasted songs. He couldn’t soak ’em up. And once he killed her, she couldn’t either. Even the song of forever won’t work if a creature won’t hear it.” She paused and let her hand caress a tree.

  “First time I loved him, I was younger than you. I loved him in spite of his crippled heart. And songs I had never dreamed of poured themselves into my soul. I sang to him. As I cooked his dinners. As I cleaned his house. As he sought me in the dark of night. As I brought forth his child. And I saw the puddle growing underneath the apple tree, but I loved that crippled heart. When he killed her I knew. It was the folly of my gift. For loving him. For wasting my songs on him. That day my heart grew a new skin. And his puddle ceased to grow.”

  I rested that day in bed. Trying not to think about Mamma Rutha’s soul hurt. About how she had loved Father Heron, or about dead Naomi. Those thoughts made me feel sad and bitter, and I couldn’t risk feeding my baby any more grief. So I made a new vow.

  “From this day on,” I whispered to my belly, “I’m gonna take care of you. All my thoughts won’t be sweet, because we still aren’t safe. But no more choking grief. So don’t you leave again.”

  The baby stirred within me. It was a sign of the covenant between us. I wouldn’t choke it with my grief. It wouldn’t leave me. And together, we would survive.

  To go to war with a murdering silence, I was going to have to find my own weapons. I had warned my baby that some of my thoughts wouldn’t be sweet. But I could only guess how dark they might become. Could my baby swallow that? Without leaving me again? I needed protection for my baby. There was only one thing I could do. I was from the Song Lady. I would bless my baby, and she would grow.

  Chapter XXXV

  I carry a child. She was there all along, nestled within. She makes my belly round and smooth, like a polished river rock. My belly rises. Like the swell of the moon over the mountain. It is filled with Eyes that see. Fingers that clutch. A Heart that pulses. She feeds off my bones. My blood. My breath. My soul. To give the world a new song. A song that hums like a steady August rain. And laughs like the flow of a mountain stream. She has eyes like sunflowers floating on deep river pools. She is love. She is her father. She is my new song.

  I knew I was having a daughter. She came to me nearly every night in my sleep. “Come on,” she would call me. “Come into the ocean. It’s warm here. And safe.”

  I would wake up from those dreams and whisper her song to her. We would hide during the day, like me and the Sally doll, hoping he wouldn’t smell our fear. And I would think the dark thoughts that I needed to, in order to keep us safe.


  The deep chill of the winter was beginning to thaw. Father Heron hadn’t seen me without my puffy coat on in months. Spring was close. All of the earth knew it too. The sun hung around longer, warming the ground. The streams purred louder with the melted snow. And my baby grew big and strong within me. She stretched my womb and banged her fists against its walls. She was ready to sing for all of Crooktop.

  With all the jelly jar money that I had saved up over the summer I bought supplies. Sweet little baby things that smelled clean and sugary. I sent Della to the Magic Mart to buy a blanket, a little pink dress, socks and a hat, sleepers, baby wash, lotion, and diapers. A whole summer’s jelly jar spent in one trip. I laughed when I thought about how I had wanted to buy sexy jeans with it. At that point I could barely zip my oversized puffy coat, much less squeeze into tight jeans.

  “Lord how people must be talking about me!” Della giggled. “One day I’m buying a pregnancy test, and the next day I’m coming home with diapers and a little pink dress. And I’ve still got my figure, too! Bet them old cats are chewing their tongues off!”

  Della helped prepare for the baby. She was working odd shifts at Rusty’s diner. He asked about me every day, and sent food that Della would have to hide and eat so that I couldn’t smell it. She spent most of her money on me and the baby. Feeding us what we craved. Black licorice jelly beans. Molasses over cornbread. And biscuits and gravy. Always biscuits and gravy. And after my jelly jar money ran out, she bought some onesies, a story book about birds, and a little teddy bear. Her first toy. A little brown bear with a cream-colored face and brown-marbled eyes. He smelled like baby powder.

  “What are we going to do about him?” Della asked.

  “I’m still working on that. You know what has to be done. And it isn’t just for revenge anymore. It’s for safety. He’ll kill my baby, Della. I swear to you he will.”

  “Shhhh. Couldn’t you just beat him to the punch and announce to the world that you had a baby? Then he couldn’t just get rid of it like it never happened.”