Swamp Cabbage (The Rachael O'Brien Chronicles Book 6)

by Paisley Ray

  Mom’s sidekick, Betts, held a dangly set of keys attached to an orange floatable piece of foam. I found myself holding the door open as Mom made her way inside. I had to refrain from letting the door slam on the face of her partner Betts as she said, “Can you feel it, Maeve? Active energy is buzzing.”

  I’d become seasoned at ignoring Mom’s sidekick. “Seriously,” I said, looking from her to the kitchen. “Did Francine call you?”

  “Hi there, Francine,” Mom shouted.

  “Mrs. O, what you doin’ around these parts?”

  “Betts and I have been staying at a friend’s on Tybee Island.”

  “Where’s that?” Francine asked.

  “Not far. South of here, across the state line in Georgia.”

  I stepped into the hallway and peered out the glass that framed the door on the driveway side of the house. “Is the double-decker bus here?” The red road hog they used for their cemetery tour business was a beast. If they’d driven that monster down the narrow drive, chances were slim to none that they’d get it out without Hodge having to remove a tree or two.

  My mother sighed. “Beetlejuice is in the shop with a dodgy starter. Parts have been special ordered from England.”

  “Beetlejuice?”

  “Betts and I loved that movie. The name is so catchy, don’t you think?”

  “With the red roadster acting up, we started calling her Beetlejuice.”

  Betts finished my mother’s sentences—unsettling.

  I gawked at the two. It had been six months since I saw them last. Besides Betts being a head taller than Mom and her gray hair being spiky, both their faces had a similar oval shape, and they both wore blousy tops, Mom in capris and Betts in Bermuda shorts.

  Francine stood in the doorway that connected the porch to the kitchen and asked, “Y’all want a cup of coffee?”

  “That’d be nice,” Betts said as she made her way past Francine.

  “How did you two get here? I mean this house isn’t exactly easy to find.”

  My mother flicked her wrist at the windows that had a view of the salt marsh at high tide. “We boated in on our pontoon.”

  Francine and I scurried to the kitchen window to look out back. “You have a boat?” she asked.

  “It was a bargain. Some bench seating. Good for fishing and catching crabs. Maeve can do wonders with most anything in a frying pan.”

  “But there are two boats down there.”

  “The old skiff is mine,” Rilda said.

  My backside plunked onto a stool. “You boated here? From Georgia?”

  “It’s a pleasant journey as long as you gauge the tides. A few hidden lefts, but we managed. Took an hour and a bit.”

  Francine talked over me as she filled the coffee pot with water at the sink. “Rilda, this is Rachael’s mother, Maeve, and her friend Betts,” she said to an empty chair. Moments later, we heard the clunk of beads, and Rilda emerged from the hallway with her purse on her shoulder.

  “Rilda,” Betts enunciated, and her head began to sway. “You’re an old soul.”

  Without taking her eyes off Betts, Francine pulled mugs off the hooks beneath an upper cabinet. “Rilda is a root doctor.”

  “Root doctor? How fascinating,” Mom said.

  “Da Gullah use herbal remedies to heal what’s ailing.”

  “Rachael, what’s wrong?”

  “Everything’s fine.”

  “We have a prowling spirit,” Francine said. “I called Rilda here to get rid of it.”

  Here we go.

  Mom nudged Betts with her elbow in an I-told-you-so kind of way, which jarred her out of her oscillating head fit. Betts steadied herself with a hand on the counter top while Mom stepped closer to me. “I sensed that you needed our help.”

  Why’d she have to open her can of crazy?Doing my best to act civilly in front of a guest, I said, “It’s not a big deal, really. We don’t even know if we saw what we think we saw. The police didn’t even write up a report.”

  Mom threw her palm to her chest. “The police!”

  Betts helped her to a stool.

  Rilda patted Mom’s hand in a soothing manner. “A boo hag, or Gullah Jack be settled in. We’s sortin’ through the happenings before I be removin’ it.”

  Francine played hostess, handing my mom and Betts cups of coffee. She pulled out a half dozen sticky buns she’d made earlier in the week and placed them in the oven.

  “It must be serious if you called in Gullah hoodoo backup,” Mom said.

  With her composure snapped back into alignment, Betts’s back stiffened. She shook the cobwebs out of her head and instructed, “Start from the beginning, and don’t leave anything out.”

  The coffee didn’t help the tension that worked its way into my neck and shoulders. “There isn’t much to tell.” Spending the morning hashing out speculation about ghostly inhabitants was not what I had in mind for my day off.

  The porch door banged into the frame, and Hodge called out, “Miss Rachael, Miss Francine, you around?”

  “In the kitchen,” Francine said.

  We all listened to work boots clonk across the patio brick. Stopping before he entered, Hodge removed his baseball cap, and I tried not to stare at the circular ravine it had pressed into the neatly cut shelf of hair atop his head. “Sorry, miss, didn’t know there’s company.”

  “Who do we have here?” Betts asked.

  Couldn’t she mind her own business?

  “Hodge, ma’am.”

  “Hodge takes care of the property,” I said.

  Wiping the counter with a dishtowel, Francine spoke under her breath. “About as useful as a shirt with a back pocket.”

  “Would you like a cup a coffee?” Mom asked.

  “Thank you, no, ma’am. Seeing that y’all are awake, I be wanting to let you know I’s working on repairing the bannister spindles.”

  “What’s wrong with them?” Francine asked.

  “A few have gone crooked.”

  I hadn’t noticed.

  Hodge surveyed Francine, then me. “Bit of a racket late last night. Stairs can be slippery in the dark.”

  I couldn’t exactly recall the details of getting home. I remember riding in the backseat and guessed Francine had driven us back in my car. Peeking out a side window, I didn’t see the yellow convertible in the carport.

  Feeling panicky about the wheels I hadn’t paid off, I didn’t want my mom and Betts to hear about the abundance of decadent mudslides and my less-than-respectable behavior at the bar. Francine would have to fill me in when we were alone.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  As Hodge retreated down the hall and up the front staircase, Francine began, “Rachael and I were headed to the shed for some tools when we spotted him.”

  “We don’t know if it was a him, her, or it,” I said before I realized I was fueling the conversation I didn’t want to have.

  Pursing her lips, Rilda began grouping a selection of incense, powders, and oil. I leaned over and read some of the labels: sarsaparilla, special oil No. 20, swallow’s heart, snakeweed, French love powder, and wild cherry bark. I noticed she’d added small rocks, yarn, a baggie of dirt, and a table knife to the pile.

  “It was a him,” Betts said.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised that Mom’s friend had an opinion.

  “How do you know?” Francine asked.

  “There’s no proof of anything. We only thought we saw something, but there haven’t been any problems since. The spirit probably left once he realized Francine and I had taken up residence.”

  “You have a gift, the third eye,” Rilda told Betts.

  Flattered by Rilda’s acknowledgement of her powers, Betts beamed and feigned humility.

  I opened my mouth then closed it. The dam had been broken, and I realized that I was outnumbered, so I let my mom and her companion slice up their signature dessert, hooey pie.

  “Betts sees things,” Mom said.

  So did I, and the s
ight of mom’s friend in my kitchen annoyed me.

  “We all know you say you can see Lite Brite colors around people.”

  Francine took the rolls out of the oven. “Is mine still blue?”

  Betts nodded.

  Rilda stopped fiddling with her powders. “What have you seen?” she asked.

  Reaching in her pocket, Betts pulled out a flask and wasn’t shy about tipping the amber liquid into her coffee mug. After taking a long swallow, her shoulders relaxed. “Murder and deceit lurk.”

  Francine rushed to the porch door and locked it. “I knew it. This place is hexed.”

  My eyes lodged near my eyebrows, and I reached across the table to help myself to a sticky bun. If I had to stay around and listen to this, I might as well drown myself in gooey cinnamon and sugar.

  Betts drank some more “coffee” and topped it off a second time with her flask. The morning brew she drank was no longer black but more of a muddy brown. All eyes rested on her.

  “And?” I asked.

  The psychedelic-light-seeing head nutso fidgeted with the mug and began staring inside it like a movie was playing.

  Mom nudged her. “She’s not always comfortable describing what she sees. There’s a risk to negatively affect destiny.”

  Mom wasn’t bullshitting. The woman had impacted my destiny, convincing Mom to leave Dad, but in my case, Betts hadn’t shown remorse.

  After a few deep breaths, Betts found some gibberish. “A black man betrayed and strung up in a dark place.”

  Francine struggled to find her breath. “That’s it. That’s what we saw. How did you know?”

  Mom was speechless.

  “We don’t know why, we just foretell of what we see,” Betts said.

  Francine stood. “I’m not living in this devil den.”

  We’d been fine in the house until these two showed up.

  Rilda began putting her things back in her bag. “Listen here now. I came to do a job and ain’t looking for interference.”

  The mention of a black man hanging had upset Rilda, and I figured it wasn’t too much of a stretch in her family’s history. On the plus side, Betts had managed to offend someone other than myself. Maybe her insensitivity would open Mom’s eyes and she’d ditch this wackadoodle. Delusional images, trancing-out, and the way she spiked morning beverages. She was crazy, and I began to worry—what if she harmed Mom? With their gypsy lifestyle, I was never sure how to make contact, never a phone number where Mom could be reached, and who knew when I’d see her next. If something happened to my mother, no one would know.

  A mechanical scraping whisk noise from the entry staircase provided background as Hodge worked to repair the damaged bannister.

  “Do you even know the island’s history? What happened here?” Rilda snapped.

  I could hear a boat motor puttering out on the water.

  “I know about the past,” Betts said.

  “Wrongs aren’t so easily erased,” Rilda said.

  “It’s been over a century. I’m living my life in the present,” Francine said.

  “Evil lurks here,” Betts said.

  With haste, Rilda snatched her overflowing bag and exited to the porch.

  Francine jogged behind Rilda’s quick-moving feet. “Don’t go. You didn’t finish. We still have the spirit.”

  The grinding from the staircase stopped.

  We all heard Rilda. “Listen here now. My work is done. But be warned.” She pointed to the back of the house. “Dabbler types can undo what I done, even make da spirits angry.”

  Mom’s coffee mug slammed on the counter top. “Betts is a sought-after and respected aura of international acclaim. She isn’t able to manipulate the way prophecies come to her. She says it like she sees it.”

  Betts wrapped her arm around Mom, which made my stomach feel sickish.

  The door slammed, and I watched the backside of Rilda head toward the water.

  Marching across the kitchen, Francine spouted off. “If the local root doctor isn’t safe sticking around this house, I’m not staying, and neither should you.”

  Like hell was I going to let Betts scare me out of my summer. “Time out. Everything was fine ten minutes ago. Don’t let overactive imaginations ruin our break.”

  “But Rachael, if Betts is seeing danger…” Mom said.

  “She didn’t say anything about danger. She said evil. There’s a difference.”

  “Still, I think Francine is right. You two shouldn’t be here,” Betts said.

  Why was Betts, almost a complete stranger to me, so adamant about getting Francine and me to move out? Inside, my bullshit buzzer began to sound.

  “I’ll call Campbell. He should be home by now,” Francine said.

  “Does he drive a silver Nissan?”

  She nodded. Leaning into me she whispered, “You were three sheets to the wind. He brought us home last night.”

  “My car?” I whispered back.

  We both strained to smile at Mom and Betts. Just out of earshot, they eyed us with curiosity.

  “Wherever you parked it.”

  Shit. I still owed Trudy for the convertible, and the last thing I needed was to be paying for a car that had been stolen.

  “We’ll find your car later. Right now we got other fires smoking. Campbell is connected with his daddy being a congressman. Maybe he can set us up with other living accommodations.”

  “Mom, why don’t you move in with us?”

  Francine stuck a finger in her ear to clear the passageway. “Come again.”

  “Until we’re sure everything’s okay.”

  Open-mouthed, Betts stared at me in disbelief.

  “We’ll be safer in numbers,” I said, and no one argued.

  NOTE TO SELF

  Desperate times lead to desperate measures. My mouth overrode my brain and invited my mother to stay with me? Maybe we can repair our damaged relationship.

  CHAPTER 7

  A Mind To

  I awoke to pots clanking from downstairs. Peeling one eyeball partially open, I saw that darkness still penetrated my bedroom. Sweet and savory aromas permeated the air. Still slumbering in a groggy haze state, I thought it ambitious of Francine to tackle some recipe wizardry before work. Mostly she cooked during evenings when not working late, or on weekends. When something with a motor whirled, I opened my eyes and attempted to read the hands on my Swatch, but my eyes couldn’t exactly focus. Although a kind gesture to cook breakfast, it wasn’t lost on me that the gallery didn’t open until ten. I was going to have to issue a friendly reminder to be respectful of those who slumbered past dawn. Then I remembered, we had houseguests.

  When I’d asked Mom to stay with me, I hadn’t really expected that she’d say yes. I’d thrown the invite out on a knee-jerk emotional rant when I feared the whole summer plan was in jeopardy. Betts made me uneasy. How was she able to accurately describe what we’d seen? I didn’t trust that woman as far as I could throw her. Now I had her and Mom staying in the house.

  As a daily ritual, the two meditated with a bunch of oms and ums before the sun rose. I’d known this from the dockside gong they felt compelled to strike as the sun climbed over the water. Funny how clearly a metal boing can travel through dead silence.

  After fitful tossing and turning, I’d knotted the top sheet in a bundle. Falling back asleep was a useless endeavor. Slipping on a robe, I headed downstairs. “Damn blender,” I seethed beneath my locked jaw and couldn’t guarantee the safety of the device.

  “Did we wake you?” Betts asked.

  I grunted a nonverbal confirmation to her snarky question. Zoning in on my mood, she retrieved a glass of a berry blend something-or-other and a newspaper before making her way through the open door to the porch lounge chair.

  “Want a cup of ginkgo biloba?” Mom asked.

  My nose crinkled at a memory. Back in Canton, before she left Dad and me, I’d inadvertently sniffed a tin containing those tea leaves. Canned cat piss. “No thanks. Just coffee.”


  “Rachael, you really need to fuel yourself with a more balanced diet.”

  A vision of Trudy, Dad’s aerobic-instructor girlfriend, who consumed self-prescribed, nose-pinching, healthful foods with ingredients like dried seaweed and kelp powder, flashed inside my brain. Had Dad hooked up with a younger version of Mom?“I’m not awake. No one eats moments after they roll out of bed.”

  A ten-pound bag of flour, a sack of sugar, and an empty mesh bag from potatoes littered the counter top. Francine’s dry goods. The pantry double-door lay open. Mom summoned her Vanna White and dragged her hand across the selection of sugary cereals, packaged snacks, ramen noodles, and tinned SpaghettiOs. “All this processed food will shorten the quality of your life.”

  For three years, I’d been pining for the mother I’d lost. Now living under the same roof, I began to question the exact longing I had for her return. Psychic, healthy-living Mom 24/7 was different than the mom I remembered. The one I wanted to be able to call and ask for solid advice, visit on breaks and summers. One who only meddled in my life when I asked.

  Settling onto a kitchen stool, I watched Betts on the porch. She, or, more precisely, her alternative toys, had taken over the space. Newspapers littered the furniture, a crystal ball rested on the coffee table, and used plates and mugs covered an end table. With a dinner tray on her lap, she held some sort of pendulum on a thin gold chain.

  “Where are my reading glasses?” she asked, and the triangle charm began swaying left to right. “Are they upstairs?”

  “What’s she doing?”

  “Dowsing.”

  “Dowsing?” Oops, I’d opened my mouth, and the question slipped out.

  “It’s a powerful tool for interacting with energy.”

  “Isn’t a dowser someone who looks for water with sticks? What does energy have to do with her reading glasses?”

  Mom sprinkled the last of Tony Chachere’s seasoning over peeled potato wedges and threw the empty container in the garbage. She popped the spuds into the oven, and I listened to the pop and sizzle of sausages in a frying pan. The label on the open package on the counter read, “Manda Andouille Sausage.” A shudder vibrated up my spine. Mom had cooked up Francine’s specially ordered Louisiana sausage and used the last of her spice blend that she’d been saving for a gumbo.