On the inside, a small child. Grit and courage. Stars and moons. Faith and hope.
My inability to say no was mechanical, a broken knob I couldn’t find nor turn on or off. I rummaged through my mind and found incidents where I should have said no, I wanted to say no, but I couldn’t, my lips frozen up, the words stuck inside me somewhere. Where and why?
Will you babysit my kids? Sure I said. But the little girl screamed, Hell, no. I’m not keeping those devil-spawn heathens. Would you like to buy some wrapping paper for my kid’s school program? Sure I said. Are you freaking kidding me? No. No. No. Slam the door in face. Unrepentant. Will you have sex—will you do this—will you do me a favor—will you—will you—will you… I said yes, but I meant no. I said yes, but I meant no. What was wrong with me? Why was it so hard to say no? To anything. To anyone. I walked around trapped in three worlds, the one with the little girl, the one with the crazy woman and the one with Branson. On rare occasions, something strange happened and usually when I was lose, and after I drank a shot of whiskey, the little girl would come roaring out using my lips with strange words.
“I’m going to leave you for good.” She’d say to Branson face to face pointing her fingers. Fear trickled on my skin. The crazy woman screamed back at the girl. “You don’t know what you’re doing. He will hurt you. Don’t say that.” I’d freeze in my tracks. I knew the consequences of my offense, or her offense, ours. Whatever.
Once she spurt it out of her lose lips, the little girl sent a vision to my mind. It was her kicking him in the knee and grabbing him by the balls. She was cocksure as if she had nothing to lose. “Uncle?” She said laughing and twisting her hands. Instead of laughing, my eyes expanded like moon pies. Consequences. My mouth. Her mouth. Ours. Whatever. Jesus, this is getting confusing.
Branson stopped cold in his no-good-for-nothing-boots and glared back at me. Her. Me. Us. Ughhh…His eyes went squint and his mouth twitched.
“Go ahead.” He said chuckling as if it was the most hilarious thing he’d ever heard.
“You’ll be back. No one will want you anyway.” He laughed. “I’m all you got baby.” His voice was the hiss of a thousand breeding snakes, writhing around, touching dark places inside the house. My breath was labored. I thought I would hyperventilate. I couldn’t budge. I wanted to scream at the little girl for making so much trouble for me. I went into escape mode, planning routes in my head, attempting to be one step ahead of him. Sometimes, Branson would get hints of something going on, as if he knew I was about to leave, bolt, get away. He rigged my car engine so it wouldn’t crank, hid my car keys, ripped the phone from the wall, emptied the bank account, or stole my wallet. He’d do anything to keep me in his place. He kept me separated from family and friends and what’s worse I isolated myself in order to function. Maintain control. Keep everything running. Endless battle. Who was I kidding? I couldn’t function in daily life. I lost countless jobs. No matter what I did to better the situation, it always got worse. Lots worse. Regardless, he made me feel responsible for his feelings, his actions, his day, his moods, him, him, him. I wasn’t good enough. He found fault with the dishes in the sink, my cooking, my makeup, the house, and the books I read, the magazines I looked at, my perfume, my clothing, and my shoes. The way I laughed, the way my teeth were aligned, the way my nose curved, the list is endless. I felt crazy—was crazier by the day—lived with crazy and did not know how to remove myself from CRAZY. All I knew was chaos and crazy.
Months later, having no choice but to listen to the little girl inside the house, I began to change, slowly but little by little. She convinced me that I did not want to die and if I stayed in this marriage for much longer—that is exactly what would happen. She told me to trust my own gut instinct. I believed her. I hoarded up inside the house inside me, and talked with the little girl about what I should do. With a lot of work, a lot of self-discovery and a lot of supernatural power, the little girl gave me the courage to leave and take a step in the right direction, even with terrible fears. I had plenty of those. All I could see was a broken woman, a torn kite, blood and tears. No wind. But the little girl reminded me I was grit and courage. Stars and moons. Faith and hope. I wanted to believe her. I needed to believe her.
It took a while for me to really let it sink in. I’d take a few steps, then panic and retreat fearfully, not fully convinced at times. My insecurities would rise up. I can’t make it alone. I will die. I will crumble. I need this man. I need this pain. I need this bed. I need this lie. But each day, she reminded me…grit and courage. Stars and moons. Faith and hope.
Branson got wind of something different in me and he didn’t like it one bit. In order to put me back in his place, he’d immediately slay me with words or deliberate actions that would cause me to doubt. Only now, am I seeing this for what it truly was. My bag of bones body had lived a lie for so long, denying the truth and my body erupted and started having fits. Uncontrollable, out of no-where, out of body experiences, panic attacks, fear of dying shit that literally took me, all of me. The truth collided with lies—earthquake. God just reached down from heaven and shook me like a rag doll. That is the only way I can explain it because that is what it felt like. Branson didn’t know what to do with a crazy, sick woman and having no compassion, he pawned me off on my parents.
“Yeah, she’s lost it.” I heard him say when he slammed the door of my parent’s house. I’m positive he went straight to the bar. Bastard. The next day my paranoid parents drove me to a clinic while I lay in the backseat thinking about Maw Sue, shock treatments, tic-tac’s, and petal people. I could hear the voice of the president screaming “Forward!” But I just kept falling, deeper into the house, inside the rooms, below, beneath. Tick. Tock.
Lena Hart totally freaked out. Of course, she would. The curse doesn’t exist. Not my daughter, not my child. I don’t remember the trip or the conversations. Dad said it got real when I told Lena about the shadow people, the ones inside the house, inside me. I started clawing at my chest, scratching, prying at my skin till I bled, as if I was trying to get inside myself, unlock a door, force my way in, stop the pain, stop the madness. I told them about the little girl that lived inside the house. This scared the black hair dye clean out of my mother’s head. And just as she feared, when doctors could find no logical medical conclusion to all my symptoms, they referred me to a psychiatrist.
“Are you sure there isn’t anything?” Lena said to the doctor, desperate. Not my daughter. Not my child. “Maybe the stomach flu? Food poisoning? I mean, for God sakes there is no telling what she eats. I tried to teach her to cook but…” When Lena could not convince the doctor she knew more than him, she had no other choice but to adhere to the family curse though she denied it vehemently. Pink elephant.
Shit Happens
Hidden behind the chicken coop is Maw Sue's garden of indescribable sweet strawberries. When the berries ripened, Mag and I would find an open space like two birds hunkering down on a nest, shaking our tail feathers, strutting in circles, thrashing dirt and finally squatting in the perfect spot to pick and eat. On every side, as far as we could see was dazzling red jewels draped around leafy necks. The edible gems were sweet and mouthwatering until we made ourselves sick. We ate and ate and ate. Mag fell over in the dirt with a half-eaten one in her hand, moaning. I was stuffed to the gill but couldn’t make myself stop. The infamous screen door slammed from the porch and the bell rang out a low chime. Maw Sue eyed us and then walked to the washing machine. It was time to snoop. It had been six weeks since Maw Sue’s mental breakdown. No one knew I went inside the bedroom and witnessed the terrible, awful. I hadn’t the guts to ask her what happened in there, although it pained me to think about it, what it meant and why. I’d catch myself staring at her from across the room, trying to form a clue of something I missed, anything that would explain her actions, her silence, and her secrets. I thought of her life, the stories she told me, the tragedies she’d faced, all the deaths, and wondered if she’d just lost
it—again, like when Aunt Raven died and she lost time and place, having no idea of what she did. I waited for a sign, a gifted-intuitive connection between us, an eye glance or a signal to let me know. I had noticed, since she had returned home, she had not once, looked me in the eye. That was unlike Maw Sue. She was always eye to eye telling stories. I could always see the stories playing themselves out in her eye reflection, like watching a movie.
“Hey Maw Sue.” I said running across the yard and up on the porch. My hand was full of berries I couldn’t seem to put down. She turned and glanced above her horned rimmed glasses.
“Whatcha doing?”
“Doing a bug.” She said fiddling with the washer. “You wanna pull its tail?” I hated hearing this ridiculous southern metaphor. It was basically a polite way of saying, mind your own damn business. I just got straight to the point.
“No bugs today. How do you grow your berries so big Maw Sue? What's the secret? You can tell me. I won’t tell Papa Hart. I promise.” She avoided eye contact and slung a powder blue pillow case across her shoulder. I hoped she would find it in her heart to tell me all her secrets, not just the garden growing secrets. But I should have known better. Papa Hart and Maw Sue had been dueling it out for years in the secret mojo garden arena. Who could outdo who—the biggest vegetable, the plumpest cucumber, the biggest berry, the best tasting green bean. Maw Sue won hands down on the strawberries but Papa Hart tipped the cart with the biggest tomatoes. Their rivalry intensified each year. They watched each other like hawks afraid one or the other would sabotage their crops. Sometimes, they’d eye each other across the pasture at the beginning of gardening season, their hand tillers drawing rifts in the dirt. It was like gardening at the okay corral. Hoes and rakes drawn like pistols.
But Maw Sue ignored my pleas. She put the towel in the washer and dropped the lid. It made a loud twang that jolted me. In defeat, I stuffed a berry in my mouth while strawberry juice ran down my chin. At the same time, Maw Sue bent down, mischievous and at eye level and pointed at the coop.
“Chicken shit. That’s the secret.”
Tiny seeds ganged up in my throat cutting off air. I gagged a vile taste in my mouth. This is not how I imagined my death. From a strawberry. No. I can’t go out like this. No. Not a strawberry. I gasped for breath while everything around me projected itself in slow vision. Chicken shit? Noooo, it can’t be. While I’m choking I see Maw Sue reach inside her wrinkled mouth, stretching her bottom lip, a rubber band of skin while she adjusted a dip of snuff and then she spit off the porch. A bullfrog with hiccups crawled from my belly, to my throat and sat next to the seed lodged in the crawl space, somewhere between my tongue and vocal cords. It was an orchestra; a hiccup, a heave, a gawk and a gag.
In slow mode, I saw Maw Sue’s unnecessary grin and her arm raised like a large tree branch swaying in the wind. The force of a slat hand pounded my upper back. It ejected the strawberry seeds and the bullfrog. The blob of gunk launched clear across the porch, a fighter pilot ejected from a plane, landing in a gross red yuck. Maw Sue chuckled and walked casually back into the house. I ran to the refrigerator before I died. Finally, after a gulping two glasses of clear water, to clear my throat of any clogs, my skin returned to a ruddy pink. Since I almost died, I planned on finding out the truth. I addressed the pink elephant in the room.
“You’re pulling my leg, huh, Maw Sue?” I felt for sure she’d agree. “Chicken shit. Ahahaha.” I fell into laughter. It was a hilarious thought. Then I realized I said shit in front of my great grandmother. I expected a swat of white fire across my leg any second, but it never came. She just lit a cigarette and sat in her chair staring into the nothing of the room. She was different since she’d returned from the clinic, that place of shock therapy and horrible terrible. I shuddered thinking about it but I didn't have time to panic, I needed answers and if I could get her to talk gardening, maybe I can fin-niggle my way to the truth about the bedroom.
“I know…I know.” I said nodding my head and trying to be chipper. “Papa Hart will never know your secret. I won’t tell him. I just want to know the truth, ya know, Maw Sue.” I eyed her real serious like. I hoped she could read my eyes but she never looked at me. “Did you make an herbal growing potion? Well, it’s really good if you did.” Garden secrets lead to real secrets.
“They are sweet, aren’t they?” She said finally acknowledging me. Then she rummaged through a stack of mail on the table. I churned with information trying to figure out what to say next. I wanted my Maw Sue back, the old Maw Sue, the one before the bedroom incident but I didn’t know how to get her, find her. I walked to the other side of the table to face her. Her wrinkled lips bobbed the cigarette up and down, putting out billows of smoke like a factory stack and forming quirly-q’s around her face like a white Texas perm. She tilted her eyes towards me and then quickly back to junk mail. If she knows me at all, she knows I’m not leaving.
“Poop—shit.” She said blatantly slapping the mail against the table irritated. I felt slightly assaulted and jumped back. “It’s the shit that makes ‘em that way. S-H-I-T.” A long stem of ash fell from her puffing stick and crashed into a gray heap on the table. The meshing, sifting sound filtered through my ears.
“Gardening is about growth Willodean. It’s the laws of nature. Plant a seed, take care of it, fertilize it, and it grows. Seed grows, birds eat seed, birds shit seeds, seed grows. Like that. Don’t they teach you this in school? Everything is connected back to dirt. Everything goes back to the dirt.” She jumped up from her chair. The screeching sound made me flinch. I’d never seen Maw Sue this way. She was always eager to tell stories, not like this. She pushed the chair under the table. It let out a shriek. She held onto the back cushion with both hands, gripping and scratching it with her nails. The sounds drove me to the bedroom again, images of the good book, the blood lines etched in scripture, the whir of the fan, the tick-tock, Maw Sue and Starbuck as pasty white faced Dresden’s, peppermint bombs, the screaming George. I closed my eyes to make the images go away. When I opened them, Maw Sue’s gaze was distant but I stood firmly grounded, waiting.
“And besides...,” she paused and looked at me. My eyes met hers for the first time in weeks. I fell into the gray vacant spaces of their roundness—fell into that suspended place where she was held captive. It rattled me undone. The house rumbled inside me.
“Willodean. You’re too young to understand this but it’s the shitty things in life that make something better—muuuch better than it ever could have been without it. Or that’s what I have to tell myself. There are lots of things I can’t tell you …won’t tell you…” She paused and bit her lip. Secrets held inside her, locked away. What? Tell me. Why do adults hide things?
“It takes living.” She said sternly. “And if you live life long enough, you’ll get shit on, sure as I’m standing here. The thing is, if you get a pile—you best make something of it. Perspective Willodean. Just call it Shit perspective.”
What tha hell? I went slack jawed. It felt like the ending of Rumpelstiltskin when he shrieked, “Curses!” and stamped his feet so hard he fell through the floor and disappeared forever. I wanted to stomp and stomp and stomp until Maw Sue told me about the bedroom. What is all this Farmer’s almanac shit? I want truth. I want to know what happened. My gardening plan was not working. She leaned over the table and pressed the mail into the wire container between the weird apple salt and pepper shakers.
“Now scat—git on out of here. I got things to do.” She flared. Now that was the Maw Sue I knew. She mumbled something about the Cowboys and Roger Staubach. I didn’t understand football as much as I didn’t understand shit making strawberries. I should have left when I had the chance but Willodean never listens.
“What happened in the bedroom Maw Sue?” I said abruptly without thinking. Needing to know, wanting to know. She stopped walking. The space between us turned frosty, like a rush of air when you first open a freezer door. Her hand pressed against her skirt and her finge
rs kneaded the fabric.
“How did you know about that?” She spun around staring a hole through me. The president screamed in my head, “Forward.” The petal people rose up and marched liked soldiers. Peppermint bombs exploded leaving a minty scent mixed with metallic to swirl through my nostrils till they itched. What do I say? What do I say? God was silent. Three lines. Twelve words. Blood etched in the gospel.
“Did William Henry tell you something?”
“Nooo…no. He didn’t tell me…I mean. Not really.” I said crawfishing.
“What did he tell you?” Maw Sue rubbed the red stone around her neck viciously till I saw it bleed and spill down her neck. “That sorry sonofa—spit it out—what did he say?”
“Nothing….I—I went in there. No one told me anything. It’s not the garden, Maw Sue.” I began to stutter wildly afraid she would flip. “I WENT IN THE BEDROOM. I WENT IN THERE!” My words tumbled out fast and furious. “I woke up Maw Sue and knew something was wrong. I felt it. And then—I don’t know, Dell told me not to go in the room, which made me want to go in, so I did. I —I wish I hadn’t, but I did.”
WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) Page 31
