Mag brings me back to reality by a loud blubbering half word cry, “Maw Sue, awwwghhh, whine, whine, where is Casper, ahhaawww…now. Is he hurting, is he bleeedddinngg…ohmyaGawwwdddddeeeeeeeeee”
“Now Maggie…” Maw Sue bent down on her level and patted her on the head. She picked a few sticker burrs out and threw them on the ground. “Casper is in paradise where the lion lays down with the lamb and the whale doesn‘t eat Jonah 'cause there is only good things there, nothing but good, a bonified animal kingdom. Didn’t they teach you this in vacation bible school?”
“But Casper won’t like lions.” Mag blurted out.
“And he’ll eat a lamb, that’s for sure.” I said not able to help myself. It was true. He was mean as a hell cat and I’ve got scars to prove it. Mag was partially right. It was ludicrous to think Casper could get along with other animals. He was a peculiar cat, anti-social, half domesticated and half wild. I just called him Capital C which was short for crazy. He was basically a miniature lion because he was always pulling a sneak attack by jumping on my back while I was unaware. Ironically, only in the last six months did he calm down, so I could actually pet him and listen to him purr. Dang it. Now he done went and got himself killed. “Stupid dumb Capital C.” I said out of nowhere and feeling a tear well up. The only thing I was sure of right now—is that when people die—they don’t come back. Brother Lester has some explaining to do.
“Now listen here girls.” Maw Sue said. “Everything is made from the dirt and goes back to the dirt. It’s the way of the universe. We all die. That is just a matter of fact. Animals and people die. We’re given a certain time on this earth and that’s it. Then God takes us back. Sure, it’s sad. We'll miss them. The bible says there is a season for everything, to kill, to cry, to throw stones, laugh, to eat, to sleep, to die.”
When I heard that, something in me reacted. I jumped up mad as all get out, saw a stone at my feet and threw it right mad like. It hit the tree, bounced off and plunked to the ground. That wasn’t good enough so I threw another, and another until I couldn’t throw no more and then collapsed on the ground. Maw Sue and Mag paid me no mind, it was like the law of the land, me throwing stones and all. Maw Sue’s seasonal analogies were nothing new to us. She said there was a time for everything. A time to be born, a time to die, a time to plant, a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time for war and a time for peace. That was it in a nutshell. This seasonal stuff was part of the reason I stayed up late into the night, sleepless, tossing and turning trying to figure it all out.
“Life doesn’t give us head’s up rule book to know when it’s our time. Ya hear?”
Mag glanced at Maw Sue considering her words. As for me, I was making a list of questions to ask God. How long do we have on earth? What should we do while we’re here? How will I die? Maw Sue sat down in the grass between us. Her boney legs popped and I wondered if it hurt or if she had a tic-tac so she didn’t have to feel? Casper’s corpse lay in front of us like a sacrificial offering slaughtered on an altar. I thought of man’s end and how we go back to dirt, just like Capital C, laying up all stiff and lifeless. Then as always, a horrible pressing panic settles on me, the one where I fear the world will crumble and end tomorrow and all I’ll have to look forward too is death, doom, gloom, lions, lambs, flattened heads, shit apocalypses and an unending relentless death wail from Mag. Jimminee freaking Christmas! Can’t a girl get some fluff? For God’s sakes, somebody give me hope. Fluff, lots of fluff, just a crumb of hope and fluff is all I ask for. I’m not sure how long we sat there in silence staring at Capital C but it was long enough for uninvited guests to arrive. The atmosphere was surreal, dreamlike, and then it morphed into a reality of buzzing.
“Okay girls.” Maw Sue said slapping her thighs. Her dress made a resounding poof as she got up. “Funeral time. Let’s get ‘em buried before the pesky flies take him away.” She swats the air a few times and her voice is joyful as if she’d just told us we were going to the carnival and could eat unlimited caramel apples. Mag and I stood up but we couldn’t pull our eyes from our beloved dead feline. Mag’s lips were puckered tight and she swatted at flies like she had a sword guarding her cat.
“It’s time for you two to let go.” Maw Sue said brushing her hands together and walking towards the shed. What does she mean let go? I haven't touched that cat and don't plan on it so there ain’t gone be no letting go to it. She returned with a shovel. Mag took one glance and started boohooing. The grim reaper scooped up Casper like a starched white shirt. Mag looked faint so I grabbed her hand and held it tight. She returned a python squeeze and I grinned and bared it. We followed closely behind the death shovel. Casper’s flat head bobbled and dangled off the metal tip in sync to the tune in my head, the morbid song of nameless horrors, the one they play on scary shows when the terrible awful has happened. Dah-dum-dum-dum, swish, shish, dah-dum-dum-dum, swish-swish. The hairs on my neck were active and pulsated to its beat. It reminded me of every fear inside me, wanting access to the world I know and waiting for permission to destroy me.
We arrived on Calvary Catawba, a small mound of red clay underneath an old Catawba tree. The tree limbs wrapped in all directions making it a perfect tree for Mag and I to play in. We could climb higher than eye level and be out of sight from everyone, so it became a hiding place for us. In Catawba season when the worms crawled across the leaves we’d sit for hours eye to eye watching them as they chomped holes in leaves. They were the fattest, biggest worms you ever did see. Dad used them as fish bait too. He’d stuff the worms with the leaves inside a paper sack and store them in the refrigerator until his fishing trip, that is, until Mag and I messed it up for him, real good like. We just wanted to see them, for a second or so, right after he put the sack inside, but we got distracted and Mag forgot to close the bag, although to hear it from her, she said I forgot to close the bag, but regardless, we got dad in a heap of trouble and his fishing hasn’t been the same since. All we heard was Lena’s worm scream. It was worse than a bloody scream because the inside of the refrigerator was full of crawling worms. Lena went ballistic and we were in the doghouse for a full week, enduring the bent eyebrows and burnt cornbread.
Casper was attracting more flies by the minute while Maw Sue found a good spot for burial. Mag and I stood glassy eyed staring into the two crosses on the hill. My hand was red and going numb from Mag’s grip. Maw Sue slipped away unnoticed and returned with a coffin. It was white shoebox marked with a red tag. Clearance! Brooks Shoe Fit, only $6.98, Keds, size 8. Mag seen it, released her grip and flung herself over the edge of the cliff she’d been hanging over for the last half hour. I felt the blood rush back to my hands. Mag shifted side to side and then collapsed in the dirt. The Greek Goddess had finally cracked.
“Lah…lah…lah. Fly…fly…fly…lah…lah…lah.” She whimpered a disturbed ramble of distraught words. Her eyes were glazed and fixed. Maw Sue sat the box down, picked up the shovel and sliced the dirt with the blade. The sound made my skin pinch. Every slice was worse than the former. She picked up Capital C and put him in the coffin shoebox. She stuffed, crammed and scrunched as if she was arranging Christmas presents. I could hear all sorts of horrible noises, his bones bending, his organs squishing. I wanted to flee, run away. I will not say goodbye! I will not say goodbye! Maw Sue placed the box in the hole and left the lid on the ground beside it. She stood up, sighed real loud and lit a cigarette. Her free hand reached for the necklace that wasn’t there. It wasn’t there because I took it. I TOOK IT. The guilt was eating me up inside. Since my eyes were accustomed to horrors, I turned them to Casper’s white mink body, all jacked up and curled into himself. His paws touching his hind feet and his tail swept up in a stiff arch towards his pink ears.
His tiny sharp teeth and red gums smiled awkwardly at me as if he knew I took the necklace too. The whole ceremony gave me the creeps and is precisely why I hate funerals, feline, bug and human. I understood Papa Hart sentiments now, more than ever.
“Did you love Casper?” Maw Sue said pulling us from our incubus. Time warped. A slow stream of white smoke blew out from her lips. She flicked the cigarette in her hand as it somersaulted to the ground and then she crushed it with the oversized Sea monsters on her feet. What the heck kind of stupid question is that? Does she think Mag bawls like this for the heck of it? The urge to bop Maw Sue with the death shovel overwhelmed me. Knock some sense into the grim reaper, the detached, unmoved, unemotional mortician that is my great grandmother.
“Yesss.” I hiss. Then I give her a stern talking to. As much as I can get away with, that is. “Look at her.” I said pointing to Mag. Of course, Mag was locked up in oblivion with Casper and word cries. “Is that not love for a cat?”
“Well, that’s understandable. She’s hurt. But there is much you two don’t understand. This is not the end. Love looks.” There was a long pause between what she said and what I heard as if my soul had to digest it, let it sink in, feel its way around. I saw her lips quiver and something plagued within her eyes. Her vision vaporized into the horizon with the identical look I’ve seen on Papa Hart a million times. As if they see something I can’t…Love looks….love looks…love looks. The words repeated in my head. What does that mean? Isn’t that what we’ve been doing for the last hour and a half….looking? I mean, the cat practically has tire prints on his head and she still wants us to look? I was about to ask her what the hell kind of torture ceremony this was and then I was going to confess that I stole her stupid necklace and I never wanted the damn curse to begin with. I would tell her that I was going to live my life like I wanted to. No curse. No necklace, no Dumas of Umbra, no house of shadows shit. NONE. I was done, comprehend, done. It’s my life. My way.
“Love looks at the good.” She said turning around. Her eyes saw right through me as if she discerned my thoughts, word for word. I felt guilty. Inflamed. Sorry. She walked over, and pushed me against Mag until we touched shoulders. “Listen here girls.” She bent down on our level. “Now I want you to close your eyes and look at the good times…” she paused and looked down at the hole, “with Casper. Savor them, absorb them, and keep them with you in your heart like a movie that you can play and rewind over and over again.” She paused but this time, a shield fell between us and messed up my vision like a wall of glass. My heart was getting squishy and ached. “Just keep your eyes closed and remember. Replay the journey of your life with your loved ones, the good, the bad, all of it and then—you’ll see a bright light.”
What? A Bright light? What is she talking about? I’ve never seen a bright light? My guilt was telling me I would never see the bright light after all I’ve done.
“The bright light is the gaze of God’s eyes telling you it is time to let go. Let your loved ones go to the other side.”
My lips turned hot. Saliva boiled in my throat. I felt a flame suddenly light up and burn, burn, burn. I was consumed with raw power and I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t move. Maw Sue had an altogether different approach to the dead than Papa Hart’s straight up—I will not say goodbye theory. To each his own, I reckon. I’m not sure what I believe, if any of it. The house inside me tends to collect the dead as if they don't want to be dead so I reckon I’m just a haunted house of bones and spirits.
“You see, girls…” She put her hands on each of our shoulders. “If we are left behind, then it means we still have work to do. We are still in our season of living. So, what I’m saying girls, is love them, look at them, rewind the movie all you want but when you see the light and you will…every single time, then you simply meet the gaze of God, let it fill you with warmth and love and then let go.” Heat rose up from my belly and I needed to breathe but I feared I’d set Maw Sue’s gray hair on fire with my heated breathe of fire. I held on to her every word. Somewhere in my spirit, in the deepest recesses, the words settled in to rest as if to lie in wait, reserved for another time and place. It was the strangest sensation ever. I heard hacking and looked up. I thought Mag might have finally choked on her word fits but it was Maw Sue. She was wiggling her jaw and adjusting the ball of snuff in her gums. After several despicable noises, she congregated a big ‘ole hunk of it and let it rip about two feet away. Gross. Nasty. Uncalled for. Bad funeral conduct.
An image of Casper sitting in God’s lap licking a bowl of milk with a flattened head enters my mind. STOP IT! I smack my hand against my head to dismantle the crude images until Maw Sue’s voice distracts me.
“You see girls…If you stare into death long enough, the enemy will take you out of season and you don’t want that. We are given life for a reason. Don’t be a sleeper when you are called to be a seeker. It is a choice. We all have a choice.” Her eyes flared to mine and in them I saw the necklace, the red dragon eye stone beating a bloody drumbeat of guilt that tore me asunder.
“Death comes to all of us but if we are in Jesus, the good book says no matter if we make our bed in hell, we will still come out with our life. And if we do—we need to live it. You understand?”
Well, I understand now, I thought to myself. If anyone made a bed in hell, it was me. I was snuggled right up next to the devils master bedroom.
“I understand! I understand” I wanted to scream but couldn’t. My mind was held up on one word, enemy. It provoked something dark and brooding in me that I didn’t want to admit was there. I have always known the enemy well, too well at times. I fear he knows me better than I know me. After all, he is attached to my gift, the enemy of my soul who tells me strange things, who sneaks into my daydreams and night visions and follows my every move, lurking at my back, breathing down my neck, always there, always learning me, watching me, tempting me. The shadow room inside the house appears in my vision and an unsettled fear swept over me. The shadows laugh at Maw Sue’s words inside the house, inside me. Around their wispy necks, they all wear a red stone necklace bleeding out a spray of red mist. The stone is hungry and waiting. The stone, like the shadows are waiting on me. I fear I have played into their hands by taking the necklace. I was tricked. I have always felt him, the enemy, continually wanting me, hunting me, waiting for me to mess up so he can make his move on me, and do what Maw Sue said, take me out of season.
“Okay girls.” Maw Sue said wiping her hands together. “Wrap it up. Get on with it. Let’s do what ya gotta do. Gaze. Let go…yada—yada.”
Her voice was chip-chop. Get this over. But for Mag and I, the world spun meticulously out of orbit. We fell into a thin, hyperbolic state of being as if Heaven gently came down to meet us, to gaze into our tired, tearful eyes and well, we weren’t ready to let go—not yet. Maw Sue starts fidgeting with her apron, lights numerous cigarettes and paces behind us. “Remember all the fun, the laughs, the purring,” she says yawning. “And you know, all that meow cat stuff, ehhh.” She taps her mouth and yawns again.
“The scratching!” Mag blurted out. I was completely taken back by Mag’s miraculous recovery. She was out of her raise-the-dead coma.
“He was mean as a rattlesnake.” I said joining in.
“Yeah, to you.” Mag said laughing. Maw Sue didn’t see any humor whatsoever, because it was holding up her nap time.
“Come on girls.” She clapped her hands. “He’s not getting any deader.”
Mag and I looked at each other. Our sister signals converge. We gave her a southern-aristocrat-look-of-defiance that said we-will-take-our-sweet-southern-time.
“I tell ya what. I’m gonna go inside for a while and you two stare as long as you need. Alright.” Before we could answer, we heard the screen door squeal, the bell ring out and the door slam shut. We looked at each other with question marks. Neither of us was entirely sure of this God gazing ceremony but one thing we knew. If we didn’t get to it, the flies were going to cart us
all off.
“What do we do?” Mag said. She looked so discombobulated it almost made me cry. By this time, she had inched over and put her hand on my thigh.
“Okay Mag.” I said putting my hand over hers. “Are you ready to go on a journey and meet God’s gaze?” I had no idea what I was doing but I was good at lying so I just went with it. She pouted her lip outward. That meant a big no. “We have to Mag. Come on. Look at him.” There was a swarm of blackness on his white fur. “Maw Sue’s right.”
“Fine.” Mag snapped and rolled her eyes to heaven giving God the stink eye. I gripped her hand and squeezed. We coded signals back and forth. Sharing our pain, our grief.
“On the count of three, close your eyes. When you are finished, let me know by squeezing my hand twice, okay.”
WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) Page 44
