Maw Sue tried to teach me what she knew, about the curse, about the gift and the importance of channeling when she could, when she wasn’t overdosed on tic-tacs or locked up in a clinic. I don’t think she realized how much I already knew of the dangers that the curse would do to me. I lived it out. She took a pill. I couldn't run or take a pill, I couldn't erase it, hide from it, none of that. The tragedy of me and all I was or wasn't, could not manifest itself as it should, so it simply hoarded up inside the Dumas of Umbra, established a foundation, a harbinger of rooms, a shelter inside me. I gave my gifts and curses a haven, a house of refuge. The Amodgian shadows took up residence as they willed and took their place. I wasn’t strong enough to fight them, I wasn’t a pugnator like Ms. Blanche said I was. She was mistaken. She was very, very mistaken. I thought Maw Sue was locked up in a clinic again, being poked and jabbed and shocked with therapy. That night I had a horrible dream. The house inside me laughed with shadow laughs, the petal people marched and chanted another language while they held their Mason Jars expectant and waiting and only now do I realize what it meant.
When they told me she was dead, I was in the living room sitting on the couch in front of my centerpiece. I was just about to unwrap a peppermint. The room went quieter than quiet, deadly still. The bedroom scene in my head turned violent in remembrance. It spilled into our living room as if Michelangelo was painting the Sistine chapel but not with paint, with blood, and not the Sistine chapel, but Maw Sue’s house and not Michelangelo, but my great grandmother who had finally taken her own life and succeeded. They said she didn’t take her own life and wondered where I got such information, but I knew. I knew what she did.
She was gone. The house inside me, inside the Mason room, rumbled and welcomed her. Everyone tried to tell me Maw Sue simply passed away in her sleep, but they don’t know what the curse can do. They didn't realize they were tricked. They didn't know what I did. It was my fault. I took the necklace. I was the reason she's dead.
In those horrific moments after learning of her death, I expounded myself inside the petal room, the immortelles room, the Mason room. The petal people flocked around me like they usually do. Sometimes I wonder if they see a reflection of horror or sadness in my eyes for things unspeakable, untold secrets. Regret. Shame. I was lost in the darkness of these petal apparitions when behind a few of them, she appeared. Maw Sue's wrinkled petal face showed relief as if she was glad to be there, a battle over, finally. She would not have to fight or struggle anymore.
I was sick with whirring fan sounds and tick tocks. I felt stuck in memory, inside the bedroom, isolated in the walls of a family abattoir. I look into her petal face and fall deep into her God gazed eyes. I remember my childhood as if I’m plucking each petal off her face and throwing it to the wind. I remember the stories, the tall tales, the imaginations wild, the superstitions, the fun, the love and light, craziness and confusion, darkness and scorn. Maw Sue’s eyes afflict me and shove me away, pressing me out of the room with force. I find myself in our living room amongst the busted stars, moons and peppermint bombs, slivers of glass, my shattered centerpiece, my stability gone, crushed. No more. Mag is on the floor surrounded by glass splinters, and eating a peppermint. Lena is horrified and standing with a dishrag in the corner. Dad is weeping in his green recliner. It was hard to remember what happened after that. The hours and weeping ran together, the visitation, my mind a mess, the shadows calling me, wanting me. I do remember screaming at dad to stop the car before he pulled out of the cemetery, me blindly opening the door and jumping out before he could put on the brakes. I made a mad dash across the grass, darting towards Maw Sue’s casket. I had forgotten the most important ritual she taught me. I had to have a flower to carry my grief. I scanned the area trying to determine an appropriate flower to symbolize her. I looked and looked but nothing spoke to me. The flowers on the casket were butt ugly. I have no idea whose decision it was to put white carnations up there but it was the wrong one. I went into a panic, nerves frazzled and eyes flitting. My eyes widened when I saw it about fifty foot away. It was on the other side of the old fence row. I heard dad’s voice hollering in the background. I paid no mind and took off running. I reached under the fence and plucked the most beautiful white Lily, a lush pure flower which doesn't worry with the cares of the world, for its creator takes care of it, come what may. Maw Sue’s desire was to be like the lilies of the field, the wildflowers tended by God, nurtured by the rain, the warmth of the sun and the glow of the moon. And now ...she was. Maw Sue was finally free and wild like she was born to be, as nature intended, free from the confines of this crazy brutal world. Free of mind madness. Free of cares and worries. Free.
When I walked back to the car, dad was standing outside the door, arms folded and concerned. Lena’s face was terror in the making. Not my daughter. Not my child.
I hung the Lily with one of Maw Sue's clothes pins on a rope inside the darkness of my bedroom closet. Every day I would go in and check it. Weeks later when it was dry, I placed it inside my Mason jar next to Big Pop’s red rose. Every night, in the darkness of my bedroom and holding a candle, I faced the darkness. I preformed the ritual Maw Sue taught me in overcoming. I faced the darkness. I sat in it. I let it breathe on me and rule me. Sometimes, I thought for sure it would swallow me whole and I’d never recover. But I lit the candle, each time, and the darkness would flee. “Devenio! Devenio! Devenio!” I’d whisper. It was ancient words that made the lesser light surrender to the greater light.
The Funeral
People line up. Drab and eerie music plays from the wall speakers. I feel sick watching this drawn out ceremonial tribute to man’s walk on earth, of deaths curse upon flesh, to ache, to remember, to mourn in agonizing grief, the memories of the past, of what we had and what we lost. It’s like being stabbed in the chest over and over. I want to run and never stop running. Run and hide all these feelings pouring out of me, deep lacerations that make me want to get drunk, swallow a bottle of tic-tacs, run back to Branson, have random sex, spend my whole paycheck, anything to rid them out of me. My demons are storming from the hidden rooms inside me, screaming and banging on the walls, rattling the doorknobs, scratching their fingernails against the windows. They want out. I don’t know how much longer I can keep them in. Brick by brick they tear it down, wall by wall they push.
I stand in the back of the room to avoid people. I don’t want to talk. I am not in a chatty mood. People pass me as if they recognize the girl I used to be, little Willodean, the one who used to stir up the neighborhood with trouble. They want to speak but my fragile shell of a carcass frightens them, as if I might break from the slightest wrong word. My tongue grows heavy. The taste is bitter and I fight against its moisture but it has its way with me and enters my vision. My mind goes back, quickly, frighteningly into the past. I’m lying in bed. I’m fourteen or fifteen, I can’t really tell. The lamp on my nightstand illuminates a small corner of my bedroom and morbidly lights up the Mason jar with decrepit dried flowers. The petal people sit inside their glass house like watchmen, idol gatekeepers. I am keenly aware of the shadows lurking from the hidden dark spaces. I’m crying uncontrollably, locked up inside myself, inside the house, inside the rooms, unable to speak. Lena of all people, sits beside my bed. Why is she there?
“Willodean, what is it?” She says. “You can tell me. Don’t you know I was a young girl too? Can’t you talk to me? What is wrong?” I glare at her unable to speak. It’s like this wall of pressure is on my vocal cords and resistance is robbing me of speech. I cry harder. I want to scream at her for some reason, just scream, shout at her—tell her, to make her see it’s real, to make her see me, the real me—but my voice is gone, locked up inside the room. No voice, no validation that proves I’m real. Lena gives up and leaves. When the room is vacant, it isn’t. People crowd around me. The petal people are no longer inside the house, inside me, they are in my room. They walk and hold their mason jars full of immortelles, while they chant, their lips
continually speaking their own stories, sorrows, and grief. One petal man reaches out with his wilted arm and grabs me, a strange evil look in his eyes. I jerk away from him and his stemmed arm falls off. I turn to run but I’m stopped.
“What did you say hon?” The old lady with gray hair says. Her hair is in a tight bun that pulls her skin back till her eyes are slanted. I am back in the viewing room not inside the Mason room.
“I—uhh, I don’t know.” I said in a bundle of nerves. I had no idea if I said anything out loud or not. “I’m sorry, excuse me.” I rushed off to hide frantic that people would see the crazy stirrings inside me. I need to be careful in public. Good Lord Willodean. Get it together. My skin aches as if it has no stability to cling to, no bones to wrap itself around, just an empty carcass, a crackle shell looking for a place to hang, to molt, to die. My eyes burn and puddles of water well up but they are not my tears. They are hers. She is here with me. She has found me in her relentless search. Inside the room where I have kept her, she pounds on the walls and with each punch of her fist, my chest caves in. Why now? Why here? She has never been so strong before, as if she will simply unzip my skin from the inside and step out of me, introduce herself, live her life, live my life. I double down and resist her exit. My gut is twisted in knots.
“Don’t leave me again.” Her voice screams between my ears. She is running up the three spiral staircases, out of breath but fearless in reaching me, chasing me down, not letting me go. I wrap my arms around myself binding my own body with cords to keep her in.
“The only way to stop this is to let me out.” She says in a desperate plea. “Surrender. Let go.” No. No. I can’t do that. No. I won’t. That is dangerous. You don’t know what you’re doing. I argued with the devil dialogue. The little girl inside me. I have lost too much. I am not letting you out.
“Let me out of hiding.” She pleads.
If I accept and let her go—will the war within me end? I could not say. I was not sure. I didn’t trust her. Visions plague me. I’m a spent shell casing, lying on a battlefield, a bullet fired and dropped to the ground. A gun with no ammunition, nothing to defend myself, nothing to fire back, no more tactics, no more running, no more excuses, no more masks. I felt hollow, numb, my knees weak. I needed my man pillow to hold, to cling to and wrap my legs around. I needed something to squeeze, a place of stability, a centerpiece to run to, to envision, to see, to focus, and to maintain. I want to shout but my mouth only trembled. I want to talk to somebody, to scream, to cry, to party, to drink Hennessey, to smoke, to have passionate sweaty sex, to exhaust myself and collapse in rapture, to shop, to spend, to buy, to drive fast, to spin out of control, to grab someone, to emerge and sink into their skin, to dissolve within their body, anything, something, oh God give me something, so that I no longer exist to feel, hear, see. No gifts. No curse.
“You’ve done all that before. It doesn’t work.” The little girls says, her voice a whisper knowing my every thought. My intimates. My secrets. I felt invaded when she enters in. For the umpteenth time I felt that the void within me, that place of dark, mysterious abyss, of avoidance, of denial, of pain. A landscape so overwhelming, that to touch its beauty is to touch our own wicked hearts, where everything that frightens us, lies in clear vision, standing with us, to engage us, to confront us, without protection, without barriers, without anything stopping it from ruin. We will either confront it—come what may—or it will destroy us in cinders, leaving us in ash. It is the vulnerable place inside me where life has left me naked, without a name or voice, or recognition. No identity, no value, no respect, no purpose. I am stripped of everything I ever desired. Everything I ever dreamed of. I am laid out flat, held up by nothing, staring at the sky with blankness, a trance, a moonlit night, shrouded by the darkness that surrounds it. I hear the waters of the river licking the sandy banks, while the stars above me blink and close their eyes, ashamed and rejecting. The wind refuses to dry kiss my wet skin. There is a hard tap on my shoulders.
A big blue mountain rises in front of me. I am startled out of my mind when it speaks. “I’m so sorry about your loss, Willodean.” The hat lady said. It wasn’t a mountain after all. “He was a good man.” She squeezes my arm and brings me back to the busyness of the room. I am distracted by her enormous velvet hat, a striking shade of blue and abstract from her green plaid dress. An odd combination.
“Yes maam.” I say politely. “Thank you. He was.” Keep it together Willodean. Keep it together. I don’t know half the people here, but they know me, which means they will want to chatter. Don’t break. Put on a mask.
Earlier, upon arrival, I was assaulted by a mob of gray haired people hunched over and walking with canes. Old lady perfume and Old Spice cologne. Dentures and snuff. I’ve been hugged countless times, pinched on the cheeks, prayed over, and numerous other elderly antics I don’t want to talk about. I am morbidly lost here and there, lost in my house, inside myself, inside the dark room of death. It’s all like a slow, bad dream. I can’t wake up. I can’t bare conversation with strangers, so I slip off to the corner and slither discreetly behind a fake fichus tree and lean against the wall. Maybe I will blend in with the leaves.
Between the tree leaves I watch. People interact with whispers, some in agonizing silence staring off into the distance. Others are laughing telling stories. The hardest thing for me is the walk by, the dreadful casket view. The way people parade by the wooden box, stopping briefly to stare at Papa Hart’s lifeless corpse, puffed up with formaldehyde, makeup and paint. I shudder thinking about it. I can’t bring myself to do it. I keep a fifteen foot distance the whole time. I want to remember him like I know him to be. I will not say goodbye.
In my head I go into a childish tantrum. I cause a scene. I embarrass Lena Hart. I rush to the center of the room, stomp my feet on the ugly brown carpet and scream like I’m on a mountain. “He is not here! He is NOT here!” I march over, slam down the casket lid and lift my hands to the sky. “Straight up. Don’t you people get it? Straight up!” Everyone is astonished at my conduct. They look at me with the same cuckoo expression they always gave Maw Sue during her fits. I’d be the talk of the town. “That Willodean Hart has done it again.” They’d say. “Just like she did when she was little.” The Pine Log Herald would read, LOCAL WOMAN HAS MELTDOWN AT FUNERAL.
I am so caught up in my head I don’t realize I’m laughing out loud and drawing attention to myself, so I sink deeper into the tree leaves. The child in me wants to rise up and not care what people think, not give a damn, but the Willodean—adult—never—have—fun tells me to save face and spare the family name. Lena Hart cuts her eyes at me so I won’t fulfill the curse, cause a scene. Not my daughter. Not my child.
Men with black suits and somber faces point and direct people to seating. The funeral director is motioning with hand signals to another guy standing by the back door. There is rustling pew noises, coughs, sniffles and a low murmur. I want to melt into the wall, erase this day completely from my memory. The forked edges of Lena Hart’s eyes rake over me and force me out of hiding. I come out from hiding and reluctantly sit down on the pews next to my sister. Scuttles and scrapes are heard. The hush that overcomes the room is unbearable. My breath utterly suspends in time. The organ starts to plays soft elevator music. I feel like I should be pushing buttons—floor 100 please. Get off, walk to the edge of the skyscraper and jump. End the pain. End the misery. Bodies wiggle and nervously fidget. It’s making me panic inside. A family mass of broken people, snug, side by side and holding each other up. Pieces of the willow tree snap and break until I am just a mere stump. I go into my internal mode, swaying side to side in little nervous ticks, hitting my mother’s shoulders and then Mag’s. I feel a hand grab mine and squeeze. Sister signals converge, melt into oneness, each of our pain submerging together, passing our grief back and forth. We are back in the deep clutches of nightfall alone and scared laying in our childhood beds, each supporting the other, while the adults around us fall apart and t
he world we knows spins into orbit.
The eulogy is long. The preacher goes on and on until I no longer hear. I am lost in my head. My right heel bops up and down to keep me from screaming a piping voice of lament. And then the hard part—the goodbyes. I sat still. Unmoved. Everyone crawled over and around me. I felt sick to my stomach. Get to the porch Willodean. It’s the final look, the last view, the end snapshot, the last kiss, the last bitter cold touch. Woody Woodpecker flew inside my head and said, “That’s all folks!” and then heckles a laugh. I taste the sweet sap of my childhood. I fear I might hyperventilate. Look, look, look. Love looks. The words haunt me and filter through my heart. No. No. I don’t want to look. I’ve looked in love so much this week, this century, this lifetime; I swear I don’t think I can do it again, ever. If I stare into God’s gaze one more time, I’ll blow up and take everyone with me. Vapor—dust—cinders!
WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) Page 47
