“No more running. No more running.” She says. I fight her and push her back. She is wearing the red stone necklace, the one eyed dragon of my fears, my terror, my sin. It leaps for me and growls. I hear its voice growl. “It’s all your fault. She is dead because of YOU!”
The girl grabs me again and whispers. “Make me seven, make me seven.” I repeat the words because I don’t know what else to do. The house begins to rumble beneath my unstable feet and her tiny bare toes. A deep spirited voice speaks but it was neither anyone we know of. Unfamiliar. It was a voice out of the earth, below and above, beyond and inward, internal and external, a whisper in the dust, a stirring voice so quiet, it was loud, and so overwhelming it calmed nature to a deep sleep, a trance. A connection of unity, transforming, and transcending all boundaries pricked my soul with terrible, splendid wonders. Particles, little decibels of righteous fury entered the foundation of the cursed house within me, making a disturbance, throwing on light, spilling out truth and sending the shadows into chaos of which I have never seen before. The wisp of spirit spoke like ferocious winds wrapping around trees and whipping the branches. We held each other, transfixed and unable to move, only to listen with our awful, terrible, splendid, gifted and cursed ears. In this moment, we realized how much we needed each other, me better with her and her better with me. A coming together of hearts, each of us seeing ourselves as one, feeling as one, knowing and breathing as one. It was eerie, awful, and disturbing. The adult and the child cried out to be filled. I merged with her, she merged with me. Things held me, unknown, hard to accept, flashes of time and places I didn’t recognize or want to remember. The deep guttural voice speaking inside me, around me, of me, beyond me, beyond my fingertip grasp, beyond the Michelangelo painting, beyond the curtain of the sky, beyond the moon, the stars, beyond the drenching rains in the fields at midnight, beyond the churning black waters that cleansed me, beyond the void of space and time, of all I knew and didn’t know—it spoke and there was no denying the presence and the power it held in me.
“Willodean. You must let go” The voice said. The child held me tighter as if she expected me to bolt and leave her. Her arms were wires cutting into my skin.
“Accept what you fear and then confront it. You must let go. It is the law of the universe. In order for a bird to fly—it must let go of the limb it’s perched upon and trust. There are no easy answers and maybe no answers at all. I have given you all you need to go forward—but it is up to you, to use it. Surrender to all you don’t understand and everything you cannot control and never could. Quit trying to fix things and let me handle the journey of your steps. Surrender to all the bad, the ugly and the wrongs committed against you, by others and most of all, yourself. You were young Willodean and it wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t. Sometimes bad things happen and we make the wrong decisions. It’s life. But if you trust me—I will make the bad decisions good for you and others. Three lines—twelve words. Those are mine. I was there when it happened with Maw Sue, with you, with everyone and I will be with you always. Don’t let go of me—and I won’t let go of you. You need me. I need you. Accept all you know and what will be revealed, confront it, deal with it and then go forward. Together. Willodean as adult and Willodean as child. They belong together. As one. Trust the child within you. Trust the adult within you. Use your gift. Fight the enemy. Fight the shadows that are trying to keep you from the life that is rightfully yours. It wasn’t anyone’s fault that Maw Sue died the way she did. There are things you don’t know. No one could have stopped it. Sometimes things are set in motion, long before we have anything to do with it. You fell apart when she passed. You went half mad. The curse wasn’t channeled for good and it almost took you. Almost. The shadows are powerful but you are stronger than they are and I am stronger than they are. When you slipped away, I couldn’t reach you. You blocked me out. You built the little girl a room and locked her away. You kept her from your heart, where she belongs. You shut me out of your life and went your own way. You shut her out of your life too. The shadows took advantage of your weakness, your aloneness, and without the childlike heart, they could use you however they pleased. They attacked when you were most vulnerable and that is when you broke. You split into two separate entities, each a half that made the whole, one wandering and searching, one a seeker, the other a sleeper, a shadow following, trying to reconcile itself with the body it belonged, the child it abandoned, the soul it lost. The little girl is you, the lost you. She’s been trying to get you back ever since. With my help of course. After Maw Sue’s death, you fell into a dangerous pit of darkness. You were haunted by the shadow of yourself, your childlike self and the choices you made. You denied your own existence, your own purpose. You shut your ears to the gift and closed your eyes to the light. You thought you’d die like Maw Sue. You felt as if you deserved it. Punishment for taking the necklace. Beyond that, a lot of things happened as you will discover on your journey, but for now, know this Willodean. Our fate is ours alone. Not of others. We can either use the gifts or let the gifts destroy us. We can either channel it for good, or let it be our demise. I pray that your journey end in your desire of heart, completeness. Seven.”
The little girl’s hands gripped mine. “God?” I said in a stunned voice. It was silent. Stilled like the peaceful waters. It got dark, quickly. I swayed a little but then realized my eyes were closed. When I open them, I look around the cemetery. I am alone with the casket. No little girl. Strong scents fill my nose. I look down at my feet and there is a pink rose lying on the ground. A small part of me wants to deny any of this happened but a larger part of me knows it did happen, exactly as I saw it, felt it, heard it. Gifted and cursed. No little girl, no breakfast smells, no souls or shadows across the cemetery, nothing. I start to tremble because I know what I must do. I walk to the casket and pull a long stemmed yellow rose out of the flower arrangement. I follow the primordial rite of passage my grandmother passed down. Besides, I need it now more than ever. I need the Immortelles to save me, and take away my grief.
In my last attempt to make peace with what I know—I close my eyes and look for the last time, or I try. Papa Hart now a petal person, forever immortalized with a flower inside a Mason jar. I look but not at the dead. I look at his life. I look with agony and pain. I clutch the thorny rose as punishment, slicing my skinny fingers. The southern sap flows in pain. Take my grief. Take my grief. Inside the realm of in-betweens, I look at my grandfather and all that he represented in my life. I remember our porch time, our stories, and our fishing trips. I loved and looked with all my heart. And once I was through—I wasn’t through. I went a little further than Papa Hart. I swept past the illumination, the burning fire of the God gaze and looked at everything I could find. My eyes were magnifying glasses into the past, viewing details, things I’d forgotten. I look at Maw Sue, her flaws, her love for me, her imagination, her laughter, her grit. I look. I love. I hear her crackling voice telling stories, the word-struck power that kept me, sustained me. I look at her death, the bedroom, the madness. I look at the stone. I look at why I took it. I look at my desperation, my madness. I look at Maw Sue, how broken she was and how her broke, broke me. I look at God, three lines, twelve words. I look at how he was there the whole time, not a no-show as I thought. Enduring love. Enduring look. Enduring God. With love I look at who he is, who he isn’t. I look at the mystery of it all. I look to the God behind the moon of my childhood heart. I look to the Old Testament God of judgment, of rules, and laws, and stones thrown. Of sacrifices, altars and baby lambs. Of fires by night and clouds by day. I look to the New Testament God of grace, of mercy and love. I look to the God who is still a mystic. I look because he keeps me yearning, searching and seeking. It is who I am. I am a seeker. I am a Cupitor.
I look for the answers to my questions? Why did he stay his hand? Why didn’t he save her? Why did he let her go? I look to understand what I cannot understand. I look to let go of the things that I cannot change, things I hold, clutch and cl
ing to. I look at a close knit family, deeply flawed, weird and quirky but I look at the love tangled in between it all. I look at my marriage, at Branson, the ring, the destructive path we took with each other. I look for the good in it, I look with love, enduring.
Most of all, I look at myself, the adult, the little girl, the parts I love and hate all swished together. I look. I look. I look at the crumbs, divine manna from heaven. I look at the messages they bring, the changes they give me, how they searched me out. I look at the little girl with hope in her heart. Resilient. She looks to the sky and waits for the wind, for the breath of God, for she knows it will come. She is enduring like the Willow tree. She is strong, relentless, and faithful. I look at the times I ran when I should have stood. I look at my world with a set of different eyes, acutely aware of my surroundings, alive, passionately looking for the magical realm of inspiration that they inspire. I look and wait for the divine dance. I wait for the Dirt Dancer to come down and whisk me away with his flames of desire. My eyes begin to flutter with the thought and I feel as if I may burn up on the spot. I realize I have never gone this far in the journey, inside myself, beyond the house, behind the moon, beyond the dark starry night of the soul, searching, seeking, looking—really looking at everything as it was and not as I hoped it to be. This time, I really looked to let go of all control, everything I planned, the failures, everything I hoped, dreamed—I let go. I fully embraced the unknowns, the invisible attributes of a life that is yet to be, the life I am supposed to step into. To be. To simply be.
I look and accept the woman I was, the woman I am and the woman I should be and will be. I look and accept the little girl that was, in all the darkness and light, in the good and the bad, I accept her. I look at her victories and her defeats. I hug her and love her unconditionally. I accept what I know and what I don’t understand about her. I accept what I don’t want to accept and hope by this acknowledgment, it will allow me to surrender when it is time. I look to receive what I don’t want to receive. I look to let go and finally accept, fully, completely, whole, seven. I accept the gift still wrapped, even if I don’t know what’s inside, I accept it wholly, fully accept. I take responsibility and accept the girl who haunts me, thrills me, and makes me cry, laugh and wonder. I accept the nightmares, the anger, the craziness, the madness and the gift. Oh, the splendid gift. I also accept the curse so that I may channel it and use it for good. I will not let it destroy me. I look and accept the part of me I left behind. I look to forgive myself. I should have stayed. I know that now. I forgive myself for denying what I should have confronted. I look and accept the House within me with its dark rooms and its buried secrets. I look and accept. I look and surrender. I surrender my past, my present and my future. I Willodean Hart, look and I let go. I make lovely my losses. Instantly, a flame lit inside me and I felt the burning lamp of a new heart beating inside me. New heart! New heart! I looked into God’s gaze and melted. I accepted the terrible, awful, splendid gift. And for the first time, I meant it. I let go. But I did not say goodbye.
When I came to myself, an old woman was standing a few feet away and startled me by her presence. She looked to be older than Moses, a black woman with silver gray hair, deep set wrinkles and dark eyes. I thought she might have been the caretaker coming to throw me out of the cemetery but then I saw the box in her hand.
I gasped. My stomach lurched. The house inside ruptured. No. No way. It can’t be. You’re seeing things Willodean. It can’t be her. The box glowed majestic prisms. It made her look like those Virgin Mary statues I see in dollar stores where Mary’s head is a circle of rainbows and halo’s. I was positive she was a vision of my imagination until she spoke.
“Hello Willodean.” She said in a raspy voice. “I’ve been waiting a long, long time to give you this.” I recognized her voice with marvel and trepidation. I would know that voice anywhere. In Ms. Blanche’s hands was my salvation, the childhood keepsake of my destiny, my beloved mirror bin. She flipped the box on its side where I could see the mirror facing me. She walked closer. My heart leapt. My heels sunk further in the ground as if the abyss was going to swallow me. I could feel the blood surging from the stone that was still inside the box where I put it ages ago. It sent a river of wax blood through the house, in the hallways, flowing down the staircases and coating everything it touched with a waxy coating, as it did to the mirror bin the night it sealed it shut. I pressed my free arm towards her to make her go away, back up, leave me alone. She kept walking. It’s a vision. Go Away. Go Away Ms. Blanche.
“This is why I am here Willodean.” She said.
No. No. Go Away. I was immobilized, frantic. Blank spaces, mind lapses. Terror.
“I made a promise to your grandmother and I plan on keeping it.” Her eyes were full of mystery and mayhem. I flashed back to childhood. In the driveway with Maw Sue and Ms. Blanche, their strange words, the way they looked at me. Secrets.
Ms. Blanche was two feet from me now, enough for the mirror lid to come into full view. The reflection in it moved when I moved, it blinked when I blinked, it talked when I talked, it did everything I did. A shiver tapped on every disk of my spine until it reached my neck and wrapped its unsteady fingers around it. And then I saw my expression in the mirror transform into the horror of my childhood. The flour girl with hollow sockets and white paste face looked through me, beyond me, for me, in me, and of me, while a thousand shadows slipped in and out of the empty spaces of the hollow eye sockets into the house, inside her. The house inside me.
I see myself in the mirror bin of truth. I see myself for who I am, and what I had become. I am the reflection in the mirror bin, I am a Dresden. Why had I not seen this before? Denial. Pink elephants. Secrets. Maw Sue's haunting words drift inside my gifted-cursed ears, “The awful, terrible, splendid gift always lives up to its namesake, one way or another.”
EPILOGUE
The phone rang before I had my morning cup of coffee. I answered it reluctantly in a sleep fog. “Hey.” Dad said. “Everybody is meeting at Papa Hart’s in a bit. We gon’ clean up the place, do some sorting. You should come.” My heart inflamed immediately. I wanted to slam down the phone but not before screaming, “He is not here! He is not here. Straight up!” Instead, I said okay with a faint expectancy that I’d walk into the door and see him sitting in his favorite chair or on the front porch swing. But no…never again. No matter how much I tell my head he is not here, my heart refuses to believe it.
“We are just gonna wrap up some loose ends. Get it done.” He said. “Be there at 10:30.” And he hung up. Wrapping up loose ends is just another way of saying we’re going to divvy up all your stuff, divide your belongings, separate your china, split the union, slice hearts, drain blood. Okay, probably not as morbid as that, but close. For me it’s comparable to digging up his grave.
I pull into the driveway at 10:45. The crunching rocks underneath Annie’s tires feels like my heart being run over. Before I get out of the car, I hear a slight humming in the back seat. I turn and give it a glance but not for long. The sight and sounds add to my suffering and I’m not sure how much more I can take. The mirror bin and the green scarf sit exactly where I left them after Ms. Blanche scared the pants off me at the cemetery. I didn’t even touch them, I made Ms. Blanche put them inside the car. Just the thought of touching that scarf that belonged to Aunt Raven gives me the creeps and there is no telling what’s inside the mirror bin. I fear the unknown and right now I can’t face it. As much as I grown over the past year, it seems I get to another level of my life and there is an obstacle waiting for me, a hurdle to leap over and I don’t have the strength. That day at the cemetery I let go of a lot of things I didn’t understand. I went to the light, felt the gaze of God touch my skin, and heal me, probably for the first time, and only because I let him heal me, I let go and accepted his grace, his mercy, his forgiveness when all the other times I refused and ran. I’m listening to the President more and more now, I’m moving forward in my life, accepting the da
ily struggles as a gift to learn, to grow, to endure, a river to cross over. I’m learning how to enjoy my singleness. I use my alone time to better myself, to grow. Because I’ve discovered that I’m never really alone. Three lines, twelve words. I mean, if I’ve done all this and more, than surely I can take the next step in my life, come what may.
But the more I stare at the mirror bin and the creepy green scarf the more fear bounds me up in a new strangulation I’ve not encountered before. Both sit in the back seat, untouched. I can’t bear to open it, touch it, feel it, and can barely look at it. I fear I’ll turn into a wreck, relapse into a crazy psychotic episode that I’ll never recover from. I fear what’s inside the mirror bin and my conversation with Ms. Blanche that day at the cemetery comes back to haunt me.
The second I saw myself in the mirror bin reflection as a horrible Dresden of my own nightmares, I collapsed and hit the dirt. The next thing I know, I see the blue sky spinning and a puffy black face with dark eyes over me, fretting and worried, rubbing her fat fingers on my forehead and saying, “Ms. Willodean. Wake up now, wake up.”
Oh. I woke up alright. All I could think about was the vision of myself as a Dresden. I sat straight up, screaming and nearly knocked her over.
“Calm down Ms. Willodean.” She said. I was wild eyed and frantic. Overload.
“Why are you here?” I said yelling. “How, how did you get my mirror bin? I’m…I’m…I’m a Dresden.” I screamed loud and violent realizing the intensity of the vision once again. My hands frantically rubbed my cheeks for white paste and I checked my eyes to make sure they were there and not hollow sockets of horror.
“Lawd Willodean. Calm yoself down. I wilz explain it all, but you gotsa settelz down.”
WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) Page 50
