These are all memories of previous existences.
Listen, if you choose to believe nothing else that transpires here, believe this: your body does not have a soul; your soul has a body, and souls never, ever die.
To my memory, I have never been human, which probably explains my fascination with your kind. Admittedly, I am guilty of a very long and desperate infatuation with a family that I followed for decades. In hindsight, I believe that I was drawn to the beautifully tragic heartbrokenness of their lives, and so for years remained with them, helplessly tethered, like a mare to a post.
Their story begins not with the tragedy of ’55 but long before that, with the arrival of the first problem, which came draped in crinoline and silk; carrying a pink parasol in one hand and a Bible in the other.
Chapter Two
In 1900, the Violet Construction Company purchased a tract of land on the south bank of the Tallahatchie River and dug up the bones of the Choctaw Indians and the Africans. They tore from their roots black-eyed Susans, Cherokee roses, and Virginia creepers, and removed quite a number of magnolia and tupelo saplings. They did all of this to make room for forty threestory clapboard homes complete with indoor plumbing, grand verandas, and widow’s walks. A road was laid to accommodate horse and buggies and the rare motorcar. The cobblestone sidewalks were lined with gas street lanterns and the street itself was christened Candle.
Oak floors, chandeliers, wainscoting, and brass hardware dazzled potential buyers who came to view those homes that looked over the prettiest part of the river. The people walked through the spacious rooms holding their chins and sighing approvingly in their throats as they admired the fine woodwork and custom details.
The homes sold very quickly.
With the creation of Candle Street came jobs for laundresses, maids, and cooks, which brought in more people to the area—darker people.
So in 1915, the Violet Construction Company purchased a second tract of land, this time on the north shore of the river.
The north shore tract was cleared of most of the ancient, towering long-leaf pines whose thick canopy had deprived the land of sun, which turned the earth hard, dry, and as uneven as a washboard. Running vines speckled with yellow thorns coiled around trees, rocks, and the carcasses of animals and people who had stopped, dropped, and died there. The Violet Construction Company removed all of it and used the cheapest grade of pinewood to erect thirty modest-sized homes that did not have indoor plumbing, widow’s walks, or verandas. At night the Negroes had to depend on the light of the moon to guide them along the rocky, cratered footpath. And if there was no moonlight—well, God help them.
The Violet Construction Company named the street Baxter’s Road, but since only Negroes occupied those homes, both black and white alike began to refer to the little community on the north shore as Nigger Row.
The church, funded by the Negro community, was built in 1921. The residents of Candle Street gifted their dark, wooly-haired neighbors a small crate of Bibles and a proper crucifix set with a blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus molded from plaster of paris and nailed resolutely to its center. The Negroes did not have a man of the cloth living amongst them, so sent out word that they were in search of a suitable cleric to lead their flock.
As fate would have it, Reverend August Hilson and his family had recently been displaced by the race riots that erupted in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Negroes who managed to avoid being shot down in the streets like dogs, or burned to a crisp as they slept in their beds, packed up what they could and fled Tulsa.
For weeks, August and his family lived like nomads, wandering from one town to the next until they wandered all the way to Greenwood, Mississippi. There, August learned that his services were in dire need, “Just down the road,” the bearer of the news advised, “in Money.”
* * *
August Hilson and his family took possession of a home on Nigger Row on a cool November day. The photographer from the local newspaper came to capture the auspicious occasion. The family posed on the porch. August was seated in a mahogany chair cushioned in red velvet. The long, dark fingers of his right hand curled around his favorite Bible. His left hand rested on the intricately carved lion’s head which looked out at the photographer from its post at the top of the armrest. His wife, a peanut-colored, petite, full-bosomed woman named Doll, stood dutifully at his right side with her left hand on his shoulder, her right hand wrapped around the long neck of her beloved pink parasol. The children—a daughter named Hemmingway and a son named Paris—were stationed to the left of their father, arms still at their sides.
It was the first time any of them had ever been photographed, and even though they were practically bursting with glee, their expressions were painfully somber and their postures were as stiff as stone.
From beneath the dark blanket that covered both photographer and camera, the photographer counted off: Three … two … one …
The bulb exploded, expelling a puff of white smoke. A cheer went up from the small crowd that had gathered to watch the spectacle, and the Hilson family officially began their new lives.
Days later, when August was presented with a framed copy of the newspaper article, he took it into the drawing room where the light was brightest. There, August stood for many minutes gazing wondrously at the grainy picture. He thought they all looked like wax figures—well, all except Doll, who had the faintest wisp of a smile resting on her lips.
August was too modest a man to hang the framed article on the wall for every visitor to see, so stored it away on a bookshelf. Every once in a while, when he was home alone, he would remove the framed treasure and ogle the picture.
Over the years, the clipping yellowed and curled behind its protective glass, and the photo began to distort and fade. Sometimes when August peered at it, Doll seemed to be sneering; other times, she bared her teeth like a badger. August blamed the changes in the picture on figments of his imagination, poor light, and aging eyes; he had a bagful of explanations to explain it away. The final straw, however, came when he looked at the picture one day and saw that Doll’s middle and index fingers on both hands were crossed; August could not for the life of him decide if the gesture had been made in hope of good luck or for exclusion from a promise.
He tossed the memento in the river, but it was too late—his fate was already sealed.
Chapter Three
Doll was the love of August’s life, but she was also a thief.
Back in Tulsa, she had closed her arms around the shoulders of an elderly parishioner and expertly procured a shiny, dark plume from the woman’s brand-new Easter hat.
She was a bandit—stealing her daughter’s prized silk hair ribbons and all of her son’s blue marbles. When she saw the children crying over the loss, it filled her with giddy pleasure.
Before the children came, Doll had even stolen her husband from his first wife. It wasn’t her fault—the spirit of a dead whore had taken root in Doll’s body on the very day she was born.
Doll’s mother, Coraline, was six months pregnant with her second child when Doll, who was five at the time, looked up from the bowl of shelled peas and asked, “Mama, how was I when I was a baby?”
Coraline was slicing carrots for stew. She stopped, raised the back of her hand to her sweaty forehead, and swiped at a damp braid of hair. The question unearthed a memory and a smile.
“You come into this world screaming holy murder, and didn’t stop until you were a month old. Like to drive me outta my mind. It was your daddy—God rest his soul—who stopped me from throwing you down the well.” Coraline laughed and swiped at the braid a second time.
Doll raised her hand and stroked the taut skin beneath her chin. “Maybe you the one shoulda gone down the well,” she said.
The knife slipped from Coraline’s hand and clattered to the table and her mouth dropped open in surprise.
The statement was horrible—yes—but the voice behind the statement was terrifying. Esther Gold, Esther the whore—dead an
d buried for half a decade, and now come back in her daughter, in her Doll? Coraline blinked with disbelief.
Esther the whore had been a fixture in Tulsa, and could be spotted, day in and day out, wrapped around light poles, beckoning men with a wiggle of her finger, hissing like a snake: “Pssst, come here, I got something that’ll make it all better.”
She had been a beauty once, bright-skinned and thick-legged, with a curtain of hair that stretched all the way down to her waist.
Esther.
Too pretty for any woman to want as a friend. So beautiful, men didn’t think about loving her; they only fantasized about melting away between her creamy thighs.
Poor Esther.
The men she welcomed into her heart and into her bed should have worshipped the ground she walked on—and they did for a while—but eventually her beauty felt like a hot spotlight and their confidence faded away beneath the luminous beam. They questioned her loyalty and themselves.
Why she want me?
The answers always fell short of what they needed, which was a scaffold of assuredness sturdy enough to bear their egos. Esther replied, “I love you, ain’t that enough?”
They said it was, but it wasn’t and they didn’t know why. So the men beat her for loving them.
They beat the goodness and the sweetness out of her. They beat her into the streets, into back alleys, down into the dirt, into the gutter, onto her knees, her back, and then they climbed on top and emptied their miseries inside her.
Esther.
The voice was unmistakable, but Coraline had to be sure, so she said, “What you say, gal?” And Doll repeated herself in the same whiskey-and-cigarette scarred voice.
Coraline rounded the table, caught Doll by the collar of her dress, and dragged her out the house and down the road to the old woman called Sadie, who had herbs and potions that would deal with a tramp soul like Esther.
“Uh-hmmm,” Sadie grunted as she used her thumb and forefinger to stretch Doll’s eyelids open. After peering in the right eye and then the left, Sadie rocked back on her heels and nodded with confidence.
“Yeah, she in there all right.” Sadie shook her head pitifully. “Sorry for this, but it make sense now, all that hollering she done when she come into this world.”
Coraline nodded her head in agreement and then folded her arms around her swollen belly and began to sway.
“Sit down, Coraline, before you fall over,” Sadie warned. “You remember how she die?”
“Who?”
“That old whore.”
Coraline eased herself into a nearby chair, dropped her head into her hands, and forced her mind to look back. “I think she was stabbed to death.”
“So she died by the blade? You sure? You gotta be sure now.”
Coraline pounded her fists against her temples. “Yeah, someone cut her throat.” Her eyes swung to her daughter’s complacent expression and back to Sadie’s well-lined face. “You gonna be able to pull that whore outta my child?”
Sadie chewed on her ragged bottom lip. “Every tramp soul is different. Some stronger than others.” She glanced at Doll who was looking up at the ceiling, her eyes intent on something. Sadie slowly followed her line of vision, but there was nothing to see but wooden planks and cobwebs. She brought her palms together in a resounding clap.
Both Doll and Coraline jumped at the sound.
“Look at me, child,” Sadie gently demanded. She leaned over and brought her nose within millimeters of Doll’s, caught her roughly by the chin, and said, “Esther, Esther, we gonna get you outta this child and send you straight to hell where you belong!”
Doll held the old woman’s gaze, skinned back her lips, and spat, “And I’ma take you with me, witch!”
Coraline shrieked and Sadie lurched back.
“Ooh, Esther,” Sadie sneered as she walked a wide circle around Doll. “When I’m through with you, you gonna be sorry you were ever born!” And then to Coraline, “You go along home now let me do what I need to do.”
The old woman moved to the door and pulled it open. A sheath of daylight sliced across the floor and the multicolored glass canisters and jugs shelved along the back wall.
“Come back for her in the morning.”
Coraline scrambled out the door.
* * *
When Coraline returned the next day, Sadie handed her a sealed jar filled with murky water.
“Esther in here?” Coraline asked, holding the jar at arm’s length.
“Her spirit,” Sadie said.
“Well, what am I supposed to do with it?”
“Dig a hole as deep as you can, pour the water in it, and then cover it up.”
Coraline eyed the jar for a minute and then looked over at Doll who was sitting at the table, nibbling on a biscuit.
“She look well enough,” Coraline said to Sadie, and then cocked her head and addressed Doll: “How you feelin’?”
Doll glanced up from her biscuit. Her lips were covered in crumbs. “Fine, ma’am,” she responded in her five-year-old voice.
“Come on now, you can take that biscuit to go.”
Doll jumped out the chair and moved across the floor toward her mother. Coraline’s eyebrows arched with concern—Doll’s legs were crisscrossed with bright red switch marks.
“Y-you beat her?”
Sadie narrowed her eyes and grabbed hold of her slim hipbones. “I ain’t beat her—I beat the whore inside her.”
Doll moved to her mother’s side and took her hand. Mother and daughter’s fingers entwined and a familiarity surged through Coraline’s veins.
“Remember now,” Sadie warned, “that hole gotta be deep. Dig all the way to China if you have to.”
* * *
Dearest, you cannot bury a soul! Souls are light, darkness, and air. Coraline found this out the hard way, when five years after she buried the jar and thought that she had rid her daughter and the world of Esther and malice, Esther reappeared, stronger and more spiteful than ever.
Coraline had spent most of the day in the yard, boiling, scrubbing, and hanging sheets. Doll helped some, but she was clumsy and easily distracted. Three separate times she’d lost her grip on a freshly washed sheet, and all of the hard work went sloshing down to the dusty ground.
Coraline sucked her teeth in anger. “Girl, you causing me double work!” She sent Doll off with a vicious wave of her hand. “Take your brother with you.”
“I’m sorry, Mama.”
“That you are,” Coraline hissed as she crumpled the sheet into a ball and dropped it back into the pot of hot, soapy water.
Hours later, Coraline entered the house in search of salve to apply to her chafed red hands. Her mood was low, but soared when she heard the joyous laughter of her children seeping from her bedroom. A favorite hiding place for brother and sister was beneath Coraline’s double-sized bed.
Her sore hands forgotten, a mischievous smile lit on Coraline’s lips when she tiptoed into the room, raised one corner of the mattress, and peered down through the jungle of coiled bedsprings.
“Gotcha!”
But she was the one who got a surprise.
Doll’s bloomers were down at her ankles and the hem of her dress was gathered around her neck. Conner, her five-year-old brother, had an index and middle finger inside of Doll’s pussy.
The same two fingers he slipped into his mouth at night and sucked until dawn. The two fingers he stroked Coraline’s cheek with and used to spoon up and eat cake batter.
Coraline went deaf and dumb with rage. She would have preferred blindness—death even—to block out the vision before her.
When Conner saw the shocked and angry look on his mother’s face, he withdrew his fingers and they came out slick with Doll’s nectar.
Coraline snapped, toppling the mattress and the bed onto its side, then pounced on Doll and wrapped her hands around the child’s throat.
Conner ran from the house and into the road, where he stood frantically waving his arms
and shrieking, “Help! Help!”
A neighbor, who had been sitting on his porch rolling tobacco, stood up and called to the boy, “What’s wrong?”
“My mama is killing my sister!” Conner screamed back before sticking his fingers in his mouth.
Yes, those two fingers.
Chapter Four
Sadie was dead, and it was the best for everyone really, because her particular type of magic would have been useless in that situation.
So, Coraline took Doll to the reverend.
“You can have her,” Coraline said, and shoved Doll roughly toward him. “Ain’t no good in her, only Esther, and she’s all bad.”
The reverend’s eyes swung wildly between Coraline and her sobbing daughter.
“Sister Coraline, I can’t—”
Coraline backed away. “Nah, nah, Reverend, you gotta take her or I’ma kill her for sure,” she warned as she raised her right palm to the sky. “I swear to God, I will kill this child and then the blood ain’t gonna just be on my hands, your hands gonna be red too.”
August Hilson gently took hold of Doll’s arm and she flinched in pain. That’s when he noticed the black and blue bruises.
“My Lord,” he whispered in horror, “did you beat this child?”
Coraline was already walking away. She turned her head slightly and slung, “No, Reverend. I didn’t beat Doll; I beat the whore inside of her.”
* * *
August led Doll into the house and guided her to the sofa. “Sit here,” he said, and then disappeared into the kitchen.
His wife Ann was standing over the sink, stuffing seasoned rice into the belly of a raw chicken. “Who was that at the door?” she queried without turning around to look at him.
“Ann.”
The seriousness in her husband’s voice was heartstopping. Ann slowly turned to face him. August was gray.
Loving Donovan Page 20
