She couldn’t think about the Joseph house without thinking of the trial. It was the day they meant to bury Josiah’s body, and the house rumbled with guests who’d come to attend the burial. Mother Joseph decided to hold the trial the same day, to have as many family members in attendance as she could.
Joanie remembered how it felt, that many-months-ago morning, when she was tied to a straight-backed chair in the main house’s front room. She remembered the weight of the serpent box in her lap, the way it was still warm from the heat lamps in the cellar. The witnesses—ten at least, Mother Joseph had been adamant—staggered around the chair. Some, barely awake after the funeral festivities, others still in the grip of the Joseph family’s darker brand of refreshments.
Mother Joseph was fully untethered and under the Vine’s influence. Of all of the guests, she was the farthest away from herself, and from her good sense. Joanie had significantly weakened by then, denied food and water. A cleansing, Mother Joseph explained, her grief-razed face split open into something too terrible to be a face. Harlan wrapped the cord around Joanie’s waist, so her hands would be free. This was the way they’d always done it. In all serious family matters, particularly when crimes were committed inside the family, guilt or innocence was determined by serpent.
Josiah had been the one who explained to Joanie the origin of the serpent, the evolution of the Work and the beginning of the family’s unusual brand of worship. Before Great-grandmother Joseph’s vision, the women in the family had done the Work without knowing it—somehow compelled by the Vine to give it exactly what it needed. They tended the very first grove like women under a spell. It wasn’t until the vision that everything began to make sense.
Great-grandmother Joseph had been a moderate woman. It wasn’t common for hallucinations to accompany a taste from the Vine of Heaven, at least none that a person could clearly remember. The old woman’s vision came to her after a drowning, after a different burial, decades before.
Great-grandmother Joseph ladled the sap into her mouth, more than she usually took, smacking her decaying gums and yellowed teeth as it went down. She was in her sorrow, Josiah had explained, that’s why she’d taken so much. She lay in the front room of the house, the same place Joanie waited for the serpent’s justice, as though dead herself. Mother Joseph was a girl then, but she remembered it and passed the story down. She remembered Great-grandmother Joseph’s labored breathing and cold, still figure laid out on the floor for a full day. She woke up, gasping, like a body pulled from the water and revived. The old woman drew across the skin of her forearm, a wavy line with her finger, over and over.
When speech returned to her, she tried to explain—a dream of a garden, gold and green, the Vine of Heaven twisting and glowing under a clear day. A clap of thunder pulsed through the vision. The vines moved quickly, the stems and leaves braiding into a sinewy coil, the bright blue blossoms sprouting fangs and tongues. The garden filled with snakes, slinking and hissing. Great-grandmother Joseph didn’t recount the story with fear. The serpents were benign, benevolent even. Every whisk of their jade bodies against her skin was a gentle caress. Josiah had held a hand to his cheek, miming the way his mother had shown him.
It was this vision that elevated their simple tending, to what Great-grandmother Joseph called the worship. For decades, the Josephs fostered this connection between the Vine and its reptilian counterpart by keeping a serpent in the cellar of the main house. It was a spiritual creature, Josiah explained; it provided a charge of gratitude. Keeping a serpent in the earth along with the growing Vine drew more power into the crop. And, when the time came, Mother Joseph used the serpent to mete out justice, the same way her ancestors had.
In the light of eleven in the morning, Joanie waited, slumped in her seat. She stayed still, too weary to struggle against the cords that bound her. Mother Joseph’s black dress gapped down the front where several buttons had come undone, and as she leaned over the chair, Joanie saw the clot of gold chains that had formed between her wrinkled breasts.
“Well,” her mother-in-law slurred. “Take it up.” The woman’s pupils were two enormous blots. Joanie understood, but her body was slow to comply. She contemplated her wrists, so thin and useless. She doubted she could even open the box.
“Hello?” Mother Joseph yelled, her face close to Joanie’s. “I said, take it up!”
“She doesn’t look so good, Amberly. Maybe give her a sip of water,” Big Josiah, her brother and one of the witnesses, said.
“Shut your fool mouth, Josiah!” Mother Joseph flung her body back, rising up on her toes, her arms straight up in the air. She looked more like a black bear than a human.
Mother Joseph’s massive body contracted around Joanie again, so close she was like the white to Joanie’s yolk. The inappropriate observation startled Joanie into a sudden smile. At that, Mother Joseph drew in a breath. “A real-life demon, you,” she said. “Take. It. Up.” Mother Joseph thumped a heavy hand on the box with each word. Joanie felt the snake’s frantic movement inside.
Joanie moved her hands to the box’s screen lid, and lifted it. The creature lay coiled inside, golden as an autumn leaf. Joanie marveled at the copperhead’s circular, glinting beauty.
“What did I say?” Mother Joseph screamed from the back of her throat.
Joanie dipped her hands into the box, and scooped up the animal. She didn’t understand it then, but she began to laugh. It wasn’t hysterical, half-sobbing laughter that poured from her throat. It was joyful, as though it came from someone else, and she delighted in the sound of it coming out of her mouth. The snake’s winding body was so warm, and it moved over her hands and around her forearms like it knew her. She felt a reassuring, almost tangible tug from the Vine, where it lay stacked in the smokehouse only yards away. Joanie stared down and shook with laughter. Holding the creature was like dipping her hands into some strange water, the way the golden body rippled and swam across her skin. Joanie’s laughter was the only sound in the front room.
When she looked up, to see if she hadn’t just imagined it, to see if maybe she really was alone, Joanie saw only Mother Joseph’s face. What Joanie saw there wasn’t anger—it was terror. Joanie laughed even louder, with honest delight, as the snake wound away from her hands and up to her face. The serpent’s flat little head nuzzled her chin, and Joanie dipped her face forward with affection.
“How much longer, Amberly?” Big Josiah said. She followed the serpent, moving her head as languidly as the copperhead, as though they were two halves of the same creature.
“Till I say stop!” Mother Joseph snapped, but kept her distance. Joanie felt a sudden coolness around her. She wasn’t sure if the snake had cooled, or if Mother Joseph and the other witnesses had backed away, opening a halo of space around the chair. Joanie leaned forward and into the plastic cord, toward the serpent.
“This girl ain’t right, Amberly, look at her. Just take a knife to her if you’re that upset.”
Mother Joseph flashed into Joanie’s line of sight, her hands hovering over the animal, as though willing it to strike out at Joanie.
“No, I’m doing this the right way,” Mother Joseph said. “How we’ve always done it.”
Joanie heard their voices like a language she didn’t know—they were speaking too slowly, opening their mouths too much. She heard an argument grow around where she sat, but it felt far away. A fresh, grassy scent hung in the air, as though the animal had been perfumed. The serpent coiled around her upper arm and shoulder, pressing into the side of her head. She allowed it to push her, leaning so far down the chair began to rock forward. Joanie heard the voices, louder now, and the serpent box as it clattered to the floor. She leaned over, more, and slid her tied feet through the chair legs, letting herself fall to the floor—as that seemed to be the copperhead’s intention.
When the snake finally bit her, it was only once, on the shoulder. She heard Mother Joseph
whoop, calling in more witnesses, the room suddenly hot and filled. Joanie couldn’t see the snake anymore. She couldn’t see anything. She tried to blink the room into focus, but every sweep of her eyelids seemed to worsen the blur. Her body was being moved, she didn’t know by who. When she was finally flung down, after an endless, lurching journey, it was in a place with a familiar smell. Joanie rubbed her cheek against the ground, and knew it to be the earth and not wood or concrete. She was in the toolshed, she thought, the one behind the crumbling old smokehouse. The place where she had gotten the pliers the first time Mother Joseph had commanded her to a task.
Joanie knew she was going to vomit. She crawled until she could get a hand up on a wall and lifted herself to her knees. A bucket, she thought, or at least a corner. But there was nothing to really come up, since they’d kept food and water from her. She heaved out an unceasing, acidic dribble until she stopped remembering things.
Joanie woke up in the night to the quiet of the compound. She didn’t know what day it was, only that she was cold, that the guests from the burial must have gone home and that she was supposed to be dead. So, she stayed quiet, pretending to be dead.
* * *
It had hurt to go back to that house.
Joanie swam through the heat of the creek, and swore her baby would never know life as a Joseph. If her baby was alive, somewhere, she’d get him back. And if he wasn’t alive on this earth, she would still find him. He was something other to her than a child. Something more, something stranger. Through the months of corrosion, through her strangling pregnancy, Joanie had fought to be a mother. Her body had fought for it. And when the baby was born, and drank from her, her mind fought to be a mother, too. All of those first, soft brushes of something so new, the times she held that fresh, sleeping creature in the crook of her elbow and he practically glowed—Joanie had felt something growing. The times she had rested a hand on his tiny chest and felt the astounding flicker of his heartbeat in her palm, she’d been terrified. Joanie believed these moments with her son were openings into something else, a portal to a different life.
A flash of coolness glanced through the water, like dropping a handful of ice cubes into a glass. Gently, the Vine tapped back a message to her through the lapping stream. It was a message of seduction, as obvious as opening a window. Mother Joseph, the compound, the serpent’s bite, even the nursing of her baby—they had all weakened her. If Joanie repaired herself and renewed her devotion to the Vine, she could grow stronger than Mother Joseph—stronger than anyone. A person like that could recover anything she’d lost. A person like that could make something new.
Joanie tested this idea, beneath the slow caress of the river. She willed each ripple of water to press what she was missing back into her, to restore the balance in her blood and bones and muscle. She understood that she had not been paying attention, dream walking through her second life at the garden. She had allowed her cracks to widen. She had allowed herself to become brittle and drained, drained of milk and empty, her monthly bleeding suspended since the birth. The water crept back in through each tiny skin cell, and she understood, as clearly as a whisper in her ear, that the restoration of these powerful fluids would please the Vine, and make her a sound vessel for the worship.
Joanie’s time as a Joseph had marked her, maybe it had even marked her baby. The only way to keep them both safe—to restore them both—was to fill her body and mind with all of its dormant potential: to triumph over and erase Mother Joseph. Joanie tilted her head back, submerging her hair in the water, her body covered in the dark liquid, drinking it in.
10
Cello followed the strange groove in the grass. He couldn’t tell in the dark, but it was too even and uniform to be a track made of footprints. It seemed more like the work of a single wheel. Cello conjured an image of an invader, one of the desperate tenants from the Joseph place maybe, bundling the baby into a wheelbarrow and tearing him away in the night. It couldn’t be a coincidence, the baby’s disappearance coordinating so perfectly with the appearance of this alien path.
Cello willed the track to cross a fresh, muddy place, so he could see more clearly who or what it was that had trespassed, but it faded out, disappearing in the layers of brambles that separated the garden from the unused access road. Cello doubled back, scanning the grass for any sign of the intruder—maybe he’d dropped something, or left a set of footprints Cello had missed. Even though it was dark, the moon was bright enough for him to spot anything obvious. An unusual sound broke the stillness of the night, interrupting Cello’s search.
It was the sound of a body in water. He turned to follow it, heading for the same bulge in the creek where the kids swam. He approached silently, barely moving through the lush sprays of green brush bordering the riverbank. He shuddered, imagining the baby falling through the murky water. Had the kidnapper done worse than steal the child? Was the thief—perhaps murderer—still there?
Cello searched the ground for fallen tree limbs or stones, anything that could be used as a weapon against whatever it was swimming in the river. He crouched low, feeling through the grass for any hard, heavy object. A flash of an arm glistened, caught in the bright moonlight. Cello froze, because it was an arm he knew—it belonged to Joanie. He stood and put his hands to his face, breathing in the scent of late-summer grass, half dried out by the sun, half violently growing. He shook his head, trying to separate the sinister thoughts of drowning, and kidnappers with wheelbarrows, from his—their—Joanie.
“Joanie? Is that you?” He stood still, apart, an almost tangible veil of seclusion suspended between them.
“It’s me,” she replied, her voice layered over with the kiss of water on skin.
“You alright?” He hung his head and nearly turned his back to the river, feeling compelled to give her some bit of privacy.
“Go home, Cello. I’m fine.” He tried to respond, but his mouth hung heavy on his face.
“Be careful,” he said, so soft he was sure she couldn’t hear it. Cello walked away, toward home and the kids’ trailer. An uneasiness coursed through him, and Cello tried to think of something else, about the plot he’d prepared, or Miracle’s perseverance as she’d looked for the baby, but his mind would not be cleared.
* * *
The next day, nobody spoke about the baby. They all knew not to mention that they were one less, but even outside of this loss, Letta was not herself. Her nastiness, her joking affection, all of it was blunted by the sudden change in their number. She sent them off to work in the morning half-heartedly, and with an uncharacteristic flash of kindness. “Let the little kids come back at noon for lunch. Sabina, you take them. I don’t want anybody wandering off. I’ll let Joanie sleep till then, and send her back out with y’all.”
Cello didn’t ask her why Joanie had been up so late, knowing that he wouldn’t get an answer. He didn’t ask Sil any questions, either.
Sil, too, worked as though he were in a trance, barely speaking. Sil’s usual, cheerful pedantry, and his running commentary on “the way things are done,” were suspended. It left the air around them silent. The bees that flickered around their hands and mouths, and the hollow calls of the sparrows, were eerie in Sil’s stern, focused quiet.
When Emil and Miracle noticed they could get away with it, they ran to the shade of a set of beech trees and raced between them. Even their little child shrieks didn’t stir Sil, wherever he was. No one could pay attention. Cello understood that Sil’s silence was easier to endure than his anger, and was happy to keep silent, too. Marcela, though, wanted to talk. He could see that her forehead creased whenever she stooped closest to the earth, like the gravity there was pulling together all of her thoughts into a denser and greater mass.
Cello and Marcela harvested the elongated, sealed stems from the Vine with efficient, practiced slices of their utility knives. As they worked, Cello could feel the conversation they were going to have, hanging
between them like the humidity.
“The Josephs took him, right? Don’t you think? We just didn’t see him, that’s all.” Marcela stopped sweeping her fingers over the feathery young plants. Sabina had quit working, too, and hovered nervously near her sister.
Cello shrugged, his eyes still slightly unfocused, searching for more stems ready to be cut. “I don’t know.” He closed his mouth, keeping the strange tracks—and Joanie’s oddness in the water—safely inside of his head.
“They wouldn’t hurt him, right? He’s only a baby,” Marcela said.
“Since when do you care?” Cello knew it sounded severe, but Marcela’s chatter made him impatient.
“Of course I care! Jesus, Cello, how could you say that? Didn’t I risk my ass going out to the Joseph place in the middle of the night with you?” Marcela stamped her feet, but just barely. The long grass at the edge of the plot bogged her ankles down. Cello knew it would have to be cut down soon with a hand scythe. The space between plots here was too narrow for machines. They turned toward Sil at the same time expecting some sort of scolding, but he hadn’t heard them—he kept on working. Sabina reached for her sister’s hand, and raised her eyebrows at Cello.
“No, you’re probably right,” Cello said, his voice spackled tight with guilt. He knew he should tell someone about what he’d seen, about the strange track, but he couldn’t do it. “If they took him, they wouldn’t hurt him. I mean, especially if they figured out the baby was Josiah’s,” he murmured to Marcela weakly.
Daughters of the Wild Page 10
