Daughters of the Wild

by Natalka Burian

  But she needed a place to start, a door to open, to let the Vine in. If Joanie didn’t have access to Helen’s cellar chapel or her own at the garden, she would simply build another, a better one, in the crumbling motel room.

  She began with the sheets and the blankets. All of that cotton had come from the ground, after all. She stripped them off the mattresses and onto the floor. She pushed her bed against the wall, and Cello’s bed against the door—they would be the pillars supporting her arched doorway. Joanie formed the blankets and the sheets into a thick, lumpy rope. She wound the rope around the wooden legs of the motel beds, connecting them, pulling the rope into a half circle. She stood and looked down at her feet in the center of that arch. Joanie tore one of the sheets into long strips and began to mold the thin fabric into one of Helen’s patterns inside of the arch. It felt so different from using the salt or even twisting the Vine—every step, every adjustment, was a caress, not a scratch. She felt the Vine’s approval from where it lay in the pillowcase on the carpet.

  Joanie lifted out of herself and into the perfect blankness that materialized through the repetition of her hands and eyes as she worked. She gripped a loop of the Vine in her hand and snapped it open, dipping her finger into the sap. She painted it on her lips, like a balm, and used it to draw her sign of protection across the skin of her forearm. Everything she did felt smooth and guided, until the sound of a baby jolted Joanie out of the worship.

  She heard a thin, short wail, the cry he let out when he was having trouble settling to sleep. Joanie began to search the room for him, turning over pillows, rummaging through piles of wet towel, checking and rechecking the bathtub. Was he dead, Joanie wondered, was that it? Had the arch she built let through his small, shivery spirit? She shuddered and reached under the bed against the wall, repeatedly scraping her palm against the floor. Maybe he’d shrunk down, she thought. Maybe he was so tiny that he was caught between the hardened fronds of carpet. She plucked at the spaces between the carpet’s bristly surface, and slithered under the bed. I need to check every corner, she thought.

  Joanie’s hand slid over something slippery. She gripped it with her fingertips and pulled it closer—a piece of paper, a folded, glossy sheet. Joanie slid back out and held the colorful pamphlet up to the light. The pamphlet glowed in her hands, and when she licked her lips, the Vine sighed through her. The photograph on the front was filled with trees, green and verdant, with a calm, wide river running through the center. In the middle, was a stone bridge. Three arches, exactly like the ones woven into the walls of the chapel, supported it. Across the page, bold white letters leaped out from the green. Antietam Battlefield: The Bloodiest Day of the Civil War.

  On the back, there was a map of the battlefield. Lines in garish yellows and reds illustrated the crossed paths of the opposing battalions, lines that wound over and across each other. Perhaps, Joanie thought, that wail hadn’t belonged to her son at all. Maybe it was the Vine. Maybe it was Helen giving her another message, just as she’d reached out to her through those books, and through her vision in the tent. Joanie felt like Helen really was there, along with the Vine, handing over a final slip of direction.

  Joanie’s hands trembled, and the map moved under her fingers as though the fields were quaking. She understood, with electric anticipation, that these crossroads, not only of paths long ago taken but of lives torn from their bodies, would be the setting for Helen’s final ritual, and Joanie’s first. Joanie returned to the worship, keeping her mind on her baby. Almost reflexively, she considered her son’s lost father. She pushed her palms into the stiff carpet, scraping away her guilt as she worked.

  * * *

  As Joanie spent more and more time in the cellar chapel, Josiah wanted more and more to impress her. She was certain that this first attempt to wean himself from the sap of the Vine had been meant solely to please her. The first time he refused the dose she offered, he looked at her with a craving, expectant face. Joanie knew he wanted her encouragement, but she muted her reaction. She made a small sound of surprise and then put the bottle away. She knew it was cruel, and she didn’t care. Apart from her time spent in worship in the cellar, these small cruelties were her only source of pleasure. She tallied them up—not only in her interactions with Josiah, but with Mother Joseph, too. She didn’t care about Josiah’s self-improvement, or her mother-in-law’s twisted, venal commerce. The only Joseph she cared about was Helen.

  When Josiah’s fevers began, no one associated them with withdrawal. Mother Joseph blamed Joanie for these spates of illness. At first, the accusation spouted from her in the form of lewd humor. “I guess you’ve been wearing him out at night, is that it, Joanie?” Mother Joseph asked, her mouth wide with laughter, the odor of her rotting teeth blustering out.

  “That must be it, Mother Joseph,” Joanie said with a stiff, obliging smile.

  The best part of Josiah’s giving up the Vine was his listlessness day and night. Joanie was relieved to be left alone. She certainly wasn’t going to tell Mother Joseph about Josiah’s new sobriety. Joanie had lived long enough with her mother-in-law to understand the value of a secret.

  Joanie’s sudden devotion to the Joseph ancestral sacraments repelled her mother-in-law to an almost suspicious degree. Joanie didn’t know then whether Amberly was jealous of her connection with the Work or afraid of it. The distance was soothing, and Joanie appreciated every instant alone. The only ongoing dangers Joanie feared were Mother Joseph’s unexpected and unchecked rages. Once she was angered, she couldn’t stop, or even slow herself down. It was all ugly, dripping chaos until the anger was burned away.

  One night, in the thick of Josiah’s spell of fevers, he couldn’t wake Joanie. She’d been dutifully soothing her husband during this period, and bringing down his temperatures when they were at their highest. Joanie tended to him the way she tended to her foster siblings when they were sick—layering his forehead and neck and wrists with cool compresses that she soaked in vinegar, changing the sheets when he sweated through them. Usually the fever broke after midnight, and he’d fall asleep. But before the break in those fevers, Josiah roiled with delirium. He chattered to Joanie, making no sense, or groaned as though he’d been shot, curling his body like a poked caterpillar.

  It was only delirium that could have propelled him into his mother’s room in the middle of the night. Joanie had been so tired—she’d nodded off and slept too soundly for Josiah to wake her. She didn’t know then, but she was exhausted because the baby was already growing inside of her. Fever-crazed, Josiah had gone to his mother for help.

  Mother Joseph stormed into their room, pulling the sweat-damp blankets off the bed. When Joanie saw her, she thought she must be dreaming—her mother-in-law clenched her teeth in the moonlight, a ratty lace nightgown billowing around her, and her long gray hair twisted into an incongruous, girlish side braid. Joanie sat up, stunned as though she’d fallen through a dream.

  “You’re both useless,” Mother Joseph howled. “Good for nothing garbage.” She dragged them both by the arms. Joanie was always surprised by the old woman’s physical strength. “Garbage stays outside.” She opened the front door and flung them onto the porch. She watched as Josiah collapsed onto the rough, splintering planks.

  “Not there. There.” Mother Joseph pointed to a pile of broken-up fieldstone. Earlier that week, one of the cousins had carted the stone over to use for some repairs to the main house chimney.

  Joanie followed Josiah, helpless as he stumbled toward the pile. Even in the fever’s grip he knew to listen. He’d grown up with these punishments, and understood them as part of the natural course of life. Joanie felt a sudden stab of compassion for her husband, and shook with indignant anger. How dare she, Joanie thought, skewering Mother Joseph with all of the poison she could scrape into a single look. Mother Joseph felt it, and her rage ballooned to an unfathomable and unexpected extreme. She broke into incoherent snarling and pushed her
son and daughter-in-law onto the mound of debris.

  As Joanie and Josiah lay on the pile of stones, Mother Joseph stacked more rubble on top of their bodies, pressing and tucking the fragments into their skin with short, vehement pushes. Josiah whimpered beside her, but Joanie kept quiet. “There,” Mother Joseph said when she was finally satisfied. The jagged clumps and plates of rock pushed down on her so forcefully Joanie could barely breathe. “Snug as two bugs in a rug.” Mother Joseph’s voice grew softer, and Joanie realized she was walking away, and leaving them alone. “See y’all in the morning.”

  Joanie dug herself out first, and then Josiah. They didn’t dare go back inside, so they waited out what remained of the night crouched on the pile of broken stone. Joanie put an arm around her shivering husband and gave his shoulder a few sympathetic pats as though she were a different, caring person. Mother Joseph was asserting her place. Joanie understood that, but she was revolted by her own powerlessness in the situation. She hated that she was out in the cold night against her will, that she was stranded on the Joseph compound, with Josiah like an unwelcome barnacle.

  After that, Josiah got worse. He began soiling himself and vomiting constantly. Mother Joseph wasn’t just angry anymore—she was worried, too.

  “What’s wrong with him?” she yelled at Joanie while they ate dinner in the front room. Josiah had already left the table, his bulbous body now weakened by the constant purging of shit and vomit.

  Joanie shrugged, ladling the salty potato soup into her mouth. She couldn’t help herself. As much as she wanted to protest her life at the compound, to waste away and turn useless, to throw the food back in Mother Joseph’s face, she couldn’t. Joanie was overtaken by the compulsion to care for herself. She slept whenever she could. She ate everything she was given, and more—everything Josiah left on his plate, she moved to hers. Joanie’s anger was still there, but it was suppressed by the pregnancy flourishing inside of her, making its own demands.

  “Well, go check on him!” Mother Joseph shouted, slapping the spoon out of Joanie’s hand. “When did you turn into such a pig? Leave something for the rest of us.”

  Joanie stood and drank from her water glass, staring at her mother-in-law over the rim.

  “Go!” Mother Joseph’s color deepened, and Joanie noticed the sweat breaking out on her forehead and jaw.

  “Yes, ma’am, I’m going,” Joanie said, first setting the glass down and giving her mother-in-law a long, satisfied look.

  Joanie was tired, and moved up the stairs slowly. She clung to the banister to ease herself forward with some of her upper body strength, but still had to stop a few times. At the top of the stairs, she shuffled to their drafty bedroom at the back of the house.

  “Josiah? What’s going on up here?”

  When she found him on the ground at the top of the landing, she wasn’t surprised. He’d grown so weak she expected to find him passed out on some surface. “Come on, now,” she said, kneeling on the ground, reaching for an arm to hoist him up.

  “Josiah,” she hissed, pulling on the indifferent limb. “Come on. Let’s get you to bed, alright?” Joanie pulled with no result, and then moved to her hands and knees, searching for something to bolster his body with. Her palms, though, didn’t feel the rasp of splintered wood—instead, she discovered that the planks were slick with syrup. At first, Joanie thought it was blood, but when she peered over the bulk of Josiah’s body, she saw the puddle of green. Josiah’s brown-glass medicine bottle, the one she hadn’t filled in nearly two weeks, lay empty on its side like a sinister, dark shell.

  He heaved up to his knees, the pupils of his eyes dilated wide as coins.

  “Josiah,” she said, holding him by the elbow. “Can you stand? We have to get you to bed. Come on, please, you’ve got to try and stand. I can’t carry you there myself.” Joanie pulled at his arm, feeling him move with her. She got him fully upright, though his body swayed.

  “There,” she said, patting him on the shoulder. “You did it. Now just a few more steps, and then you can go to sleep.” She should have known what would happen. If she hadn’t been so distracted, dulled even, by the pregnancy, maybe she could have stopped it. Maybe she could have thrown her arms around him just as his knees buckled, and pulled him back to the floor of the landing.

  Instead, he fell. He fell, not like a human being who fells, and twists and protects the soft places of the body to survive. He fell like a thing, a heavy chest of drawers, thumping and cracking its way down the stairs. Joanie felt her own hand on her mouth, her gaze on Josiah’s mangled form.

  His body began to move. Joanie climbed down the stairs toward his convulsing figure and wiped her palms on the front of her shirt. Vomit and green foam frothed from his mouth and onto the floor. Joanie leaned over him and pushed down into his chest, the way she’d been taught as a little child. There weren’t any hospitals or doctors at the garden, and Letta made sure all the kids knew CPR if only for her own longevity and protection.

  She counted and pushed as her hair fell into her face. It clung in sticky clumps to her forehead and cheeks. Her skin and clothes were spattered by the spray from Josiah’s mouth. Joanie stopped the compressions when she felt Josiah begin to involuntarily retch under her hands. She waited for it to pass and kept on pressing. She worked on him in silence. Later, she wondered why she didn’t call for anyone. She wondered why she didn’t even scream. By then, it was too late, anyway. Josiah was dying, and her hands were the last to touch him.

  When Mother Joseph finally made her way to the back stairs of the creaky old house, after eternally hollering up for them to answer, all she saw were Joanie’s hands on her dead son. She pulled Joanie away herself, calling for Harlan and Frank, and the rest of the cousins. They all put their hands on her, grabbing onto whatever they could touch. Then they locked her away, completely alone—or so they thought.

  * * *

  A pounding sound jolted Joanie out of the memory. Someone was knocking at the door of the motel room. She stood up, rubbing her tingling palms together, and peeked through the slats in the blinds. She saw an elderly woman with a housekeeping cart outside. The woman’s head was bent with impatience, her curly yellowed-white hair held away from her face with an array of red plastic butterfly clips. Joanie climbed onto the mattress that barricaded the door, latching the discolored, greening chain. She knelt on the mattress, and waited for the knocking to stop.

  But the knocking didn’t stop—it moved. The sound jumped from the door, to the room, to the bathroom door. A slip of the mind, Joanie thought as she massaged her scalp with cold fingertips. She stood and switched the light on in the bathroom. It was too bright. The bulb had been dull and yellow the night before, barely illuminating the hot and cold taps in the shower. But now, the light was almost silver. The knocking continued all around her, growing in volume until the sound was coming from inside of her head. A push from behind drove her out of the bathroom and the door slammed behind her.

  Joanie hunched down, trying to make herself smaller, to disappear. A figure stood in the room with her—the watery, ultra-blurred shape of a small woman. The face was familiar. The swollen lower half—the cheeks and chin—those were all Joseph. The figure stepped on the pamphlet Joanie had found and slid it forward with its bare toes. Joanie knew it was Helen. As the figure approached, she became clearer, lovelier. She looked not much older than Joanie herself. The Vine’s presence hung between them, a bright cord linking the two women through space and time. Helen tapped and tapped her toes on the folded piece of paper on the floor. Joanie would’ve thought it was a dream, but the sound of calloused skin on the stiff, glossy pamphlet was so specific and clear she didn’t think her subconscious could’ve dredged it up out of nothing.

  Joanie tried to look at Helen, trying to piece together the right questions to ask. But the harder she looked, the blurrier Helen’s outline became, until she dissolved back into the room. When Joa
nie looked down, she saw the folded brochure was already in her hands. It was a benediction, a reminder, a confirmation that this was how she would find her son, that her worship was working.

  Urgency bloomed all around her—because of Helen, or the Vine, or finally having a specific place to go, Joanie wasn’t sure. She only knew she had to leave right away, that her son’s life depended on it. She gathered up the white cotton pillowcase full of ashes and the now-quiet loops of the Vine. She folded the map and put it in her back pocket and left, hoping for Cello’s sake that he’d kept the key.

  22

  Cello and Ben harvested another section of the ginseng plot, even after Ben begged Cello to give it more time.

  “You’re killing me, man,” Ben said, shaking his head. “If you’d even give it a couple more weeks. Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for this one to come out right?”

  “How long?” Cello snapped, daring Ben to detail the length of his trespassing.

  “Fine, never mind.” Ben sulked as they took up the rest of the harvest. “But I really wish you could’ve been more patient.”

  “It’s not about me being patient!” Cello said.

  “What’s it about, then?” Ben looked at him with frustrated concern.

  “Nothing, don’t worry about it,” Cello muttered, sorting the stack of roots. When they were finished, they went looking for more wild plants, climbing up a rocky incline. Cello trailed Ben up the slope, scanning for dashes of red in the shade of darkened grass.