Root Magic

by Eden Royce

  “Why?” me and Jay asked at the same time.

  “Well, maybe they think rootwork and other magics like it are old-fashioned and only for uneducated people.” Doc pushed his hat back on his head. “Or maybe they don’t want to remember our history because some of it’s painful.”

  Jay nodded. I could tell he remembered the other stories Gran told us about how white people treated her when she used to work in the city. They would shout at her and shove her as she walked to her job, and sometimes they even threw their drinks on her.

  “But that’s not all people, right?” I thought of Susie, the question she asked this morning, like she was curious about rootwork.

  “No, not all people,” Doc said as we got up near the house. Crisp blue-and-white-striped sheets were drying on the clothesline, snapping in the wind. Fat bees buzzed in around us, dipping to sample flowers. “But you need to be careful about who you tell, like your mama’s told you. For your own protection.”

  “I’ll try,” I promised.

  “Good.” Doc smiled. “And speaking of protection, that’s what we’re going to be continuing with for today’s lesson.” He handed me and Jay a small cloth pouch each. They had reddish-brown dirt inside. “Pour a little of it behind you as we walk. Make sure you have about half of it left when we get to the cabin.”

  We did as he said, sprinkling the dirt in our footsteps.

  “Pour the rest of it in a circle around the cabin,” Doc told us when we got there. “One of you go right and the other left. Come back to me when you’re done.”

  We placed our books on the ground and ran around the cabin, using up the rest of the dust.

  “Good.” Doc nodded. “You both did that real well.”

  Jay frowned. “Throwing dirt ain’t that interesting.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I was hoping we’d do something more exciting than painting this time.”

  “That wasn’t any old dirt.” Doc fixed us with a sly look. “That was brick dust mixed with something special: graveyard dirt.”

  That caught our attention. “Now that sounds interesting,” Jay said.

  Doc laughed at him. “It can protect anything, big or small. Best to always keep some of this made and close by.”

  He opened his cabin door, and we followed him inside. Then he showed us how to grind the brick pieces, then how much graveyard dirt to mix with it. “Last, but most important: make sure you always leave a gift for the person whose grave you get the dirt from, as payment. Otherwise, it’s stealing.”

  Doc let us fill up our bags again from his supply, but he promised he would take us out to the cemetery one day so we could gather dirt to make our own protection powder. “Now, I know you want to be doing more than painting houses and spreading dirt. You two grew up around me and your gran picking plants and herbs, making medicines and such. Yes, there’s more to it. More than I’ve ever shared with you before. Some of it will be fun, some of it will make you nervous, some of it you won’t like at all. But before we can get into those things, you need to learn the basics. Protect yourself.” He looked at both of us in turn. “And always take care of each other. Understand?”

  Jay scowled his face up like he did when we had green beans for dinner. He hated them, but they were my favorite vegetable. “Just show us how to curse somebody with a spell.”

  Doc smacked him on the head with his rolled-up newspaper. I laughed because I knew it didn’t hurt.

  “That’s what I want both of you to hear me on,” Doc said. “If there’s anything I learned in this life, it’s that problems are going to find you. Problems I won’t be able to prepare you for, no matter how many spells I teach you. And the only thing that’s going to get you through is your belief. Your faith in yourselves, and your trust in each other. Nothing works without that.”

  We both nodded, even though I’m pretty sure we didn’t understand his full meaning.

  “What else are we learning today, Doc?” I was hoping to learn something, anything, that might protect me from Lettie. I was pretty sure Miss Watson wouldn’t be happy if I poured graveyard dirt around my desk.

  Jay rolled his eyes. “Probably gonna have us scrubbing floors or something.”

  Doc took a jar full of cloudy water out of his bag and placed it high up on a shelf. “One day, you might have to do exactly that.”

  “Really?” I asked, my hands on my hips. “Is cleaning house really part of root? Because it sounds like a way to get us to clean for you.”

  Doc chuckled. “I wouldn’t lead you wrong, Jezzie.”

  “Oh yeah?” I lifted my eyebrows. “What else are we going to do then?”

  “First, change your clothes. I already painted most of the house while y’all were at school, but there’s still a bit left, and you’re going to finish that up. . . .” Jay was already groaning. “But if you finish quick and do a good job, you can have the rest of the afternoon to play.”

  I wanted to learn more spells, but getting most of the afternoon to play wasn’t bad. We ran off, dodging the chickens milling around in the yard, tuck-tuck-tucking a food call to each other. We put on our playclothes, still splattered with paint from yesterday, then grabbed the brushes and went around the house to the places we hadn’t finished the day before. Most of it was done, except for under each window of the house. Hopefully we’d be done in time to play down in the marsh.

  I tried to keep the paint from dripping on me today, but it was no use. Jay soon had smears of paint on his overalls and down his arms, so at least I wasn’t alone. Mama could be mad at both of us.

  We worked together quietly, until I remembered something and nearly dropped my brush. With Gran’s passing, school starting, and starting our root training, I almost forgot. “It’s our birthday today!”

  “I know,” Jay said. “How we gonna celebrate without Gran making our cake?”

  I shrugged. “Do you think Mama and Doc got us anything?” Mama and Doc had so much more to do now that Gran was gone, I wasn’t sure if they even remembered.

  “I don’t believe they’d forget our birthday.” Jay shoved his brush all the way down into the can of paint, getting blue all over his fingers. “But we ain’t got much money, especially with Gran’s funeral and all.”

  “Yeah.” Already tired, I rubbed sweat off my forehead with my arm. It didn’t do any good. Heat surrounded us, hanging in the still air and coming up from the earth. I put the brush down and wiped my face on the hem of my skirt. The fabric darkened with my sweat and the dirt and dust clinging to my skin. “But I bet she’ll have something.”

  When Doc came out of his cabin and up to the house, he stared at what we’d done.

  “If you had turned like this when you first started painting, this whole house could’ve been finished.”

  We stood there side by side, silent, but proud that he saw the work we put in.

  “Go on and play some now. Don’t go too far out though; it’s almost dinnertime.”

  We whooped and ran off, past the plump, squawking chickens roaming the yard, away from the house, and down the soft slope of farmland that ran along the woods. Doc’s words were a memory as we found trees to climb and ran off the aches in our backs from the work.

  Soon we got to the edge of the salt marsh that separated us from the ocean, tall sea grasses bending and blowing in wind hot as bathwater, forcing the bubbling scent of pluff mud into our noses.

  “I’m gonna get a hidin’ man,” Jay announced, kicking off his shoes on the grass and rolling up the ends of his overalls to his knobby knees. We loved playing with baby fiddler crabs. They liked to hide inside old spiral snail shells, but we knew how to get them to come peeking out of their hidey-holes. And that’s exactly what Jay, already ankle deep in the sucking mud, was doing. He bent down and plucked a shell from the grass, then put the open end of the shell to his throat and hummed low and long. When he pulled it away, he grinned, and I knew the crab’s curiosity had made its wobbly eyes peer out.

  “Can you get
me one? I don’t want to take my shoes off.”

  “Then you don’t want a crab.”

  “Dog bite it, Jay.” I cursed in the only way Mama said was all right for a lady, and took my shoes off. I cursed for real when I saw drops of blue paint on each of them. A quick glance at Jay’s showed he had paint on his left one, but not the other. Hopefully turpentine got paint off leather.

  I placed one foot on the brown-black mud. The layer of muck had small holes all over it, where marsh gas breathed out. Larger holes showed where frogs and crabs and crawling things made their homes, protected from the burning heat of the sun.

  Jealous of Jay’s catches—he had two now—I took another step. For a moment, I stood there, looking out at the marsh and listening to all of her sounds: insects buzzing, crickets singing, bubbles popping on the surface. I smiled and stepped forward, Mother Marsh pulling at my ankles.

  “Time.”

  It was a voice, as loud and clear to me as my own thoughts. I glanced around, expecting one of our neighbors from a nearby farm to be fishing on the water’s edge. But no one was out here except for my brother, comparing his two pets and choosing a winner to take home.

  “Did you hear that?” I asked. Jay wasn’t listening and I had to ask him again.

  “Hear what?”

  “That voice,” I said, annoyed.

  He looked back over his shoulder toward the house. “Could it be Mama calling us? I don’t think we can hear her way out here.”

  If Mama wanted us, I was pretty sure we’d be able to hear her yelling if we were in the bottom of a pyramid way out in Africa. “No, it was something else.”

  “Well, I didn’t hear nothing.”

  “For true?” I said. I was sure I’d heard something. It was getting late; I didn’t know how long we’d been out here, but the sun was dipping lower and Mama would want us home for dinner before sunfall. “We should probably be getting back soon anyway.”

  Jay looked up into the sky, now stained with faded purples and pinks and hot orange. “Yeah . . . ,” he said, drawing the word out like he didn’t want to go. Finally, he put the hidin’ men in his pocket. He stepped toward me, lifting his feet high to get them free of the thick mud. As he passed me, I lifted my foot to follow him, but it didn’t come up. I yanked it up again, with no results.

  “Jay?” I said. “I think I’m stuck.”

  “Shut up, Jezzie, and come—” He stopped talking when he saw my face. I was pulling my legs up as hard as I could, but they weren’t moving. “Stop playing and pick up your feet.”

  “I can’t!”

  Jay grabbed me under the arms and yanked hard as he could, making me think my arms would come out of the sockets. I squinched my eyes tight but let him keep on. I was scared; at that moment, I wished I had Dinah with me.

  It’s time.

  That voice came again, like the wind herself whispering to me. I didn’t know what it meant, but it scared me even more. “Did you hear that? That voice just now?”

  Jay was still yanking on me. “I don’t hear nothing but your breathing and your hollering.” But he had an idea. “I’m gonna hold on to you and you lift your right leg up, okay?”

  I nodded, my throat tight. The marsh felt different somehow. Early September was always hot, but there was now a chill surrounding it, one that hadn’t been there when we stepped out a few minutes ago. My head felt light, like it was trying to remember everything at once, then gave up.

  Jay grabbed me around my middle and held me straight while I tried to lift my leg. I pulled up hard, twisting as I did, but my foot wouldn’t leave the ground. A frog croaked near me and my heart jumped.

  “Go get Mama!”

  “No! I’m gonna get Doc.” He let me go, then turned and squelched out of the marsh to the edge.

  I turned as best I could to watch him go. He picked up his shoes from the marsh bank. A smear of light mud shaped like a handprint had dried on the side of the black leather, stopping where the wide splash of blue paint covered the top.

  “Jay! Let me see your shoe.”

  He brought it over and handed it to me. I saw that the muddy fingerprints stopped before they reached the blue.

  “It’s the blue,” I whispered. “It really does work.” A gust of warm wind blew over the marsh, tickling my neck. “Do we have anything with a lot of haint blue on it?”

  Jay still had the stick he’d used to stir the paint in his back pocket, and he took it out.

  “That might work,” I said. “Shove it in the ground near my foot.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Ready?”

  I took a deep breath, then nodded.

  Jay jammed the stick down into the mud next to my heel. Mud closed around the stick for a moment, then shrank away, leaving a small gap. I pulled up and my foot came out with a loud, sucking pop. With one foot free I pushed myself back and sat my bottom on the edge of the grass. Jay wedged the paint-coated stick under my other foot, and the grip loosened enough for me to scoot all the way back to safe ground.

  I lay down on the bank, breathing hard, looking up at the raw-bacon sky, streaked with color. The sun was low now, making the shades richer and deeper, but the hot, moist wind was still heavy on my chest. My back was getting damp as I lay there, and it was only after a little while that I realized my brother was calling my name.

  “Yeah?” I was free, but inside me I felt strange, like I’d lost something but couldn’t remember what it was.

  He sat silent for a moment, not looking at me, thinking. “You okay?”

  I wasn’t sure. When Jay finally pulled my foot away from the marsh’s embrace, I’d heard the voice again. It had said my name. Jezebel. Close to my ear, deep in my chest I’d heard it, whispery and slight.

  “I’m okay.”

  He stood up and brushed off his pants. “Then we better get on home.”

  6

  When we walked in the door, Mama looked at us like we were wild children living out in the forests who’d come into her house asking for food.

  “What in seven holy bells happened to you two? You are a level mess.”

  Mama, for her part, looked so pretty. She had on a clean, starched dress, not new but nice, and her hair was twisted up in one of those knots she liked to wear when it was too hot to hold a decent curl. Her beige apron with the green palmetto trees was around her waist.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “You don’t look like nothing happened,” she said, hands on her hips.

  “We was playing, Mama, that’s all. Picking up crabs and stuff.” Jay moved a hand toward his pocket, but the look on Mama’s face stopped him.

  “I wish you would leave those things alone. Not like you can eat them. Go on and wash up for dinner. Your hands and face and those alligator-looking feet. Use the basin outside, not the one in the bathroom.”

  We both mumbled a “yes, ma’am” and rushed back outside.

  Jay and I dragged the tub over to the water pump in the back and filled it. The sun had heated the pipe so the water was warm when we soaked our washcloths. We scrubbed our faces and hands, then took turns sitting on the edge of the tub scrubbing our feet. Back in our room, I rubbed Vaseline on the bottoms of my feet before I put on my house slippers, but Jay stuck his feet in his slippers dry.

  “Feel better now?” he asked.

  I nodded. “I think so. But . . . something is out there, Jay. I don’t feel right about it at all.” Jay was quiet; I could see he maybe didn’t really believe me about what happened. But he helped when I needed him to. That was good enough. I patted his arm and said, “Let’s go.”

  He followed me out of our room and into the kitchen, where Mama and Doc were sitting at the table. Bowls of stewed butter beans with bits of crispy salt pork sprinkled on top were at each place on the table. In the middle sat a big pot of white rice. A bottle of vinegar hot sauce sat in the middle of four glasses of iced tea, the edges of each one sporting a wedge of shiny-skinned lemon. We fell on the food, spooning the peppery
bean soup ladled over fluffy rice into our mouths. It was warm and comforting, even in the heat of the kitchen, and when Mama placed leftover biscuits on the table, we didn’t complain about not having fresh ones as we usually did. We dipped them in the creamy soup, thick with onions and bits of roasted meat, and jammed them between our lips. Jay went back for more soup, but all I wanted was more rice. I reached for the pot and refilled my bowl.

  “Easy, easy,” Doc said, laughing at our eagerness. “Where’s the fire, y’all? No one is going to take the plate out from under you. Take your time. Enjoy it.”

  We slowed down as instructed but still finished our dinner way before Mama and Doc. Jay and me sat, wiggling in our seats, waiting to see what we might be getting for our birthday.

  “Looks like you better handle business, Janey,” Doc said, reaching for another biscuit. “Or you’ll get holes worn in the bottom of those chairs.”

  Mama agreed and got up from the table. “I don’t know what’s got into you two today. Frantic as bats outta torment.”

  “Eleven,” Doc said. “That’s what’s got into them.”

  Mama went into her bedroom, shutting the door behind her. When she came out a few moments later, she had two packages wrapped up in the brightly colored comic section of the newspaper. Me and Jay gasped. Then we clapped our hands. I was just as happy to see Mama smiling as I was to get my gift.

  “Thank you!” we said at the same time. We hugged them—me with Mama first, then Doc after. Jay went the opposite way, Doc before Mama.

  “Lordy, I swear. Never seen you kids act so grateful in all my born days. You haven’t even opened the things yet.” Doc chuckled. “Oh, and you can add this to your gifts.” He reached into his pocket and held something out to us.

  I took the circle of what looked like braided branches from his hand, while Jay stared at his. I elbowed him in the side.

  “Ow!” he yelled. Then he took the circle and looked at it like it was a nasty thing on his shoe.