Root Magic

by Eden Royce

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Remember the roots I showed you yesterday?”

  I did. “The Devil’s Shoestrings?”

  “Yes, these are bracelets I made from eleven of them woven together.” Doc smiled. “What do you think it’s for?”

  “Protection?” I guessed. I rubbed the bracelet made of twisty vines.

  “That’s right.” Doc nodded. I could tell he was pleased with my answer. “My grandmother used to say if you tie up Devil’s Shoestrings, it’ll trip up any evil that’s after you.”

  “Wow,” I said, sticking my hand through. It fit perfectly. I twisted my arm back and forth to see the bracelet from all sides. It looked like a tree had wrapped its roots around my wrist. I put my hand in my pocket, where Dinah was, to show her my new jewelry as I thanked Doc for the gift. “Is that story true?”

  “Sure is.” Doc finished off his dinner and took his plate to the sink. “You wear that on your ankle or your wrist, and one of these days, I’m sure you’ll find it helpful.”

  “I will,” I said.

  “Boys don’t wear bracelets.” Jay pouted.

  “Some boys and some men do,” Mama said. “Remember, these are gifts, and we could take them back real easy. So what do you say?”

  “Thank you,” he muttered, but he didn’t put his on.

  Red hot in the face that we had to be reminded of our manners, me and Jay both sat in our chairs and carefully peeled off the sticky tape from the colorful sheets of newspaper, making sure we didn’t rip or tear any of the word bubbles in the process. I folded mine as close to the way it had come as I could and sat it next to me, for reading later. Jay’s was crumpled but still carefully set aside. He got his package open first.

  “Oh yeah!” His excitement was plain on his face as he held up the balsa-wood airplane model kit. It included a tiny paintbrush and pots of paint to make the plane look like it was from the war.

  “Hope you ain’t too sick of painting to want to get that done and ready for flying.”

  “No, sir.” He was already looking at the instructions on how to put it together while I opened my gift.

  I got a new dress for Dinah, a tiny scrap of yellow trimmed in red polka dots. There was also a little package of hair barrettes with the same polka-dot ribbon wound through them, which were for me.

  “They’re so pretty!”

  “Do you want to wear them to school?” Mama asked. “I can put them in for you.”

  “Um, maybe.” I didn’t want to wear anything that was going to call more attention to me. “Maybe I can save them for special times.” Mama nodded, even though she looked a bit disappointed. My heart sank into my tummy. I squeezed her tight.

  “Lord, they grow up fast, don’t they?” Doc was setting out his pipe and tobacco. “Come on, Janey, serve that cake before I go light this up. Cake and pipe smoke don’t go together.”

  “There’s cake?” Jay put the airplane box down on the table and looked around for it, his eyes bright as noontime.

  We hadn’t seen Mama’s cake tray, the metal one with the matching covered lid, when we came in. Now that we were looking, we still didn’t see any cake, but the scent of it was on the air—brown sugar and warm butter. Mama went to the stove and took out her big iron skillet with a folded-up kitchen towel and her oven glove. She sat the pan on the top of the stove and placed a platter on top of it. Then she turned the whole thing upside down and lifted the skillet, revealing our birthday cake. She brought the platter to the table, and we oohed and aahed, bringing a bigger smile to her face. Rings of pineapple lay on top of a yellow cake, with rivers of brown-sugar syrup running down the toasty-looking sides. A plump red cherry lay in the middle of each pineapple ring.

  Mama and Doc sang “Happy Birthday” to us and Doc cut one huge slice and put it on a plate between me and Jay. We always shared one piece of birthday cake. It was good luck to get the first piece on your birthday, so that was the fairest way to do it. I took one big triangle of cake on my fork and ate it real slow, but Jay ate his half of the slice like it was going out of style. All of the moist, sweet treat was gone before we sat back in our chairs. His finger traced the syrupy puddles on the plate to get the last bits.

  “Thanks, Mama,” I said. “Can we be excused now?”

  “We?” Jay asked, eyeing up the bits of Doc’s slice that he hadn’t finished.

  I tried to give my brother the same stare that Mama used on us when she expected us to fall in line, but it didn’t work. He kicked me under the table. Mama poured cups of coffee for her and for Doc and told us we could both go. “Both,” she said again when Jay didn’t move.

  He got up, trailing behind me. I could feel his eyes jabbing into my back. When we got to our room, he asked, “What you do that for?”

  I laid Dinah’s dress and my hair barrettes on the bed. “Because we need to talk about what happened.”

  “You getting stuck in the mud?”

  “I wasn’t stuck and you know it. Something was holding me there.”

  Jay poked out his bottom lip. “Wasn’t nothing pulling you down.”

  “I didn’t say it was pulling me. I said it was holding me there. So I couldn’t get loose. Not until we shoved that stick covered in haint blue in the mud. And I heard a voice.”

  “You fool up, huh?”

  “I did hear it. I swear. I’ll swear it on a stack of Bibles.” My mouth tightened up into a line.

  He looked at me sideways, then went to the milk crate by his bed that served as a night table. Jay plucked out a small book, and I recognized it as the one Jehovah’s Witnesses gave out.

  “That’s only half a Bible. Jesus’s part.”

  “This the only one I got. You gonna swear on it or not?”

  I put my right hand on the Bible and held my left hand up. “I swear.”

  Jay stood back from me in case God struck me down for lying. Then he said, “Okay.” He sat on his bed, flipping the book around and around in his hands.

  “Well, what do you think?”

  Jay shrugged. “I dunno. What the voice say?”

  I sat on my bed across from him. “That it was time? Like this.” I made my voice all whispery and light. “It’s time.”

  “But did it sound like, you know . . .” He fought for the right words. “Scary?”

  “I . . . I think so. Should I tell Mama? Or Doc?”

  Jay put the book down and crossed his feet over each other so he could pick at a bit of dead skin on his heel. “You know Mama don’t really want us learning root. If she thinks something bad happened, or that you’re scared, she’ll make both of us stop.”

  “Yeah.” I picked Dinah up and held her close. I knew what Jay said was true. But I also knew that Gran and all the other witch doctors and rootworkers and healers before her put up with a lot more than voices in a marsh, or some silly girl’s jokes. They faced real danger to help others. I remembered about a year ago, when the police got it in their minds to investigate all the witch doctors and rootworkers in the area. They were going around and knocking on everyone’s doors—whether they did magic or not. If the person didn’t let them in, they busted down the door and went in anyway. Sometimes, they dragged people out of their houses. Sometimes people got shot. And sometimes, they just disappeared.

  That was the first time Deputy Collins came to our farm. Gran told me and Jay to stay inside while she spoke to him. I remembered the look he gave her—like she was a nasty bug he wanted to step on. His voice got louder and angrier with each word he spoke, and his fingers did a little tap dance on the gun hanging around his waist. Most of all, I think, he hated that Gran didn’t act scared of him.

  Truth was, I was scared. But I did my best to hide it. Gran had told us when we were really little that some people would hate us on sight because of our color and some would hate us because we were a rootworking family. She said we must never run from either one, because Turners don’t run from nobody.

  No matter what happened at s
chool, or in the marsh, I wasn’t going to let her down.

  “If I can’t tell Mama, I can’t tell Doc either. He’s gonna tell her whatever I say.”

  “True,” Jay agreed. “But if you don’t go back out to the marsh, Doc will ask why you ain’t going—then you gonna have to tell him. And he’ll be mad you ain’t said nothing before.” Jay paused like he was going to say something more, but changed his mind. Then he straightened up his back and words rushed out from him like an untied balloon. “If something’s wrong, you got to say so. The longer you hide it, the harder it is to . . . you know. Besides, when did Doc ever not know something he needed to know?”

  I screwed up my face. Dinah lay on the bed and I turned to dress her in her new outfit. Her red stitched smile had flattened out, like she was judging me. I shook my head and whispered, “I can’t tell him, Dinah.” I put her on the windowsill, where I could see her but wouldn’t have to look directly into her face.

  Before, I could ask Gran for her help. She always knew what to do. But I couldn’t ask her anymore.

  The crack of wood breaking startled me, but I let out a breath of relief when I saw it was only Jay punching out the pieces of his model airplane kit. He spread them out on the bed. The cover of the box showed a picture of a plane with gray and blue and white coloring. “Tomorrow I’m going to ask Doc for some red paint. Know why?”

  I shook my head.

  “Because the only Negros allowed to fly in World War II had planes with red tails.”

  “How do you know that?” I’d never heard Jay talking about planes and flying before.

  “My friend Larry at school told me. His uncle was one of them pilots. He has a picture of him in a uniform and everything.” Jay carefully laid out all the pieces of his model airplane like they would break if he was rough with them. “They called the Negro pilots Red Tails or Red Tail Angels. But the stores don’t sell these planes with red paint.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Probably because they don’t think it’s important. It’s like they don’t want us to know we have heroes too. Negroes who were brave, and not scared.”

  “They fought in a war,” I said. “I bet they were scared.”

  Jay sighed and touched the set of paints. “Yeah, but they did it anyway.”

  7

  It was black-dark outside, but I was still awake.

  Even though me and Jay had gone to bed, I couldn’t sleep, so I stared out of the window. The moon shone round and full in the deep night sky. I could hear Jay’s raggedy breathing—not snoring, he said—coming from his side of the room. To me, it was still our birthday until the sun came up. And that’s what I was thinking about.

  I thought something amazing was going to happen when we started to learn about our family magic. That I would find some special magic inside me. Instead, it seemed like root had only stirred a bunch of bad things up. Deputy Collins continuing to creep round, Lettie getting everyone in class to laugh at me, whatever had happened in the marsh . . . It seemed like things would be a lot easier if I just gave it up.

  And at that moment, I really wanted something to be easy.

  I sighed and turned on my back, my long cotton nightdress twisting around my knees. That’s when something moved near the window. It must have been a cloud over the moon . . . but I could have sworn I’d seen Dinah move. I rubbed my eyes, then looked at her again. She was as still as ever, sitting on the windowsill where I placed her.

  Another shadow flicked across the window. I squinted, looking at Dinah really close. When I leaned her against the windowsill earlier, I had arranged her new dress so the little pleats lay flat in neat rows, the way Mama had pressed them. Now those pleats were spread wide, like Dinah had swung her gunnysack legs.

  I gasped, then pressed my lips together to keep the sound in. My heart beat faster. Maybe it was the wind? Me and Jay left the window cracked at night so cool air could creep in.

  I stared at Dinah in the darkness, unblinking, until my eyes got dry and itchy. There was no more movement, and soon I let my eyes close, once, then twice. I was about to close them again when I heard the brush of stiff cotton. I held myself still but limp, a slit in my eyelids just wide enough to see through.

  Dinah was moving.

  It was a small movement at first. She sat up. Then, a minute later, she turned her head one way, then the other, then she looked right at me before she pushed her little round cloth arms under her stuffed body and stood up. She looked at the dress, and her red stitched mouth wiggled back and forth, as if she couldn’t decide whether she liked her new outfit.

  I froze where I lay. The sheet on top of me felt heavy as a winter blanket, holding me in place on the bed. I fought the need to run, breathed slow and deep to stay calm. Did this have something to do with whatever had grabbed me in the marsh? Had a real, honest-to-goodness haint gotten inside my doll?

  Carefully, Dinah lowered herself down onto the thin bedspread. Her weight didn’t make a dent in the material until both feet were planted and firm. Then she made her way, foot over foot, swaying like a drunk squirrel, to the edge of the bed.

  Part of me was scared to move, because she would know I was pretending, but the other part of me had to watch. I made a light snoring sound and turned over in the bed like I was getting settled.

  Dinah’s steps halted for a moment, then she hice-tailed it out of the room.

  I couldn’t believe it. I shook my head and rubbed my eyes, thinking I might be dreaming, so I pinched myself and looked at the windowsill. It was still empty.

  A squeak from the front of the house told me the screen door had opened and closed.

  “Jay, wake up,” I said in a loud whisper.

  He continued to breathe deep.

  I got up, my bare feet soft on the wood floor, and shook him. “Wake up!” When he didn’t move, I pinched him, then covered his mouth with my hand when he yelped.

  “Shhh!” I told him, pulling on his arm. “Listen: we need to go outside.”

  His eyes were slits of white in the darkened room. He was mad at me for waking him up. “Huh? Why?”

  “Dinah’s gone.”

  He scratched at his belly under his white T-shirt. “Somebody tief her?”

  “No, nobody stole her. She got up and left.” Before he could call me crazy, I jumped back on my bed and pointed out of the window. “Look!”

  Jay cut his eyes at me, but he got up. He crawled out of his bed, tiptoed across the room, and kneeled down on mine. “I can’t get why— Lord afire!”

  Dinah was making her way down the dusty path from the house, waddling along like one of our chickens.

  His mouth dropped open. He must have truly been shocked, because he didn’t even come back with a smart-mouthed comment. It was one of the only times I’d ever seen him with nothing to say. He pointed outside.

  “I told you!” I hissed as we pressed our faces up against the window.

  Where was she headed? The marsh?

  Finally, my brother found his voice. “What kinda mess is that? Did you make her walk?”

  His voice was too loud and I shushed him before I answered. “No! How could I?”

  “Do you think it’s a haint?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But they ain’t real, are they, Jez?”

  “I don’t know!” I said again. I was scared when I first saw Dinah move, but now I was curious. Gran had breathed into that doll, for me. I wasn’t about to let some haint run away with her, whether they were real or not. “We have to follow her.”

  “What?” He shook his head while he waved his hands in front of his face. “Not me. Dolls walking in the middle of the night? Leave me outta this.”

  I tugged at his arm. “We have to. What if she’s off to tell Doc about today?”

  “Then that’ll be good. He can deal with whatever it is. I don’t want to get mixed up with no walking dolls.” He got up and scrambled back over to his bed. “I’m gonna stay nice and sa
fe right here.”

  “Suppose she gets torn up by dogs or something.”

  Jay groaned and put his pillow over his head.

  “Well, I’m going out there,” I said, putting my socks and shoes on. “You better come too, because if I get hurt, first thing Mama and Doc are gonna ask is why you didn’t go with me.”

  He pulled the pillow down from his face. “Fine!” He yanked his overalls on over his nightclothes and stuck his feet in his shoes. Then he grabbed a flashlight from his milk crate. “You gonna need something to see with. You ain’t no cat.”

  I took the small hurricane lamp off my bed table, went to the kitchen, and lit it with a match. Then we eased the door open and crept outside.

  Jay turned on his flashlight. He muttered, “Looking for daggone doll footprints in the moonlight. No sense in that.”

  “We’re gonna check the cabin, then check at the marsh,” I told him.

  With that, we snuck to Doc’s cabin, quiet as we could. He wasn’t there. He had been working, because there were bowls of root cuttings and such on the table, but there was no sign of him now. There was no sign of Dinah, either. So from there, we headed toward the marsh.

  “You sure you wanna do this?” Jay asked. “Considering . . . ?”

  I swallowed hard. “Yeah. I’m okay.”

  A gust of wind came through the dark and brought the night to life. It rustled the leaves on the trees. The stalks of corn and benne made a shushing sound. Crickets, frogs, and other night creatures chirped. Clouds covered the moon and stars. I couldn’t see anything beyond the single line of light from Jay’s flashlight. My lamp flickered.

  My heartbeat felt like it was pounding in my head. I could hear my blood rushing through my body. An owl hooted. Long grasses rustled, tickling our ankles. We marched quietly toward the marsh, the evening air steamy, making sure we stayed on the path. We were past our crops when Jay went still next to me.

  “What?” I asked, leaning to look over his shoulder.

  “Thought I felt something brush past me. Like a spiderweb. A leaf, maybe.”

  He tilted his head to listen, and a puff of air blew my flame out, like somebody had made a wish. Now Jay’s dim flashlight was the only light we had.