by Eden Royce
19
When we got to school on Thursday, Miss Watson asked us if anyone had heard from Susie. I didn’t answer, knowing that there was no reason for her to ever return to school.
For the first time, I didn’t care that the other girls whispered about me, or that they put their books on the seats next to them when I walked by their tables at lunch. I ignored them all and took my bag to an empty table, where I thought about places I could look for Susie’s missing piece of skin. If Gran or Doc had taken it, it could only be in Doc’s cabin or in the house. I supposed it could have been buried in our fields, but if that was the case, there was no way I’d ever be able to find it. Those girls’ whispers faded away as I ate, the sound like wind ruffling marsh grass. Soon, lunchtime was over and I went back to class.
“I wasn’t even paying attention to those mean girls at all today,” I told Jay as we walked home. “Even without Susie there, I was okay.”
“That’s good,” Jay said. “Them girls ain’t nothing noway. Who cares what they think?” He picked up a rock from the path we were on and threw it sideways. It sliced through the air and hit a young tree hard enough to make the branches shake. “Plus Doc says if you wanna be a rootworker, you gotta get used to doing things all by yourself.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I guess so.”
I wondered if Doc was lonely before he came to live with us, but I guess it didn’t matter now. He was here and we were all family. As we came up the path, I could see the flash of white fabric on the porch of our house—Mama was outside. And she wasn’t alone.
“Jay, is Mama supposed to have company today?”
He looked up from the June bug he had caught and tied to a string. “I don’t think so. Who is it?”
“I can’t tell from here.”
“Probably someone from the church or somebody to trade their catch for some fruit or something.”
But when we got closer, we found we were wrong.
Susie was there, on the porch, talking to Mama.
She was sitting there pretty as you please in a white blouse and striped skirt, sipping on lemonade and eating Mama’s benne seed cookies. Me and Jay looked at her, then at each other, then back to Susie. I bit my lip and clenched my fists, glanced into the trees all around. There was no hag army; Susie was alone. Why was she here?
Jay was about to tell her head a mess until he noticed Mama was all smiles. “Look who stopped by, Jez,” she said. “Would you like some cookies while you visit with your friend?”
“Mama,” Jay said, “she ain’t welcome around here.”
“James!” Mama scolded. “How dare you say that about your sister’s company. You be nice to Susie.”
“But she ain’t even—”
I put my hand on his arm. “It’s okay. Me and Jay were just wondering if we’d see her again so soon.” I said it with a strong voice so Susie would know what I meant: that me and Jay were ready to fight if we had to.
“That’s better,” Mama said with a smile. I could tell she was happy we had a visitor. We hardly ever had anyone come to visit us. The boys who wanted to play ball and such with Jay played in the open field away from the house and the crops so they didn’t damage anything. Mama went back inside to fix a plate and Susie turned to us.
“I really am sorry, Jezebel,” she said. “I just wanted to tell you that in the light of day, when I can’t take off my skin. So you’d know I meant it.”
I crossed my arms. “Why did you lie to me? You pretended to be a person and pretended to be my friend.”
Susie twisted her hands in her lap. “I didn’t think you would help me if you knew I was a boo-hag. You would’ve run away, or told your uncle or your mama. And I was afraid they would kill me. I had to do something.” She glanced in the screen door to see where Mama was, then turned back to me. “And I did pretend to be human, but I didn’t pretend to be your friend. That was real.”
I sucked my teeth the way Jay did when he didn’t believe something. “But a friend wouldn’t steal from a friend.”
“No, you’re right. I shouldn’t have done that. When I saw the instructions, on how to kill boo-hags, I just . . . got scared and ripped them out.”
I nodded. I could understand that. “I’ve . . . I’ve been thinking about where your skin could be.”
“Really?” she said. “You’ll really help me get it back?”
Jay shot me a nervous glance, but I ignored him. I’d explain my thinking to him later. For now, my intuition was telling me to trust Susie. “I’ll try. Is there anything you can tell me about where it might be?”
“I don’t know exactly. There are always protections around this place, so I can’t tell. Your house is painted blue, so I can’t go inside. But maybe, this close, I can use my power to see where it is.”
She closed her eyes and sat still as a statue for a while. I reached out to poke her in the arm, but a second before my fingertips reached her, her eyes opened. “It’s . . . in some kind of fancy wooden box, carved or something, but I can’t see more than that.” She shifted on the rocking chair.
“Okay,” I said. “That helps.”
“When do you think you can get it back?”
Jay had been staring at Susie for the last minute without speaking, quiet anger on his face. I was afraid I’d have to do this all myself. “As soon as I can.”
“Please hurry. I’ve been stuck here such a long time.” She sipped the lemonade. Sweat clung to the glass and the coldness slid down in drops.
“I will,” I said. “But we have to be careful.”
Susie’s eyes flashed from black to golden, then back again. “You mean because of that policeman?”
I had been thinking more about Doc. “How do you know about Deputy Collins?”
“I see him around the rootworker farms and houses. Sometimes sneaking. Sometimes not.”
I shuddered, but I couldn’t let myself get distracted now. “How long has it been since that piece of your skin was stolen?” I asked.
“Twelve years.”
“Twelve years?” I exclaimed. That was longer than me and Jay had been alive—but she looked the same age as we did. I knew Susie wasn’t a human, but I realized then how little I knew about boo-hags. Maybe even Doc and Gran didn’t know everything about them.
Instead of accepting what the girls at school had said about rootworkers, Susie had asked me directly. Maybe it would be okay if I did the same.
“So . . . what exactly is a boo-hag?” I tugged on one of my pigtails.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m just . . . me. I’m a spirit with a body. Does that make sense?”
“Sorta. Are you alive?”
“As alive as you. My skin has magical properties. I can change how it looks, but losing a piece of it means losing a piece of my power. Because that piece of skin is gone, I’ve been stuck looking like this. And I’ve been searching for it ever since.”
Then I asked a question I wasn’t really sure I wanted the answer to. “Where is the piece of skin from?”
Susie knew what I meant. “Here.” She pulled up the right side of her blouse and there was a patch of skin missing, about the size of a large walnut, from her side. In its place was a deep, empty dark space. It didn’t bleed. I reached a finger toward it, then stopped myself and drew back. Susie pulled her top back down quick and tucked it into the waistband of her skirt.
“Does it hurt?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “But I can’t be myself. I can’t change or leave here or find the rest of my family. That part hurts.”
I couldn’t find my daddy, and that hurt a lot. Maybe if I knew where he was, that would help the whole family deal with his being gone. There was no way I could refuse to help Susie find the rest of her family.
“There’s one more thing.” Susie pulled a square of folded paper from her dress. After a moment, she held it out to me. “These are the pages I took from your journal. I’m giving them back. Along with something else.”
Susie took a deep breath. “That is my promise to you, sealed with my blood: if you ever call me to help you, I will come.”
I ran my finger over the drop. I thought of my idea to use black cat fur instead of the bones. Here Susie was, giving away her promise and her blood freely to me, a rootworker. She was taking a risk—that I wouldn’t use it against her, like other rootworkers might. She trusted me, even though we were from different worlds.
She finished her lemonade and called to Mama through the screen door. “Mrs. Turner? I have to go now. Thank you for the cookies and all.”
“Wait a minute, sweetie.” I heard Mama scrabble around in the kitchen for a bit, and then she came out with a mound of folded tinfoil that she handed over to Susie. “Here, I want you to take these with you, since you loved them so much. Come visit Jezebel anytime, hear?”
“Yes’m.” Susie turned to me, and her smile was shaky but real.
From deep inside my heart an ache started, a hurt for Susie and for her loneliness. Even though she stole from me, I understood why. To protect herself. It was the same reason I was learning rootwork.
I think I gave her a smile back, but I’m not sure. My mind was already focused on finding that piece of skin.
Mama told us dinner was just about ready and went back inside. Susie stepped down off the porch, heading for the path. As she passed me, she whispered, “Thank you.”
I was quiet all through dinner. So much that Mama asked why. She understood when I said I was thinking about all I had to do; she probably thought I meant homework and chores. But I meant helping Susie.
“We have to do this tonight,” I said to Jay when we were in our room later. We were supposed to have our lights off, but I couldn’t sleep and Jay was awake too, picking something from his teeth with a fingernail, then looking at it.
“No, we don’t have to do nothing for that . . . thing. How we gonna find a box when we don’t know what it looks like anyway? Could be anywhere.”
“It’s somewhere on this property. Susie said she could see it. And it’s not like we have a lot of carved wooden boxes it could be in.” I pulled at one of my braids. “I wonder if she could just be thinking of our house? Technically, that’s a wood box.”
“So, our house fancy?” Jay raised his eyebrows at me.
“No,” I admitted. I flopped back on my bed with my arms over my face.
I wondered who in our family would have a carved wooden box. Mama wasn’t one for pretty things that didn’t have a good use. And Doc’s idea of fancy really wasn’t at all—he had what he liked to call simple tastes. I rolled over onto my belly to think. Most of the special items we had belonged to Gran, and we’d placed several of them on her grave after her funeral.
A memory rose up in me, and I bolted upright.
The box. The one I thought was beautiful the first time I laid eyes on it—on the first day Doc let us inside his cabin to start our lessons. He took it down from a top shelf, where it was pushed all the way back. When he’d opened it, it was full of Devil’s Shoestrings.
“What if it’s that box in Doc’s cabin?” I said.
Jay’s eyes got big and round. “Oh no, we ain’t getting in there.”
“Doc’s going to go out tonight to gather plants in the marsh, so we’ll have some time to look.”
“‘We’?” Jay shook his head. “What’s-its-name done got you doing its work. You on your own.”
This time I wasn’t going to argue with him. Not about how he was wrong, or how he had promised to not let me go anywhere alone. I just said, “Fine.” I held up Dinah, whose mouth was turned way down at the moment. The new dress I got for her was already starting to look dingy. Had Dinah been going out when I couldn’t see her?
Then I stood up and patted Jay on the shoulder. “I didn’t expect it anyway.”
“How you mean?” His look was suspicious.
“I mean I understand. You think Susie is a monster. But I can’t stand to see people, or animals, or even monsters, in pain.”
I shoved my feet in my shoes. Then I put Dinah’s old dress, which Mama had washed and ironed, back on her. The new one I left on my bed to put in the hamper later. I tucked her in my pocket as I looked at the clock, then raised the bedroom window. I’d oiled it earlier, and it slid open without a sound.
“What you fixing to do?” He watched me but didn’t make a move to get dressed.
“I’ll figure it out,” I said, climbing out of the window and dropping softly to the ground. “Hand me the flashlight.”
He placed it in my hand. “I hope you know what it is you doing,” he said.
“I do.” I marched off, the flashlight swaying. The movement created shadows that crept toward me, then away, and I shivered. I thought for a moment I might hear Jay following me by the time I got down to the chicken coop, but he didn’t. And that was okay. I didn’t want him to get in trouble for a decision that I made anyway.
I crouched next to the coop and waited until I saw Doc leave with a basket on his arm, headed for the deeper part of the marsh. I ran on my tiptoes to the cabin and eased the door open. The scent of bark and herbs surrounded me. I breathed in deep, holding it inside me for a moment before breathing out.
The cabin was dark and warm, the boards holding on to the heat from the day. The place felt empty without Doc in it, like it was missing an important ingredient. I walked all around the space, being careful not to knock anything over. A bowl of pomegranates with ruby-red skin and some waxed-paper-wrapped peanut candies sat in one of Mama’s sweetgrass baskets on Doc’s worktable next to a deck of playing cards.
I looked to where I last remembered seeing the box, and found it almost immediately. It was still up on the highest shelf. There was no ladder, so I pulled over Doc’s straight-backed chair and climbed onto it. Still, I couldn’t reach the box. I stretched more, and the chair started to wobble. If I fell, all the glass bottles and jars on his shelves would come crashing down around me and make a huge racket. Surely Mama would hear it and come running, and then I’d be in for it.
I needed something to—there! The sharpened cane I used when I thought an evil spirit was chasing me and Jay. I hopped down and grabbed it up, then returned to the chair. When I used the hooked end, I found I could snag hold of the box and drag it to the edge of the shelf. One more yank, and the box was falling. I caught it in my outstretched arms.
“Oof!” It was heavy. The solid wooden box had a thick metal plate on each corner. I climbed down off the chair and sat on the floor.
It didn’t seem to have any way to open it. There was no lock or keyhole or hinges. “What in the world . . . ?” I tilted the box, looking all over. Something was rattling around inside. As I fiddled with the box more, a thin piece of wood slid away. I gasped, thinking I broke it, but when I looked, the sliver of wood revealed a keyhole.
Resting the box on my legs, I pushed and pulled at all the panels of wood. My back ached from hunching over my task for so long. Then another sliver moved and I felt something fall into my lap. A key.
Fast as I could, I shoved the key into the lock and turned it. The lid creaked open when I lifted it. Once it was open, I held it close to the flashlight so I could see.
Empty! The box was completely empty. Only the scent of cedarwood lay inside, and I realized the rattling that I thought came from within the box was the key in its hidden compartment. If the skin had once been in here, it wasn’t anymore.
I slumped down on the floor, defeated. It was getting late. Doc would probably be back soon. I reached for the box and noticed writing in its lid:
PROPERTY OF ANNIE FREEDMAN
That was Gran’s name. When she passed away, Mama and Doc went through her things, deciding what to keep, what to place on her g
rave, and what to give away. Mama took all of Gran’s clothes and things. But Doc had taken all of her rootwork possessions: her potions, her perfumes, and all of her jars and baskets. And this box.
I leaned back against the wall of Doc’s cabin. Right after Gran’s funeral was when Deputy Collins came to our house, searching for who-knows-what. For as long as I could remember, Gran had said her magic would keep us safe. How could I think that, knowing other families of rootworkers had been dragged out of their homes, beaten, and jailed? Even though we mourned when other people on the island lost family and friends and property, the deepest part of me trusted that Gran would protect us. I realized why: It was because I had never seen those horrible things happen myself. Until a few months ago, I had never been face-to-face with someone who truly had the desire to hurt me. Gran had done everything in her power while she was alive to protect our family and keep me and Jay from knowing how much danger we were in every day. If she knew a spell to protect the entire house and farm by using a piece of hag skin, she would do it without a second thought.
Raise the family, she’d said to me. That was what she had done for me and Jay our whole lives. Raise up our family in the traditions of rootwork and use it to keep us protected.
But now that Gran was gone, was her spell gone too? Was our whole family without protection? I shook my head. Gran wouldn’t have left us without anything to help us. But if that was so, where was the skin? Gran had been pretty sick toward the end of her life, and she didn’t have much strength to do things. The last thing she did was make Dinah and breathe into her.
Dinah.
I pulled her out of my pocket. She was made of crocus, but she never felt as rough all over as a real gunnysack. I looked at her and saw her red stitched mouth was in the tiniest smile. I had changed her clothes before, but I’d never touched her headwrap. . . . My hands shook as I removed it.
There it was. Right at the back of her head, where the bright wrap covered it. The hag skin was a smooth blue color against the brown fabric and felt cool when I touched it. I’d had the skin all along. As I went to remove it, I stopped. Suppose this hag skin wasn’t just for protection but was also what made Dinah move? The thing Gran used to connect herself to me? I didn’t want to lose that. If I took off the hag skin, would Dinah be just like any other doll?
