by Catie Rhodes
I bit my lip hard to scare away the laugher. “What’d you tell Jadine?”
Cecil put his palms up and shrugged. “What the hell could I say?”
“You lying old man. You tried to run him off.” Shelly crossed her legs, smiling at Cecil. It was the same kind of smile Dillon had given Finn. We’re thick as thieves, this old man and I. What we have goes beyond a few finger gestures and a little name-calling. Soulmates. That stab of envy came back.
“How’d you try to run Brad off?” I hoped Shelly and Cecil would act up more. Seeing them made me feel less lonely.
“I told him he’d have to take the Gregg name.” Cecil raised his shaggy eyebrows, making it clear he’d have never agreed to changing his surname to be married to any woman.
“Hell, you lost before the game started,” I told Cecil. “Mysti chose her and Brad’s last name after they got out of foster care. I think the original is White.”
Cecil nodded sourly. “Yeah. That’s about what he told me.”
“I hate to see her get married so young, but my daughters from my first marriage did the same thing.” Shelly shook her head. “I was only seventeen the first time I got married. Who am I to talk?”
“Brad’s an okay guy. Just lazy,” I said to nobody in general.
“He’ll get along fine with Finn then.” Cecil rolled his eyes. Suddenly, the bad-tempered joking went off his face, and he turned to me, serious. “I want to apologize to you, Peri Jean.”
I flushed. “What for?”
“The way I talked to you about why you need to have a child. The way I pushed you at Tanner embarrasses me now.” He licked his lips and swallowed hard. Shelly got him another drink of water, eyebrows raised in command for me to tell Cecil it was all right.
“Don’t worry about that. I do like Tanner…”
Shelly cut me off with a whoop. Cecil shushed her.
“But he’s broken,” I said. “Did he tell you what happened to his wife and kids?”
Cecil nodded. “If Tanner had a dollar for every pound of guilt he’s carrying around, he’d be rich. But who knows? Maybe he’ll let it go. Sometimes you do find a way to shed the past.”
The expression made me think of the ouroboros Tanner wore around his neck. A snake shedding its skin was another form of renewal. My tattoo twitched, and I thought of the wheel sitting in my purse. My brain had that fluttery feeling, like I was right on the edge of an epiphany. Then Cecil spoke again, and it slipped away.
“We’ve put a lot on you from the second you walked into our lives. If you’ve been made to feel like there was some kind of test to pass, I’m sorry.” Cecil chuckled. “Talk about death bed loose ends. I’m as bad as the rest of them.”
Cecil and my family hadn’t made life easy for me, but I’d never doubted my place among them. That was worth all the trouble. I cast off his apology with a flick of my fingers, but he shook his head and kept talking.
“Once I started getting to know you, it felt like you’d been one of us forever.” He stared into my eyes.
“I feel the same way.” I put my hand on the bedside rail. Cecil put his over it. Tears stung my eyes and my sinuses. I didn’t want Cecil to be coming to the end of his life. The idea hurt.
“Aww, not you too.” Cecil lay back with a drawn-out sigh. “You know, I’ve been sitting in this room seeing my wife’s scared face, knowing my family’s right down the hall worried, but I’m sort of on the fence.”
I drew back, too surprised to speak. “You don’t want to stay with us?”
“Well, sure I want that.” Cecil widened his eyes, incredulous again. “I want to be with y’all forever. But this old body is getting tired. The day’s coming.” He pointed one finger at me, the way Memaw had always done when she was dead serious. “Don’t think I’m not grateful to see all I’ve gotten to see. I’m seeing my parents’ beloved Sanctuary being reborn with new, talented young people. Seeing my daughter get married, which is a kind of rebirth for her. Seeing you birth yourself, painfully sometimes, into your destiny as the bearer of this family’s power.” Cecil’s chin wobbled, and his eyes brimmed with tears. “Not so bad for an old ex-con.”
I got up, kissed his whiskery cheek, and put my forehead to his.“I love you.”
Cecil said, ”I love you too, baby."
Two sharp raps sounded on the door. A nurse wearing purple scrubs with green lobsters on them came in and said, “We need to get Mr. Gregory ready for his procedure.”
I kissed Cecil again and stood. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” I couldn’t tell him things would end one way or the other with me and Miss Ugly tonight. Not in front of an outsider. He seemed to understand anyway and gave me a grave nod.
I walked out of the room but didn’t go straight back to the waiting area. The image of the snake shedding its skin, of Cecil’s talk of rebirth, kept coming back to me. It played over and over. Then I’d see the wheel of life in my mind.
I went outside and found a table with an ashtray next to it. A man with gray hair wearing a white doctor’s coat sat, holding a cigarette between his fingers. He took urgent drags, eyes fixed on a blank wall. Not wanting to interrupt, I lit up my cigarette a few feet away and leaned against a sign that said “No Smoking within Twenty-Five Feet of Building.”
The doctor finished his cigarette and crushed it under his polished black shoe. He walked to the door, turned back to me, and said, “Across that threshold lies a new, smoke-free existence.” We exchanged smiles, and he went inside.
The idea of a threshold added itself to the carousel of ideas revolving in my mind. Rebirth, threshold, wheel.
The wheel of life controlled fate. My fate was connected to Miss Ugly’s. What if I could rebirth myself to a new fate?
I took out my phone and called Hannah.
16
Hannah and I spent most of the day researching rituals that represented death and rebirth. I had the formula now. I must die in order to be reborn to a fate without Miss Ugly.
Although it would have been the simplest to pull off, we quickly nixed baptism because it just didn’t feel right. And who’d perform the baptism? Certainly none of us. But it was more than that.
The spell surrounding the mantle was made up of all the bad things I’d experienced in life. The stuff that marked me. I believed in learning from my mistakes, even those perpetrated on me by others. But the scar tissue had helped me hang on to it far longer than was helpful.
Since I was the one who’d done the hanging on and picked what to hang on to, I was the one who needed to cleanse myself of it.
By mid-afternoon the search had become frustrating. I went into my camper’s tiny bathroom and dragged my long, sweaty hair into a ponytail on the top of my head, longing for the convenience of short hair again but liking the way I looked.
Hannah watched me from the table. “I saw a taqueria in town. Let’s go get some real tacos, come back here, and settle on something.”
By real tacos, Hannah meant the kind served in a soft corn or flour shell rather than the hard shell served in the American version. Hannah meant the kind of tacos garnished with hotter-than-hot salsa, fresh cilantro, and sliced avocado if we were lucky.
I grabbed my purse, we got in my truck, and I drove us into the tiny town near the RV park.
The taqueria was so authentic that the counterperson didn’t speak English. Hannah and I struggled through broken Spanish to order beef tacos and the kind of green salsa that started a fire behind your eyeballs. We ordered tall glasses of horchata served on ice and sipped the sweet, cinnamon-flavored drink while we waited for our food.
The earthy smell of cumin and the sweetness of frying onions had my mouth watering by the time they called Hannah’s name. I snatched the tray, and we hurried to a booth and sat down.
The tacos came with a bowl of Mexican white cheese, tiny paper cups of crema, and two plastic cups of the hot green salsa. I put a little of everything on my tacos and bit into the first one, chewing slowly, and waiting for the
burn of that green sauce to hit my tongue.
When it did, sweat popped out on the back of my neck and forehead. I imagined myself descending to the underworld, the common perception of Hell, letting it engulf me, and arising without my baggage.
“I’m going to do what Inanna did,” I said around my food. Hannah and I had read about Inanna during our research. The Sumerian goddess was the subject of a famous death and rebirth myth.
Hannah chewed thoughtfully, swallowed, and wiped the sweat off her forehead with a rough paper napkin before she answered. “Descending into the underworld and dying to be born anew is pretty powerful. How do you want to do it?”
“Before Inanna could complete her journey into the underworld, she had to give up her jewels and fancy clothes.” I took a bite of my taco.
Hannah began speaking while I chewed, swallowed, and sipped horchata to soothe my tongue. “Those fancy things were her confidence, the things she believed showed her power. She had to strip something off at each of the seven gateways.”
I dipped a crisp tortilla chip in the hot red salsa at the center of the table while she talked. When she finished, I said, “Inanna had to do these things to make herself vulnerable and open so that she could die and be reborn. I’m the same as Inanna, only my earthly accoutrements are the bad things I’ve endured.” Tears stung my eyes. “Deep down, I think if I hold on to it, I’ll be immune to more bad stuff happening, or at least tough enough to withstand it.”
“You’re never immune.” Hannah leaned forward to whisper, her food forgotten. “And your strength comes from you being you. Not that stuff.”
She was right, but up to this day, stripping myself down to an open canvas had been scarier than holding on to the poison. Hannah and I stared at each other for several seconds in silence, then began eating again.
Between bites, I said, “I may not be able to do seven stations, but I think I can find something tangible to symbolize the big hurts. I’ll get rid of each one, then die and be reborn. What do you think?”
“I think if it works for you, I may try it.” She winked and took a huge bite of her taco, extra-hot green sauce dripping to the plate.
We finished our tacos, got a refill on the horchata, bought two concha pastries with yellow icing, and went back to the RV park. Tanner was sitting in front of my camper at the picnic table. I tossed my cigarettes and lighter down on the table in front of him, tore off half of my concha, and gave it to him. He wanted to refuse, I could tell, but he ate the pastry and lit a cigarette.
“What are you going to do?” He held his smoking hand in front of his face, almost as though he was hiding behind the smoke.
I lit my own cigarette because I couldn’t stand not to. “I’m going to make my own version of Inanna’s death and rebirth.”
Recognition flashed on Tanner’s face. “I know this story.”
“I can’t recreate the doorways, where you leave behind things or the climbing out of the underworld, so I’m going to have to improvise.” And I had no idea what I was going to do.
Tanner stood and motioned Hannah and me to follow him. He walked to the edge of the RV park’s property. The property didn’t end at a fence. It ended at a steep drop-off into a deep crevasse. From far below came the sound of rushing water.
“Been down there?” Tanner gestured at the drop-off.
“Hell no.” The descent was so steep I’d never make it back up. My smoker’s lungs would strand me down there, and I’d have to start my own new civilization. Live on bugs and dirt.
“I went down there and came back up. This is nothing compared to the mountains I used to hike all the time in California. You saying you can’t?” Tanner’s lips, which I remembered vividly on mine, quirked into a sly smile.
Did he just challenge me? Really? Time to pull out my big guns. “Liar.”
“No. The lady who works the desk in the office told me about it. It’s an area attraction. I hiked it while the two of you went to out to eat.”
I rolled my eyes. “Go on then, mountain man.” I gestured at the drop-off. “Show us how it’s done.”
Tanner nodded. “Okay. Get the stuff for your ritual, though. It’s about three-quarters of a mile both ways. You won’t want to come back up and go back down.”
I glanced at him, looking for a twinkle in his eyes, even a smirk. Nope. He was serious. I swallowed hard, not looking forward to eating my dare.
Hannah and I went back to my camper to gather up what I needed. Choosing items that I thought represented the contents of my scar tissue proved more difficult than I thought. In the end, I guessed and hoped it was enough.
Tanner led Hannah and me to another area of the RV park. We passed a swimming pool full of screaming kids. The people who knew us yelled our names. We waved. Behind the RV park’s office, Tanner gestured at a set of steps.
I narrowed my eyes at him and turned down my lips. “You acted like you climbed down that steep hill.”
“Did not.” Tanner started down the steep, stone steps.
“Did too.” I followed him, still having to pick my way down, despite the footholds. I wished for a railing, something to hold on to and steady my descent.
“Fine, I did.” Tanner stopped and turned around. “Let’s stop joking. You wanted to emulate Inanna’s journey. These steps are your descent into the underworld.”
I nodded my understanding. As I picked my way along, I imagined myself leaving the known world. In a way, I was. I had no idea what was at the bottom of this ravine, only that it was wet and that water was a source of cleansing and rebirth.
“These steps really are old,” Tanner said. “The lady in the office said these current steps were put in by the WPA during the Great Depression. But they were put on top of steps already here. Nobody knew how long those first steps had been here or who put them here.”
We walked in silence. I concentrated on the roiling mass of scar tissue, on all the disappointments in my life, all the heartbreak, all the stuff I’d done wrong, all the people who’d let me down. I thought about the contents of the little bag I’d packed and hoped again they were enough.
The descent got steeper as we went. The punishing sun beat down on our backs, and a painful burn built in my thighs as they strained against the sharp angle. The sounds of the water splashing came nearer bringing with it a mist of humidity to steal my breath. Sweat slicked my skin. Just as I decided I’d have to stop and catch my breath, the land leveled out, and we stood on a slight rise overlooking a briskly moving stream. We walked to the edge of the water and stared into it. My black opal gave me several sharp, warning pings. This place is haunted with magic or ghosts. Beware. The steps took a sharp turn to travel alongside the water.
“Hannah and I stop here,” Tanner said. “If you want to be like Inanna, you go the rest of the journey on your own.”
I walked to the steps and stared down, unable to see where they ended.
Tanner came to stand next to me. “The water flows over several natural levels of rock. Wait till you see what’s at the bottom. The path gets harder and harder. It’s slippery in places. Be careful.” He gave me a light push to get started.
I glanced back at Hannah, wanting some kind of reassurance, but her face was fixed and serious. Heart pounding in my throat, I took the first step into the underworld.
The steps went straight down. On one side was a moss-covered expanse of rock. On the other side, water rushed past me. After ten or so steps, the land widened out to a steep drop-off of three or so feet. Below that, the water splashed down, and the steps started again.
The black opal pinged on my chest. It was a signal. I didn’t have instructions for this journey, so I acted on instinct. I took out the little bag of things I’d brought from my camper and drew one of them out.
It was a picture of me with my mother, Barbara Mace. The picture was a cheap studio shot taken at a discount store a couple of years after my father died. It was the only picture I had of us together. I had carried it in m
y wallet or on my person all my life. At one point, it had been in hopes Barbie would feel my love for her and come back. In later years, it became a symbol of rejection. In a sick way, I had relished the hurt it caused. If I can survive being shunned by my own mother, I can take anything.
In the picture, Barbie wore perfect makeup, a revealing top and a miniskirt. I had on regular kid clothes, a shirt with cute designs on it, baggy little jeans, and dirty sneakers. Unlike most mother and daughter photos, Barbie and I sat a few inches apart. She smiled as though her life depended on looking pretty. I looked uncomfortable and maybe a little scared.
A tear tickled on my lashes and burned down my cheek. I set the picture on the ground next to the stream. “I’m sorry you hated me, Mom.” It was the first time in a long time I remembered calling her that. “I wish you’d had a happier life, and I’m sorry you died the way you did. Now I have to let you go.”
The mantle shifted around inside me like a huge serpent whipping its tail. A couple of wisps of smoke drifted up from the picture. The paper curled, and the image of me and Barbie turned black and bubbled. A pain flared in my chest, in a place too deep to soothe. The picture burst into flames. Soon nothing was left but a piece of charred paper and some bits of ash. A wind whipped through and blew away the whole mess.
I watched it go. My chest gave a particularly sharp throb. I raised one hand to massage the spot, regretting the very spicy lunch I’d had.
The pain lanced deeper. I pressed harder and moaned. The discomfort increased to agony, to the point where I stood with my hands on my knees gasping, a line of slobber between my mouth and the ground. Then, just as quickly as it had come, the hurt went away. I fell to my knees with relief.