Susannah had always feared the unknown. Plus, her mind madness often went into a siege if she put too much thought into things. But as it were, the messages found her. She felt a huge disappointment in herself, as if she had let down the child, let down her ancestors. A phone rang loudly from the nurses’ station only a few feet away, startling her out of her dark thoughts and back to reality. She couldn’t stand outside the doorway all day.
A life awaits. She must do what she knows she must do. For herself. Her bloodlines. And for the child.
In her hand the mirror bin seemed to hum, almost vibrate in her hands, awaiting its mission. It was old and ancient as if salvaged from the Titanic. It was beautiful, intricately carved with swirls, mysterious symbols, and ancient etchings. It was strange and mysterious, hand-wrought and instilled with vision, foresight, and preparation. Simon Ainsley was a meticulous carpenter and everything he built showed it with craftsmanship to last a lifetime. Every mirror bin for his seven children were as different as each girl. This one belonged to Maw Sue’s mother, Joseymae, and inside it was the carved number seven. Today, there was an urgency about it. It seemed to nudge at the souls of anyone who glimpsed it. On top of the wooden bin was a square mirror, ancient and older than the wood it sat on. The mirror was filled with insidious black bubbles and beady threads forming squiggly lines. They lay underneath as if the mirror trapped them there, holding accumulations of time and layers thick with secrets as old as the people who’d stared into its reflective depths, seeing themselves for who they were, and who they were not, while their spirits dissolved and melted into the cloudiness of the silver, trapping their stories inside its slick and mysterious realm. The mirror held many descendants, great and lowly lineages of families long gone, voices and screams muted by time and silenced by oppressors.
“How is the little one this morning?” Maw Sue said, entering the room holding the mirror bin like a tray of food. My mother, Gabby, looked up at her in distress. Her eyes were droopy and worn. Her legs were sprawled halfway inside the cover and halfway out. I was kicking like white fire in between them. “She’s restless, so restless.” Her eyes had dark moons underneath them as if she hadn’t slept.
“Oh. Yes. I reckon she is,” Maw Sue said as a quiver rolled up her spine. Knowing, remembering. She nudged the door closed with her elbow and walked toward me holding my destiny in her wrinkled hands. It had begun. There was no turning back. Nowhere to run. Only forward. She laid the wooden bin on the nightstand.
“What’s that?” Gabby glanced at it.
“Oh. It’s a gift. It’s for the child.”
“Well…gift or not,” Gabby snapped. “Susannah, I am not burning sage in my house for some cleansing ritual, and it better not be a bell or some ridiculous chime because I’m not doing that either. No offense, Susannah, but that isn’t me. Keep your ancestral traditions in your own home. Not mine.”
“Oh Gabby. Calm down, honey. I left my voodoo dolls at home.” She laughed as if to make a joke, but Gabby didn’t think it was funny. Gabby look at the box suspiciously. “It’s a precious box my great-great-grandfather made by his own hands. Articulate craftsmanship, wouldn’t you say? Isn’t it gorgeous?” She lowered the box for Gabby to see, trying to convince her it was just a box. She knew it was much more.
“Hmmmpt. Yeah, it’s pretty. Your grandfather, huh?”
“Yes, his name was Simon Ainsley. I think your daughter would love it, Gabby, and as she gets older, she can keep trinkets in it and you know, teenager stuff.”
“Well, I guess she can have it. Thank you.”
“Oh, I appreciate it so much, Gabby. It’s a family heirloom. Very important. It’s called the mirror bin. It’s been in my family for a long time.”
“God. Whatever. Sure. I’m too tired to argue and I have to pee like Niagara Falls.”
“Go ahead, Gabby. She’ll be fine. I got her.” Maw Sue swooped me up in her arms. While my mother was away, a number of magisterial events took place. The mirror bin hummed a low noise and vibrated across the nightstand, establishing a connection to me. It was time to bestow its gifts and idiosyncrasies. It threw off light beams from the mirror reflections and the room filled with a thousand faces, generations of family members, all dead and gone, screaming out their stories to me. A barred owl flew to the ledge of the windowsill. Maw Sue’s face was filled with wonder and curiosity. She knew the old stories. She knew what was happening. The light transfixed us both, as the mirror bin hummed, beamed, and bounced, transferring the gift from Maw Sue, its former owner, to me, it’s new vessel. She held me tenderly with care until the mission was complete, until the room returned to normal, which wasn’t normal at all.
“Little one,” she said. “I’m your Maw Sue. You are going to fulfill your namesake, honey bunch. You will do what I could not. You are a Seeker. I can see it in your eyes, sweetheart. They are the color of water, the deep blue sea, way below in the unknown depths of hidden things. That is where your destiny swirls. It was meant to be. The numbers never lie.” Her heart swelled inside her till she thought she might burst. “This time—I will do right by you. I will. I promise you, I will.”
Susannah Josephine Worrell held redemptive flesh. Seven pounds of second chances, a way to right her wrongs and Lord knows, there were many of those. Through the firstborn, Cassidy Cleo Collard, the great-great-great-grandchild of the Seventh Tribe—I would be made seven. I would be whole and complete. By this, my great-grandmother, Maw Sue, would finally make lovely her losses.
NEWS YOU CAN USE
BY EDNA ROLLINS
JULY 27, 1971
THE BEST NEWS THIS SIDE OF SALT FLATS RIVER
It is with great pleasure I give you my update on my recent missionary work while engaging the tribal people known as Moon Wanderers who passed through our community last month. I am late on my normal publication, and I apologize, but it was rather exhausting to minister to lost heathens who engage in all sorts of shenanigans right in front of my face. I endured naked bodies, loud, obnoxious singing and dancing all hours of the night, moonshine, spirits and more spirits, campfire games, mud Olympics (who knew?) and so much more I can’t list them all. I am happy to say the Wanderers accepted me in and even invited me to all the activities without question. It was hard to talk to them about Jesus with all the goings on, but I persevered and several lost souls came to Jesus, or at least I think they did. It was hard to decipher the language sometimes. I got a lot of “yeah man, and peace.” Or “Preach, Sista, we hear you.” But not much else.
Billy Ray was an exceptional bodyguard and kept me safe even though we got separated a time or two, me pulled one way and him pulled another. All in all, it worked out fine. With exception of one thing which has still got my feathers in a tussle. The rowdy crowd picked me up and tossed me around like a tomato in a salad. I kid you not. It was a ritual of some sorts, an acceptance into their tribe, although I strictly forbade it, I could not keep them from trying. We had only planned on staying the day but Billy Ray convinced me that people are more receptive to Jesus at night, which I thought was absurd, but turns out there is some truth to it. For some reason, be it the alcohol consumption or the plants they were smoking, there was an interest in my storytelling, of which I shared my testimony and the love of Jesus to all of them, regardless of their substance abuse. I even saw a few tears run down their dirty cheeks. I’m glad I made the trip and it was a gospel success. On another note, let’s talk about Billy Ray. Since returning from the trip, days later, he disappeared and his mother, bless her soul, is worried sick. If anyone knows his whereabouts, please contact the Pine Log Police Department. Everybody stay cool, drink sweet tea and go to church.
Until next time, tune into KTBR local radio news station 109.9. I’m Edna Rollins and that’s news you can use.
18
Love Looks
Love looks not with the eyes,
but with the mind; and therefore,
is winged Cupid painted blind.
~Will
iam Shakespeare
Mama C was recovering after surgery in the ICU behind a little blue curtain. Only two people were allowed at a time. Meg and I went in to visit. She was lying on a bed of ice to cool her high fever. She had a tube in her mouth attached to a machine. It pumped air every few seconds and made a god-awful racket. There were wires running all over her body. Her feet were exposed. Since we were both Seekers, we decided to do our gifted part in hopes it would send healing vibes to Mama C and speed her recovery. I spied some lotion on the table beside the bed and told Meg I would massage her feet and seek her healing. We chanted prayers like Maw Sue taught us. It was going great until bells and whistles went off. Mama C’s eyes popped open so wide in terror it made me flinch backward. It was as if she saw a monster. Meg flung herself against the wall. Before I could turn around, a slew of nurses zipped past the curtain and pushed us out of the room. Mother took us to the waiting room. All I could see in my head was her marbled eyes.
Twenty minutes later, the room was a wailing mass of broken people. Mama C’s lungs had exploded. Meg leaned against me and cried. Her tears burned through my shirt. I couldn’t move. All I could do was stare at my hands. My cursed hands. My terrible, awful gift. I had failed. I was terrible at this gift stuff.
Two months later Maw Sue returned from the hospital. I was overjoyed. I had missed her something terrible. I didn’t say anything to her about the bedroom, or the blood, or the president and the strange happenings. Maw Sue had worse things to deal with. Death. Petal People. Another flower to add to the Mason jar. May Dell, our beloved Mama C, passed and had been whisked away to the great by and by. They found a tumor in her lungs caused by those cigarettes she smoked one after another. Maw Sue missed it all. She was still locked up in Pine Castle, locked up in her broken mind when Mama C passed. Since she was unstable, Papa C made the decision not to tell her, not right away. My dad was a wreck. Losing his mother broke him. He cried almost every day. He shared memories with everyone about her and he could barely get through talking. It was Dad’s duty, everyone agreed, to tell Maw Sue when the time came. He did. I was with him. She cursed him in disbelief. I wanted to scream it to her, to make her see the truth, but I’d have to tell her everything. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I killed her daughter. My cursed hands took her because I didn’t have the gift after all.
Dad even took Maw Sue to the cemetery and showed her the grave. Maw Sue went into some blind stare, stoic and distant without words. Denial is a horrible master. She never said a word. She just walked away from the tombstone with a stone glaze in her eyes. Dad just let it be. He knew how Maw Sue was. Through it all, and since I was at the funeral, I felt it my obligation to pick the flower for the Mason jar, not only for myself, but for Maw Sue, since she wasn’t there. For the Tribe. For the Petal People. When it was dry and formed her face, I placed it inside her Mason jar on the nightstand beside her bed. I had a rose inside my jar too. It bore my grief when I couldn’t.
For weeks, Maw Sue remained in denial. Psychotic denial. Each day she’d ask Papa C where May Dell was. He’d tell her the truth. “She’s dead, Susannah, I already told you.” It tore Papa C apart to see her that way, and it made him relive it all over again. Maw Sue scowled, spit and cursed him. Normally, he took no shit from her, and they would banter and bicker back and forth for days on end, something that brought pleasure to both of them; but in this case, he knew she had finally broken over May Dell’s death. He simply waited until she had no words and he walked away. I had watched this horrible scene play out from the side of Papa C’s well shed, where I heard the shouting going on. It sent me to a deep place inside myself. I could not handle the pain. I had avoided going to see Maw Sue for this very reason. But it was time. I had to go no matter the consequences. The next day, I walked inside to find her standing in the living room, frozen, she seemed, in a stoic stare into the walls of nothingness. In her hand she clutched the peach rose, the one I plucked from her casket at the funeral to represent her among the Petal People. I had dried it just like she taught me and placed it inside her Mason jar while she was at Castle Pines.
She didn’t see me standing in the doorway. I watched her collapse and crush the rose in her hand, the brittle petals falling to the floor like snapped bones. She knew it was true. Her daughter was gone. She had missed the burial. She cried like a pack of wounded animals. To see her like this broke my heart. I had always believed in the stories she told, but watching her made me have doubts the everlastings, the Immortelles, the Petal People could help her now. Somehow, this had crossed the line. Her grief was too much. Her losses too many.
* * *
I reached the pinnacle milestone of ten years old. I thought I’d be a little more grown up but instead I was sad, fearful and weird. My body turned on me like some evil twin hell-bent on destruction. I didn’t know who I was. Empty, mindless, scattered like the windswept leaves in fall. The queen of the pine curtain with the locust crown was long gone. I felt like half a person. I felt abandoned by God. I most certainly wasn’t seven. Bad girls can’t be seven. What happened next was punishment and I deserved it. I was a monster, after all.
I was in the bathroom looking intently at one of those girlie magazines I had found ages ago. I remembered the first time I looked at one. It would become a dark harbinger imprinting its mark on me, never to leave. I figured out through process of elimination they were Dad’s magazines. And yet, even though something deep inside me told me it was wrong, vile, awful…I could not turn my eyes away, as if possessed by a darkness I could not control. Was this what happened to my dad too? The black bars tacked a shameful mask across my face when the door flew open. My mother stood there shocked as if she had to look at me twice, the magazines the same. Her pale skin turned beet red. “Where did you get this filth?” she said, snatching it from me.
“I-I-don’t know. They…they…” I stuttered, afraid to say too much, to get myself in trouble along with my dad. From the girl talk at school, every red-blooded Southern male had dirty books stuffed somewhere whether or not his wife knew about it. The house of silence flipped upside down. I was the monster my mother couldn’t love and Gabby became the mother I feared. The one I saw inklings of from time to time when she and Dad fought. She rolled up the magazine and slapped my thighs. My arms, my back, and wherever she could reach.
“Bad. Dirty. Nasty girl.” She stopped and bent down. She squeezed my jaws. “Disgusting. Shameful. Do you hear me?” I trembled and stared into her dark shark eyes as if there was nothing there, nothing at all. Whatever terrible, horrible thing happened afterwards; I don’t recall. Dad came in, more screaming, throwing dishes and slamming doors. The rest is blocked from my mind. Gone. Removed. Maybe to protect me. Help me survive. Whatever lies in the pitch black, it is clear I am unable to go back to it.
I split in half. Mind madness, unlovable, monsters and shadows. My mother was lit with a destructive fire set to consume me. Unaware, I had summoned every dark hidden creature from deep inside the pine forest to my door. Squeals, howls, screeches, teeth snapping, snarling, growls and scratches. They were hungry. I was the dark thing they craved. I deserved punishment. I was bad. Sin, rotten, terrible sin.
Later in the evening I skipped supper and stayed inside my room. I cried long and hard, and violently. A fake Cass rose up from deep inside the house. The girl who would survive for me…control my life outwardly, do what I could not do. The queen of the pine curtain, the girl with the locust crown, the Southern sap of Texas must depart. Go away for good. I silenced her screams inside the house, inside me. Buried. Beneath. Below. Behind the pine curtain. The House of Seven received another occupant.
Cass, age ten.
It took my mother a long time to look at me. She walked around me as if I wasn’t there. She didn’t want to see me. In truth, she had never seen me at all. I didn’t blame her. I didn’t want to see me either, and as days passed, pieces of me disappeared. I began to wonder if my mother had been the same way as a child, where pie
ces of her just vanished, never to return, and then I wondered why. Was this the reason she was so distant? It didn’t matter, I still tried.
“Hey, Mom, look at this doodle bug,” I’d say. Or “Look at this cool cicada shell,” trying to get her attention, but she’d stare at me listless and blank. In her eyes I saw my refection. I was the unlovable monster. Every night I’d stare at the moon and confess my sins. I’d think of the cut loose, wild slit-eyed mother appearing the night of New Year’s Eve when we danced with pots and pans and silver spoons under the light of a moonshine which now eluded me, avoided me, and never saw me. I prayed earnestly for another heart. For God to release me. When dawn came, I’d try once again to win my mother’s approval.
She was sweeping the living room and deep in thought. I asked her a question, trying not to get in her way. I don’t even remember what I asked. Probably something stupid, but I just wanted her to speak to me, say something, respond, reply, nod, blink, anything.
THE HOUSE INSIDE ME Page 20