THE HOUSE INSIDE ME

by Camelia Wheatley

  “How many people know about this? I just got off temporary probation, you know, so I cannot get into trouble, so I can’t have anything to do with this if it has blowback. Understand?”

  “Of course, sure, yeah, that’s not a problem. I told George I wanted you to know, because of the article she wrote about you, that’s all. And us three are the only ones who know. Pretty soon, the whole town will know who Edna really is.”

  We both cracked up laughing.

  “You’re all right, Pearl,” I said, high-fiving her. “When is this covert mission happening?”

  “As soon as Edna decides she wants to write another article. She’s been off and on with the writing, and George isn’t sure what’s up with that, but she’ll eventually write something because she always does, and that’s when NEWS YOU CAN USE is going down.”

  “My, my, Pearl. You are one bad girl,” I said, laughing as I walked out the door.

  “I got my ways,” she said, smiling and pushing up her glasses.

  “I like it, just don’t go burning up the town. We all know how that ends.”

  28

  Mason Jars And Mirror Bins

  The more we try to deny who we are,

  the more we become what we fear.

  ~ Freud

  It was three months before I saw Doc again. The court system was tied up in paperwork, so my dismissal was delayed, but it wasn’t a big deal. I was laying low and staying out of trouble. Pearl told me at my last appointment that George was still working the magic on Edna and she’d call me once it goes down. It’s hard to get one over on ole Edna. Either way, I was healing slowly and dealing with my life. Where I’ve been. Where I’m at now.

  There is one thing I haven’t moved past yet. It’s been sitting in the middle of my living-room floor since I brought it home from my sister’s house. I hadn’t the heart to open it yet. With the funeral a few months ago, the dismissal, me getting my life back, and just basically dealing with all the memories, I truly didn’t think I could handle anymore. To be truthful, I am fearful of what I might find hidden.

  When I got close to the heirloom, I could feel it. All the power and energy of the people of the past seemed to rise up from it. Those strange flashes hit me like before; ceremony, crackling fire, leaping flames, terrifying screams, the slice of the blade, seven distinct drips of blood, Maw Sue’s red forefinger on my cheeks, the smell of the owl’s blood, the shadows dancing and voices singing. Can I open it? Am I prepared for what I’ll find? I wasn’t sure. All I could hear was Doc’s voice in my ears: “Confront it, Cass.”

  I poured a glass of wine and contemplated. I paced a bit and then sat on the living-room floor in front of it. I felt the stirrings of the past coming alive in the glimmer of the mirror reflections, as if it had held every snapshot of my life. I downed half the glass of Cabernet Sauvignon and prepared myself. Time to face the magic of a childhood I put away, lost, forsook, denied. The ancient talisman of the Seventh Tribe sat before me, anticipating my awakening with a gentle hum. In my childhood vision it was a God, larger than life, blood of my blood, Seeker to Seeker.

  I popped open the lock. It made a loud swishing sound like air escaping. Dust particles spiraled in a cloud and I could smell old tarnished scents, oil of rosemary, honeysuckle and lemongrass. I took a deep breath and opened the lid. Sitting on top was a satchel of herbs I collected on walks with Maw Sue behind the pine curtain. I lifted it to my nose. Rosemary, sage and mint intoxicated my senses. Underneath was a handful of pine needles tied in a bundle with a blue string. After all these years it still smelled like home. The little girl, Southern sap, the Queen of the Pine Curtain. I laid it on the rug and tears welled in my eyes. There they were like corpses wrapped in burlap, waiting to be resurrected. The Petal People, wilted flowers, Immortelles, the everlasting representation of my loved ones. Big Pops, May Dell, Maw Sue, and me. The dead one. The wild, white rose, the spirit rose represented the little girl taken at the river, the night of the great sadness. I thanked God the little girl is no longer dead, no longer hidden in darkness, inside me, inside the house of seven where I kept her imprisoned, robbed of voice, denied life and love. Tenderly, I removed the fragile dried rose and held it to my heart and wept. I felt the weight of grief the rose carried in its petals all these years, because I could not bear it myself.

  The more I held it, the lighter it got. I opened my wet eyes and laid it aside, and winced. There on top was the rose for my mother. When I couldn’t revive our relationship, she didn’t exist to me. I submitted her to the Petal People. It was sad but necessary, back then. For the child. But the adult in me now must resurrect what I did, but how? Maw Sue wouldn’t approve of me using the ritual for my own personal judgment. I sat the roses aside till I could figure out how to reverse the curse. Next was a tattered and stained letter, maybe? I didn’t recognize it to be the poem till I opened it and could hear Maw Sue’s voice reading it for the first time. Immortelles. The Everlastings. This poem touched me deeply, and its waxing poetic spell stayed with me throughout my journey. Reading it made me smile and cry.

  Next were my tiny journals and scrap pieces of paper with scribbles of words. Some disturbingly dark, some comical, others confusing and riddled with pain and big questions. Some I remember, some I don’t. I laughed and finished off my wine. It seems I was a writer all along. Words resonated in me, so much they had to have a place to rest. As a child I buried the word skeletons inside the hush cemetery inside me with the little girl who lived inside the house of seven. It was a survival method. It was the only avenue where I could maintain some form of stability and function. Today, words have found their rightful place on the blue lines of my journal. I can see the child so clearly, the one I was then, the one I am, still, even now. With the wonder of a child’s eyes, I pulled out feathers, rocks, and other objects I collected behind the pine curtain of my childhood. And then my ears splintered with the sound of a creature.

  “Oh my God. It’s the crackle,” I said out loud, cracking up with laughter. The lone crackle was brittle and so fragile with age, I thought for sure it would crumble in my fingers. In my childlike ears, I’d hear the terrible, awful crunching sound of the brokenness I avoided in childhood when we accidentally crushed one. Memories of Meg and me flooded my thoughts, collecting boxes of crackles, dressing them up, and the infamous prank on Maw Sue. I laughed so hard my belly hurt. This memory provoked another. The vow. I made a solemn vow to never grow up. As a child, it was frightening to see the life of grown-ups falling apart around me, and I wanted no part of it. I scrambled through the journals until I found it. Reading it made me feel so alive. I did it the hard way, but I kept the little girl’s promise. I am her. She is me. We are one.

  It was then I noticed a pink fabric tucked in the corner and bound with ribbon. When I untied the ribbon, it was like heaven raining down in my lap. My heart swelled so big I thought my chest would explode. Scattered like hundreds of rose petals were Kisses for Cass, lipstick kisses from my mother’s lips. Tear after tear flooded my hot cheeks as I picked them up one after another. My mother used to put on lipstick and take a torn piece of paper and kiss it, leaving her imprint, then tossing it away in the car, in the bathroom, or on top of the dresser. I’d have scavenger hunts to find each one. I’d look at her and see what shade of lipstick she was wearing and then off I’d go. They were kisses from my mother’s lips to mine. I held on to them as a child, hoping, wishing, and praying I’d find enough lipstick kisses to uncover Mother Moonshine. The mother I knew existed, but rarely saw. All around me, lipstick kisses, imprints of my mother’s withheld love, shades of passion pinks, ruby reds, crushing corals. The weight of the emotions in those tiny pieces of paper came crashing down. I broke into sobs. The adult in me cried. The child in me cried. And I’d like to think even Mother Moonshine cried.

  Knowing what I know of my mother now, even in understanding, didn’t make the pain any less. I still yearned for a mother I would probably never have, or experience as I did
one precious night under the moon.

  Perceptions. Thrones. Expectations. Cycles. Clay feet.

  I heard all of Doc’s words running through my mind. I saw my mother, parts of her, now, and I realized she gave what she had to give, in the only way she knew how. Did she get it all right? No. But who does? I certainly didn’t. Maybe we learn the best and the worst from people so we can clearly see the best and the worst in ourselves…a mirror of reflections, of failure, and of redemption.

  Doc said to look at the good, deal with the bad, and move on. Mother did teach me good as a child, even though I couldn’t see it then. How to cook, to skimp and save money so that I could one day travel the world. Every summer we went on vacation, hitting the highway to visit other states. She loved to travel. We went one place every year in the summer. I forgot about all the good times we had on those trips. My eyes could only see the bad. Mother also taught me when you don’t have fireworks you make your own. She taught me to cut loose. Dance on the lawn barefoot and bang pots and pans. And maybe, just maybe, I want to think she left those lipstick kisses just for me, because it’s the only way she knew how to give them. I may never know everything there is to know about my mother, her deeper story, who she is, but I know enough to forgive. My mother and I are more alike than we are different.

  And Dad? He had clay feet too. Rebel clay feet. My best and worst from him as well. My drinking habits come from his bootlegging tree, a little too much alcohol in the sap of the tree limbs. Dad did inspire me to use my own head, to wonder, observe, dream, explore, question and seek adventure. Go out knowing, he’d say. Use my imagination. Don’t leave this world a wasted life. If you’re going to leave it, then leave it knowing something. Go out knowing. Did he have faults? You bet. I fell into one of his vices and the way it trapped me, I can only wonder if it did the same for him. Doc says the devil uses sex to trap a good man and make him fall. I’d like to think this cycle has been broken and dethroned as well. I’m sure I wasn’t the easiest child to raise and no one knew about mental illness back then, the way they know of it now. I was as messed up as Maw Sue—it’s just no one recognized the signs, because you know, of those, damn perceptions Doc talks about. Lord, dealing with my clay feet had to be double-trouble. And Meg? Well, I discovered a lot about my little shiny diamond sister. She was a sore loser in card games but she had a hell-fire streak in her that terrified me. In the end, she protected me at the risk of herself. She stood for me at the river. For someone so little, she was brave and fearless. Sharp as a diamond’s point and shiny as a midnight star.

  It was such a surreal moment when the past emerged with the present, my mirror bin, the amulet of a Seventh Tribe, my tokens of childhood, a child and an adult wrapped in one, finally together to remember, forgive and move forward. I could only do one thing which seemed right. Surrounded by love, or rather my version of love, paper kisses, I took each one to myself. One after another. I accepted a kiss, from my mother’s paper lips to mine. Lipstick kiss to cheek. I could almost feel her presence near me, mother to child. Kisses for Cass. It broke my heart and healed it at the same time. In my vision two little girls danced and beat on pots and pans with silver spoons with their Mother Moonshine. With each coral crush kiss, with every lipstick smudge, I made peace with our grievances. Suddenly, like magic and warmth from the heat of the pine curtain at sunset, I felt the presence of the divine. Maw Sue was right. God, the great majestic one in the Michelangelo painting with his sacred fingers reaching to Adam’s fingers, which were now my fingers reaching—up, up, up, because in reality, God had never left me. He is always reaching for His children. We just have to reach back. Accept His embrace. Receive His love.

  When I gathered my wits about me, and wiped the snot and tears, I collected each paper kiss and put them neatly back inside their pink sachet with ribbon and sat it with the rest of the stuff. I reached the bottom of the mirror bin. There it was, my childhood crown waiting for its queen. The queen of the pine curtain. The locust crown leaves were brown and cracked, the brambles twisted and aged, the honeysuckles dried and crippled and the sap brittle and dark, but the thorns held it intact. The precious gift of nature made from Maw Sue’s hands. I reached inside and lifted it out, gently and so focused I felt the air leave my lungs. Tear after tear flooded down my face as I remembered the words, the ceremony, the anointing from my great-grandmother. I could barely swallow without feeling lumps in my throat. I felt breath and redemption and tasted glory on my tongue. It was the crumbs Maw Sue talked of; crumbs of my past, of my present, of my future. I opened my eyes, sat the crown down gently and ran to the phone.

  “Meg, do you have your crown?” I said, so full of anxiousness I bounced up and down.

  “Whaaat?” she said, baffled.

  “Your crown…the locust crown Maw Sue made us when we were little.”

  “Uhhh, yeah, are you okay, Cass? You sound rattled.”

  “DO YOU HAVE YOUR CROWN?”

  “Yes…. okay. Calm down. Yes, I have it. What is wrong with you? Why are you so loud?”

  “Because. I just opened mine. Everything is still there. All of it.”

  “All of what? I have the green scarf in mine, and yes, I have my crown too, but it’s almost falling apart. Why?”

  “You ask too many questions. Can you bring the mirror bin and the crown with you and meet me on the old dirt road by our parents’ house? Just park at the intersection and I’ll meet you there.”

  “Cass…” Meg said with a voice of worry. “What are we doing exactly?”

  “Trust me. I know what I’m doing, Meg, I promise.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  “Come on…” I said bluntly.

  “As long as it doesn’t involve a fire,” Meg said, worried.

  “No promises,” I said in a smarty-pants tone.

  “Fine. I’ll meet you there. I’ll have to take Bill’s piece of shit hunting truck because he’s out of town in my car.”

  “I don’t care if you ride a horse. Be there,” I said, hanging up.

  A half hour later, I bailed in the cab of Bill’s old rattling Ford truck. Meg tore off down the road. I sat my mirror bin next to hers. There was a bottle of vodka and a long machete in the floorboard. I looked at her and picked it up.

  “Are we going to get drunk and kill somebody?”

  She laughed. “We might see a snake, you never know. It is the river bottom. And that’s some good drink right there. Bill got it from a client. Expensive spirit. And he doesn’t know we’re drinking it.” She laughed wickedly. “Plus, I need to drink since I have no idea what you are up to.”

  I smirked. “We’ll both need drinks. Especially after I tell you what all has happened.”

  Meg looked at me, intently curious. “Whaaatttt?”

  “It was me. I set the fire.”

  “No shit. You remembered?”

  “I sure did. Along with a whole lot of other stuff. But the best part is, get this, Meg. The girlfriend ditched Sam and she dismissed the charges. I pay some money to a flower fund, that’s it.”

  “Hell yes, sister! That’s drink worthy. Open it up, Cass. Go ahead.” I grabbed the vodka and burned down a swallow and passed it to Meg. I glanced behind us. A large cloud of red dirt stirred in the loom of the taillights as we entered our pine curtain kingdom. It was the first time we’d been together under the pines since we were kids, and everything felt familiar again. A shiny diamond and Southern sap. Road trip rebels. Together again.

  Out of nowhere a thud hit the front bumper of the truck. Meg squealed. She hit the brakes and we swerved until we were sideways in the road.

  “What the hellfire was that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, unsure and looking around. “Did you see anything?”

  “No. Did you?”

  “No.” We sat there as if neither of us knew what to do.

  “Well, know this. If I get murdered it’s your fault,” I said, getting out of the truck a tad anxious with wide ey
es.

  “I can’t see anything?” Meg whispered and leaned across the seat. I gave her a glare straight out of our preteen years.

  “Why are you whispering?”

  “I don’t know, it’s what they do in movies, right before someone is killed,” she said, smiling and giggling.

  “Oh, you’re hilarious, Meg. Get out of the truck. You’re coming with me.”

  “Fine. We die together. I accept my fate.” Meg laughed.

  “When did you get so dramatic?” I said, looking at her curiously.

  “Hmph…” She shrugged as we made our way to the beam of the headlights. Our shadows long and stalky beside us on the ground looked like tall wood walkers. I stopped in my tracks. My heart skipped. Meg stopped too. Her face went pale.

  “It’s a sign,” I said, gasping and looking up at her.

  All at once, we were brought face-to-face with our childhood. A dead owl lay on the ground circled in blood and entrails, still alive and twitching. It was painful to watch but more painful to realize what it meant for Meg and me.

  “Nothing is coincidental. Remember?” I said, looking at Meg sternly. “Maw Sue used to tell us that. We can’t leave it here. It was meant to be. Never leave a wounded owl behind. Remember, Meg?”

  I felt a fluttery feeling in my belly. The suffering of the owl made me queasy. I knew without a doubt what I had to do. I turned and walked back to the truck. I pulled the machete out of its leather sleeve and felt my chest hitch. My balance was poor and my eyes tunneled. I walked toward the light beams and the crumpled feathers, all the while the whispers in my head, they fly silent, over and over. Meg was bouncing more energy that I could withstand. She was babbling all sorts of words, but I could not filter them in. All I heard was the inner realm, the whispering words of the owl’s inner light.