The Witch of Belladonna Bay

by Suzanne Palmieri

  “What do you need, my love?” I asked him.

  He started to cry. I could feel the tears go straight through my nightdress. He took the pipe out of my hand. I remember being worried he’d shake out the last bit of opium. I was more concerned about that than I was about him. That’s the truth.

  “Why do you smoke this, Mama? Wyn’s too afraid to ask, I think. Or maybe she just don’t care. But I do. I miss you.” He didn’t look at me. Couldn’t. Just kept his head buried against me so that his voice, changing at the time, was muffled.

  His request was so sincere that I tried my best to answer him.

  “Well, now. That’s a big question, isn’t it?” I said. “One that I don’t even know if I understand myself. But let me try, okay?”

  He nodded against me, still crying.

  I took the pipe back, relieved to have it in my hand again.

  “When I smoke this … medicine, I feel a wave of warmth rush through my body. And there are no worries. No cares. Everything melts into the edges of life. And I don’t feel the magic so much. No sight. Nothing. It’s better that way, Paddy. I don’t like to see the future.”

  He pulled his head up, wiping his eyes. “Can’t you control it some other way? In science we learned that the brain has chemicals in it, and that we only use part of it. Can’t we just retrain your whole brain, Mama?”

  It was a good question. But I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to use the drug, and I wanted everyone to leave me alone. So I kept explaining the unexplainable.

  “But, baby, I can still do things … well, at first I could. Everything was so beautiful. And quiet around me. And even if you don’t remember, I was a better mother during those early days. I played with you. I ran around the yard. Danced with your daddy. Made meals with Minerva, and … Susan. But the problem is, the drugs build up in your system and soon—”

  “You can’t do nothin’ anymore.” he finished.

  “Yes, that’s right. This medicine and, Paddy, believe me, it is medicine … it builds up. Then I need more in order to feel that way again. And taking more just makes me sleepy. I don’t mind, though. Feeling sleepy makes me warm and happy.”

  “We learned about that, too,” he said. “It’s called addiction.”

  His words startled me.

  “I guess you’re right, my smart boy.”

  “Don’t you want to change?” he asked, desperation dripping from his voice. I couldn’t tell him I didn’t want to change. He’d be devastated.

  “Of course! And you know what? I’m going to try. As a matter of fact, I have your daddy looking for something else that can make the things that bother me go away. But until we find it, this is just how it is, Paddy. I need that peace, honey.”

  I fed him a shit lie, and look what I lost.

  He left the room then. And I had to get Jackson to support that lie. He wasn’t looking for anything else. But I knew Patrick needed something to hold on to. And I wasn’t brave enough to make it the truth.

  I was a terrible mother.

  My children never knew what mother to expect, so they stopped expecting me to be anyone. In time, so did Jackson. I was “sick.” Minerva was the only one who truly understood.

  One night, while I was writhing in sweaty sheets trying to come off of a particularly long binge, she held me. I wouldn’t let her take the pains away. I wanted to punish myself.

  “But don’t you understand, Naomi? Whether you’re smoking the opium or coming off of it, the only thing you’re thinking about is opium. You have successfully saved yourself from ever actually thinking about your own life. Your longing, your fear, your magical ways.”

  “Well, then, what do you propose I do, O mystical Caretaker?” I spat at her.

  “I’ve never told you what to do, and I’m not starting now. I’m here to love you, not boss you, so I propose you do what you need to do to get by.”

  So I did.

  The night I died, Bronwyn’s words cut deep.

  We’d been arguing about Grant. I wasted so much time worrying about that boy when it was me who pushed her away. She still carries the words she said to me that night. She blames herself for my death. I know it now.

  I was on the stairs and she was walking out the door, ignoring my request that she stay home. Finally, I’d just muttered at her, “Do what you want. I’m tired of fighting with you and need to rest.” Rest is the word they all knew meant “I’m closing my bedroom doors and smoking myself into oblivion.”

  “Oh, poor you. Poor baby wanting a break from the voices in your head. I’m so sick of hearing about it!” she screamed as I walked back up the stairs. She had so much rage, and she was right to feel it. But back then I just wanted to be high. To get away from her. And I’d been clean for about two weeks, so I figured it was time.

  “That’s right! Run to your rooms!” she screamed. “Close those doors and don’t pay any attention to the world around you. And just so you know, while you’re up there I’ll be out on the boat fucking Grant. Do you hear me, Mama? Go get nice and high and I’ll be out making my own life miserable because that’s what you taught me to do. Sometimes I wish you’d just die already, so I wouldn’t keep worrying about it.”

  I knew she was lying. She was just saying that to hurt me.

  That’s when I realized what deep scars I’d created.

  She hated me. And with Jackson’s distance and Paddy’s fear, I understood I was more alone in Magnolia Creek than I’d ever been in Fairview.

  Was it an accidental overdose? I don’t think so. I think I knew I was making a decision to go to sleep for a very long time.

  I never thought Bronwyn would live with the guilt of my death on her conscience forever. That she’d run away and never come back. I was too selfish to realize that.

  If only I could find a way to tell her, I’d take the rightful blame. And wash her clean of all the dirt I’d buried her with since she was born. She choked on the earth I covered her with. But I never noticed.

  I told myself I’d never leave them. But I was gone all the time. You can’t leave anything if you were never present in the first place.

  Liar, liar, liar. Go to the funeral pyre.

  19

  Bronwyn

  Leaving Paddy would have been harder if I wasn’t so motivated to find Grant. Paddy’d be home in no time if we could cast doubt on the whole thing.

  Ben played down my theories and ideas in the car. Tried to stay calm.

  “Why are you trying to take this away from me?” I asked angrily.

  “Eyes on the road, Bronwyn, please.”

  “But answer me! I have a solid idea on how to get Paddy out of that place, and you keep telling me all the ways it might not work.”

  “I’m just trying to keep you from being disappointed if it doesn’t go the way you want. Dear God, do all the roads have seventy miles per hour speed limits down here? Makes everyone do ninety.”

  A few days before, I’d have loved that. Wanted it. Craved it. Keep me safe, clear-minded, clever, sober, and responsible. Yes, Ben. Do that. Make me drive slow.

  But not now.

  Coming into New Orleans, no matter which route you take, is always an experience. There is no other city on earth where you can measure a mile by district and be in such completely different worlds. One block the wrong way and it’s like another country all together.

  “I love it here. I used to come here and write,” he said.

  “You did? I never knew that.”

  “That pesky past of ours,” he said.

  I went straight to the French Quarter and parked in a lot near Bourbon Street.

  No matter how many times I visit that part of the city, I’m always amazed. The architecture alone is dizzying. And the people. Dear Lord. Everyone is happy in the French Quarter. Sure, they might be drunk, and maybe even miserable, but they’re happy nonetheless. Misery clings to those that are the happiest, it seems.

  “I always forget how beautiful it is,” said Ben.r />
  “Me, too. I wish I had my camera.”

  “We can get you a disposable,” he offered.

  I rolled my eyes at him.

  “What?” he said.

  “You really think I could take pictures like that? That’s like me telling you I can get you an old slate tablet for you to write on,” I said.

  He was quiet then. I don’t usually talk back to him like that.

  Silently, we walked past beautiful courtyards blooming over with plants and flowers. Abundance is the best word to describe New Orleans. Abundance of poverty, abundance of wealth. Abundance of fine music, food, and liquor. Abundance of history.

  I didn’t expect to find Grant at that bar on Bourbon where Stick sent us. I thought I’d leave a message and come back.

  But there he was.

  I could see him drying glasses through the open-air front of the Frosty Tooth. He wasn’t seventeen anymore, but even from a distance I could see that he looked just how I expected him to. Minus the stupid T-shirt that had the bar logo on it.

  It was the bar itself that surprised me more than Grant all grown up. It wasn’t a blues joint or a fancy place. It was a chain, a franchise, that seemed to sell mostly frozen drinks and Jell-O shots. A place that, in the old days, we would have avoided.

  He saw me at almost the same time I saw him. Shock washed over his face, but without hesitation he turned and yelled to his partner, “Take my shift, Angel. I got an old friend to see.”

  He hopped over the bar and grabbed me, picking me up off my feet and spinning me around as Ben took a step back.

  Grant.

  God, the memories I had of him. I’d loved him with no safety net.

  “Where you been all my life?’ he said. He slurred a little and it was only then that I realized he was drunk.

  “I thought you were bartending, not partaking,” I said.

  A shadow fell across his eyes. He had a quick temper that matched my own.

  “Yankee girl gonna be a monkey on my back, or do you wanna catch up proper? Lost your manners up north, I see.”

  Ben cleared his throat.

  Ben. Shit.

  He held his hand out politely to Grant, who shook it. Solidly.

  “Ben Mason,” he said.

  “Grant Masters.”

  They shook hands for a second too long and a touch too firm. A pissing contest.

  Men. I swear.

  “I’m a friend, from up north,” said Ben.

  “Must be nice.”

  “Look,” said Ben, “I’m going to go a few blocks over to Cafe Du Monde and get my fill of coffee and beignets. I don’t know when I’ll be back down this way again. And you guys can get caught up,”

  “You sure?” I asked.

  “Very,” he said, walking away.

  I turned my attention back to Grant. I knew the way to get to him was to be sweet as pie, so I smiled a big, warm smile. And for reasons only the heart can know, secretly slipped my ring off my finger and dropped it in the pocket of my jeans.

  “Do you have some time I could borrow, handsome? It’s been too long,” I said.

  That did the trick.

  “Come on in and I’ll get you a drink on the house. Still a bourbon girl?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. “Angel! Get me a Maker’s on the rocks. Make it two, okay?”

  “Sure thing,” she responded. When I glanced at her, I saw who I might have become if I’d followed Grant’s path. It was uncanny, the resemblance. Pale, with soft blond features. But she had her eyes outlined in black kohl and her hair was a mess. She was sexy in that goth kind of way and wearing a black ribbon around her neck, with tattoos inked up and down her arms. She hummed and twirled as she made our drinks, and then brought them out to where we were sitting at a dirty little glass-top table. She leaned into Grant as she put down his drink and he grabbed her ass.

  “Give me some sugar, you sexy thang,” he said.

  She leaned over and I could see her panties through the ripped black fishnets under her jean miniskirt.

  She kissed him. Long and hard. BitsyWyn would have punched her.

  Her lipstick left a bright red smear across his mouth that she unsuccessfully tried to wipe off.

  “I’m Angel,” she said, holding out a thin hand embellished with permanent black henna tattoos and chipped black polished nails.

  I shook her hand reluctantly. “Nice to meet you.”

  She smiled with cigarette-stained teeth. “You bet it is. Just so you know? He’s mine. I have his name tattooed on my ass and everything.”

  “Just so you know,” I replied, “you look just like me. Go check it out in the bathroom mirror the next time you need to get your fix of whatever drug you take that makes your eyes wiggle. You’re a poor man’s version of me, that’s all.”

  “What the … she’s crazy,” said Angel as she headed back to the bar.

  I wanted to slap my hand over my mouth. I couldn’t even believe I’d said that.

  “Shit. I’m sorry, Grant. That was about the bitchiest thing I’ve done since I’ve been back. Should I go apologize?”

  Grant lit a cigarette and pushed back his black hair, a little too long … but still shiny and gorgeous.

  Then he laughed.

  “Well, damn, girl. It’s good to see you. No worries here. I was scared you’d come back prissy and uptight. Guess I was wrong. Besides, she’s got six of me on the side anyway. And she lied about the tattoo.”

  Laughing, we looked at each other, and I swear that cloudy feeling I had around him when we were younger came right back. You’re in trouble, I thought.

  Grant took a long sip of his drink and offered me a cigarette. I took it, ready to inhale my teenage life.

  “She ain’t you, by the way.”

  “Nope. Me she ain’t.”

  Angel shot us a glare.

  “Let’s get out of here and walk these streets like in the old days, whaddaya say?” Grant winked.

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  He offered me his arm and we began our journey through the twisted back streets of the French Quarter. It’s a strange place, but not for reasons that visitors could ever define. Not because of drunks or ghosts or even voodoo. It has all that strangeness, but also something more.

  Each building in the French Quarter has a garden of sorts, as well as a stone alley that leads there. Some are private, but most are connected. So, if you explore behind the city, not just the facade, you get the real deal.

  Arm in arm with the man I’d lost my virginity to, who I was happy to see, and who I thought might have killed my best friend, as well as his own son, I couldn’t help but wonder about the strangeness of life.

  The human heart is a mysterious place. Love comes in all shapes and sizes, and I’d loved Grant. Hard.

  “You hungry?” he asked. “I think I need some food to soak up the liquor so you and I can have a proper conversation. They got the best muffaletta sandwiches down at the market.”

  “Better than your mama’s?” I asked.

  “No, nothin’s better than her cooking, but they’re close.”

  “Sure,” I said as we made our way through the streets to the market. Grant ordered and we found a table.

  The sandwiches were huge and stuffed full of imported meats and cheeses and sprinkled with pickled vegetables.

  “That’s better,” he said after he’d eaten about half of his in two bites. He wanted to be clearheaded for me. Which, coming from grown-up, drunk Grant, was a wonderful compliment.

  “Grant, I’m happy to see you. Maybe too happy … because I need to ask you a few questions that are going to be hard.”

  He sat back and sighed a little. Then went to his pocket for a smoke, but there were “No smoking” signs posted everywhere.

  “Can’t say I didn’t think this was comin’. But not here, okay? Let’s wrap these up and find somewhere quiet.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  It’s funny how patterns become talismans of comfort. Gra
nt and I were doing the most normal thing in the world. Having lunch, wrapping up the sandwiches, asking for a bag to carry them with. Only we fell back into a natural rhythm. I went for the bag as he condensed the food onto one plate. We’d done it a thousand times before. We were always impatient, yet mannerly. Thank you, may we have the check, a bag please, yes, no the food was fine …

  The fast retreat we made from the market felt more like a homecoming than anything else had so far. But I shouldn’t have been surprised, because Grant had always felt like home.

  As we walked, the smell of him damn well intoxicated me. Part of me just wanted to take him to bed. Do not pass Ben. Do not get Paddy out of Jail. Do not collect the truth. Just sink back into the past and luxuriate the days away with Grant. Even with his newfound rough-and-tumble exterior. Possibly because of it.

  Grant was all man now.

  We went into a quiet, public courtyard and sat on a bench at the base of a statue.

  He offered me another smoke.

  “No, I need to just say this,” I said. I had to get to the point or I’d never leave. “What I really want to know is what you were fighting with Charlotte about before she died. And why you left that crazy message on her answering machine after she’d died. And, well, what you were doin’ the night she was killed.”

  He laughed tightly. “Really? That’s why you came to see me? No ‘how you holdin’ up with Lottie dead?’ no ‘haven’t heard from you in fourteen years and how you been?’”

  “Or even,” I hesitated, “how do you feel about your son being missing?”

  Grant tensed up beside me.

  “Shit. You know. Who told you?”

  “No one had to. Well, Paddy and I sort of put it together today when I went to see him.”

  “You saw Paddy? Damn, how is he? I’ve been meaning to go, too. Really. I just … well … it’s hard.”

  I grabbed his hand and squeezed gently, “Do you think he did it, Grant?”

  “Hell no,” he said.

  “Did you?”

  “Dammit, Wyn! No. I could never—” His voice broke a bit.

  “So, will you help me then? Just answer a few questions. That’s all I need. We have to get him out of there, right?”