“You see,” said Ethan, “Everything is going to be okay.”
“I hope so,” said Zelma, “though I still fear I’ve waited too late. My time is short, you know. I really feel that.”
“I hope you live a long time,” said Ethan.
“You’re such a wonderful boy. I’m so glad we’ve met.”
“Me too,” said Ethan, and he really was. “How old is this house, by the way?”
“I’m not sure, but it was built well before Flintridge.”
“Wow, that is old,” said Ethan. “Can we go inside?”
“Yes, of course.”
Ethan assisted her into the house through the open door. There was a long staircase, a landing halfway up, in the front hallway. Birds were singing from somewhere on the second floor. Vines clung to many of the walls and were making their way across the ceilings, having climbed through windows with broken glass. On each side of the main hallway were two large rooms, both rooms having a mantled fireplace. Zelma walked around for a moment, sighing repeatedly as she examined the interior, then sat down on an empire sofa with faded green upholstery, the only piece of furniture in the hallway. There were, in fact, only a few pieces of furniture in the entire house. Ethan sat down beside her.
Zelma laughed a short, thoughtful laugh and said, “You know, it upset me terribly when I first saw the condition of this house, in ruins and forgotten, the vines of the earth reclaiming it. And for a moment I felt superior in some way, like a strong healthy mother overseeing her sick child, knowing that I must protect and save it. But I realize now that I was looking in a mirror. This house is what I, and my life, have become. Money can revive this building of manmade materials, make it like new again, but what about the ruins of my life? All the money in the world can’t put my life back together and make me young again.
“It’s the joy and sorrow of living and being human, I guess. We’re given the gift of life, of growing and experiencing new and wonderful things, then we have to watch it all fade away. Life is strong and robust when we’re young. As time passes, everything we know and love becomes increasingly brittle, like an old and yellowed newspaper, so easily crumbled and blown away by the wind. I hope that not all of my life is carried away and forgotten. I hope you will listen to the things I tell you and take something from it, if only a few bricks. If so, maybe my life will have meant something, will live on in some way. I don’t know why that’s important to me, but it is.”
“I know I’ll remember you and the fascinating stories of your life.”
“It’s so wonderful to hear you say that,” said Zelma, wiping a tear from her eye with a handkerchief. “I’m sorry I’m so emotional today. I knew I would be, but seeing the state of this place has upset me greatly.”
“I would love it if you told me more about Mittie. Of course, if it don’t make you too sad.”
“Yes, certainly,” said Zelma. “I want to tell you the story whether it upsets me or not. I feel I need to tell it. I’m just going to swallow my tears and charge forward.
“I believe the last time we talked Horace was beating on the front door of Flintridge. Yes, that’s where we left off. I knew something was terribly wrong when I looked out the window and saw him riding his horse up the driveway. I ran down the stairs, feeling weak and at the point of fainting, and swung the door open.
“‘I need your father and some of the servants,’ Horace said, ‘There’s been an accident. Mittie has fallen down the stairs.’
“‘Oh, dear,’ I said, bursting into tears. I turned to go find my father, but Brother Charles, as we called him, had walked up behind me by that time and said he would immediately fetch my father and brothers from the field.
“We called him Brother Charles because he preached at the little African church up the road from here called Icy Sink. I’ll add, I attended that little church many times with Ester. It was always a wonderful service. Brother Charles had been with my family for many years, and my father paid him well compared to the rest of the servants, said the house would be lost without him. Brother Charles’ mother and father had stayed on after the War, for wages of course, and he had been born and raised there.
“There was a large bell on a post beside the kitchen. Back then the kitchen was in that cabin behind the house. I rang the bell repeatedly and alerted everyone on the farm, while Brother Charles fetched my father and brothers. They all road horseback to Mittie’s, and Ester drove my stepmother and me in a carriage. That was a few years before motor vehicles came along. It was difficult for women to ride a horse with those cumbersome long dresses we wore at the time.
“Mittie was pale and didn’t appear to be breathing by the time my stepmother, Ester, and I got there. Horace had moved her to a couch in the front parlor, the room you see over here to the right of the stairs. I can’t tell you how it ripped my heart out to see her lifeless body lying there. I can almost see her now. I cried profusely until I nearly passed out, and my father insisted I be removed from the scene. Ester accompanied me home, and I went straight to bed, crying until I drifted off to sleep.
“I awoke that evening to learn that the doctor had pronounced Mittie dead. The nap having revived my energy and strength, I convinced Father that I would be okay to sit with Mittie’s body that night, as was the tradition to do when someone passed. I’ve always heard that this was to guard against cats trying to consume the corpse. This was an issue in those days because during the warm months people always kept their windows open, having no such thing as air conditioning. Though Ester was terrified of being in the presence of a dead body, she insisted on sitting up with me.
“It was a long and horrible night. Horace stayed upstairs and never came down. I believed he was too grief stricken to do otherwise. After Ester and I stopped all the clocks and covered up all the mirrors, we passed the rest of the night by preparing Mittie’s body for the funeral, which was to be held the next day at noon. She was covered in bruises; I figured from the fall. After powdering her face heavily, covering up the bruises, I fixed her hair the way she liked to wear it. Together with the help of Ester and Mittie’s housekeeper, Rachel, we managed to dress Mittie in the most beautiful dress I could find in her wardrobe: a dark blue lacey affair. Next we tied a cloth around her head to keep her mouth closed. Ester then placed nickels over her eyes, insisting that a corpse whose eyes are left open would find someone to take with them.
“It was one of the worse experiences of my life, that whole awful thing, but I somehow got through it. If you live long enough, you’ll find that some days are as black as coal, best locked away, learned from, but locked away so far back in the back of your mind that their clawed fingers can never clasp and destroy your sanity.”
“I’m not very old,” said Ethan, “but I know what you mean. The days after my father died were some pretty dark days. I think I’d go crazy if I dwelled on it all the time. I try not to, at least.”
The two sat silently for a moment, both deep in their own thoughts. Ethan broke the silence by asking, “So what happened at the funeral?”
“The next morning the undertaker from Russellville came to pick up Mittie. Her body was placed inside a wooden coffin and loaded into a fancy horse-drawn hearse. The hearse was decorated with carved cherubs and had curtained windows, making the coffin visible from the outside. It was quite a spectacular-looking vehicle that I’d not seen before, nor since. After watching the hearse slowly carry Mittie away down the long driveway, we rode a carriage home to rest and prepare for the funeral.
“I attempted to take a nap but couldn’t, so I walked to the kitchen behind the house, and Ester fixed me fried eggs and strong coffee. She hadn’t been able to sleep either. After talking solemnly, almost reverently, we went upstairs, and Ester helped me put on my best black dress. It may seem ridiculous now days to have someone help you dress, but the clothes women of society wore in those days were so cumbersome that assistance was almost a necessity. The dresses some of these women wear today don’t have enough material to hav
e made a good scarf in my day.
“When the time came, Ester, Father, Stepmother, my two brothers, and I climbed into the family’s Landau carriage, and Brother Charles drove us to the Catholic Church in Russellville. I learned from Ester that Father had suggested that Brother Charles preach the funeral at Icy Sink, but Horace vehemently refused. It’s a shame because I knew that Mittie would have wanted it that way. She and I had so enjoyed attending services at Icy Sink together. Brother Charles’ preaching seemed so much more spirited and meaningful than the Catholic mass. As it was, Brother Charles and Ester, along with Mittie’s servants, sat in the Catholic Church’s balcony, because that’s how things were in those days. My family and I sat in the front with Horace. The Dranes weren’t from around here and hadn’t yet made many connections, so we were the closest thing to family in attendance.
“Even though I had certainly never been fond of Horace, I was feeling rather sorry for him as the funeral began. He looked lost, just staring down at the floor. I was wishing there was something I could do to comfort him.
“It was that day that I learned a terrible truth: having the gift is a double edge sword. It turns my heart cold to this day when I think about it.”
“Why, what happened?” asked Ethan, wiping sweat from his brow.
“Once the priest had finished speaking, and the organ began to play a sad hymnal, Horace walked up to the coffin and held his head down crying. We stayed seated for the moment, giving him a chance to be alone with Mittie before she would be carried away to the cemetery. I felt terrible for Horace, even though I knew he hadn’t been the best husband. I stood up suddenly, feeling compelled to go and comfort him in his grief.
“Then that’s when it happened, hitting me like a bolt of lightning, like the lightning that had struck me and my poor dog all those years ago.”
“When what happened?”
“As I stood up, I dropped my hymn book, and it thumped loudly as it hit the wooden floor. Horace reflexively turned his head in the direction of the noise, and our eyes locked. I nearly fainted as an overwhelming feeling of terror flooded my whole body. His eyes were like coals of fire that I felt sure would cause me to burst into flames. In his eyes I saw everything, everything that had taken place that horrible night. I heard Mittie crying as Horace slapped and hit her, and I heard her final scream when Horace pushed her down the stairs. I could feel her fear as she realized that she had truly married a monster, that her time on earth was finished. I felt her pain as her body tumbled roughly down to the foyer. Then everything went dark, like the flicking off of a light switch, and I passed out, falling to the floor.
“Recovering quickly, as those around me shook me awake, I ran out of the church crying. I was too upset to go to the cemetery. Everyone thought it was because I was too grief stricken to go, and I let them think that. Ester tried to comfort me, but I was inconsolable. At her insistence, she drove me to my cousins’ house, and I went to bed, sleeping until the next morning when she came back to my room to check on me. She put her arms around me, and I cried like I’d never cried before. Just having her there was a great comfort to me, and because of her I found the strength to get dressed and meet the day. It was the first day of my life as a much wiser and worldly woman. Yes, I have considered myself a woman from that day forward.”
Ethan and Zelma jumped a bit as a crow flew in the open doorway, landed on the newel post of the stairway, and cawed loudly.
“That crow about gave me a heart attack,” said Ethan, “especially at that part of your story.”
Zelma laughed nervously and said, “I speak of death and a crow arrives. What smart creatures they are. They don’t forget, you know, and they pass their memories on to their children, so to speak. You should never harm or kill a crow, or you will have made enemies for a lifetime, something else I learned from Ester.”
“That one seems pretty angry. Crows can be kind of scary, I think.”
“It’s such a strange thing to see that crow,” said Zelma. “Mittie used to feed the birds, but there was one bird in-particular she was very fond of: a black crow. She would talk to the crow sometimes, and it would caw in response, almost as though it understood her words. The crow would get very close to her, but it would always fly away if she tried to touch it. I remember so often sitting outside with Mittie while she talked to the creature, amazed at how intelligent it seemed.
“After the unfortunate incident with Mittie, the crow flew around here for days, cawing angrily. It was almost frightening to hear it. It’s like it knew there was something amiss with Mittie’s so-called accident. The strangest thing is how it treated Horace after that. I actually saw it fly into Horace’s head. He swatted it hard, injuring it, I think.”
“That’s amazing,” said Ethan. “I wonder if this crow could be one of that crow’s descendants.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me at all.”
The crow cawed loudly another time then flew out a window.
“That was pretty amazing,” said Ethan, “having that crow fly in here like that.”
“Yes it really was,” said Zelma.
“Is that the whole story about Mittie?”
“No, I wish it was, but I haven’t told you the worst part yet. I’m not sure I’m strong enough to tell you the worst part, the part that nearly drove me mad.”
“Please, I hope you can,” said Ethan. “I’ve just got to know what happened now.”
“You’re right. I’ve come this far. If telling this long buried story again drives me insane, then so be it. I’ve had more good years than most, anyway.
“Something wasn’t right with Ester that next morning. She hardly said a word as she helped me get dressed for the day. As I mentioned earlier, back then we used to wear the most uncomfortable clothes you can imagine, and Ester’s had to assist me with tucking and pulling everything into the right place.
“‘What’s wrong with you this morning,’ I asked her. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
“‘Oh, Zelma, wish I did see a ghost this morning instead of what I saw. Zelma, we need to kneel down and pray right this minute. We need to pray for that poor Mittie. Pray that she’s made it to Heaven.’
“‘You’re not making any sense,’ I said. ‘Mittie’s gone. There’s nothing we can do for her now. What did you see this morning that has you so upset?’
“‘I’m afraid they may have done buried the poor woman alive,’ she said. ‘Oh, it’s too horrible to bear. I hope it ain’t so.’ With that she buried her face in a handkerchief and started crying.
“‘Now stop this nonsense,’ I said. ‘What gives you such a crazy idea?’
“‘I’m not crazy,’ she said. ‘As I was walking past the cemetery this morning on my way here, I noticed Mittie’s dog standing over her grave digging. I walked up to the dog, and he commenced to barking like he was trying to tell me something, like he could hear Mittie down in there crying for help. Dogs got very strong hearing, can hear a cat’s footsteps a mile away. Well, he just kept digging and looking over at me for help. They’ve done buried that girl alive. The more I think of it, I know for sure they did.’
“‘If this is true,’ I said, ‘Why didn’t you tell someone?’
“‘I did, Miss Zelma,’ she said. ‘That’s why I was late getting here. You know I’m never late. I stopped over and told that Mr. Horace what I saw. I’d be too ashamed to repeat the awful things he said to me. Why, if I were to repeat such things, they’d lock the door in my face when I tried to get into Heaven.’
“‘This is just horrible,’ I said. ‘We’ve got to go do something We’ve got to find out for sure, or my mind will never rest again.’
“‘Maybe if you go with me we can convince him together that something needs to be done,’ she said. ‘But we better bring some backup, don’t want to get shot.’
“‘No, I said, ‘There’s something I need to tell you about why I left the church early.’ I told Ester about what I had felt and saw during the funeral
service.
“‘Oh, Zelma,’ she said, ‘my daddy always did say there was a curse upon that old house. He said the people who lived there years ago were so mean, their slaves got together and killed them all in their sleep one night. Oh, what an evil place. I know now my daddy weren’t just telling a story. We’ve got to do something to help that poor woman.’
“‘If Mr. Drane won’t do anything about it, we’ll get my father to help,’ I said. ‘Run outside, ring the bell, and alert everyone. I’m going to find Father. We can’t rest until we’ve rescued Mittie.’”
“Man,” said Ethan, “this is giving me the chills. It would be horrible to wake up in a coffin.”
“Yes,” said Zelma, “Today, thank goodness, if you’re not dead already, the mortician will finish you off during the embalming process. Back in those days, at least out here in the country, didn’t very many people get embalmed. If you looked dead for very long, they put you in the ground.”
“Glad I didn’t live back then,” said Ethan, “as heavy as I sleep.”
“I feel that we are in a grave now,” said Zelma, standing up and walking slowly about the room. “Time can be so cruel. This house was so immaculate when I was a young woman, all cluttered with beautiful things. Someone has even removed the chandeliers. And there were oriental rugs that dressed up these barren wood floors. It’s as though vultures have come and picked the bones clean. People try so hard to hold onto things, but eventually time devours all.
“There used to be a music box sitting on a marble-top table between these two windows. I say a music box, but it was really so much more. It was a glass dome with a little monkey inside. I would always beg Mittie to wind it for me, afraid to touch it myself. The monkey was dressed like an artist, with a little artist’s hat, and he was holding a tiny paintbrush, and was standing in front of a small painting. When wound, music would play, and the monkey would move about and appear to paint. It has never ceased to fascinate me. I have never seen anything like it before or since.”
A Million Doorways Page 12