by Amber Foxx
Malba added two cloth bags to her purchases. “If I lived in Tylerton, I’d vote for Sallie, you know. Fine woman.”
“Thank you.” Mae doubted she sounded grateful enough. Malba now knew Breda was Sallie’s daughter-in-law. Was there any way to keep her from mentioning it? “I’m sure she’d value your support any way you can give it.”
“That’s kind of you. My ministry, you see, is a lot like Sallie Ridley’s politics.” Malba paid for her purchases, emptied the plastic bags into the cloth ones, and returned them to Arnie to put back under the counter for future use. “It’s all about nature.”
Leaving her bags on the counter, Malba turned to Mae. “Jesus, you know, was a healer.” Her voice took on the sing-song flow of preaching. “And God made the world with natural medicines in it.”
Arnie nodded. “Rhoda-Rae doesn’t see that, but Reverend Cherry is right.”
“When Jesus called me, I was walking through the herb gardens at my uncle’s farm, and the word of the Lord was so loud and clear, I heard Jesus telling the sick man to take up thy bed and walk, and I knew—this was my calling.” Malba looked into Mae's eyes for a moment of silence, then turned to Arnie, dropping her church voice, and said, “These are what you been using. Still doing you good?”
“Yes indeed, Reverend Cherry. A world of good.” He came out from behind his counter and took out his wallet, handing Malba a ten-dollar bill, and picked up the two bags from the check-writing stand. He handed them to Mae.
She read the cards.
Reverend Malba Cherry, Church of Jesus Christ the Healer, Doctor of Naturopathy. Her shop’s address and phone number followed, with a verse of scripture describing one of Christ’s acts of healing.
If Arnie knew what else this preacher woman was up to, he wouldn’t buy from her. Mae didn’t want to blackmail Malba, but there had to be a way to make sure they both agreed on not telling anyone about each other’s roles in Virginia Beach.
Handing the herbs back to Arnie, Mae said, “I’m gonna walk out for a minute with Reverend Cherry. I’ll be right back to go to lunch with you.”
“Take your time. Sharon still has ten minutes on her break.” He put the herbs in his back pocket and smiled. “It’s good to see you want to talk to a preacher, Mae.” He sounded touched, as if Mae might finally have some interest in his faith. “And this is a woman of God, I tell you. She has the Lord’s ear when she prays.”
Trash blew across the parking lot. One car, followed by two more, pulled in, and several large people got out of each to go into the store. Across the street at the Ford dealership, salesmen wandered the lot under waving banners and a flapping American flag. A few blocks to the left of the car dealer’s stood the brown house with the big deck where Belle had hidden. Every time Mae saw it, she remembered.
Malba hung both bags on one arm while she fished in her prim little purse for her keys. “What you want to talk about?”
“About us knowing about each other up at the Beach.”
“So?” Malba pressed a key remote and a black Cadillac directly in front of the store blinked in reply, its doors unlocking. She double-pressed the remote and the Caddy’s trunk unlatched. “What about it?”
Bargaining felt wrong, but Mae couldn’t think what else to say. “I won’t say anything about you being Maloo the voodoo woman if you won’t tell anyone I’m Breda the psychic.”
Lifting the lid all the way, Malba placed her bags inside the trunk and closed it firmly. She said, “Honey, I’m sure you’d never tell that to Arnie, no matter what I said about you. You love your step-daddy. And he's doing so good with my herbs. Look at him. Got some pep in his step, got a smile on his face, took off a little weight. You wouldn’t want him to stop using them, would you?”
“I don’t know. What’s he taking? How do I know it’s safe for him?”
“Ginseng root from up in the mountains. Good for his blood sugar and his energy. St. John’s Wort from Otis Cherry’s greenhouse. Good for his moods. You can look those up. So long as he’s not on any medications, Arnie can take these fine.”
“How’d you talk him into it? Mama hates stuff like this.”
“I let him know I pray over these herbs, to make these plants stronger. You don’t get that in some plastic bottle in a big store. There’s more to my ministry than plants.”
Mae couldn’t hide her disbelief. “What? Like having the Lord’s ear?”
“You think I don’t? I told Arnie I’d pray for his promotion, and look, he got it.”
Mae doubted God listened to Malba more than anyone else. “I think you threw the bones and saw it.”
“And I should tell your step-daddy that?”
Mae felt confused. Did she have anything at all she could use to keep Malba from talking about her? “I could tell him.”
“Here’s what you tell him. You tell Arnie to watch his game show tonight and keep an eye out for his good luck. And that I’m praying for him. I know how much he wants that trip, to take your mama somewhere nice.”
“You saying he’s gonna win it?”
“I’m praying that he does.” Malba smiled as she opened her car door. “And he will—so don’t you talk bad about me. I’m doing Arnie good, and you know it.” She settled into the Caddy’s driver’s seat, placing her purse on the passenger seat, and buckled her seat belt. Hand on the door handle, expression serious now, she looked at Mae and shook her head. “But I can’t pray your bad luck away. That ankle? It’s just getting started.”
Malba shut her door and drove away.
“Mama doesn’t know you take those herbs, does she?” Mae asked
Although she and Arnie had gotten the salad bar, the smell of the other food at Chik’n Buffet greased the air and seemed to drop an oily sheen into the tea as Arnie dumped a little dose of each herb into the hot water in his mug.
“No.” He resealed the bags and slipped them into his back pocket. “She still thinks anything that’s not from a drug store is quackery. Even if God’s hand is on it.”
“Are you and she getting on all right? She’s gotta notice you’re looking good.”
“I’ve got a long way to go, but thank you for noticing. I lost ten pounds. Need to take off another fifty.” He cut his salad with a knife and dipped a forkful into a blob of dressing on his bread plate, next to a slice of unbuttered bread. “I’m afraid your mother notices the fifty, not the ten.”
“Does she know Ms. Cherry prays for you?”
“She does. Malba used to be a nurse with her, you know, before she got her calling, and I think they got on pretty well, for your mother and a black woman, anyway. Rhoda-Rae says she’s glad someone has the patience to pray for me, because she’s about given up.”
If Malba had been a nurse, it might be why she knew so much about herbs. No—her card said Doctor of Naturopathy. And she must have gone to divinity school, too. That was a lot of education for a country woman still living around here. Three credentials and she still played voodoo woman. Hard to make sense of that. She didn’t share that role with people like Arnie who respected her as a minister and an herbalist, but Malba must have thrown the bones and seen Arnie winning the trip, like “praying” for his promotion.
“If you won that trip on Wheel of Fortune, maybe Mama would be nicer to you.”
“Maybe. I hope so. Funny, you know I’ve actually forgotten to watch a few times, been taking walks when the weather’s nice in the evenings.”
“Take your walk after the show. You’re gonna win—” A splash of ice water and a cry of dismay interrupted her as a server with a water pitcher tripped on the cane. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” Mae said.
The short, stout woman with the empty pitcher apologized, too, and laid the cane across the seat of an empty chair. She looked down at Mae’s wrapped ankle with a sympathetic cluck, then at her dripping sweater. “I got you all wet.”
“I’m just glad you didn’t fall. Don’t need two of us hurt.”
“I’m fine, honey. But l
et me get you a towel.” The server bustled away, and Mae assessed her dampness. A dripping sound drew her attention—water leaking out the bottom of her purse as it hung on the back of her chair. The fake leather held the water like a plastic bag except for this slow drip through the corner near a seam. “Shoot.”
Arnie offered her a few napkins while they waited for the towel, and Mae dipped the napkins into her purse. Hopeless. It was full up past her wrist. She drew out her soggy wallet and cell phone and put them on the table. Touched a few phone keys. Nothing. Dead.
“Due for a new one free on your contract?” Arnie asked.
“No. I wish.”
The server appeared with several white towels, all slightly stained and disagreeably stiff to touch. Mae thanked her, stuffed one into her purse to soak up the water, and Arnie stood and began to press another towel along Mae’s back.
“Oh, not your phone,” said the server. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. You tripped on my cane.”
“Honestly, honey, first your ankle and now your phone. You sure are having a run of bad luck.”
Was there really such a thing as bad luck? At home, as Mae hung her purse wrong side out on the back porch railing and laid her sweater beside it, she realized the railing felt loose. She knelt and checked it. How had neither she nor Hubert noticed? The whole thing was getting soft and rotten. But this had to be normal decay, not more bad luck. Some part of this old place was always falling apart.
The only good thing about living here was that she could go out somewhere pretty and quiet her mind—and she needed to. She felt like she’d been hexed.
Careful not to turn her ankle again in the spring-soft earth, Mae walked through her backyard to the edge of the windbreak, a thin patch of trees between Ronnie’s fields. The ground was firmer here, though littered with broken branches in heaps of old leaves and pine needles. Along the edge of the bare brown field, deer had left their little pointed tracks and wild daffodils brightened the greening edges of the woods. Further away, Mae could see something small and white. Privilege was out and about, doing his job on mouse patrol, fully recovered.
Finding a fallen tree towards the end of the windbreak, Mae sat, put up her leg, and lay back on the moss-furred trunk. It was an old tree-fall that she rested on, probably went down in Floyd, the storm that had made the bad luck of northeastern North Carolina famous. Above her, the tips of the living trees made subtle circling movements against the sky, and a cardinal’s bright red flashed from branch to branch as it sang its “pretty birdie” call. Another bird’s song sounded like an off-key wedding march, another a little like a cell phone ringing.
Bad luck. Everything reminded her of it. Was there anything Mae could do to prevent it? Malba said there wasn’t.
A meow drew her attention. Privilege trotted up, rubbed against her left leg. She reached down to pet him, and he purred. His back and his eyebrow area looked great, no sign of being bitten or clawed, and he walked so you’d never know which paw had been hurt. Amazing—he'd looked so awful, lying on that grave a couple of months ago, like he was the one that was going to die.
Mae felt a chill. Her twenty-seventh birthday was coming soon, early April. Elizabeth Andrews Tyler Ridley. Died at twenty-six. Now that would be one heck of a stroke of bad luck.
Chapter Fifteen
Re-plaster the living room. Shore up the kitchen floor. Insulate the attic. Put in solar hot water. Replace the porch railing. Replace the furnace. Replace the whole house.
“It’s getting more expensive than paying rent or a mortgage.” Mae sighed, putting her pencil down and leaning her head in hands. Hubert reached across the kitchen table and took one of her hands away, to make her look at him instead of the exhausting list of projects and expenses.
“But once we finally get it fixed up, we’re set for life. It’s just a rough patch, that’s all. For us and the house.” He smiled, played with her hand. “Gets smoother already next week.”
Mae was about to start her job. But now that they were calculating how her income would fit into their lives, it wasn't as exciting any more. The work itself still was, but not the money, not after seeing how it would get swallowed up by this sinkhole of a house.
Mae reviewed the list again. “I’d like to be able to save something. The young’uns have got to go to college someday. They’re not getting stuck like I did.”
“You’re not stuck. What are you talking about? You just got a real job, got your certification. You’re getting somewhere.”
“But I never got an education. We need to do more for them. We still need more money.”
“You’re not thinking about going back to that psychic reading thing are you? I know the money was good, but—well, you know what I think.” Hubert stood up, walked over to the stove, and refilled the kettle from the filter pitcher. “You want more tea?”
“Thanks. And no, I’m not going back to Healing Balance. I hope we’re not that hard up. Deborah’s still asking once in a while, though, begging me to at least do summer.”
“Don’t do it. I heard Joe saying something to Buddy—we don’t need money that bad.”
“What now?”
Getting fresh herbal tea bags from a box in the cabinet, Hubert said, “He said you’d seen him in a crystal ball. Go figure. I don’t know where he got that from.”
Only Malba knew she used crystals in her work. “He got it from Malba Cherry. She works at Healing Balance herself—not with a crystal ball, though. She does this African act with throwing little carved bones and telling your future.”
Hubert turned round. “You got to be kidding. Otis’s niece? She’s all over church lady.”
“I’m not kidding. She calls herself Maloo and tells fortunes.”
“But the Cherries are Mama’s biggest asset. Otis and his family are about the last people not to sell out to some big agribusiness company. They’re working with my folks on setting up a farmers’ market in Cauwetska or Windsor, maybe both.”
“What’s that got to do with Malba talking about me?”
“It means you can’t go saying that about Malba. I know that little herb shop of hers doesn’t look like much, but it’s a foot in the door for local farming, even if she does get some of her stuff from other parts of the state. We can’t get in bad with that family. There are Cherries in Tylerton and they’d vote for Mama because Otis would tell them to. And so would Malba.”
“Well, I’ve still got to get Malba to stop talking about me, even if I can’t talk about her.”
The kettle whistled. Hubert turned off the stove and poured the water onto the teabags. “I should be buying her tea,” he said to himself as he set the kettle on a cool burner and turned around to look at Mae. “It’s too late. She’s already talked to Joe. At least you quit doing that stuff, so it can’t get worse.”
Two days later, shortly after Mae passed the Ridley farm on her way to Cauwetska, a police car appeared in her rearview mirror. Knowing she was under the speed limit, she felt bewildered when the lights flashed, but she pulled over. Not a good time to get pulled. She was due at Health Quest at ten a.m. for employee orientation, and then she would have her first client at one.
Yolanda Cherry strolled up to Mae’s car, and Mae rolled down the window. “Hey, Yolanda. What’d I do? I was going slow.”
“Expired tags. I seen ’em around town a couple of times and let you go, thinking you’d get to it, but I had to pull you this time.”
“I never got the reminder from the state.”
“Talk to Jerry about your mail. Sorry. I got to give you a ticket. Need to see your license and registration.” Yolanda’s tone was friendly, almost regretful. “You can always go to court and try to fight the ticket if Jerry put your mail in someone else’s box.”
Frustrated, Mae handed Yolanda her license and registration, took her new phone out of her purse, and looked up Jen’s number at Health Quest to explain why she’d be running late. It bothered her to look
unprofessional to Hubert’s old girlfriend, even if he hadn’t dated Jen long or seriously. Jen’s voice mail answered. Of course. She’d be getting things set up for the orientation. Why should she be glued to her phone just because Mae wanted to talk to her? She left her message and hung up. What a way to start work. Late.
Something going on in the police car seemed to take forever. Probably they had to check some database of criminals to see if Mae was one of them. She looked at her watch. Looked out the window and wished she had left earlier. Might have missed Yolanda, been early for work.
After a tormenting wait, the policewoman came back, handed Mae a clipboard with the citation, explained what it meant, pointed out the court date, and where to sign. Mae looked at the fine. It was like buying another phone. More bad luck. At least her ankle hadn’t cost money. She handed back the clipboard, and Yolanda tore off Mae's copy and gave it to her.
“I’d’ve thought you’d see the whole thing coming,” Yolanda said with a grin, “being psychic and all.”
“I don’t see the future.” But your cousin Malba does. Saw my bad luck and you’re part of it.
“I got to tell you something.” Yolanda’s smile faded, and she stepped closer to the window. “This isn’t me talking as a cop, Mae.” The words came across more like a warning than anything she’d said in her professional role. “This is just some good advice.”
“Advice?”
“If you hadn’t seen Mack out in the woods like that, known where he was, I wouldn’t put much stock in what I’m hearing—but folks at church and around, they’re saying you do some spooky stuff, putting curses on people, witching Ronnie’s cat onto that grave and showing it to him all bloody, maybe even that you witched Mack out there to die and changed your mind.”
“Curses? That’s the craziest ... I want to say stupidest ... I mean, you can’t believe that.”
“Ronnie’s your mother-in-law’s opposition, right? And you and Mack sure didn’t end too peacefully. Like I said, I wouldn’t put much stock in it. I don’t think you’d do anything bad ...” She looked at Mae with a small frown. “But you know how some folks think. See the devil in everything.”