“Willodean.” Death whispered its familiar wretched voice. The hair on the back of my neck stands up. I gulp down the lump in my throat and feel the hard knot in my stomach. Ripples of panic vibrate on my skin. “Willodean.” Death howled. I felt a stinging pinch on my arm. I turn to scream but come face to face with Mag.
“Snap out of it Willodean.” She said. “Mom’s gonna cart you outta here in a damn paddy wagon. Do I need to take your somewhere until you get a freaking grip? What the hell.” I hesitated and glanced around. What was I doing? Whatever it was, it was enough to alarm Mag.
“I’m okay.” I said. Denial mode. Pretend—I'm—not—crazy—mode. Willodean is just like everyone else mode. The madness doesn’t exist mode. The curse never happened mode. Our family is just fine mode. The pink elephant is not real mode. It’s all my imagination mode.
And then I snapped. “I’m just upset by all this Maggie. God.” I lied partially. Not the whole truth but close enough. She wouldn’t understand anyway. “I’m gonna miss him so much. Ya know…it won’t be the same. Can’t I just grieve my own way without someone thinking I’m losing it? I am crazy. Okay? A part of me is messed up. I can’t help it. You know that Maggie. Hell, Lena is dishing out fruit by the barrel but I can’t act a little off without someone freaking out? What tha hell, right back at ‘cha.”
Mag’s eyes went round and whitish. She gave me a hush. There was tinkering coming from the kitchen. Then nothing. We sat in the bitter silence we had grown accustomed too, on the second generation rug that held us together, sister to sister, child to adult, and adult to child in the house that built us, the home that molded us, while the scent of the death cobblers and fried pies told us our end.
We were adults. We were kids. We were lost. We were found. We were crazy. We were sane. Papa Hart’s death stirred up terrible memories of Maw Sue’s death, something I didn’t expect to happen. How it affected me for worse, dark things I had forgotten, until now. When she left, I lost it. She left me all alone with the secrets and the gifts and the curses that I didn’t know how to channel, how to use to my benefit or others. Worse than that, I was alone with the secrets. I had no one to tell. God I missed her then. I miss her now. And now, Papa Hart is gone. The end of an era. The end of me. Besides my parents, he was the last connection to my childhood. Realizing this broke me on so many levels. “I miss him so much.” I wept and fell into a blubbering mess. The loneliness I felt as a child, isolated and different, crept through my veins, black blood carrying me to dark places. A nameless horror emerged that I could not look at and on impulse, a child clinging to what it knows, I reached across the rug and grabbed Mag’s hand. As kids, when the world around us crumbled or something terrible happened in our midst—we were tangled vines clinging to each other, scared, frightened and fearful of consequences, fearful of our future, fearful of growing up and becoming those kind of adults.
Neither of us could bear the pain of losing Papa Hart alone, so we squeezed our fingers, passing it in grips back and forth between us. As much as I struggled with the house inside me, the horrors of my own mind, my sister Mag had her issues as well, although I couldn’t tell you what they were. We didn’t’ share like that. There was always an anomaly of silence and secrets between us. I was an isolated child but Mag refused to talk. She was like the pebble you carry in your pocket. It’s there, you can feel it, rub on it but it doesn’t speak, it carries secrets in the hard stone—merely existing, heavy and polished, shiny but silent.
As kids, Mag would creep into my room at night, half asleep, cradling her pillow and blanket and careful not to wake me which she wasn’t too good at. I knew she was there the whole time. She’d nuzzle up to me and in order to sleep, she’d have to touch me somewhere, either a foot, or toe wiggle, or a hand on my back. Simply someone to hold in case the world spun out of control. A hand to keep her tethered to earth, to each other. Tangled vines.
Hand to hand, blue to blue, our eyes meeting in the realm, acknowledging secrets kept, things known and unknown. I squeeze her hand tighter. In that moment of vulnerability, on the second generation rug, we were two kids again, just needing simple protection from the world around us. I thought about the crackles and how I didn’t want to grow up, how I was right about the pain, the adults. And now I was one of them. Being an adult squeezes the life out of a person and crushes the child within. Crushes the fragile shell, the tunnel digging hands, the magical heart. It kills the innocent imaginative qualities that should remain with us, regardless of age. It dulls our ears and clouds our vision, just like Maw Sue said it would. We live out life as sleepers, accepting but never receiving. It was precisely what Maw Sue was trying to teach me all along. How to keep the childlike heart within an adult shell and keep the magic and mystery of the world—without getting lost—in it.
I felt a tug on my hand. Mag had fat squalls of her namesake running down her highly manicured face. It wasn’t a catastrophic storm but it was a flood.
“Dang it Willodean." She jerked her hand away. “You broke my nail.” Her faucet of tears shut off instantly without a drip but it wasn't because of her stupid nail.
“What?” I waited for her classic move to render its torrential rain. I expected the box of pictures to rise up and scatter across the room, then Mag would rattle off an eccentric fabricated story of wild tornadoes or flying frogs. But it didn't happen. That was long, long ago. Mag wore a mask, just like I wore a mask.
“I can't believe you broke my nail.” She whined and held her precious pink nail like a wounded bird. It was like she couldn't function in society without that nail.
“In your dreams.” I said sarcastically.
“You did.” She said lip tight and glaring. “Do you know how much a manicure cost? My God. Now I’ll have to go back to the salon.”
“You practically live in the salon. Glue it back with Elmer’s. I bet dad has some you can use. Oh...is that not good enough?”
“It’s the principal of it.” Mag said pale faced and pissed. Her foundation was spotted with black mascara.
“They’re so fake.” I rolled my eyes. “How do you do anything with those claws?
Mag went silent and stealth. She paced and pranced. A red herring tactical diversion was necessary to avoid real life emotions. Mag couldn’t lose—in games, nor in life. Both of us emotionally cripple, similar but different. She couldn’t confront life when it hit her square in the face. Emotions rendered her undone. She had reached the hairline crack of her soul. We learned about this crack when we were little. Maw Sue told us that everyone had one and when they reach it—there is no returning. Mag’s line was emotion. She built her own storm shelter inside and nothing, and I mean nothing was getting inside those walls. If anything got close—Mag could not and would not let it cross over or she’d break. Forever break. And God forbid, no-one can see Mag when she is undone, or broken. No-one. Not even me. Sometimes I think she carries as many burdens of the mind as I do, inside rooms, inside her own constructed house. Her gifts, her curses. Her secrets.
Mag gave me a turn-to-dust look and strutted towards the kitchen. I laughed but inside the house, inside me, I wondered what made her this way. What horrible-terrible changed Mag’s view of the world and was it the same as mine?
Calvary Catawba
Calvary Catawba was Maw Sue’s pet cemetery. Two distinct crosses marked its existence in her back yard. KERNEL and the other, MORSEL. Ridiculous names if you ask me. All I could think of is the Holiday Inn buffet bar on All-you-can-eat Sundays where they mark the food with labels as if we couldn’t tell the difference between CORN and BUTTERBEANS or ROAST BEEF or CHICKEN. I mean, if you can’t tell what the food is by looking at it—and it has to have a label, then chances are you better not eat it. That’s my thinking.
Morsel was a stray hound that showed up on her porch one day, brittle bones and starving. She fed him and instead of eating like a savage, he was finicky, as if he was raised in a castle among kings and queens. From hearing Maw Sue talk,
he acted like he had been hanging around my royal sister Mag. He ate in refined, slow, tiny bites, one morsel at a time and that’s how the namesake stuck. He had a sniffer on him that could track a rabbit twenty miles away. Bad thing is he’d disappear for weeks at a time. Folk said they seen him clear across town with his nose to the ground. Maw Sue just said he was a pugnater in dog form, a fighter all the way. Nose to the grind. When he decided to do something, he followed through all the way until the end, up until he died. Then, when it was time, after he’d been gone two weeks straight, he just showed up on the back porch, ate his last meal, one fine bite at a time, took a grateful rubbing down from Maw Sue and then laid down and never woke up again.
“Follow though.” Maw Sue said. “It’s what makes a fighter, a fighter. All the way to the end a pugnator has the heart to follow through, right up till their last breath.”
“Willodean—Mag.” She said looking at us weepy and serious. “We should all be like that stupid dog. Follow through. Finish the task we’re given. Then, when it’s time—go home, eat and die. You know…simple as that. Live life on purpose, go home, eat and die.” Of course, this story always led to the next story which explains the other cross on Calvary Catawba.
“How did you end up with a parrot in the first place?” Who has a bird as a pet?” I asked curious-like the first time I heard about it. Maw Sue said it just happened that way. She was on the porch shucking a bushel of corn and humming, “Nothing but the blood of Jesus” when he swept in with his colorful feathers and landed in a pile of corn cobs. He looked at her. She looked at him. At first she thought she might be hallucinating. But she wasn't. He was real. A live parrot. He flew off a few minutes later, but everyday he’d come back. She’d throw him corn cobs and other scraps and he’d peck for days. She told the family she had found a parrot and tried endlessly to teach him to talk without success. The family thought she had finally lost her mind and simply seeing Mockingbirds or Blue Jays. Until…the day Papa Hart misplaced his tire iron. He remembered seeing one in her shed, so he was rummaging around in there and heard Maw Sue talking on the porch but he didn’t see anyone with her.
“Who you talking to old woman?” He hollered from the shed door. “Ghosts?”
“Kernel. My parrot.” Maw Sue said with a growl. She gave him the belladonna stare which according to Maw Sue meant none of your damn business. Belladonna was an herbal remedy used to make a woman’s eyes more beautiful but the side effect was that it was also poisonous and could kill you.
“A parrot? Crazy woman.” Papa Hart said shaking his head. Before he turned a shadow of something jumped across the porch.
“Sonsabitches!” He yelled unable to find more appropriate words.
“Sonsabitches! Sonsabitches!” The parrot said spontaneously. Maw Sue nearly fell out of her chair. “Sonsabitches! Sonsabitches!” He said over and over flapping his wings outward. Well, that did it for Maw Sue. It was the Hatfield’s and McCoy’s all over again. Maw Sue threw a stem winding hissy fit. She’d been trying to get that bird to talk for months without success and now Papa Hart done went and stole her thunder. Papa Hart laughed so hard he had to sit down on the porch steps. Before he walked off he said, “Well Susannah Josephine Worrell. All these years I thought you was plum crazy—turns out you might have seen Jesus on the rooftop after all.”
Maw Sue fumed. Papa Hart laughed and threw up his hand shushing her away.
“Sonsabitches! Sonsabitches!” Kernel said over and over.
“Shut up you stupid Parrot.” Maw Sue screamed. She chased him off the porch with a broom until he flew up in the Catawba tree. She held a grudge against Papa Hart because she never could get that parrot to say anything else. The parrot did have his benefits, however as they’d soon find out.
Tessy Pearson, the town gossip stopped by to visit, way too many times for Maw Sue’s taste. On her regular Thursday evening stop, she sat on Maw Sue’s back porch babbling and trying to pull out gossip so she’d had enough to spread it all over town. Maw Sue never gave in to her prying tactics anyway but she could never shut Tessy up. Maw Sue’s ears were hurting with the insistent banter of her blah-blah voice when she eyed Kernel in the Catawba tree. Tessy rambled while Maw Sue moseyed over to the paper bag beside the washing machine and grabbed a corn cob and tossed it on the porch floor.
“Are you feeding squirrels Susannah?” Tessie said distracted from her tittle tattle.
“Why no Tessie. You haven’t met Kernel, have you?”
“Kernel? You naming the squirrels now, Susannah?” Tessie’s voice was self-righteous and mocking. The same monotone she uses when she thinks the other person could use some straightening out.
“You have way too much time on your hands. I swear you need to come back to the women—of—the—rock bible study on Wednesday Susannah. Make some friends or something. The way you live is just, well, just, you know, you could use some godly advice.”
Maw Sue gnarled under her breath. The last thing she needed was a hen house full of do-goody women who put themselves high on the saint list of no wrongs while they pointed out everyone's sins. Maw Sue knew the good book better than anyone. Fanatics like Tessy Pearson got under her skin like no others. Of course, nothing stopped Tessy from jip-japping, and she was right back on cue, yacking with the two ton bible in her lap she called the rod of justice which she frequently used to whack people in the head. An angel of mercy swept in. Except it wasn't an angel, it was Kernel. He was like a 747 landing low. In one clean sweep, Kernel flew over Tessie’s bouffant hairdo, his wingspan wide and buoyant, his claws stretched outward to land dead center on the corn cob. Tessy howled, lost her balance and tipped over backwards. Her feet went spread eagle, her slip etched up around her thighs making her pink girdle an eyesore. The rod of justice catapulted through the air and off the porch and landed with a wrath of thunder. Tessy was flabbergasted and rolled over like a beached whale, her beehive sideways like a one horned goat. She sat up tussled. “Whaaat...what in tarnation was that?” And then she realized it was still there, strutting across the porch and heading straight for her. “
Oh, my Lawd in heavens. Git. Git it away from me...git you…you beast.” Tessy skidded across the porch on her pink eyesore and leaned against the moaning freezer. She shushed and shushed the bird, scared to death. Kernel did a few beast of burden struts. It seemed Tessy was an intruder he didn't recognize and she had hoarded in on his corn cob and he didn’t like it one bit.
“Sonsabitches! Sonsabitches!” He said pecking the cob. Maw Sue laughed so hard she nearly choked on her snuff.
“Well I never…You, you and that, that bird need lessons on taming. It’s as wild as you.” Tessy huffed and snorted. She eyed her rod of justice sitting in the grass a few feet from the steps. She got up, adjusted her skirt, lopped her horn hair to the top and marched down the steps like Jericho was around the corner. She scooped up her rod of justice and stormed off.
“Tessy…” Maw Sue said patting her heart. “Just so you know…God has always been in this house. Right here.” She pat her heart a few times. “And you are the most gossiping woman I have ever met. The only thing that needs taming is your tongue.” She gave Maw Sue a bewildered stare, upturned her nose, crammed herself in her Ford four door and left in hail and brimstone. For the first time, Tessy’s tongue was tied. Maw Sue fell out laughing and Kernel got a double helping of corn cobs. And the best part—Tessy never came back.
Kernel died three years later. She found him lying on the dirt mound beneath the Catawba tree. It seemed he’d just fallen off the branch, right into his burial spot beside the cross of Morsel. I was only two years old when he was around so I don't remember him but Maw Sue keeps his memories alive by the stories she tells.
“I can’t eat corn without thinking of that stupid parrot.” Maw Sue said tearfully. “Man is responsible for the animals it tames, girls.” She said explaining the errors of man. “Someone tamed that parrot and either let it go carelessly or it flew away on its own, w
anting to be free of a cage, I suspect. I mean, how would you like to live in a cage if you had wings and were meant to fly?” Maw Sue thought all creatures should be left in their wild state as God created them to be, including mankind. “And if that’s the case,” she said gritting her teeth, “I don’t blame it for escaping.” She ended her point by spitting on the ground like she always did. It was her period. Her exclamation mark. I loved hearing stories like this.
When Maw Sue ran out of stories, I had to entertain myself. Pine Log wasn't exactly the muse of festivity so I wandered the blackberry trail. My hands were stained a bright purple but it was a small price to pay for deliciousness. I picked the blackberries fresh off the vine, and threw them in a bowl of milk, with a tablespoon of sugar and had a feast. Mag was gone again, chasing money, or rich folk, and Lena was in her kitchen cave creating the latest and greatest new recipe from Betty Crocker. Dad was in the tinker shop overhauling a tractor motor. I guzzled a glass of water and headed to Maw Sue’s to fiddle around outside. Maybe I could conjure up another story or two from Maw Sue. I was halfway down the old dirt trail when I noticed an unfamiliar car parked in the driveway. What if Tessy had returned? I had only met her once at the church potluck supper but heard her throughout the entire sermon. If AMENS could get someone to Heaven, then Tessy has it down pat. Almost every sentence Preacher Lester spoke, Tessy would shout “Amen.” And sometimes, she’d be so filled with the Holy Spirit she’d jump up and lift her hand and scream, “Yess...Preach it Lawd, Preach it to the sinners. AMEN.” Maw Sue referred to this section of the church as the AMEN section. She sat as far away from it as she could. And all she wanted Tessy to do was shut up so she could hear the preacher but shutting Tessy up would be considered a miracle.
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