“No. You’re not imaging.” The little girl said. “And don’t worry with Maw Sue—she’ll have her say, for sure.” She acted upset, as if Maw Sue would revenge me for taking the necklace, causing her death. But how could I blame her? It was my fault. I’ve prayed for forgiveness for years but could not get it. The memory came to my mind, as if the little girl made me remember.
A few weeks after Maw Sue’s death I fulfilled ever last one of Lena Hart’s nightmares. Well, let’s just say I was a little carbon copy of a crazy Maw Sue, except in teenage form. I was unable to get out of bed, just a zombie staring at the ceiling. The Mason jar on my nightstand began to spin like a carnival ride. Suddenly the room came alive with petal people. My bed began to jerk and I heard a loud thumping noise underneath. The mirror bin. I jumped up and rolled to the floor. The bin was bouncing up and down, the same way it did, the night I stole the necklace. It hit the metal frame underneath. I reached in and pulled it out. The mirror on top threw out a prism of illumination until the whole room lit up in flares. I looked into the reflective mirror and it showed me horrendous white faces, those awful, terrible Dresden’s that scare me to death. Instead of fear, all I could think about was opening the mirror bin and getting the red stone out. I had crazy delusions that I could bring Maw Sue back to life with it, like some resurrection stone. In my head, I’d go to the cemetery, present the stone at her gravesite and she’d forgive me, come back to life and all would be well with the world. She’d go back to rubbing that stupid stone and soothing her mind. I’d go back to sitting at her feet and listening to her stories, in order to soothe my troubled soul. Life would be normal again, our normal. Maw Sue was my stone. A crazy, wild stone but she soothed me unlike no one else. Papa Hart runs a close second. Her presence gave me comfort, her stories kept me level and mildly productive but when she died—it was if she took it away, leaving me to rot in my sickening, twisted mind while the stone sat inside the mirror bin locked away. I had simply given up on ever getting it open. It has been underneath my bed ever since so why is it suddenly coming to life? In one simple courageous move, I unlatched the lid and flipped it open. The surge of power inside threw me backwards into my closet and bounced the bin across the floor, reclosing the lid. The sound was so loud I was sure my parents would run in any second. I waited until I was positive they wouldn’t show up and then I crawled back to the bin and carefully opened the lid. No impact this time, just an eerie quietness that disturbed me. My eyes glaze over as I look at the contents. Laying on top of a folded piece of paper was the red stone necklace. The paper was the poem, Seven.
“It’s not your fault Willodean.” Maw Sue’s voice says. It is coming from a sifted stir amongst the inside of the mirror bin like rustling leaves in fall. “It’s the curse. But all is well now. The necklace is yours as it was meant to be all along.”
Just hearing it broke me. I screamed. I cried. Afterwards, her voice disappeared and I never heard it again, not until the tree climbing incident at my parent’s. Everything after that is a blur as if I purposely erased it. I have no idea what happened to the mirror bin, the stone necklace or my life after that.
I came back to myself. I’m staring into the wild pink rose that spins and twirls and is held by tiny hands. I realize the little girl’s finger is bleeding. I look down at mine, and it is matching each drip of her blood, identical heartbeats pulsating and surging together but in different eras.
“Yeah. You’re me. I’m you.” She says. “It’s all that. Now can we move on?” Her voice was flustered and cocky as if she was glad to be in charge. I was still in shock trying to find place. It was a bit overwhelming. I could not take my eyes off the small persona of myself, a body and soul I didn’t quite recognize.
“So…now that you’ve acknowledged my existence, gosh almighty and Lord tarnation, you are a stubborn shit. I thought I was going to be stuck inside that room, inside that damn house forever. It’s about time you listened to me and let me out.” She wiped the damp sweat from her face and pulled her hair off her neck.
She fanned her hands on her face. “God, I forgot how hot it gets here.” She fidgeted a little. “Anyway, back to business.” She used her hands to talk and motioned her words. “You know Maw Sue said seekers work out their own journey, you know, this, that and the other, ultimately, it’s your own choice and all, ‘cause he don’t force you to do nothing but I think we both know what you need to do, huh?”
“No…uhhh.” I said afraid, confused. “I don’t know what to do.”
She leaned forward and drew my eyes to hers. “I encourage you to go forward and by encourage, I mean you don’t have a choice, not really, unless you want to remain stuck and circle the freaking mountain of stuck for the rest of your life. But no matter what—I tell you this much, I’M NOT going back to that room—not the house. It ain’t happening, you hear? Oh, and when I say you must go forward, I really mean you have to go backwards to sort some things out. It’s that backwards crawfishing thing.”
She laughed. “You’ll figure it out. Seekers have to seek. Yeah…I know, I sound like an Ancient Sage don’t I?” She nodded her head as if I would agree with her but I had no idea what she was referring to. “But hey, your great grandmother knew some things about the ancients, your kin folks. She might have been locomotive half the time, but she knew some stuff, for sure and her most important subject was you. Did you know that? She wanted to guide you Willodean. She knew the calling on your life. A seeker must grow and change. Remember what she always said…”
She looked at me as if I would remember but I didn’t.
“Faith and fingertips. Come on. Remember? Devenio! Devenio! Devenio!”
Her words were like a glitter bomb of fairy dust. I look into the void, I look at the gap between the fingers, I remember the painting, the story behind it.
“Reach—reach—reach. Remember that?”
Reach—reach—reach. The words repeat themselves and fill up the spaces in my head. My hands lift up in auto response, responding to some force outside myself, as if my own precarious childhood was in reach of my own grasp, touchable, a finger-tip away. I feel immense pain surging through me like a rod touching electricity but I keep reaching, I don’t flinch, I don’t turn back. I reach until I touch the house inside me, the tender, fragile places. It takes my breath away. Reach, reach, reach.
My whole life has been about reaching, trying to touch the fingertip, looking for answers, looking for faith, looking for love, looking for peace to rest my soul, rest my mind, settle the house of shadows inside me, of me, for me—to reach a pinnacle of sanity, of meaning, to receive that which I longed for, from heaven, a crumb of desire, of hope, of something to fill that wide, despairing void that drives me crazy, that place of in-betweens, that space between my finger and God’s, the gap that splits me in two and makes me half a person looking for the whole. Make me Seven, Make me Seven.
Devenio! Devenio! Devenio! The childlike voice inside me cries and reaches outward. My vision is altered in and out from past to present, images of time flashing in and out and then gone. I am left with her. Alone with her. It fuels me. Inflames me. Her. The little girl who is perched atop my dead grandfather’s casket. I realize how awful it is for her to be sitting there. Disrespectful. I snapped like a purple hull pea in Lena Hart’s pea shelling hands.
“Get down from there.” I spat and pointed with my bloody finger. “Have you no respect? It’s his casket, for God’s sakes.”
“Willodean. Pssshhhttt!” She said unaffected. Her eyes rolled in my familiar circle. I saw a mirror to myself, expressions, and mannerisms acted out right in front of me. She stared right through the walls of the house inside of me and outside of me. I hated that I could hide nothing from her.
“You know as well as I do that Papa Hart wouldn’t care. Hell—he’s still throwing a hissy fit about all the money forked out for this polished tree trunk.” She tapped the casket a few times. “Three thousand dollars? Mercy. He is fit to be tied, I tell y
a.” She grinned awkwardly.
“Have you went too-adult on me Willodean? Too grown-up? Are you offended? Have you forgotten all you’ve learned? He’s not here—He’s not here. Straight up!” She pointed to the sky and my heart dropped. Everything and I mean everything, details, memories, stories, past, present, back then, right now, all of it became crystal clear as if I hadn’t acknowledged anything was real until this very second. This very moment. Gut punched with the gift and the curse, I felt betrayed as if an intimate moment between me and my grandfather had been stolen away by some bratty insignificant child imposter.
“Oh, come on Willodean.” She said mocking me. “I’m you. You’re me—if you’ll just get out of your own head and listen to me and quit jip—jiving so much, you might learn a thing or two. Gah, what happened to your sense of humor? You used to be pretty funny and light-hearted. I mean, sheez, quit trying to figure it all out. You’re so freaking serious. Uptight as Lena drip-drip Hart. Stoooop it. Chill out.”
Hearing this inflamed me more. I am not Lena Hart. I am nothing like Lena Hart. She spun around on the casket as if she was on a merry go round. A scream lodged in my throat refusing to come out.
“You can’t run. You can’t deny the magical mysterious undeniable things that are presented to you. It’s part of your gift, Willodean. It’s part of you. And besides, God won’t let you. If you’re truly a seeker and we both know you are. We are. Us. Me and you. You and me. So…just accept me for who I am. All of me. All of you. The good and the bad.” She paused and bit her lip. My heart felt jabbed inside me, a knife from an unknown hand. She flinched. I flinched. Her face fell sodden as if she knew more than she could tell me. A blank line simmered between us, me trying to find the words to put there and her avoiding my stare. What is she hiding?
“Oh, I’m not hiding anything.” She said looking back to answer me. “You need to accept me. Simply as that.” What is she talking about? Accept me, accept her. I thought I already done that. The unknowing made me panic limb to limb. I want to run to the shadows Amodgians, to the familiar, my uncomfortable comfort. Run to the rooms inside the house where I don’t have to feel, or confront or deal with anything. I want to—but I can’t seem to move. A force is against me, preventing me, and it’s different than before.
“You don’t believe me do you?” She said. Before I could open my mouth, she tossed the dried pink rose at me and slid off the casket like it was a playground slide. The back of my legs burned and my flesh squealed. I reached outward to catch the rose and in the distance before it landed in my hand, I saw Maw Sue’s face in the petals.
“Why are you doing this?” I said screaming. The little girl leaned on the casket and crossed her arms. Her face was attitude and disbelief.
“You’re me.” She said pointing at me and then back to herself.
“I don’t understand. I’m a grown ass woman. Is this really happening? How do I know it’s really happening? It could be the madness—you know—the house inside me, the shadows trying to make me stay. And for all I know you could be helping them to make me crazy. Huh? How do I know you’re not just my imagination, my sickness, my crazy?” My voice was shrill and tempered in surges of pain. I was tipping over. My fingers loosened their grip on the pink rose and it tumbled to the ground. It was happening. I could feel it—inside me—going to the place of no return. It was her fault. All her fault. Anger fueled me. And she was the object of my anger, my pain. She is the reason I am in this mess. I jerked my spike heels out of the dirt and lunged at her. I was on her level, nose to nose, my mouth spilling out expletives and pointing my fingers. I have no idea what all I said—it came out to quickly, to mad, to inflamed and hurt. And then my eyes wedged with hers—and it stilled me. I saw what I hadn’t seen before. A place of hurt, softness and vulnerability inside her eyes. On instinct, I wanted to touch her cheeks and hug her and tell her everything would be alright. But how could I? It was a lie. It wasn’t alright. The world wasn’t okay. Our eyes transfixed, one to another, one light and one dark, both in some tragic battle with each other, and our worlds, hers and mine, each reflecting their own tragic stories, me to her, her to me, us, ours…
And then I heard my voice. I was screaming, “Tell me! Tell me what you know. I need to know. Just make this stop. I hate being this way. I hate it. I hate you. Just stop it! All of it. Just do it.”
While I lashed out, she touched my cheek in the way I wanted to touch hers but couldn’t. Her lips never moved but my gifted ears heard her speak and it was not at all what I wanted to hear. “Willodean. It will never stop. Every gift has a curse attached and it is irrevocable. It will not stop. But…you are given the courage and the where with all to endure it. Transfer it to your advantage. You are a Pugnator and that’s what Pugnators do. They fight! They engage and fight for what is theirs. That is what Maw Sue was trying to teach you, to channel it for good. The dark, the light, all of it. So, quit trying to run from it. Quit trying to deny it. This is your cross to bear. Yours and yours alone. Only you can make it what it is meant to be. It is inside you. But know this much—” she paused, “It is a choice of will. You have to do it yourself. Go your own journey. Those before you will go with you too. Is it hard? Yes. Grueling. But you are a survivor Willodean. It takes being so sick of where you are—that you will endure whatever it takes to get to the next level of your life. It takes being so worn out of being in pain that you will face the pain, in order to remove it. I cannot make you understand that. It is something that you have to learn from your own heart.”
There was a long drawn out silence in what I heard and what I wanted to believe. My heart grew heavy. I thought I’d break into a million busted stars and moons at the foot of the casket.
“Look for crumbs Willodean.” She said turning away. Her hands lifted towards the sky. “Use the gift. Reach—reach—reach.” My right hand lifted in some childlike auto response mechanism. Make me seven—make me seven. Whispers filled the gap between my ears. A hard resistance fought me internally and externally. I feel them. Shadows emerge from the house to keep me complacent. The girl turned towards me, until we were facing each other, our hands lifted in front of each other. Her hands reached for mine. Devenio! Devenio! Devenio! My ears filled with sounds. A thousand voices, hers, mine, Maw Sue’s, Papa Hart’s, Jesus, apostles, prophets, the Marie Antoinette God, voices from the graves. Voices, many voices. Anyone who had ever spoke those words in the past, were now speaking them again, in unison, across time and death, across family lines, and ages, centuries, generations, all speaking to form a cosmic intervention, inside me and outside me. Beyond me.
My fingers and the little girl’s fingers touch at the peak of the shrill voices. A bolt of electricity shot through me. I fell slowly forward and emerged inside a thick fog, falling without control, I lost my balance and mobility. I went right through the little girl, her figure a transparent apparition, like seeing my own reflection in glass, of me, of her, of us, all tangled up. In my mind, I saw it slowly happen again and again as if I had to soak up each detail for what it was, and what it meant. Step by step, second by second, the world I know, the world I seek, the shadows that hunt me, the child I hate, and the child I love. I reach, we touch, we merge together, her visions, my visions, my fears, her courage, her fears, my weakness, our vows, our faults, our good, our bad, sweet sap, bitter sap, southern sap, bleeding and healing, dripping from wild roses, voices from Mason jars, speaking, talking, shouting, and telling twisted tales. And then a shuddering silence covers me. My mind at rest. My madness stilled. A peaceful calm. I’m not sure how long I stayed in this relaxing, floating on a river mode of being. Perhaps I was dead, and this is how it felt. Such peace. Such quiet.
When I came to—I was ever bit alive and on my knees in front of the casket. The little girl is gone. I am alone. Everything was different. Everything was the same. It was reminiscent of the day I climbed out the window and rescued the crackle. But today, I crossed a line in the sand, stepped over, entered a realm,
then fell back to earth, never to return to where I was. Or how I was. And now all my lines were erased. Tick—tock. Tick—tock. I hear the clock and the president scream his battle call. “Forward!”
“You’re a pugnator.” Ms. Blanche says in my mind.
No I’m not. No I’m not. I find myself inside the house, inside the many rooms, one to another, running and hiding, running. I am spinning with half pieces of me and the little girl, all shambles, trying to find place, to fit, to mold, to be.
“Make me seven. Make me seven.” The little girls says while she runs behind me, in front of me, beside me. Everywhere I am—she is. It’s like one of those fun houses at carnivals, mirrors everywhere, distorted reflections. I run from her, room to room. I go up and down the spiraling staircases of threes, leap over the three moons, a glistening reflection underneath the night sky, a thousand blinking stars. I wander past the forest of wondering trees growing one after another, their branches entangled and shaking hands. I slip away to the darkness of the rooms, to hide, but each time, she flips on a light or sneaks up behind me, exposing all that is me, all that is her, all that is us. The unseen is seen. The hidden is out of hiding. The secrets are whispered. I bolt and continue to run, zig-zagging through the many hallways, past the many doors with copper nameplates, past the door with a thousand hands reaching, and groping. I don’t know what I’m running from. I just run. I need to get out, just get out of the house. But how? The doors are locked, the windows locked, all is locked.
In the turmoil, I am frantic and run smack dab into her. The little girl locks her arms around my waist forcing me to feel her thoughts and pain, wicked, light and dark.
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