Beloved Mother

by Laura Hunter

  Julie tugged at Lily’s shorts. “Where they taking Eli?” she whimpered.

  Lily whirled around and said aloud, “Hush, Julie.”

  A dark face appeared at the door. “Okay now, go on. Get out of here. Girls and kids ain’t allowed,” he snapped. He leaned against the doorframe and swallowed a long drink from his beer. “You heard O’Mary.”

  Lily straightened her back. “What’s his cat look like?”

  “How do I know?” The miner bent down so close she felt his spit on her cheek. “Get out of here, girlie.” A miner in the dusky room laughed. “Scat.”

  Lily looked around the smoky room. In the far corner stood Briar Slocomb in his long pale duster, flat against the wall. He glared at Lily from under his long hair.

  Julie snatched Lily’s hand. “C’mon, Lily.”

  Lily broke away from Slocomb’s stare. Julie pulled her back down Town Street toward the miners’ monument and home.

  The dream came on fast and spiraled itself into Lily’s long-term memory. When it showed itself, Lily flailed and kicked, knotting the sheet around her legs.

  O’Mary’s Bar emerged in shades of grey. Men sat three to a table, their beers clustered in the center of the round as if they waited to break a fast. Every miner resembled every other miner, their heads low under metal hardhats. No carbide lamplights glowed. Lily could see no eyes, but she felt their eyes move across her skin.

  In unison, one miner at each table reached to the floor and brought up a tin dinner bucket. They removed the lid and took out a white bread sandwich wrapped in opaque paper. Lily looked around the room and noticed that each sandwich had a cat’s tail hanging out of the paper fold. The miners opened their mouths to take a bite. Lily screamed, but no sound came out.

  From the center of the room, Eli hung from a rafter, his white hair glowing like a lamp, its globe dingy with soot. She expected him to spin as he did when she saw him through the window, but he didn’t. She tried to call to him, but something large and viscous clogged her throat.

  Back at the tables, miners worked their mouths as if talking, but Lily heard nothing but um, um, um, as if swarms of flies had invaded the bar. No one noticed Eli.

  The unreliability of dreams dropped her on a riverbank. She sat on a place higher than any she had ever seen. An open brown paper bag floated downstream. A cat’s head, its eyes, ears and two front paws rested on one side of the sack. The cat smiled, as if he were enjoying a Sunday afternoon boat ride.

  Eli hung above her from a tree limb. He mouthed, “Get the cat.”

  A miner clothed in black stood on the far bank. His carbide lamp glowed a hazy golden circle that cut through a curtain of darkness. The dark, solidifying more into wall than curtain, stopped before reaching the other side. The miner stayed but a moment, looking for all the world more Cyclops than human, then vanished, taking his light with him.

  Lily slid on her butt toward rushing water, through mud that appeared just before she reached it, brown sticky mud where moments ago soft grass had been. When she hit the water, she knew she was peeing, but the water said, “We are akin, so I don’t mind.” On the bank, Uktena watched and swayed approval.

  The cat floated close. As Lily opened her bladder, the cat slapped Lily’s cheek hard with a paw. Lily cried out against the cut.

  Julie rocked the bed and moved away from Lily. “Ew. Ew.” Once her feet smacked the floor, she yelled, “Mama, Lily peed on me!”

  Sunday morning, Julie’s father drove Lily to Boone Station and let her out. He never killed the car’s motor.

  Eli did not come back to school. For a time, Covington remembered him as being no more than a shadow, someone no one could describe. With the passage of years, he became invisible. So no one noticed on the morning, two weeks before his seventeenth birthday, when he walked out of Covington, carrying a burlap bag, headed northwest.

  Chapter 26

  After Mr. Hudson dropped Lily off and drove away, Lily found Anna inside in a chair. Her mother’s white face and loosened hair terrified her. She screamed out to Mr. Hudson, but he was gone. She shook Anna’s shoulders, trying to waken her, but Anna’s head only lolled in a circle as her eyes rolled toward the ceiling.

  Lily wept. Her mama was dead. And dead while she was gone to play at Julie Hudson’s house. Lily cried until she hiccupped. She filled a glass with water from the bucket and sat down next to her mother. She set the glass on the crack between the two wide planks that made the table. The glass tipped and water spilled over Anna’s arms and into her lap. Anna roused.

  Lily squealed, “Oh, Mama, I thought you were dead!”

  “Help me up. To the bed.”

  Lily could barely hear her mama, her voice was so weak. While Anna rose, bracing herself on the table, Lily pulled the chair out of the way. Dried blood coated the chair seat. The back of Anna’s dress was red with new blood.

  Lily gasped.

  “Go for Granny Slocomb,” Anna said.

  Lily ran. She ached for the wings of a great black bird to carry her up the grade to Flatland for help.

  Few days passed without a trip to Flatland for medicine for Anna. As winter approached, the daylight lessened but the symptoms strengthened. Lily no longer went to Covington for school. Each day Lily climbed the path. Rattler never appeared, and Lily saw no improvement in her mother. The days found Lily with tears on her face from the worry. She wondered if the medicines were worth the trip, but Kee Granny’s church compensated for Lily’s anxiety.

  Kee Granny’s church held strange things: canned tomatoes crowded on a wooden shelf, a shotgun taller than Lily herself, so many empty bottles Lily could not count, herbs and blooms hanging like harvested tobacco from pegs Kee had nailed out from the walls.

  Mountain physician, Granny Slocomb came each time with her black leather valise bulging with snuff cans of plants she had ground and refused to identify. Her woven pine basket had long ago deteriorated. Her worn bag still tied her to Jackson Slocomb, not Beloved Mother, but it was what she had. The granny asked Lily to boil up a pot of water when needed. Granny stirred powdered greens and browns into the bubbling water until she had a drink that resembled thin mud. Once the drink cooled, Lily held Anna’s head while the granny coaxed her to drink a glass, sometimes spoon by spoon. Anna gagged and fought the granny, alternating from grabbing her head to pushing the granny’s hand away.

  There were times when Kee Granny stayed, sleeping on the porch even in mid-winter, until Anna came closer to being herself. Lily once counted Granny’s doctoring to take six days, before it brought Anna back.

  Anna awakened with numbness in her right side. She howled with pain in the back of her head that moved to her forehead. Lily’s footpath from Boone Station to Granny’s church up the hill hollowed out deeper and deeper. When the attacks came every two weeks, Granny brought her gourd rattle. Dry beans inside swished like dying leaves resisting the need to fall. Lily sat against the far wall and wondered if this rattling sounded like what Rattler might. After the gourds failed, the granny added a little rabbit-hopping dance at the foot of the bed to each visit.

  With each treatment, Lily saw her mother lose more and more of who she was. When Anna awoke from Granny’s different brews, she was more disoriented. She called for people, some Lily knew little of. People like Ruth, Anna’s sister in Covington. Juanita in Breakline who had visited with her son, Jason. Gladys. Lily knew no Gladys. Winston. She knew no Winston. And Gabe. Anna never called to Clint. Lily wondered why, since her parents had been married eight years when her daddy was killed.

  Anna had insisted on doing her part when out of bed. But she was no longer out of bed for days at a time. It was as if someone had opened a plug in the bottom of Anna’s feet and let her spirit drain out, taking her lifeblood with it.

  The school truck no longer stopped for Lily. Lily could no longer leave Anna alone.

  A year after the day she had come home from spending the weekend with the Hudsons, the month of the Harvest Moon once again
, Lily stepped out to gather firewood and looked toward the heavens. There above the shake roof hovered a pale, pale mist. Lily considered telling Kee Granny, but a second of uncertainty destroyed the thought when she heard her mother call.

  Anna uttered a tentative call. “Lily?” She called louder. “Lily, come in here.”

  Lily kicked the door open, her arms laden with hewn fireplace logs. “What do you…” Seeing fresh blood on the floor, Lily stood rigid. “Mama?” She let the logs fall, each hitting the floor with its own thump.

  Sticky blood had created a puddle on the plank flooring beneath Anna. Her knees wilted when the metallic smell hit her nostrils. She fell into the nearest chair, catching as it tilted backwards. “Don’t talk. Get the granny.”

  Lily gawked at the crimson that eddied as it tried to seep between the boards. But it stayed, trapped by a burl on the floor. “I can’t leave you.” Lily had never seen so much blood.

  “Go, girl. Now.”

  Lily raised her voice in fright. “But what…”

  “Go and go now. I need a granny.” Anna bent over as if she had a sharp pain in her belly.

  Lily ran out, leaving the heavy door ajar.

  Lily passed her eleventh birthday with no one noticing. With Anna ailing more month by month, Lily laid quarter after quarter on Kee Granny’s worktable. Lily had climbed the rise to buy herbs for Anna’s vomiting, headaches, and cramps, and for bleeding coming more often and more freely each time. Lately the bleeding had put Anna in bed, but never as much blood as today’s.

  Maybe she should talk to Gabe. He wanted them to move to Covington, but Lily knew no one in Covington. She only knew Juanita and Seth White in Breakline. They couldn’t live in a camp for miners. Lily would ask Kee Granny for a double dose.

  At the church, Lily opened the door. “Kee? Kee Granny? It’s me.” Lily stepped in. “Mama’s bad. A lot of blood.” Lily licked her dry lips and held her breath. “Maybe she needs a double dose?”

  “Give me a minute to mix it up.” The granny snapped off a puffy green plant. She broke off three pointed blades and squeezed out the juice. It turned black against the air as it covered the bottom of a chipped crockery saucer. Granny asked Lily to bring peppercorns from across the room.

  Jars, each filled with red, green, or black liquids, crowded the shelves. Plant blossoms, some dried, some fresh, hung from the boards along the wall. Empty jars, dusty with age, cluttered the floor beneath the shelves. The room had not changed since Lily had seen it years before.

  A whiff of mint and black pepper teased Lily’s hunger. Lily remembered there was nothing cooked to feed her mother. She handed the granny a jar of black peppercorns and moved to inspect a branch near the window. Its green sepals held a cluster of firm berries. Black berries with tiny points at the top, more blueberry than black. Lily reached to pluck a berry.

  “Leave that be, girl.” The granny spoke with her back to Lily.

  Lily shifted her eyes sideways. How could Kee Granny know she had almost touched the berry?

  After mashing the peppercorns into the liquid with her pestle, Kee Granny spooned the concoction into a small jar and tightened the lid. “Give it to her slow. Some when you get home. Some at daybreak.”

  “Have I seen this before? What is it?” Lily asked. She swirled the brew around inside the jar, eyeing it to see if it would separate.

  “Do what I say. Ain’t no mind what it is.”

  “Can’t you come with me?” Lily said. “To see about Mama.”

  “No. This is what she gets.” Granny grabbed Lily’s hand to stop her swirling the potion. “If you’re going to be a Beloved Mother, you got to learn to do what you’re told.”

  Reluctantly, Lily put her quarter on Kee Granny’s table and followed the trail back down Turtleback. Maybe she could pause and ask Rattler if all this blood and pain and secrecy were part of being a Beloved Mother.

  In answer, Sister Sun heats the north wind and sends out a clap of fierce thunder.

  Lily looked upward, but she did not understand the language of the universe. Farther down Turtleback, she found Rattler not at home.

  Chapter 27

  It was spring of her twelfth year, 1956, and Lily ventured to Flatland. She knew of only two who lived there. Kee Granny and the carpenter, the granny’s son.

  In all likelihood, the carpenter would not be on the bald. Lily watched him walk past Boone Station and down Turtleback to Covington to tinker for a customer during the day, his tools and a large hatchet on his belt. There would be days when Briar Slocomb’s dog walked by his side, so close in sync that the man appeared to have four extra legs.

  Higher up the trail, the creek bounced over little falls that talked to ferns and mosses along its banks. Smooth stones cut white ripples through the water. This spring day the weather was warm, the air soft. For once, Lily let worries of her mother’s health fade from her mind as she drank in the solitude. She thought of going to the Falls. Instead she turned, as if she had been summoned, up the trail that passed Rattler’s den and ended near the granny’s beehives. Rattler’s hole was empty and his mist gone, so she watched each side of the trail to avoid disturbing him where he might lie in wait for an unsuspecting mole. Or he might be resting, sunning himself beside a log, taking in the warmth of the earth.

  She veered off to the west to see the cedar.

  Sister Sun, sweating from exertion, sends extra heat in an attempt to revive the trees that encircle the cedar Granny chose.

  Lily had carried her potato plugged can and fed the surrounding trees each summer for six years. Year by year, each tree weakened, but the cedar grew in breadth and stature. Kee must be proud, Lily thought.

  Sister Sun sees the girl climbing toward the ridge. Sister Sun is tired. She grunts at the realization that Lily doesn’t get the joke about the trees and the purpose of the cedar. Great Spirit should take hold of the old crone before the phony kills something more significant than a few trees.

  As she walked, Lily pondered this reversal of what she had pledged the oak, the black walnut, and the sour persimmon. With each trip, she had assured them of the nourishment Kee had ordered, but somehow Lily’s intent had turned on her. Now leafless, the older trees were dying.

  The cedar’s massive presence amplified the impending loss of its brethren. A bed of needles coating the ground promised softness, but Lily knew from experience that all needles, pine, fir, or cedar, offered only prickles. The lone thriving tree, the cedar, stood like a vibrant emerald flame against the sky.

  Sister Sun sees the girl standing before the cedar. “I see you standing there. Why don’t you listen, little girl?” Sister Sun’s heat amplifies Lily’s thirst.

  Sister Sun signals for a passing asteroid to pause and help her get the girl’s attention, but the asteroid, a random passerby, ignores the signal and flies behind the earth.

  The granny’s church would be the place for water, a drink to wash the dust from Lily’s throat and a bucket or two for the drooping trees.

  There was no one on the bald. The smokehouse where the carpenter slept looked as if no one had been there in weeks. Its door stood open to the air, its makeshift porch empty.

  A myriad of colors drew Lily to the side of the church. Reds, yellows, purples, and whites scattered in patches squared out, each to its own. Drawing nearer, she recognized the cultivated area as the granny’s garden. She had not thought of the granny as having a garden, but she would need one, living on the bald most of the year. Lily had expected vegetables. Instead, she found an orderly garden of flowers in bloom.

  Stones the size of large shoes marked the garden expanse. Within the walls were small squares that held each kind of flower in its space. Among the squares lay a path, paved with tiny stones from the creek. The pattern was brilliant. The stones lay so rain could seep into the ground and water the plants as they grew. It was the most precise garden Lily had ever seen. There was within its structure an exact design that controlled how and where to place your feet.


  The garden threw out an explosion of color. Lily looked close. Within each square was a stick. On that stick was a tin can lid with the name of the flower etched in precise letters. Lily marveled at the number of different flowers.

  She expected a granny, as a healer, to grow a separate herb garden for her salves and brews. But Lily could not tell if some of the plants were flowers or herbs. Perhaps Kee Granny grew herbs unnoticed, especially the ginseng that brought such a high price in Covington. If no one knew where her herbs grew, no one could steal them or thin them so sparsely they would not reproduce.

  But the flowers. Lily stood mesmerized by shapes and colors. She read the names aloud. Purple coneflower. Foxglove in pinks and yellows and white. Clematis with purple petals and golden centers. Hellebore, black nightshade, poppy as red as holly berries. Angel’s trumpets, their blooms bowed as if in prayer. And a vast span of pennyroyal, its creeping stems covered with lavender orbs that Lily thought looked more like dandelion heads ready to puff than pennyroyal. In one corner, a stand of mountain laurel in pinks and whites. In another, three yew trees leaned against the church wall, their needles so filled with deep green they resembled coal.

  Lily walked to the far corner. There were no plants. Rather four green logs, each pointed in a cardinal direction. In the center, a light smoke drifted up from ash that kept the fire aglow night and day. In time, Kee Granny had taught Lily that this ring represented Cherokee Harmony, a belief that striving for wisdom through experience would lead to a courageous heart and a deep respect for all life.