Beloved Mother

by Laura Hunter

  So that she forgot nothing, Lily acted out what would happen in her mind. When Anna’s shallow breathing stopped, she would lift her mama off the bed and into the sanded pine box. She would shovel out a niche of soft soil and settle Anna in. The burial would be in the side road. Time and weather had worn the road down, leaving a bank on each side. Earthen walls would protect the grave from strong winds. She would tell Gabe when the weather broke, and together they would plant trillium in mass over the grave. By spring, the grave would be blanketed in carmine, blood-red and thick.

  First, Lily had to get under the back of Boone Station. She could not use the rock steps. So busy with her mother, she had failed to scrape moss off near the end of the summer. Now that they were wet from recent rains, she slid, as if on ice. She avoided the winding steps and skidded down late fall leaves as she made her way.

  Out of the weather and near the worn fence that held their chickens against foxes and coons waited the two identical boxes. One coffin for Anna. One coffin for Lily, crafted when she was eight-years-old.

  Gabe knew a carpenter, the best in Covington. He felt it best not to mention that he was the granny’s son. Anna ordered the coffins and sent money with Gabe month by month until she had a paper proving the boxes were her own. She paid an extra five-dollars for sanding and mitered joints to keep out the damp. Anna sent her height, thinking if she changed with age, she would do no more than shrink. The paper stayed in a hidden drawer that ran across the bottom of the bureau. Lily doubted anybody would question where Anna got the coffins, but she, like her mother, kept the paper hidden as safely as had it been a marriage certificate.

  Lily knew where the boxes were and what they were for. No one lived a mountain life without meeting Death face to face more than once. Over the years, the wood had so hardened that nails could be hammered in only where the carpenter had pre-drilled holes. Anna had stored nails inside each box so Lily would not have to search.

  As Lily skidded down the slope, a thought stunned her. With Anna gone, there would be no one to find her box or to tap in her nail. No one to seek out a shallow dip for her burying. For the first time, Lily questioned staying alone on Turtleback. She might want to talk this out with Gabe. Maybe Kee Granny. No. Kee Granny was not coming back. Maybe Ruth. But she had never met Ruth, and Anna had not mentioned her for years. Lily pictured Ruth, who was older than Anna, to be bent and shuffling. Gabe would be her answer.

  Lily lugged the box back up the hill by a rope handle attached to the coffin’s narrow end. She shifted it back and forth to maneuver through the door. She expected the noise to awaken Anna. Lily opened the door and icy air blew over Anna’s bed, but she slept on.

  With the coffin inside, Lily heated water for the cleansing. Once during the bath, Anna fluttered her eyes. She appeared to see Lily and mouthed words Lily never heard. Lily kissed her mama on the mouth and tucked the woolen quilt over her shoulders. Anna closed her eyes.

  Lily looked again at the receipt of payment. The year had been 1954, when Lily turned ten. When Anna had first begun to bleed. In the lower right corner where the feet would rest were the initials S.W./B.S., perhaps the mark of the carpenter, acknowledging payment.

  Anna slept three more days. She refused to awaken for food or water. The wolf wailed night after night. Lily replaced the crazy quilt that warmed Anna with a log cabin quilt, laid the woolen quilt in place in the coffin and patted it from time to time. She tried to keep the room warm by doling out logs she had gathered during the summer. She sat in the ancient rocking chair and waited. Outside, Turtleback waited in semi-darkness. The sun grew dark and the moon refused to shine.

  Chapter 33

  The day broke with the smell of snow on the air. Anna breathed deep and relaxed. A noise, more a scraping, aroused something within Anna. A gray, shriveled face appeared, almost like a ghost, outside Anna’s window. From her bed, Anna watched it float closer toward the house. She tried to look to the window to identify who was there, but her head refused to move. Yet she still saw the face. It shimmered and came closer. Anna strained her eyes for a better look.

  The face stopped when it reached the window. Anna knew the face was her own. But it was old, older than she thought she would ever be. Features she had failed to notice when she was well were obvious. What appeared to be wrinkles around her eyes spread out like scars, but their depth told her they had been sinking for years. Furrows between her brows were deeper still, as if she had set her countenance into a frown from her earliest memory.

  The lines had not always been there. She had not been happy with Clint, but she had been conscious of hiding her feelings. She had been happy with Winston, both early on and after the War. She had followed the devil in her heart the first time she met him at the commissary, and she had fallen in love with his touch. Now facing herself through wavy glass, she wondered if God would open Heaven’s gates to her. Hers was a God not easy to please.

  Anna wondered if her God would forgive her. Hers was not just a sin of pride. She had committed adultery. She had known lust, lust that had fed her day after day. And, oh Lord, the death of the boy. She had plotted. She had shed innocent blood. She had committed murder.

  The face hovered so close Anna could see indentations around the edges of her mouth. It was not a mouth that tempted anymore. She had once been vain about her mouth. It pouted enough to make a man look twice. It smiled a crooked smile that was straight enough to seem happy. Now it was an old woman’s mouth, one that had spoken when unnecessary and had remained silent when words would have helped her Lily know which path to take.

  She had no idea what determined Lily’s choices. She could have ingrained her more with her own ideology and kept her away from the granny. But Anna had made her own decisions, and she had lived almost half her life with them. Her dread today was more for herself than for her daughter. Her recognition of such self-centeredness did not surprise Anna. She acknowledged that she had often put her own desires before those of her child. Not that Lily had had an empty life. Her life was filled with the granny Lily trusted so completely that Anna feared the repercussions of taking that away. Lily lived a life filled with the wilds of Turtleback and with joy that lifted her away from the negatives Anna faced.

  The face hung outside the windowpane. Though Anna could not look at it directly, she could see it as clearly as if it hung before her on an invisible thread. A green leaf, one that defied the winteriness of December, lingered over the face for a moment and dropped toward the ground, out of sight. With the disappearance of the leaf, Anna grasped the significance of seeing herself and blinked to push the burn away from her eyes. Anna cringed.

  “What’s wrong, Mama?” asked Lily.

  “I’m going,” the face said.

  “I know,” Anna answered. “Are you my sorrow? Aged by my sins?”

  “Come with me,” the face mouthed.

  “Where you going?” Anna asked.

  “I’m not sure,” it said. “Can you tell me?”

  “No.”

  “Rise and come.” The plea in the voice tugged at Anna’s indecision. “You have to go, you know.”

  “But I expected something else. A light. An angel…with wings. Maybe…”

  “You have me.”

  “Go without me. When you come back, tell me where you’ve been. I’ll decide then.” Anna said. “I don’t like brown. Will it be brown? I’ve been buried in this brown house all these years.”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t been there yet.”

  “Come back and tell me what you find,” Anna insisted. “Tell me if he smells like Wildroot Hair Creme.”

  The face did not move.

  “I never forgave them, you know, either one, for leaving me alone,” Anna said.

  “You’ve not forgiven yourself. You must forgive yourself before you can forgive them.”

  “I don’t know,” Anna said. “All this thinking wrinkles my mind. No. I can’t. Oh God, I’m not worthy.” Anna felt tears pool in her eyes. Whe
re was the granny when she needed her? Where was her Lily?

  “I know you better than you know yourself. Scars within feed your guilt. You are woman. Women have within them so much love and so much hatred they confuse the two,” said the face. “Come. I can carry your forgiveness forward.”

  “Not yet. Come back and tell me if there is pain. I can’t stand pain.”

  “I know.” Anger crinkled the face into a grave frown. “You cut your path over time and sowed the seeds of pain.” The face drifted away toward the darkness. Its voice echoed back to Anna’s bed at Boone Station. “It’s time to go,” it said.

  “No. Wait.” Anna blinked. “You must carry my sins.”

  Anna’s ancient face vanished.

  “Come back,” Anna said. “If I’m to go, someone must tell the bees.” A tremor shot through Anna’s body, and she grunted. Her heart stopped. Her eyes, staring at the unpainted plank ceiling, flickered, then fixed themselves in place.

  “Mama?” Lily whispered.

  Sister Sun means to tell Great Spirit about what she has seen. And about the face. But clouds heavy with snow push her light aside. She later decides there is no reason to bother Great Spirit. Anna had not known him at all.

  Great Spirit releases the snow’s power. It falls in great flakes and covers Kee Granny’s cedar high on the Turtleback’s ridge within minutes. The sacred cedar stands alone, a shimmering sculpture that might have been carved from marble.

  Death stepped up on the porch the seventh day of the howling. He did not knock but entered with Anna’s grunt. Lily was finishing her morning tasks. She whispered her mother’s name and moved to her bed. Anna’s face and neck were deep sky blue, as if a high summer light had settled there.

  As soon as Death left with Anna’s spirit in tow, Lily steadied the mantel clock’s pendulum at 11:03 and draped the clock face with an old rag Anna once used for cleaning. She cracked a window only for an instant, then shut it, allowing any part of Anna’s spirit that might not have escaped to have a way out. She shuttered the windows and locked the door. Lily lit a kerosene lamp against the dimmed light and spent the remaining daylight hours crooning one of Kee Granny’s low chants to keep evil spirits out, spirits that had power to steal her mama’s soul had it all failed to leave the room. An unexpected yearning to have Kee Granny near to help her face this death overwhelmed her. She chastised herself for such a thought and fell to her knees keening a knife-sharp yowl. The slashing realization that her mama was gone sucked the air out of Lily’s lungs.

  Dazed, she let the fire burn low. In time, she placed another log on the embers and moved to the bed to lower her mama into the coffin. Though Anna was thin and bony after her long wasting summer, her weight seemed to double when Lily tried to lift her into the coffin. After a time of failure after failure, Lily climbed onto the opposite side of the bed and nudged, then pushed her mother, rolling her off the bed into the coffin.

  Anna landed with a thud.

  Lily rushed around the foot of the bed. “Mama, are you hurt?”

  Anna lay face down in the coffin.

  For the first time her features distorted, and Lily cried silent tears.

  Lily could not turn her mama over. If she tugged at her feet, Anna’s chest grew heavy. If Lily tried to roll Anna using her chest, she could not find enough room to put her arms around her to flip her over. After several attempts, Lily left her lay and folded the edges of the worn quilt over her back, under her head and feet.

  Lily took a small hammer from the bureau and tapped in the nails. Exhausted, she crawled to the fire. At nightfall, Lily slept. What sounded like Owl woke her after midnight. Lily moved to the bed and nestled herself in the indentation her mama had burrowed into the mattress.

  Snow came again in the early morning hours, thick, deep clean snow that covered the road in front of Boone Station. Before midday, snow broke tree branches. With the air’s icy breath, frozen sap caused trees to explode, sounding like rifle shots through the mountains.

  The second day, Lily remembered the fruit jar. She added the date, pried up two nails near the head of the coffin and poked the jar inside, not looking to see if it hit her mama’s head or not. She crept back to the bed. Outside, wind battled naked tree limbs and cold blue sunlight, as they threw patterns across the ceiling.

  The wind lessened. Silent snow and a realization of finality threw Lily into hard sleep. During the third day, the stench of Anna’s body moldering from heat inside the room forced Lily out of her mother’s place in the bed. She opened the door and dragged the coffin to the porch. Sweat from her exertion chilled her body, and she shook. Huffing in icy air, she lodged the loaded coffin between two tree trunks that supported the roof. There she left it, centered under the wobbly sign that marked the house as Boone Station. If the snow stayed and if more snow fell, the body would freeze and Lily could bury her mama when spring thaw came. Gabe could help her.

  It was mid-December, 1961. The road had vanished under a heavy layer of snow. Lily was alone on Boone Station.

  Early January, Month of the Cold Moon and Old Christmas, just before dawn. Three weeks it had snowed. Snow sifted down the rock chimney and spit on the logs. Only orange embers remained to warm the room. An interruption in the snow’s silence awakened Lily. Music. The music was back. Hauntingly beautiful, as beautiful as any Lily had heard before. It was a dream. Not Laurel People. Not even Dogwood People. There had never been any Little People. Kee Granny had lied about Little People. “Men and women no taller than my knee,” she had said. “They play their drums, sing and dance in circles deep within the woods.” Their drumbeats had fallen as icicles from her roof at night, and now one sang, just for her, to bring joy into her life. “One of the Laurel People waiting for a break in the cold so they could force the spring buds,” Granny would have said.

  Three weeks of temperatures below freezing kept Anna’s body frozen. Days, Lily trudged through knee-deep snow left by the blizzard to feed her goats and chickens. She hung rabbits out for Owl. Nights, strange music, ancient mountain ballads sung in a lonesome tenor voice Lily waited for at dusk, now sung louder. The sun cast indigo shadows on snow. The cushion of snow amplified the voice’s journey. It reverberated night after night, some nights so close Lily could recognize the lyrics. It was as if some spirit from the past had settled on Turtleback and waited to draw Lily back into the forest with the coming of spring. The music soothed her nights and calmed her days. Lily called the voice her dream music.

  Chapter 34

  The knock on the door startled Lily. No one had passed since before Anna died. Roads had been too bad, the snow too deep. She edged toward the door. “What’d you want?” she said.

  A second knock pushed Lily back. She held her breath, waiting for an answer. “I’m not opening the door till I know who you are,” she said, trying to steady the tremor in her voice.

  A man’s deep voice answered, “Briar Slocomb.”

  Lily whirled around, looking for a possible weapon. She had seen Briar Slocomb passing day after day over the years, but he had never stopped or even lifted a hand in greeting.

  “Be still.” Her pin’s angel spoke in her ear. “He’s done nothing to make you afraid.” Ena’s voice surprised her. It was when Ena spoke that she recalled weaving the pin into her collar each morning as she dressed.

  She took a butcher knife from the table. “Don’t be childish,” Ena said. “Put the knife back. Don’t let him in. Don’t let him know your mama’s dead.” Lily began to put the knife away, but instead she dropped it into her pocket.

  Tall Corn had come to Briar in a dream. He walked out of lush mountain shrubs, dressed as he had been on his deathbed. He carried the hatchet Briar wore on his belt.

  “I hacked my way through trees and budding rhododendron to find you,” Tall Corn said.

  “I’ve been right here.” Briar gawked at Tall Corn. He was scratched and bleeding from his journey. “It’s winter. There are no buds.”

  “It’s a long, l
ong journey,” Tall Corn said.

  “How did you take my hatchet?”

  “What is mine is yours. What is yours is mine,” Tall Corn said. “We all are akin.”

  Briar looked at his mother who sipped her coffee, her arm propped on the table. She didn’t respond.

  “It is time for you to gather your harvest,” he said.

  “I told you that I don’t have a harvest.”

  “You do.” Tall Corn smiled. “It fell from the tree. It weathers on the ground. It lies under moldering leaves.”

  “Why do you give me a puzzle?”

  “You must stand for something. Make yourself known as a man.” Tall Corn rubbed the nape of his neck. “I have slashed through undergrowth to say to you that you must choose between the white man who sired you and the Cherokee who raised you.”

  “What do you mean, white man?” Briar felt his brow furrow.

  “Your beloved mother can tell you.” The shadow of Tall Corn walked like a phantom through the brush. A limb from Old Oak popped and fell to the ground. Though Old Oak was at the top of the rise, Briar heard the break. In the distance, Tall Corn leapt upon a muscular black bear. The two glowed with stardust as they soared across an ebony sky.

  At dawn when Briar awoke, he opened the door to his mother’s church without knocking and sat down at her table.

  That afternoon, Briar arrived at Boone Station. Speaking through the closed door, he said, “You got something of mine.”

  “No, I don’t,” Lily argued.

  “You do,” said Ena. He fluffed his robes from around his feet and sat down on the pin’s head.

  “What?” Lily whispered. Lily had imagined Briar a dirty man, but he was Kee Granny’s son. Kee Granny had not been dirty. He would be one whose breath puffed his long hair out of his face. But that was nonsense. He kept his hair tied at the nape of his neck with a string.