by Mary Rickert
When they stopped in front of Nan’s house, Mavis pointed her ghost finger at the one next door, the porch covered in dried vines and dead flowers, the carved pumpkins on every step flickering candlelight grins.
“She lives there,” Mavis said.
Mr. Black bent until his face was so close Nan could smell his breath, which was surprisingly cotton candy. He lifted his hand in front of Ruthie’s nose, his bony finger pointed straight up.
Nan followed the line from crooked nail to the moon. “You get your power from here,” he said. She looked down just in time to see him touch Ruthie’s lips with the tip of his finger, which made Nan feel funny, like she’d seen something bad.
Nan suspects her little-kid mind, full of Halloween excitement, makes her remember it like this, but she always pictures him standing and turning away, losing his human proportions like a figure drawn in black crayon on the silver night. She remembers watching him walk up the stairs to Miss Winter’s house, almost disappeared sideways; the great door creaking open, a cackle of laughter from the other side, the enchantment broken by her mother’s voice.
“Nan, what are you doing? Where have you girls been? Do you know how late it is?”
Nan was distracted for only a moment, but by the time she turned, Miss Winter’s door was closing, creating a draft, which blew out every pumpkin grin, and splashes pumpkin wine on Nan’s hand, startling her back to the present, sitting in the uncomfortable chair, blinking at the dark.
Nan inhales deeply, steeling herself against the pain of moving stiff bones to set the glass gently on the floor beside the open bottle. At seventy-eight, she is too old for sleeping in chairs, too old for raising a teenager, and certainly too old to be afraid of ghosts. But what can be done, she asks herself, as she has so many times before; what else can the guilty do but fear the retribution?
PINE Pine, slow to decay, is a symbol of immortality. It is used to treat despondency, despair, and self-condemnation.
The worst day is her birthday. Seventy-nine years, Nan thinks on that cold December morning. Not much time left.
“What are you doing?” she mumbles, staring at her bedroom ceiling. “Get a hold of yourself.” She glances at the digital clock’s red numbers glowing through the clutter on her bedside table. Six fifteen. She needs to get up. Make sure Bay doesn’t miss the bus.
Nan shivers against the cold as she throws off the blankets and quilts, awakening Nicholas in the process. Only as she slides her legs across the flannel sheets and sits up does she realize she smells something wonderful, which is most unusual for her birthday. A knock on the bedroom door, situated strangely low, as though made with the fist of a tiny creature, or perhaps someone’s foot, startles her; she is sitting with her hand over her heart when the door swings open and Bay enters, carrying a tray of pancakes and coffee.
“Happy birthday, Nana,” Bay says, grinning broadly.
Nan makes a big deal of clapping her hands in delight, though it is mostly pantomime and doesn’t make any sound at all. Bay doesn’t seem to notice. She walks slowly across the room. Nan moves to sit with her pillows against the cold, hard wall, pulling the blankets up around her lap. Nicholas, clearly annoyed by this break in routine, jumps to the floor and scurries out of the room, a flash of white.
“I hope you’re hungry.” Bay sets the tray on Nan’s lap, then turns to flick on the bedside lamp, knocking over an empty mug in the process.
“Oh, I am,” Nan lies, blinking against the bright. “This smells wonderful,” she says, no longer locating the pancakes or coffee through the salty scent that permeates the air.
Bay, her red hair uncombed, still wearing her pajama pants and the lavender sweater someone gave Nan years ago, encourages her to eat, which she does.
Everything tastes like salt, but Nan continues swallowing against the gag reflex, smiling and complimenting the breakfast. She knows the meal is probably as delicious as she says it is. Bay is quite competent in the kitchen. Nan glances at her, sitting in the chair on top of the clothes tossed there, the once lovely sweater stretched over her knees. Bay doesn’t know this is the worst day of Nan’s life. Not a celebration, but a lament. She had not been very good at friendship, in the end, but she likes to believe she has been a good mother.
“You better get dressed,” Nan says. “You don’t want to miss the bus.”
The room dims with Bay’s sigh.
Nan has found that the best way to get through all the birthday eating is to pretend exuberance, shoveling food into her mouth like a person starved, just to get it over with as quickly as possible. She chews vigorously. Nan knows what Bay wants. She wants to stay home. It’s been a struggle for years to get Bay to school, and lately it’s gotten worse.
Nan is grateful she has chewing as an excuse for not speaking. Truth be told, she would love to have Bay’s company to distract her, though maybe it would be better if she did not. The memories that arrive on this day are a crash of blood and hope so spectacular, they leave Nan breathless; what if Bay’s presence is not enough to stave them off? She would be traumatized to find Nan clutching her heart and weeping.
Bay stands suddenly. She smiles, but it’s a salty smile. Clearly the child is exasperated. She leans over to kiss Nan’s forehead and says something about how much she loves pancakes. Of course Nan concurs.
“I better hurry,” Bay says, and just like that, she is gone. Nan can hear her in the bedroom, opening drawers and not closing them. The girl is dressed in five minutes, calling good-bye, sounding like a pony running down the stairs. The house shakes when she slams the door. Nan lifts the heavy tray off her lap, sets it on the bed, shivering as she walks to the window, arriving just in time to watch the small orb bobbing through the dark.
It is only a moment, brief as a single breath, but Nan does something she hasn’t done since she was seventeen. She makes a birthday wish, using Bay’s flashlight as conduit. “Be happy,” she says.
At the heavy sound of the bus coming around the corner, Bay turns the flashlight off, and Nan feels a dark terror. Wishes bring spirits out of their hiding places. Now, in an unguarded moment, she’s opened the door that is impossible to close. “Please,” she whispers into the cold room. “Leave her out of it.” Somewhere in the distance she hears the voice singing happy birthday. “Just stop,” she says, and it does.
HOLLYHOCK AND MALLOW Hollyhock should not be confused with Mallow. Mallow is useful in cases of difficult or obstructed menstruation, especially good as an abortifacient; placing the fruit over a dead person’s eyes will keep evil spirits from entering the body. Hollyhock root powdered or boiled in wine prevents miscarriage and kills worms in children.
On the morning of Bay’s fifteenth birthday, Nan wakes to the pleasant scent of summer flowers and loamy earth. She eats a bowl of blueberries, savoring the sweet flavor unassaulted by the rosemary scent of memory or salty scent of lies, before going to the garden where she tends her hollyhocks, the old-fashioned single blossoms in shades of pale pink, blushed violet, and creamy white. Settling quickly on the menu for Bay’s birthday dinner, Nan’s mind wanders, as it does so often lately, but at least this time it goes in a pleasant direction.
Though Bay might have been born the night before her arrival, they celebrate her birthday on the July date when Nan found her, left in a box on the front porch, mistaken at first for a shoe donation until she heard the strange cry, even then expecting a kitten, not the baby who blinked tear-beaded lashes when Nan parted the odd draping like some kind of primal mosquito netting, though she recognized the caul immediately for what it was, the sign of a witch.
Nan peered down at the strange arrival as if expecting the newborn to disappear, which did not happen, of course. When she looked up, she scanned the front yard, its crowd of shoe flowers yawning open in July’s mist, craning her neck to peer around the side of the house, leaning over the railing, careful not to squash the morning glo
ry’s blue throats. She walked, barefoot, past the two rocking chairs, to the other side of the porch, frowning at the elm tree, scanning the quiet S-curved road and the bank beyond lined with a blaze of tiger lilies and purple phlox.
Who knows how long she stood there, breathing in the minty scent of pennyroyal, before a strange sound interrupted her reverie? Nan returned to the abandoned baby just opening her little mouth to cry in protest. A bright sunbeam pierced the dawn to shine on the newborn as though anointed.
Nan squatted, feeling the resistance of her knees and the uncomfortable girdle of her belly, placing one hand under the soft, small head covered in downy red hair, one beneath the swaddled blanket. Their eyes locked, for just a moment, in a very adult manner before Nan brought the baby to her shoulder when she realized she could not easily rise to stand from this position, which caused a momentary panic. She could not risk wavering to a fall, not with this innocent creature depending on her, nor could she put the baby back into that sun-tortured box. Nan sat on her bottom, and once there, stayed for quite a while, watching the mist depart in wisps like night fairies frightened of the light, not realizing for some time that she had been singing to the child, a lullaby of sorts, from that poem by Yeats.
“For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.”
Goodness, why would she sing such a thing? Nan shook her head at herself. She was old. Well, not that old, only sixty-four, but certainly at an advanced age for realizing she could no longer do, or say, or sing whatever she pleased.
Nan discovered that by scooting across the porch she could place her feet on the step below and, holding the baby tight with one hand, using the other to pull on the railing, she rose to stand, by which time she was overheated, her hair damp against her forehead.
“Well,” she said, as she turned back to the house and the cool rooms that waited there, “I haven’t killed you yet, at least.”
It was meant as a joke, but she immediately regretted saying it.
Over the years, Nan had received other strange donations. Mrs. Vergonian, for instance, always donated only one shoe of a pair. Nan wondered what she did with the other. Perhaps she’d started a secret shoe garden of her own. Some people seemed to confuse Nan with Goodwill, leaving boxes of clothes for children and men that Nan had no interest in. Somebody left bags of giant zucchinis on Nan’s porch every fall, which she very much appreciated. For years someone had left homemade bread, still warm enough that it was sweating the plastic bag it was wrapped in. Nan was sorry when that tradition came to an end. One summer, someone left honey, and though the jar was sealed, bees clustered around the lid when Nan discovered it at the far corner of her porch. She took advantage of the situation and whispered her secrets to the swarm until, one by one, it became too much for them, and they flew off. Once there was a hand-knit sweater. It was a beautiful shade of lavender, too precious for Nan. She did not wear it, but tucked it into the bottom drawer of her dresser.
She was never sure what she’d find on her porch, the lovely gifts interspersed with bags of dog poop and nasty words written in chalk, or flowers torn from their shoes and thrown, which Nan found quite upsetting. No one had ever before left a baby. Nan decided it was probably a trick of some kind. A test.
She called the sheriff.
Sheriff Henry, who at first did not understand what Nan was telling him (“A what?” he’d shouted into the phone three times before shouting, “A baby?”), arrived within the hour to begin his “investigation,” which amounted to poking his index finger gently into Bay’s tummy, producing a much-older-than-her-hours smile.
Nan showed him everything—the box, the blanket, even the caul, which in hindsight was a mistake; he remarked on the strange color and feel of it. When he asked Nan what it was, she explained how the baby had likely been born with it around her face. The sheriff made an expression as though he’d just gulped sour lemonade, then quickly changed the subject. He would find a place for the orphan, he said, to which Nan replied, in the legendary word burp of her life, “What are you talking about? Her place is right here.”
The sheriff, who had arrived in Nan’s kitchen, blinking against the light, his usually neat hair uncombed, was momentarily struck silent by Nan’s suggestion that she keep the foundling, then mumbled something about paperwork, red tape, the annoying habits of his deputy, and what he called “the scourge” of gossip. (In spite of the odd rumors that circulated about Nan, she had her advocates, and the sheriff’s mother, though now dead, had been one of them; it is for this reason, Nan assumed, that he was so kind in his pessimism.) He did not know, however, that the social worker owed Nan a big favor.
Mrs. Hevore arrived the next day. Looking as if she bore no relation to the young woman Nan found a decade ago weeping in her garden, shoving hollyhock and mallow blossoms into her mouth, as though there were no difference between them. She toured the house without making reference to the trouble she’d once been in, or how Nan, who had already been retired for some time by then, helped. Nan needed to fill out an absurd amount of paperwork, but with Mrs. Hevore’s peevish assistance, and with almost no one claiming the child or challenging Nan’s right to parent her (no need to dwell on that dark matter now) the adoption was completed.
The whole thing happened with shocking efficiency, which, Nan later learned, was attributed by the locals to something unnamed, but certainly of an occult nature that she had done to hex the system. Soon after, she was confronted by the terrible things being said. Of course she suspected there were rumors, how could there not be? A baby left on the porch in a box! It was the most sensational thing to happen since 1965, when the local high school basketball team had a terrible accident and two of the boys were killed. What Nan didn’t anticipate (which in hindsight she realized was shockingly naive—she knew small-town judgment, after all) was the breadth of cruelty that so easily embraced the innocent newborn.
But that was long ago, Nan thinks, picking a hollyhock blossom for the kitchen windowsill. Fifteen years! Surely no one would be so cruel as to fault Bay for the circumstances of her birth! Yet what else can Nan conclude from the distressing state of Bay’s social life? She is spending her birthday with her best, and apparently only, friend, Thalia, a perfectly nice girl who stares at Nan too much. The girls have spent a lazy morning, first upstairs in Bay’s bedroom, and now on the quilt beneath the elm.
Pretending to fuss over her herbs, Nan realizes with a start that Thalia has caught her spying. Thalia waves while Bay frowns; she has told Nan several times that she looks silly wearing the wreath of walnut leaves, but Nan won’t part with it. After all, it keeps the flies away, and that is the point. As Nan picks mint for the frosting, she thinks how all those years when she mourned motherhood, she had never guessed at the anguish of the position.
***
They call Bay wolf child because, they say, she was raised by wolves before she was left on Nan’s porch wrapped in a blanket, in a box with lace draped over it to keep the mosquitoes out.
“Like that makes any sense,” Bay says. “How could wolves wrap a blanket? They don’t even have fingers.”
Bay knows she should probably stop; Thalia has her own problems, after all, but sometimes Bay just needs to talk, even if it is her birthday, the supposedly happiest day of her life.
Sitting at the edge of the quilt, Bay glances at Thalia to see why she’s so uncharacteristically silent, and discovers her waving at Nan, who stands in the middle of the shoe garden, wearing that stupid wreath. This is the kind of thing Bay is talking about. How can she ever expect the kids at school to treat her like she’s normal? Her Nana ducks her head, shuffling along the side of the house, carrying her basket filled with herbs and cut flowers, looking just like the witch everyone says she is.
“I’m not going back.”
“Back where?” Thalia asks.
“School.”
“What? Where are you go
ing?”
Bay shakes her head. She has no idea where this came from. It just came out, a word burp, her Nana calls them, but now that it’s been said she realizes how much she wants it to be true.
“What about—”
“Don’t say anything to her. She doesn’t know.” Bay lays back on the quilt, squinting against the sun streaming through the green leaves of the old elm tree to the blue sky beyond. Her whole life, it seems, she’s wanted to be only here. Would her Nana consider home schooling? Or will Bay have to think of something else? She doesn’t have the answer, but one thing she knows is that saying she isn’t going back to school makes her feel immediately different. Lighter. As if she’s suddenly holding a giant bouquet of balloons, like in that movie. Like she could float away at any minute. Like anything could happen. She hopes for anything good.
***
The birthday feast is a great success. The menu consists of herb-roasted chicken, cream cheese mashed potatoes (Nan makes extra of these, knowing how much both girls love them), and boiled beets. She serves good red wine, chosen for its smoldering taste, hoping it will ruin both girls for the cheap affection of high school boys.
The girls smile and make eyes at each other when the wine is poured, but it quickly becomes apparent that they prefer the lemon water. They eat in the dining room, off china set on the lace tablecloth, the white taper candles lit, the chandelier dimmed. In spite of the still air of a July night, the sheers billow around the open windows, bringing with them the scent of lavender, basil, and something else Nan can’t quite identify, something musky, damp, slightly unpleasant, like a sweater left in the rain, or a dead animal in the garden.