The Scattering

by Jaki McCarrick

  ‘What are these things anyway?’ Ashleigh asked, turning to the crates with their inch-high shoots.

  ‘These? Why these are my Christmas roses. Except they’re not really roses. That’s just a nickname they got.’

  ‘What are they, then?’ Ashleigh asked.

  ‘Hellebores. They bloom early. Around January. They’re poisonous. But I don’t grow them to eat them,’ Jessica replied.

  *

  Ashleigh and Olivia had been signed up by Bobby Jean for a term at Bay City High. Three days into term, Cole Spencer, the Head, called Jessica.

  ‘No, it’s not Olivia, Jessica May. It’s Ashleigh. Look, I just think you should come down here, soon as you can.’

  When Jessica arrived at Bay City High it was quiet. All the times she’d been in that school for Tina or Jules she’d never seen it as calm. It was like it was shut or Christmas. Cole Spencer rushed into the foyer and asked her to hush as he led her into the assembly hall. All the students sat around quiet as mice, the teachers behind them, arms folded. She noticed that Miss Quigley was crying. Miss Quigley was as stern as iron so Jessica thought that maybe someone had died. Until she saw who it was they were sitting around listening to. Up front, by the stage, on a small classroom chair, her long pale legs all tied up around each other like pea vines – Ashleigh, talking animatedly about the hurricane.

  ‘It’s not just Katrina,’ whispered Spencer.

  ‘What else is there?’ asked Jessica.

  ‘A whole lot of what else. She says… well… she says she’s the daughter of God.’ A cold shiver ran down Jessica’s back. Mad as the words Spencer had just said sounded, they went a long way towards explaining the unnerving self-assurance she herself had observed in Ashleigh.

  ‘Don’t be crazy, Cole. She’s a kid. It’s just a turn of phrase.’

  ‘Listen to her, and watch their faces. She’s hypnotic. I’m telling you, the child is gifted. From the beginning of lessons this week she’s been dazzling every teacher in her Grade. She says she got the gift out in the floods. From the hurricane itself.’

  Jessica looked around at the rapt faces of the children. They were all engrossed in Ashleigh’s tale. Which seemed to be about how, when the whirlpool started up in the river, Ashleigh had stood up and demanded it fall away, and how it did just that, and how when the waters parted she walked on dry land to the other side of the river to rescue her sister, Olivia.

  In the following weeks the store was the busiest Jessica had ever seen it. People came to buy flowers and wreathes and winter shrubs, but mostly they came to see the girl who had been touched by God in the hurricane. Even when they didn’t ask directly to see Ashleigh, or point her out to each other, Jessica knew that was why most people came to the store. (It had never been busy at this time of year.) On Saturdays, when Ashleigh would help out, Jessica would see old women or sick-looking people whisper into the girl’s ear to see if she could help them. Sometimes they touched her arm, or brushed past her clothes, and Jessica knew it was so they could get something of Ashleigh into themselves. Some kind of hope or healing. Jessica wanted Ashleigh to settle down to a normal life, as much as she could offer the child while under her roof.

  One evening Jessica asked Ashleigh to sit with her out on the porch.

  ‘Sweetie, I know what you’ve been saying at the school.’

  ‘I know, Mrs Lawson, I saw you.’ Jessica lit up a cigarette. She hadn’t especially wanted to discuss the matter. It was Ashleigh’s personal business, and soon the child would be gone from the house and Panama City anyway. But after seeing how people were with her in the store, how they looked at her on the street and in the bank, Jessica felt she had to speak up.

  ‘This has got to stop, honey. You don’t realise how people can react to this kind of talk. It’s dangerous.’

  ‘You don’t believe me, Mrs Lawson?’

  ‘It’s not about whether I believe or don’t believe. Look – Eric – you remember Eric from the hospital?’ Ashleigh nodded.

  ‘Well, Eric said you and Olivia need to come by one day soon. He’d like you to speak to someone. Counselling it’s called. You know what that is, Ashleigh?’

  ‘I’m not crazy, Mrs Lawson. I already spoke to doctors.’

  ‘You did? When?’

  ‘In the ’dome. After a couple of days they had doctors talk to the children who lost their folks. They thought I maybe got hit on the head. But I didn’t.’

  Jessica looked long and hard at this skinny girl with the white braids and grey-blue eyes. She was convinced now that the loss of their parents had caused Ashleigh and her sister such inestimable pain that they were, most likely, as Eric had said, suffering from some kind of delayed reaction.

  ‘Pineville is a long way from New Orleans. How’d you get to the Superdome?’ Jessica asked.

  ‘Red Cross picked us up on some dirt track,’ Ashleigh replied.

  ‘By then your parents had…’

  ‘Yes, Ma’am.’

  ‘The house went too?’

  ‘Yes Ma’am. See, it came real early in the mornin’. I remember the air filled up with grey and dark, and pieces of our rooms, my dolls, my books, were swirlin’ around, gettin’ flung down onto trees and other houses. We ran out of the house and just as we did it folded up behind us like firewood. Olivia cried for Beau, our dog, and Ma and Pa went lookin’. They were just gone a couple of minutes when the river burst out of the earth and swept everythin’ forward. We all got separated so quick. I remember my breath – coz it got took clean out of my body, and my nightdress swelled up and I thought I would take off and fly. But then I got swept along so I clung tightly to Olivia. We seemed to be in the water hours and hours. But nothin’ fell on my head, Mrs Lawson. I just made up my mind to pull the strength out of myself, and I did.’

  ‘And all of this “daughter of God” business?’

  ‘Olivia got pulled to the other side of the river and this force started to build up inside the water and I couldn’t cross. I tried and tried. That’s when I heard a voice, and I recognised what it was sayin’. It was from Exodus: And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground: and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left. So I just did what Moses did, which was what the voice told me to do.’

  It occurred to Jessica, then, that maybe Ashleigh was right. Maybe nothing had fallen on her head. Maybe she just hadn’t been well to begin with. After all, what did Jessica really know about these young people now living in her home? So much data had been destroyed by Katrina; Ashleigh could be just as ill as her sister for all Jessica knew.

  ‘Ashleigh, now Bobby Jean and me, we mostly go to Unity Church. And Unity is non-denominational. You know what that means?’ Ashleigh nodded. ‘It means a mixture of everything and nothing in particular. You see, we don’t do much Bible study at Unity. And we don’t believe hurricanes have anything at all to do with God. Maybe you believe it’s his “wrath”, do you?’

  ‘What I believe, Jessica, has nothin’ to do with religion.’

  ‘Your daddy. Was he a Baptist preacher?’

  ‘Episcopal.’

  ‘Episcopal? Well, they aren’t fanciful. So how come you got to thinking you’re the daughter of God?’

  ‘My daddy said.’

  ‘What do you mean “he said”?’

  ‘My daddy told me. He said I was the special one. He said it every night he come in my room. And it was only the moment I saw my sister on the other side of the water, that I truly believed him.’

  *

  Eric brought both girls out to the waiting room where Jessica waited with Bobby Jean. Then Bobby Jean stayed with the girls in the bright, sea-lit room as Jessica went into the consultation room with Eric. Jessica sat. The female psychiatrist entered and sat down opposite Jessica and opened a file.

  ‘Olivia’s epilepsy is congenital, but with the right treatment she will most likely stop having seizures by her teens. She is slightly traumatised, but it seem
s Ashleigh covered Olivia’s eyes from a lot of the horrors they might otherwise both have seen.’

  ‘Horrors like what?’ asked Jessica.

  ‘Well, there were a lot of bodies on the river. Drownings. A lot of loose animals, too. And it was hot, so you can imagine what state those bodies were in. Ashleigh believes she saw things.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘Like I said. Drownings. Animals gnawing at bodies.’

  ‘What else?’

  The doctor hesitated: ‘Well, if you must know, for instance, like a National Guardsman airlift a woman into a helicopter then drop her to her death. Like soldiers opening fire on a black neighbour of the Williams’ who, Ashleigh claims, was procuring food from his own store. These are serious allegations. So for the minute it’s Ashleigh we’re mostly concerned about, Mrs Lawson.’

  Jessica decided at that point not to inform Eric, or the doctor, that there were people in Panama City who believed Ashleigh had divine lineage. But somehow Jessica thought that perhaps they knew something about this already. The beach town was, after all, as provincial as any small village – which, indeed, it used to be and in a way still was – despite its recent sprawl out onto the highways of Wal-Marts, malls and Po-Folks restaurants. People on this part of the Gulf knew the exact movements of the tide; they knew when new retirees arrived into this or that complex, or when they died. At the Unity Church there would be a coffee hour after service each Sunday and everyone would talk. Jessica had the feeling that everyone in Panama City (including the people from Unity) pretty much believed she had the daughter of God living under her roof. So it would be a lot easier for Jessica if it turned out the child had concussion. Then everything could calm the hell down before the two girls finally left for Atlanta or somewhere else. Just about anything (except that thing Ashleigh had alluded to the night before) was better than the child going round with an inner power other people wanted a piece of.

  ‘What’s wrong with Ashleigh?’ Jessica asked the quick-eyed doctor.

  ‘I’d like her to have an MRI scan,’ she replied. ‘Just routine. To rule out concussion or brain damage. Before we assess her further.’

  ‘You don’t believe she saw what she says she saw?’

  ‘We need to rule certain things out.’

  ‘Well, what do you think’s wrong with her?’ Jessica insisted.

  ‘I think the child is traumatised. Quite seriously. She assumed a lot of responsibility.’

  Jessica mowed in: ‘Has she been abused is what I’m asking you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ the doctor replied. ‘It takes time to find out.’

  Jessica called the hospital the following day for the result of Ashleigh’s scan: all clear. Then she made an appointment for the following week for the commencement of Ashleigh’s counselling. The evening Jessica got the news that there was no sign of damage or concussion, or any nascent tumours in Ashleigh’s brain, Jules came home from Miami.

  *

  She had begun to organise excursions for the girls so they would see less of her unshaven son slouching around the house. Jules had been unusually quiet since he’d come home, broke, in debt, and deeper into the end of his bottle than ever. He didn’t join them at mealtimes, and worked mostly alone in the yard.

  One evening, Jessica asked Ashleigh and Olivia if they’d like to go to the theatre. The Bellevue players were to stage Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean at the Martin Theatre, in which her friend Doreen was playing a waitress.

  ‘Who’s Jimmy Dean?’ asked Ashleigh.

  ‘A famous actor who died tragically in a car accident,’ Jessica replied. As soon as she uttered the words she saw Ashleigh’s face light up with understanding. She realised then that Ashleigh had somehow heard the story about Tina’s car being left open with the radio on by the dunes and the lack of any body, or sign of it, for the best part of seventeen years. Before the girls had come, and before Ashleigh had stirred people up with her claims of divinity, Tina’s disappearance had been the only story of note ever attached to the Lawsons.

  After the play, Jessica brought the girls into Panama Java for hot chocolate. She looked at the two girls so joyous in the busy café with the fan swirling crankily above their heads like some kind of predatory bird. She knew that soon she would lose them both.

  That night, Jessica heard screams and thought Olivia was having a seizure. She ran quickly to the girls’ room and opened the door. Olivia sat bolt upright, frightened, white as a sheet.

  ‘Where’s Ashleigh?’ Jessica asked.

  ‘She ain’t here,’ said Olivia. The moans and cries continued as Jessica walked along the corridor. She saw a light on in Tina’s room. She opened the door and saw her son standing by the window, smoking. Ashleigh lay on the bed. There was blood all around the girl’s groin, and Tina’s sheets were stained. Jessica put on the main light. So dazed was she by the scene before her she could barely make out a word Jules was saying. All she could focus on was the blood, and Jules’ foul smoke-breath filling up her daughter’s room. Suddenly Jessica’s voice seemed to take on a life of its own and she began to shout. She continued until she felt her son shake her violently by her shoulders.

  ‘Are you listening to me?’ he said. ‘I said, I heard crying. I thought it was Tina.’

  Jessica broke free and went to the bed. She covered Ashleigh with her robe.

  ‘It came just like a flood,’ Ashleigh said. ‘I got so scared I came in here so as not to frighten Olivia. I’m sorry about the blood, Jessica. But Jules never touched me, not like you’re saying.’

  ‘Why you just didn’t let her have her own room, this room, I don’t know. It’s obvious what’s happening to her!’ Jules screamed.

  ‘This is Tina’s room. And you know I don’t let anyone sleep here.’

  ‘Well, why’s that I wonder?’

  ‘You know damn well why. Now shut up and get me some towels.’

  ‘Tina’s dead and she isn’t ever coming back. And you know it.’

  ‘How in hell do I know that, huh? Am I psychic or something? Are you? They never found a body. Case. Not. Closed.’

  ‘Tina’s case was closed the night she went out and…’

  ‘Shut the fuck up!’ screamed Jessica. ‘She liked the nights on the beach. Just like we all did. You, me, her, your father – we often took you both out in the moonlight, you motherfucker. You know that. Now you just like the nights out drinking.’

  ‘Come on, Mama,’ Jules pleaded.

  ‘She left the radio on in the car! Suicides don’t leave the radio on in the car!’

  ‘Yes they do!’

  ‘She met someone and took off. She was like that. Flighty. She would just take off.’

  ‘She’s dead, Mama. I know she is.’ Jules moved slowly towards his mother.

  ‘Why d’you rush in here if you’re so sure about it, huh? You said you thought you heard her.’

  ‘I just wanted it to be true.’

  ‘You still came. You’re as unsure as I am, why don’t you just admit it?’ Jules left the room with his head bowed. Jessica curled up around Ashleigh on the bed and held tightly to the menstruating child. After a while, Ashleigh turned to Jessica and said: ‘It seems to me you had two children and you never noticed but one. And not the one that stuck around neither. Jesus says to love all the children.’

  ‘I know,’ Jessica replied.

  ‘Tina ain’t coming back, Jessica May. Not ever. You jus’ been clingin’ to that radio.’

  ‘I know,’ Jessica replied.

  *

  When Bobby Jean came to pick up the girls, Jules was out in the yard taking the lights off the Christmas tree. He hadn’t had a drink in over a month and Jessica was glad to see him busy. A couple of girls from Bay City High had come to say goodbye to Olivia and Ashleigh, and Jessica was leaving them to it. Then, as Jessica tended to the last of her hellebores, their five-petal heads all drooping to one side, Ashleigh came up quietly behind her. Since the night in Tina
’s room Ashleigh had not spoken again in assembly and had gotten quiet all round. Cole Spencer had even called to ask what had happened to the dazzling student. Jessica was just glad that the circus that had built up around the child had packed up and left. And now that the Atlanta authorities had tracked down a relative, an aunt, Jessica had no more cause (officially, at least) to worry about Ashleigh. The girl’s counselling was to continue in Atlanta, the details of which would now pass exclusively to her aunt.

  ‘Why do they droop their heads like that?’ asked Ashleigh.

  ‘I guess they’re just protecting themselves.’

  ‘From what?’

  ‘From things that might otherwise destroy them. The wind and cold and such like,’ Jessica replied, and looked up, puddle-eyed, at Ashleigh.

  ‘I’m going to miss you, Jessica May.’

  Jessica held her close. The scent of camomile from Ashleigh’s hair hung in the air as she moved off. Jessica watched her stop by the Christmas tree and speak to Jules. Something electric passed between them, and she saw her son suddenly become younger-looking and less bound up with his own inarticulate feelings and thoughts.

  As Bobby Jean’s car drove off with Olivia and Ashleigh in the back, Jessica thought her heart would break. She cleared up the plates of half-eaten lemon cake and tidied up inside. When she went out into the yard to turn on the evening lights, Jules was there. He had a towel rolled up under his arm.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Jessica asked her son.

  ‘I thought I’d go for a walk on the beach. Maybe take a swim.’

  ‘You be careful. Don’t go far out. Just as far as the rock.’

  ‘I will, Mama,’ he replied, and walked off along the side of the store in the direction of the beach.

  After her evening tour of the nursery, Jessica sat on her chair on the porch and listened to the sea. In the lull between the waves she could hear the low thrum of the humming birds in the bottlebrush. She looked up to the tops of her tall bamboos. The slim, dark leaves bubbled in the breeze all along like a wave. Jessica closed her eyes and pushed her face out into the mild evening. In the darkness she felt herself rising up over all the plants, flowers and trees of her gardens into the warm sea air, becoming first part of the lapis lazuli sky, and then the whole sky that looked down on all the travelled and untravelled earth.