The bird was on his back, head straight, no blood or sign of attack. Did he die of natural causes? Then I noticed the eye swollen shut. What on earth?
That’s when I saw the thunderheads gathering again as they had the last night and the night before and the night before that. But nary a drop of water. And I felt the full weight of my eighty-one years of existence. As I do now.
“Yes,” I said to Bob over the phone again, “I know how to prepare the body.”
I let myself into Annie’s house, find food for the cats, and change their water. Fetch the box of burial clothes she had shown me once, on the top shelf of the front hall closet. Get to the hotel just as Bob and Vera and the ambulance arrive with her body.
Jack opens the front door for us. He looks weary, trembling. I am shocked at first. Well, I knew they were close. There were rumours. I knew it was their routine to meet for coffee before the hotel opened. Jack helped her sometimes at the post office. They were often seen together.
But he seems to know; he seems to know and is waiting. Bob tries to speak but starts to weep. Vera rushes ahead to meet him. “She’s gone, Jack. She died instantly.” He lets out a great howl and pounds his breast when he sees the body bag on the stretcher, the attendants hanging back. He can’t breathe at first and collapses. When he finds his voice again, he asks, could we allow him a few minutes with Annie, even with her all wrapped up from the hospital? We find him a chair, set him on it, remove the body bag, and leave the two of them alone. The four of us drink out of the pot of coffee still hot in the kitchen, welcome the bitter taste. We give him a good thirty minutes.
Then, “We have to,” Vera, explains to him, “we are sorry, but we have to prepare the body now.” He has been crying. We can see that. Vera sends Bob home with him and tells him to come back later in the day, when we are done.
“Yes, yes.” Jack nods quickly.
He fixes his eye on the mummy-wrapped body one more time, takes hold of the cane that Bob has retrieved for him, presses his hat to his head, and lets himself be led out the front door.
DAISY
The dead bruise easier than the living, that’s what I’m told. The attendants wheel her in on a stretcher and place her carefully on the ancient plank table we have set out in the middle of the public house for the purpose, the table that usually sits in the foyer across from the mail wicket and has a coffee pot on it. Florence says it’s the one piece of furniture still surviving from when Annie’s father’s people came across the ocean. “The Table of Truth” the men call it. After Jack, Bob, and the attendants leave, Florence tells us about the magpies in the schoolyard last night. “For land’s sakes!” I can’t help the outburst. Then we stand quietly for a moment, the three of us, to pay our respects. Florence makes the sign of the cross.
First, we unwrap the face. Florence and I stand back. Annie is staring at us.
“That’s odd,” Vera says. “I closed her eyes at the hospital.”
Florence reaches over to close them again, but Vera is nervous. “Careful.”
Florence steps forward, tries again.
“No, they won’t stay. It’s best not to force them. They’ll bruise and swell and look even worse.”
“What about coins?” I ask foolishly, thinking of movies I’ve seen, pictures of mummies in National Geographic.
“I don’t know,” Florence says. “She never cared too much for money.”
“It would be forcing the skin now,” Vera says. “If they don’t go naturally, there’s nothing we can do.”
So we begin to undrape the body, neck first. I’ve never done this sort of thing before. My hands are all sixes and sevens. Like when I’m learning a new stitch or a new pattern at the shop. And death is certainly a new stitch for me.
When we examine her closely, we see the etchings in the shape of grand trees and ferns branching all along her neck, down her throat, around her shoulders and up her scalp.
I can’t help but gasp. “It looks like jewelry,” I say and can’t stop talking. “I think we should leave some of it showing, at least what we would normally show I mean.” I am pleased by this unexpected show of beauty in death. I had expected ugly red gouges or black smears on her skin. My mind takes fanciful flights, thinking how well this might look on a tea towel or a T-shirt. That’s when I first get the idea of a memorial of some kind.
“It’s like the most beautiful tattoo I’ve ever seen.” I am babbling nonsense I know.
“No,” Vera says, “I mean, yes.” She shakes her head. “But it’s from the lightning.”
Florence steps back, stands with her hips apart, flexes her wrists as she sometimes does when she’s excited, articulates both palms outward and upward, as if she regularly juggles in her sleep and this were an unconscious vestige of it in waking hours. “Annie’s love of living things. The trees, the plants.” She clasps her animated hands together. “It’s right!”
She’s restraining herself. She wants to call it miraculous, I can tell. For once, I do too.
“It is fitting,” Vera admits.
We reason that Annie would have wanted the marks to stay. It’s just the way she was. No varnish in her life, and she wouldn’t want it in her death either.
I find carbolic soap in the hotel kitchen cupboard. Vera brings us each basins with lukewarm water, fresh sponges and washing cloths. We unbind her wrists and hands. Florence locates a few pillows in the hotel stores, places a smaller one under Annie’s chin and two more under each elbow to keep the hands crossed.
We look at where the lightning has punctured the flesh, first at the back of the neck and then the palms of the hands and the bottoms of the feet where the current has exited.
Vera warns us we’ll see burn marks.
“Like the stigmata,” Florence says.
“That’s because she was in a crouching position when she was hit,” Vera says calmly, “and she always witched with her palms down.”
We start off washing her together, the face, the neck, the shoulders, the collarbone, the torso, the small of her waist — all down one side. At first we work in silence. She moves a little while we work, the legs twitch, the feet too, the muscles, the way it is with the dead, according to Florence. Florence is working on Annie’s belly when she puts her sponge down and suddenly starts to give orders.
“This isn’t the right way to go about this,” she says, upset. “Daisy, get us some drying towels from the hotel stores. Vera, find some shampoo. I’ll wash. One of you dry. The other, work on her joints.”
She is the elder among us, so of course we bow to her wishes.
FLORENCE
What stops me are the scars on the front of her belly. Whiter against white in death. Was it a baby? A caesarian section? Not long enough. Appendicitis? Wrong place. I rinse my sponge, and then I feel her presence in the water. I look up: the others haven’t noticed. I feign bossiness, excitable nerves, something I’m known for, and send the two of them off on errands. I turn back to the body and keep washing. Every time I dip the sponge, I ask her a question.
“Do you remember the time I came to your grandmother’s house?”
“I was staying over that weekend.” Annie’s voice is whispery, trembling-like.
“You remember what happened?”
“I remember your screams. But women often came to scream and then they left happy.”
“Do you remember how long it took?”
“It seemed all night to me.”
“All night and all day.”
“Your grandmother gave me an herb. No scissors or knitting needles. No pointy sticks. Just tea and she prayed to the Virgin. God forgive me. She knew I could not have that baby.”
“I didn’t know how to comfort you.”
“You fed me chicken soup.”
“You wouldn’t eat at first. You wouldn’t take anything.”
“Till your grandmother told me she could not abide two deaths.” I bend my head, bring my cupped hand to my forehead, touch my breast, each sho
ulder, my heart, and then my lips.
“I rested there a week,” I go on. “Your grandmother spread a crazy quilt over me; she called it the quilt of transformation. Your grandmother defended me to my mother. She knew some of the nuns at the convent school at Victoire. She told them that I had miscarried and sent me away to them where she said I’d be safe. You and your father paid dearly for it though.”
Annie seems to shift on her pallet. Her voice is small but matter-of-fact: “It was your mother who started the rumours.”
“It was all done so secret and hush-like behind curtains and closed doors in the night. None of it tested in the light of day. I’ve tried to atone.”
Annie says nothing. I rush on.
“It divided the town when it happened. There were those who were grateful to your grandmother. But they were no match for religion and by then we had a doctor in town.”
“It was your father’s baby.”
“For a long time, I hated you for knowing. I hated myself.” I catch the sobs in my throat.
“I’m sorry.” Annie’s eyes stare somewhere behind me.
“But you never judged me.”
“No.” Annie moves her head ever so imperceptibly.
“You were the only one. When you came back to church, at every communion, we would always share a moment, both of us estranged for different reasons. We would look over at each other.”
“Yes.”
“Your grandmother asked me to name it; to speak to its spirit. She said I should remember it was not to blame. To say good-bye, but I couldn’t.
“Your grandmother said the placenta from all the babies was a fertilizer, full of rich vitamins and minerals and that bodies too were rich places. Bones, calcium. That a tree would grow.
“Your grandma had many apple trees, crabapple, many fruit trees, even pear. Her lot, like yours, reached right to the creek bed.”
Annie moves. “That and pin cherry and plum. The apple tree is still there.”
“She buried the body for me while I watched. Wrapped in a linen cloth, one of her best, she said, from across the sea. We planted a small seedling on the spot, an apple tree. Said it would bear fruit.”
Annie looks at me full on. “People would say, a new tree, a new baby. Placentas mostly. A few miscarriages. She was a midwife. But she did what she had to do.”
“Some nights I visit in the dark, pay my respects. Pray for its soul.”
“Yes, I’ve felt you there in the night.”
“I still have nightmares. ‘The Dark Mother,’ my own grandmother used to say, ‘she who rides the night.’ I want to save others from the nightmares. So all these years, Annie, I have prayed to the Holy Mother.”
“As have I.”
“I have prayed the shame be gone.”
“Yes.”
“Benedictions and rosaries, I have prayed to make up for my family’s sin. I should have named that baby, released its soul.”
“You still can. It was your father’s shame.”
“I know it.” I sigh. “Her name is Annie,” I say finally.
Daisy reaches over and touches my arm. “Are you all right, Florence?”
That’s when I notice there are tears on my cheeks.
ANNIE
Florence looks down, covers her mouth before she makes her confession. That’s the only time we’ve spoken of it.
She has a sign up in her picture window. STOP THE KILLING it says. She’s had that sign or some version of it for forty years. She’s pro-life. She takes it down every five years or so, cleans it up or replaces it with a new one. She’s got a small shrine to Our Lady out front. A fountain and statue, wild rose bushes all around. Sometimes she dresses her in special skirts and veils for feast days. Most people just ignore it. She says she owes her sanity to the Virgin Mary.
“She has forgiven you!” I say as forcefully as I can without rising from the table. My lips don’t move but she hears me in her head, as she’s heard me through all the washing, through the feel of the water. I can tell from the way her eyes look startled.
That terrible night, we were already in bed; me upstairs, my nana down. This was long after my maman had gone away. On weekends I’d often stay at Nana’s and help with whatever was needed. I heard a knock at the back door, propped myself up on one elbow on the bed, parted the curtains and leaned over to look down from my second-storey dormer window to see who was there. I heard my Nana’s step on the hall stairs. There was an awful storm out that night, wind and rain, a night the colour of ink, no moon. Still I could hear the choked crying and I could make out a young girl in an old house shift, a blanket over her shoulders, and an oversized pair of rubber boots. I could hear her sobs and her heaving. I couldn’t hear the words, only their timbre, and the slant of her terror in the sharp intake of breath.
When my nana answered, she beckoned the girl inside, took her arm, “Now, that’ll be all right.”
I had come to the top of the stairs, the girl turned away and hid her face in Nana’s shoulder. But I knew her from school, a couple grades ahead of me. She was shaking and there was blood dried on her calves. “Make yourself useful now,” Nana had said to me. “We need linens in there. Quick.” She pointed to a bedroom off the kitchen we had for the purpose. I brought sheets and blankets and clean towels and started a new fire in the old wood stove. I knew what to do.
When I returned to the kitchen, I found Nana on her knees on top of the counter, rummaging in the back of her Fibber McGee cupboard. She had dug out a quart size canning jar full of dark brown roots, set it on the counter, hoisted herself down onto a chair and opened the lid. Pungent and old, an odour like wet autumn forests wafted across the room. Satisfied, she chose one small root and held it by the tips of her fingers. She placed it on the counter.
“This is dangerous for a woman. Beware how you use it. It speeds labour.” She grated a pile just big enough to fill the smallest tea ball.
“Now, go back to bed,” she told me, after I had set out the Brown Betty teapot and put the water on to boil.
“And cover your ears. It’s a hard thing we have to do tonight. When a girl gets pregnant by one of her blood relations it’s a fearsome terrible business, fearsome for the girl, fearsome for the baby. Some girls cannot bear it. The worst in a family is multiplied — deformities, defects, and most severe, a deficit of love. The child will starve from sheer lack of affection. I’ve seen more than one child wither that way and die and no one so much as marked its passing.”
That’s when Nana told me the girl had tried to bring it out with the sharp end of a coat hanger. That she had hurt herself doing it and that she may never be able to have babies again. Worst, if she got an infection, she could die.
“The child has to come out.”
I did not sleep the rest of that night.
VERA
It takes us a few minutes to locate the shampoo and when we come back, we find Florence crying, muttering to herself.
“Take a break,” I suggest. But she won’t stop washing. “It’s my penance,” she says.
“I can’t imagine Annie having any scores to settle with you,” I say.
“The harm wasn’t to her,” she says. “No, it wasn’t to her. It was the harm I did to myself. Or maybe it was to both of us.”
Florence shakes so much that I pour us all a shot of whisky from the bar and insist she sit down for a minute.
“To Annie, the Water Witcher,” I propose.
“Yes,” Florence says fiercely, proudly, “to Annie Gallagher, the best friend I ever had.” Florence, Daisy, and I clink our glasses.
But the drink just seems to give Florence verve and she’s more eager than ever to continue. “Let me finish the washing,” she insists. “I have to.”
So while Florence washes and Daisy dries, I work over all of Annie’s joints. Flex the wrists, massage the hands to lie flat; the knees and ankles. Move around the table, massage each arm, and cover it again with the sheet, as if she were alive. We keep unwra
pping the body, carefully turning it between us, washing, drying, and massaging it, as if it were a treasure rolled up in a Persian rug we were unfurling.
“She was beautiful wasn’t she,” says Daisy at last.
“Even at seventy-nine,” I agree. “And in such great shape. You’d never know it from all the big clothes she wore,” I add.
“I’ve always loved her white hair,” Daisy says.
“The high cheekbones.”
“And the skin,” Daisy agrees.
“Yup, still smooth, even.”
“Why didn’t she ever get married?” Daisy looks to Florence.
“Oh!” Florence gives a little hop, like she’s been off on a little journey and just come back again.
“Florence?” I ask.
It has been a strange shock, the manner and suddenness of Annie’s death.
“I’m sorry,” Florence says, smoothing her skirt. It’s the kind of big gathered skirt that was popular in the early sixties. The kind my mother used to wear. Still, Florence can’t stop. She grabs the bottle of baby shampoo Daisy has put out and starts to work up a lather in her hands. She rubs it into Annie’s hair. Between the three of us we manage to rinse Annie’s hair and towel it dry. Vera uses the hair blower to finish the job. Annie’s hair combs out nicer than when she was living.
“No braids or ribbons,” Florence says, when Daisy starts to fix it. “Just comb it and let it hang loose. That’s right.”
No blush, no eye shadow, no powder, we agree. We file her nails plain, straight across. Buff away all the broken skin on her hands.
I put a thin layer of Vaseline on her lips.
“What’s that for?” Daisy wants to know.
“I found it in the cupboard. Keeps them from drying out and puckering.”
Florence retrieves the laying out clothes from their shallow box one by one. Together we dress her, turning her, bending her knees to pull on panties, fasten the bra. “The few bras she had,” Florence remarks, “did up at the front . . .”
“That’s so sensible,” I say.
We slip a sleeve over an arm, button up a red plaid shirt. Daisy and I each take turns holding a leg, while Florence, after careful lifting and turning, slides on a new pair of blue overalls and clips the suspenders on the back, then the front. Blue was Annie’s favourite colour. No jewelry, just the ring on her right hand — no one knows from where or why — and a crazy quilt with the tiniest of stitches thrown over the body. And finally, something to cover her face between showings: Florence flourishes a red and white polka dot, OshKosh handkerchief.
The Death of Annie the Water Witcher by Lightning Page 5