SOLOMON’S SEAL
2007
—Please state your name.
—Officer Emil Regin.
—Have you ever seen the defendant before today?
—Once.
—When?
—A little over a year ago.
—Would you describe what she looked like the day you saw her?
—She looked like she’d been through the wringer. She had soot on her cheeks and clothes. Her hair was scorched in one spot. She had what looked like some burns on her hands, and some on her face, I think. And I remember there was this—I don’t know—this wild look about her.
—Objection, Your Honor. Move to strike. This is irrelevant.
—I’ll strike just that last statement. Everything else is relevant. Just the facts, please, Officer. You may proceed, Counsel.
—Where did you see her?
—Down where we impound towed vehicles. She was asking about a car she said had been stolen years before. She said she left the keys in the car by accident, that she thought it was stolen by some guy she described as looking like just about every male twenty-year-old around here. But she didn’t have a driver’s license with her, and she didn’t know the license plate number.
—Objection, Your Honor. Move to strike. What’s the relevance of this?
—The defendant was trying to get away, Your Honor. After she poisoned her aunt and cousin last year, after she set that church on fire, she was trying to get her hands on a car. Shows her state of mind.
—Objection. Move to strike Counsel’s comment from the record, Your Honor. It’s misleading. And lacks foundation. The prosecution has provided no evidence Aslaug poisoned anyone or that she set any fire.
—Objection sustained. Any more of those types of monologues and you’ll be sanctioned, Counsel.
—My apologies, Your Honor.
—You may proceed with your questioning about the vehicle, Counsel.
—Thank you. Officer Regin, did you find her car?
—No. I don’t imagine she’d ever had a car stolen. It was just a charade she was putting on, trying to get a car. We see it all the time.
—Objection, Your Honor. Move to strike. Speculative. Argumentative.
—Sustained. Please strike all but the word no.
—Thank you, Officer. I have no further questions, Your Honor.
WITCH HAZEL
2003
The witch hazel is not yet blooming, but even absent its spidery flowers, it’s unmistakable: the limbs and twigs of the witch hazel are crooked, but smooth as skin. When Mother and I would dowse for water, each gripping the fork of a witch hazel branch, I could feel the witch hazel’s power in my hand, every time the branch would bend toward the earth, toward the water beneath the earth. I was a good dowser, even better than Mother was; I thought it was because I was more open to the spirit realm, more sensitive. Mother would have no part of such talk. Dowsing was not magic, according to Mother; dowsing had nothing to do with spirit, nothing to do with sensitivity. Dowsing worked because of electromagnetic radiation, or the direction of the gravitational field, or ultrasonic waves. It seemed Mother always had a different explanation when the topic arose, and each explanation was no more convincing than the last. Not even to her. I could see the surprise and wonder in her eyes each time I found water, each time she found water; I could see the way she looked at the witch hazel as if it held a secret she longed to own.
The building stands twenty yards or so beyond the witch hazel, beyond the gate; it looks different by day. Still, I recognize it, this genteel old woman with the stained blouse and smeared mouth. I walk to the end of the driveway, not sure what I’m planning to do, knowing only that my head feels full and my mouth dry. Unlike the night I came here with Mother, daylight seals off the interior from me: I can see nothing there. But I can see a sign propped near the porch—one I hadn’t noticed when we were here before. It’s large and white with removable letters, like the sign outside Soren’s Grocery. The sign reads: “Charisma Pentecostal Church, Pastor Sara Lerner, Sunday Services 11:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m., Tuesday Prayer Meeting 7:00 p.m., Wednesday Healing Service 7:00 p.m.” I hear music playing inside, the type of jarring music I’ve heard blaring from passing cars. And I hear singing, too, but the voices are barely audible over the music.
I walk up the steps, peer through the window on the door. Twenty or so people stand with their backs to me, many with their hands above their heads, their fingers spread.
I wonder, is my Dimmesdale among them?
Most of the people move to the music: some sway with the rhythm, some jump up and down. A woman wearing army fatigues runs circles around the group waving a purple flag. Another woman spins, her skirt an umbrella about her; she shakes a tambourine high above her head. A teenage boy stands in front on a low stage, facing me, playing an electric guitar, and to his far left a young woman plays drums, next to a poster of haloed Jesus in a ruby robe. An adolescent girl stands between the guitar player and the drummer, singing into a microphone, her free hand stroking the air. But even her magnified voice is difficult to discern, the accompanying music is so loud. At the rear of the stage hangs a large screen with words. An overhead projector sits beneath the screen next to a boy, his hair a dusting the color of persimmon. The boy yawns, looks at the ceiling, then the screen; he doesn’t sing.
“We are God’s soldiers,” the screen says, “the Chosen Ones. We will fight the battle, till Glory is won.” The words slip away, and new words appear; the boy looks back at the ceiling. “We are God’s children, we believe in God’s Son, Jesus the Savior, in Him Glory is won.”
The music stops and the singing stops.
“God is great,” the girl holding the microphone says. “I feel His presence here tonight.” She’s like a painting, this girl. Like a painting of an angel in the margin of one of Mother’s old books. Peach-flesh hair curling down her sides and periwinkle eyes. And yet, there is a weight about her—not a physical weight. She’s slight. But I feel a drawing down when I look into her eyes.
The music starts again; new words slide in and the angel girl starts to sing, and then everyone but the orange-haired boy sings. But the music is quiet now, and the people sway almost in unison; their hands rock like branches in a breeze. “Praise you, Jesus,” a man calls out. “Yes, yes, yes,” a woman says.
Then the woman in army fatigues starts to shout what sounds to me like nonsense, like she’s imitating Hebrew. Occasionally I think I hear her say “Adonai,” but otherwise I can make sense of nothing she’s saying. She still swings the purple flag—the faint light leaps from its fabric in silvery bursts—but no one in the room even looks at the woman, except the man to her right.
“That’s right, sister,” he says, as if what the woman is saying has meaning to him. “Uh-huh. That’s right.”
As soon as the army woman’s outburst fades, the man to her right speaks. “Our sister said there’s a darkness in our midst tonight. Tho the light of God’s grace is free to us, we all at times face an alley of darkness. And that alley is like a snake making a road into our souls. We must stamp out that snake, fill that alley with light.”
“Amen,” someone says. And then several people say, “Amen” and “Praise God” and “Praise Jesus.”
The guitar player and drummer fumble with their instruments before they move to the rear pew. The angel girl hands the microphone to the woman with the tambourine; then she joins the drummer, the guitar player.
The tambourine woman is alone onstage now. She turns to face the group, and I see she’s an older woman, much older than Mother was, and yet she holds herself so differently, more comfortably. She wears a suit jacket and a wide skirt, and her hair is tied tight. And when she speaks, I feel needles up my spine. She has an accent, a familiar accent: it’s Mother’s accent, my accent, but stronger. “The holy spirit is with us tonight. Thank you, Jesus, for blessing our sister with the gift of tongues.” She nods at the woman with the flag. “And for h
er joy in Christ.” She looks at the man who’d just spoken. “And thank you for our brother’s gift of interpretation. We are blessed with the gifts of the spirit tonight.”
“Amen,” someone says. “Hallelujah.”
“And we are blessed with you, Pastor,” the man says. There is another round of “Amens” and “Hallelujahs,” and I realize the woman with the tambourine is the preacher.
“Anyone needing to be blessed tonight,” the preacher says, “anyone needing the alley to their soul to be filled with light, come forward. Let God’s light fill you, heal you. Heal your body and soul.”
People from the pews stream forward and form a line along the stage. The preacher walks from one to the next, lifting each person’s hands to the air. They look like a belt of ferns, these people, with their arms making V’s to the sky. I think of the ferns parallel to the gully, the ones Mother pointed out the day before she died. I think of that image of me in the gully, veiled by my hair, and the sound of Mother’s moving feet, one slapping the ground, one dragging the ground. And I remember the sensation of Mother’s grip; I remember hearing the hair strands tear, and I remember the look in Mother’s eyes.
The preacher grips a small bottle containing a yellowish liquid. She pours a bit of the liquid onto the tips of her fingers. She again walks the line of people; she dabs the liquid on each person’s forehead, then lays her palm over the dabbed oil. She speaks quietly—I can’t understand her words—but within moments every person she touches drops to the ground, as if the preacher’s words or her touch or that liquid she’s holding were imbued with some strange power. Two men stand behind waiting, easing the people down as they fall. And the men throw swatches of thin red fabric over the legs of the sprawling women, some of whom have skirts now bunched up past their knees. And soon everyone who stepped forward lies on the floor—some still, some quivering, their bodies like leeches in salt. The preacher and the two men assisting her walk among the fallen, gingerly stepping over one person’s legs, another’s torso. The preacher’s mouth moves as she walks—I still can’t make out her words. She kneels by one woman and yanks the red fabric farther down the woman’s legs; then she places her hands on the woman’s shoulders, and the woman starts to writhe. The preacher is thin, yet I see strength in her body as she holds the writhing woman down. The preacher’s face reddens, and then her words become audible; her voice sounds different, deeper. “In the name of Jesus,” she says, “I cast out the demon that has hold on this woman, that has tainted her seed. This spirit of illness and depression is cast out, because the devil is a coward when faced with the might of the Lord.”
The drummer, guitar player and angel girl had been huddled on the back pew, whispering. But when the woman started writhing, and the preacher’s voice changed, the drummer rose from her seat. And now, when the preacher falls quiet again, the drummer turns toward the door, toward me.
SOLOMON’S SEAL
2007
—Cross-examination?
—Yes, just a brief one. Officer Regin, you described Aslaug as looking like—and I’m quoting here—“she’d been through the wringer.” But you didn’t ask her what happened to her, did you?
—I figured if she wanted to tell me, she would. I mean, we see all sorts.
—But as an officer of the law and a community servant, isn’t it your duty to help if you spot someone in trouble?
—I didn’t say she looked like she was in trouble.
—Well, let me tell you what you did say. You said Aslaug had soot and burns on her clothes and face and body. Doesn’t that sound like someone in trouble to you?
—Listen, I’m not a social worker, all right? Or a medical professional. I’m an officer of the law. When I met Ms. Hellig, it didn’t look like anyone had broken any laws—although it sure looked like Ms. Hellig here may have been trying to break one, trying to get a car that wasn’t hers.
—But you don’t really know whether Aslaug had a car that had been stolen, do you, Officer Regin?
—No, I—
—Thank you, Officer. A simple yes or no is fine. And you don’t really know whether her car had been impounded, do you?
—No.
—And you certainly don’t know why she was looking for her car at that time, do you?
—Well, the timing doesn’t look good—
—But you don’t know, do you? Your answer is no, isn’t that right?
—No, I don’t know.
—Thank you. I’ve no more questions.
LILY
2003
I’m standing plain in the yard, like a blue pickerelweed in the starkness of a marsh, when the door opens. The drummer steps onto the porch; at first she doesn’t see me. But I see her, better than when she was inside. She passes down the stairs, then from the stairs into the soft light of the low sun, and I realize she’s the apparition—the apparition of Mother. Except she is no apparition, and she’s not Mother. She’s the person I saw earlier, the one I thought was Mother—the ghost of Mother. The coincidence seems too much, too strange, and I wonder if I’m dreaming now, or if I was dreaming then when I thought I saw Mother’s ghost. The days and nights since Mother’s death blur in my mind; it’s hard for me to be sure what’s real.
I set the suitcase on the ground and sit down on it, aiming to make myself smaller, less visible, as I try to make sense of the sign, the music, this woman, that preacher. As I try to find some moisture in my mouth. I feel the masking tape wrinkle beneath me and stick to my dress; I feel the tickle of the warm grass on my calves. I’m not dreaming, I think: this woman is real.
She’s older than I am—I see this in her body—but not much older. And while she shares some traits with Mother—the pale skin, the delicate frame—she’s different, too. Taller. Her movements less erratic. Her eyes larger, her lips fuller.
Still, she reminds me of Mother. She wears a loose white garment that rides high up her neck, reaches to her ankles, extends to her wrists despite the heat; it billows as she descends the stairs, and it seems for a moment the air alone could lift her. A dandelion gone to seed.
Fallen apples speckle the yard like sores on the grass, and she begins to collect them; she bundles the front of her gown and drops them in—as if to weigh herself down. Mother often referred to apples using the Celtic word for “apple,” abal, the foundation of the word Avalon, the mythical isle of apples. She said the apple symbolizes the life inside a mother’s womb. Abal connotes fertility, immortality.
Minutes pass, and I start to think it possible the woman won’t notice me—she seems absorbed in the gathering, in the arranging of each abal within her gown. I feel my jaw ease, feel the familiar ache that follows the unclenching of my teeth. She’ll go back inside, I tell myself. And I’ll slip away, watch the church from a distance, look for my Dimmesdale from where I can’t be seen. But then the woman jerks to a stop and looks directly at me. I expect she knew I was there all along.
Her cheekbones roll creamy white; her fair skin is fairer than mine. Yet her lips are full, and their color so vivid, they seem too lavish, almost clownish. Her eyes are those of the black-eyed Susan, that daisy-like flower with light rays eclipsed by a black-moon core.
The kerchief she wears slips, and some of her hair falls loose, and I see it’s a menagerie of pink and black and reddish gold. I wonder how she painted her hair that way. And I wonder whether her hair is her hairstreak.
“You caught me scavenging,” she says, and she laughs a laugh that’s scratchy and high-pitched. “I hate letting the apples go to waste. Gudinden gets annoyed when I do this. She says they’re full of vermin.”
“Gudinden?” I say. But I understood her words. Gudinde means “goddess” in Danish. I’ve never heard anyone but Mother speak Danish.
“The pastor,” she says, but she doesn’t explain. She collects another apple from the ground, holds it toward me. “They’re not bad.”
I stand and the masking tape holds me, then gives way. I walk toward her, take the
apple—it’s wet in my hand—and I notice two of her fingers are webbed. I sense I should look away, but I don’t. Her eyes follow the path of my eyes but then quickly move on to the suitcase behind me.
“The service is still going on. You can just head in,” she says, but to the suitcase.
“I’m not here for the service.”
“Lucky you.” She looks back at me. “You selling something?”
A moment passes before I realize what she means. “No, I’m not. I’m just—”
“You looking for someone?”
“Yes. I mean, I guess I am. There’s this man, I thought he lived here….”
She tucks her bottom lip in her mouth, holds it there, rounding her narrow chin, making it bulge like a bullfrog’s. I can hear Mother’s taunting voice in my mind—what she’d say if I were to make such a face. “Goddamn you, Rune,” she says after she’s freed her lip. And then, “Hold on. I’ll see if I can get his attention. They’ve all been slain in there. I shouldn’t have much trouble.”
“Wait,” I say as she pivots; she turns back. “They’ve been slain?”
She laughs that laugh. “In the spirit,” she says. “Nobody’s dead.”
I don’t have any idea what she’s talking about. “I don’t know Rune,” I say then. But I know the name, I think; I know runes.
“You don’t?” She blows a strand of pink hair from her face. And she becomes in this moment one of the girls I admired, one of the girls I saw in Bethan, one of the girls I imagined being.
“I came here months ago with my mother,” I say. “She brought me here, my mother—she didn’t say why. We just sat outside. Looked. There were people inside. A man. I think this place meant something to my mother. That that man meant something to her. She died, my mother. I didn’t expect her to die…. I just wondered if that man knew her.”
“She went to church here?” The apples slip from her grip, tumble to the ground. She looks at them like she’s not sure how they got there. She makes no effort to pick them up.
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