Madapple

by Christina Meldrum

I shake my head, squat to gather the apples.

  “Don’t,” she says. I look up from the apples and see she’s looking at me in a different way, like I might look at a plant I’d never seen before. “Leave them.”

  I do. I stand.

  She bends and picks up one of the apples, pulls a penknife from her pocket, slices the apple through its middle. She holds out one half toward me, but it trembles; her hand trembles. “When an apple’s cut like this, through its center,” she says, “each half makes a pentagram.”

  I see the pentagram, each point on the star containing a seed, but I can’t focus on what she’s saying. Not with her hand shaking like it’s dangling on a string.

  “Sometimes Gudinden calls the pentagram the star of Bethlehem,” she says. “Sometimes she calls it the Three Kings’ star. But her favorite is five wounds of Christ. You know, like the five points, here, represent Christ’s wounds. Two in his ankles, two in his wrists, one in his side.” She bites into an apple half, into Christ’s ankle or his wrist or his side. “That make sense to you?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. I don’t want to talk about the star of Bethlehem or Christ. I want to talk about the trembling I hear in her voice, the trembling I see in her webbed hand.

  “It’s bullshit,” she says. “The Christians co-opt everything. The pentagram first symbolized the pagan goddess Kore. The apple was sacred to Kore. People across Europe—even in Egypt—worshiped Kore, long before they worshiped Christ. The Christians even took Kore’s festival, turned it into the Feast of the Epiphany.”

  “Isn’t this church Christian?” I think of the music. The Jesus poster.

  “Yeah,” she says. “So?”

  The door to the building opens, and noise from inside spreads outside. The woman grabs my hand with her webbed one and pulls me toward the bushes.

  “What are you doing?” I say, and I remember Mother’s words: poison ivy.

  She grabs the suitcase as she yanks me across the yard. “Get down.” She pushes me and I crouch behind a bush, beside her. “Trust me,” she says, “or you’ll be another sheep to the slaughter.” She yanks her dress up, sits cross-legged. I see her upper calf is painted, like her hair: that pale skin of hers is no longer pale, but hued in reddish strands and flecks. I can’t see enough to discern an image. I want to ask whether there is an image there, like Mother’s Solomon’s seal, or my touch-me-not, or my hairstreak. But she sees my looking, pulls at her garment, tucks it around her calves. Then she unearths a small box from under the bush, opens it and removes a square of what looks to me like hemp-fiber paper, the same as Mother would use to fold her cigarettes. She rifles through the box, pulls out a small bag, pinches out a tablespoon or so of some dried plant—I can’t see what—and arranges it in a loose line along the paper. She lifts the paper with her forefingers and thumbs, and she rocks it, until the plant pile becomes cylindrical. She rolls the cigarette, then, as Mother would; she licks it, lights it. And I smell Mother.

  People trickle out the door of the church, and I watch them now as she smokes and sways. I see the woman in army fatigues, her purple flag pocketed. And an older woman with pink shoes. A man steps out behind them; he stands too upright, his neck hugged by an oversize ring that’s white and stiff. The fatigues-wearing woman takes one of his arms, the pink-shoed lady the other, and together they descend the stairs as if negotiating ice. They chatter as they walk from the yard, about lobster rolls.

  The angel girl appears then, and the guitar player, and they walk down the stairs together. The girl dissects a strand of hair: she rolls it like that cigarette, pulls at its tip, rips its tip. Then she drops it, starts on another. The boy tugs his hands from his pockets, looks at them as if he’d just happened upon them, seems unsure what to do with them, pushes them back inside his pockets. The angel girl kicks at the apples as she passes through the yard; she arranges them in a line of sorts, leaves a trail of sorts.

  When the two disappear behind the church, the drummer says, “She’s screwed.”

  “What did you say?” I know what she said, not what she meant.

  “Literally,” she says. I see her eyes are dilated, like Mother’s would be, and pink as those shoes. She looks out toward the apple trail. “Did you see that girl, the one that just passed?”

  “The one who was singing before?” I say. “With the long hair, the light eyes?”

  She turns those black-eyed-Susan eyes on me: I’m inverted in their pool. And I realize I shouldn’t have said what I just said. How did I know the girl was singing?

  “Yup, her,” she says. It seems the cigarette’s changed her. “She’s pregnant, that girl. She just told me tonight. She’s only fifteen. About your age. And it wasn’t a holy union, if you know what I mean. It’s going to be interesting. Her parents are as stodgy as you can get in a church like this, and that’s saying a lot. They probably think she doesn’t even know about sex. And Gudinden thinks she’s some sort of goddamned saint. Welcome to the real world.” She rolls backward on the grass, lifts her feet in the air, drops them back down. “You smoke?” she says, still lying on her back. She holds the cigarette between her webbed fingers and a free one. She lifts her head; I shake my head. I’ve never smoked, but I’ve wondered where Mother went when she smoked. And I wonder where the drummer has gone. I wonder if I could go there, too.

  “What was your mother’s name?”

  “My mother?” I’m surprised she’s asking this; it seemed her thoughts had moved on. “Maren.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Aslaug.”

  “‘Consecrated to God.’”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Pardon me?” she says, and she laughs again, but this time it sounds forced. “The name, Aslaug. It means ‘consecrated to God.’”

  “You know me?”

  “Do you know what consecrated means? It means ‘dedicated,’ right? But it also means ‘to make sacred.’ Like you can just choose to make something sacred. To make someone holy.”

  “You know who I am?” I say again.

  “Like changing bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood. Consecrate some bread and wine, and voilà, you’ve got your Savior. The mundane becomes the hallowed.”

  “How do you know my name?”

  “You told me your name.”

  “But you knew my name—”

  “It’s a Scandinavian name. I said I knew the name. I didn’t say I know you.” She lifts up farther, props herself on her elbow. “What are you doing here, Aslaug?”

  “I told you—”

  But she shakes her head, peels grit from her tongue. “You didn’t tell me squat.”

  I feel blood pulse to my head, flush my face; I feel sweat creep up my spine and into the pits of my arms; and I feel the swirling in my head, the scattering of my thoughts, that always aggravated Mother. But I also feel exhilaration, a sense that life might not always be as it’s been, that there may be more to my existence, that I might belong somewhere. There’s nothing mundane about this, nothing familiar.

  “You knew her,” I say, like I know it’s true. “You knew my mother.”

  “I’m Susanne,” the woman says then, as if this should mean something to me. “I’m Sara’s daughter.”

  The name Susanne comes from the Hebrew word shoshannah, meaning “lily.” The biblical story of Susanna is a tale of a bathing woman who is propositioned by two men. She refuses them, and in response they claim they witnessed her committing adultery. Susanna is condemned to death, but then Daniel, inspired with the wisdom of God, interviews her accusers separately. Daniel asks each man to name the tree under which he saw Susanna and her lover. The first man says a mastic tree, the second says an evergreen oak. Their inconsistent testimony indicates Susanna is innocent. Susanna is freed, and the two elders are stoned.

  Mother assigned me to read two versions of this story, one from the original Septuagint translation, and the other in the Greek version of Theodotion. Mother never discussed the actual sto
ry with me, only the language. She pointed out that the Greek word for mastic tree is similar to the Greek word for cut, and the Greek word for evergreen oak is similar to that for split. The use of these particular trees in the story was satirical wordplay, according to Mother. But I was captivated less by the language and irony, more by the story of Susanna, the lily of the garden, saved by the difference between the mastic tree and the oak.

  I’m still holding the apple she gave me. It’s rotted on one side; I see this now. I let it drop. “I don’t know who Sara is,” I say.

  SOLOMON’S SEAL

  2007

  —Please state your name.

  —Dr. George Florens.

  —What is your profession, Dr. Florens?

  —I’m a medical doctor and a botanist. I’ve been employed for seven years as a professor at Bran College, in the biology department.

  —Are you familiar with the plant jimsonweed?

  —Datura stramonium? Yes, I’m quite familiar with the poisonous plant. It has several common names, including jimsonweed. It’s also at times referred to as thorn apple, madapple, angel’s-trumpet….

  —You said the plant is poisonous. How so?

  —Well, the plant contains the alkaloids hyoscyamine, atropine and hyoscine, also known as scopolamine. These are toxins. Atropine, in particular, is quite deadly.

  —What part of the jimsonweed plant is poisonous?

  —The entire plant—although the seeds are the most poisonous.

  —Does boiling or drying the plant alter its poisonous properties?

  —Objection. Leading.

  —Overruled.

  —No. The plant is just as poisonous if it’s consumed fresh or if it’s dried or boiled before it’s used. Some people have a reaction on their skin to just touching the plant.

  —What kind of reaction?

  —They get a rash. The rash isn’t fatal, of course, but it can be unpleasant.

  —So if someone were to handle jimsonweed, the person might develop a rash on her skin in the area where the person came in contact with the weed?

  —Objection. Leading.

  —Overruled. You can answer.

  —Yes.

  —Thank you.

  ZARA

  2003

  The biblical Sarah was the half sister of Abraham, and the wife of Abraham. She was once called Sarai, then Sarah, which means “princess” in Hebrew; she also may have been called Iscah. The Arabic form of Sarah is Zara, or “flower.” Sarah was a prophet who heard directly from God. She gave birth to a child, Isaac, when she was an old woman, then nursed strangers’ children to prove Isaac was her own. She committed adultery with an Egyptian pharaoh and compelled Abraham to cast his other son, Ishmael, into the wilderness. Sarah’s son, Isaac, fathered Jacob, who became the patriarch of the twelve tribes of Israel.

  I hear the door open again, and the preacher steps onto the porch, then off the porch. “Sanne?” she says. And she walks directly toward us, like she knows where we are.

  I expect Susanne to extinguish the cigarette, hide it, but she doesn’t. She stands up before the preacher reaches us. “How did you know where I was?”

  “Don’t I always know?” the preacher says, the smoke a screen around her. She is tall, the preacher, with elongated features, and the line of her nose is distractingly straight; its tip seems honed. Her skin hangs in crisp folds, especially around her eyes, which sit snug against the bridge of her nose, and slightly too close to the expanse of her brow.

  “She was in the yard,” Susanne says. She holds her hands flat against the air, and the diminished cigarette juts. “She was just out here in the yard.”

  The preacher sees me huddled. My heart thumps in my ears, and when I stand up, I feel I might drop again, and I wonder if it’s the preacher’s power coming down on me.

  “Maren,” the preacher says. Then again, “Maren.” And I think she believes I’m my mother. But then she says, “You look just like her.” She walks around the bush, nudging Susanne to the side. Then she lifts her hand to my hair, then my cheek, my mouth. She takes my hand, holds it in hers, seems to study it. Then she lets it drop, pushes my hair behind my ears, stands in front of me, holds my face toward her, looks at me straight on.

  Mother taught me much can be gleaned about objects by the light the objects emit. When heated, chemical elements emit distinctively hued lights: sodium emits a yellow light; helium, orange. A compound of copper and chlorine produces blue; strontium and carbon form a hot bright red. Some elements emit light not visible to humans—as do flowers. Flowers often highlight the location of their nectar using ultraviolet light that bugs can see, humans cannot. The evening primrose appears yellow to humans, but a bee sees an ultraviolet halo around the flower’s periphery that serves as a guidepost for the bee, directing the bee to the nectar and the pollen. Watching this woman study me, I wonder what it is she sees, whether she sees something in me I can’t see myself.

  And I wonder about what I see in her: the darkening blood-vessel rays about her nose; the rising gloss on her forehead and cheeks; the expanding and collapsing as her breathing thins out, accelerates; the green tunnel of her eyes clouding over.

  “I’m Aslaug,” I say again, but this time I say it as if it matters, as if I need to convince her of something.

  “Aslaug,” the preacher says. “Aslaug.” And then, “I’m Sara.”

  Susanne’s mother.

  This should have been obvious to me; the two are the same person at different stages of life. The wrinkles and weight of age had masked this from me, as winter’s tree. But their stalks are the same, and their limbs, and the structure of their faces, the shape of their lips. Only Susanne’s hair betrays them, and her webbed fingers. And her eyes: they are almost black. But the preacher’s are the yellow-green of wild leek—a color pearls would be if God were a child.

  “Maren sent you to us?” the preacher says.

  “No,” I say, although I nearly say yes. “Maren—my mother—she died.”

  “I hadn’t realized she was so sick,” the preacher says. “I wish you would have come to us before.”

  “I couldn’t have come to you,” I say. “I didn’t know of you.”

  “But you did come, Aslaug,” Susanne says. “You’re here, aren’t you?” And I’m reminded of how different she seems compared to when I first arrived; how misplaced. And I think of the mastic—symbolic of the biblical Susanna. The mastic could never flourish in Maine. Accustomed to warmth, it would suffer here, and its lemon white resin would slowly dry up.

  SOLOMON’S SEAL

  2007

  —Cross-examination?

  —Yes. Dr. Florens, the alkaloids in jimsonweed make the plant narcotic, correct?

  —Yes.

  —And the plant is narcotic whether consumed fresh or dried, right?

  —Yes.

  —People do, at times, consume the plant fresh for its narcotic properties, correct?

  —Yes, but it’s unwise.

  —It’s unwise because the plant is also poisonous, correct?

  —Yes.

  —It is possible, isn’t it, that Mrs. Hellig was using fresh jimsonweed as a narcotic?

  —Objection. Speculation.

  —Sustained. The jury can make its own inferences.

  —Dr. Florens, not everyone who touches jimsonweed develops a skin rash, isn’t that right?

  —That’s right.

  —In fact, many people can handle jimsonweed and show no physical signs of having touched the plant, correct?

  —That’s right. The people who develop a rash after contact with jimsonweed are having an allergic reaction to the plant. Not everyone is allergic to the plant in this way.

  —Thank you, Doctor.

  GREAT ASH TREE

  2003

  In Norse mythology, the universe consists of nine worlds, all contained in the great ash tree, Yggdrasil. The upper level of Yggdrasil houses three worlds: Asgard, land of gods; Alfheim, land of elves; an
d Vanaheim, land of Vanir gods and goddesses. In the middle of the tree are the worlds of Midgard, land of humans; Jotunheim, land of giants; Svar-talfheim, land of dark elves; and Nidavellir, land of dwarves. The lower level of Yggdrasil holds the worlds of Muspelheim, land of fire; and Niflheim, land of cold and ice. Three old crones reside in the roots of Yggdrasil—Urd, crone of fate; Skuld, crone of necessity; and Verdandi, crone of being—where they weave the “tapestry of fates.” Each person’s life represents a thread in their loom, and the length of the thread corresponds with the length of the life.

  Mother knew I loved the story of Yggdrasil, of its nine worlds and three old crones. She told me the story once when I was a child, and I never forgot. I imagined the crones weaving my fate, and sometimes at night I would talk to them, as if they were real, and I would ask them to give me a glimmer of my fate, an idea of my place in the world. But then one day when Mother and I were out foraging, we came upon a great ash tree, Yggdrasil; I couldn’t help but venture toward it, touch it.

  “Yggdrasil is not invincible,” Mother called to me. “One day the dragon Nidhogg gnaws its roots to shreds, and the entire universe comes crashing down.”

  I stopped myself from thinking of Yggdrasil after that day; I stopped myself from looking to the crones for comfort or guidance. They were imaginary, I told myself. A fantastic fabrication. They couldn’t be destroyed, because they weren’t real—they didn’t exist. But now, at this moment, Urd, Skuld and Verdandi feel alive to me again. And I want to tell Susanne and the preacher that Mother’s string came to an end; that in the “tapestry of fates,” Mother’s string no longer reached the loom. I want to tell them that I couldn’t have told them Mother was dying because I didn’t know myself; I couldn’t have known. Only the old crones knew Mother’s fate.

  But I don’t say this. Instead, I speak again of the night Mother taught me to drive, the night I first saw this building I now realize is a church. I tell them I don’t know who they are—the preacher and Susanne. That I don’t really know who I am. I am here to find my father, I say. I show them the suitcase of dwindled money, and I tell them he sent it to my mother. And I ask them, “Do you know my father? Do you know where he is?”