The Storycatcher

by Hite, Ann

  “Oh, I know what you mean. At first I thought it was odd she would put gravestone rubbings on a quilt. But now I’m attached to her work.” Miss Lydia shook her head. “She doesn’t get it from me. I sure don’t sew.”

  I touched the old lace, and an angry feeling hit me. Somebody had been done wrong. The quilt was a story of pain. I looked closely at the picture from the stone. The hand of God was reaching down and breaking a chain. “I don’t like that picture.”

  “It is horrible. I’m not sure why the Browns had that put on their daughter’s marker. She was only fifteen when she died. Maybe they felt broken by God.”

  “What girl would be roaming around a graveyard taking the pictures off the stones?” This just popped out before I thought on it long.

  Miss Lydia smiled, so I guessed she didn’t take no offense to the question. “I don’t know. There is a lot about Faith I don’t know. She has always been quiet and stayed off to herself.”

  “We got strange gravestones on the island. She’d have a time with them.”

  “I bet your island is pretty, Ada.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m partial because it is my home.”

  “I don’t even know where home is anymore. I wish I could go to your island.” She began to fold the quilt.

  “It’s the best place in the world. You get ready one Friday morning and I’ll take you. My boy can bring you back before dark.” I said this without even thinking. This woman had managed to get on my good side.

  “Would you? I bet Faith would love it too.”

  Now, just the mention of that white girl’s name set my teeth on edge. “We’ll do just what I said. I’m going to clean your room, ma’am. This one is too clean to mess with.”

  The biggest cold chill settled on me in that little room at the top of the house. Once, it had been my favorite room ’cause I could see the island on a clear day.

  “I’ll see you downstairs, Ada.” Miss Lydia left me standing there.

  “That be one strange white girl that keeps her room like this,” I mumbled to myself.

  “Yes, she is strange,” said a voice behind me, one I recognized straightaway.

  I didn’t turn to look. Nope, nothing at all I wanted to see. “Don’t be bothering me after all these years. I ain’t got a thing to say to you.”

  “You blame me for your beau dying.” She still talked in that proper way of hers. Death didn’t take that away from her.

  “I don’t blame no one for nothing.” Still I looked out the window.

  Her laugh was soft. “You’re afraid of me, Lou.” She said that name with a hard edge.

  “Not much I’m afraid of these days.” Boy, that was some kind of lie. I flipped the lock on the window and forced it open. The salt air filled the room, clearing my head.

  “Why didn’t you like me? I never did a thing to you. You could have saved me. I died too early.”

  This made me turn around. I couldn’t help myself. “You’re still some kind of fool, girl.”

  “Me? You still work here.”

  “Why are you here?”

  She smiled. The mark on her neck made my stomach turn. “Me and you have a story together, Lou, but my being here doesn’t have one thing to do with that. I have a story to tell, but not to you. You didn’t care when it counted. I’m here to tell someone else that will listen.”

  “You brought all that mess on yourself, Mary Beth Clark,” I shot at her.

  “You’re right about that. But tell me, was it because I was with a white man? Or because I was dressed nice and talked decent that you were mean to me?” She crossed her arms over her chest. “What makes you any different than a white person passing judgment?”

  “You ain’t the only one who lost something that night. I lost my life when Roger died. They killed him ’cause of you.”

  She tilted her head to one side. “Yes, ma’am, but he came here at the wrong time. Me and him were having a conversation. That’s all.”

  “Stop.” I held up my hand. “I don’t ever want to know.”

  “You’re part of what happened that night, Ada Lee Tine. You are part of that night no matter whether you want to be or not.” She waited a minute. “The old woman ghost used you to get here, to get into the house. That’s the way she moves from one story to another. She uses a live person who can see her and hear her. And there you were. Benton T. Horse killed me. He killed me, and the old woman ghost didn’t save me.” And she was gone.

  “None of it had a thing to do with me.” I said this too loud.

  “You don’t know.” The words sat in the room. I stepped out on the landing and seen Shelly standing at the foot of the stairs. Faith came into the front hall and cut a look up at me. For a minute I saw two girls in one. That’s when I understood I was looking at that girl from the stone, Arleen Brown.

  PART EIGHT

  Memory Box

  1869–1870

  “Memory box: a box made of anything that holds a girl’s trinkets, dreams, and secrets.”

  —Armetta Lolly

  Shelly Parker

  THAT SUNDAY AFTERNOON when I seen Miss Laura Wool’s death quilt, I knew I had to read Armetta’s book, knew I’d been wrong not to read it before then. Arleen, Faith—whoever she was—had a streak of bad running through her. I told Ada I was going to walk on the beach. I took Armetta’s book with me, safe in the pocket of my skirt. I settled on the part of the beach that met the hills of sand. I let the wind blow across my skin and the water sing to me. Maybe it wasn’t too late to find a answer.

  April 3, 1869

  I live in a small shack tucked in one of the corners right close to the bend in the river, not far from the Danielses’ plot. The shed was meant for tools, but I cleaned me out a space and ran a pipe out the wall for the old wood stove Smug Platt hauled over there for me. All I need is a warm room with no one bothering me. I’ve given up on living in the world and decided to stay tucked away in the cemetery for the rest of my life.

  On the left side of Ella Creek Cemetery is nothing but woods and the road leading down to the white farmers. On the right is Dragonfly River named by the Danielses. Mr. Daniels’s place is out behind the graves, about a half a mile in the woods. Folks on down the road believe the woods that separate them from Ella Creek Cemetery be full of haints. I reckon they know just what they’re talking about ’cause I see my share of spirits roaming the family plots, but me and them share the place with no problem. Those spirits don’t even surprise me no more. It’s the river that drives me slap crazy, the way it churns so loud, filling my head with long, mournful sobs. But mostly all those graves bring me some peace in this old world.

  I take care of the graves: planting, raking, and all the things that make the dead seem looked after. It keeps me busy. I know lots of whispering is going on about me living in a cemetery. But here’s the thing: folks be real bad about throwing stones without looking at their own ways. See, I have me a good reason to be living right here. My daddy wandered off down the mountain and fell off his old mule into the river. He drowned. I was standing in the front yard of our old house when the mule came wandering back. I knew something terrible was wrong ’cause Daddy was attached to that old mule like a boy to his dog. Mama had only died a couple of months before, so I was alone when I went searching for Daddy. My mama, Liza Lolly, was something special. And if the truth be known, I loved her better than Daddy. I put him in a grave right beside Mama in the cemetery. Mr. Daniels don’t have a gripe with coloreds burying their dead there as long as they choose a plot in the corner away from the white family plots. Imagine a graveyard being separated into skin colors. Lordy, what does he think? That we will rub off on him in death?

  So I took me some slate and buried part of it in the ground so it stood nice and straight at the head of his grave. But for some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to leave the slate blank like he had Mama’s. I spelled out his name with a piece of white chalk that I kept in my memory box. The first decent rain would wash him
away.

  My memory box is the one thing I keep from my old life. Inside is that chalk, a button from the shirt Daddy wore when he drowned, Mama’s real gold wedding band, a ribbon from her hair, and a note some old boy gave me when I was thirteen. He died a year later when he fell off a crazy horse while working on a farm down the mountain. And that was that for me. And if the person reading this right now wants to know how a old colored girl learned to write, the answer is Amelia Daniels, but that’s more of a story for another day. The good thing about living and working in the cemetery is I can do pretty much what I want. I like it that way. But them haints do get under my skin sometimes.

  April 10, 1869

  All I am good for is planting. I can plant anything and it will grow like some dern weed. Now, a few years back I had me a idea to go down the mountain and see the Swannanoa River. That is a decent-sized stretch of water. I can tell ’cause when I stand in the west corner of the cemetery, right on the edge of the woods, I can see it snaking on the valley’s floor. I bet it is quiet and lazy, not all riled up like Dragonfly River. But I never went. Couldn’t leave. That dern old mountain has me around the feet and planted me right here. So sleeping in my old shed comes to me just as natural as wildflowers coming back to the meadow each and every spring. I like that word meadow. It sounds all nice and kind. Not much of that here on the mountain, kindness, not for coloreds, anyway. Each day I get up and work until dark, but always I wander over to Mama’s grave and have me a conversation with her. Sometimes I can hear her sweet, clean voice. She was the best cook ever. That’s what Mrs. Daniels said when Mama died. “That orange cake she made was divine, Armetta.” A cake. A stupid old cake. My mama was something more than her cooking. She was the air in my lungs and the push in my step. That’s why it didn’t take me no time to bring that cemetery into a show place. Folks, both white and black, walk by and whistle at the work I’ve done.

  So it was all my hard work that brought me to Miss Amelia Daniels. See, she be crazy. That’s what everybody said, especially the coloreds that worked there. I knew her when her and me was little things. She started teaching me to read then. Later she learned me to write halfway. Mama said she was touched, but Mama was always kinder than most. Amelia stayed upstairs in the house all the time, but I’d seen her sneak out late in the evening and dance without any shoes in the meadow while the sun went down. Mr. Daniels, her daddy, up and died from a heart attack, and that changed the whole place. Most of the coloreds started worrying that living on the Daniels place was going to end, but then that lawyer man read Mr. Daniels’s will—I even had to go stand in the yard and listen. He left each colored family their old house and a plot of land. Folks said he was still trying to make up for slave days.

  When Mr. Daniels died, things changed. Miss Amelia began to come out of the house anytime she wanted. The day I started knowing her, really knowing her as a grown-up, she wore a pink dress covered in tiny rosebuds. On her feet was a pair of soft pink slippers like flowers in bloom. She moved around like a fairy in one of Mama’s stories. Her dark-red curls fell down her back. I wanted so bad to touch that hair. Mama always said red hair be the sign of luck and favor. I’ve never been anything to look at, not like Mama. This gives me three wrongs: a girl, colored, and ugly. And everybody knows three be a bad number. Most folks say I looked like some old boy.

  Miss Amelia carries herself like a butterfly that caught a good wind. What I would do for that kind of grace in my soul. Now, a soul be a funny thing, all tangled up in this worldly life, speaking in the most quiet words that can’t be heard by the human ear. Once in a while a soul takes up housekeeping in a person’s mind and steals all her practical sense. Miss Amelia has that kind of soul. You can tell by looking deep into her eyes.

  My soul be old, old, old. Nothing fanciful. So it was a true wonder that I walked right up to Miss Amelia that day. Most of the time I kept off in the woods when others came visiting the graves.

  “There you are.” It was that simple, like she’d been knowing all along I’d come to her.

  I stood there like all my sense had drained out of my feet.

  “What are your plans for Daddy’s grave? I think . . .” Her voice broke in half. I wished her silent. Her pain soaked into my bones and ached just like Jesus hurt when he saw Martha crying over her brother, Lazarus. “I think he needs something real pretty,” she finished.

  Life could rip a girl up and leave her to defend herself. “Some wildflowers.” I dug the toe of my old work boot into the loose dirt.

  “Please.” One long curl pushed down over her eye.

  “I’ll work on it today.”

  She looked at the pure blue sky. “Daddy called that a glass sky, Miss Armetta.”

  My name sounded like musical notes coming out of her mouth. Imagine a glass sky. Not a thought I would ever find on my own.

  “I always remembered you. I taught you to read. Daddy would have killed me if he knew. He never believed in smart coloreds.”

  I nodded.

  After she left, I sowed a whole slew of seeds into Mr. Daniels’s mound, working my fingers into the cool dirt. I’d been catching plenty of seeds for a while. Only fitting to give them back to Mr. Daniels. The knees of my overalls had big dirty patches. The evening sun stretched out and touched my shoulders as I worked. My job was to make them seeds stay put until they took hold. That was the most important job.

  April 14, 1869

  And we set into a pattern for the next few days. Me working and her talking.

  “I had me a beau once. He was pretty as he was tall.” Miss Amelia watched as I tended the seeds with water I hauled from the river.

  “If we don’t get some rain, these flowers will never grow.” I kept my look on the ground.

  “He had eyes as blue as robin eggs. Do you know that color, Armetta?”

  I met her stare. She talked to be talking, and listening to her soothed the hurt I didn’t even know was there.

  “He just up and left for Atlanta. I don’t blame him none. I was more your age and the dumbest girl around. Lord, Daddy kept me closed and didn’t even let me live. The boy just wanted me. You know what I mean?”

  The river was calm from lack of rain. “I reckon.”

  “Well, he used me right up. I never had another thing to give to a boy. You need to be careful, Armetta Lolly. You are alone in the world. Men are snakes. Don’t trust them.” She dug her bare feet into the dirt. “Mama says I need to find me a man and just get married. She says there ain’t no use in loving someone. She says I’ll be twenty-five soon and nobody will want me.”

  The words in my mouth tasted like gravel, and I forced them down. I care about you. That thought floated right through my mind. But her mama was right. Amelia needed to find a man and marry. What was love? I’d never known one thing about it. Mama loved me, but shoot, she was so busy taking care of us to show me much touching. Daddy was Daddy, all about himself, like I wasn’t even part of him.

  “Love be right here.” I opened my arms to the graves.

  She pulled her feet close to her and studied me. “Maybe. But that’s so sad, Armetta. Real sad. The dead give us love. Too sad.” She shook her head. We could disagree and still be together there, among the graves, the dead. Me growing things and her talking things out.

  April 18, 1869

  Miss Amelia came knocking at my door today, a good week after I planted the flowers on her daddy’s grave. She had found the seedlings peeking up even though we was still in a dry spell, not to mention the hot wind.

  “Mama has taken sick. I think it’s this crazy weather. Not a cool day in sight.” She nodded at the ball of sun in the sky.

  “Nothing I like about this weather,” I said.

  “I made you some fresh bread and gathered some eggs.” She pushed a pretty brown basket at me. “I have this too. I want you to take it.” She pulled a package out from behind her back. It was wrapped in pink tissue paper and tied with a yellow ribbon.

  My stomach got
to fluttering. The tissue paper was the prettiest thing I’d seen in my whole life, prettier than the white Bible Mama gave me one Christmas. It be in the memory box too.

  “Go on, silly. It’s just plain old paper.” But she wore a big pleased smile on her face.

  The paper be soft like a piece of fancy cloth, maybe softer. Pale-yellow material with tiny white dots was folded in the neatest of ways. The color against my dark skin makes it look beautiful. A dress. The skirt is flimsy and fluffy like a cloud settling on the cemetery after a rain. They say the valley pulls the clouds down and when the sun hits them it be the prettiest sight looking down from Black Mountain. My one dress is meant for scrubbing floors at some white woman’s house. And it is this very reason bile pushed in my chest and up my throat. The new dress is a heartbreak waiting to be thrown on me. That’s exactly what Mama would have said. It is so pretty, sin is written all over it. Miss Amelia thought she be doing good, trying to make me better, lift me up in the world. A white woman with good intentions is the worst thing to come up against in life.

  Miss Amelia took the dress from me and gave it a good shake. “I think it will be a perfect fit. You’ll look so nice, Armetta.”

  My name coming out of her mouth sounded like a soft wind rippling through the leaves. I held on to the pink tissue paper.

  “I know you’re thinking you don’t need to look pretty, but that’s just not so. Every girl should look her best. Anyway, surprises happen every day. You never know when you might need a good dress.”

  Now, that was the apple on the tree of knowledge tempting and taunting me. “I’ll wear it to the next party I’m invited to.” I cut her a grin so as not to show disrespect or hurt her feelings.

  “You never know, Armetta. We can meet someone special in the oddest of ways.”