Maybe, she thought. Maybe.
When she was finished, Joanie retreated into the cellar. Just to take another look. Out of all of Great-grandmother Joseph’s illustrations, the final pages scratched through with images of a crossroads chilled and intrigued Joanie the most.
The crossroad drawings were deliberately singed, nearly a third of each page disappeared into the air. Helen must have tried to use a fire to ask the Vine what came next. Elongated bodies looped and uncoiled from the burned edges. The faces of some of the figures were blacked out, others had gaping mouths full of sharp teeth. In the center of each corrupted page there was a rough pencil sketch of an organ: a heart, a lung, a kidney, a brain. The papers were bordered by chains of not-quite-connecting crosses. There were no captions for these drawings, like there were for Helen’s other illustrations, but on the back of each page—some smeared with charred, sooty fingerprints—eight words were neatly printed in giddy, almost childish loops. A PLACE WHERE LIVING AND DEAD CROSS PATHS. Joanie sensed the danger in those scalded pages, and understood these last books were a place where one might find another level of power. She could feel the tingle of that promise rising up through the paper to meet her fingertips.
Had Letta’s sister been the last one to read these? Joanie wondered if she progressed in the worship did it mean she would die, too—like Letta’s sister? She approached the idea cautiously, warming her hands at it.
Death would keep her out of the dank bedroom she shared with Josiah. It would keep her away from the gate, and the guilt she felt at the sight of the tenants in their listless all-bone bodies. It would keep her away from the stinking house, and Mother Joseph’s unpredictable orders. And if she didn’t die, she would become something else, something even Helen Joseph hadn’t imagined.
The recipe pages in Helen’s books were extensive, although most actual measurements were obscured; fragments of words were piled one on top of the other, towering across the height of the paper. The handwriting was small, two or three layers of writing stacked on each line. Each list of ingredients was strange and incongruent—chamomile leaves, one-third of a railroad spike, turmeric, nettles, rainwater. Joanie ran a finger over each ingredient, remembering it, guessing at its location at the Joseph place.
Joanie lifted the thin cardboard cover of the very last book, exposing the final drawings there. Helen had carefully labeled sketches of what she called the Vine’s Heart Cycle: a sinewy loop, serpent to rodent, rodent to seed, seed to soil. All of the sketched creatures climbed and wound around in a circle—a delirious whorl of life.
This was definitely a book for someone who was obsessed, a book made by someone who was testing her limits, Joanie thought. And she wondered if she was like Helen enough to pick up where she left off. Could continuing what Helen began result in the birth of something new?
Joanie devoted her days to studying the worship. As soon as she finished a boil in the smokehouse, she came to the cellar to salt the floor. If there were no cuttings to boil, she came to the chapel straight from her bed, a tap on the turtle’s tank her only greeting for the day. Joanie memorized the contents of the books, whispering over them in the dim cellar.
* * *
Leaving the Josephs and having the baby had meant a long pause in her worship, not its abandonment. Under the bubble of the tent where she sorted and sponged off the harvested lengths of the Vine with outward calm, she wondered, desperate, how she could reach the Vine in her new chapel. There was nothing in Helen’s books about recovering what was lost, but maybe Joanie could build a recipe for that. Bring back her son.
She pulled on a pair of yellow rubber gloves and took a stalk of the Vine from the freshly cut pile in its usual bin. Joanie settled the razor in her hand and, despite the bulk of the glove, shaved deftly away at the browning leaves, leaving the bright green loop of stalk intact. She had always been swift and precise in this work, never accidentally discarding any healthy bits of the plant, or puncturing the cylindrical, fluid-filled stem. She could almost feel the stalks moving, they were so vivid and alive. Joanie pressed her plea into each stalk, and felt an answering squeeze, like the grip of a hand.
She listened to the muted crunch of her rubber gloves compressing and expanding around her fingers. Joanie was swept under the work in a kind of grisly meditation. She imagined the texture, a sinewy slip, of her uncoiling organs through her fingers—like the cord that had connected her baby to her body. She imagined that she was part of the Vine, and that it was a part of her, a part of her baby, too. She urged it along, willing it to stretch further and longer, to wrap all the way around her, to wrap around her baby. Her baby who was gone, torn away like a piece of her flesh.
The Vine called to her, in response to her jolt of loss. It called out from where it lay piled around her; it called out from where it twisted between her fingers. I will give you more, it crawled. She pierced the stalk of the Vine, and a glimmering slick of sap oozed out onto her fingers. Joanie lifted it to her mouth.
She drank a single, long sip and tipped her head back, feeling the thick, green scent in the tent cover her. She had only drunk from the Vine that one time with Mother Joseph. This was different—it was much more than the floating ease she had felt at her mother-in-law’s elbow. The sap offered her something bigger, an invitation. The Vine’s power wound around her like a pair of arms; it lifted her out of the tent and set her by the side of a road. The cartoonish cross of white and yellow painted highway lines glowed bright. She saw the unmistakable outline of Mother Joseph on one side of her, and the impression of her tiny son, on his back on the pavement, kicking his legs joyfully, on the other. Across from her another figure, unfamiliar, wavered and glistened. The Vine lifted her up, so that she could see all of them, even herself, from above; they were arranged just so, four stars in the grisly constellation Helen Joseph had drawn in her final book. A crack of thunder outside the tent broke her vision in half. As it fell away, Joanie found herself on the ground, cradled by the soil as it drank in the water from the storm.
When the rain stopped, she stood, fully back in the tent, hazily taking in the surroundings she had left. Her discarded clippings had already filled the blue plastic tub on the ground. Joanie hadn’t remembered skimming off so many leaves, and she wondered how long she’d been in the tent. She ducked outside to empty the tub onto the mulch pile, the storm gone as quickly as it had come. The earth was spongy with water, and the rain caught in the leaves of a colossal maple, shuddering with tiny downpours at every residual gust of wind.
When Joanie turned back inside, she nearly stepped on the bloated body of a dead rat, overcome in the storm. The shape of it struck her suddenly like an answer—an ideal fit into one of Helen’s asymmetric, bubbling drawings. She felt a stirring alignment with the decaying animal, and she dropped to the ground beside it. She pressed into it with the flat of her hand, and felt a connection. She rolled the still-warm body over, a key turning in her mind. It was like Helen had delivered the animal herself from the beyond, a creature bridging her world and Helen’s, to bless the junction of her last recipe and Joanie’s first.
Helen’s gift was perfect. Joanie knew exactly what to make—to find what she had lost. She would take the silt-thick liquid from the creek. She would mix in the ash of burned, precious things. She would infuse it with the husk of the creature before her. She would boil it in a great fire and then she would take it to the crossroads she had seen. Joanie understood where she had to go if she wanted to find her son.
She left the drying tent, determined. She abandoned the slick, shorn stalks of Vine and her rubber gloves on the ground. In the kids’ trailer, she collected the baby’s crate, and began to fill it. Even though they weren’t there, Joanie could feel the presence of her foster siblings. She could hear them, and feel their cravings all through the bits of debris they left in their communal sleeping space. Joanie touched their pillows and blankets with the same fondness she would ha
ve used to touch their shoulders or cheeks. She paused by her cot, and slipped the top sheet off her bed. It was coated in skin cells, she thought, the cells that belonged to her and her baby. She folded it calmly and settled it into the crate with a little pat.
What Joanie needed most wasn’t in the kids’ trailer—it was in Letta’s. The night that Sil and Cello had brought her, half-dead, back to the garden, she remembered the floor, the way all of her bones seemed to rest atop it in a careless pile. She remembered being alone with Letta, Letta stripping her naked. The smocked peach dress she’d worn to the trial was filthy and reeking, covered in vomit. Letta sliced the dress off her with a pair of kitchen scissors, but didn’t ball it up and throw it away. Instead, she held it up cautiously, as though it were a serpent, too. Joanie wasn’t sure if she dreamed it or not, but it looked as though Letta held it up to her face. Close enough to see the stitching. Then she folded it and closed it away in some cabinet or case, as though quarantining the garment. Only then did she wash Joanie and dress her in familiar things. Letta settled Joanie into her and Sil’s bed, and fed her a warm tea. She hummed as she cleaned and dressed the festering snakebite.
At the time, Joanie hadn’t understood why Letta had saved the dress, but now it was clear. The Vine’s sap lingered in her body and tapped a message through her. The dress had power—it was filled and saturated with it. The sweat from Joanie’s pores as she’d handled the serpent, and the creature’s poison that had been retched back into the world, all of that mystical fluid vibrated in the fibers of that destroyed dress. The Vine was giving her directions, the same way Helen had sent her a sign.
Joanie didn’t bother to knock at Sil and Letta’s door. She pushed through, unafraid. Letta was there, smoking on the sofa, ashing into an upturned doll’s hat nestled between her ribs.
“What is it? One of the kids?” Letta’s voice was tense, but she made no movement to hoist herself to standing.
Joanie shook her head. “Where’s my dress?” Joanie’s voice was hoarse.
“What dress?” Letta exhaled and the trailer filled with smoke.
“My dress from the trial,” Joanie said, calling it up in her mind.
“Whatever would you want that for?” Letta’s voice hardened, shutting down any suggestion of affection. She knew Joanie hadn’t come to apologize.
“Did you think about what I said?” Joanie asked.
“Why can’t you leave it alone? I said I’m not interested.” Letta ashed her cigarette and covered her throat with a skeletal hand.
“We’re on the same side, Letta.”
“You’re on your own side,” Letta said, dragging heavily from her cigarette. “Do you even know what you’re throwing away messing around like this?” Letta stabbed her cigarette out in the little plastic hat.
“I just want my dress. It’s mine, isn’t it?” Joanie kept her voice low.
Letta dropped her head into her hands, as though protecting herself from an invisible blow. “I can’t stop you now. I can see you already got started. But I won’t help you.” Letta looked up, her mouth turned down in a mournful purse. “Promise you won’t hurt any of the kids. Or me and Sil.”
“Of course I won’t,” Joanie said, stung.
Letta looked at her hard. She pulled a fleck of loose tobacco from her lip, and pointed to a bank of cabinets. “Up there,” she said.
Joanie pulled the large, overturned plastic bin Sil and Letta used as a coffee table against the wall and climbed onto it.
“Did Amberly say anything about the mark on your shoulder, from the—the bite?”
“What? No.” Joanie opened and closed the thin fiberboard doors with purposeful viciousness.
“Because there’s something you should know, before you go too far.” Letta paused and shook her head.
“Well?”
“That mark you had, when you came back to us. My sister May, she had it once. Like a rash. She told me and Amberly it meant one of us was going to die.”
“So? Neither of y’all died from it. I almost did.”
“Amberly and I were fine, but May wasn’t. What you’re doing—this Work—it’s dangerous. I mean, life-and-death dangerous. I’m sorry, honey,” Letta said. “About Junior. I really, really am. But this won’t help him.” Joanie froze, and tried to really listen, to comb through each of Letta’s elongated syllables for any trap she’d set there. “Did you hear me? This won’t turn out the way you want,” Letta called loudly, her voice abuzz with irritation.
“I heard you,” Joanie said, and kept looking. The dress was on the top shelf of the center cabinet. She snatched it up. It was stiff with her year-old vomit.
“I know you won’t listen. Lord, help us.” Letta canted her head a few inches, and squinted one eye closed, focusing her gaze on Joanie.
Joanie climbed down from the bin and stuffed the dress into the crate. She took a plastic bag for the rat from beneath the sink, and left the trailer, the filled crate tucked under her arm. She stepped out into the humid afternoon with a grim giddiness, a premonition that she was at the beginning, instead of the end of something.
18
Cello rubbed at a small crack in the windshield, reaching over the wheel. The plastic ridge pushed against his ribs. Ben climbed into the truck. His face had lost the practiced cheer on display in Dr. Santo’s absurdly bright kitchen. It was warped into something else, a new, unfamiliar look. Cello was surprised by all of the work that had to be done when meeting someone new—noticing moods he didn’t understand, and figuring out how they might affect him. He wondered if Joanie would have navigated this new predicament more easily, but he was uncomfortably grateful she wasn’t there, in the cab of the truck. He shuddered away from the idea of Joanie meeting this attractive stranger, or walking through Dr. Santo’s immaculate house.
“Thanks for the ride,” Ben said. “Do you mind driving me to my dorm?”
“How far is it?” Cello asked, feeling immediately chilled beside Ben, no longer interested in his particular moods.
“Just about eleven, twelve miles. I can take the bus, but it barely ever comes, you know?” Ben’s face transformed again, this time near sticky with supplication.
“Which way?”
“Back east.”
Cello nodded. He was overwhelmed by the bizarre stretch of hours that had passed—not overwhelmed exactly, more like overfilled. Cello didn’t think he could take in another unexpected piece of information. He would do the right thing, take Ben home, drop off the next payment at the Stuckey’s on his way back and return Sil’s truck. He just had to keep remembering himself. He wasn’t like Ben, or Dr. Santo. Cello would never have a life like theirs. He’d hated that untethered feeling from inside the house, like he was a moth or some other pest who’d connived his way indoors—that he was a creature who didn’t belong there. It made him wonder what kind of life this extra money could buy. What kind of life would suit him better than his life at the garden?
Ben buckled his seat belt, and Cello turned the key with a little shake of his head. “Wait, don’t you want you guys’ money?” Ben asked.
“Oh, yeah.”
Ben counted out his and Marcela’s share onto the space between them on the vinyl seat. As Cello folded over the bills and tucked them underneath his thigh, he did his best to hide his humiliation. He’d been so blinded by Dr. Santo and his home that he hadn’t even thought to ask for their money—he’d had to be reminded.
“You okay, man?”
“Sure,” Cello said, winding through the neighborhood’s neat, freshly paved drives. “Just to the college you said, right?” He was caught in separate tides of worry. One current pulled at him, away at his understood life, peeling back those small routine comforts and exposing other questions and desires. The other current pushed him, toward the Stuckey’s, toward his obligations to his family, to Joanie.
“Yeah, t
hanks. I’ll show you when we get closer. Or actually you can just drop me there. I have class soon,” Ben said.
The college wasn’t too far from the garden, but Cello had never been there. Until he’d met Ben, he had never seen anyone from there, either. In the rare times he’d ridden past the campus, it flashed by quick as a photograph—fleeting and flat. It might as well have been Mexico, or the moon. Of course, Cello knew how to get there. The college was famous for practically straddling two states, his own and Maryland, another place he only knew through its fields on visits undertaken with Sil to buy specific types of seeds or supplements for the soil.
“What kind of class you got?” Cello asked.
“Renaissance drama.”
“Huh. What’s that?”
“It’s plays. Written around the time Shakespeare was writing plays, but not Shakespeare.”
“That doesn’t seem useful to anybody,” Cello said plainly.
“No,” Ben laughed. “It’s really not.”
“I thought college was expensive.”
“Oh, man, you’re killing me. I have practical classes, too, but I let myself take one I like every once in a while,” Ben said, putting his feet up on the dashboard.
“Don’t do that,” Cello scolded.
“Sorry.” Ben resettled himself on the bench and slapped his palms on his thighs. “It was actually a pretty good day, don’t you think? We got a lot of work done—you guys did well. You’re so fast.”
“I guess.” Cello scratched an itch on his chin with a T-shirt-covered shoulder, keeping his hands on the wheel. “Is that why you’re doing what you’re doing? To get money for college?”
Daughters of the Wild Page 18