by Eden Royce
This time I nodded. I never knew how to act around people. I took a drink from my thermos of lemonade.
Susie did her strange double blink again. “My family used to live here a long time ago—up by Robinson farm. But we moved away.”
I didn’t know any Robinsons, but then I didn’t know all the people on the island. Some of the farms were really large. “When did you come back?”
“About a week ago.”
Another double blink. She placed her sandwich on her napkin and removed the top slice of bread. With her butter knife, she scraped off some of the peanut butter and licked it.
I giggled and Susie’s eyes went round, like she’d been caught doing something wrong. “What?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I have strange ways of eating things too.”
“You do?”
“I eat all the tiny seeds inside the string beans first.”
“That is weird!” Now she was giggling too. Then she leaned forward and whispered, “You wanna see what I can do?” Before I could answer, Susie ripped her apple in half with her bare hands.
I gasped. “How did you do that?”
She laughed and spread peanut butter on half the apple. “I’ll show you if you show me how to write really pretty like that.” She pointed to my composition book.
“It’s a deal,” I told her.
4
After school, me and Jay raced home, ignoring the wall of breath-stealing heat outside. Usually we would be running along the cooler marsh bank, climbing the branches of the big live oak trees, smelling the scent of pluff mud, and getting in all the fun we could before we had to go in for dinner and do homework. But not today. Today we ran down the dirt road toward home for our first real rootwork lesson.
Doc wasn’t in his room when we got home, so we headed to the cabin. The lock Deputy Collins had broken was fixed, so Doc had to be around somewhere. If he’d left his cabin door open, he couldn’t be far away. We went back in the house to change out of our school clothes. For the first time ever, Gran wasn’t home to greet us when we got home from school. My throat tightened up looking at the empty kitchen. It was so quiet in here. No pots banging around, no visitors chatting away at the table, no cold drinks or treats waiting for us. Next to me, Jay sighed. He put his arm around my shoulder and squeezed.
“I miss her too,” he said, reaching up to raise a window.
“That’s why we have to learn. So her memory isn’t gone forever.” I took a deep breath in and held it until my head felt light as a balloon. Then I finally let it out in a big huff. “Even if it means I have to deal with those snotty new girls at school. Lettie’s never going to quit when she finds out I’m learning to work root.”
Jay frowned. “Somebody bothering you, Jez? Need me to—”
“No, it’s okay.” I gave him a squeeze back. “Let’s get changed and find Doc.”
Seconds later, we were sitting in the yard watching the chickens peck for corn and bugs. Doc wasn’t anywhere to be found.
“Do you think he forgot?” I asked my brother.
Before Jay could answer, the door to the cabin swung open and Doc stomped out. He brushed dust off his clothes and placed a huge rock in front of the cabin door to keep it open.
“Where’d he come from? We just looked in there,” Jay said, pointing.
When Doc saw us there in the front yard looking at him, he jumped like he’d seen a ghost from one of Gran’s stories. “What’re y’all doing out here?”
“Waiting on you,” I said.
“Me?”
“Yeah,” Jay piped up. “You know . . . lessons?”
“Oh! I got busy and clean forgot we were going to do that today.”
I was about to be disappointed when I noticed his eyes sparkle. He was teasing us.
“First things first. Y’all two need to look out for each other when you’re working roots. Don’t let Jezebel go off by herself, Jay.” When Jay agreed, Doc pointed a finger at me. “And you know better than to leave your brother anywhere.”
“Yessir,” I said, saluting him.
“Now that’s clear, c’mon in here with me.”
Doc’s cabin was where he stored everything he and Gran used in their potions and powders. While they had sometimes let me and Jay write out labels and such, Doc had never let us spend much time in the cabin. My heart beat faster just thinking about all the secrets and mysteries waiting for us inside.
“Wow,” Jay said.
Doc’s supplies had started running low when Gran got sick, but he must have been busy restocking his products. The pine shelves smelled sweet and clean, like they were fresh cut, and were filled with bottles and jars of roots and dried flowers. A table, covered in carved wooden bowls and handfuls of branches, stood in the middle of the room. Bundles of herbs tied with tan string hung from the ceiling. Mixed up with the scents of Doc’s and Gran’s handmade potions, the whole place smelled like spice-filled woods after a hard rain.
I could see dust-covered jars pushed toward the back of the top shelf. I stood on tiptoe and my fingers were barely able to reach the shelf at all. I jumped and got a quick look at them, but it was difficult to see in the sunlight filtering through the cabin’s windows. Were they hidden back there by accident or on purpose?
“I’ve never let you two in here much before because I didn’t want you getting into anything.” Doc took a deep breath. “Just because we’re going to start working in here doesn’t mean I want you coming in on your own, that clear? I usually leave the door unlocked during the day because I’m going in and out all the time, but the last thing I need is y’all fooling around in here by yourselves.”
“Fooling around doing what?” I asked.
“Anything,” he said, running his finger along the row of shelves. “Twins in this world got more to worry about than normal people.”
I put my hands on my hips. “You saying we ain’t normal?”
“You ain’t,” Jay said, his nose squinched up.
I hit him in his scrawny arm. He yelped, then pushed me. Since he put all his weight behind it, I stumbled and banged my shoulder on Doc’s worktable.
“Stop it, y’all.” Doc’s voice cut through our fighting. “See? This is what I’m talking about. You need to work together.”
A carved wooden box stood on a shelf pushed back behind a round basket woven from black and green telephone wires. Doc took down the box and showed it to us. When I peeked close, the carvings were of water and ocean waves. But I couldn’t see any way to open it – there were no hinges or locks or anything. Doc held the box close to his chest and opened the lid, almost as if by magic. He showed me and Jay the inside. Lots of long, twisty vines lay on a checkered handkerchief.
“These are called Devil’s Shoestrings. They’re one of the most important ingredients for protection spells.”
I reached out and touched on the strings. They felt dry, but when I pressed one, the Shoestrings bent easy as a honeysuckle vine.
“Ugh,” Jay said, peeking into the basket. “They’re all dark and ugly.”
Doc set the box down on his worktable. “One thing I need you kids to understand. And I want you to listen real close now.” He tilted his head and looked at us through one eye like a bird. The air in the cabin felt like it was vibrating, moving around me. “Dark is not ugly. Get that out of your minds right now.” His voice was stern, but the look on his face was gentle. “You are both Black, and your mama taught you to hold your heads up and be proud. You’re Turners, and that comes with a legacy.”
“What’s a legacy?” Jay asked.
“Something from your parents and grandparents,” I said.
“And even further back than that,” Doc said. “Rootworking and magic has been in this family for over three hundred years. Maybe longer, in some way or another.” Doc rubbed his palms together, the sound of his rough skin like sandpaper. “So that was your first lesson in rootwork.”
“That’s it?” Jay stuck out his lower lip. He lo
oked so funny when he pouted and I couldn’t hold in my laugh. “I thought we were gonna actually do something.”
“We can’t always just do fun stuff.” I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at Jay. “It’s like math. We have to learn the principles first. I’m up to it. Are you?”
Jay threw his hands up in the air. “I’m here, ain’t I?”
“All right, all right, you two.” Doc looked at us thoughtfully. “There is something I need help with if you think you’re up to it, something very important. We’re gonna lay down some protection for the house.”
“Didn’t Gran use to do that?” Jay said.
“She did, but some of her magic is fading now that she’s gone.” Doc went clink-clunking around in some boxes stacked in the corner of the cabin. “Since we have a lot more to worry about right now, I think it’s best we set some protection that will last a long time and only need touching up once in a while.”
Doc removed something that looked like a big metal key from a basket and handed it to Jay. He then pointed to a new can of paint on the bottom shelf. “Jay, open that up there.”
Jay lifted the can of paint with both hands and dragged it to the floor. He wedged off the lid with the metal key and then peeled off the thick, dried skin covering the white liquid underneath.
“Now, Jez, you pour this, drop by drop, into that can of paint there.” Doc pressed a small bottle of blue liquid into my hands. “Keep adding drops until it gets to be haint blue.”
“Haint” was the word Gran had used in her stories to mean ghosts, or spirits of people and things that hadn’t moved on from our world to the next. Even though it was an old word, Mama and Doc used it sometimes too.
“Haint blue is the color ghosts and spirits hate most,” Doc continued. “It reminds them of the big salt—that’s the ocean. Since ghosts can’t cross water, they stay away from the color.”
“Okay.” I tugged on one of my pigtails. I had a hair ribbon that was haint blue, but Mama only let me wear it on the Sundays we went to church. I knew the color was special, but not like this. “Then what do we do with it?” I asked.
“You paint the house.” When we just stared at him, Doc laughed. “I never said rootwork wasn’t real work.” He lit his pipe, and the scent of tobacco and dried peaches started to cover the smell of spice and wood from the cabin. He pulled Devil’s Shoestrings out of the basket one by one, then started to braid them in a circle. “Now get that paint mixed.”
I carefully added in the liquid Doc had given me. Jay brought a new paint stick over and went to stir it all up.
“We’re supposed to do that together,” I told him. “Let me hold part of it.”
“Ain’t long enough for you to hold it and pour in those drops at the same time. I’ll go first; then you can stir when there’s enough liquid in.” He sank the stick into the paint and blue rose to the top.
“No, you’ll do it all and not leave anything for me.” Stirring paint was one of my favorite things to do. I loved it when the separate colors would come together all smooth into a brand-new shade.
“I will so! You need to wait, Jezzie.”
He yanked back on the stick at the same moment I decided he was right and I should trust him and wait. The stick flew up, catching against the lip of the paint can, flinging huge blobs of light-blue paint all over the inside of Doc’s cabin, and all over me and Jay, too.
My favorite denim dress—with pockets big enough to hold my doll, a peach, and anything I found out in the marsh while I was running around—was ruined. A line of paint slid down Jay’s dark cheek, headed toward his chin. He wiped at it with the back of his hand, and it smeared into a chalky, ashy smudge that ran along his arm as well.
Mama was going to kill us dead.
Doc slammed his fist down on his worktable, making the roots and herbs inside the jars rattle. “That’s enough out of both of you! Look at my ceiling. Blue paint is no good inside a place. If something gets in here with one of us, it’s already too late.”
“You mean hags?” I joked, grinning. I picked at a dark spot on my dress until I realized it was a small hole. “We’re gonna paint the house now, so they won’t be able to sneak in after today!”
“I’m glad to hear you both remember those stories.” Our uncle returned his attention to his table, brushing aside stubborn gnats as he scraped bark from a twisted, blackened branch and put it in a jar. “They were a warning to keep you safe. There’s worse things than hags out there.”
“Like what?” Jay asked.
“Deputy Collins,” I whispered.
Doc got a faraway look on his face like he did when he was listening. Soon, I heard it too.
Footsteps.
Someone was coming up to the cabin. A knock sounded on the door. We looked up as a light-skinned man with a pencil-thin mustache and tired eyes stuck his head in. He held a beat-up fishing hat in his hands, crushing it in his trembling fingers.
“Begging your pardon, Doc. You got time to krak teet some? To ease my heart a bit?”
Doc smiled at the man. “Mr. Benjamin, always got time to talk with you. Sit yourself down in here.”
I didn’t think Mr. Benjamin was that old, but he looked weary. “Sorry I didn’t make it to your ma’s service, Doc. I just . . . couldn’t take no more.”
Doc pulled a stool from under the table and sat next to the man. He placed a comforting hand on the man’s shoulder. “Don’t you apologize, no sir. Your own loss is still fresh on your heart.”
“What happened, mister?” I asked.
Doc gave me a sharp look. “Jezebel—”
But Mr. Benjamin held out a hand. “That’s all right. Gotta speak on it sometime.” The man turned to me and said, “I lost my daughter a month back. She got real, real sick, then she died.”
“I’m sorry,” Jay said.
“I’m sorry too,” I told him. “I wish we could help.”
The man’s light-brown eyes looked watery and sad, but he smiled at us. “You two learning from your uncle how to work the roots?”
We both nodded.
“Then maybe one day you will.”
“That’s all a part of what we rootworkers do.” Doc pushed aside the ingredients littering his table to make room for the man to lean on. “Not everyone needs a potion or a spell. Sometimes they need someone to listen. And since Mr. Benjamin wants to talk grown people’s business, you scoot on out of here. Better get on with the painting. I already scraped off the old, flaking paint from the wood. You do the bottom of the house up as high as you can reach, and I’ll be there after I finish talking with Mr. Benjamin to do the rest.”
We hurried back to the house and greeted Mama where she stood at the kitchen sink. She was up to her wrists in soapsuds and called out to us to be careful as we whizzed back outside. We picked out a spot around the back of the house and dipped our brushes.
“Sorry I got angry about the paint,” I said as I pushed the brush back and forth over the cracking wood slats of the house.
Jay was quiet for a moment, slapping the paint-swollen brush messily. “Yeah, me too. I guess I didn’t figure we’d be painting the house as a root lesson.”
“Me either.” With my bare fingers, I wiped off a drop of paint from my arm. “Remember when Daddy used to do things like this? Painting, mending stairs, patching the roof.”
Jay nodded. Somewhere way far back in my mind I remembered Daddy being around to do those things. Then, one day, he went out to work and never came home. We didn’t even know why he left us. When we thought we might be forgetting him, me and Jay built him in our minds. From scratch. I would remember how tall he was, and Jay would remember his deep, rumbly voice. He could even imitate him telling some of his jokes, while I remembered his eyes were turned down at the outside corners and deep brown like springtime mud. At first, we thought it would be enough to keep us going until he came back. Back then, we wanted it—expected it—to happen every day of the year. Then it slowed down to only special days,
like Christmas or our birthday. Now we didn’t expect it at all, but we wondered all the time where he was and if he missed us too.
I thought about all of this as I painted, and since Jay was quiet, I figured he was thinking of Daddy too. We painted and painted as the sun dipped lower in the sky. Too soon, Mama stuck her head out of the front door.
“Kids, time for dinner!”
“Aw, Mama, we’re almost finished,” Jay whined.
“Don’t you ‘aw, Mama’ me. You were nowhere near finished.” She swatted away some gnats with a dishcloth. “And just look at the paint on your clothes!”
“We were getting there,” I said, hoping the paint would come out with a little turpentine. We put the lid on the paint, dumped our brushes into a jar of paint thinner Doc had set out, then marched up to the porch. “And we didn’t even get the chance to play today.”
“Well, that’s what happens when you have school, homework, and root lessons.” Mama smiled like she knew we would complain. “You sure you still want to keep up with these lessons of Doc’s?”
I pushed my lips out so Mama would see I knew what she was doing. “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I’m sure.”
“Okay, then. Get in here and get cleaned up for dinner.” She tugged one of my curls. “How was your first day in the new class?”
“Good and bad things happened today,” I said. “But mostly good.”
“I’m so glad to hear that, Jezzie.”
“Me too.” Then I smelled the chicken roasting and I ran off to get washed up. If I didn’t hurry, Jay’d grab both of the chicken wings for himself.
The sun was finally starting to set by the time we ate dinner, did homework, gathered eggs, and got our clothes ready for school the next day. Mama sent Doc off to find her some saw palmetto to make tea. I washed the empty glass jars Mama’s customers brought back, and Jay dried them. Mama had just made wild strawberry jam. The big metal pots sat on the counter covered with muslin cloth to keep the bugs off while it cooled. She had a basket of okra on the counter waiting to be pickled next.
“Mama, when you make teas with plants, isn’t that rootwork?” I asked.