The Restorer (17 page)

I was in the land of superstition, the land of the Lowcountry Boo Hag. A woman—according to Papa’s old tales—practiced in the ways of sorcery and witchcraft. When night fell the hag would leave her body and roam unbridled over the countryside, draining life force through the breath of her victims. She couldn’t be seen, but she could be felt. Her touch was warm, Papa said, and had the texture of raw meat.

“She’s not a ghost then,” I’d pointed out with what I considered perfect logic. “Their touch is cold and damp. It makes me think of being trapped in a tomb.”

“Shush,” Papa warned. “Don’t let your mother hear you talk about such things.”

I’d clammed up like the obedient daughter I was, but it bothered me that I couldn’t share this part of my life with Mama. After an encounter with a ghost, I’d longed more than anything to feel her warm arms around me, holding me close, keeping me safe from the dangers that floated by our windows at dusk.

If my first ghostly sighting had changed my relationship with Papa, his rules had created a chasm between my mother and me. We could never have the kind of bond I wanted because I kept things from her.

Papa kept things from her, too, and his secrets had become a heavy a burden for both of us.

Mariama and Anyika’s graves were in the newer section of the cemetery, near the entrance. They’d been laid to rest side by side beneath the gnarled branches of an ancient live oak.

Mariama’s grave was decorated similarly to the others, but Anyika’s tiny burial site had very little adornment. A simple headstone and a few scattered sand dollars and whelks.

But what struck me the most was the date of birth on the marker. Today would have been her birthday.

I knelt and with gentle hands cleared away the dead leaves from the grave, exposing a heart that someone had fashioned from cockleshells.

Slowly, I traced the outline with my fingertip, seeing in my mind’s eye the heart forming on my frosted window.

I heard the crunch of gravel out on the road as a car approached. I waited for it to pass by, but it pulled to a stop and a second later, a car door slammed.

Rising, I walked quickly away. I couldn’t explain it, but I didn’t want to be found at those graves. Since I didn’t have time to make it all the way back to the car, I stepped behind a tree and hoped no one would come my way.

Huddled behind the massive trunk, I watched as the visitor came through the arched entrance, walking with shoulders forward and head slightly bowed. I knew him instantly.

It was Devlin.

SIXTEEN

A
s soon as he was inside the gate, his head came up and he paused to scan the cemetery, as if sensing my presence.

More likely, his years as a cop had made him wary of isolated places. Whatever the case, I jerked back and pressed myself up against the bark. When I didn’t hear footsteps coming toward me, I chanced another glance.

He had moved over to stand between Mariama and Anyika’s graves. He was turned away from me so that I couldn’t see his expression, and I was thankful for that. I hated myself for spying on him in such a private moment, but I couldn’t look away. Or maybe I just didn’t want to. Maybe I’d convinced myself that because of my connection to the ghost child—to him—I had a right to be there.

He gazed down at Mariama’s headstone for the longest time, then knelt and placed something on Anyika’s grave.

The cemetery was very quiet. I fancied I could hear his voice.

After a moment, he rose and strode from the cemetery. Out on the road, I heard his car door slam.

I waited until the sound of the engine faded before I emerged from my hiding place. It was to my shame—and later, my bitter regret—that I didn’t leave the cemetery right then and there, but instead walked back to the graves to see what Devlin had left.

In the center of the cockleshell heart, he’d placed a miniature antique doll, hand-painted with a dusky complexion and adorned with lace parasol, silk bustle and buckle-up shoes. She was the most exquisite thing I’d ever seen.

The offering stirred something deep inside me. Tears stung behind my lids and I tried to blink them away.

Then, as soft as the whispering trees, I heard a voice. A name…

“Shani…”

For a moment, I thought I must have imagined it, but then I glanced up and saw that I was no longer alone. An old woman and a girl of about ten stood beneath the drooping tree branches, watching me.

Awkwardly, I stood. “Hello—”

The woman put up her hand and I fell silent.

She wore a faded red skirt that flapped about her ankles and a green shirt buttoned all the way up her throat. Her hair was gray and wiry and she wore it in a loose bun at her nape.

The girl was the epitome of youth, all arms and legs in cutoffs and a lemon-colored blouse that set off her beautiful skin tone. A mane of wild curls framed an angelic face made all the more stunning by a pair of light green eyes.

The study in contrasts couldn’t have been more striking, and yet there was no less beauty and elegance in the weathered face than in the child’s.

They were both barefoot, but the twigs and pinecones littered over the ground didn’t seem to faze them as they walked toward the graves.

The woman paused between the headstones, mumbling something I couldn’t understand. Then she took a packet from her pocket, poured something into her palm and blew. I saw a tiny blue flash before the breeze carried the shimmering particles away.

Her eyes came back to me, taking my measure in silence.

“I’m…Amelia,” I finally said, because I could no longer bear the quiet.

The girl skipped over and looped her arm through the woman’s. “I’m Rhapsody. And this is my grandmother.”

“Rhapsody. What a lovely name,” I said.

“It means excessively enthusiastic. A state of exalted bliss.” She preened like a peacock, then leaned down to scratch the back of her knee. “Did you come for Shani’s birthday?”

“Who’s Shani?”

She pointed to the tiny grave.

“Why do you call her Shani? It says Anyika on the headstone.”

“Shani’s her basket name.”

I remembered reading about the Gullah tradition of dual naming. Every child was given a formal name at birth, along with a more intimate moniker used within the family circle, a secret name assigned to them when they were still small enough to fit inside a rice basket.

Rhapsody twirled a dark curl around one finger. “My basket name is Sia on account of I’m a firstborn girl.”

“What does Shani mean?”

She made a symbol with her fingers. “My heart.”

My knees went weak as a numbing chill went through me and I thought again of that heart traced on my window. Shani had wanted me to know who she was. She’d used her basket name to connect us, bind us…

It was daylight, hours before the veil would thin. But at that moment, I could feel the child’s presence as strongly as though she stood at my side.

Unaware of the emotions storming through me, Rhapsody nattered on about other basket names in the family.

Her grandmother pinched her arm.

“Ouch! What the heck!”

She shook her finger in the girl’s face. “Hush, gal. I swat dat b’hin’ luk e’ wuz a muskituh.”

Rhapsody held her tongue, but her jutted lip spoke volumes.

“And don’ gimme dat longmout’, edduh!”

“Yes, ma’am.”

To me, the woman said with an imperious note, “Oonuh! Come’yuh.”

“I’m sorry?”

Rhapsody, already recovered from her sulking spell, came over and took my hand.

“Granny wants you to come with us.”

“Come with you…where?” I wasn’t at all sure I liked that notion.

“To her house.” She nodded toward the gravel road. “It’s just down yonder.”

Her grandmother said something else, very rapidly, but I didn’t understand a word of it.

Rhapsody obligingly translated. “She says if you want to know about Shani you better come with us. I’d listen to her if I were you,” she added with a sidelong glance. “Granny says without her help, Shani won’t ever leave you alone.”

The invitation had suddenly become irresistible.

We walked down the gravel road together. Or rather, Rhapsody danced along between us, her movements so light and airy, she almost appeared to float.

All the while she chattered nonstop about her father, who was on some sort of extended trip to Africa. About their house in Atlanta, which was like a million times larger than Granny’s old place. They had their own pool and Rhapsody could have friends over whenever she wanted. Granny didn’t even have television, much less cable or the internet. If Rhapsody wanted to chat with her friends, she had to walk all the way into Hammond and use the library computer.

Despite her grumbling, she seemed happy and I sensed a deep affection between her and her grandmother, Essie.

At the end of the road was a tiny community of clapboard houses surrounded by piles of tires, abandoned cars and a hodgepodge of rusted appliances. The structures were all single-story and lifted above ground on wooden pilings.

As we walked past the first place, I saw a girl of about fourteen staring at us from the shade of a sagging porch. When Rhapsody waved, the older girl got up and hurried inside the house.

“That’s Tay-Tay,” Rhapsody explained. “She doesn’t like for me to look at her.”

“Why not?”

“She’s afraid of me.”

“Why would she be afraid of you?”

“Granny’s a root doctor and I’m the only girl left in my family,” she said mysteriously.

Essie muttered something under her breath—an admonition, I suspected—which Rhapsody blithely ignored.

“Tay-Tay claims I put something in her Pepsi to make her hair fall out, but I didn’t. Could of if I wanted to, though.” She tossed back her own glorious mane with all the hauteur a ten-year-old girl could muster. Which, in Rhapsody’s case, was quite a lot.

“Some li’l gal gwine tuh bed widout’uh suppuh tuh’night,” Essie warned.

“Sorry, Granny,” Rhapsody said contritely, but she shot me a cagey grin as she kicked a rock toward Tay-Tay’s house.

As we passed by the next house, a tethered mutt in the front yard let out a bloodcurdling yowl. Essie lifted her hand and the dog fell silent, much as I’d done back at the cemetery.

“That’s Granny’s house over there.” Rhapsody pointed to a tiny white cottage at the end of the road. It was easily the prettiest in the neighborhood, with a well-tended garden and fresh laundry flapping on the clothesline.

They led me up a set of concrete steps, across the porch with its plank flooring and blue ceiling—the sky color a Gullah tradition to keep away wasps and ghosts—and into a narrow hall that smelled of sage and lemon verbena. I noticed three things at once: a mirror that hung backward on the wall, a straw broom just inside the doorway and an arrangement of angel-wing seashells laid out across a small bench.

Essie bustled off to the kitchen, leaving Rhapsody to show me around the cozy parlor where every inch of table space was decorated with the most gorgeous sweetgrass baskets I’d ever seen. When I complimented them, Rhapsody said with an indifferent shrug, “Those old things? Granny makes them all the time.” She couldn’t have been less impressed.

She waved a hand toward a wall of fading portraits. “Those people are my kin, but don’t ask me their names. They passed a long time ago. Granny says we Goodwines have a habit of dying young. Except for her, I reckon. We’re probably cursed or something.”

Her granny, she told me, was in fact her great-grandmother. Her father and Mariama had been first cousins, but were more like brother and sister on account of they’d both been raised by Essie.

“What did you mean when you said your grandmother is a root doctor?”

“She’s a witch,” Rhapsody said with that same crafty smile I’d seen earlier. “And since I’m the only girl left in the family, I get to be her helper. That’s why I’m here for the summer. So I can start learning how to cast.”

“Sia! Tie yo’ mout’, gal!”

Essie had come up so quietly that Rhapsody and I both jumped and spun toward the door. She carried a tray with a pitcher of sweet tea, three glasses and a plate of sesame-seed cookies. Before either of us could offer to help, she turned and disappeared down the tiny hallway. A moment later, I heard the screech of the screen door.

Rhapsody and I followed her outside to the front porch where she settled herself in an ancient cane rocker and poured us each a glass of tea, taking a moment to swat Rhapsody’s hand when she reached for a cookie.

Essie offered me the plate and I took one because I had a feeling it would be a terrible insult if I refused. Besides, I liked benne wafers and they were said to bring good luck.

I sat down on the top step while Rhapsody perched precariously on the flimsy railing. I could taste honey and lemon and the barest hint of orange in the tea. Like my mother’s, it was sweet and delicious.

While Rhapsody and I nibbled on the wafers and sipped our drinks, Essie watched the sky. The sun had finally come out, and as the breeze died down, the heat index soared. I held the cold glass against my face and wondered how to broach the subject of Shani.

After a bit, I began to feel a little woozy in the syrupy heat. I leaned over to place my empty glass on the tray Essie had set beside her chair, and when I straightened, the porch started to spin. I gasped and clutched the newel post for support.

Rhapsody hopped down from the railing and came to squat in front of me, peering into my face. “What’s wrong?”

“I feel dizzy…”

She put a hand to my forehead. “She don’t look so good, Granny. Maybe you should give her a dose of Life Everlastin’.”

Suddenly, I felt an urgent need to get away from there. I tried to rise, but the porch spun faster.

Rhapsody placed her hands on my shoulders and pressed me back against the floorboards.

SEVENTEEN

I
swam up through a pounding headache.

It was only with a great deal of effort that I managed to open my eyes. Blurry faces peered down at me.

“She’s coming to,” someone said. I thought it was Rhapsody.