The Witch of Belladonna Bay (15 page)

“Ain't never gonna happen, Wyn,”

“Why not?”

“'Cause even though I love him to pieces, there's someone I love even more.”

She put on her devilish smile, and I remember she'd just got her hair cut short, pixielike, and it was dark and shining and modern under the city lights by the bay. She reached in the backseat to get the bottle we'd stolen from Jackson. She opened it, took a swig, and gave it to me.

“Who?” I asked, my mouth full of bourbon.

“Shh,” she said. “It's a secret.”

“Come on, spill,” I said. “You ain't got no secrets from me,” I said.

“Not this. This is like, scandalous. Like … bad. A sin, even. I don't know. But it makes me shiver on the inside like nothin' ever has.”

“Are you in love with the pastor?” I asked, half joking and lighting another cigarette.

“No! Not like that. Anyway, he's married. The pastor, not the one I love … I've loved him forever, you know. Forever and ever. And now? I'm thinking I might have a chance.”

“Okay, Lottie. Now you
have
to tell me who it is,”

But then she got serious and wanted to go home. I think I even called her a “moody bitch,” but that was the person I was then. Part princess, part viper.

And she never did tell me who it was. But right there in my dream I suddenly knew.

She'd been in love with Grant.

Crazy fuckall.

 

Diggin' Up Dirt

Everyone has a dark side. This is pure
fact.
I can see it like a shadow behind them all the time.

—Byrd, age eleven

 

10

Byrd

In the face of an overpowering mystery, you don't dare disobey.

—The Little Prince

When the morning sun came sparklin' across my eyelids, I snuck out of Aunt Wyn's cottage. I was confused, see, because I hadn't been prepared to love her. So I left real early before she woke up.

The day before, when I held her hand, I knew I was a goner for sure. It wasn't any ordinary glow that happened. It was even stronger than the one I had when Jamie and I first met. It surprised me, and I don't like bein' surprised. That extra bit of glow? I knew it meant we had a
bond
.

So, I also knew I didn't have a lot of time. Because the deeper I started to love her, the less of her I'd be able to see. Between lovin' her, and her own strange ways growin' … there'd be no way to read her mind or any of that stuff.

The night before, she was the kindest person I'd ever known. She just put me in her big bed without a second thought. She didn't even make me take a bath.

I think she looks like an angel. All golden tan.

All it took was one day walkin' through town, and her skin was already brownin' up. It's a wonder she don't burn bein' so pale. But she looked like an angel, tryin' like crazy to talk about important things on the porch, and no one wantin' to listen to her. I wanted to count her freckles.

Before I left her sleepin' there, I kissed her forehead. Firstly, because it looked so damn pretty. And second, because I wanted to get a peek at what she'd found out. Since it was getting' harder to “read” her, kissin' sort of helped that along.

And boy, what I found out … she'd discovered something out about Grant! And you know somethin'? I hadn't even considered that possibility. Boy, did I feel good, but confused. Aunt Wyn was wakin' up so many things inside and around me, too. My family, my heart … and worst of all, hope. Hope can hurt.

So I did the only thing that made sense. I reached next to her, stole her set of tarot cards I'd been eye'n since she unpacked them. (What? I was gonna give 'em back.) Then I crept out of Aunt Wyn's little cottage (I did a mighty fine job on that, if I don't say so myself) and went on over to the Big House to visit with my friend, Mary.

She always helps me get my crazy fuckall thoughts back in a straight line. It's her best quality, really.

I like walking into the Big House through the kitchen. That way I get to go through Naomi's garden. My garden now. My mama's garden for the time she lived here.

It's where I plant and take care of all the herbs I learn about in Naomi's book.

I add some, now and again, to the earth
and
the book. My mama, Stella, planted new things there, too. She had a little spot all her own that my daddy dug up for her. It's my favorite part of the garden. She must have been a real witch, because she planted things like belladonna, rue, mandrake, and foxglove all tangled up with wild, wild roses.

I know what all those herbs do, and I know how to mix them up. Or, if need be, keep 'em separate. Like rosemary shouldn't grow next to lavender. You can mix those up before they blossom … and one means remembrance, while the other means sorrow. That's not somethin' you want to get wrong.

Anyway, that morning I was downright sick with confusion over these feelings I had, and taking a stroll though my garden on the way to visit Mary was just the thing to cheer me up. She's right about my age, Mary, and sometimes a girl just needs a friend her own age to talk to.

I pushed open the screen door, and yep! there she was, stirring the gumbo. I had to make Dolores wait outside, because Mary won't show herself if the dog's there.

I've told her time and again that she's a ghost and that a dog can't bite a ghost, but she said I have to respect her ways 'cause she's dead and I'm not. I suppose she has a point.

She's pretty, Mary. She's got the darkest skin I've ever seen, and her hair sticks out this way and that, tied up in pieces of white cotton. And she's always wearin' this flowered apron, only it fits her. Not like mine. I guess they made aprons that fit little girls back then. I don't know how I feel about that. It's one thing to
want
to work in a kitchen, but another thing altogether if you're
forced
to work there.

So I'm standing there next to Mary, who's stirring her spirit gumbo, and I ask her what I should do.

“Ifn' you love someone, you love 'em. Can't do nothin' 'bout it,” she said.

“Can't I put a spell on myself not to love her? A voodoo spell or somethin'?

“Sure, ain't nothing dat can't be fixed or muddled wit juju. But you gotta be careful wit it. Mayhaps you find you fix yourself one way and then can't never love no one again? Dat be okay wit you?”

I thought on it for a bit.

There'd be a lot less missin' of folks who die or leave or just disappoint a person if I couldn't feel love. But I thought I'd start missin' love, sooner or later.

“Nah. Seems like too much work.” I said, getting off the chair. “Hey, Mary, that gumbo almost done? It's time for you to cross over you now.”

“Dat light be waiting for me, Miss Byrd. Pay me no mind. Gumbo got to be just right. Just riiiiight.”

“Can I have a little taste?” I asked.

“You knows betta dan dat, Miss Byrdie. You taste the spirit gumbo, you join us. What you want to do dat fo'?”

I was just about to tell her that she was raised around way too much juju herself and that things like that never really happened, but she was gone. I have to tell you, I really wanted to taste that gumbo. It must have been a mighty fine recipe for her to want to stir it for eternity.

I decided to take some time to think in the very best thinking place of all.

Naomi's outdoor bathroom. Safely hidden there with Dolores, I watched my aunt walk up the path to the Big House. She was lookin' for me. But I wanted to look at her without her knowin'. So's I could get a real picture of who she was when nobody was lookin'.

Her hair was down, and she musta been feelin' right at home 'cause she was still wearin' her nightie. She was barefoot, too. No fancy-pants Yankee clothes, not that day.

Man, I hope I grow up to look like her. She don't even know she's fine. She thinks she needs to be darker. Darker hair, darker skin. Don't she realize she's like the sun?

As I watched her look for me, I realized right away I'd lost her thoughts altogether. It was hopeless. I loved her too much to unravel her mysteries now.

So I sat there, in Naomi's outdoor tub (empty, 'cause me and Dolores don't like takin' real baths), petting Dolores just like she loves. I like motherin' her. I thought maybe I'd like Aunt Wyn for a mother if I couldn't
look
like her or even read her thoughts.

But maybe not. It seemed to me, mothers could do more damage than tornados. And they didn't even have to say a word.

Or maybe that's just
some
mothers. Maybe others do the opposite. I get sad when I think about mamas. Especially my own. Makes me start to think that havin' magic is useless if you can't help your own self figure out the simplest things.

*   *   *

You'd think I'd be able to shut my eyes real tight and see the things I need to see. But that ain't the way my strange ways work. Don't seem fair, does it?

So I watched my pretty aunt look for me up and down and everywhere. Then I saw her go into the kitchen. She peeked in through the window first, which made me love her even more. Then when she opened the door, she was gone for a long, long time.

And when she came out, she seemed to know right where I was, but somethin' else caught her eye, that swing on Esther. I love that tree. (I don't let Dolores pee on her, not ever.) Aunt Wyn was starin' at that swing for so long I thought maybe she'd gotten sick. But then she walked through the garden, picked a bunch of lavender, and headed my way.

I got nervous then, because I knew I'd have to tell her the whole
dark
truth. So I recited the Declaration of Independence in my head, until she reached the tub and looked inside.

Everyone has a dark side. I can see it like a shadow behind them all the time.

Some dark sides are more interestin' than others. I like the ones that are complicated. Pure evil ain't interestin'. But take me, for example, I ain't pure evil, but I sure have a dark side.

Mostly I don't notice my darkness.

And I don't worry about it
too
much. It's like dyin', I suppose. We all gotta die, and we all gotta live with the things our dark sides do. People are afraid of their darkness, though. Spend their whole lives so scared of dyin' that they never get to live. Spend their whole lives pushin' down that darkness, until there ain't no light at all.

The only thing that worries me … is sometimes I have these
spells,
these pieces of time I don't remember. Like my soul just floats out of me when I least expect it, and when I come around again, I've been doin' all the things I shoulda been doin' only I can't remember any of it.

No one notices. Not Jackson, not Minerva, not my daddy neither.

Only Jamie. Jamie always knew when I was “absinth,” that's what he called it.

Well, we were little, maybe five or so, we were skipping rocks on the creek. I remember it got real hot, and then I was sitting at the kitchen table eating pickled okra out of a jar with a fork.

“What happened? How did we get on in here?” I asked him, grabbing for a biscuit on the table because ordinarily I don't even like pickled okra. Call me crazy.

“It was like you were there … but not. Like when a kid is out of school, they call it absinth.”

I miss Jamie when he was little. All those screwed-up words and tiny lisp. I always felt like I could be a little kid around him, even though I feel like I was born a grown-up in this awful small body.

“Your eyes were empty, like when I come home and the house ain't got no lights on,” he continued. “It scared me.”

It scared me, too. And it has ever since. But it stopped scaring Jamie. Sometimes I thought he liked fooling me. When he'd see me go, he'd think it was funny to put me in a crazy situation when I “woke up.”

In a treetop.

Tied to the porch.

Or, the worst ever? Sitting in school.

And after he disappeared, I went about crazy thinkin' on how I couldn't remember one thing from that night.

You see, the night Charlotte was killed, and Jamie disappeared, I was absinth.

I can't remember a thing. For months and months, I was scared I'd done the impossible. But then, that first morning with Aunt Wyn, when that kiss told me Grant might be another option? The idea that another person might have gone and ruined my whole life, and it wasn't me, was a piece of heaven right there.

But there was something else.

See, I collect things. Things a lot of folks might think are strange.

One of my favorite collections is pocketknives. I like how they click open and shut. I like how some have all sorts of layers to 'em. Forks and knives, baby scissors. All kinds of things. Only …

My favorite knife from my whole collection? The one with the mother-of-pearl handle. It was gone. I couldn't find it anywhere.

Lottie and Jamie were stabbed, but no one could find the knife that did it. At my daddy's trial, the Dr. Specialist Whatever Mr. Person, he said that it was a small knife. That's why it took so many cuts.

Dark, dark, and darker.

 

11

Bronwyn

 

When Paddy and I were little, all we had was time. Long stretches of time where we simply luxuriated with nothing to do. The recollection tugged at me as I woke up, slow and lazy in my new little house.

I could smell the scent of those days with Mama, Jackson, and Paddy. Soft, loamy ground and bleached cotton. Those were the good days, before she got too sick. When Jackson's laugh rang through the whole house and we'd gather as he lit a cigarette and sat back in one of his old armchairs saying, “Ain't got nothing but time and money. And right about now I'm feeling too lazy to waste money, so let's just sit here a while and waste some time!”