Authors: Mary Rickert
Nan looks past the moonflowers, beyond the road to the droop of weeds lining the drainage ditch while the memories swirl around her like a little tornado. Her parents, laughing on the porch swing; why has she forgotten how they used to laugh? She remembers a lavender ribbon and her mother saying, “Here, Nanolan. You have such pretty hair.” Why? Why has she forgotten that for so long, and why does this memory return tonight?
Mavis says it is time they get started on the ceremony. She scoots across the chair accompanied by that clank of bracelets. When she stands, both she and the chair rock precariously.
Nan peers up at Mavis. Old now. Dying. At a distance, as if in a dream. What is she saying? Nan can’t be sure; the taste of ash overwhelms everything else; she is filled with it as though on fire.
“I’ll be right there,” Nan says, though her words sound strange, distorted, distant. “I need a few minutes alone.”
Mavis grunts, waving her hand in that way she has, as though every time Nan opens her mouth, gnats swarm the air between them.
***
Even though it was December, Nan sat on the porch swing, staring at the black night, searching for stars in the dark embrace of winter chill. She had taken to doing this in the past week, donning coat and mittens to sit outside. Earlier, when she went in to use the bathroom, Nan heard her parents arguing. “It isn’t normal,” her mother said. “I am afraid there’s something not right about her, and it’s been getting worse. We never should have let her develop a relationship with that woman.”
Nan sighed, glancing at “that woman’s” house. Miss Winter, recently returned from visiting her sister, with violet jelly and potted parsley as a thank you to Nan for changing Fairy’s water and filling her bowl with cat food, never suspecting, Nan hopes, that she was the sort of girl who took advantage of trust.
“It’s a sign of larger developments,” her mother said. “A young lady does not sit on the porch in the middle of winter.”
“It’s her birthday.” Her father sighed, sharply interrupted by something inaudible from Nan’s mother, he continued. “Well, all right, tomorrow. Let her be. She’s a thoughtful child.”
“But she’s not a child. That’s what you don’t seem to realize. She’s a young woman now.”
Lately, it seemed to Nan, there was no safe thing to think about. Everything was infected by what happened to Eve. Nan stood so suddenly, the porch swing rocked behind her as if with a ghost. She opened the front door and called into the house, “I’m going.”
Her mother came on noisy heels to look at Nan as though she had turned into something grisly.
“To Mavis’s,” Nan said, pretending to be cheerful. “To sleep over. Remember?”
“Where are your things?”
Nan was afraid of entering her own house, even for her nightgown and pillow. She didn’t trust herself, afraid she’d say the wrong thing, afraid she’d tell the truth.
“I took my bag over earlier. I’ll be back tomorrow,” she said, not waiting for a response.
Her mother hated it when she ran but Nan loved the cold air on her face, the feel of her hair blowing back. She ran the whole way to Mavis’s house. Mrs. Hearn, used to this sort of wild behavior from her own daughter, only said, “Mavis asked me to tell you there’s been a change of plans. The sleepover is at Eve’s house tonight.”
But Eve never had sleepovers. The feeling started to creep up on Nan that something wasn’t right. Something wasn’t right. It went through her head, over and over again, like a playground chant or camp song. Nan tried to shake it away, but something wasn’t right.
Mr. Leary answered the door, chewing on his tongue, but not acting like anything unusual had happened. He pointed his chin toward the back of the house, where Eve’s bedroom was. Nan walked down the narrow hall. Maybe they were having a surprise party for her! They were waiting with balloons and cake! When Nan opened the door, she saw Eve in bed and Mavis on the other side of the room, signaling to shut the door, which Nan did, revealing Ruthie in the corner, her round cheeks flushed.
“What’s happen—”
“Shhh, not so loud,” Mavis hissed. “We can’t let anyone hear.”
Nan looked at Eve’s face, glowing white. “Is it the flu?”
“Don’t be ignorant. You know what it is.”
“We have to tell someone,” Nan said.
“No, we don’t. We promised.”
“We can’t,” Ruthie whispered. “He’ll kill her if—”
“Don’t fight.” Eve didn’t open her eyes to speak. She didn’t move her head. “I just need…”
What? Eve never said what she needed, but they tried to find it for her. At some point Ruthie produced a damp washcloth, which they took turns administering, patting Eve’s forehead, her chin, her cheeks, her neck, until the cloth was clammy and pointless. Not daring to disturb her head, they brushed the exposed pillowcase until she asked to be left alone. They went to separate corners, watching Eve as though their lives were tied to hers, and when she stirred, they stirred too, returned to the patting and cooing, the useless gestures they employed.
It’s like all of a sudden we are mothers
, Nan thought. Eve moaned, a low sound, almost a growl.
But
we
aren’t very good at it.
When footsteps creaked through the carpeted floor, evidence of someone walking down the narrow hallway, they stared at one another with wide eyes. The footsteps stopped just outside the room and Ruthie gasped but stifled herself with her hand pressed across her mouth.
“You girls need anything?” he asked.
“Not a thing at all,” Mavis called brightly, so cheerful that, for a moment, Nan felt she misread the situation and everything was fine.
“Eve?”
They turned to look at her, a still figure on the twin bed, her lips white; she opened her eyes wide—
frightened
, Nan thought—and said, “Good night, Dad,” in a shockingly normal voice.
“You girls need to keep it down in there. I have early shift.”
“Okay, Dad.”
Nan was once again struck by the horrible realization that as good of an actress as Mavis was, Eve was better. She fooled all of them for a very long time.
Who
are
you
anyway?
Nan thought. With everything else going on, she hadn’t realized—she was angry at Eve! And in just that moment, their eyes locked across the room cast in a pea-green glow.
Liar
, Nan thought and Eve closed her eyes.
No, I take it back. I don’t mean it. I’m not angry. But why didn’t you tell us? Why didn’t you…
Nan could hear Mr. Leary send the boys to bed. Sound traveled through the walls as if there were no walls at all, and Nan wondered if they have already been too loud. How could he not be suspicious?
“We need to call a doctor,” Nan said. “She needs—”
“No,” Mavis hissed. “We promised. No one else can know. They said she might have cramping. They said she would be tired.”
How long the night! How the hours spilled like sand through Nan’s bones while she brushed Eve’s hair, tried to make her drink water, waited for her to open those eyes and smile! Nan longed to see Eve smile, even if it was a lie.
Finally, unable to keep her own eyes open any longer, Nan curled into an uncomfortable compromise in the chair and slept. She must have slept, because she awoke to hear Mavis apologizing to Eve. But Nan couldn’t rouse herself; she was heavy with the black night drifting through her bones, sleeping again, until at last she awoke out of her paralytic state to blink in the dim morning light at the sound of Ruthie sobbing.
“Stop it,” Mavis hissed, “or I swear I’ll kick you out of the house, and I won’t let you back in.”
Nan almost smiled at Mavis’s power. One second Ruthie was weeping, and the next she was not. Maybe it would be like that for Eve. Mavis would tell her to sit up, shake it off, get over it, and she would. But Eve’s complexion was a terrible white; her skin shimmered like a naked lightbulb.
The footsteps again came down the hall, knuckles tapped the door though he continued walking.
“He always does that,” Ruthie whispered.
Nan did not go to Eve, but instead turned away to part the dismal curtain and stare out the window at the cold morning.
My
birthday
, she thought. She jumped at the sound of the back door pulled shut and watched Mr. Leary, lunch pail in hand, saunter down the walk, stopping at the curb as though he forgot something.
Yes
, Nan thought.
Turn
around. Save her. Save us.
Who would ever guess that Mr. Leary, of all people, could be the one?
What
are
you
waiting
for?
Nan thought.
Here’s your chance to make things right.
But whatever caused him to pause—watching the road as if waiting for a bus—passed, and with a hitch of his shoulder, he continued down the walk.
Eve murmured, was it something about blood?
Nan turned from the window to hear better.
“The boys,” she croaked.
“What about boys?” Mavis asked, her voice at normal volume, a shock.
“School,” Ruthie squeaked. “She gets them ready.”
“You do it,” Mavis said.
Nan volunteered to help, happy for an excuse to leave the tiny room.
“Where’s Eve?” little Danny asked.
“Oh, she’s sleeping in,” Ruthie said, her voice ringing with false cheer. “Every mother needs a day of rest.”
“She ain’t our mother,” Danny said as Petey nodded.
“Well, she sure acts like it.” Ruthie pulled off T-shirts, washed faces, buttered toast, and made sandwiches while Nan followed like a lost child, finally stopping to stare out the kitchen window at the gray sky, remembering summer, how persistent it seemed, the green days, the sweet flavor of strawberries.
Nan didn’t even realize she was crying until Danny said, “What’s wrong with her?” and Ruthie said, “Oh that’s just Nan. She’s full of emotion.”
“I’m about sick of girls crying all the time.”
“Well, then, why don’t you just get out of here?” Ruthie softened her voice before she continued. “You don’t want to be late for school now, do you?”
“What about Sissy?”
“I already said, didn’t I? She’s sleeping this morning. Everyone deserves a rest, and today is Eve’s turn.”
“I don’t know about that,” Petey said, but Danny told him to hurry.
I should help,
Nan thought, standing at the kitchen window, watching through the dirty glass. Petey and Danny, dressed for snow, hurried down the sidewalk, almost as if they knew this was a house to run away from.
Nan didn’t notice when Ruthie joined her, only realized that she had. They stood side by side, staring out the window, watching the snow drift slowly past the orb of morning’s streetlight. The children walked past: boys with big ears, girls with braids. The children walked to school, sticking out pink tongues and mittened hands to catch the flakes, while Nan and Ruthie stood frozen as though trapped in ice.
Ruthie finally turned away and Nan followed like a child more interested in daydreams than reality.
When
they
open
Eve’s bedroom door, Mavis will be asleep in that chair, and Eve will be sleeping too, her color returned, the long night
vanquished
, Nan thought. But Mavis stood by the side of the bed, blood on her hands, a streak of red on her face, the blanket and sheet pulled down, Eve’s brown dress blossomed in red.
“They said there might be blood,” Mavis said, but Nan was already spinning out of the room, stumbling down the hall, opening the door, stepping into a world of white, shocked by the cold and the apple blossom scent of snow.
Bay and Ruthie walk back to the house in silence. Bay wants to make things right between them but doesn’t know where to begin. Ruthie walks up the sidewalk leading to the front door, but Bay stays on the grass, which is soft beneath her sore feet. Nan and Mavis are no longer on the porch, though a chair gently rocks there as though someone just departed.
They both start to speak, then stop. It would be funny in other circumstances. Ruthie looks down her long nose at Bay. “What does Nan say about this witch business?”
“I never really asked. Not right out.”
Ruthie, her lips pursed, nods. “Well, dear, it has been my experience that when you have a question, the best thing to do is to ask it.”
Bay has the funny feeling they are talking about more than it seems. Does Bay want to ask Ruthie what she meant earlier about having gotten over the urge for murder years ago? Does Bay really want to know?
“You’re not planning on taking any more midnight strolls, are you, dear?”
Bay shakes her head. Where did she think she was going anyway? What did she expect to find out there?
“That’s good. ’Cause I’m as worn out as galoshes.”
“What are gal…thank you,” Bay says, surprised to find herself pressing the side of her face into Ruthie’s soft robe, inhaling the scent of lemons.
At first Ruthie hugs Bay as though she might break, but then she squeezes back until, for just a moment, Bay thinks she can’t breathe, and right then, Ruthie opens her arms wide and says, “You have been the top light of my visit, you know.”
“Me too. I’m so glad you came. Dinner tonight was the best meal of my entire life.”
Ruthie opens her mouth, but snaps her lips shut without speaking. She nods abruptly and walks up the front steps at a surprisingly brisk pace, into the house.
The white moonflowers have blossomed from the heart-shaped leaves all the way along the porch railing and up the drainpipe. Bay can’t remember when she’s seen so many blooms in one night. All these flowers will be dead soon; poor moonflower! She leans forward to inhale the intoxicating scent. Other summers when she had the bedroom next to her Nana’s, right over the porch, Bay drifted to sleep on a cloud of moonflower perfume. Is that why dreams were sweeter then?
“Bay, where have you been? We’ve been looking for you.”
Bay is not used to thinking of her Nana as pretty. She wears that old dress almost all summer, often with that stupid walnut wreath and her clogs. In winter she wears the green dress with various colored cardigans that strain across her chest. Bay can’t remember a time Nan has dressed differently before tonight. She stands there in her blue velvet, with her white hair hanging down, the silver strands catching the light.
She looks sparkly, not like a witch at all,
Bay thinks,
more like a fairy.
“Do you think we could plant a moonflower next year beneath my window?”
“We could do that,” Nan says. “I’m sure we could.”
On any other night, Nan would have heard the car pull over to the side of the road. She would have heard it even if she were all the way in the back of the house in the kitchen, singing at the top of her lungs. She would have heard it with all the windows closed in the depth of winter. She would have heard it even if she was at the high school, sitting on the hard bench with all the screaming people, watching Bay’s swim meet—so attuned has Nan been for just this moment, she would have said nothing could stop her from noting its arrival; and yet, when she hears the sound of the car door close, her first response is pleasant anticipation, smiling as she turns.
“Sheriff Henry,” she gasps.
“Did you call him about Karl?” Bay asks.
Nan watches the sheriff come slowly up the walk, by all appearances enjoying the shoe garden, not noticing them at all. It occurs to her to send Bay away. Instead, Nan pulls her close.
“Mz. Singer. I didn’t see you.”
“Sheriff Henry.”
He’s aged, though he still isn’t old. Somehow, in spite of his profession, he’s maintained an amiable countenance, as though he is everyone’s favorite visitor.
“I’m sorry to just show up like this but—” He looks at Bay, actually startling, which Nan assumes is meant to be cute. “Is this…” He glances at Nan, turns back to Bay. “Are you?”
“You remember Bay, don’t you, sheriff?” Nan says.
“Last time I saw you, you were the size of a loaf of bread.”
This makes Bay smile, as if her birth size was some kind of accomplishment, and Nan squeezes tighter.
No
need
to
grin
at
wolves.
“I’m sorry to drop in like this. I tried to call, but we got disconnected. I wanted to—”
“Warn me? I think you said.”
He nods. “In case there was a time you preferred.”
“It’s late now,” says Nan. “And I have guests.”
“I’m sorry, it’s just, I found the whole case, and I don’t know if you heard? I’m moving?”
“Where to?” Bay asks.
“What are you now? Twelve? Thirteen?”
“Fifteen.”
“Fifteen?” He shakes his head. “This big,” he says, his hands before him, holding the imaginary loaf.
At
least
he
isn’t being mean,
Nan thinks.
Maybe
he’ll even let me steer Bay away so she doesn’t have to see the handcuffs.
Nan doesn’t feel she deserves special treatment, of course, but Bay does. And maybe the timing isn’t horrible after all. At least with Ruthie and Mavis here, Bay will be taken care of.
“I can bring it up to the porch or into the house, if you like. It’s heavy.”
Nan can’t believe how her mind wanders. How, at this pivotal time in her life, it has wandered again.
“You all right, Mz. Singer?”
“Nana?”
“It’s just…” She shakes her head. “What are you doing here?”
Sheriff Henry stares at Nan a moment, and in that small space of time she feels herself sinking, as though swallowed by the earth, buried alive.
“Orange blossom honey,” he says. “I don’t eat it myself, and now that I’m moving out of state…”
“Honey?”
“I remember my mother saying how much you loved her honey. She told me…” He glances at Bay. “She told me how you helped her. Before I was born. My mother was…”
Incredibly, standing there in his impressive uniform, Sheriff Henry’s voice quivers.
“We love honey,” Bay says.
Nan wishes she could remember what she did for his mother, but she can’t. There were so many for a while there, and then, when the law changed, there were less and less until she was no longer needed. There were stragglers, of course; those who didn’t want a doctor. And there were always the others. Nan sometimes forgets about them. Her garden worked both ways, didn’t it? Some women came to her with a desperation for birth, didn’t they? She looks at Sheriff Henry’s kind face and wonders if she sees a bit of hollyhock there.
“Ma’am?”
“Yes,” Nan says. “We love honey. You can just bring it to the porch. Orange blossom, you say?”
Nan wonders, briefly if it is some kind of trick, but he walks to the car with a generous man’s gait, swinging his arms, taking broad strides. He unlocks the trunk and reaches in for a large box. Why he didn’t just leave it, the way people do, Nan has no idea, but decides she is not one to judge others’ eccentricities. Still, it isn’t until Sheriff Henry passes and she gets a whiff of the musky sweet blossom that Nan releases her hold of Bay, who is still standing there when the sheriff drives away, promising he’ll send them a postcard.
Nan can’t believe it. Has she really avoided the worst?
“Wow,” Bay says. “You must have done something really nice for his mom. I thought he was going to cry.”
“Oh, well,” Nan says, “just being neighborly.”
“Nana, are you a witch?” She hadn’t meant to ask like this, though in a way it’s a relief to have it out.
“Why? Whatever gave you that idea? Did Ruthie say something?”
Bay nods. After all, it was Ruthie who said that the best thing to do with a question is ask it. “Are you?”
Nan blinks against the question.
What
am
I?
She is stunned by the simplicity of it. For so long everything seemed complicated.
“I’m going to tell you now.” Nan looks closely at Bay, trying to stay focused. It’s strange how this weekend has wound up time, how one minute she is an old woman and the next she is young again.
Bay thinks,
Well, here it comes
. She isn’t sure she wants to know. What if she could go back in time to just a year ago, to when the nights were scented with moonflower and not the loamy scent of river water? Bay hears the others in the backyard, their voices a distant murmur. Nan must hear them too, because she turns in that direction for a moment with a longing look.
“Do I fly through the sky at night?” Nan asks. “You know I don’t. Do I disappear and walk through rooms like a ghost? Of course not. Do I make terrible things happen?” Nan is startled by her own question, arrived at unexpectedly. She nods slowly. “Yes, sometimes I do. Sometimes I do.”
Bay regrets asking. Why, her Nana never did a bad thing in her life, and this whole matter is just incredibly “stupid.”
“Yes,” Nan says, nodding. “I’ve been stupid. I should have learned. I should have learned a long time ago. Don’t you see, Bay? Don’t you see?”
Bay not only doesn’t see, but is entirely confused.
“What I’m trying to say, Bay, is that the only thing that matters now is what you believe.”
“What I believe?” Bay likes the feel of the words, as if what she believes is actually important. What she believes is that her life would be a whole lot easier if her Nana were a whole lot different, but Bay doesn’t say that, of course.
“I just want to be normal,” she says.
Nan nods, pretending she is not in the middle of an epiphany. But of course! Of course Bay wants to be normal. Why has Nan considered this a problem when she, herself, has longed for, well, if not normalcy, something of what her life would have been had it not been so tragically altered?
“Everyone’s waiting,” she says. “Let’s finish this conversation later.”
The front yard’s flowers, while in their shoes, are strangely out of place, growing crooked and broken, and Bay realizes the garden damage was more thorough than she had previously understood. The hollyhocks, bent with the weight of summer, appear to be in despair. Who put them there anyway, where the sun will never find them?
Everything
is
wrong
, Bay thinks.
Torn
flowers
planted
with
roots
exposed
in
dirty
shoes, sun plants in the shade, shade plants in the sun.
As they walk along the side of the house, Nan blinks against the memory of smoke. How strange life is, one minute to be a young woman watching Miss Winter’s house burn down, knowing that those who lit the match would set it to Nan herself if they knew the truth, and the next to be an old woman who has lived a long life, walking with her daughter to the backyard where Mavis, Howard, Thalia, and Stella sit in a small circle beneath the moon-bright sky. No wild flames and acrid smoke, just the night garden, the scent of summer: pennyroyal, parsley, angel roses, and mint, with only the vaguest odor of death emanating from beyond the lilacs and pampas grass.
“Oh,” Bay says. “You changed again.”
Stella, sitting in the grass in her party dress, looks puzzled. “What?”
“From before.”
Stella glances at Howard and shrugs.
Nan, who has a great deal of sympathy for the vagaries of memory, reminds Bay, “Everyone changed for the party. You remember, don’t you?”
They are all looking at Bay as though she has suddenly grown as old as Nan. “Of course I remember, but she was wearing a different dress afterward. That’s what I’m talking about.” To be polite, Bay turns her face away from the group and whispers, “She’s pretty drunk, actually.”
Nan, who’s been looking for this sort of thing for a while, asks Bay to describe the other dress.
“It was brown, with red roses on the skirt.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Stella says. “I don’t own anything like that.”
“Nana? Are you all right?”
“Let’s start this thing,” Mavis says with a great deal of grumbling as she struggles to stand, and Howard comes to his knees to assist her.
“What thing?” Stella leans back on her elbows as though tanning beneath the moon.
“Hey, what happened to your curls?” says Bay.
“Stop.” Nan puts out her hand like a crossing guard.
Mavis, who is massaging her hair in such a vigorous manner that it appears to slide like a tectonic plate, sighs. “In Africa,” she starts.
“Oh, stop with Africa. You don’t know anything about it.” Nan feels bad, talking to Mavis this way, until she remembers how pity would bury her alive. She turns to Bay. “Don’t worry, dear, it’s all going to make sense soon enough.”
“It is?”
“Well, not all of it, of course,” Nan says, turning back toward the house.
The kitchen, lit by the stove-top light, is cloying with the mingled sweet and savory scents of dinner. Flowers droop like exhausted girls in ball gowns shedding petals to the floor, creating the lovely illusion of a garden carpet Nan hates to tread on. Nicholas, curled on a kitchen chair, opens one eye to watch her pass. Walking up the creaking stairs, Nan notices a single red petal stuck to her big toe. She has lived in this house for a long time; there is nothing in the dark that frightens her, not the twisted stairs or sharp corners, and not the ghosts. She always hoped they’d speak and tell her what to do. What frightens Nan is the way the past sneaks up on the present, consuming all in its path.
Like
I
am
the
flower
, Nan thinks,
and
life
is
the
feast
.