Solange stands nimbly, and Avis sees her apron contains dark strips. “There are interesting things in your yard.” She leads Avis to the stubby bushes in the far corner, a place their landscapers have elected to prune and ignore, instead of doing the more surgical work of weeding. “Here’s a plant going to waste.” Solange strokes the long, spiny branches between her fingers. “This is good medicine. You boil it for tea, for restorative properties.” She picks the quills, adding them to her apron. “This is granny bush — you use it for women’s trouble — pain and bleeding.”
Avis looks around at the land she’s inhabited for nearly thirty years. Years ago, when she’d studied the constructions of stem, blade, stamen, ovule, she loved the infinite possibilities of the plant kingdom — but she had been interested in color, scent, presentation: the beautiful names — cloth-of-gold crocus; ash-leaved trumpet, star-of-Bethlehem; meadow saffron — the loveliness of a blown field of asters or irises, a ring of roses to bed a wedding cake, the careful depiction of a peony in cross section on the page, a gentian constructed in icing. She knew all about beauty and almost nothing of utility. “All kinds of good things here,” Solange says again, her fingers combing the weeds. “You boil that thistle to cure asthma — its sap will take away warts. The leaves of that lime tree are fine for the skin, the guava calms the stomach and nerves. Over there? The bark on your lignum vitae regulates the system.” She stands, one hand holding up the pouch of stems, the other pointing out plants.
Avis plucks a stem of a pointed, glossy leaf that’s established itself in that far corner. Solange says, Wild coffee. Avis holds it under her nose, studying the musty green fragrance. “Could I bake with this?”
“You roast the seeds, to make a brew.”
Avis smiles, twirling the bit of twig. “My son would love this.”
Solange lifts her head so the sun turns her dark irises amber. “I told my son that there used to be one flavor only. Everything was pressed together. The universe, the people, animals, vegetables, dirt, water — everything — in the smallest seed. That’s what people try to do — eat and touch small pieces of the world to try and get back into the whole thing again. Sweet and sour. That is how bush medicine works.”
Surprised to hear about a son, Avis glances at her. Solange lifts her fingers to Avis’s hair, a spidery touch at the side of her head. “Come here.” She leads her to the step to the French doors. Just beside the step is a squat weed. Solange touches Avis’s head again — it’s almost painful, the shame of her thinning hair. “This…” Solange bends and pinches the shoots between her fingertips. “It’s called Braziletto. You boil the leaves and sip the tea. It fortifies the blood. Your hair will stop falling.” She places the leaf in Avis’s palm. “Will calm your pulse as well.”
Avis stares at it. Then she notices Solange’s stillness. She follows her gaze to the empty windows of the house, the black reflections, as if the building were filled with stormwater. She picks some of the little shoots. “Where is your son now?”
Solange smiles, her eyes untouched. “I had to leave him. He’s back home there.”
Avis needs to creep into some shade, out of the blistering heat, but now she can’t move; the breath rushes in and out of her. “How old is he? Is he with family?”
“Yes. All the family is there.” Solange sorts through the herbs in her apron, running the twigs between her fingers. “His name is Antoine and he’s the very best in his class. He is wonderful with a soccer ball too, but he can’t keep hold on it.” Her lips part. “He’s too softhearted and he gives the ball away. He’s the fastest and strongest, but no one wants him on their team.”
“That must have been so hard.” Avis’s voice is low. “For you and your husband — not to be able to bring him with you.” Solange closes her fingers around another sprig and doesn’t say anything. Avis says, “I have a daughter who — she doesn’t live with us. She hasn’t, for years. It breaks my heart, every day.”
Solange looks up from her sorting. “Oh yes.” It seems she doesn’t say this so much in sympathy as in acknowledgment of a basic truth. “Of course.”
“Is there a remedy for that?” She means to say this lightly but she sounds serious.
Solange’s eyes flicker to her face, examining and curious. Then her thin fingers wrap around Avis’s wrist. “I don’t know. We’ll see about it.”
Avis follows Solange across the yard, following the path she’d taken on the day she’d felt so furious about a noisy bird. Weeks ago: it seems like years. They go up the rough cement step and enter an enclosed back porch which contains another birdcage: this one is smaller, made of silvery metal; it hangs from a hook in the ceiling. The bird rests there purring as the women enter. Avis glances around as they go into the house, but the shades and curtains are drawn and the windows behind them are open, so the interior is dark and sleekly sultry. The kitchen seems to be the only room lit with natural brightness: the slats of the blinds are turned open, so the room has a clear, marine light. Solange seats Avis at a table on metal pipe legs with a Formica top and Avis cannot help an evaluative scan of the kitchen: no appliances beyond an enamel refrigerator and stove — small and clean. The dainty refrigerator like an old-fashioned icebox.
Solange holds a cast-iron pan under the tap, then places it on the stove’s coil. “There are varieties of pain…” She begins removing jars from the cupboard. “It’s simple fact, not sorcery. I don’t believe in spells — I only know in some way the idea of a spell is powerful. You have to be careful — that kind of stuff leaves a residue behind.”
Avis holds her forearms propped on the table. On the counter across from her, tiny green chilies float in a clear liquid, as if suspended in light. Stacked beside the jar there are bundles of sprigs and leaves bound together with a kind of raffia. The unfamiliarity of these objects give them an allure, a glistening touch of the unknowable. On the opposite counter, Avis notices several small woven grass effigies — birds and squirrels — of the sort that were tied to the trees. Solange plucks one up and places it before Avis. “These are just things that I make. Ideas. You may have this if you like.”
Avis picks it up. Woven entirely from waxy green blades of grass, its upper half appears to be that of a woman, her arms outstretched in a U-shape, as if calling to someone, her lower half tapering into a fishtail. “You made this? It’s beautiful.”
“Avis,” Solange pronounces her name with sharp emphasis on the second syllable, Ah-vees. “It’s only grass.” She pours a steaming pale yellow tea into two strained mugs, then she places a mug before Avis and sits in the other chair, its cracked vinyl back patched with cellophane tape. “The lady of our house had me baptized and raised me with Catholic instruction. My mother taught me that the world is crowded with gods — they live in all kinds of places and you can call on them. It seemed to me that both systems believed in slicing through.” She moves the edge of her hand through the air. “To reach worlds beyond the world. Using prayers to carry us.”
Avis lifts the hot mug, enjoying the sensation of heat in her palm, thinking of her mother’s heaven of completion and return. “What do you believe?”
Solange inclines her face toward the surface of her tea. “I try never to believe anything at all. If I start believing things, I might believe that the universe is a dead door, that we all get crushed.”