JOHNNY
In the early spring of my eighth year, I ended up with ringworm. We kept a few chickens and Whitey had puppies, but wherever the fungus came from it was ugly, traveling up my leg in big scabby loops that looked like burns. That morning while my mama was sewing a rip in Laura’s dress, she happened to glance up and notice. It was one of those days she would come to life and see what needed replacing in the pantry and picking in the garden and what needed to be washed. Those were the times she would silently note the holes in our shoes, slip off for a day or so, and come back with new things in a brown paper sack for us to take whenever we found them. Laura and I seldom got sick or hurt in those last two years on Bloodroot Mountain, but when we did we looked after ourselves. She never made mention of my copperhead bite, as if she didn’t even notice how bad off I was. It was up to me to get better alone. Later that same year, when Laura ate the wrong berries and got sick to her stomach, I was the one who took care of her. But for some reason, my mama happened to see the ringworm that morning and it must have reminded her of the way her granny used to cure ailments like mine.
She finished sewing Laura’s ripped dress and slipped it back over my sister’s head. We followed her out the back door and up behind the house where the mountain was steeper and wilder. It was hard to keep up with her, ducking under branches and climbing over fallen trees. Now and again her hair would get hung on a twig or bush and she would push on without caring. I tried to help Laura along and we both slipped a few times on the wet, slimy rocks. More than once we came across swampy puddles and trickles of ice-cold water running down the mountain because it was early spring and the woods were thawing out. By the time we reached the spot on a slope where she wanted to stop, we were all three briar-scratched and muddy. There were shreds of low fog and the air was colder so far up the mountain. It hurt my throat to breathe, but it tasted sweet.
Our mama pointed to a scattering of white flowers along the ground, peeking up through a leftover litter of winter’s dead leaves. She got down on her knees and dug one up with a trowel she had brought in her dress pocket, then held up the root for us to see. It was thick and fleshy, like a finger under a mess of thin, wiry hair. She snapped it with her long, strong hands and I was scared when I saw the red sap because it looked like splattered blood. I didn’t know much better than to think she had wounded a living thing, made a sacrifice for my ringworm. “The Cotter boys used to gather up this bloodroot and sell it,” she said. “But it might die out if we take too much. Granny used bloodroot to treat everything. Warts, headaches, sore throats. When Granddaddy’s gums would bleed she’d put it in his toothpaste. You know he still had most of his teeth when he died, and him an old man. Granny said, too, the Indian warriors used to paint their faces with it.”
Laura took hold of my shirttail. We hadn’t heard our mama speak so much in a long time and didn’t know what to make of it. If we stayed close while she hung sheets on the line or split wood or scaled fish we could hear her reciting verses sometimes that I thought might be from the Bible. Otherwise, we seldom heard her voice anymore. I held still and willed Laura not to move either, afraid of breaking the spell. Then our mama turned on us with those wild blue eyes and I had a crazy fear that she was going to eat us up. But she just reached out her fingers, stained red with bloodroot sap, and smeared some high on my cheekbone. She did the other side, too, and I must have looked funny because she laughed. I’d heard my mama laugh before, but that day it felt like a miracle. She knelt in the leaves and dipped her finger in the sap again and again until my whole face was painted. It tickled and soon all three of us were laughing, scaring up birds from the trees. Then suddenly it was over, her laughter dried up like turning off a spigot. She went back to the business of gathering bloodroot as if nothing had happened.
On the way back to the house I fell behind and stopped to look at my reflection in the creek water. She had given me the face of a warrior, anointed my cheeks with birds in flight and marked my forehead with snakes coiled to strike. I thought, “She must know that I’m a copperhead now.” Or maybe she knew I was bitten all along.
LAURA
I might never know for sure who that man at the co-op was, or what Mama done to his brother. Me and Johnny was little then and didn’t talk about it much. All we knowed was how Mama changed after she seen him. First she started forgetting to make me and Johnny breakfast. The house didn’t smell like ham and eggs anymore when we woke up. Mama would still be laying in the bed with her eyes wide open and the covers pulled up to her chin. When I touched her shoulder she’d flinch. I cried because she looked at me like she didn’t know who I was anymore. Johnny said, “It’s okay. I’ll fix you something.” He tried to make biscuits but they was flat and hard like crackers.
Them first weeks after the co-op it was like Mama was waiting on somebody to come. She’d pace the floor and look out the window. One evening we was setting in the front room listening to the radio and heard a bump at the side of the house. Then the lilac bush by the kitchen door started rustling. Mama jumped up and went after her granddaddy’s shotgun. Me and Johnny stood in the kitchen holding hands. She went out and the gun shot off. Me and Johnny ran down the back steps and seen one of the Cotter man’s cows had got loose. It ran back in the woods bawling and Mama turned to us with the shotgun still in her hand. Johnny said, “Don’t worry. It was just a cow.” But Mama started crying so hard she couldn’t stop. All me and Johnny could do was stand in the light of the kitchen door and stare at her. We didn’t know how to make her get better.
The winter was even harder. It came a storm and I found her laying in the snow, so cold her lips was blue. I throwed myself across her to warm her up. “What’s wrong, Mama?” I asked, but she didn’t say. After that she got worse. Some days she acted more like her old self. But on the worst days she stood in one place for hours without moving. It was like her soul flew off someplace. Mama never had talked much, and she always liked being outdoors better than indoors. But after that trip to the co-op she hardly ever said a word. Sometimes she even slept outside in the woods under piles of fallen leaves.
Me and Johnny did the best we could for ourselves. Mr. Barnett and his wife was worried about us. He brung us food and clothes and one day he said they might ought to tell somebody how Mama was acting, but I knowed he didn’t want to get her in trouble. It got so bad on the end that Johnny’s ribs was poking out. I hated seeing him so skinny. He was the one that held me when I was hungry and made me laugh when I got scared.
It was good to have Johnny but I needed Mama. One time she was gone all day and I slipped off from the house and went far up the mountain to Johnny’s rock. I pressed myself flat and stretched out my arms. The rock was smooth and cool and a wind was blowing, raising bumps along my arms. I closed my eyes and prayed hard for Mama to come home. I still had my eyes shut when I heard feet coming. My heart went faster. I never had a prayer answered the minute I said it before. I was afraid to look. Somebody was standing over me. I heard breathing and knowed it was Mama. It seemed like something magic was about to happen. Finally I got the courage to look. It was a big brown and white horse with Mama’s blue eyes, staring down at me. I never seen anything so pretty. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t move. I just laid there and shivered. Whatever it was, God sent it to me. I opened my mouth to say something, but before I could get out any words, the horse had done walked off in the trees. That’s one memory I never told Johnny about. I didn’t want him to say it was another one of my dreams.