“A yellow house?”
“Yes. I want you to go in yonder and get that ring from out of Mama’s box.”
I only hesitated for a second. “Where is it?”
She smiled her tired way again. “You know where I would keep it.”
“All right,” I said. “I’ll find it.”
Then her smile faltered. “Johnny.”
“What?”
“I throwed that finger bone away.”
I opened my mouth and closed it again. I didn’t know what I wanted to say.
“Wasn’t no use hanging on to it.”
“No,” I said after a moment. “I guess not.”
“It don’t seem right for that box to be empty, though.”
“No,” I said.
“There’s something I want you to put in it for safekeeping.” She looked at the envelope still in my hand. “I wouldn’t quit squalling until they gave it back to me.”
I looked down at the envelope, too, the sweat on my forehead turning cold.
“Open it,” she said.
I fumbled at the unsealed flap and reached inside. What I found there wasn’t paper. It was a lock of glossy hair, yellow as the sun, tied neatly with a length of string.
“I had a baby, Johnny,” she said. “I named him Sunny.”
For a few seconds I thought I hadn’t heard her right. I closed my eyes, trying to make sense of her words. I didn’t know if I could stand to hear more. If I was going to turn my back on her, now was the time. But I didn’t leave.
I bent closer to the window and asked, “Where is he?”
Her eyelids reddened. “He got took away from me.”
“No, Laura,” I said, even though I already knew it was true.
“I got to get him back,” she said.
“We will.” My voice cracked. “We’ll get him back.”
I opened my fingers and we looked down together at the lock of yellow hair in my palm. It seemed I could feel some old part of myself dissolving into smoke and ash.
After a while, Laura asked, “Do you still believe there’s such a thing as curses?”
I didn’t have to think about it. “No,” I said. “Not anymore.”
“I don’t either.” She looked up into my face. “I’m ready now, Johnny.”
“Ready for what?”
“To go see Mama. Let’s get Sunny and leave out of here for good.”
I looked into her eyes. They were like they used to be, only sadder. But I saw something alive in them that might be rescued. She didn’t belong in that room so I put her back in our woods, shrunk her down and grew her hair into long black sheaves again, stood her on a mossy log with her arms held out for balance. I was beginning to see then what I have learned now. It’s not forgetting that heals. It’s remembering. I swallowed hard, wetness blurring my eyes. I hadn’t felt tears in so long I barely knew what they were. “Okay,” I said. “We’ll go see her.” I knew Laura was right. We were both ready. She looked startled. Then she smiled and I couldn’t help smiling back. I leaned over to press my forehead against the glass. I shut my eyes and pretended we were high on a rock over a bluff again, my tongue singing with the tartness of the berries she brought me.
THREE. MYRA ODOM
I can’t stand to hold them. I have to let them go. I don’t want to leave too many marks behind. There were fingerprints all over me when I came back here, and it’s taken a long time to wash them off. I hardly remember the names I gave them. That was another time. I think of them now by their real names. Silver like how her eyes glint in the dark. Cinder like how his eyes look in the white of his face. Woodsmoke, the way he smells passing by me in fall. Lacy, the way leaves pattern her shoulders as she moves under the trees. Their old names mean nothing now. Neither does mine. I am whatever I say I am. Rainy, when I come in dripping after a storm. Bird, when I climb to the ledge and sing down the mountain. Alive, now even more than when I was a child living here. I squat where I please and watch the water I lapped up from my hand run back out of me, spreading and mixing with the dirt of this place, swirling with pine needles as it heads down the mountain toward the creek where it came from. I am part of this place like never before. When I was small, there was always something hindering me.
Granddaddy was too protective, but I believe Granny’s instinct was to let me go. She would allow me to stand for a while in the rain, hair parting soaked down the middle, before making me come in. Once she found me stripped naked facedown in the dirt. She stood watching for a long moment before she pulled me up by the arm, wiping at my blackened tongue with her apron and brushing sow bugs from my chin. “Lord, youngun,” she said, “you’re going to be sick as a dog.” All I wanted was free. Granny seemed to understand. After Granddaddy was gone she let me roam. But every minute in her presence it seemed she was touching me, stroking my hair, pulling me onto her lap.
I still miss her every day. Time is different on the mountain. It stretches out longer. I used to always know what year it was, and how old I would be on my next birthday. But, like names, it seems less important now. There’s a calendar hanging in the kitchen, yellowed and stiff as if something was spilled on it. It has been there on the same rusty nail since before Granny died. It’s a calendar from 1975, the year I came home and my babies were born. If I mark time, it’s by their birthdays. Not the exact date, because I forget sometimes. But I can tell by the weather, how it smells outside and what’s growing out of the ground. One day I’ll wake up and there’s a charge in the air and I’ll know it’s the anniversary of their birth. I’ll get up and see what I have to make a cake for them.
Today I woke to a chill wind blowing colored leaves through the window, scattering them across my bed. I sat up and plucked one from the blanket. I smelled what day it was, a scent I can’t describe. I went to the kitchen knowing they are six. The house was empty. They rise early and go into the woods because morning is their favorite time to play. The floor creaked as I brought flour down from the pantry shelf. My back prickled like there were eyes on me. I froze, sure it was all over, my time with them. It came back to me then, how it felt in that house beside of the railroad tracks with John, listening for the creak of his boot on the floorboards. But I stood still, counting backward, and nothing happened. No arm snaked under my throat, no fingers snagged my hair. I tried to hum as I made the cake, but I was rattled. I couldn’t shake the feeling of an end coming. Not the end of the world that our pastor at Piney Grove preached about, but the end of my world, the one I’ve made on Bloodroot Mountain for my twins and me.
I’m not sorry for the way I live, even when I see how Mr. Barnett looks at me sometimes, and Mark Cotter when I go up the mountain to buy fresh milk from him. He owns the farm since his parents died. I’ve only spoken to him once, when his wife was gone to town. I asked about Wild Rose. He claimed she spends most of her time loose in the woods now. “I don’t even try to pen her up no more,” he said. “She’s more ornery than ever since she’s got old.” He stared at my babies as he spoke to me, one on each hip, but he didn’t ask about them. I know Mark Cotter and I are not friends anymore, but he is still loyal to me. He must remember how it used to be. Whatever Mark and Mr. Barnett think of the way I live, they keep my secret. That’s all that matters. For six years, I’ve managed to hide my twins up here. But stirring the cake batter this morning I couldn’t stop thinking, not just about John, but about my whole life. I remembered myself as a six-year-old girl, when I marked time by my own birthdays and not those of my children.
I thought of Granny and how she liked to talk as she worked. There was a wringer washer by the back steps and I can still see her feeding Granddaddy’s shirts through, telling stories about Chickweed Holler. She talked most about her cousin Lou Ann, who I pictured as a crone with a hump, putting a curse on our family. I saw her with sores eating at her nose and mouth corners, eyes like holes pecked into her face by crows, standing on her high porch handing down love potions and charms to women desperate to bewitch a man, to have a child or lose one, to be granted long life or for someone else to die. I imagined powders in twists of paper, left hind feet of graveyard rabbits, snakeskin bags with toad’s eyes inside. They walked up the holler with their darkest desires and she did what she could to make them real. Even one of Granny’s great-aunts had gone to her.