WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) (74 page)

She looked at me as if I would remember but I didn’t. 

“Faith and fingertips.
Come on. 
Remember? Devenio! Devenio! Devenio!”

Her words were like a glitter bomb of fairy dust. I look into the void, I look at the gap between the fingers, I
remember the painting, the story behind it. 

“Reach—reach—reach. Remember that?”

Reach—reach—reach.
 The words repeat themselves and fill up the spaces in my head. My hands lift up in auto response, responding to some force outside myself, as if my own precarious childhood was in reach of my own grasp, touchable, a finger-tip away. I feel immense pain surging
through me like a rod touching electricity but I keep reaching, I don’t flinch, I don’t turn back.  I reach until I touch the house inside me, the tender, fragile places.  It takes my
breath away.
Reach, reach, reach
.

My whole life has been about reaching, trying to touch the fingertip, looking for answers, looking for faith, looking for love, looking for peace to rest my soul, rest my mind, settle the house of shadows inside me, of me, for me—to reach a pinnacle of sanity, of meaning, to receive that which I longed for, from heaven, a crumb of desire, of hope, of something to fill that wide, despairing void that drives me crazy, that place of in-betweens, that space between my finger and God’s, the gap that splits me in
two and makes me half a person looking for the whole.  Make me Seven, Make me
Seven
. 

Devenio! Devenio! Devenio!
 The
childlike voice inside me cries and reaches outward. 
My vision is altered in and out from past to present, images of time flashing in and out and then gone. I am left with her.
Alone with her. 
It fuels me. Inflames me. 
Her. 
The little girl who is perched atop my dead grandfather’s casket. I realize how awful it is for her to be sitting there. 
Disrespectful.
 I snapped like a purple hull pea in Lena Hart’s pea shelling hands.

“Get down from there.” I spat an
d pointed with my bloody finger. 
“Have you no respect? It’s his casket, for God’s sakes.”

“Willodean. Pssshhhttt!” She said unaffected. Her eyes rolled in my familiar circle. I saw a mirror to myself, expressions, and mannerisms acted out right in front of me. She stared right through the walls of the house inside
of me and outside of me. 
I hated that I could hide nothing from her.

“You know as well as I do that Papa Hart wouldn’t care. Hell—he’s still throwing a hissy fit about all the money forked out for this polished tree trunk.” She tapped the casket a few times. “Three thousand dollars? Mercy. He is fit to be tied, I tell ya.” She grinned awkwardly.

“Have you went too-adult on me Willodean? Too grown-up? Are you offended? Have you forgotten all you’ve learned? He’s not here—He’s not here. Straight up!” She pointed to the sky and my heart dropped. Everything and I mean 
everything,
 details, memories, stories, past, present, back then, right now, all of it became crystal clear as if I hadn’t acknowledged anything was real until this very second. 
This very moment.
 Gut punched with the gift and the curse, I felt betrayed as if an intimate moment between me and my grandfather had been stolen away by some bratty insignificant child imposter.

“Oh, come on Willodean.” She said mocking me. “I’m you. You’re me—if you’ll just get out of your own head and listen to me and quit jip—jiving so much, you might learn a thing or two. Gah, what happened to your sense of humor? You used to be pretty funny and light-hearted. I mean, sheez, quit trying to figure it all out. You’re so freaking serious. Uptight as Lena drip-drip Hart. Stoooop it. Chill out.”

Hearing this inflamed me more. 
I am not Lena Hart. I am nothing like Lena Hart.
 She spun around on the casket as if she was on a merry go round. A scream lodged in my throat refusing to come out.

“You can’t run. You can’t deny the magical mysterious undeniable things that are presented to you. It’s part of your gift, Willodean. It’s part of you. And besides, God won’t let you. If you’re truly a seeker
and we both know you are.  We are.  Us.  Me and you.  You and me
.
So…just accept me for who I am. 
All of me. All of you
. The good and the bad.” She paused and bit her lip. My heart felt jabbed inside me, a knife from an unknown hand. She flinched. I flinched. Her face fell sodden as if she knew more than she could tell me. A blank line simmered between us, me trying to find the words to put there and her avoiding my stare. 
What is she hiding?

“Oh, I’m not hiding anything.” She said looking back to answer me. “You need to accept me. Simply as that.”
What is she talking about? Accept me, accept her. I thought I already done that.
 
The unknowing made me panic limb to limb.  I want to run to the shadows Amodgians, to the familiar, my
uncomfortable comfort. Run to the rooms inside the house where I don’t have to feel, or confront or deal with anything.
I want to—but I can’t seem to move. 
A force is against me, preventing me, and it’s different than before.

“You don’t believe me do you?”
She said. 
Before I could open my mouth, she tossed the dried pink rose at me and slid off the casket like it was a playground slide. The back of my legs burned and
my flesh squealed.  I reached outward to catch the rose and in the distance before it landed in my hand, I saw Maw
Sue’s face in the petals.

“Why are you doing this?” I
said screaming.  The little girl leaned on the casket and crossed her arms.  Her face was attitude and disbelief. 

“You’re me.” She said pointing at me and then back to herself.

“I don’t understand. I’m a grown ass woman. Is this really happening? How do I know it’s really happening? It could be the madness—you know—the house inside me, the shadows trying to make me stay. And for all I know you could be helping them to make me crazy. Huh? How do I know you’re not just my imagination, my sickness, my crazy?” My voice was shrill and tempered in surges of pain. I was tipping over
. My fingers loosened their grip on the pink rose and it tumbled to the ground.  It was happening. 
I could feel it—inside me—going to the place of no return. It was her fault. 
All her fault.
 Anger fueled me.  And she was the object of my anger, my pain.  She is t
he reason I am in this mess. I jerked my spike heels out of the dirt and lunged at her. I was on her level, nose to nose, my mouth spilling out expletives and pointing my fingers.
I have no idea what all I said—it came out to quickly, to mad, to inflamed and hurt.  And then m
y eyes wedged with hers—and it stilled me. I saw what I hadn’t seen before. A place of hurt, softness and vulnerability inside her eyes. On instinct, I wanted to touch her cheeks and hug her and tell her everything would be alright.
But how could I?
It was a lie. It wasn’t alright. The world wasn’t okay. Our eyes transfixed, one to another, one light and one dark, both in some tragic battle with each other, and our worlds, hers and mine, each reflecting their own tragic stories, me to her, her to me, us, ours…

And then I heard my voice. 
I was screaming, “Tell me! Tell me what you know. I need to know. Just make this stop. I hate being this way. I hate it. I hate you. Just stop it! All of it. Just do it.”

While I lashed out, she touched my cheek in the way I wanted to touch hers but couldn’t. Her lips never moved but
my gifted ears heard her speak and it was not at all what I wanted to hear. 
“Willodean. It will never stop. Every gift has a curse attached and it is irrevocable. 
It will not stop.
 But…you are given the courage and the where with all to endure it. Transfer it to your advantage. You are a Pugnator and that’s what Pugnators do. They fight! They engage and fight for what is theirs. That is what Maw Sue was trying to teach you, to channel it for good. The dark, the light, all of it. So, quit trying to run from it. Quit trying to deny it. This is your cross to bear. Yours and yours alone. Only you can make it what it is meant to be. It is inside you. But know this much—” she paused, “It is a choice of will. You have to do it yourself. Go your own journey. Those before you will go with you too. Is it hard? Yes. Grueling. But you are a survivor Willodean. It takes being so sick of where you are—that you will endure whatever it takes to get to the next level of your life.
It takes being so worn out of being in pain that you will face the pain, in order to remove it. 
I cannot make you understand that. It is something that you have to learn from your own heart.”

There was a long drawn out silence in what I heard and what I wanted to bel
ieve. My heart grew heavy.  I thought I’d
break into a million busted stars and moons at the foot of the casket. 

“Look for crumbs Willodean.” She
said turning away. 
Her hands lifted towards the sky. “Use the gift. Reach—reach—reach.” My right hand lifted in some childlike auto response mechanism. 
Make me seven—make me seven.
 Whispers filled the gap between my ears. A hard resistance fought me internally and externally.
I feel them.  S
hadows
emerge from the house to keep me complacent. 
The girl turned towards me,
until we were facing each other, our hands lifted in front of each other.  Her hands reached for mine. 
Devenio! Devenio! Devenio!
 My ears filled with sounds. A thousand voices, hers, mine, Maw Sue’s, Papa Hart’s, Jesus, apostles, prophets, the Marie Antoinette God, voices from the graves. 
Voices, many voices.
Anyone who had ever spoke those words in the past, were now speaking them again, in unison, across time and death, across family lines, and ages, centuries, generations, all speaking to form a cosmic intervention, inside me and outside me.
Beyond me.
 

My fingers and the little girl’s
fingers touch at the peak of the shrill voices. 
A bolt of electricity shot through me. I fell slowly forward and emerged inside a thick fog, falling without control, I lost my balance and mobility. I went right through the little girl, her figure a transparent apparition, like seeing my own reflection in glass, of me, of her, of us, all tangled up. In my mind, I saw it slowly happen again and again as if I had to soak up each detail for what it was, and what it meant. Step by step, second by second, the world I know, the world I seek, the shadows that hunt me, the child I hate, and the child I love. I reach, we touch, we merge together, her visions, my visions, my fears, her courage, her fears, my weakness, our vows, our faults, our good, our bad, sweet sap, bitter sap, southern sap, bleeding and healing, dripping from wild roses, voices from Mason jars, speaking, talking, shouting, and telling twisted tales. And then a shuddering silence covers me.
My mind at rest. My madness stilled.
A peaceful calm. I’m not sure how long I stayed in this relaxing, floating on a river mode of being. Perhaps I was dead, and this is how
it felt. Such peace. Such quiet. 

When I came to—I was ever bit alive and on my knees in front of the casket.
The little girl is gone.  I am alone. 
Everything was different. Everything was the same.
 It was reminiscent of the day I climbed out the
window and rescued the crackle.  But today, I crossed a
line in the sand, stepped over, entered a realm, then fell back to earth, never to return to where I was. Or how I was. 
And now all my lines were erased. Tick—tock. Tick—tock.
 I hear the clock and the president scream his battle call. “Forward!”

“You’re a pugnator.” Ms. Blanche says in my mind. 

No I’m not. No I’m not.
 I find myself inside the house, inside the many rooms, one to another, running and hiding, running. I am spinning with half pieces of me and the little girl, all shambles, trying to find place, to fit, to mold, to be.

“
Make me seven. Make me seven.
” The little girls says while she runs behind me, in front of me, beside me. Everywhere I am—she is. It’s like one of those fun houses at carnivals, mirrors everywhere, distorted reflections. I run from her, room to room. I go up and down the spiraling staircases of threes, leap over the three moons, a glistening reflection underneath the night sky, a
thousand blinking stars.  I wander
past the forest of wondering t
rees growing one after another, their branches entangled and shaking hands. 
I slip away to the darkness of the rooms, to hide, but each time, she flips on a light or sneaks up behind me, exposing all that is me,
all that is her, all that is us. 
The unseen is seen. The hidden is out of hiding. The secrets are whispered.
 I bolt and continue to run, zig-zagging through the many hallways,
past the many doors with copper nameplates, past the door with a thousand hands reaching, and groping.  I don’t know what I’m running from.  I just run. 
I need to get out, just get out of the house.
But how?
The doors are locked, the windows locked, 
all is locked
.