WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) (77 page)

Ms. Blanche said the red stone necklace was the traitors sacrifice but no one knew that until it was too late and the necklace ended up gone.  She only thought it soothed her mind but it was a trick of deception.  The closer a person gets to evil, the more likely they are numb to its affects.  It’s like Maw Sue had held hands with the devil as long as she had that necklace on.  The more time passed, the more she turned into a sleeper.  Maw Sue drifted between both realms her whole life, a sleeper and a seeker, never fully able to decipher which was which and it’s part of the reason she was so confused at times.  It wasn’t until the stone came up missing, that Maw Sue realized the capacity to which she had been tricked but habits are hard to break and when you’ve spent your life amongst them, it is grueling to let go of them.  But Maw Sue finally made the decision anyway.  She was going to destroy the stone and give herself as the sacrifice in exchange for my life.  Because you see, Maw Sue found out that one of the women in her ancestral line, generations ago, vowed to give the ultimate sacrifice. 
Her child.
  And down the line, when it time for the vow to be given, it could not be done, for it was the ultimate and hardest sacrifice to make and to fulfill.  The vow was broken time and time again.  Each time the Dresden curse grew stronger and stronger.  Maw Sue’s discovered another vow shortly after that.  It was from her mother, a Cupitor herself.  It was found inside the journal written in small print and hidden by a corner that was bent down.  Her mother vowed that through her bloodline, a Cupitor was to be born that would make the ultimate sacrifice and bind the curse in the fires of sorrow so that no one else would have to suffer and the full circle would be complete forever and for all time.  Of course, Maw Sue didn’t plan on me taking the stone necklace but Ms. Blanche said even after it was gone, Maw Sue was hell bent on continuing.  And she did.  She took my place.  She gave her life for mine.  She made lovely her losses and now that the sacrifice has been made, I can live my life as a Cupitor.  I can live as I was meant to live.  Ah, but then there’s the red stone necklace.  It’s still inside the mirror bin for all I know.  I don’t remember much after Maw Sue died, so who knows.  Ms. Blanche said she had not opened the mirror bin and only did what Maw Sue told her to do, which was present it to me, when the time was right. 

Ms. Blanche said being a Seeker has its advantages and I will find the way to go from this point onward.  The only concern I had was first and foremost in my mind.

“
How did I become a Dresden?” 
Maw Sue’s words come back to haunt my memory.

“The spirit of the Dresden is the child inside the adult, the child who is broken and wounded, and separated from the adult spirit who is looking for a way back to where it belongs.  For a Dresden to appear—something awful had to have happened.”  This is what bothers me. 
What happened to me?  And when?  And why can’t I remember? Did Maw Sue know I was a Dresden?  Was she one too? 

A door slams jolting my eyes from the mirror bin to Papa Hart’s front porch.  It’s my Aunt Marlene who throws clothing into a pile off the porch.  She halfway waves with her free hand and walks back inside.  Papa Hart’s chair sat in the same spot on the porch, unmoved.  It was empty, sad, unfilled, longing.  I felt myself tipping to that place of shattering, that disruptive place where people break off limb by limb until they are nothing but a pile of bones, stretchy skin and wet tears.  Annie groaned as I shut her door.  I stood silent for a second preparing myself for what lies ahead.  I made my way towards the back porch.  I grabbed the metal bar that held up the porch with one hand and swung around it, like I used to do as a kid.  For old time’s sake, or just to feel the simple magnitude of it between my hands.  Brown paint peels off and sticks to my skin.  I walk up to the porch and open the screen door and step inside.  I hear voices coming from the back bedrooms.  Suddenly dad’s head pops up from behind the bar with a large wooden drawer.  “Hey pumpkin.  Jump right in.  Just pick a place and start sorting out stuff. Take whatever you want.”   He turned it upside down on the counter.  An assorted mess of junk, metal, tin and papers fall out.   The words impaled me like a knife daring me to take nothing that wasn’t mine.  “And Lord.  I don’t think daddy threw anything away.  Do you know Uncle found 13 toothbrushes? 
Used.
  I mean, why?”   

“Hmmm…”  I murmured unable to find words.  “Who’s here?”

“Just about everybody, I think.”  Dad said.  “All over the place.  There is a lot of stuff to go through.”  I was paralyzed not sure what to do or even if I wanted to participate.  Something about it felt wrong.  So wrong.

“I’m just going to walk around for a minute.” 

“Well, okay.”  Dad said emptying another drawer.  He pulled out several objects, inspected each one and tossing them in different directions, some even in the trash.  My stomach turned. 
Just walk Willodean, just walk I told myself.
  I stepped across the floor slow and light, taking in every detail of the house, the color of the walls, the old floor planks, the stained ceiling, the old light fixtures, the way Dell arranged things in her own style.  I knew I’d never again see it this way again.  In the bathroom, right below the light switch on the right side of the lavatory cabinet was a blue travel case, a Samsonite special edition.  The lid is still open.  It’s been that way since Dell passed.  It holds all the contents she took with her to the hospital.  Toiletries, Maybelline mascara, coral lipstick and a powder case with other personals.  Sticking out of the cinched pockets below the round mirror is a toothbrush, some Jergins body lotion, hair pins, and a beige bristle hair brush.  She checked in the hospital for surgery.  The travel bag came home.  Dell never did.  The blue bag has sat in the bathroom in the same place, ever since then.  

Dad and I went to check on Papa Hart a few months after she passed.  Dad wandered off in the house while I visited with Papa Hart in the kitchen.  Dad stayed gone a long time until Papa Hart got suspicious.  Unbeknown to us, and with good intentions, dad had boxed up some of her clothes and other items.  Out of sight—out of memory, or that was dad’s thinking.  Spare his father some unnecessary pain.  But when Papa Hart found out, he exploded.    

“Don’t you touch another goddamned thing, you hear me?” He said going off like a rocket.  He grabbed the box and dumped it on the bed and pointed to a frame hanging on the wall. 

“You see that picture right there.  Right there.”  He said pushing dad with his hand.  He shoved him clean to the wall where a sepia image hung in a tarnished gold frame.  It was a picture of an old truck with cattle boards on each side of the bed and inside was practically everything they owned at the time, or so says Papa Hart.  Standing in front is Papa Hart and Dell looking as happy as they ever could be. 

“That is the day we moved in our house.” Papa Hart said.  Dad didn’t say a word and neither did I.  Papa Hart yanked the picture off the wall, tore the backing off, pulled the picture out and shoved it in dad’s face.  “You see the writing on the back?”  Dad stood dumbfounded afraid to say anything.  “It says,
setting up housekeeping this day. March 28, 1942 Wildhurst mill. 
Your mother wrote that.
 
It meant something to her.  It meant something to me.  From day one….”  He paused and gripped his lips together as if he was going to bawl. 

“Since that day, she has been setting up housekeeping and by God THAT is how it’s going to stay.” 

“Alright pops.” Dad said backing off and his hands up in the air.  “I was just trying to help. I didn’t know.” 

“Well you’re not helping. Leave my shit alone. I don’t mess with your stuff, now do it?” Papa Hart eyes were on fire.  He rushed around the room and put her clothing back in the closet where it belonged.  He missed her something terrible.  For him, Dell setting up housekeeping was all he had left.   And by God, it wasn’t going to change.  In his house, life went on as if Dell was still in it.  In the kitchen, on the refrigerator hanging by a fish magnet is a grocery list in Dell’s handwriting.  It lists bread, milk, eggs, fig newtons, paper towels, cinnamon, beer and butter.  I remember the biscuit recipe and wonder if it’s still inside the mirror bin.  I enter the living room.  Seashells wind chimes hang from the ceiling lifeless without clatter.  Without wind.  Souvenirs from fishing trips hang from the rafters and sit on tabletops.  Dell’s favorite lamp, the red lava lamp sits motionless and still, and with lumps on top of the television set.  Mag and I could sit for hours watching the lava acrobatics, it was hypnotizing.  Dell’s knitting needles and sewing patterns are stacked neatly on the table right beside six or seven photo albums.   When I past the nightstand in the hallway, I lose my breath.  On top sits a King James Bible with a long stemmed red rose on top.  I plucked it myself from one of the flower arrangement at Dell’s funeral and when I got home, I told Papa Hart the story of the Mason jar, the immortelles, the everlastings and how it takes your grief and pain away.   I wanted to help him, take his grief away, his pain, his hurt.  Papa Hart didn’t seem too interested in the story at all.  He just smirked, cursed the air and grabbed his whiskey.  I dried the rose for him despite his refusal to accept and a week or so later, I put it on top of Dell’s bible and from the looks of it, hasn’t been touched.  

I enter the spare bedroom and sitting in the corner is the 1964 Singer sewing machine with a striped shirt still in its clutches, unfinished.  Instantly, I hear the threading like a locomotive and her voice, “Girls, look what I made you.” And she’d be holding them God awful patchwork shorts.  A big smile covers my face and I’m filled with joy and sorrow.  Underneath the table, there are piles and piles of old patchwork fabric she’d been saving for years and a whole stack of patterns.  I sort through a few patches of fabric I remember wearing and put them in my pocket.  On top of the table, against the back wall are four jars of buttons and a basket of assorted thread.  I take two jars, one for me and one for Mag.  She’d appreciate them as much as I do. 

I heard new voices and realize the rest of the family has shown up to overturn the place, box up things, pocket and take things.   I’m not sure how long I walked through the house like a ghost taking in the fullness of it all, but the whole time, I could see figures moving past me, hauling, dumping, and sorting but I was lodged up somewhere in time, reenacting my childhood in this house, jumping on the bed, hiding in the corners, playing in the closet, sitting at the bar with Dell watching soaps, asking a million questions, making biscuits, smelling the sweet scent of Papa Hart lighting a cigar, hearing his voice telling a story, front porch sitting, back porch sitting, hide and seek—
I was there all over again.
   And then…s
queak—squeak—squeak.
  The sound jerks me to reality.  My uncle passes me.  He’s rolling a metal tray down the hallway and out to the porch.  I hear it land in a trash pile with a crippled bang.  My aunt rushes by me with a handful of clothing and lays it in three plies across the room.  Dad is at the bar sorting through Dell’s jewelry box and intermittingly wiping tears.  I felt sick and overwhelmed with grief.  The everlastings, the immortelles wasn’t working.   Papa Hart’s voice filled my head.  Stories, porch times until the entire foundation became a haunting chorus in my ears.  Every cut, measured board, detailed trim, every square inch built by hand, hammered, honed, sanded, painted—all of it, balked and screamed. All the hand sewn curtains, the quilts, every inch of fabric.  The house mourned and wept its missing occupants while intruders ransacking it.  In my gifted vision, I saw Papa Hart walking behind each person saying, “
Hey, wait a minute.  That’s mine.  Put that back.  Where are you going with that suit?  Dell made that for me in 57.  We went dancing.  Hang it back up right now.  Don’t touch that!  That’s a pearl necklace I brought in France after the war.  No one can wear that but Dell.  Put that back.  You hear me?  Put it back.”  

When I could take no more, I ran to the sacred place.  No storytelling, no words, no change, no moving, no throwing things out, no sorting, no piles, no unsettling feelings—just porch silence.  I flopped down on the edge of the steps and squalled like a baby. 

“Aww come on Willodean.”  Papa Hart’s voice said in my spirit.   I looked up quickly expecting to find him there.  The swing was unmoved and still, eerily quiet.   

“Straight up!  Remember?”  The voice said again.  It startled me and I had no idea where it was coming from.  

“Papa Hart?”  I said in barely a whisper.  My eyes moved but my body was frozen. 

“Yeah.  It’s me.”  His voice said.  “Snap out of it.  It’s just a house for God’s sake.  Those things are not important.  You can’t take it with you, Willodean.  But I did leave you something. Something very important.” 

“What?”  I said wondering.  “What do you—mean you left me something?” 

“I left you the snake runner.”  He said.  “I’m counting on you. It’s a family tradition.” 

Snake runner?  And then I remember that day inside the care center, the vision of the stick, and seeing Snake runner on the stick but not knowing what it was about.  Why can’t I remember? 

“What is it?  What’s a snake runner?” I said baffled.  “I don’t remember...”  I waited for the crumbs to fall, for my divine delights to be consumed, for my eyes to see, for my ears to hear, for a dirt dancer to appear and tell me all I needed to know.