Nether Regions (30 page)

Without a moment’s hesitation, Sophie pushed open the glass door and ushered Delora through.

“I don’t know what to make of this,” Delora said as soon as they had moved around the side of the building. “I know I should be upset he’s gone, but I just can’t be. I don’t think that sorrow is even anywhere in me. Am I that horrible?”

“He killed whatever love y’all had a long time ago, hon. It’s that simple.”

“I hate it that I’m that way,” Delora commented, chewing the skin around her thumbnail. “Some wife I was.”

Sophie’s gaze grew warm, her voice low. “You’d be a good wife to me.”

Delora lowered her hand and smiled, thrilling Sophie. “Wife. I like that. I’d enjoy taking care of you.”

“Working alongside me,” Sophie corrected.

“Do you think I could, Sophie? Work with you, I mean. Help people?”

Sophie was thoughtful, her eyes taking in the night sky. Delora enjoyed watching her. It was as if Sophie spoke the same language as the night. It was as if her time among humans was almost an annoyance. Though she seemed comfortable no matter where she was, Delora knew her real place was out here, among nature.

“You’d be good, Delora,” she said finally. “I saw you with Firis, how you helped her. That’s all we do.”

“Right,” Delora muttered with some sarcasm. She leaned against the brick wall of the funeral home, hoping no salamanders were crushed by the move. She studied Sophie again, disturbed by her sadness. “I know you miss Grandam.”

Sophie nodded. “I do.” She took a deep breath and shifted her weight. “Listen, honey, tonight I…”

A shrill call fractured the night, momentarily silencing the normal evening song. Alarmed, Delora fished frantically in her pocket and pulled out her cell phone. Abruptly silencing a second peal of noise, she flipped it open and answered.

“No, Aunt Freda, there’s no need to come. I know you’ve been feeling poorly. Yes, a tragic accident.” Her eyes found Sophie and she mimed helplessly.

Sophie could tell this was going to be an involved call so she leaned in to give Delora a quick kiss on the lips. “I gotta go,” she whispered.

Humming in agreement with her aunt, Delora trailed her finger along Sophie’s arm and their hands brushed in a gentle farewell. Their eyes met and lingered fondly.

Chapter Fifty-One

Louie’s interment was a dismal affair. Hinchey was there, his demeanor glum and guilty. Rosalie was still angry, but Delora didn’t much care. As a stolid counterpoint to Rosalie’s loud grief, Delora remained silent and held her head high during the twenty-minute graveside service.

Surprisingly, several of Louie’s park cronies attended, even the one she called Hard Eyes. His gaze crawled across her, and she felt soiled by his thoughts. Each of the three men had made a concerted effort to spruce up for the event, but the suits were ill-fitting and threadbare in places.

Louie’s friends, Delora thought sadly, as she studied the small gathering. He sure hadn’t gone out of his way to make friends. He’d been a brute and Delora couldn’t help trying to analyze the reasons behind his angry, irascible personality. He was intolerant, bigoted, misogynistic and brutal. Losing his mother could have contributed, but if that was so, why wasn’t Delora more like Louie? She’d lost both mother and father at once.

Perhaps Louie’s father had been more abusive than she realized. Delora had only met the late Bob November three times during their marriage and each time at a large family gathering. She’d had little one-on-one with the man. She realized suddenly that she hadn’t really known Mister November at all. He’d been a distant voice on the phone, calling to get Louie to check something at his home while he was away hauling freight. He may have beaten Louie as a child, but Louie had never discussed it with Delora.

Louie’s death troubled Delora. She’d wanted him gone from her life for so long. Then to have him die in this tragic way and Delora lie about it. It would surely have some repercussions, perhaps even on her soul for allowing the lie to take root and grow. No matter how she shook the issue, however, she just couldn’t see the good in allowing Hinchey to take the blame for something that really went directly sideways of being his fault. By rights, he should never have been any part of Louie and Delora’s sick relationship.

She sighed and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. She’d be glad to get back to the quiet of her hotel room. Unfortunately, there was still the gathering at Rosalie’s house, which could take several hours. Several hours of feigning sadness for Louie’s absence in her life. Several hours of making small talk with people she knew only in passing. She’d never connected with any of these people. They were Rosalie’s friends, Louie’s friends or long-ago friends of her parents. They had little to do with Delora and her life, and she bore some resentment that she was forced, by society’s dictates, to make nice-nice with these well-meaning but mostly just curious townsfolk.

The service ended and Reverend Lorenz handed Delora a long-stemmed white carnation from a nearby arrangement. A prolonged silence fell and Delora realized that she was supposed to make some profound gesture. Frowning, she stepped forward and laid the flower atop the polished wood of the casket. Reverend Lorenz gestured and the crowd began to disperse. Behind them, the casket began to lurch downward. Delora looked back once as the primary source of her life’s discontent moved below the ground. She stopped walking, startled and afraid. Oh God, what if she still wasn’t happy?

She lowered her chin to her chest and stubbornly plodded toward the waiting car. She thought of Sophie. Dear Sophie. The thought of Sophie sustained Delora as she shook the hands and accepted the condolences of well-wishers.

At some point, she found herself in the sleek black family car sitting across from Rosalie. She was staring out the window, her mind blank. It was a nice thing that she could think as much as she wanted and everyone believed she was lost in grief over her husband’s death. In actuality, she was pondering the new direction of her life. The goal that had sustained her for so long, now that it was so close to realization, had abruptly dissipated. Delora knew the reason lay in her newfound love for Sophie. There was no reason now for her to escape Redstar. Louie was gone and she was free—even when bound to Sophie. This was Sophie’s home and would continue to be Delora’s. It had a good feeling.

In this frame of mind, she was delighted to see Sophie’s car parked outside Rosalie’s house. And worried. Surely the townsfolk would be able to see the extent of the two women’s feelings if they were observed together. Delora still felt unsure of how others would react to the idea of two women in love. It was best ignored as long as possible. A hard task, feeling the way she did about Sophie.

Yet seeing Sophie’s lean form in the kitchen doorway set her mind at ease. Breath entered and filled a chest she hadn’t realized was empty. The pathway to Sophie was filled with condolences, however, and it was some time before Delora made her way to the kitchen. The range was hidden by the bulk of flesh that was Rosalie’s younger sister, Phyllis. Clary washed serving utensils at the sink, and Sophie was uncovering casseroles. Clary looked up when Delora entered. Drying her hands, she moved to pull the younger woman into a loving, compassionate embrace.

“I’m sorry for your loss, honey,” she whispered into Delora’s ear.

Peace washed across Delora and a type of sorrow. She would not cry. Would not break down under this kindness. Phyllis turned and watched with keen interest as Sophie approached Delora and held her, murmuring soothing words. Delora, uncomfortable under Phyllis’s relentless interest, gave Sophie the most cursory of hugs and did not meet her eyes.

Delora could tell Sophie sensed her hesitancy, and, to her credit, she followed Delora’s lead, backing away almost immediately and casting her gaze downward.

“I’m so sorry, Delora. About your loss. I know the hereafter will greet him with welcoming arms.”

Sophie raised her eyes for one sweet moment before she turned back to the task at hand. Delora remained rooted, feeling superfluous and lost with all the activity around her.

Sophie must have sensed Delora’s distress because as was her way, she silently pressed used plastic wrap into Delora’s hands, which propelled her toward the waste bin. Once this ice, of a sort, was broken, she was able to fall into a normal kitchen routine, working alongside the other women. And even though she was back in Rosalie’s house, she was glad for the familiar tasks to occupy her hands.

Chapter Fifty-Two

Part of Sophie’s training as a healer had included the proper burial procedures for Manu Lisse who passed from this life. There were certain sacred practices that only those close to the Manu were privy to. Sophie had learned at a very young age that death, in its own way, is just as important as life.

It fell on Sophie, even in her grief, to prepare for her grandmother’s traditional burial the evening after her death. After discovering Grandam’s body, Sophie had called Brother Kinder to arrange the regular funeral and then Womack, who lived midway between the Bayou Lisse and Redstar and divided his time between both communities. He’d processed the paperwork but looked the other way when Clary and Salty came, late that afternoon, to load Grandam’s body into the back of the car to bring her home to the bayou for her true burial.

Still numb from handing Grandam over to Womack, but filled with a sense of duty, Sophie had entered the new quietude of Grandam’s bedroom late the day after her death.

The Manu often know when their time is nigh, usually by the somber sound of the death beetle paying a visit laced with prophesy. Obviously Grandam had been visited. Following ancient ritual, she had, without anyone’s knowledge, prepared and gathered together all that she would need to be carried properly to the next world. She had patiently braided summer woodbine into long ropes—ropes that would be used to bind her coffin—and laid them in thick coils atop her wardrobe.

The coffin itself would be made of smooth willow splits, which Grandam had no doubt purchased from the hardware store and had stacked inside the shed lean-to out back of the house. Herbs and imported spices had been set aside, hidden under the head of her bed. Her shroud, sewn by her own hands, was intricately embroidered with the symbols of a prosperous, happy afterlife.

Sophie found the folded shroud in the press in Grandam’s bedroom. She found the coils of woodbine and the herb pouches easily and piled them, alongside the shroud, on the top cover of Grandam’s bed. She took the toiletries from the bureau and added them, her touch lingering on the heavy hairbrush used to untangle the long gray strands each evening before retiring.

Sophie sighed. Life would never be the same.

Bringing up the four corners of Grandam’s coverlet, Sophie lifted the items and carried them through the house, the family turning their backs to her as she passed. She went through the kitchen, out the door and across the lawn to the sloping bank of the bayou. After resting the bundle against one of the dock posts, she made her way to the shed, sure she would find the coffin splits there under a heavy tarpaulin.

During the next hour, as she wove the long splits and the woodbine rope into a flat mat, Sophie relived the highlights of her life with Beulah Cofe. She remembered their eyes meeting in relief after the difficult but successful birth. Their time together reciting and reasoning out the ailments of the community. The sweet smiles of triumph when Sophie had remembered the ingredients of a difficult potion. Sophie’s eyes moved to the lean-to where her grandmother lay waiting.

People not of the bayou didn’t take kindly to the bayou ways of death and dying so preparing the body was always done after dark. The herbs Sophie would use to prepare Grandam’s body had all been carefully labeled and the use of each had been just as carefully passed from grandmother to granddaughter. There were ones for the mouth, nose and ears and others for between the legs. Some went beneath the arms and others at the soles of the feet. Each placement was accompanied by a specific chant. Sophie ran them through her mind as she carried each of the four twenty-pound lead balls from their neat stack beneath the ancient oak tree at the northernmost point of Cofe land. One of the kith had already brought the burial flatboat and two poles and left them at the water’s edge so she placed the four balls against the side of the boat. They would be added last, when the coffin was bound tight.

After the back and forth trips, which when combined amounted to several miles, Sophie rested and watched as dusk settled onto the bayou. Her stomach rumbled and she welcomed the grounding that reminded her she was still alive. It was tradition that the nearest family member fast the day of the bayou funeral. Otherwise it would have been too easy to complacently follow the dead into their watery grave.

Wearily she rose, fetched items from Grandam’s coverlet and entered the lean-to. She smelled Grandam’s familiar rosemary scent, now enhanced by the hours lying dead in the hot shed. Womack hadn’t touched her beyond checking to make sure she was truly dead, so she looked peaceful even though her face and body had begun to stiffen. Steeling herself, Sophie touched her grandmother’s icy arm, once more getting used to the oddly sub-zero dead weight of a body. Each time she prepared a body for burial, it was a shock. Trying not to think about who the person had been, she respectfully removed the clothing, bathed her with clean bayou water, then brushed the long, unbound hair one final time. She applied the herbs with the appropriate prayers and chants. The entire process took almost two hours, and by the time she was finished, she felt as though she’d lost a part of herself to iron will. Gaunt with misery, she wrapped her grandmother in the embroidered shroud and lifted her.

The warm bayou air felt good as she strode from the shed, Beulah an awkward weight in her arms. Earlier she had laid the newly woven coffin across the boat. Now she tenderly placed her grandmother in the center and touched her cheek one last time before placing the weights evenly next to the body. She covered Grandam with the quilt from her bed, as if simply tucking her in for the night, and lovingly placed her favorite possessions around her. Pulling the coffin sides close, she began weaving the edges together with woodbine cord.