Snow in Summer: Fairest of Them All: Fairest of Them All (10 page)

“Magic,”
I whispered, and allowed myself to finally understand what I’d been battling.

I knew Cousin Nancy had little money, her being a widow and times still being hard. All she had was her government wages from the post office and the bit of Cousin Jack’s pension from the army, so I hadn’t expected a real gift. But the gift of understanding what I was up against was better than anything she could have bought me at a store.

“Open it carefully,” she said, though the warning was unnecessary. Her gray-green eyes had a watery look. Like the Elk River running slow in summer.

Inside was a birthday card with a poem exhorting me to be a good child. And a photograph, one she said she’d found tucked away in one of her drawers. Staring out of the photo were Papa and Mama in their marrying clothes. They both looked stiff and scared and happy all at the same time, Papa so young and vital, I almost didn’t recognize him. He stood tall and thin, like a boy who’d grown up too fast and his body hadn’t quite caught up with the growing. His long face looked softer, fuller than ever I remembered it. And Mama, small and pretty, her hair in long dark braids, a dimple in her chin—the same as I have—stood straight by his side, clutching his arm. Even in the picture you could see the strength in her hand, the knuckles near white, as if there was nothing that would make her let him go.

Nothing but death.

A second envelope sat within the first, crinkled like it had been handled too often. I touched it tentatively, then worried open a little bit of the flap. Inside was a single sheet of folded-over paper. Slowly I opened it and gaped.

A strange piece of grayish material, a bit like a cap with long rubbery ribbons, lay there. Along its edges, the paper had turned light brown, like a water stain. The whole cap was oddly puckered, almost a map of our town, the center surrounded by little peaks and valleys. I touched the thing tentatively but couldn’t identify it.

“Your caul, child,” Cousin Nancy said. “I retrieved it right after you were born. Salted it down, let it dry over the rim of a bowl. I’ve kept it for you all this time. I knew it’d be important for you to have it one day.”

“What . . . what do I
do
with it?” I was afraid to touch the thing again. Just the thought of doing so made me a little sick.

“Just keep it on you. Always. As long as
she
lives there.” Meaning Stepmama. Meaning in our house. Then Cousin Nancy reached into her pocket and pulled out a little drawstring bag. “Keep it in this, which bore the gift from your dear mama to me when she asked me to stand as your godmama. Keep the caul in this. It’ll bring you luck. And, more important, it’ll protect you.”

Luck and protection.
I certainly could use both, though neither of us said that aloud. I took the string bag and closed the horrible rubbery caul up inside it. Then, shuddering slightly, I put the drawstring over my head and tucked the bag under the front of my dress, where it made scarcely a bump or lump.

Then Cousin Nancy got out another bottle of pop that she’d stored in her satchel, plus two glasses. That satchel was like the never-empty bag in the tale about the old woman and the wind. I wondered what else it contained.

Filling each glass to the brim, Cousin Nancy told me the story of when I was born, a story I hadn’t heard in years.

“Your mama was plumb wore out from your birth, but when she held you, all her spirit came flooding back into her.” Cousin Nancy smiled. “She stared down at you lying by her side and said, ‘Looky there, Nan, she’s all red and white and black,’ her voice a wonderment, though weak. ‘Like that girl in the fairy tale.’ Your mama just plain loved the old tales.”

“Happily ever after,”
I said. “Anyways, that’s the promise.”

That made Cousin Nancy glow, like she was a jack-o’-lantern all lit up inside. She kept her hands tight clasped in her lap, afraid to reach out and touch me in case I shrank back away from her like I had before. How could she have known that now I’d have welcomed that embrace? Even if I couldn’t have told her so. But she said, like it was an echo,
“Happily ever after,”
and clinked her glass against mine.

We both knew Mama’s story and my story were a long way from any such happiness. And at twelve, heading for adulthood, a child fears that the way she is at that moment is all she’s ever going to be.
Un
happiness seemed to me a straight line into forever. I clutched onto the drawstring with all my might and made a birthday wish. Then I clinked her glass with mine.

 

 

When we walked back to my house, I believe that both of us were fearful that our faces would give away what had happened between us: a small hope if not an actual promise of happiness ahead. But Stepmama was gone, a note on the door stating only:
Gone to church.

“Which church?” asked Cousin Nancy, for it was already three in the afternoon, way past time for any service in any of the churches around here.

“I don’t rightly know since Stepmama hasn’t ever been to any church that I know of,” I said, shrugging. Then, putting my hand over my chest and feeling the horror/ comfort of the bag and what was in it, I opened the door and went inside.

Cousin Nancy didn’t come in, of course. She hadn’t set foot
inside
the house since the day Stepmama arrived. I waved at her out the window, then turned.

As always, Papa sat in his chair by the fire though it was unlit since this was still early fall. But he smiled just a bit at me, possibly more a touch of heartburn than an emotion. Still, I took it as a sign and after stuffing some of the rowan berries in his pants pockets, I gave him a huge grin and went into my room.

I glanced back right before closing my door. His head had already sunk back onto his chest and he’d begun to snore again.

But the church thing was niggling at me. If Stepmama planned to take me along, I needed to know what to expect. There were all kinds of churches, up and down one side of our mountain and the next. Most of those churches were pure Baptist and some were Pentecostal and a few—a very few—were Catholic. I heard this from the kids at school. But none of them, as far as I knew, met late Sunday afternoon. So was she
really
at her church—or up to something else? And how would I ever find out?

It was too much of a dark puzzle for me and thinking about it threatened to spoil my joy in the day. So I put it out of mind and went into my bedroom. There I reread Cousin Nancy’s card and looked at my parents’ photograph for the longest time. Then I put them both in the secret drawer of my dresser. Next, I nailed the string of garlic over my window and the rowan branch over the door, believing that now I was as protected as I could be. And, I hoped, Papa, too.

I went back into the living room, carrying my homework with me, to watch Papa sleep until the night wrapped around the house. Only then did the front door open and Stepmama—like a shadow—slip back into the house, taking her scarf off as she entered and filling the house with cold.

COUSIN NANCY REMEMBERS

I
’ve often wondered about courage. Easy to read about it in the old tales, where it takes the right sword or spell to defeat the witch. Easy to read about it in scripture, where a good heart and a strong belief are all one needs to be armored against evil. But courage in this world is a subtler thing. A word said right or wrong. A chance meeting. A photograph. A promise. A satchel. A caul.

Would any of these save my godchild from what lives in her house and attacks her soul? Would any of these save her from that she-devil’s hand?

And what about my poor Lem, who is all but lost? Did I lose him or did he lose himself?

Yet take heart, Nan. Aren’t we promised that the lost will be found, good turn away evil, the prodigal return? Doesn’t the priest warn against sinking into despair, which is a lack of hope? Doesn’t he tell us that losing hope is a sin?

I will
not
lose hope. I will find my small bit of courage so I can help Lem somehow find his.

 

 

That night, of the twelfth birthday lunch with Summer, when I got down by the side of my bed and said my prayers, I spoke for a long time to Ada Mae. I could just about see her at my bedside, wrapped in a flowing white robe, her white wings fanned out behind her, an angel.

“Ada Mae,” I said, “help me that I may do God’s work. And yours.”

She smiled, but she said nothing.

I suppose angels don’t talk to mortals simply because we want them to, but only under orders from God. So I stood up, realizing with a sharp pain under my breast that in fighting this thing, except for God’s watchful eye, I was to be on my own.

But surely,
I thought with a shiver,
that’s enough.

It had to be.

SIGNS

M
y courses came right before my thirteenth birthday, early for some, late for others, but my mama’s had done the same, or so Cousin Nancy had warned me. The very next week, Stepmama’s told me we’d be off to church together on Sunday.

Since she’d said I was to go when I turned fourteen, I wasn’t really prepared for it. But evidently, it was getting my first period that decided Stepmama that it was time.

By then I’d had over two years with Stepmama and should have been ready for anything. Two years of charms, cozening, threats, curses, cold comfort, privation. Two years of icy glares, small meals, hard work. Two years of watching Papa sink deeper and deeper into his chair despite my stuffing his pockets with the rowan berries any chance I got, mostly after I’d washed and ironed and hung his trousers in the cupboard. Still Papa slipped further away into the comfort of his chair till it was hard to tell which was which.

It’s not for nothing they say around here: “Meanness don’t happen overnight.” Stepmama was well practiced in meanness. And the thing about meanness is, it saps the spirit. There were times when I felt like sinking deep in Papa’s chair with him.

But at least the beatings had stopped. The pinchings, too. The garlic and rowan branch and caul had worked magic enough for that. And even though it may have had as much to do with my getting older and wiser and sneakier, I thought every day since:
Thank you, Cousin Nancy.

I had taken to wearing the caul in its string bag around my neck, taking it off only when I bathed, and even then kept it close to hand. I’d made new little bags to house the caul; the best and safest was one I sewed in home ec class, under the watchful eye of Mrs. Cadwell. The bag was of silk with silver and gold threads. And a few bits of Papa’s hair that I stole out of the bowl on Stepmama’s table.

Yes, I believed the caul had kept me safe. And maybe the thing was also somehow a sign from God. I began to believe that even if I couldn’t ever best Stepmama, I could outlast her. I mean, I was almost thirteen and she was old.
Nigh on to thirty-five if she was a day,
I thought. Even her powders and face paint couldn’t disguise the age lines and the gripe lines that ran as deep as the railway tracks some said were bound to cross our mountain any day soon.
A railway!
I longed to see one, but I knew Papa would hate it, the steel rails crushing the green.

 

 

As I got closer to my birthday, I promised myself that when I was old enough, I would run off and make my own life. Ride a train. Go to a city. Maybe even take classes at the university in Morgantown. It was all a dream, of course. At eight or nine or even ten and twelve, I could never dare to actually believe such a thing could happen. But with my thirteenth birthday looming, suddenly I
did
dare. And believing it, I was lulled into a sense of safety instead of constantly looking for a way out on my own.

My Sundays at church with Cousin Nancy and the everyday-ness of school, where I once again shone, seemed enough to sustain me. Though I hadn’t any close friends—because I’d no one I was allowed to spend time with after school—I wasn’t bothered by it. The girls at school thought me stuck up, but it was more as if I was bottled up. I kept my heart and my confidences tightly locked away. As for the boys, they were intent on hunting and fishing and telling stupid jokes. The other girls laughed at them, but I couldn’t do any such thing. So they ignored me as well.

At least by now I knew what to expect from Stepmama. Or I thought I did. Love—true or otherwise—was no part of the equation.

And then I woke on an ordinary school day at the hind end of May with blood on my sheets and a queasy stomach. I wasn’t particularly surprised. I knew what I had to do.

Stripping the bed quickly so that the mattress wasn’t spoiled, I washed the sheets by hand with lye soap and salt till my fingers were sore. Then I put the sheets through the wringer, careful not to get any of my fingers caught. Papa had a sprung thumb from the time he helped his mama with the wringer. I knew a moment’s inattention could mean disaster.

Then I hung the sheets out to dry. This all before Stepmama woke. But since I always did the laundry before going to school, there should have been nothing about my washing the sheets to alert her.

Cousin Nancy had already given me a copy of
Good Housekeeping
magazine at Christmas and pointed out the ads in it for Kotex. She even slipped me several of the napkins. I’d been a bit embarrassed by the present except she was so matter-of-fact about it. However, it turned out to be a fine gift because now I could take care of myself without letting Stepmama know. I’d hidden the napkins in my bottom drawer, under my winter nightgowns, a scattering of rowan berries on top—just in case Stepmama should pry.

So off I went to school that morning, with one of the napkins pinned in my panties, another two stuffed in my school satchel, thinking myself safe.

But Stepmama must have had a secret talent I hadn’t been aware of. She sniffed out the blood even though those sheets—snapping in the May wind and glistening in the morning sun—smelled only of sunshine, lye soap, and salt.