The Killing Tree (30 page)

“Yeah, I do.” I smiled back at her.

“It’s like the Song Lady. She’s a seventh daughter, you know. But her healing power is different. She soothes the spirit with
her songs. When my daddy died and my momma about lost her mind over it, somehow the Song Lady knew. Nobody knew where my momma
had run off to, and nobody went to tell the Song Lady. Somehow she still knew, though. She found her, carried her back here,
and sang to her ’til she was feeling better.”

Mamma Rutha, a seventh daughter? I remembered how rough hands and bitter herbs had carried me back from my plastic death.

“Only bad thing is they can’t heal themselves. Their gifts don’t work on them,” she said.

“Why not?”

“Don’t know. But the seventh son, we take good care of him, ’cause he can’t heal himself. The Song Lady, though, your people
didn’t take care of her. She has a soul hurt she can’t heal.”

“Do you know what her soul hurt is?”

“No, but she spends days trying to heal it. She’ll be in the heart of the mountain, naked no matter what season it is, pouring
out her hurt. Her song is long and strange, about two dead children. One of them dies because they can’t walk through a door.
The Song Lady tries to heal its soul hurt, but she can’t. We don’t know why the other one dies. But we know that one’s name.
It was Naomi.”

I shivered.

“Do you know what killed Naomi?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“I thought you might since you’re from the Song Lady. Sad that she had two children killed. Well you better go inside before
your baby gets too cold.”

Two children killed? Me and my momma? In a way, the girl was right. When my momma died, she took everything that was supposed
to be me with her. She took a child that would have always known it was loved. She took a child that would have looked at
the world with curiosity and not fear. She took Naomi with her. And left me, traded down Mercy Heron. Lord have mercy on the
bastard child. Call her Mercy, that’s what she’ll need.

As I walked home with Mamma Rutha, I saw it. She wasn’t just a crazy old woman singing strange songs. She was a seventh daughter.
A soul healer. And all of nature knew it, and loved her for it. I asked her about herself, what it meant to be a healer. We
walked in silence for a great distance, until she spoke.

“When I was a little girl, my momma told me to sing. She said, ‘Sing Rutha.’ And so I do,” she said. “I send out the gift
and it’s soaked up to heal. Except for one place. Look under the apple tree, and see the pool of wasted songs. He couldn’t
soak ’em up. And once he killed her, she couldn’t either. Even the song of forever won’t work if a creature won’t hear it.”
She paused and let her hand caress a tree.

“First time I loved him, I was younger than you. I loved him in spite of his crippled heart. And songs I had never dreamed
of poured themselves into my soul. I sang to him. As I cooked his dinners. As I cleaned his house. As he sought me in the
dark of night. As I brought forth his child. And I saw the puddle growing underneath the apple tree, but I loved that crippled
heart. When he killed her I knew. It was the folly of my gift. For loving him. For wasting my songs on him. That day my heart
grew a new skin. And his puddle ceased to grow.”

I rested that day in bed. Trying not to think about Mamma Rutha’s soul hurt. About how she had loved Father Heron, or about
dead Naomi. Those thoughts made me feel sad and bitter, and I couldn’t risk feeding my baby any more grief. So I made a new
vow.

“From this day on,” I whispered to my belly, “I’m gonna take care of you. All my thoughts won’t be sweet, because we still
aren’t safe. But no more choking grief. So don’t you leave again.”

The baby stirred within me. It was a sign of the covenant between us. I wouldn’t choke it with my grief. It wouldn’t leave
me. And together, we would survive.

To go to war with a murdering silence, I was going to have to find my own weapons. I had warned my baby that some of my thoughts
wouldn’t be sweet. But I could only guess how dark they might become. Could my baby swallow that? Without leaving me again?
I needed protection for my baby. There was only one thing I could do.
I was from the Song Lady.
I would bless my baby, and she would grow.

I
carry a child. She was there all along, nestled within. She makes my belly round and smooth, like a polished river rock.
My belly rises. Like the swell of the moon over the mountain. It is filled with Eyes that see. Fingers that clutch. A Heart
that pulses. She feeds off my bones. My blood. My breath. My soul. To give the world a new song. A song that hums like a steady
August rain. And laughs like the flow of a mountain stream. She has eyes like sunflowers floating on deep river pools. She
is love. She is her father. She is my new song.

I knew I was having a daughter. She came to me nearly every night in my sleep. “Come on,” she would call me. “Come into the
ocean. It’s warm here. And safe.”

I would wake up from those dreams and whisper her song to her. We would hide during the day, like me and the Sally doll, hoping
he wouldn’t smell our fear. And I would think the dark thoughts that I needed to, in order to keep us safe.

The deep chill of the winter was beginning to thaw. Father Heron hadn’t seen me without my puffy coat on in months. Spring
was close. All of the earth knew it too. The sun hung around longer, warming the ground. The streams purred louder with the
melted snow. And my baby grew big and strong within me. She stretched my womb and banged her fists against its walls. She
was ready to sing for all of Crooktop.

With all the jelly jar money that I had saved up over the summer I bought supplies. Sweet little baby things that smelled
clean and sugary. I sent Della to the Magic Mart to buy a blanket, a little pink dress, socks and a hat, sleepers, baby wash,
lotion, and diapers. A whole summer’s jelly jar spent in one trip. I laughed when I thought about how I had wanted to buy
sexy jeans with it. At that point I could barely zip my oversized puffy coat, much less squeeze into tight jeans.

“Lord how people must be talking about me!” Della giggled. “One day I’m buying a pregnancy test, and the next day I’m coming
home with diapers and a little pink dress. And I’ve still got my figure, too! Bet them old cats are chewing their tongues
off!”

Della helped prepare for the baby. She was working odd shifts at Rusty’s diner. He asked about me every day, and sent food
that Della would have to hide and eat so that I couldn’t smell it. She spent most of her money on me and the baby. Feeding
us what we craved. Black licorice jelly beans. Molasses over cornbread. And biscuits and gravy. Always biscuits and gravy.
And after my jelly jar money ran out, she bought some onesies, a story book about birds, and a little teddy bear. Her first
toy. A little brown bear with a cream-colored face and brown-marbled eyes. He smelled like baby powder.

“What are we going to do about him?” Della asked.

“I’m still working on that. You know what has to be done. And it isn’t just for revenge anymore. It’s for safety. He’ll kill
my baby, Della. I swear to you he will.”

“Shhhh. Couldn’t you just beat him to the punch and announce to the world that you had a baby? Then he couldn’t just get rid
of it like it never happened.”

“He has ways of killing that look legal. Like my momma. He never even had to touch her to kill her. And he’ll find a way to
do it to us,” I said, rubbing my belly.

We had lots of ideas. I always fell back to the arsenic in the tobacco.

“First of all,” Della said impatiently, “where in the hell are you gonna find arsenic? And secondly, it can be traced! They
trace that stuff on TV all the time! You got a baby to raise. Both its parents can’t be locked away in jail.”

I winced. Since my promise to the baby that I wouldn’t choke it with grief, I had tried not to think about its daddy, locked
away in jail. The baby stirred and I thought that I could feel her gasp. So I whispered her song. A song that Della had learned
now too, she had heard it so many times.

“Well what do you suggest?” I asked.

“I say we get somebody else to do it. Make it look like a robbery. Let ’em ransack the place, and beat him ’til he’s dead,”
she said evenly.

“Who?”

“We’ll hire somebody. There’s lots of desperate people that are willing to do anything. Even kill an old man.”

“But we don’t have any money, Della. We’ve spent it all on diapers and black jelly beans!”

“There’s other currencies,” she said. “You know that by now.”

“No, that’s your momma’s type of money. And it just leaves everybody more broke. Besides, this job is too important. I can’t
trust it to nobody else. It’s going to have to be me.”

I thought about how surprised he would be when I didn’t dance around him. I was going to dance with him, through him, over
him, until he was dead.

“Well how are you going to do it?” she asked.

“I’m going to drown him. There’s a stream, not too far into the woods. It used to have wild morning glories growing around
it. I’m going to drown him in it.”

“How on earth are you going to hold that man under-water?”

“Sleepy tea. Mamma Rutha drugs him all the time. I’ll make sure he’s stone dead asleep. Then I’ll drag him to the stream and
lay him facedown. I’ll bring his fishing pole too and lay it in his hand. It’ll look like he’s been fishing and just keeled
over dead. It’s perfect.”

“You think you can drag him?” she asked.

“To keep my baby safe, I could drag this mountain.”

I walked home that night with new energy. Finally, I had a plan to protect my baby. I started tracing the path to the stream
every night. Memorizing its curves. Pushing back its brambles. Making it a smooth death walk.

A
fter Father Heron left for church, I started crushing Mamma Rutha’s hidden crumbles into a fine powder. I stared out the windows,
at the dark clouds of a storm brewing. And I thought it was a sign. The stream would surely be full from the rain.

I brewed some extra-sweet tea. It was death tea. “Shall we dance, Father Heron?” I whispered as I slid it into the fridge.

But someone else wanted to dance with me that day. Tapped out with the pulsing rhythms of my womb.
Curl graze snap
. Twirled around the blood of my body. At first I thought I had just spilled the tea. A gushing flow down my legs. But the
tea was still steady, not a drop had spilled.

You can’t come yet!
I wanted to scream to my baby.
It’s not safe. Just give me one more day.
I felt her tug at my womb. She was itching to dance.

“You’ve got to stop,” I whispered to her. “You’ve got to give me more time. Just one more day.”

I laid down in my bed, willing my body to get control of itself and make those dull pains disappear. “It’s okay. There’s no
pain there. You’re not having this baby,” I whispered to myself. When the pains would leave I would celebrate.
That’s it. Just a warning. Like a fire drill.

But the alarm kept going off, and as the pain grew stronger I knew that it wasn’t a drill. I got out of bed and began to pace.
Back and forth I walked for hours. I counted the tiles in the ceiling.
One two three . . . fifteen, sixteen . . . twenty, twenty-one.
And then the pain would come and I would brace myself against my bed, moaning into my pillow. Then,
one two three . . . fifteen, sixteen . .
. More pain. Harder, longer. It was a hot pain, like the seventh son’s hands but longer and sharper
. One two three . . . five six . .
. oh God the pain. I was in bed again. Flat on my back. Chewing on my hand as I stifled my screams. Blood trickled down my
wrist. The taste of copper filled my mouth. There wasn’t time to count between the pains.

“
I can’t survive this. God, protect my baby
,” I whispered.

Mamma Rutha was there now, singing and moving her hands over my belly. But I only saw pain. I breathed it. I screamed it.
I ate it. She started yelling for me to do something, but I couldn’t hear her. Because with every pulse of my womb my baby
was singing her song.
She was there all along, through all the losses.
Pain. Hot coals, filling my belly.
It is filled with Eyes that see. Fingers that clutch. A Heart that pulses.
Pain. Gnawing my insides, ripping my body.
She feeds off my bones. My blood. My breath. My soul.
Pain. Spilling my blood over the bed.
She has eyes like sunflowers floating on deep river pools.
Pain. Tearing away the life that had rooted inside of me.
She is love. She is her father. She is my new song. My Song Baby.

There was a cry that was really a laugh. A pain that was really a joy. As she clawed her way out of me, I saw bars swinging
open. I saw the Fire Trout, free and swimming away. I heard his voice in her cry.
You got glory all around you, Mercy.
As she laid upon my stomach, with red hands covered in our blood, I saw him. He lived again. Because of her. I lived again
too.

“Thank you. Oh thank you,” I whispered. She was my feast. After all the great losses.

Mamma Rutha was standing over me. Blessing my baby and rubbing her down. We were loving her cry. So full of life. Little lungs
belting an angry song. My beautiful Song Baby.

“She needs a name. What have you chosen?”

I hadn’t chosen a name. She had picked it herself. Her father had picked it. I just whispered it over her. “Glory. Glory Trucha
Price.”
A holy moment.

“That’s a fine name, Mercy baby. A real fine name.”

Mamma Rutha was smiling, and her eyes were shining. My Song Baby was a healer too. Easing our soul hurts. But we were still
in danger. There was a noise outside of an old truck pulling in the driveway. And Glory was still screaming her song.

“Shhh. Shhh. Glory, please. We aren’t safe. Please be quiet,” I begged.

Mamma Rutha’s eyes flashed wild and dangerous. She began grabbing bloody sheets and stuffing them under the bed. She half
carried me into my closet and pulled the clothes around me and Glory. I was a jelly jar secret.