Reason

It can’t be more than five minutes later and I’m standing in front of Reason feeling like I’m about to throw up. My legs and stomach are seized tight as a widow’s knickers.

Mother Opal’s is one of the only houses left in Curdle Creek with its own name. Reason. Like everything we do is for her and this house. A pink and white Victorian house shouldn’t make your heart stop but it does. Just looking at it makes my mouth dry up. Nobody should have a house this grand, not even the Head Charter Mother. Whoever heard of a house with three floors, four if you count the cellar, five with the attic, a bathroom on each one, a kitchen, and a whole other house beneath it, all for one person? She could run up one set of stairs and slide down another. Between the passageways behind the cupboard, the hidden crawl space beneath the cellar, the back room in the attic, a person could disappear. Never be seen again. Eight bedrooms. No children. No living husband. What does one person do with all this house? I know what I’d do. I’d open the whole thing up to any last-chancer who made it past the Curdle Creek sign. Anyone running from a pack of wolves, dogs or men could have a safe place to stay the night. As long as they didn’t come bearing plague again.

I steady my breathing, run up the steps and bang on the front door. It’s not really the front door, it’s the door to the front porch. Nobody touches Mother Opal’s actual front door. They don’t usually need to. She says she knows who’s out front before they even know they’re on the way there. She sees things. Nothing much goes on in Curdle Creek that Mother Opal doesn’t know about. It wasn’t more than two months ago that everyone except Mother Opal had one of them tinkling, off-key bells to announce company. As soon as Mother Opal said she could see why some people needed them, since not everyone had the gift of common sense, the Charter Mothers started not needing them either.

Mother’s always trying to out-mother Mother Opal. If I had a nickel for every time she had me sneak out back and snake around to the front of the house to peek at who was on the porch so she could call out So-and-so, I knew you were coming! I’d have a handful of nickels to throw at one of the sunporch windows to get Mother Opal’s attention right now. I wouldn’t even need to break the glass; just a sharp knock would bring her running. I don’t have a nickel and I wouldn’t dare throw it if I did. There’s no telling how long the apology would take and I don’t have that much time. There I’d be mid-apology and the phone would ring. Everyone would pick it up, of course, even though it would be for Mother Opal and they’d know it by the high-pitched beeps the line makes when the call’s for her. They’re nosy though so they’d pick up too. Someone—probably not one of the Deacons, they’d be too ashamed; the wife of one most likely, someone who couldn’t wait to get in a good word with Mother Opal and against Mother—would be telling her that I’ve had a message before I could tell her myself and wasn’t it a coincidence that the ancestors chose me to end the Moving On the year my father’s name was called? How could I be trusted? By the time she got off the phone, there would be no use in apologizing about the window or anything else. My whole family would be damned, and Mother would blame me and that window.

I wait to hear her shuffling footsteps, a creaking door, a whining floorboard. I know she’s in there. Mother too. I followed them even though I couldn’t hardly keep up with them. I listen for the sounds of a full house. Teakettle whistling, oven door opening and closing, a friendly Come in! Instead, there are birds singing. Bees buzzing. Even with my ear pressed to a window, I can’t hear anything inside. Soon, one of her nosy neighbors will come out, asking me what happened to my good sense? The knocking doesn’t do much of anything except echo in my ears. I expect the wood to splinter. The door to shatter. It doesn’t. If anything, that old mahogany door swallows up all the sound. If Mother Opal really is just like everybody else, the door isn’t locked. I could walk right in.

I scan the neighbors’ windows. Even though everyone’s busy having an early supper to ward off hunger, I’m sure someone’s peering back. I look to the house across the street. The curtain flutters. I can’t stop myself: I’m cracking my knuckles. I’m nervous. Just this once can’t hurt. The pops are satisfying, like extra puffs of air. My hands still shake. I close my eyes, hold my breath to twist the knob. Of course it’s locked. I’d keep my door locked too if I was in charge of deciding who lived and who didn’t. I almost hear her correcting me: I don’t decide. I declare. Fate does the deciding; the Caller calls the name. I amplify their voice. Mother Opal considers herself the bearer of the news, not the maker of it. Still, if I was her, I wouldn’t trust a soul in Curdle Creek, living or dead.

I knock again. Wait a few minutes. My foot’s tapping. I don’t have much more time. I’m going to have to do it. I press my knuckles against the closest window. It’s cool against my skin. Clear as ice. Imagine how much they would have cost. The town paid for them, Least they could do for all she’s done for them. Mother Opal’s is the only house with a full porch made of windows. No wonder she can see the future. She can just sit on the front porch and watch the whole town if she wants to. Today, the blinds are closed tight. Not an ounce of daylight can squeeze its way in without Mother Opal’s permission.

I rap on the window hard. It seems like the whole thing rattles. I can’t afford to pay for broken glass. I’ll try around back.

At the back of the house I run my fingers along the iron fence the way I used to do when I was a kid. I’m a grown woman and the fence is still taller than I am. It’s high enough to make you think twice before trying to jump over it, but not too high to keep someone out who has a mind to it. What would it look like if I tried to jump over it still dressed from the Calling, lipstick probably smeared across my face, nails chipped, curls heavy with sweat? Years ago, I’d sail over it like I was ten, fresh from ordinance recital practice, impatient to show off what I’d learned. Now, I’ll probably only make it halfway over. I’ll be stuck with one leg on this side, the other dangling in the garden, skirt hitched up, snagged on one of those gilded iron leaves poking out the top of the fence until someone, probably Mother, comes along to rescue me. The thought alone makes me cold. Mother would kill me.

I walk around the house. The side gate is always unlatched anyway. Today, it’s wide open, swinging. I close it behind me. It’d be rude not to. I don’t bother going up the back steps and knocking on the door. If she didn’t answer the front door, she won’t answer the back one. She must get tired of daughters, sons, mothers, fathers, sisters, tired of all of that begging her to find another way, choose another neighbor, spare them that much longer. Just selfish.

There’s a breeze whipping up. I know that’s not why I’m shivering, though. Everyone in Curdle Creek knows, if your name is called, more often than not family had something to do with it. You might be paying for something they did or something they didn’t do years before you were even born. Family. I sure wish I were an only child.

I stroll past the rosebushes, one for each of Mother Opal’s dead husbands, across the cobbled path, and head for the cellar door. I wait for a minute, half expecting her to call down from the kitchen porch, inviting me in like I’m just here for tea and a biscuit or two. I smell it first: rain. I love the way it fills the air. I imagine it’s going to put out the fires for miles around, scatter people like secrets. Maybe, if it rains hard enough, the Moving On will be canceled. The earth will swell with water, the crops will burst with seeds, the animals will breed. The town will flourish. The Moving On could be skipped, set aside for at least another year.

It would take a flood for that to happen. I need a sign. I’m leaning against the door waiting for one. When it comes, it comes as hot rain. The drops are full and thick, full of spite. Each splash seems to make its own puddle. It’s pouring. The sky is cracked wide open. Rain falls and falls and falls. My clothes stick to my body, making me look bloated and misshapen. I feel heavy. If it keeps raining like this, the Creek might overflow, flood the whole town, and me and my clothes would sink. It’s the lightning that makes up my mind for me, and the thunder. The whole world, or at least the whole yard, fills with thunder and I jump. The boom roars longer than it should, rattling across the sky. I push against the door; it’s bloating and damp and doesn’t want to open. I push it with both hands. There’s a sharp crack. I’m in.

I’m holding my breath. I’ve never been inside Mother Opal’s house uninvited. It feels different without a welcome. It’s darker in the house than it is out of it but I close the door behind me anyway. There are worse things to be scared of than the dark. “Mother Opal?” I call. I whisper but I may as well be shouting. I shouldn’t be here. But if they hadn’t chosen Daddy, if she hadn’t let them, I wouldn’t have to be. If she’s upstairs, she won’t be able to hear me call anyway, but I don’t want to pop out of her kitchen unannounced. If I move a few boxes and chairs along the way, maybe that will let her know I’m in the cellar and heading up. That way she’ll have time to get decent if she isn’t already. She wouldn’t know it was me, though, would she? Well, if she can really see the future she will. But, if she can’t, I could stop her heart or something if I scare her.

I’ll call her when I get to the top of the cupboard stairs. I know the cellar enough to feel my way around. I don’t need to light a candle. When we were kids, me and Mae would play down here while our mothers met above. When we were older, we had lessons in the front room. Piano, reading, Warding Off. Then, when we were older still, the ordinances.

There are stacks of boxes lined up everywhere. Most of them are Mother Opal’s dead husbands’. Stuff they couldn’t take with them though they tried, according to her. Boxes of clothes, shoes, coats. I don’t see why she couldn’t keep them upstairs for the next one but she said most new men don’t want to wear old clothes. So each time a husband Moved On that Father Opal’s clothes came down here. It’s a museum for departed men.

I’m just through the ’50s aisle. That Father Opal didn’t last long. They weren’t married two years when it was his time to Move On. Mother Opal has to be the unluckiest woman in all of Curdle Creek. All of her husbands get called sooner or later. I walk through Memory Lane: the row of couches, bureaus, tables, chests and lamps Mother Opal or past Mothers didn’t have space for. I’m at the door to the stairs. With my fingertips I feel my way up the stone walls. At the top of the stairs, I press my fingers against the tip of one panel and the bottom of the other. Like witchcraft, they slide open just enough for me to slip through. Mother Opal keeps this cupboard filled with cleaning supplies. If you want to hide something, Mother Opal always says, hide it behind a mop.

I’m inside the cupboard, keeping company with overused things. A straw-haired broom and corn-husk mop guard the door in a giant cross. I would knock but she’s liable to think it’s one of her dead husbands come to complain about being called, or the ghost of some departed Mother wanting her Council seat back. It could be a burglar but I don’t think that would scare her as much as a visit from the grave would. It would mean the Warding Off didn’t stick. Whatever makes its way back after being Warded Off the first time is up to no good. Damp, pine, bleach and fresh air. I try not to breathe. The gap beneath the door is like a mouth breathing in air and breathing out sound. Mother Opal always said she could tell the weather just from standing in front of the cupboard door. Turns out you can hear it from in here too. I wonder if she knows that.

“Why would it be his time now? I told you I would do it when the time was right.” From where I’m standing, it sounds like Mother. I can tell she’s angry because she’s doing that pretend whisper. The one that sounds like hot, spitty words and deep breaths. If it were anyone else but me, they’d say her eyes were glowing, smoke streaming from her mouth, her fingertips on fire. They would say it behind her back the way they do when they say she’s some sort of evil spirit. Like it’s her fault her first husband Moved On before his time. She’s not a spirit. She’s just Mother. Somehow she’s caught Mother Opal’s bad luck.

“His name was called,” Mother Opal says. I can tell from her voice that she doesn’t have her teeth in. Her words are sticky and slow, like she wasn’t expecting company, or not expecting to be caught by company. This is an emergency but, as Mother Opal would say, An emergency ain’t an emergency for all of us. Maybe because they were friends, Mother’s pain is Mother Opal’s too. It wouldn’t have been right to have Mother waiting on the steps while she fixed her hair, popped in her teeth, put on her grief hat. “We put the Caller in the well same as we do for every Moving On. No one knows who’s been nominated or what name’s on the paper before it’s called.” She’s using Mother’s there-there tone.

“How do we know it was his name? Nobody heard it but you.”

“That doesn’t make it less real.”

“Says who?”

“It was good enough last year when it was Jude’s time. And the year before that, when it was…” She pauses. A chair scraping the floor, the pucker of the icebox lid, cracking of ice, breathing. Then the pop of a cap, the ahhhh of the fizz, the swallowing of words. That year was Jeremiah’s father. Things haven’t been the same at his house since. No lights on, even though the whole town has electricity. No running water, no nothing. His mother says she don’t want nothing more to do with this backward town and its hard-earned evil. If they can’t grow or make it, she doesn’t want it. I’m not supposed to go over there anymore. No one is. The Council decreed her officially shunned and the shunning does not include popping over for biscuits no matter how good they are or her homemade punch no matter how much rum she puts in it. Since I lost Moses, though, Mother Adelaide and I have a lot to talk about, even if I do have to slip in like a ghost in the middle of the night to do it.

My heart is racing. It’s boom, boom, booming in my head, making me dizzy. I close my eyes and mouth soothing words to calm my spirit. My mind is steady, life complete, trust the land beneath your feet. If Mother finds out I’m here, she’ll burst from the shame of it. Her own daughter breaking into people’s homes, slithering and slipping through their houses just to eavesdrop would be bad enough. Claiming to have a message from the ancestors would be too much for her to bear. Mother might disown me. Erase me right from the family book like she did Romulus. Mother Opal could hardly intervene twice. I’ll be erased, disremembered. It’ll be almost as bad as the shunning that will surely come with it.

I’ll get to keep the house. Even if the land’s the town’s, Moses and I built it, so by rights it’s still mine. But what good will it do, with the whole town pretending I don’t exist? They’ll mark my mail Return to Sender, not that it will be anything but bills. Nobody writes to the erased. I’ll have to shop after hours to avoid the embarrassment of being served last no matter who arrives after me or, even worse, have to go to the only entrance around back like Mother Adelaide, as if my money is no longer good enough even to spend.

No, if Mother knew I was here, she’d have opened the door by now, flung it open with an Aha! worthy of a classic Curdle Creek detective film. Mother Opal must know I’m here. She must be wondering why I’m waiting like a thief.

“Let me see the box!” The tone of Mother’s voice snaps me back to the cupboard. It’s so sharp that I almost jump. No one but Mother Opal sees the box, Mother knows that. All that history, years of names, dates and notes. It would be dangerous for anyone other than Mother Opal to have it. Someone with less sense than her would start looking for patterns where none existed. It says so in Book II.

“In my house—” Mother Opal begins.

Crackkkkkkk. The sound of a hand against skin silences her. Even my heart stops. If my mother hit Mother Opal, surely she’ll die right now. Lightning will strike them both. It might hit me too by accident. Please don’t strike me down, please don’t strike me down, please don’t. I don’t say the words out loud but God and the ancestors can hear me. I know, cuz I’m still standing. There’s shuffling and tussling and sobbing. They speak in grunts and moans, finishing each other’s sentences, answering each other’s silences. It’s like hearing two sisters fighting and making up. I shouldn’t be here. By rights, I should be running to gather the Council together. But if I do that, Mother will be gone just as sure as Daddy. I’ll be a forty-five-year-old orphan. There would be no waiting for the Moving On. A special ceremony would be called. Mother would be Moved On by sunset, with the first blow dealt by the offended Charter Mother. Even then, with the debt paid, the criminal’s family could be sure to inherit at least a generation of bad luck. Mother’s just damned our whole family. Now we’re double cursed. Maybe triple.

There’s no one for me to tell. It’s not like Mother Opal needs me to tell her what Mother’s done, and Mother would be the second in line to be told. There’s no sense in getting involved. Nothing good can come of it. Mother will fix this herself. She’ll make it up to Mother Opal, do right by Curdle Creek and the family.

I slip out the way I came, travel backward through the cellar. I close the gate. I take the long way home. Someone else can tell Mother Opal about my blessings. Mother will intervene for Daddy. Mother Opal will recall the Calling. Just because it ain’t never been done before, don’t mean it can’t be undone now. Besides, there may be a way to fix everything before they even need to know. “Spirits of Curdle Creek,” I say. I can’t stand on my tiptoes in the middle of the street so I whisper in case somebody’s watching. “Spirits of Curdle Creek, please make everything all right.” I don’t say what all right means. Who am I to interpret for spirits who know better than I do? There I go, sounding just like Mother Opal again.