Snow in Summer: Fairest of Them All

I was not sure when my sixth-grade teacher, Miss Alison, first noticed the burn marks on my fingers or the way my hair was often unplaited or unwashed. She was new in our three-room schoolhouse, a woman of quick smiles and a chirrupy voice, like a sparrow in human form. How was she to know what I’d been like before?

She sent for Stepmama to come in to talk about how poorly I was doing in school. The two of us stood before her, me with my head down, like a student wearing a dunce cap. Stepmama stared Miss Alison straight in the face as if her conscience, at least, was clear.

“Miss Curtin told me before she left that Summer was her star pupil, bright and sunny, eager to learn,” Miss Alison chirruped. “Said Summer was the one child she’d miss following her retirement.”

We both heard the threat in that and Miss Alison answered quickly. “Oh, that won’t be necessary, Miz Morton,” she said. “I’m sure Snow in Summer will do well enough. I’ll continue to encourage her. Chirp. Chirp. Chirp.” She took a little bird breath. “It would be a shame to”—here she stumbled—“to burden you further.” She meant further than a husband who was fading into the woodwork. Further than a house that was falling down around our ears. A garden that was overgrown. A family that dwelt in rumors. Further than a once-bright child failing at school.

And so the lines had been drawn. The war begun. But still the little princess lived in the tower with the dragon. There was nothing a chirrupy teacher could do about that. If I had hope of rescue, it wasn’t going to come from Miss Alison. Or Cousin Nancy. Or Papa. Or any of the Morton clan.

Yet, in a strange way, rescue did come from Miss Alison. Oh, not directly. And not all at once. But a week later, she bumped into Cousin Nancy at Cogar’s meat counter, and they got to talking as neighbors will, and suddenly Miss Alison told her all. About the burn marks on my fingers, the deep circles under my eyes, the unplaited hair, and all the rest.

Cousin Nancy wrote out a paper in her careful hand stating her can do’s and must do’s, and then marched to our house that Sunday in her very best churchgoing outfit, a gray dress with white piping and a hat to match. She was carrying a big old brown leather satchel, which didn’t match her outfit, and that made me wonder.

She knocked smartly on the door and when it was opened by Stepmama, Cousin Nancy spoke right up. She didn’t start with any pretty words about how nice it was to see Stepmama or wasn’t the autumn weather glorious or the usual slow greetings we have in Addison. No, Cousin Nancy showed backbone by coming right to the point. “I am taking Summer to church with me this morning.”

Of course, she didn’t expect to be greeted pleasantly and was prepared for the worst—at least the worst as she envisioned it—but Stepmama surprised her. Cocking her head to one side as if sizing up an adversary, Stepmama answered, “That’s fine. I think Snow needs some moral schooling. She’s become careless and sneaky. She covets my things, talks back to her elders, grows lax in her personal habits, and is failing at school.”

“I never . . . ,” I began, but remembered shamefully that I had sneaked into her room and I had broken her things, and I had spoken to the mirror about my dead mama, and I was definitely failing in school. Suddenly, I understood that from Stepmama’s point of view, I was all the bad things she’d just said. I shut my mouth, hung my head, and waited for judgment.

Stepmama took a short breath and continued, “In the meanwhile, you may see her for her birthdays. And on each Sunday you may take her to your church or Lemuel’s. Which one is up to you. But I expect you to correct her lapses in moral judgment.” She smiled again, this time at Cousin Nancy, but the smile never reached her eyes.

I was stunned, and certainly didn’t trust that Stepmama had changed her mind about me, only her tactics. But even that wariness couldn’t hold back the happiness that, like a warm blanket, folded around me.

Cousin Nancy and I walked directly to her church without me even taking time to get into my churchgoing clothes in case Stepmama should change her mind and call me back.

“You’re twelve now, and a few months more,” Cousin Nancy said in her soft voice. “You’ve lived almost as long without your mama as with her.” She said it as if telling me a secret, but it was a secret we both knew.

“You’ll see your mama in heaven someday. But until then, there are certain things she’d have me do for your protection. I’m your godmama after all.” She took a deep breath. “Forgive me, child, that I’ve not done a good job of caring for you in the last year or so.”

I didn’t quite know how to think about that. She’d given me a fact of life and a fact of death squashed together. It was an uncomfortable place to be at twelve. And she’d made the mirror’s promise of seeing Mama once more nothing but a promise of life after death in heaven. That was not what I was hoping for, but some greater bit of magic from the mirror. Somewhat more subdued, I nodded and said nothing in return and soon enough the little Catholic church came into view.

Mass seemed both long and short. The priest—a circuit rider from Clarksburg—told some interesting stories, but their points were lost on me. I kept thinking about the fairy tale I’d read the night before in bed, about the good girl who spoke in diamonds and pearls, the bad girl in vipers and toads. Both seemed an uncomfortable gift. Either way, their own voices were lost.

Cousin Nancy and I sat silently side by side after his sermon. She was silent because she was praying hard; I was silent because I was afraid to break whatever spell had been cast. Also I was wondering how much I would have to pay for this moment of peace, and yet at the same time I was so happy to be there, I would have willingly given anything for it to continue.

Then Cousin Nancy stood, to go down with the others who were taking communion. I knew I couldn’t go with her because I hadn’t been through the proper study. Stepmama’s arrival into our lives had put a stop to that. Even if I could have done so, I was certain I hadn’t lived a good enough life the past year to be allowed at the rail. I’d lied, coveted, didn’t honor either father or stepmother, was full of greed. Just thinking about taking communion invited lightning to strike me down. When it didn’t, I was less relieved than surprised.

Afterward, we walked back along the road toward Cogar’s. Silence stretched between us. Cousin Nancy seemed wrapped in a kind of sanctity. I was still vibrating with my close call.

There at the town’s second bottom, the single row of storefronts—Cogar’s, the drugstore, Lawyer McAdams’s office, and the doctor’s office—all leaned together like old friends. It had been months since I’d been down that way. Stepmama kept me much too busy to even think of such an adventure.

Cousin Nancy had her arm tucked through mine, the way two women do when they stroll through town. I could feel her warmth coming in waves toward me. I hadn’t been warm like this in a while. Far too long.

When we got to Cogar’s door, Cousin Nancy said, “I have a present for you.” She slapped her hand against the brown leather satchel. “But you have to keep it from your stepmama.”

I looked down at the ground and nodded before looking up at her. Cousin Nancy’s green-gray eyes softened. She read my face and she got a misty look about her, which gave a luster to her familiar face, like washing old china till it sparkles, till you remember the good of it.

“My strong girl,” Cousin Nancy said, not asking me what those other things were in case I didn’t want to say. “If only your poor papa could be so courageous. But of course that witch woman has him be-spelled.”

“Anything?” Mary Lou asked. It was past wartime of course, and past the Depression, not that you could tell in West Virginia. There wasn’t a whole lot of anything on offer.

I ordered a tuna salad sandwich and a bottle of pop. “This is the best present ever,” I said to Cousin Nancy, the words garbled because I had shoved the sandwich into my mouth without regard for the manners Stepmama had been forcing on me. The sandwich was so much better than the scraps from Stepmama’s meals, scraps that were all gristle or bone.

Then Cousin Nancy put her hand into the leather satchel and drew out a packet made of white tissue paper wrapped about with a sturdy brown string. Handing it to me, she said: “Happy birthday, Summer.”

I opened the packet quickly, and a string of garlic and a rowan branch tumbled into my lap along with a little brown paper bag with rowan berries that Cousin Nancy must have been saving since last fall.

“The garlic is to ward off bloodsuckers and the rowan branch is proof against witches,” she said. “Nail the garlic over your bedroom window, the branch over your bedroom door. Put the berries, just a few at a time, in your papa’s pockets.”

I wondered how this squared with the teachings of the church. But here in Webster County, the old mountain ways were still followed even by the most ardent Christians.

“Let her think that’s all there is to it,” Cousin Nancy said, her face crinkling up like an old peach too long in the sun. “Homey magicks.” Then she pulled out an envelope from her bag and handed it to me. “This is the real present. You’re gonna become a woman someday soon and will need it.” She had a strange look I couldn’t parse, like a long sentence in a grammar lesson at school. “We must fight magic with magic, child.”

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.

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.

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.”

“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.

“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.”

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. Unhappiness 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.

“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.

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.

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.